Galahad - a-england

Hi lovely people!

Quick post tonight (this morning - it's 3am?!) as I have been desperately finishing up a rather large neuroscience report and I have to get up and study for a genetics test on Monday. I have a couple of quick pics of a gorgeous polish that I don't know why I haven't shown you guys yet... a-england 'Galahad'.

'Galahad' is a dusty teal polish. It has quite yellow undertones, but is surprisingly wearable even on my pale skin. It's really quite striking.


Best part about this polish... it's formula is so easy peasy and super opaque. In the past I have only ever needed 1 coat when I've used this polish, but I was in a hurry last night and I didn't let my base coat dry so my first coat was not perfect. I just used a really thin second coat to even everything out.

Check out a-england's website to see where you can buy their beauties from (as currently they are not shipping internationally).

Merman - Chi Chi & Pixie Dust - Dollish Polish

I have something that has been buried so far at the bottom of the vault that I had all but forgotten about it. Truth is, it's a gorgeous polish (two actually) that deserve to be shown off, so here we go...

First up, I am so surprised by how long my nails used to be! I never realised at the time. Weird!! (which reminds me, I hope you guys don't mind the lengths being all over the place in my photos at the moment).
Anyway... Chi chi is one of the "cheaper" brands in NZ (and by cheaper I mean ~$10-15 (I can't quite remember)). It's an Australian brand and I've never really even looked at their polishes, until I saw this little fella winking at me in Farmers one day. 'Merman' is a wonderful teal coloured polish, and as for the name, well the Zoolander lover in me kinda had to have it for this reason too...

On my middle and ring fingers, I decided to put a layer of Dollish Polish 'Pixie Dust'. I knew this would be really subtle and I was right, but I kinda like that it gives 'Merman' just the slightest shift in colour to blue at certain angles and it gives it a certain textured look that I actually quite liked. Kinda like mermaids' (mermen's??) scales.


Speaking of texture, 'Pixie Dust' is certainly not lacking in this department! She was a gritty little bugger! Luckily that doesn't really bother me too much and I just put an extra layer of top coat over it. These pictures show 3easy, thin coats of 'Merman' and one coat of 'Pixie Dust'.

I bought 'Merman' from Farmers a wee while ago, but I imagine it's still available there. I got 'Pixie Dust' from Llarowe for $11USD, but I've just looked and it doesn't appear to be available there at the moment. It's part of the Mythical Creatures set that Dolly will be restocking in her Big Cartel shop on the 5th of November though :)

Wanderlust - Takko Lacquer

How has your weekend been (or is it still going for those of you in the rest of the world)? I have had such a lovely day today, painted my nails, been to the movies, had amazing campari and orange sorbet and now watching Formula 1, Suzuka Grand Prix. That's pretty much a perfect day in my book. Anywho, I've got an absolutely gorgeous polish to show you today, sent to me by Sheryl from Takko Lacquer. This is 'Wanderlust'...

This polish is quite simply breath-taking. As soon as it arrived I was all ooohhh and aahhh just looking at the bottle. I put it on and it dried slightly matte. Skip forward to top coating time... It was like magic how the shimmer suddenly appeared with the shine of the top coat!

The shimmer in 'Wanderlust' is certainly not shy. It's incredibly prominent even in lower lighting. The shimmer is so complimentary to the slightly dusty lavender colour.

Speaking of the shimmer in 'Wanderlust', it sometimes appeared blue, as in this photo...

... and at times could appear quite green-leaning teal. This is one of those polishes that you really have to see in real life to fully appreciate.


On to the formula... 'Wanderlust' is surprisingly opaque, which was unexpected for me, considering how well the shimmer comes through. I needed only two coats for full opacity, though I have to admit I have three on most of these fingers as my left hand decided not to play nicely in the polishing of them and I had to fix the cuticle area with the third coat! 'Wanderlust' is fairly thick and for the last coat I actually added just a couple of drops of thinner (definitely not a biggie though).

I just have to take a quick second to say that the customer service that Sheryl provides is genuinely fantastic. I had a minor problem with a previous order and I just emailed her to let her know. She replied quickly and was so lovely about it and the problem was quickly rectified. I really appreciate this level of service and it makes this brand just that much more appealing.

Takko Lacquer is available from Sheryl's Etsy store. All the polishes are vegan, 3-free and not tested on animals. Check out Takko Lacquer blog for updates on restocks etc.

This product was provided for review. This is my personal, unbiased opinion.
For more information, see my disclosure policy.

Hey Jude - Enchanted Polish

I'm home and I'm so happy about it! I can't believe our trip is almost half way over already! Anywho, as promised, I have 'Hey Jude' to show you today. Holy mother of multichrome goodness, this is one seriously impressive polish!!!

*WARNING* this polish has a serious number of colours and so naturally this is a picture heavy post, so I'm putting most of it under a jump...

These show 'Hey Jude' in the sun in all it's holographic glory. I love these polishes that are holo and multichrome! Be still my beating heart. The second photo shows the more gold-ish sheen that 'Hey Jude' often has in sunlight. It actually shows even more gold and sandy in sunlight, but for the life of me, I could not capture it.

Unfor-Greta-bly Blue - OPI & BM-305

Today I would like to show you the second polish that I got from the OPI Germany collection that has just been released. I am a sucker for blue polish, so naturally, I had to get this polish. This is 'Unfor-Greta-bly Blue'...

This is a super dooper glowing blue with a super dooper amount of ultra-fine teal shimmer! Love, love, love! This is without top coat.

I decided to add a bit of stamping and I somehow ended up with a mani that makes me think of super heroes. I'm so happy with this polish and this stamp! I used Bundle Monster plate BM-305.

'Unfor-Greta-bly Blue' has so many facets. It can look really bright teal blue...

But it can also become sort of blackened around the edges. Ahhh so deliciously pretty.


'Unfor-Greta-bly Blue' was really easy to apply. Like 'Every Month Is Oktoberfest', the first coat gives decent coverage and the second coat just makes everything come together and gives that gorgeous glow. I was worried that it was going to be really brush-strokey, but once it dried, most of that disappeared. You actually can't really see any brush-strokes in real life. BM-305 was also really fantastic. I had absolutely no problem with this at all. I used China Glaze 'Sci-Fi' as my stamping polish.

Splatter Mani Take One...

Last Sunday, the last day of my holidays, I thought I'd like to try one more technique. So splatter mani it is...

I have to say, this was just as fun but not quite as messy as you all say it is to do! I took forever to decide which colours would go perfectly together and I ended up back with my old favourites, yes of course, I used 4 a-englands and a little Essie to top it off. On these four nails, left to right, all a-england - 'King Arthur', 'Avalon', 'Perceval' and 'Order Of The Garter'. Underneath is Sally Hansen 'White On', two coats.

This photo was taken mainly without top coat. There is top coat on my index finger, but it smeared the colour so the rest is without. I love how everything has a matte sort of look about it. All the other pictures are with top coat but a different one (on the index finger is Cult Nails 'Wicked Fast' and the rest are using Essie 'Good To Go').

I know this is a weird picture but I just popped my left thumb in here so I could show you all the colours together! On my thumb is Essie 'Trophy Wife'.

I really loved this fun look and will definitely have to try it again some time. The only thing was that I kept doing double takes, as my middle finger looked like I had ripped off a large piece of cuticle out the corner of my eye! I think these a-england colours played so nicely with Essie's 'Trophy Wife'.


And to make life a little sweeter, the ever-generous Adina has a massive promotion happening from now until the 22nd July and all the Mythicals are only £5 with free shipping, so hop on over to the a-england website and get shopping. The three polishes on the left are all from The Mythicals collection.

First Water Marbling Attempt!

Today I have for you my very first attempt at a water marble mani! I've always looked at pictures and tutorials for water marbling and thought that I'd love to give it a go some time, but I was never brave enough. Well, yesterday I plucked up the courage to give it a good go. It took a fair while but I have to say I'm pretty happy with how it came out considering it was my first go... To the pics...

Here it is! I used three of my gorgeous a-england polishes - 'Saint George', 'Excalibur' and 'Avalon' - and OPI 'No Room For The Blues'.

I came up with this colour combo in the middle of the night the other night and I think it was pretty cool. I want to try a bit more subtle water marble in the near future, but I do love how this one looked. 'Excalibur' tended to spread further than the others so that's why the silver is a bit more prominent in 2 of my fingers.

 

You can see what I mean about the silver spreading in these photos (plus I just love the look of the bullseye! So pretty). A handy tip I picked up from LTHP was to use a smaller glass so that you can get a tighter bullseye with less polish, though in saying that I didn't actually end up doing a tight bullseye at all.

There's a couple of kinks that definitely need to be ironed out. I'm not 100% sure why, but I got a few bubbles. I have actually since found a pretty awesome little tips and tricks post from Lacquerish that may explain this little problem. Like I said earlier, I am definitely going to be giving this technique another go soon, hopefully with a bit more finesse thanks to the things I've learned! It was so much fun, albeit very messy!

These are the designs on my thumbs. I didn't really get fantastic pictures of them, but you can certainly get the idea. My thumbs ended up being some of my favourites! Both of my thumbs some how came out with perfect little french tips in silver on my right thumb (see the left side of the top pic) and in purple in my left thumb (the right side of the bottom picture) - please excuse the tip wear, I got called into work last night and they got a bit thrashed!

Just because this is a post about my first marbling attempt, I thought I'd better pop in a photo of the actual first finger. This is on my left hand (hence it not being in the other photos) but it's kind of cool. Very different to the more flower sort of designs on most of my right fingers.

So what do you guys think? I had so much fun doing this mani and I can't wait to try some other exciting techniques. Anyone with any tips or suggestions about how to avoid pesky water bubbles, please let me know in the comments section! One other small problem I had was with top coat. Every single one of my top coats except one, Essie's 'Good To Go', made the polishes go all blended and cloudy. Particularly 'Saint George' would tend to mix with both 'Excalibur' and 'No Room For The Blues'. Curious, but luckily I tried my other top coats on my left hand fingers and thumb before doing anything on my right fingers :)

Sea Creature - The Hungry Asian - & School Of Hard Rocks - Essie

I have never been so excited about a glitter in all my life. As I put 'Sea Creature' on, I was all "ooohhh aaahhh"... Let me attempt to show you why...

But first I'll just quickly show you what was underneath this amazing glitter. I used Essie 'School Of Hard Rocks' as my base colour for this mani.

'School Of Hard Rocks' is a dusty looking dark teal colour. Really pretty actually. I love how the colour is somewhat greyed out and a bit muted.

These photos show 'School Of Hard Rocks' without top coat and you can see that it's gorgeously shiny.  The colour reminds me a lot of raw greenstone.

This is 'Sea Creature' from The Hungry Asian. I actually got this a little bit ago. I originally set out to get 'Sneeze Breeze' (which I did also get :) ) and I saw this and just chucked it in my cart thinking the bottle shot looked quite nice. Well thank goodness I did! Like I said at the top of this post, I've never been so in love with a glitter.

'Sea Creature' is made up of little black matte hexes, tiny green glitter, slightly larger pinky-purple hexes and larger blue hexes. It's my absolute favourite mix of glitters of all the glitters I own.

I love the pink bits of glitter. They're a really surprising addition to this polish to me, but they just catch your eye perfectly and really give this mix of glitters that little extra je ne sais quoi.

Here's the macro. Isn't 'Sea Creature' brilliant?!



To the formulas... 'School Of Hard Rocks' was a simple two coater. The only little niggle I have with this polish is that it was really thin, the type of watery polish that wants to pool in your cuticles, so a bit of careful and patient application is needed. As for 'Sea Creature'... So easy to apply. The glitter stayed exactly where it was put and was so simple to get a nice even spread. I used 2 thin coats of 'Sea Creature' and I think it's great that thinner coats can be used so that you are in full control of how much glitter you end up with on your nails. It was a pretty hungry fella though, so you are seeing 3 coats of Cult Nails 'Wicked Fast' on top. 'Wicked Fast' is a really awesome but fairly thin top coat, so if you use something like Seche Vite, you shouldn't need so many coats at all to get it smooth.


'School Of Hard Rocks' can be purchased from anywhere that sells Essie's (Kiwi's - quite a few pharmacies, Smith & Caughey and Candy Girl (which is by far the cheapest)), and 'Sea Creature' can be purchased from The Hungry Asian Etsy store for $9.25 USD (apparently $12 NZD according to Etsy) and I have just checked and I think 'Sea Creature' is in stock right now! Check out her other beauties too :)

a-england - Saint George

Another legendary polish from a-england's 'The Legend' collection. Today I have for you 'Saint George'.

Yet another super stunning polish from Adina and a-england, 'Saint George' is a brooding, deep teal colour with a subtle holographic shimmer. I absolutely love everything about this colour.

In full sunlight, you can see the huge amount of shimmer in this polish. 'Saint George' is sort of like the darker cousin of 'Dragon'.

In indirect sunlight, the depth of the colour comes to the fore. The colour darkens and becomes the perfect representation of the mysterious dragon slayer - the brave Saint George.

In the full range of light - from full shade through to full sun - you can see how the colour changes. In the shade, this polish seems to have a blackened veil over it, go into full sun and the bright blue/green of the teal bursts through.

The close-up and macro photos again showcase the change in the polish with the change in light. In more light the holographic shimmer really enhances the blue in 'Saint George'. This polish reminds me a lot of being in the middle of the ocean on a very calm night with just the moon as a source of light.



To the formula... First up, this polish gave me a little trouble on the formula side of things. It was really quite thick to the point where it wasn't especially easy to apply. I added a few drops of trusty thinner and I have every confidence that that has sorted it out. This polish is actually fully opaque in one coat, so potentially, if I was careful, I could manage one slightly thicker coat. Trouble is, I'm a serious creature of habit and I feel much better doing two thinner coats in order to make sure that everything is smooth and pretty. At the end of the day, the minor thickness issue doesn't even come close to making me not want to wear this polish again in the very near future! As usual, I used Essie 'Millionails' underneath 'Saint George' and I used a-england's 'The shield' (appropriate for use with this slaying Saint I think) top coat.

Just in case I haven't made it clear already... I am entirely in love with this brand and particularly this collection. I have managed to get my fingers on 6 of the 7 polishes and I'm sure the 7th will follow in due course. Just to whet your appetite I have here the 6 of them together...

From left to right - 'Bridal Veil', 'Saint George', 'Dragon', 'Princess Sabra' (aka 'Tristam Eyes' - I will explain when I post this polish!), 'Ascalon' (Saint George's sword) and 'Princess Tears'

Please excuse the horrible lighting! Auckland has decided to be particularly overcast today and it's less than ideal lighting to show you these to-die-for polishes! This photo does these polishes no justice but that just means that if you think they're nice here, you'll think they're amazing in full sunlight when I eventually post them.

To remind you, these polishes will be available shortly from the a-england site, but until then, these polishes are able to be ordered by emailing Adina - hello@a-england.co.uk.