Anny – Rock Your Nails

Oh my, I have a lovely polish for all you lovely people today.  Again, this is something I picked up in Europe.  This is from the brand ANNY and is their take on liquid sand/sand style nails.  This is from the Desert Glam Las Vegas Show Stars Collection.

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This is a lovely lavenderised silver, with a range of matte glitters within it.  Lovely, really pretty and it catches the light in such an amazing way.  It is simply stunning.

I used a base coat, here its G & G Stuck on Blu! and as you may recall, top coats are not a requirement with these textured polishes.  Gosh I love this, glitter and cool in equal measure.

Quality of this polish is excellent, good manageable formula with a good drying time – but time is needed between coats to allow the texture to develop.  These are smaller than the regular bottles but that isn’t always a bad thing as how often to you get to the bottom?  Brush is small but workable.

Very nice, loving this.  I think I paid about €5 for this and if I recall, I picked this up in a Douglas store. I’m intrigued now about ANNY what else is good??

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Catrice – Petrolpolitan

A quick post for you today, things are a bit busy at home with small people’s birthdays and the like…

Anyway, this is one of the newly reformulated Catrice Nail Polish.  I picked mine up from Mainland Europe, but UK girls can now buy the directly from the lovely Sally over at Sally Magpies.  Do check it out.

Onto the pictures!

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Petrolpolitan is a new shade the range, its not quite as dark as forest green and it has a lovely shimmer rippling though it.  The shimmer is not as apparent as it is in the bottle, however it can be seen in bright light.  Otherwise its quite a subtle effect.  Formula is good, opaque in two coats.  Good drying time too.  Formula is much better with the reformulated polishes.  I base and top coated in Essence Better Than Gel Nails products.

Have you tried any of the new reformulated Catrice polishes, what ones would you recommend.

 

 

 

 

 

Catrice – Pimp My Shrimp

Who doesn’t love a nice bit of Catrice nail polish?  I know I do, but its frustrating that you cannot buy such loveliness in the UK.  Its readily available all over mainland Europe and in Ireland.  I keep my fingers crossed that eventually we will see it in stores here, or at the very least, be able to purchase it online for a reasonable non-eBay fee.

The other thing I adore about Catrice, is the clever naming they come up with.  Its not quite a cutesy as those you might find adorning a bottle of OPI polish, but clever nevertheless.  I also have a bottle of the wonderfully named Khaki Perry that I will be sharing with you very soon, but other naming delighted include ACid/DC, Salmon & Garfunkel and Dulce & Havanna.

Pimp My Shrimp is a shrimp coral orange, perfect for the summer, for toes or fingers.  There was something about the name that struck me and then the colour became so desirable that I had a friend pick it up for me on a trip to visit her family in Ireland (to be fair, they enjoyed hunting out the polishes I had asked for and now I get one or two every trip – lucky me!!)  Anyway, here are the pictures….

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The formula was a little bit on the thin side for me, meaning that what you see here is four thin coats.  However it does dry quickly and because they are so thin, I don’t think its much extra effort because the colour is BANG on trend.  Its probably not as pink as shrimp but I’m not going to pick holes here.  It has a nice creme finish to it and a bit of top coat gives it a nice shiny finish.  Wear was also good as I had four days before I just had to change my colour.  It was also nice to be able to take pictures outside to give you more of a sense of the actual colour.  If you do try to do thicker coats then you will experience some considerable pooling of the polish along the sides and cuticles of your nails.

What shrimp colours are you currently rocking  (or not) on your nails?

Essence – 91 Glamorous Life

Here is one of the Essence polishes I received from my lovely friend in Holland.  Glamorous Life is a red glass flecked polish with strong pink undertones.  Like all the Colour and Go Essence Polishes, its a lovely little bottle holding 5ml of product, and is an absolute bargain for the price.

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The formula on this one was a little bit on the runny side – careful application needed.  However, after three thin and careful coats, you can see the results above.  I used Essie Billionails as the undercoat and then used Seche Vite on top.  Its very shiny when it dries anyway, but a top coat just helps to bring the best of the flecks out.

I’ll be honest here, wear was not like the other Essence Polishes I have.  It was chipped within 24 hours.  I may need to retry this with a different base coat and top coat as I did experience significant shrinkage and that may have contributed to the reduced wear time.  The colour is FANTASTIC, I could not have asked for a better summer colour and I am definitely going to wear it again.

If you are interested in the different types of nail polishes, you can check out the HUGE range on this brilliant guide on Lacquerized. I often use this guide to ensure consistency when writing and tagging posts.

Do you have any of the Colour and Go polishes?

Essence – Fruity Nail Polish, One Kiwi a Day & Mashed Berries

Here are some more polishes from my recent package from the Netherlands.  Again, we have some Essence Polishes, a range not available in the UK.  These two come from the recent Ltd Ed Fruity Range.  Essence are really good a having small runs of ltd ed products, about 10 or so a year.  I am most looking forward to the forthcoming Snow White Edition!

These two are One Kiwi a Day and Mashed Berries.  Both of these have micro glitter in them, for the Kiwi one the micro glitter is green and for the Mashed Berries the micro glitter is pink.  The bottles for these are lovely, sleek and different from the Colour and Go Bottles.  The formula on both of these is OK, not the best in the world, but not the worst.  Especially considering the inclusion of glitter.

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What you see above it three coats of each, as I was just about to go on holiday, I thought why not mix it up a bit.  So for the first time, you get to see both my left and right hands.  I decided to do each hand a different lead nail colour and do alternate ring fingers.  You will get what I mean from the images.

I based coated with Essie Billionails and top coated with a thick coat of Seche Vite.  I think Billionails is being discontinued.  In a recent Spotted! we saw the new Essie stands.  Their nail products are very different to this one and I was able to scoop this one up for £3 in a small sale rack in Boots.  Although online, Boots are looking for £13.  Dry time on these was good and with the Seche top coat, wear was rather good.  In excess of 4 days before a chip.

What do you think?  Own any Essence products or know of any good places to get them?

Barielle Berry Blue & Essence Blue Addicted

You may remember my recent European Swap where I scored some new Essence polishes, including the very lovely Blue Addicted, which you are going to see below.

As Blue Addicted is only a small bottle by polish standards, I decided to use a blue polish as underwear for the lovely glitter goodness.  Barielle Berry Blue is a very dark blue, not indigo or purple, but a very dark blue.  Its the perfect underwear for this polish.  Berry Blue has a great formula with a good drying time.  Its easily applied and went where I put it.  The images below show two coats of Berry Blue.

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Now, here comes the magic.  I put one coat of Blue Addicted over the Berry Blue.  And KA-POW!  Glitter joy joy.  Blue Addicted is said to be a good dupe for one of the Deborah Lippman polishes, and my goodness, what a great polish she is.  It has green and blue mid sized glitters with small turquoise blue glitters as well all suspended in a dark blue polish base.  Magic.

I used a good coat of Seche Vite to finish off the manicure.  As you can see, one coat is plenty.  I think two might push it into overkill territory but I liked to too much to try that.  These Essence polishes are fantastic value for money, they retail about the 2€ mark across mainland Europe and Ireland.  But not the UK.  Boo!  Another great polish brand not available in the UK, unless you go on holiday or swap.

Anyway, what do you think?  Do you have any Essence in your stash?

European Nail Swap

In one of my Nail Polish exchange groups, they are many opportunities for exciting swaps for polishes you cannot get in your local stores.  I recently undertook a swap with a lovely woman in the Netherlands for some Essence polishes I was lusting after.  I’m not going to put them in a slideshow, so just keep scrolling.

So, first up we have two of the three glitter polishes from the Fruity edition.  One the right we have One Kiwi a Day, lovely green polish with darker green glitter.  On the left is either Mashed Berries or Very Cherry, as I don’t have the third one I am not sure.  In swatches they both clearly have the same glitter.  So until I get this on my nails, it could be either.  If you have any ideas, please comment below, all help gratefully received.

Above we have on the right, 85 Galactic Black and the on the left, 87 Passion for Fashion.  Lovely!

Above we have on the left 78 Blue Addicted, a Deborah Lippman dupe, the lovely Adina has some fab swatches here

Finally, here is a little shot of them all together,  Lovely non?  Essence is such a fab, versatile and cheap range.  I so wish we could get them in the UK.  Until then, thank goodness for Polish Buddies such as the lovely Maddy from Holland.

And whilst we are on the subject of swaps, the aforementioned lovely Adina of Blue Collar Red Lipstick, posted about a package I sent her recently – you can check that out here!