L’Ete Papilion De Chanel – Painted Nails & Baking Scales

Today I have Azure to share with you, one of the three colours from the Chanel Summer 2013 Collection L’Ete Papilion De Chanel. The whole collection is pretty fantastic, using a range of inspiration and colours. I love the advertising with its use of an iridescent butterfly, if you have ever seen these in museums then you know how amazing they are and the range of colours they display in different lights.

According to the US site, the entire range of make up which includes all three nail varnishes, sister polishes to Azure, Bel-Argus and Lilis, are limited edition so if you fancy any of them, don’t leave it too long! I’ve got my eye on some of those Stylo Eyeshadows. Anyway, onto the pictures.

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Azure is a deep aqua turquoise with hints of blue. In the bottle its colour changing properties are quite apparent and thankfully you can see most of this on the nail. Now you may remember that my love is Chanel is ever lasting, and lets be honest, no one does a creme polish like Chanel. Have they pulled off a flawless formula?? The answer is nearly. What you see above are three coats of polish. The first two looked super streaky, however a third put paid to that. The metallic nature of it means it does dry slightly quicker than cremes so haste is needed to prevent streaks.

The colour pay off is so spectacular, the shimmer, the blue to green flash, it is just like looking into a tropical ocean. The black Chanel cap pops off so you can grip the inner lid and the brush is the usual Chanel brush, thin without tapering. I base coated with Essence Studio Nails Better Than Gel Nails Base coat and topped with Seche Vite. The Seche didn’t dull the colour change effect.

I’m really in love with this colour, and I think I probably only have a couple similar in my stash which is Sally Hansen Lustre Shine in Scarab and Illamasqua Viridian (which is more green than blue). I’ll try and get some colour sticks to show you.

So, what do we think? Has Chanel knocked it out of the park? In the UK Chanel can be bought form a number of high end department stores and Boots stores, it can be bought online from Boots.com and RRP is around £18.

I am a very lucky lady, I can currently in Holland on a work related visit. When I arrived I had a small window of time to myself, so what else is a polish lover to do but find polish!!

First up, I went to de Bijenkork, the premier department store in Amsterdam. Two reasons for visiting – I had a hunch that in mainland Europe the new Chanel range was already out. I was right on the first count, PLUS they also had one bottle of Taboo left, so I grabbed that along with Azure, the peacock green/blue. Absolutely killer range of products this time around, loving the eye liners too!

Secondly – On the second floor of de Bijenkork is the mysteriously titled ‘Nail Bar’, which turns out to be the KOH experience bar. Wow, this is a bit full on to be frank. When I was there is was RAMMED. They do nail treatments too and so can get very busy and distracted doing that and not serving customers. I took a lot of images…. just scroll for a bit.

Look at this giant box of KOH??!!

After that I went for a wonder and saw two wonderful stores that are well worth a visit – first up Douglas. A make up and beauty store. Lots to see here including their own brand polish and they also stock KOH.

Then, I stumbled across the HEMA Beauty store. They have recently released a range of duochromes and holographics. Lovely and very reasonable priced!! You can even get some of the polishes in the small store in centraal station, but if you are going shopping its worth seeking out the beauty shop.

I was also able to find Essence and Catrice in a store called Kruidvat and there are a couple in the city centre. There are probably lots of places where I should also look, so hit me up in the comments and you may catch me before I head home!