Vintage Valentines - Hard Candy - Violet?

Pastel pink/lilac creme  

Another collectable vintage brand is Hard Candy, first produced in 1995.  I have a couple of first edition Hard Candy polishes and one from the second edition when they changed the bottle shape to be rectangular.

Hard Candy were all about unusual colours (for the time), the free rubber ring with every bottle and provocative advertising.  Again Pretty Random has a great reference guide if you want to see more.

The very secret shimmer

I *think* this is Violet.  As you can see my bottle is pretty worn and has no labels left at all so I am guessing the name based on peering at some old shade pics on the internet!

I do have the ring that goes with this, or to be more accurate, I have a selection of rings that might match this!  Somehow I have 4 rings but only 2 polishes!

And unfortunately this polish is not a win from me.  Pastel cremes are notorious for  being tricky and this one certainly lives up to that.  You can see in the swatch photos that it really didn't self level and looks very uneven.  I even added top coat but it didn't help much.

Swatches are 2 coats with top coat.

The bottle close up in the sun shows a pretty secret shimmer but I couldn't spot a hint of it on the nail.

So this will always have a place in my stash for its originality and rarity but not a lot of love....

Alessandro - Pale Blue Lagoon

Pale blue creme  

The sun is shining and everything is sprouting green, it feels like Spring is finally here so he's a lovely springy pastel shade.

Pale Blue Lagoon is, like the name indicates, a pale blue creme.

It's a mini bottle of only 5ml but let's face it, I'm pretty unlikely run out!

Alessandro are a German brand of nail polish and nail care - their hand creams are fabulous.  I did pick up a few on business trips to Germany but most have come from flash sales on Vente-Privee.  When not buying from cheap sale sites I think they're at least mid-range, in Germany I saw them in department stores and higher end pharmacies rather than drug-store equivalents.

Application was pretty good for a pastel, swatch shown is 3 coats and as usual, the mini bottle/brush didn't cause me and my tiny nails any issues!

This colour is a little changeable depending on the light, looking cooler & starker in indirect light and slightly more turquoise in full sun

Leighton Denny - Inside Scoop

Pale green creme  

Super summery, Inside Scoop isfrom 20ll's Gelato collection.

Inside Scoop is a pale apple green pastel creme. Leighton describes it as cool mint green which is probably true too, it's one of those colours that looks cooler/warmer depending on the light.

Swatch shown is 2 coats with no top coat.  Application was good for a pastel creme and Leighton Denny's always seem to dry with a good shine.

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Catrice - Am I Blue or Green

Pastel turquoise creme

My first thought on looking at this was how much it reminded me of Illamasqua Nudge but I don't have that polish to compare and couldn't find any comparisons in the blogosphere.  So just know that in my mind they're pretty dupey!

Am I Blue or Green is a pastel blue leaning turquoise creme.

This polish claims to only need 2 coats and I'd say it meets that claim.  And for a pastel the application and coverage were great

My swatch shows 2 coats on each except pointer which has 3 as I overspread the first coat - d'oh

Oh I wish Catrice were available in the UK....

Illamasqua Nudge

Oooh, how exciting, arrived in Birmingham yesterday (for planned gig in Nottingham)to find gorgeous birthday present from my lovely friends Liz & Matt...

How well do they know me? Well enough to buy me fabulous Illamasqua nail polish

Luckily we had time before we left to apply a quick mani and this morning I grabbed a couple of pics.

 
Sun

Shade

This was two coats on all nails except my index finger which took three (and I didn't do a great job with the third coat - we were drinking sparkling wine, never condusive to great manis!)

This was pretty good to apply, especially for a pale creme polish, not as good as some of the darker Illamasquas but not terrible.

I also had to tweek the colour of these pics to make them more colour accurate, the original pics were too blue, IRL it's a minty green, so ignore the lobster hands!

I don't have Chanel Jade to compare it to but from pics on NailGal I'd say it was lighter and more minty green than Jade and doesn't have the secret shimmer

Anyone else have any of the Illamasqua Pastels?