Pop Beauty Nail Glam - Midnight Minx

Blurple shimmer with fine glitter

Midnight Minx is a bluely blurple shimmer with fine blue and magenta glitter that you can hopefully just see in the bottle shot.

Midnight Minx is from the Autumn 2012 collection and I picked it up in the ASOS sale.

Swatches are 2 coats with no top coat.  I've seen other reviews that show this with one coat but there's no way my bottle was going to be opaque at one coat!

It's not a very shiny finish so would definitely benefit from a nice glossy topcoat.

Nails Inc - Instyle Bluebelle

Periwinkle blue creme


I know it's only February and temperatures here are still in single figures, but we've had some sunshine, the snowdrops are out and it's my Birthday this week so I'm celebrating with a gorgeous springy colour from last year.

Bluebelle was a covermount gift with the June 2012 issue of InStyle magazine, there were two other colours available, a bright pink and a peach creme.  But this was the standout for me.  I *love* this kind of bluey/purple.

Bluebelle is a gorgeous periwinkle blue creme


Swatch shown is 2 coats with no top coat.  Like most pastel cremes this was a little streaky and tricky to apply but you can see it evened out nicely on the second coat.

When I first got this I thought it was going to be dupey for something else in my nails inc collection but nada. It's certainly in the same colour family as Chalk Farm but much lighter.

In fact this is so pretty I may have to resort to ebay for a backup

Accessorize - Sapphire

Blue/grey metallic finish  

Accessorize describe this as a 'Metalized  One coat polish'

And they're pretty on the nose, this is just one coat and it definitely has a metallic style finish.

It is slightly brushstrokey, but nothing too terrible

Sapphire is not the colour of sapphires but is a very pretty deep blue/grey - I love this kind of colour, maybe because it's one of 'my' colours (according to the colour analysis I had done a few years ago)

Red for Valentine's - Barielle - Mazie Rose

Bright red crelly

Happy Valentine's Day all!

My man is away in Dublin for Valentine's (boo) so I'm off out to for dinner and the flicks with my BFF (yay)

So here's a quick post to share a lovely red from Barielle

Mazie Rose is a gorgeous bright red jelly/creme.

Swatch shown is 2 coats except for index finger which is 3 - my index finger always has a more visible nail line for some reason!

One day my nails will all be this long again, at the moment I have some long and some shorter - which to some I know is a total nail crime!

US Trip Haul

US Polish Haul

What a fortnight!  I got back from Florida last Saturday only to lurch straight into a hideous post-conference flu bug.  Am finally feeling something like back to normal - phew..

I didn't buy much on my trip, partly time and access - I was at a conference at Disney World, so no polish buying opportunities there and not much time to get off-Disney for shopping.  Also I found I wasn't super excited about the polish I found at the mall (Florida Mall).

So here's my mini-haul...

Sephora by OPI

 

Black Poppy Glitters from a clothing store

 

Nicole by OPI - random Glitter and one from the Modern Family Collection (whatever that is!)

Milani One Coat Glitters

 Sally Hansen - Gem Crush

Discounted Sephora Pantone Polishes - love the bottles and colours on these

And after seeing swatches I couldn't resist the OPI Liquid Sand minis

(Trying to ignore the naked Mariah)

Pleased with my little haul though - I'm already wearing that "Modern Family" Nicole by OPI polish - it's called Stand by your Manny - presumably the name of a character in the show?

And I did a road test of a home gel system while I was travelling so watch out for the review of that coming soon.

Boots 17 - Revenge

Purple/taupe with purple/pink secret shimmer   

That description sound familiar? Yep, Revenge was one of the many polishes in 2011 that appeared to be inspired by or outright duping Chanel's infamous Paradoxal.

Now I don't have Paradoxal to compare but you'll have to take my word for it that they're not total dupes.  Although some folk actually prefer Revenge because the shimmer is a lot less hidden.

Take that Just In! with a pinch of salt - this was released in 2011!

Revenge is a purple toned dark brown with a good amount of pink/purple fine secret-shimmer.  But not so secret you can't see it!

Application was good, swatch shown is 2 coats, no top coat.

This will be my last post for a week  - I'm off to Disney World, Florida for a conference - I'm so excited to see the sun again, it feels like it's been grey and cold here in the UK forever - it's forecast to be high teens, early 20's while we're there - hooray!.  And hopefully I'll get some time for shopping/haulage - I've made myself a Google map with the nearest Ulta, CVS, Walmart and Walgreens on!

Ciaté - Vintage

Mid grey creme   

Blimey, over 3 years ago I showed you a comparison swatch that featured Ciaté's Vintage and here I am, finally showing the swatches for that polish!

That probably tells you all you need to know about how many unpublished swatch pictures I have !

Vintage is a lovely mid grey creme.

Application and pigmentation were great on this one and look at that shine!

Swatch shown is 2 coats with no top coat.

I know Ciaté aren't the best loved brand after their mishandling of the whole caviar/fish-egg mani debacle but they do make some fine nail polish

W7 - Metallic Jupiter

Dark plum foil duochrome   

The last of my W7 metallics - Metallic Jupiter

Jupiter is a return to the foily metallic finish from W7.  

Jupiter is a dark plum with a hint of copper duochrome

Swatch shown is 2 coats with no top coat and application was great.

I also tried this one out with a pinky gold crackle from P2

Without topcoat

With a coat of Seche Vite

I'm not really a fan of crackle but this one intrigued me with its mixture of pinky lilac base and gold foily shimmer.  It definitely looks better with the Seche Vite in my view!

W7 - Metalllic Venus

Purple/plum shimmer   

Venus is another of the W7 Metallics but this time there's no foil in sight. There is still a hint of duochrome, though not massively visible in my pics I'm afraid.

Venus is a shimmery purple/plum colour with a darker plum and brown/copper duochrome that's much more visible in the bottle.

Application was good, swatches shown are 2 coats, no top coat.

They might not be super innovative colours but I do think W7 make some great polishes for their price point.

W7 - Metallic Mercury

Plum foily duochrome   

Metallic Mercury is one of a number of W7 polishes I picked up in TK Maxx last year for a bargain price.  TK Maxx seemed to get a lot more nail polish in last year, long may it continue!

Metallic Mercury is a warm blackened plum foil with a hint of greeny gold duochrome.  The duochrome isn't super obvious though.

Nice and opaque, swatch shown is 2 coats with no top coat.  Application was good.

IIRC this is similar but not a total dupe to one of the Orly FX collection.

Barry M - Christmas Pink

Pink foil GWP   

In the run up to Christmas Barry M had an offer where if you spent £5.99 or more you got a free nail polish. Boots and Superdrug both had different polishes on offer.  Boots had the choice of a pink or gold foil.  I picked the pink foil to show you today.

In Superdrug they had an icy blue foil and a mixed glitter - more on that later as it turns out there were two different versions of the glitter...

Back to Christmas Pink...

Christmas Pink is a Pink foil with a silvery streak and a smidge of gold thrown in too.

It's very opaque, the swatches are only one coat, but 2 would probably have be better.

They also changed the lids to match so Christmas Pink has a pink metallic lid.

I was super impressed with this, it was easy to apply, almost totally opaque in one coat and I liked the colour/finish much more than I expected.

Anyone else pick this up?

I decided to pop some glitter over the top, a single coat of a Color Club holo glitter that I got in a boxset and so doesn't have a name/label (grrrgghh, that so annoys me!)

Sorry the swatches of this one are pre-cleanup....

Happy New Year! featuring Pop Twinkle

Silver scattered holo  

Sorry for the lack of posts, the blog went on a Christmas/New Year break with me!

I had a lovely Christmas, good food, great presents, time with friends and family.  Could've done with a bit more relaxing but hey ho..!

So I thought I'd belatedly kick the year off with a dose of sparkley bling in the form of  Pop Twinkle

Twinkle is a silver based scattered holo.  The holo pieces are on the larger side and are pretty densely packed.

Swatch shown is 2 coats and you can still kinda see VNL.  But it's so pretty in the sunlight....

The Pop Beauty Nail Glam bottles are tall, square and shallow, very like the American Apparel ones and hold a generous 15ml.  I bought mine a while ago ASOS, don't think I've ever seen them in a store here in the UK.