Vintage Varnish - Sparkle & Fade Black glitter

Black creme with sparse fine glitter  

More Sparkle & Fade...

This polish is a nicely opaque black creme with fine, flakie silver glitter.  The glitter isn't massively obvious but does add a little interest to an otherwise regular black creme.

Swatch shown is 2 coats, no topcoat

Leighton Denny - Big Bang

Black/silver glitter bomb  

Apologies for the lack of posts, I've been away on holiday in Tenerife with the family for a week and then totally caught up with wedding preparations.  I'm not sure I've mentioned before but I'm getting married in 20 days time(!), the todo list is finally getting shorter but there's still lots to do.

The Leighton Denny site says Big Bang is black & silver but the base colour to me looks like a sheer dark blue and I think there's some fine turquoise glitter in there too....

And in the sunlight the bottle and the polish definitely has a purple tinge to it.

But it's pretty, if rather messy.  Any polish on my fingers was super tricky to clean up as you can see from my rather messy swatch pictures.

Swatch is 2 coats.

The polish dries kinda matt so I added topcoat to make it sing.

Also, unlike other Leighton Dennys this one has a very strong chemical smell, a consequence of the glitter I presume.

And I love the name, this totally looks like the ultimate cosmic explosion.

Alessandro - Marvelicious Dream

Black with masses of gold flaky glitter

Marvelicious is a sheerish black base packed with fine gold glitter and somehow that makes it look almost greenish!

I think this is a fab combination of polish/glitter.

Swatch shown is 2 coats with no top coat.

An unexpected win for me!

Alessandro - Stone Washed topped with Maybelline Polka Dots in Chalk Dust

Dusty blue creme and a black/white glitter topcoat.  


First up an Alessandro polish in Stone Washed

Stone Washed is a fantastic mildy dusty blue creme.

It's super shiny and a one-coat-wonder!

This is a 10ml Alessandro.  Stoned Washed is from the Denim Diva collection and has a matte silver lid rather than the usual glossy black.

To me this isn't the colour of stone-washed denim at all, but it is gorgeous!

So I decided to try out one of the Maybelline Polka Dots topcoats which are somewhat similar to the nails inc sprinkles and much more similar to the L'Oreal confetti top coats.

Stone Washed topped with 1 coat Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots in Chalk Dust

Chalk Dust has a clear base with black & white matte different sized glitter.  Coverage is very good and with just a little work you can get a great effect from just one coat.

I wouldn't say the effect is much like Polka Dots but I do like it a lot!

The other colours in the Polka Dots collection have coloured jelly bases which probably makes Chalk Dust the most versatile.

Catrice - Black Beauty

Black packed with copper flakes

 

 After yesterday's disaster I thought I'd redress the balance with a fab Catrice

This is a different type of Catrice polish, 60 Seconds Nail Couture in a taller, narrower bottle. Pretty sure this is the only one of this type I have.

Black Beauty is a gorgeous black (it looks more brown to me but given the name I'm assuming black!) with lots of sparkly copper coloured shimmery flakes.  Easy to apply and dries smooth and glossy. Fabulous.

Swatch is 2 coats, with no top coat but look how shiny it is?! Definitely a winner

Rimmel - Black Pearl

It seems strange that I haven't shown you any Rimmel before. Rimmel along with Cutex, are probably the brands I've associated with nail polish (and removal) the longest.

I can remember as a young girl, probably about 10 or 11, pouring over the adverts Rimmel used to run in Woman and Woman's Own (weekly housewife type mags).

Back then they'd run a double page spread with swatches of all the nail colours, bliss! Of course this was when it was plain old Rimmel, not the Rimmel London it is today.

Unfortunately of all the magazines I kept (you don't wanna know!) , I didn't keep any of those and so I'm still searching for a copy of that original advert. I did find a fragment on the web which I'll share with you


Just imagine a whole page of this... The prices ranged from 15p to a heady 34p each

Enough of the reminiscing here's a swatch of a very modern Rimmel polish - they did have pale green and blue but definitely no charcoal!

This is from the Rimmel - Lycra Pro range and goes by the evocative name of Black Pearl

 
Shade


Sun

It's a charcoal with very fine silver/multi shimmery fine glitter.

This is 2 coats with no top coat and it's not the shiniest of polishes

Application was ok but it had one of those weird pro brushes like Sally Hansen which I don't have much experience of and I have teeny nails.

Overall I like it... Anyone else have fond memories of vintage nail polishes?

17 - Pizazz

This is the second of the 17 Christmas collection, Tinsel & Tiaras.

 

 

This is Pizazz - a black jellyish creme with fine silver glitter
It's pretty - this one took 3 coats and I added a top coat.

I was pretty impressed with these, they were unusual colour/finish combinations and nice and Christmassy.

I'll certainly check out more 17 polishes - anyone else got experience of these?

Bloom - Yeojin II

I'd been wanting to try Bloom polishes for a while and finally found some in Superdrug in Sheffield - I've never seen them in any of the Superdrugs round my way.

Bloom is an Australia brand, created by Natalie Bloom back in 1993, and now includes a full range of cosmetics and skincare.

I only bought a couple of polishes as they're quite spenny, about £8 each IIRC.

First up is yeojin II, part of the designer collection and named after Australia designer Yeojin Bae.

It's a blackened blurple, very blackened, in fact it looks black almost all of the time!

Check out the pics taken in different light and see if you can spot a hint of purple in any of them?!

 
 


Nope, me neither. To be fair I can see a hint of blurple in some of the bottle shots but on my nails it's just black.

This is 2 coats with no top coat - it's very glossy (and very black...)

Formula was fine and you can see how opaque it was in two coats

So overall this colour didn't really work for me, it's dark, dramatic and glossy but you might as well wear black.