Bend Over Backwards by China Glaze

Hello ladies! Today's NOTD is from the 2012 China Glaze "Worlds Away: Cirque Du Soleil" collection.  This was a fantastic collection from CG, who are renowned for their 'tie-in' collections to movie releases, TV shows etc.  This collection captured the colours of the vibrant costumes of the circus brilliantly.  Tonight's polish is "Bend Over Backwards"....

photo credit: Al Seib and Cirque Du Soleil

My camera didn't know what to do with this super saturated metallic shimmer.  It's an eye-watering orange toned red that is just fabulous.  This is a great fall/holiday colour and as you can see from the swatches it will certainly get you noticed.  To be fair, this super-saturated hue is really brought out by the artificial light, it's more toned down by natural lighting as the swatch at the bottom shows. 

Bend Over Backwards by China Glaze - artificial light

This is an easy two coats, fully opaque, with NE base and HK Girl topcoat.  No issues with formula or application.  I really like CG as a brand, they have such a high turnover of shades there's always something new on the horizon, and for a mainstream brand they have had more unexpected shades in the last few years than OPI for example.  It was CG that I first saw bar glitters in a non-indie polish.  They're not afraid to think outside the box, and always at such good prices.

Bend Over Backwards by China Glaze - natural light

I picked my bottle up from Nail Polish Direct (link in Suppliers page) for a tasty £4.95.  NPD are currently having a promotion on CG and this shade is £3.99 along with dozens of others....it's a great time to grab a bargain and with free P&P it's a steal.

China Glaze "Let's Groove"

Hello Ladies!  A quick post today to show you a luscious purple polish from China Glaze....feast your eyes upon "Let's Groove" from the 2009 "Retro Diva" collection:

China Glaze "Let's Groove" - artificial light

Phwoar! his polish is all kinds of awesome!  My crazy lemming love for all purple polishes is well documented and this one is a fantastic addition to the stash.  With an almost neon blurple base, this is a royal purple shimmer packed with pink and purple flecks.  It has that 'inner fire' that the best shimmers have and a lovely shine.  It was love at first brush stroke....

China Glaze "Let's Groove" - artificial light

I'm wearing my usual two coats between NE base and HK girl topcoat.  Application was perfect, no complaints about wear time either.  Just look at that amazing shimmer...

Phwoar!

I picked up this beauty from Nail Polish Direct (link on suppliers page) for a bargainous £4.30 with free P&P.  I highly recommend it if you're a lover of purples (and really, what sensible nailista isn't?)

Tongue & Chic - China Glaze Autumn Nights collection

Hello ladies! Today I have my final polish from the China Glaze Autumn Nights Fall 2013 Collection - 'Tongue and Chic.  I was already very impressed with its collection-mate 'Don't Make Me Wine' and 'Red-Y and Willing', and this teal beauty is just as gorgeous as those.  Like DMMW and R&W this is a metallic shimmer with great depth of colour and shine.

Tongue and Chic by China Glaze - artificial light

This is a couple of coats, with NE base and SV to top it off.   This isn't a colour I have much of in my stash and this polish makes me think I should remedy that.  Formula and wear time were both great, it's a big win all round. 

The Autumn Nights collection was one of my favourite collections of 2013.  It might not be the most original range of colours but the finish on the metallic is lush.  I'd highly recommend them.  I picked mine up from Radiant-Babe's Amazon store for a bargainous £4.99 (store links are on the Suppliers page).

China Glaze Monsters Ball - Bat My Eyes & Howl You Doin'

Hello ladies, in line with my new year's blogging resolution to catch up with my swatch posts I've got a couple of polishes from the China Glaze Halloween collection to show you (Halloween at New Years? Really?...).  The 2013 collection was 'Monsters Ball', the collection was mostly glitter polishes, with a texture polish and a glow in the dark polish thrown in for good measure.  So it hit a lot of key 2013 trends.

The polishes that I picked are 'Bat My Eyes' which is a gold/bronze glitter, and 'Howl You Doin' a pink/purple/blue glitter.  Pictured here are two coats with Nail Envy base and Seche topcoat.  In both cases you can see tipwear in my swatches - I was pretty disappointed with the wear of both manis, this tip wear is < 24 hours from application and it chipped within 1-2 days.  I hesitate to blame this on the CG though, it's possible that this was due to my Seche which was getting elderly by this stage. Glitter polishes are notorious for early chipping, so perhaps that's why.
 

China Glaze Bat My Eyes - Natural Light

Bat My Eyes was a gorgeous polish, and a big surprise.  I've seen this described as a black jelly base, but to me it looked more brown.  That warmth in the base jelly really compliments the warm toned glitter pieces which are bronze and gold, in a range of sizes (hex and round).  There is also a very small amount of orange bar glitters in here, but at such a low number it almost makes you think that they got into the polish by accident in the factory rather than being part of the mix.  I really liked this polish, I don't see what's 'Halloween' about it, I think it's a lovely part polish for any time of year.  The colour mix made me think of art deco and 'great gatsby' type styling, for a glitter polish this has real class.  My only disappointment was the wear issues I had.



China Glaze Bat My Eyes - Artificial Light

Howl You Doin is an intriguing polish.  From the swatches I'd seen I wasn't sure what colour it would really be 'on nail', and I'm still not sure having worn it!  It's a deep purple crelly/jelly base with glitter particles in blue/indigo and pink glitter pieces and shards.  The combined effect is really rather pretty, and varies according to the lighting conditions.  I didn't find it to be very sparkly for a glitter, it didn't have the 'wow' factor for me that Bat My Eyes does. Up close you can see all the sparkles that online swatches show, but just glancing at your hands it's a dark purpleish polish, which is nice but not incredible.

China Glaze Howl You Doin - Artificial Light

Of these I'd recommend Bat My Eyes, it's a really unusual polish and perfect for party manis.  Whether the wear issues I had were due to my seche or these polishes I'm not sure, but since party mani's only have to last a short time who cares?

Don't Make Me Wine - China Glaze Autumn Nights

Today I have another totally lush polish from the recent China Glaze Autumn Nights (Fall) collection - "Don't Make Me Wine" (DMMW).  Shown here is two coats of colour with the usual NE undies and Seche topcoat.

China Glaze Don't Make Me Wine - Natural Light

DMMW is an intense magenta glass flecked shimmer, with a blackened edge to it that's utterly gorgeous.  There's really nothing more to say than that - it's like raspberry velvet for your fingers. You definitely need this.

China Glaze Don't Make Me Wine - Artificial Light

 My camera handled this a lot better than its collection-mate Red-Y and Willing, which was likewise a total win.  A little later I'll have my final buy from this collection - Tongue and Chic.  Not to give any spoilers away but it's also fab.  CG have made an awesome fall collection this year, definitely my favourite of all the brands.  I also picked up a couple of the Halloween collection that will follow soon, and are also totally rocking. I've not looked closely at their Christmas collection yet, but I'd expect it to be pretty sweet given what they've been pulling out the bag this year.

I picked this polish up at a Sally Salon for £6.95, and I reckon it will become a firm favourite in my collection (by which I mean I might possibly wear it as often as three times a year....so many polishes, so little time!)

Halloween-y Heli-Yummy

Today's NOTD is Heli-Yum by China Glaze from their 'Up and Away' Spring 2010 collection.  I was in the mood for something summery now that the nights are dark and the temperature has dropped.  This is a lovely bright pink crème with an almost neon jelly quality to it that made it very hard to photograph!

China Glaze Heli-Yum - Artificial Light

Shown here I'm wearing two coats, with a coat of Seche on top.  I'm also trying out a new nail shape on my nubbins and I'm still a bit mystified how to make a round thing square armed only with a nail file.  We'll see how this goes.

Tomorrow is Halloween and, even though this isn't a really Halloween-y shade I decided to have a go with some Born Pretty store water decals to make this mani a bit more festive.  I was really impressed with the decals, they're super easy to use and awesome fun.  I'll definitely be buying a bunch more of these.  The pack contains dozens of decals and at just $4 with free postage, that's a lot of bang for your buck...

Halloween water decals

The only negative I have on these is that the instructions on the packet are pretty hard to understand, but a quick google search revealed several YouTube videos that told me all I need to know.  They take seconds to apply, and are sealed in place with another layer of Seche.

Spooky fun

I bought the CG polish from Radiant-Babe Beauty on Amazon UK  for £4.95 with free postage (because I bought 3 polishes in total) and the decals from Born Pretty Store.  Born Pretty is awesome - they sell nail art supplies at bargain basement prices and with free P&P.  The only downside is that they are based in Asia and it takes  3-4 weeks to arrive.  But as long as you're not in a hurry its ideal.

Happy Halloween mani-maniacs :)

China Glaze Autumn Nights - Red-Y and Willing

Today I have an incredible polish to share with you, which my terrible pictures do absolutely no justice.  For some reason my camera really failed to take a true colour picture of this shade.  This is from the China Glaze Autumn Nights collection 2013 - Red-Y and Willing.

China Glaze Red-Y and Willing - Artificial Light

Red-Y and Willing is an absolutely gorgeous deep blackened red metallic shimmer, with such a lush depth of colour that I was constantly distracted by my fingers the whole time I wore it.  For some reason in my pictures it has come out much pinker than it looked to me IRL.  The picture at the top of this post is the truest to colour, although there is much more 'inner fire' to the polish than this picture would suggest.  This is exactly my kind of colour, which means that I have a whole host of similar shades so this will definitely feature in a comparison post at some point!

China Glaze Red-Y and Willing - Artificial Light

The formula on this was fantastic - super opaque and not at all streaky as something this metallic can tend to be.  Pictured here are two coats plus Seche.  Apologies for the poor swatches, this was on about day 4 of the mani so you can at least see that wearability is excellent on this one.  It's also winter in Scotland so sadly most of my swatches from now on are going to be by artificial light only!

I can't recommend this highly enough.  If you want a gorgeous metallic red shimmer that's perfect for the Christmas season then look no further.  I picked mine up for £6.95 at a Sally Salon Supplies store, but I can also recommend Radiant-Babe Beauty as a good online UK supplier of discounted CG polishes (typically £5.95).  I would recommend though that you use her Amazon UK store, for some reason she sells the same polishes on Amazon for £1 less than her online shop,  and if you buy 3 polishes you get free postage.

Disclaimer: I am in no way affiliated with any of the online retailers or shops that I mention in my posts.  My comments are based purely on my own shopping experiences.

A Very Merry Un-Birthday...

Today's NOTD is the fantastic 'It's a Trap-eze' from the China Glaze Cirque de Soleil World's Away collection that came out at the end of 2012.  Kudos to my friend the lovely Clare for discovering this and then ordering one for me too :)  It's like wearing a birthday party on your nails!

China Glaze - It's a Trap-eze - Natural Light

It's a Trap-eze (IATE) is a milky creamy polish that's jam packed with hex and round glitter pieces in a range of sizes.  The main glitter colours are white, sky blue, red, green and there's some silver and gold in there too.

I started out with Nail Envy base coat and a single layer of a pearly white shade called 'Silver Bullet' by Rimmel.  I had heard that it's hard to build IATE to opacity on its own, although I think 3 coats of IATE on its own would have done it.  I then used two full coats of IATE, and a sparse 3rd coat to just fill in a few gaps.  Then I capped it with two layers of my beloved Seche.  This polish was surprisingly smooth for a glitter, although still feels a wee bit bumpy with the dual Seche topper.  The formula is fantastic and surprisingly easy to apply for a glitter.  The glitter is so dense that there's none of that fiddly dabbing your nail to spread it out evenly.




China Glaze - It's a Trap-eze - Natural Light

I really like this, although I am a wee bit unconvinced about whether I can pull-off white polish with my ridiculously pale Scottish skin-tone.  But this is so much fun that I just don't care.  I'm making an effort to try to have a tidy looking left hand for the photos, and nicely moisturized cuticles...but after applying Lush's Lemony Flutter for this photo-op I just look like I've got really greasy fingers...I promise I wasn't eating chips at the time...

This polish is pretty hard to find.  For some reason there's a selection of the 'Cirque' collection available everywhere, and some that seemed to be limited.  I got this one through Amazon, shipped from the US, but even with postage it was still just £7, which is the UK in-store RRP for CG.