AEngland - Jane Eyre

Hello ladies!  Today I have another AEngland polish to share with you - one that I picked up in the last AEngland bundle sale (3 polished for £18!).  This is Jane Eyre from the Gothic collection, a blackened russet shimmer.

AEngland Jane Eyre - artificial light

Pictured here is two easy coats over NE base and beneath Essie Good to Go.  As with all AEngland polishes application, formula and wear time were all flawless.



AEngland Jane Eyre - artificial light

 All of the Gothic beauties collection are black based polishes with a coloured shimmer that peeks through. In these pictures you can see the russet/red shimmer really clearly, but this is the only place that you will see it.  On the nail, in virtually all lighting conditions, this polish just looks plain black.  It was quite a disappointment in that respect.

This is the second shade from the Gothic collection that I own, and I really only got this because it happened to be in a bundle with two others that I wanted.  I personally wouldn't recommend the Gothic collection unless you really like black polish and don't mind that the shimmer is only peeked very rarely.

Crown of Thistles by AEngland

Hello ladies! Today I have a gorgeous polish to share with you from the brand new A England "Elizabeth + Mary" collection.  A new A England collection is something to get very excited about, and this one is no exception.  Taking inspiration from two of Britain's most famous Queens - Elizabeth the 1st, and Mary Queen of Scots. The history of these two women is steeped in murder, betrayal and intrigue.  Mary was considered by many to be the rightful heir to the English throne, and Elizabeth in turn kept her cousin imprisoned for 18 years before finally having her beheaded for treason. 

A England - Crown of Thistles - artificial light

Today's polish is 'Crown of Thistles', a shade inspired by Mary, the Queen of Scotland, whose national emblem is the thistle.  This is a beautiful shade of Orchid (pinky purple) that really captures the colour of the tufted top of the thistle:

Crown of Thistles is also a very strong holo finish, far more prominent than the usual soft dusty holo finish that A England are famous for.  Seen here in the bottle shot you can see the polish comes alive with a rainbow of colour from that dense holo finish.

Crown of Thistles was a lovely polish to wear, and for someone that owns a lot of pink and purple shades this one also has managed to be unique in my collection which is quite some feat.  I'm in awe of Adina at A England and her creative polishes.  Each one is truly a piece of art in a bottle.  Application is butter smooth, glossy and flawless.  Pictured here I'm wearing a couple of coats with NE base and Essie GTG, although this polish is easily a one-coater.

A England - Crown of Thistles - artificial light

I love this shade, and I'm looking forward to getting more from this collection.  I particularly fancy Fotheringay and Virgin Queen, so expect to see those at some point in future! In the meantime, UK customers can head over to A England http://a-england.co.uk/ where I picked up my bottle of Crown of Thistles for £9.  They are also currently having a special offer for November on the Gothic collection, with individual shades for £6 or bundled for even less.  With free P&P on all orders it's a bargain for polish of this pedigree.

Lady of the Lake by A-England

Hello ladies! Tonight's instalment in the A-England stashathon is the gorgeous 'Lady of the Lake' from the Mythicals collection.  The Lady of the Lake was the ruler of Avalon, and a pivotal character in the Arthurian legends.  Most famously she arose from the lake to present King Arthur with the sword Excalibur.  Since Halloween is almost here, here's an incredible artwork by thejeffster@deviantart depicting the Lady of the Lake to set the mood...

Lady of the Lake (http://thejeffster.deviantart.com/)

'Lady of the Lake' by A-England is a non-spooky but utterly gorgeous shade of dusky amethyst with the AE signature soft holographic finish.  Easily opaque in two coats and dries to a high gloss shine, the formula and application are flawless.  A-England is a truly luxury boutique brand and their quality is consistently excellent.

Lady of the Lake - by A-England - artificial light

Pictured here I'm wearing two coats with NE base and Essie Good to Go topcoat to extend weartime.  I really love this shade, apart from being purple (which is my favourite colour in case you hadn't guessed) it's such a pretty balance between the richness of the base colour and the sparkle of the holo finish.  A-England polishes are very rarely an 'in your face' colour, they make sophisticated and elegant shades and this one is no exception.

Lady of the Lake - by A-England - artificial light

In full sunlight (below) you can see the full rainbow effect from the holo.  In artificial light (above) the holo particles add a slightly silvered sheen to the polish to give it that soft 'dusty' look that I love.

Lady of the Lake - by A-England -sunlight

I could wax lyrical about A-England polishes until the cows come home.  There really are only so many ways that you can say 'these polishes are awesome, you need them all' and I think I've exhausted them.  If you are new to A-England then I'd say take a chance and try one, I'd put money on it not being your last.  In the UK you can order direct from http://www.a-england.co.uk/.

I am super excited to hear this week that there is a new collection ready to drop ANY DAY now...It's called the 'Mary + Elizabeth' collection and takes its inspiration from two of Britain's most famous (or infamous) queens.  I've seen early nail wheel swatches and can't wait to see more.  I'd recommend following the fantastic blog of Eugenia - Ommorphia Beauty Bar - she seems to have a special relationship with A-England and is usually one of the first to swatch the new collections.  She also does some of the prettiest swatch photography I've seen, so be warned, you will have major lemmings for basically anything she points her camera at.

Dragon by A-England

Hello ladies! Continuing the A-England love-in, today's offering is the beautiful Dragon from the 'Legend' collection:

Dragon - by A England - artificial light

I'm not a fan of green polished in general but this one is a doozy.  A gorgeous shade of sage/emerald with gold and teal flecks to give it an amazing depth.  This really does look like the skin of a dragon (and on that theme, just wait till you see my swatches of Crowstoes Vanaheim! Yowza!).  The lovely soft holographic finish is a really pretty touch and it really comes alive in sunlight (see below).

Dragon - by A England - sun light

 This is two coats, with NE base and Essie Good to Go topcoat.  As ever, no issues with formula or application.  This polish (like all A-England's) also dries to a really nice glossy finish all on its own, so I add the topcoat only to extend weartime.

Dragon - by A England - artificial light

 In this closeup you can see the gold and teal particles that are threaded through this shade to give it that extra bling factor.  The gold adds fire (especially in sunlight) and the teal really lifts the green.  Like when you add coffee to a chocolate cake to make it taste more chocolaty, somehow the teal makes the green seem greener.

Dragon - by A England - artificial light

I picked up my bottle in a sale at http://www.a-england.co.uk/ for £6.  Adina holds these sorts of sales once or twice a year, and it's a great time to expand your collection.  Keep an eye out around Christmas time, alternatively you can check out the 'gem of the month' where each month one shade is at £6.  It's an absolute fricking steal for a polish of this quality.

Sleeping Palace by A-England

Hello ladies! Continuing with the theme of A-England polishes tonight we have the last one from the Burne-Jones collection in my stash - Sleeping Palace.  This smoky plum holographic polish is just fabulous...

Sleeping Palace - A England - Artificial Light

This is a really tricky shade to describe, part smoky charcoal, part plum, with a dash of brown.  Combined it's a beautiful warm toned shade that's super flattering.  This is hardly a surprise, I'm convinced that Adina is incapable of producing an ugly polish.  The holographic effect in this polish is more pronounced than in the others of the collection, and I think this is due to the base colour showing it off.

Sleeping Palace - A England - Sun Light

This is two easy coats with NE base and HK Girl topcoat.  As with the others in this collection (see:  Rose Bower and Briar Rose, and Briarwood) application and formula are both top notch.  No complaints here.

Sleeping Palace - A England - Natural Light

This is a really lovely shade, and great for the autumn. It's a sophisticated take on the Grey/Mauve trend that I really love.  I bought my bottle for £6 when it was the 'gem of the month' on  http://a-england.co.uk/ and I highly recommend it :)

Sleeping Palace - A England

Briarwood - by A-England

Hello ladies! Tonight we have the second instalment of the A-England swatchathon (if three polishes can count as a 'thon ;) of anything). Tonight polish is the much belated post of Briarwood, collection mate to the fabulous Rose Bower and Briar Rose from the amazing 2013 Burne-Jones collection.  The collection takes its inspiration from the four paintings of The Briar Rose series created by Sir Edward Burne-Jones depicting the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty.

Briarwood - A-England - full sunlight

I'm wearing two easy coats here, with SV topcoat and NE base.  As ever the quality, application and finish are flawless from A-England.  This is a gorgeous complex shade, I'm going to call it reddened brown, and its perfect for Autumn.  I'm surprised it has taken me this long to blog this shade because it was definitely in my top 5 polishes for 2013.  I love love love it!

Briarwood - A-England - natural light

This is still one of my top pick polishes, it's really unusual and the holo finish is just so pretty with this shade.  I can't recommend it highly enough.  I loved this whole collection, but Briarwood is definitely the star of the bunch.

You can Buy direct from A-England at http://a-england.co.uk/  RRP is £9 but I got mine on offer for a bargain-a-licous £6, and P&P is free.  Keep an eye out for A-England offers, its a great way to stock your A-England stash :)

Perceval by A-England

Hello ladies :)  Kicking off tonight I have a series of A-England polishes to share with you.  A-England are one of my favourite brands, and hopefully over the course of a few posts you'll see why.  So onto today's offering - this is "Perceval"...

A-England "Perceval" - full sunlight

Woo mama! There is no other way to describe this shade other than it is the PERFECT metallic red.  Formula, pigmentation, application, finish, all A*.  I love a good metallic red and this is hands down my favourite.  It's perfect for Christmas (which is only 10 weeks away apparently - yikes!).  Every last detail of an A-England polish is quality.  Boutique brand owner Adina knows her stuff.  I also love the titles of the polishes and collections - (usually) inspired by English myth and legend.  Perceval was a knight of King Arthur (at least according to Prof. Wikipedia).

Pictured here I'm wearing two coats with NE base and SV topcoat (hence the tip shrink!).

A-England "Perceval" - indirect natural light

I have only ever bought A-England polishes when they have been on offer - occasionally there will be a promotion where shades are typically £6.  There is also a monthly promotion where each month a different 'gem of the month' is picked and sold for £6.  With free P&P this is a mahoosive bargain.  Even the RRP of £9 a bottle is well worth it in my opinion.  Buy direct from A-England at http://a-england.co.uk/

Picture Polish Solar Flare

Hello Ladies! I've got something very special to share with you today..."Solar Flare" by Picture Polish.  This is one of the recent Limited Editions that Picture Polish released in a frenzy of smart marketing. They generated so much hype in the build up to their release that these sold out almost immediately.  Luckily I managed to get my hands on most of them so I'll be sharing them with you over the next few posts...

Picture Polish Solar Flare - artificial light

Solar Flare is a Russet-Gold duochrome polish with a dusty holo finish and scattered shards of sparkly holo particles.  It's astonishingly beautiful. As a duochrome the shift is quite subtle, the polish does have a dramatic colour range, from a russet brown through to an olive gold, but the colours don't appear on the nail simultaneously - it looks one colour all of the time, but that colour changes.  Most of the time the dominant colour is the russet brown seen in the top left picture above.  Each of the three colours are absolutely gorgeous and the scatter holo and dusty finish is stunning. 



Solar Flare - this russet brown shade is the dominant colour on nail 

In these pictures I'm wearing two coats of Solar Flare on top of two coats of 'Just Black' by No7.  Using a black undercoat on any duochrome polish really makes the colour shift pop.  I also have NE base and HK Girl topcoat to finish this off.


Solar Flare - the gold shade pops at more extreme angles relative to the light source

I'm absolutely in love with this polish.  Application is flawless, and the finish is just incredible.  It dries naturally as glossy looking as the HK topcoat you see here, but I added topcoat to extend the wear time.

The finish really reminds me of an A-England polish with extra scatter holo shards I did a quick in-bottle comparison of Solar Flare with a couple of my favourite A-England polishes; Briar Rose and Briarwood.



top (l-r): A-England Briar Rose, Picture Polish Solar Flare, A-England Briarwood
bottom (l-r): Picture Polish Solar Flare, A-England Briarwood

The dominant shade in the Solar Flare looks to me like a cross between Briar Rose and Briarwood, although of the two I think it's most similar to Briarwood.  The A-Englands are two of my favourite polishes, so having Solar Flare embody them both, PLUS be a duochrome, PLUS have the big sparkly scatter chrome particles is almost too much excitement for me to handle.

This polish is utter amazeballs.  I can't recommend it highly enough.  And if you think this is swatch porn just wait till you see collection-mate Aurora....

I bought my bottle of Solar Flare from the lovely Sally Magpies for £13.50 (link to the shop is on my suppliers page).  These shades should be getting a restock soon, so keep an eye out.....


Finding the perfect purple...

Every nail polish addict has a favourite drug...I'm far too greedy to settle for just one, but I do have a particular weakness for metallic purple polishes.  It doesn't matter how many I've already got, it doesn't matter if I know the shiny one I've just seen in the shop/online is an almost exact dupe of something I've already got three of...I.Just.Can't.Help.Myself.  I know, it's a sickness.

I've collected here some of my favourites for comparison, just in case unlike me you don't like to own many incarnations of the same purple :) 

Right, onto the nitty gritty....



Looking for the perfect purple?

These four are some of the lushest purples that money can buy. From left to right we have: Avalon (A-England, review here), Rebel (Leighton Denny), Sexy Divide (Essie), Regent's Palace (Nails Inc).

Of these, the most similar are Sexy Divide and Regent's Palace. Both are deep dark rich shades with a red edge - Regent's palace is packing some burgundy shimmer that's hard to make out here but I'll be comparing this to Chanel Taboo in a future post and its more obvious there.  Avalon and Rebel are cooler toned purples.  For me, Avalon has the most 'pop!' and is a much more in-your-face purple whereas the darker shades have a richer texture that reminds me of plush velvet....but maybe that's just me.



brands (L:R) - A-England, Leighton Denny, Essie, Nails Inc

I love Rebel, it's such an amazing colour, but it has the weakest formula of the bunch.  It's quite thin, needs three coats to get this level of opacity, and looks streaky and awful on the first coat.  It does even out perfectly though.  In terms of brushes and other such nail geek concerns I'd say they're all about equal.  In terms of quality the A-England and Essie offerings are the best.  Wear time on all four is pretty good with perhaps the Nails Inc being marginally less hard-wearing than the others (I find that generally with NI polishes).  Apart from Rebel (which is 3), all polishes are two coats of colour with Nail Envy undies and SV on top.  I made an arse of 'Rebel', squidging it near the tip, turns out its a tricky business operating a camera with semi-wet nails.  Avalon also appears to have tip wear, but that's because I swatched after wearing Avalon for 4 days for my last review.



Purple Comparison - Artificial Light

I paid £11 (full price, John Lewis) for Rebel, £6 for Avalon (gem of the month, RRP £9, A-England website), £3.33 for Sexy Divide (TK Maxx bargain - 3 for £9.99!!! RRP £8, Boots) and finally £3.33 for Regent's Palace (again, TK Maxx marvel, RRP £11 from John Lewis).  At these prices I'd say buy them all! But if you were paying full price, and you could only get one....then I'd say Essie 'Sexy Divide' is the best purple for your money, with Avalon a close second.  There's no way I'd pay full price for the Nails Inc.

Coming soon....Regent's Palace vs. Chanel Taboo (not as crazy as you might think!)

Avalon

"Through the western isle
I hear the dead awaken
Rising slowly to the call Avalon"

"Isle of Avalon" - Iron Maiden

Avalon by A-England - Natural light

I don't think that Adina of A-England was thinking of Iron Maiden's awesome song "Isle of Avalon" when she was naming this polish, but I like to think so.  Avalon is this month's "Gem of the Month" on the A-England website.  For anyone that hasn't heard of this awesome concept it's this - every month, one polish will be chosen as the 'gem' and will be just £6 for that month.  Quite often the site isn't updated bang on the start of the month, so usually it's still available for the first week of the next month.

I can't resist a good purple...more on that later when I compare this beauty to the other metallic purples in my collection.  I can honestly say that Avalon has come in and gone straight to the top of my favourites list.

What can I say about A-England that I haven't said before? Nothing really. This is a very special brand, with excellent quality and a stunning array of shades.   It's clear that a lot of love goes into these, and for £6 that's less than 'drugstore' price for a polish that's boutique quality.

Avalon - by A-England - Artificial Light

For some reason my camera made this look blue-er than IRL.  This is a sumptuous royal purple metallic shimmer polish.  It's a definite one-coater, although here I'm wearing two coats sandwiched between my usual Nail Envy base and SV top.  It's lush, I love it!

My nails might be sad little nubbins, but don't they look fancy :)

If you missed this month's A-England Summer Sale you're out of luck because it ended today....but I did get some nail mail today so expect more A-England loveliness to come....For those that did miss the sale, bear the "Gem" in mind...it's like a mini-sale every month :)

ps. Check out Iron Maiden's "Final Frontier" for "Isle of Avalon", it's all kinds of awesome

A-England sale!

A-England are having a summer sale! From 21-26 th August only, for UK customers only, they have 18 shades reduced to £6 each with free postage. There are some amazing shades in there...I'd personally recommend Lady of the Lake and St George. Also, this month's "gem" is Avalon, and is also just £6 for the whole of August. It's utterly fab, I'm wearing it now in fact, and I'll be blogging it soon.  Hurry off to A-England's website and grab yourself a bargain ;-) I have!

A-England Briar Rose/Sleeping Beauty

A-England Briar Rose - Full Sunlight

Today's review is of another stunning polish from A-England's Burne-Jones Dream collection (previous review of Rose Bower). According to the A-England website this collection is inspired by the four paintings of The Briar Rose series created by Sir Edward Burne-Jones depicting the fairy tale of the Sleeping Beauty.  Briar Rose is the namesake of Burne-Jones' collection and is an enchanting dusted Rose colour packed with A-England's signature scattered holo particles.

As with all A-England polishes the application and formula are flawless, with excellent opacity.  This could easily be a one-coater, although I'm a habitual two-coater and pictured here I'm wearing a single coat each of my usual Nail Envy base and beloved seche.  Briar Rose dries to a lovely glossy finish, so in this case the Seche is for maximising wear time rather than shine.

A-England Briar Rose - Indirect Sunlight

Briar Rose is an elegant and sophisticated shade.  Rose is a classic shade but this incarnation looks totally modern on the nail and the holo finish as ever gives A-England polishes that added edge of glamour that makes each of them so special. 

A-England Rose Bower





"Here lies the hoarded love the key
To All the treasure that shall be
Come fated heart the gift to take
And smite the sleeping world awake"

inscripton beneath "The Rose Bower" by Edward Burne-Jones





A-England Rose Bower - Natural light, indoors

Today's NOTD is the stunning "Rose Bower" from the new A-England collection "Burne-Jones Dream".  A-England is a fabulous UK based boutique brand that finds inspiration in classic literature, art and poetry to create some of the most unique polishes I've ever seen.

 

Indirect sunlight

Rose Bower, like the rest of the Burne-Jones Dream collection is a scattered holographic polish.  A-England have perfected the art of the perfect holographic polish; ultra-fine astonishingly sparkly holo particles produce a rainbow of colour when the light catches it but give the polish an elegant dusted appearance in indirect lighting.  The formula is smooth as butter, and dries smooth and glossy with none of that gritty texture you might expect from a polish with this amount of sparkle.



A-England Rose Bower - indirect sunlight

Here I'm wearing two coats of Rose Bower, with a single coat of Nail Envy underneath and Seche Vite to top it off.  It was opaque enough in a single coat, but I'm a habitial double-coater!  Its a scrumptious shade of raspberry, I'm totally in love :)

 

A-England Rose Bower - direct sunlight

Summer is the perfect season for holo polishes that burst into life at the merest hint of a sunbeam.  Rose Bower is a beautiful summery colour, I'd definately recommend it.

These are not available on the A-England just yet, but you can order directly by sending an email to hello@a-england.co.uk with your colour choices and you'll be sent a paypal invoice to complete the sale, and even better - postage in the UK is free!  Each bottle is £9, and worth every penny.