Damson Dream by No. 7

Hello ladies!  Before the Boots No.7 voucher scheme ends this Sunday I have one more No. 7 polish to share with you...This beauty is 'Damson Dream'



Damson Dream by No. 7 - artificial lighting

This is my usual two coats with NE base and SV topcoat.  I absolutely LOVE this shade, it's lush.  It's a plummy red metallic shade with a lot of oomph! I'm a sucker for a good shimmer polish and this one has that 'lit from within' effect going in spades.

Quality wise I really can't fault No. 7 polishes (apart from the awful Betty Blues which stained like crazy).  The formula is smooth and consistent, weartime is excellent, and the brushes are good too (always an important consideration for me!).  Top marks all round for this one No. 7!

These polishes are on offer until the 2nd of February (details below).  To help you choose you can check out my reviews of Galaxy (Chanel Taboo dupe!!!), In The Stars and Betty Blues.  I haven't got swatch pics for it yet but I also highly recommend Salsa - it has the same finish as Damson Dream but it's a fabulous shade of red.

The Offer: These polishes RRP for just £6 for the 'Stay Perfect' regular range, and £7 for the Gel-look Shine polishes.  Until this Sunday any Boots purchase will get you a £3 off voucher to spend on No. 7 make-up, plus No. 7 are also doing 'buy one get 2nd half price' deal.  You can combine both offers to bag yourself two half price polishes. Sweet! 

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).

Indian Summer

Today's NOTD is from my latest Indie haul - be prepared for a lot of picture spam because this one's a doozy!  This is "Indian Summer" by Crowstoes from the new 'Better Late than Never' collection (I also have Hellhound to show you later, which if it lives up to the promise in the bottle it's going to rock!).



Crowstoes 'Indian Summer' - Artificial Light

Indian Summer is a metallic multi-chrome from Indie brand Crowstoes.  Shown here I'm wearing two coats, over NE base and black undies (single coat of No7 'Just Black') with SV to top it all off.  No issues at all with formula or application, both were fab.  I love the bottle design too, the logo is really cool and Halloween-y (I know that's not a real word, but it is in my house). 

Crowstoes 'Indian Summer' - Natural Light

The eagle-eyed among you may notice that this daylight shot was taken in a car - I was parked I promise! Living in Scotland I have very little access to sunlight during winter.  I'm at work for the 5 minutes of sunshine we might get in a day, so I've done my best for you with my crappy camera phone.  The multi-chrome effect comes across best in natural sunlight, as this shot shows.  I'm now going to moan a bit about the multichrome effect so bear in mind that I almost never got to see this baby in sunlight....

I didn't find the multi-chrome effect to be particularly strong with this polish.  It's not like a Hits polish (you NEED to get as many of those in your life as you can by the way - go to Sally Magpies for those).  It is totally gorgeous though.  I would say that 90% of the time this polish appears to be a lovely shade of metallic blurple (and you know how I feel about metallic purples).  At more extreme angles it shifts to magenta.  In the bottle, at the extreme of the inner curved surface, there's gold too but I didn't see that on the nail at all (see pic at the bottom of this post).  I've noticed that all the online swatches suggest that this has a mega-chrome effect (including mine, yeah I know...hypocrite).  What's undeniable though is that multi-chrome or not, this is a beautiful polish.

Crowstoes 'Indian Summer' - Macro bottleshots - Artificial Light

Above: the two main colours are seen here by repositioning my desklamp relative to the bottle.  On the right, the blurple shade, is the dominant colour that you see at direct angles.  The magenta on the left is the secondary colour, which pops out at wider angles.

Looky looky! It's a bottled sunset!

Above, again with my trusty desklamp, with a fair bit of fiddling you can get to a red gold tone that's awesome.  Not sure what angle you'd have to peer at your nails at in real life to see this one but you'd probably do yourself a neck injury trying.  And finally, taking advantage of the curviest part of the bottle you can see the whole range of colours - its a sunset in a bottle!

This polish is absolutely lovely, I highly recommend it.  I picked mine up for £10.25 from Rainbow Connection. In fact they're having an offer right now that orders placed before 2nd December will get you a £3 off voucher for your next purchase.  But sorry, Indian Summer is currently sold out....

Disclaimer: I am in no way connected with any of the shops or brands that I blog about. I'm just a happy customer and nail nerd. All the shades I blog about have been bought with my own hard-earned moolah.

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.

Comparison: Chanel Taboo & Nails Inc Regent's Palace



Today I have a new comparison to show you - Chanel Taboo vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace.  I'll start by giving away the ending - these are not dupes.  However, it's worth taking a closer look, the comparison isn't as crazy as you might first think.

Readers of this blog will know that I have never been so excited, or so disappointed by a polish than I was with Chanel Taboo (my Taboo review and swatches).  I won't repeat my review here but the main reason for my disappointment was the vast difference between the in-bottle and on-nail impact of this polish.  In the bottle it looks like instant galaxy nails - it's utterly packed with phenomenal looking colour, sparkly bits and what-not.  On the nail, it looks for the most time, like a dull dark black/purple.  The 'pop' in the bottle is only seen in flash, and direct sunlight, and even then only when you're really looking at it.  The formula is also pretty pants, quite gloopy.

So I wondered - supposing you don't want to spend £18 or can't get a hold of this limited edition.  What else could you get that would look as good or better?  Step up to the plate Nails Inc Regent's Palace....



Chanel Taboo (index, ring) vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace (middle, pinkie)
Natural Light

In close up here you can see some evidence of the sparkly bits in Taboo, and you can also see it's in a much darker base than RP which has a fairly indigo base to it.  Both polishes have a lovely shimmer, but the brighter toned base of RP means that this shimmer is much more evident on-nail in a variety of lighting conditions.  Pictured here is two coats each of colour atop a Nail Envy base.  There's no top coat here.

Chanel Taboo (index, ring) vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace (middle, pinkie)
Flash

When you look at these under flash, you can see more of the bottle-beauty of Taboo coming out and the tonal difference in the bases is more pronounced.  I don't often take swatch pics with flash on because a) it makes me look like a scary albino lady and b) 99% of the time you're not going to be looking at your polish by flashlight so it's not really a fair test of how pretty it will look (I wouldn't have had such a lemming for Taboo if I had seen it in more natural lighting pics I think).
Taboo does have more sparkle than RP for sure, although bear in mind that this sparkle is not actually visible by eye a lot of the time.  So to add some extra zing to the RP I then popped on a thin coat of Max Factor Fantasy Fire (possibly the best layering polish of all time, there is nothing that this won't make more fabulous.  It's like the mani equivalent of bacon).
 


Chanel Taboo (index, ring) vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace with Max Factor Fantasy Fire (middle, pinkie)
Natural Light 

Wowza! Regent's Palace on its own is a fabulous metallic purple shade (see my purple metallics comparison post here) but layered with Fantasy Fire it's stunning.  Again, not a dupe for Taboo, but certainly punching far above its weight in terms of price comparison and on-nail 'pop factor'.
Finally with flash, it's the return of the albino:



Chanel Taboo (index, ring) vs. Nails Inc Regent's Palace with Max Factor Fantasy Fire (middle, pinkie)
Flash

In terms of on-nail impact, sparkle, and purple-ness (I know that's not a word, but it should be) for me Regent's Palace plus Fantasy Fire is a clear winner.  In terms of price it's also a no-brainer: the Chanel will cost you £18 but it's Limited Edition so if you miss out in store I've seen this changing hands for £30-£50 which is just insane.  I got the Nail's Inc in a set of 3 from TK Maxx (bargain polish heaven) for £9.99 which by my maths makes this £3.33, but full price would cost you £11.  Fantasy Fire is £3.99 in Boots/Superdrug for a mini bottle.

So for my mani that's £7.32 vs £18, or full price it would be £14.99 vs £18.  At full price the argument is less compelling, but Regent's Palace is one of the few Nails Inc polishes that I would be happy to pay full price for.  Even on it's own, without the Fantasy Fire topper, I feel that Regent's Palace is a better all-rounder than the Chanel.  Blasphemy I know, but there you have it.
 

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

Spring Greens



This week's manicure was a spring inspired combination of the mettalic shimmer "Metamorphosis" by Color Club and the gorgeous topcoat "Platinum Wishes" by Jessica.  Just look at how pretty these are in the bottle....



Jessica "Platinum Wishes" and Color Club "Metamorphosis"


This was my first experience of both brands, and I was very pleased with the application, formula and brushes.  The Color Club brush was narrower, but easy to use.  Metamorphosis is gorgeous on its own as a lovely sparkly mettalic shade.  It's very sheer, so I used three generous coats to get full opacity.  This polish was from a TK Maxx bargain hunt where I grabbed an 8 bottle set of the "Take Wing" collection which are all butterfly wing inspired mettalics, for a stonking £8.  That's how much a single bottle retails for online here in the UK.

Jessica "Platinum Wishes" and Color Club "Metamorphosis" - Artificial Light

Pictured here we have Nail Envy basecoat, three coats of Metamorphosis, two coats of Platinum Wishes and one coat of Seche Vite.  I think two coats of Seche would have been better as this still had a grainy feel to it, but by that time it was late at night and I couldn't be bothered waiting for another coat of polish to dry.  It's a hard life sometimes.
The Jessica glitter coat looks like a total glitter bomb in the bottle, with a mixture of bronze, gold, teal and blue round glitters that remind me of the colours of a peacock.  This would look gorgeous layered over quite a few different shades with that range of colours in there.  It does come out more sparse on the nail than you'd expect from the bottle, but with patience you could build this up to get the effect you want.

Jessica "Platinum Wishes" and Color Club "Metamorphosis" - Natural Light

A word of warning though - I have never had so much trouble removing a polish in my life!  I was at it for over half an hour, used two different brands of remover AND the foil method and was beginning to think amputation was the only answer.  I don't know which of the polishes was more to blame, or whether it was just the sheer number of coats, but this sucker was a b*tch to get off and my fingers were left a charming shade of green afterwards.  Still it was pretty while it lasted.  Spring might not be happening here in Scotland but it was happening on my nails this week :)