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! 

No.7 Betty Blues & Bargain News



 

Hello ladies :) Laqueristas in the UK are probably well aware of the Boots No.7 voucher scheme but for anyone that's not....Boots periodically hand out £3 off No.7 makeup vouchers with every purchase, usually for a few weeks.  Perhaps to encourage spending No.7 then usually run a 'buy one get 2nd half price' offer.  So the upshot is, you can get two polishes for £3-£3.50 each (depending on which ones you pick).  Bargain!

The offer is on right NOW!

What's even worse for a polish addict like me is that they keep giving me the flipping vouchers! So when you use your voucher to buy polish they give you a new voucher....which you have to spend because it's cheap polish...arg! The addiction cycle continues....

So for any of you about to dash out and get spendy here's an 'anti-recommendation' that might help from my last voucher-induced stash stockup:

No.7 Betty Blues - Natural light

This is 'Betty Blues' and it certainly gave me the blues....it's terrible!  In the bottle this looks like it has a deep sapphire shimmer, which you can just about see in the bottle in this picture.  On the nails there's absolutely nothing...it just looks black, not even navy blue.  It was also one of the worst staining polishes I've ever used...my cuticles were navy blue for a week.  Ick! My advice is to avoid this like the plague.  With my navy cuticles it didn't just ruin this mani for me, but the next two! That's a special kind of awful.

If you are looking for positive recommendations - In the Stars (microflakie topper, link is to my comparison post), Salsa and Damson Dream are all amazeballs!  Swatches will appear here eventually!

Polish magazine giveaways - December 2013

UK girlies there are some polish giveaways this month! The latest issues of Glamour and Cosmo both have multiple polishes to choose from.  The Glamour giveaway is for full size Nails Inc polishes supposedly designed with 'Kate Spade of New York'.  I have no idea who Kate Spade is but I'm not inspired by her polish choices, they look like the same stock freebie polishes Nails Inc roll out every time.  The red reminds me particularly of the free one that InStyle magazine gave away this summer, which was pretty shoddy.  So I won't be rushing out to grab these.

 

Nails Inc with Kate Spade - free with Glamour UK December 2013 issue

 Cosmo is giving away Orly minis that are really teeny, so although the colour choice is a lot more festive it doesn't seem a big enough bargain to me to suffer through the magazine.

Orly Minis - free with Cosmopolitan UK December 2013 issue

 So there you have it ladies.  If you fancy a freebie this is your month!

Plum Gelly

"Plum" is my first experience of the Gelly Hi Shine line by Barry M and I absolutely love it.  It's a beautiful and sophisticated shade of dusky aubergine/eggplant (depending on which side of the pond you're from) that's perfect for autumn. 



Barry M Gelly Hi Shine  - "Plum" - Natural Light

I never thought I'd go without my beloved Seche, but the pics here are both with NO TOPCOAT.  So this definitely lives up to its 'Hi-Shine' billing!  I guess the 'Gelly' element is a reference to its shiny gel nails type finish, because I'd definitely class this as a crème polish.  Opacity is very good, I'm wearing two coats in these pictures but you could get away with a single coat.  Formula is excellent, smooth and self-levels well, what's more to say? Love, love, love!





Barry M Gelly Hi Shine  - "Plum" - Natural Light

Well there is one more thing to say - this is ridiculously good value at £3.99.  I even picked mine up in Boots in a 'Buy 1 get 1 1/2 price' offer (which incidentally is on again right now!).  I have polishes 3 times this price that aren't even half this good.  I'd highly recommend this.

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!