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!

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.

New York State of Mind

Today's NOTD is a new brand to me, and a fairly new brand to the UK - Morgan Taylor.  Morgan Taylor polishes are owned by the same company that make Gelish polishes, and as far as I know the brand was released in the US earlier this year.  It was only available in the UK to trade customers until really recently, but I'm now happy to report that Sally Salon supplies is now stocking a wide range (63!) of these polishes on the high street!



New York State of Mind by Morgan Taylor - Artificial Light

New York State of Mind is a black jelly polish packed with micro glitters in a range of colours - predominantly pink and blue hexes and squares.  I'm wearing two coats here, with NE base and SV top coat.  I couldn't photograph this until a day later, so there's some tip wear on show too (sorry).  Coverage was good, no VNL, and the finish was fairly smooth for a glitter of this density.



New York State of Mind by Morgan Taylor - Artificial Light

Formula was not brilliant to be honest, I had some issues with drag, but in this case I think its the result of being such a dense glitter.  What bothered me about this one was that overall I found the effect of this polish on the nail rather underwhelming.  I really wanted to be whelmed by it, but it just doesn't quite live up to the promise in the bottle.  Is there anything more disappointing than a polish that looks better in the bottle than on the nail?



Ooooh sparkly!

I mean look at it! Isn't that soooo pretty! It's a sparkle bomb but on the nail it doesn't have the same POP! factor.  In the spirit of fairness, perhaps this polish suffered a bit by being the mani I replaced the stonking Klaatu Barada Nikto with, frankly any polish isn't going to compete with that one for sparkle-factor.  All in all though, this polish left me feeling 'meh', which isn't a good thing.  My collection is large enough that even my favourites only get used a handful of times so I suspect it'll be a long while before this one gets another go around.

That being said, there is a really wide range of colours out there, so perhaps I'd be more excited by one of those.  I'll certainly give MT another go.  I particularly want to try Under the Stars but sadly it doesn't look like this is currently one of the shades Sallys stocks.





 

New York State of Mind - Macro

The price point for these is £10.99, so around OPI/Nails Inc prices, and that seems fair.  The quality was good, wear time was similar (if a little less than OPI, but with a glitter polish that's not a fair comparison), and I really like the bottle design.  The brush was good too, not as great as the OPI pro-wide (but then what is?).  I really want to like this brand, it's got a good look and a good range of shades.  Have you tried any Morgan Taylor polishes? Do you have a shade you'd recommend? I'm always on the hunt for good tips :)

Klaatu Barada Nikto - by Smitten Polish

Today's NOTD is the utterly jaw-dropping 'Klaatu Barada Nikto' by Smitten Polish.  This satisfies two of my passions - nail polish and geekery as it refers to a line in a classic sci-fi movie that's been used in a ton of pop-culture references included one of my favourite films of all time Army of Darkness.  The fact that this is one of the most astonishing polishes I've ever clapped eyes on is just the icing on the dead-ite cake.

So without further ado....let me introduce you

Smitten Polish - Klaatu Barada Nikto - Artificial Light

KBN is a royal blue/blurple jelly so densly packed with holographic glitter particles that this is possibly the sparkliest polish I own.  It's truly astonishing.  My pictures only capture a fraction of its lustre, it has to be seen to be believed.  Shown here I'm wearing two coats for full opacity, with NE base and two coats of Seche.

Smitten Polish - Klaatu Barada Nikto - Artificial Light - Macro

 

Formula on this was very tricky.  It is so packed with particles, that it applied with a really gritty texture that I struggled a bit with clumping/dragging.  It also dries looking downright nasty - matt, and gritty looking - so you need a nice shiny topcoat to finish it off.  As soon as I laid down the Seche this polish came alive and is just such a pretty finish.  One coat of Seche would have been enough for a perfectly smooth finish, but I used two for extra lustre.  I don't own a liquid sand type polish, but the kind of 'texture' to the un-topcoated polish isn't anything like as textured as one of those polishes so this didn't 'drink' top coat like I've heard those can.

Smitten Polish - Klaatu Barada Nikto - Artificial Light

This polish is just astonishingly beautiful, I'm completely in love.  This is a new brand for me and I'm definitely impressed.  Smitten Polish is a hand-mixed indie polish brand from Missouri, and available through her Etsy store or here in the UK from Rainbow Connection. I got this on sale, and it's now down to £7.50 a bottle so expect it to run out soon.  This polish is definitely going to make my top 10 favourites, I'd highly recommend it....

Smitten Polish - Klaatu Barada Nikto - Natural Light

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.