A-England Holy Grail - Review, Swatch and Nail Art

I can't resist a bargain. It's just one of those things, I can't help myself.  Even if its something I don't really want, if it's super cheap, I'm there.

So, when I found out a-england were selling off their Holy Grail polishes for £5 a bottle with free shipping, I was so excited, I had my laptop open and was on the website faster than Usain Bolt running away from an angry bee!

If I remember rightly it was because this polish is being discontinued, and as of today (29 Sep 2012) it's still there on the website waiting to be snapped up.

It came in a couple of days, considering it was free P&P I was expecting it to be sent on the back of a trained snail, but no, just as fast, if not faster, than any normal shipping.

So without further ado, lets get on to the pictures:

The formula was thin, with a little bit of VNL on the first coat, but it was nice and obedient to work with.  I found the brush ever so slightly on the soft side, but it worked well with the formula. The first coat did emphasise ridges, but the second coat covered that all up nicely.  Here's another picture:

It did threaten to blob once during application, but never actually did, and there were a few quite faint brush strokes left.  I couldn't decide if I had VNL or not after 2 coats, which means I probably didn't, but I ended up doing 3 coats anyway just in case.  Sometimes you don't see any in real life, but then they show up in the photos which is weird, and I didn't want to take the chance. 

Dry time was medium, maybe five minutes between coats, with a final five minutes to set it, and I still ended up with a little dent, but that happens sometimes when you're moving your hands about to take the pics.

Here's a picture under the LED craft light, I think it shows the finish well, the polish formulation is *very* shiny but offset a bit by the shimmer:

And then, me being me, I decided to do some nail art on it.  As it's a very yellowy gold, I wanted to make my fingers into bumblebees, but despite doing some test nails, I just couldn't get them to look as good as I wanted, and couldn't see any tutorials on YouTube that had the finished look I wanted, so ended up doing something else:

When I started off doing it, my intention was to do a paisley look, well, as you can see that didn't quite work out.  However I like the blobby look of this, so am going to pretend it's what I intended all along haha.  It's actually the first time I've used the pen nib bit of my Rio nail art brushes, as I've only ever used the striper before and it was actually nicer to use than I thought, I'll have to try something else with the other colours I've got.

Heres another pic, this one taken outside:

And finally, the obligatory brush shot:

And there we have it!  I actually don't think this colour works particularly well with my skintone, but that's obviously not the polishes fault!  I actually already have a gold I'm more than pleased with, but I couldn't resist the temptation to try out the a-england formulation that everyone seems to love at such a bargain price.  I'm glad I did, because I do like it, and if I see one of their polishes in a colour I want (all their recent releases are a bit dark for me), I won't hesitate to buy it.  At full price.  And thats saying something coming from me ;-)

Until next time.....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~