A-England Princess Sabra - Review and Nail Art

Hiya again!

Today has been a day of excesses for me.  I stayed in bed too late, went shopping and spent too much, came home and ate too much junk food, and didn't get any housework done.  Slapped hands. 

Well, never mind, on the positive side, I've FINALLY bought myself a pair of work shoes that actually fit me, rather than struggling on with the ones I bought before Christmas that are way too narrow, and making my toes swell up.  I just didn't want to think I'd wasted my money as they cost me £40, but I've finally admitted defeat and thrown them in the bin.

Also, it's impossible for me not to buy polish at the moment, as spring is coming and all the pretty pastels are in the shops.  I adore pastels, and I bought 3 from Marks & Spencer which I'll swatch for you another day, they're so pretty in the bottle I hope they don't let me down.  I've also ordered Essie's Borrowed and Blue, as it looks like the perfect powder blue I've been looking for, fingers crossed!

Anyway, on to business.  Recently A-England had a fab sale where all their polishes were reduced to £6 each. Two of them I bought straight away, Princess Tears and Princess Sabra, and three, Tristram, Dragon and Lady of the Lake I ordered later.  Princess Tears and Princess Sabra were delivered on Friday, so I swatched Princess Sabra yesterday.

A-England have a lovely way of creating a background story for all their polishes, Princess Sabra's story on the website is "The heart-stoppingly beautiful daughter of the king, whose misfortune it was to have her name drawn as the next sacrificial victim of the dragon".  The founder of A-England, Adina, has based the colour of this polish on the eyes of her cat, Tristam.  She describes it thus:  Alluringly feline golden olive bronzite, the sacrificial Princess constantly shifts with her elusive, myriad hues.

So let's get on with the swatches.  Here's how it looks out in the garden.  Yesterday was cloudy and overcast:

It looks to me like a greenish toned antique gold.  This is two coats over basecoat with no topcoat.  The formula was nice, and has seemed pretty consistent across all the A-Englands I've tried so far.  Dry time was medium/fast. 

There is some scattered holo in this, but don't buy it expecting a holo fest, or you'll be disappointed.  However the best thing about it was that it's kind of metallic, and no brush strokes!  I hate brush strokes, I think it completely ruins any look of sophistication a polish might have.

It doesn't completely do my skintone justice at the moment, but I think in the summer when I get a bit of colour it will be perfect.  Here's another outdoor pic:

Try as I might, I couldn't really get the holo to show in my pics.  Here's the nearest I got, you can kind of see it up near my cuticles:

To jazz it up a bit I used some small circle stickers to mask off an area of my nail, then stamped using the snakeskin effect on Bundle Monster plate BM-215, and an Elf polish called Chocolate, along with NYC polish Canal Street blobbed randomly.  As it was I needn't have bothered doing that as the mottled effect I had planned didn't really show, but hey-ho it was worth experimenting because you never know:

In my impatience I smudged my index (pointer) finger with my SV topcoat, but it's not too noticeable, so I didn't bother to re-do.  Here's a final pic, taken under the kitchen lights.  Again, the holo allllmost comes out to play:

All in all, I like this polish.  I don't own anything like it, and I think it's going to make a versatile neutral-ish base for a lot of looks.  I can also see this coming out alot around Christmas time (I know it's a long way away, but planning ahead), and already I'm wondering what it might look like with Nubar Black Polka Dot over it, also safari/animal prints... and so on.....

It's available with free international shipping for £9 on the A-England Website HERE.

What do you think?  Are you a fan of gold toned colours?  I am, even though they don't do me any justice haha, I keep at them!

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~