2True Fast Dry Polish Shade 11 Swatches

Hi again!

Hope you're well today.

Here we have a surprise buy for me, a super-cheap £1.99 nude polish!  Now I'm not a big fan of nude polishes, despite loving my pastels, but this one caught my eye because I'm looking for an antique cream for a nail art look I've got in my head. 

I thought this might be the one I'm looking for. Unfortunately it wasn't, (not cream coloured enough) but I like it all the same:

It was streaky in one coat, and opaque in two, which is what's shown here.  The formula was a tiny bit runny, but nothing too awkward, and perhaps half a shade darker once on and dry than in the bottle.  It reminded me very much of the 'camel coats' we all used to wear, way back when...

It also reminded me very much of a bottle of concealer, and once I'd got that in my head I felt weird painting it on my nails haha!  Here's another pic:

And finally, here's a pic of the brush, partly because there's a flash on the packaging that says 'new flat brush' so I thought you might like to see it, and partly because I always want to show brushes on my polish review posts.  I'll include front view & side view to show that it is, indeed, flat:

And actually, the brush was the only thing that slightly let this polish down, the shape was actually fine, I did my little finger in more or less one stroke and pressed flat it went into a more slightly rounded shape, but it was just that little bit too stiff bristled to be perfect.  However, bear in mind I'm comparing it with Nails Inc and Jessica polishes that cost more than a tenner each.  No complaints on glossiness or coverage though!



Also not only are they £1.99 each, they're 3 for £5 in Superdrug, which is where I got mine, so they really are a bargain!  Thoroughly recommended.

Until next time...

MASPOOASE   X X X

~Wendy~

Nail Polish Review NYC Canal Street

Hi there everyone,

Back to normal with a proper weekend, YAY!  Also my car is booked into the garage on Tuesday to hopefully get mended, so it's all looking up!

Today I'm reviewing a nail polish that I wouldn't usually pick up.  I'm not really one for dark polishes, and I only have owned one NYC polish up to now, and that one I wasn't really keen on, but this one caught my eye as I was on my internet 'looking for browns' spree.  As it happens, when it came, it turned out to only be brown in certain lights, but that doesn't matter because I love it!

Feast your eyes on this beauty:

Gorgeous, right?  I took so many pictures of this, but as it's so overcast now when I get home from work, it's hard to get a good shot.  Here's one I took in the garden:

The bottle colour in this shot is very representative of the 'actual' real life colour, kind of a rich burgundy wine colour with lots of copper shimmer going though it.  These pictures are two coats, with no topcoat. 

The formula is an absolute dream, first coat no VNL, and you could probably get away with one careful coat, but I did two, and it pretty much covered the ridges on my nails and gave a great finish.  It seemed quite thin, but managed to be opaque, a win-win.

Dry time, about two minutes for the first coat, five minutes for two coats to get touch dry, and fifteen to 20 minutes to get completely hard, thats pretty good going.  I would say, yes, fast drying.

Here's a close up of the beauteousness of the polish in the bottle under the craft light:

No photoshop here, I just put it on a jiffy bag and took the pic, and this is what I got, lovely!  I love my camera, I do

Speaking of which, showing you this perfect autum nail colour, it reminds me, I went for a walk last weekend and I took some nice pictures, I thought I'd share some with you

I thought this one came out nicely, the way the light is catching the leaves:

And this one, which made me a bit hungry on my walk!

And I don't know what this plant is, but it's pretty:

Anyway, I digress big time, back to the polish!  Here's the brush shot.  The brush was a flat style brush, not too wide and was quite firm.  It worked well with the formulation of the polish, no blobbing:

So anyway, as you might be able to tell, I really like this polish.  And do you want to know the most amazing, jaw dropping, supercalafragislisticexpialadocious thing about it?

YOU CAN GET IT RIGHT NOW ON THE SUPERDRUG WEBSITE FOR £1.79 WITH FREE SHIPPING !!!!

Hurry though, you've got (I think) until the 24th October to take advantage of the free shipping, after that they charge £3.00, but even then it's not so bad.  Or of course you could always do it the old fashioned way and actually go to the shop using your body...

If I'd paid £10 for this I would be perfectly happy with it, and not feel hard done by, but to get it at this price is an absolute steal - BUY BUY BUY!!!

Until next time, when I might have calmed down a bit.....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Simple Pleasures Scented Halloween Nail Polish Set Review and Swatches

Hi there again everyone,

I hope you are well and have been enjoying your Sunday

So here I am, just back from my weeks holiday in Blackpool, all refreshed and rejuvenated!  Or at least I was until my car started playing up again, gah!  Anyway, while I was away, I happened to stumble into TX Maxx and have a bit of a browse.  It was weird shopping for polish with other half there, I don't know why.  I came away with a few collections, and this is one of them:

I've taken the clear plastic box off because it had the price ticket stuck over the polishes (as usual), also its worth noting this will be a picture heavy post, please let me know if it causes you problems and I'll make the pictures smaller.

I swatched them from lightest to darkest, so the first one I tried was the Pumpkin orange:

A strange formulation this, a bit watery but fast drying.  First coat was very sheer.  This is three coats and as you can see there is still a bit of VNL there.  It gets darker the dryer it is.  As for the scent, I found it a bit soapy, definitely not a pumpkin scent.  It was also repelled by any oil at all on my nail, it literally ran away from it.  I found it super tough to remove, I had to use the strongest acetone remover I had and even then I had to work at it.

Here it is with the glitter coat that came in the collection:

I struggled to get the glitter out of the bottle, this is a thick coat, and it was gloopy to start with.  It definitely didn't smell of vanilla, it just had the same soapy smell as the orange one.

The next one I swatched was green apple:

And here it is with the glitter topcoat:

It was the same semi-sheer fast drying soapy smelling hard to remove formula as I'm sure you can tell.  Next up I swatched the red one, for some reason called Cotton Candy:

From the first sweep of the brush with this one I said wow!  It's coming off a little too tomato-y in this pic because it was a truer red than it shows here.  It was opaque in one coat, but I did two and it's pretty much perfect coverage.  Here it is with the glitter coat:

I put a coat of Barry M Red Glitter on my little finger just to see what it looked like, and I liked it better than this silver stuff.

Next up I tried the Grape, I had trepidation, would I get the lovely red formula or the sheer orange formula?

It was the sheer - boooo

This is 3 coats and I suppose you could almost get away with it, it dried so much darker than the colour in the bottle though:

And here it is with the glitter coat:

I put a coat of Max Factor Fantasy Fire on my little finger, just because the purple reminded me so much of the base colour of that polish and it makes the shimmer show well I think.

Well, by this time I only had one left to swatch, and let me tell you I was glad, because that soapy smell was really starting to give me a headache!  Plus I was having to use so much polish remover to get it off so that wasn't helping either.  So here we go with the Licorice black one:

Hooray it's back to the lovely formula the red one had!  This is one coat, and I had no inclination to do another.  It dried with a slight misty haze. Here it is with the glitter:

This one did actually smell a bit licorice-y!

So there we have it, all in all a bit hit and miss.  I wish as much care and attention had been taken with the formulations as it was the packaging.  The red and black were fine, but the others were a let down, just too sheer for me.  And SO hard to remove!  They'll maybe come in handy for some nail art, but at the grand old price of £4.99 for the whole collection I'm not too gutted.

I hope you've found my review helpful, and until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Collection 2000 All That Jazz Review and Swatches

Hello again!

Today I bring to you a surprise new favourite of mine, Collection 2000's little stunner All That Jazz.  I was in Wilkinsons looking for some reds (if you've seen my cloud mani post you'll know why), and I just picked this up as a side thought, it was only cheap so I thought I would give it a try.

Anyhow, I only painted it on my little finger while I was watching TV, and I really loved it!  The formula is somehow runny but compliant, was opaque in one coat and pretty much self levelling, but as my nails are pretty ridgey, I've done 2 coats for these pictures.  These are all with no top coat, I got pretty carried away with the pictures, once again we go around the house and out into the garden haha:

 

As you'll be able to see on the close ups I did slightly mess up the cuticle area on my thumb, but I didn't have to do any clean up at all, the brush was a wide one but it didn't give me any problems whatsoever.  Here's some more pics:



 

It was pretty fast drying too, I only had it on for five minutes when I remembered that we were going out for lunch and I had to wash my hair!  I did get a couple of small dents but it held up pretty well, much better than alot of other polishes I've got.  And when we went out I realised that my nails were the same colour as other halfs' car! Ford Magnum Grey:

And of course I must show you a picture of the very obliging brush, even though the lid is rounded it still stood up which surprised me:





All in all, I'm very pleased with this, as I'm sure you can tell.  I don't own OPI's My Private Jet, but the swatches I've seen suggest that it might be similar, and for £1.50 who can complain!  If you see it in the shops I'd say snap it up!

 

Until next time.....

 

MASPOOASE x x x

~Wendy~

Jessica Gelato Mio Collection nail art and review

Hi there!

Hope your day's going great, here's another polish review for you.

I love pastels, so when I saw the Jessica Gelato collection advertised I was super excited!  Scrangie reviewed them recently LINK HERE and as usual her pictures were mouthwateringly good.  What swayed me most of all though is that she said the formula was perfect and it was OK in two coats, which is quite unusual for pastels. 

So I went on to Amazon UK and ordered Banana Peel, which is yellow (surprisingly lol), and Strawberry Shake It, which is pink (no suprise there either).  They cost me £9.75 each including P&P, which is near the top end of what I'll usually pay, excepting the odd Chanel or extra special polish.

Here's what I've done with it today, please excuse both my dodgy dots and my super dry cuticles, I am still on the hunt for that 'it' treatment for my cuticles, there will be a very long post of 'what I've tried' when I do finally find it!

For a change my camera has picked the colours up quite accurately, they're just a tad 'whiter' than this, but not much.  While I like the colours, I myself didn't like the formula.  I found it runny, streaky at 2 coats, and sloooooowwww to dry.  This is 3 coats.  Perhaps it's because my expectations were so high, but I think you can tell on the dots quite well what the formula was like, which is why I did them.

The other bit of a let down was that I realised when I got it home, that I already had a very similar pink with California Dreaming, see:

Thats Strawberry Shake It on the left, not much difference, certainly not enough to justify owning both anyway, sigh....

And true to all my other polish reviews, here's a picture of the brush.  Jessica in their wisdom make a round end on their lid so it didn't stand up very well:

So there you have it, pretty colours, but the formulation was a bit of a let down.  I'm glad now that I didn't buy any of the other colours, I didn't mainly because I already own similar ones to them, and also they were expensive (to me anyway), but I think I will use the ones I got despite them being a bit of a pain.

I hope you found my review interesting, or at least useful, and until next time....

MASPOOASE X X X

~Wendy~

Color Club Foiled - Metallics - Review

Hi there again folks!
Once again I have a nail polish collection review for you.  This time it's Color Clubs 'Foiled - Molten Metal for your nails' collection.  I don't have many foil or chrome effect polishes, so when I saw these in TX Maxx for £7.99 for 7 polishes (although one is a topcoat), I thought it's enough of a bargain to have a go.

So here's the polishes:

And here's how they come packaged:

Now, usually I show each colour, and then explain how the coverage and application, etc was.  I'm not going to do that for this collection for one good reason - the application and coverage was exactly the same for each polish!  I don't find that much in collections, but certainly in this case that's what it was like.

And the good news is that it was really nice to apply, not too streaky or self deleting, and a nice amount of polish came off the brush for each brush stroke.  You do need to make sure you clean off the stalk of the brush though, because I found a couple of times that a blob came down it and blobbed in it's blobby way onto my nail!  Luckily it was pretty easy to swoosh back off with the brush with no harm done, but it was just a slight irritation in an otherwise seamless polishing session.

Coverage is good, first coat ever so slightly patchy, but you could definitely get away with it in a rush, with no VNL to speak of.  I think this is because it contains alot of tiny foil pieces.  All pictures shown here are two coats and thats definitely enough.  To get a smooth glossy finish you would need the topcoat that came with the kit, but I didn't use it for these pictures.  The topcoat is under the sticker in the packaging shot, in true TX Maxx style of covering up the polish with the price sticker.  Dry time was medium-fast.

I'll show them in the order they came in, as shown in the pacakaging shot.  One thing that bugs me about Color Club collections is that they don't put the polish names on the bottles.  I've got so many I can't really swatch as I don't know what they're called.  This time I've tried to get around that by cutting the names out of the packaging and supergluing them on the bottom of the bottle.  Don't know how long they'll stay stuck on, but it's worth a try!

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

The first one is 927 Perfect Mol-Ten - a light pinky tan colour:

I think it would make an excellent base coat for 'lovely but too sheer' polishes, and am definitely going to try using it for that.  Heres another pic, I took loads, but have limited myself to two per colour on the blog, it wasn't easy to pick!

Next up is 928 - Antiquated:

A lovely feminine mid/bright pink - am not usually one for pinks, but this was my favourite of the lot.  Heres another pic:

Next in the box is 929 Cold Metal - a nice royal blue:

I simply couldn't limit myself to two pictures for this one because it appears so different in daylight and indoors, so heres two more pictures :)  one in daylight:

And one indoors, but daylight is shining on my thumb, the difference is clear between that and my little fingernail:

Next along is 930 Hot Like Lava:

This is a paler, cooler toned version of Antiquated, this and cold metal were my joint second favourites.  Heres another pic of it:

Next in the pack is 931 Foil Me Once - an almost duo-toned green:

The fresher green flecks are quite noticeable in the bottle shot above, but they seen to merge together once theyre on.  Heres another pic:

And last but not least, 932 Lumin-Icecent, a silvery light blue:

And here it is again, with the bottle in shot:

And that's all the colour, there was also a bottle of top coat, here's a picture of it, mainly so you can see what the brushes looked like!

So there we have it, one collection swatched and reviewed, and all in all I was pretty pleased with it.  I would have rather had a red in the same tone as the royal blue than two pinks, but then I am a bit fussy!  It makes a good addition to my ever-expanding collection, and I promise that my next post will be something different than nail polish!

Until next time.....

MASPOOASE X X X

~Wendy~

Jessica Hologram Chic - Disco Diva

It's the weeeekeeeeennnnnd!  Yaaayyyy!!!
Anyone who's seen my Twitter feed today knows how I feel about this polish kit.  I love it!

Lets get straight on to the pics - I've jazzed it up using Konad black polish and bundle monster plate BM221:

I really like this look, it feels really 'rock chick' to me, and one of the first times I've felt like I'm 'rockin' a nail look.  Although the BM plate is floral, the feel is very animal print.  I slightly smudged my stamping with my top coat, but I like it so much I don't really mind.  Heres another pic:

I ordered mine from Ebay UK and it came really quick, but I have seen it on Amazon UK too.  I paid just over £25 with free shipping.  Here's how it comes packaged:





And the back side:

As you can see, it comes packaged nicely enough to make a great gift.





Luckily for me it was sunny today, first day for a while, so I managed to get out and take a few sunlight shots, this is where the polish really comes into it's own.  Here it is in all its unstamped naked glory:

Application was lovely, the brush liked to cling onto the polish a bit instead of dropping it on my nail, but it wasn't at all streaky or self deleting.  This is 3 coats, but when I looked on my second hand, there was absolutely no difference between 2 or 3 coats, so I wasted a coat!  With one coat there was a bit of VNL, so am intrigued to see if I can layer it and change the look.

I have no doubt that this will become one of my regularly used nail art polishes, it's given me so many ideas for new designs, watch this space!

Until next time....

MASPOOASE X X X
~Wendy~