Hi there again lovely people,
Hope your weeks going well. We've finally had some sunshine - and I've been stuck at work, typical! The weekend was cloudy, and today it's started to rain again. According to the weathermen it's going to get freezing cold again next week, and then I'll be wanting this mild and rainy weather back, so not going to complain. This doesn't count as complaining, right?
Have got some really good blog post ideas in the wings, some other reviews, a tutorial, a couple of music posts.... and am very close to 100 followers, have got some good posts lined up for that too, exciting times!
Finally my TK Maxx has restocked with some decent polishes, and I recently picked this set up:
I've never used Nails Inc's mini polishes before, so I was intrigued to give them a go. I'll review them in the order that they came in the box.
The names on the bottom of these polishes were nearly impossible to read, but I managed. The first one is called Pimlico. It's purple with a blue shimmer running through it:
As you can see, the shimmer still shows when the polish is applied. Too often polishes like this look awesome in the bottle, and then when you apply them they look ordinary. Not the case with this one. The first coat was a bit patchy, and weirdly the brush seemed a bit too square, which made my cuticle area a little bit untidy. It was slightly watery, and flooded my cuticles a couple of times, but I caught it fast and could clean it off with my opposite thumbnail. Dry time was medium/fast. This is two coats, and I still had a little bit of VNL, but as you can see it wasn't too bad, another coat would have covered it. I like it.
The next one in the box is Ebury Bridge, a cornflower blue polish:
This one has a lovely shine! It's slightly greyer in tone than it looks in this shot, and as you can see it dries quite a bit darker than it looks in the bottle. The shiny lids on the Nails Inc bottles freak out my cameras white balance, it's so frustrating. This is two coats. The formula wasn't too bad, a bit thick and it did need a little bit of clean up. It was self levelling, and dry time was quite fast. I like this one too.
Next up we have Blandford Street, a straight up coral:
It's very bright in real life, almost neon. The brush on this one wasn't so good, a bit stiff, but I still managed to apply it OK. The first coat still showed VNL, but the second coat covered it. Dry time was medium, and as you can see it dried darker than it looks in the bottle. This one doesn't really suit my skin tone and I'm not so sure about it, but thats just a personal thing, not the fault of the polish. Would be good with a black or green glitter over it for halloween. And yes, I do think that far ahead haha.
Next up we have Cadogan Place:
This is a true greige. The first coat was patchy, but the brush is good. Slightly runny formula but it was still easy to control. This is two coats. It has a lovely shiny finish. As you can see it dries signigicantly darker than it shows in the bottle. Dry time was medium/fast. I like this one alot, and in fact I prefer it to their 'hero' shade Porchester Square as a go-to nude. It self levels nicely and I like it alot.
And lastly we have Holland Park Road:
Here we have two coats. Can you guess how I feel about this one? Thats right, I hate it! Super sheer and sheen finish. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if this was part of their 'neon' collection, the same as Portobello, which I also hated. This one is a fail. Its one positive is that it was very fast drying. It's possible the sheer finish would make it good for using on a gradient nailart look. Will give that a go and show you another day.
So there we have it, that's all of them. I was surprised that the brushes weren't uniform across the collection. I've always been put off buying mini's because I thought the brushes would be too small. This hasn't been the case, and I would definitely buy Nails Inc's mini polishes again if another collection caught my eye. There weren't any brushes that I really disliked. As I never finish a bottle of polish anyway, the small size of the bottle doesn't put me off. They all had 4ml each in them, which is probably enough anyway.
I think I paid £12.99 for the set, and I'm quite pleased with the value I got. Apart from the last one, I'd recommend all of these. I've also reviewed some other Nails Inc colour collections HERE HERE HERE and HERE - I've done more of them than I thought I had!
So what do you think? Have you got any favourites?
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi there!
Hope your weekends going well? I haven't got much planned, I spent all my polish budget last week, so this weekend I'm on a ban! Have got tons of swatches to do for you, hurry up light nights and get here! Every night on my way home from work I'm trying to judge whether the suns still high enough or not to give me time to take some decent photos, so far it hasn't been, but it won't be long I'm sure.
I finally got my broken tooth filled, it actually wasn't too bad, she had to replace the whole filling, but she knows (somehow) how to do injections without hurting, so I love her! I wouldn't want any other dentist now, I had a nightmare of a time with other dentists before I found this one. I actually wrote to my MP about one who was particularly terrible, but despite that going on to be an official NHS complaint, nothing was done.
Anyway enough about teeth, lets get on to nails! The lovely Claire at MAYBELATER challenged Catrine at UNNAKED NAILS and myself to produce some 'Neon and Nude' nailart. Well, who am I to resist a challenge? This is what I came up with:
No I don't have giant hands! This is a mini bottle of Nails Inc Cadogan Place. This is part of a minis' set I bought last weekend that I have in my 'ready to swatch' pile. The set has some really pretty colours in it, and this challenge was a good excuse to break this one out.
I've been wanting to do a design like this since I saw THIS ONE from The Little Canvas. This challenge seemed like an ideal time to try it out. Now I do own some of that foil striping tape, and I hate it. It goes curly and seems fiddly and impossible to work with. I know other people don't seem to have this problem, so maybe it's just me. So I was in Rymans Stationers getting some art stuff and I saw this GRIDDING TAPE and I'm happy to report that I've found this much easier to work with. It does still go a little bit curly, but it seems to stick down and peel off better. Yes it is a bit more expensive, but personally I think it's worth paying that bit more. Am tempted to try the 3mm tape too, I used the 1.5mm tape for this.
Then I used some fluorescent acryllic paint that I think I also got in Ryman, and blobbed it on all over. I couldn't do it thinner because then it would lose its brighness as it dried, so I decided to make a feature of the texture. Her's another pic:
Typically of me, I see that a couple of pieces of the tape weren't quite straight, but never mind. I used two coats of Seche over everything to smooth out the surface, but I'm glad that it still kept its textured look as my nails actually feel pretty smooth. Here's a final pic:
All in all, I'm quite pleased with how this came out, and I'm definitely pleased that I've found some striping tape that I'm able to use. I'm thinking I might quite like to put this paint over a silver holo, and see if I can't get the look of a hi-vis jacket haha!
You can see Claire's Neon and Nude nails HERE and I'd love it if you could carry this tag on! Let me know if you do.
Until next time...
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
