M&S Limited Collection Textured Polish Pink Mix Swatch and Review

I love a bargain, me. LOVE. So, while having a browse in Marks & Spencer last weekend, this lil pretty caught my eye. I've stayed away from textured polishes this far. The only ones that have caught my eye have been the Liquid Sand ones, but they cost too much really to justify as a 'novelty' polish purchase, so I haven't bothered. And all the swatches of the Barry M ones I've seen have been a bit meh.

 

But at £4, this one called to me from the shelf... "Buy me, buy me, you know you want to.... I don't cost much and look at how prettyyyyy I am" then somehow jumped into my hand, and magically towed me to the cash desk. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

 

But sadly then all week the weather has been rainy and grey, and no good for showing the new addition to my polish family off to her full potential. Saturday I was rough as anything due to slight over indulgence on Friday night, so no polishing happening there. But today, the swatching gods got their act together, I felt OK, the sun came out, and I was able to take some pics to show to you. Slightly too many if truth be told, but I couldn't pick, so you get the lot.

 

So without further ado here's the first pic. Now in winter jumpers, yay!

Sparklicious!  This fuschia-y shade is one of my favourites, which is lucky because as far as I could see, it seemed to be the only colour it came in haha.  It's called Pink Mix and it's a jellyish watery berry base with fuschia and electric blue micro glitter mixed in.  There's also something holo-y in there, but I couldn't figure out what.  One coat was passable, but I got full coverage in two coats.  This is obviously shown with no top coat, and dry time was initially fast, but stayed denty for about 7 or 8 minutes.  I found that once you can't smell them any more, they're dry.

 

Here's a pic I took earlier in the day when the sunlight was a bit whiter:

This is a truer representation of the colour, and the blue has come out to play.  It dries ever so slightly lighter on the nail than it shows in the the bottle, but not much.  If you like it in the bottle, I think you'll be pretty pleased with it on your nails.  I know this sounds weird, but it can't be said of all polishes.

 

Application was ok.  I didn't need to do any clean up, and I didn't have the 'not going to the edges' problem you sometimes get when applying glittery polishes.  The brush dropped the polish pretty much where I wanted it to without flooding or blobbing.

 

Speaking of the brush, here's a pic of it:

It looks a bit stubby there, but actually the lid's quite long and it was good to use.  Sometimes the lid of a polish can be a distraction while you're using it, but not the case here.  You can see the brush itself is slightly splayed, and that made it work well with the glittery formula.

 

Here's the Extreme Close Up.  Matchy matchy with my phone cover:

Bright enough for you?  It comes into its own much more in real life.  I wouldn't call it a full on blingy sparkle, but a more grown up twinkle. 

 

As its selling point is as a textured polish, I guess I should talk about that a bit.  I think that pic shows the texture well.  It's not gritty to the touch, just slightly bumpy, so it won't pick up hairs or accidentally scratch you.  Think teeny tiny fairy woodchip wallpaper.

 

Packaging wise, it wins points also:

Yep, holographic deers.  I don't care what's in the box, I'm having it!  I think it looks like it cost more than it did, and the packaging also makes it easier to wrap.  A definite win/win gift-wise.

 

Let's have one more swatch, just because I took the pic and we may as well:

You can see on my middle finger, I have a little bit of wear.  I'd put the polish on in the morning, and this is mid afternoon.  Although admittedly I didn't wait very long before I starting doing things, wear time is going to be interesting with not having a top coat.  Actually in real life you can't see that wear at all, but it is there (obvs).

 

Surprisingly, removal wasn't too bad.  I use Cutex Ultra Cleansing remover which contains acetone, and gets rid of regular polish in one or two sweeps.  This one required a little bit of rubbing, but I wouldn't put it in the 'painful' category along with my other glitters.  Also I wasn't covered in glitter after I removed it, like some polishes.  It put me more in mind of removing a foil finish polish.

 

So, I think you can tell, I like this one.  I think I'll get a fair few uses out of it, and it's not too seasonal to have to just stick to wearing it in the winter.  So far I haven't found a polish from the M&S Limited Collection colours that I haven't liked, and I've got 6 or more now, so thumbs up M&S!  If you want to buy online, here's the (link) which shows me it also comes in a blue version, which they didn't have in my store.

 

Do you own this one?  What do you think?

 

Until next time...

 

MASPOOASE x x x

~Wendy~

Estee Lauder Pure Colour - Smashed - Review & Swatches

Hi again!

I was in Boots today looking for a lipgloss, and I got talking to the Estee Lauder woman.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw some random blingy-ness, which turned out to be a range of their polishes I hadn't seen before.  This one caught my eye:

Well, I had a base coat already on my nails (I always go shopping with base coat on in case I want to try some), so I tried a few out.  They weren't all as brill as I thought they would be.  These are all just one coat:

The purple on my thumb I especially didn't like, it managed somehow to give me pink-finger when it wasn't even a red!  But the purple that had caught my eye in the first place still had potential, so I bought it.  It cost me £14.50:

It's worth bearing this very pretty packaging in mind, as it means it would make a brill xmas present which would be very easy to wrap indeed!

So lets get on to the swatches, I took quite a few pictures.  These are all 2 coats with no top coat.  I wish I'd done one more coat really.  Formulation was quite thin and workable and highly pigmented.  I found the brush ever so slightly too bendy.  It's a little bit self deleting if you go over the same spot too many times.

First one's at the window:

Next we have under the craft (l.e.d.) lighting:

Next we have under the kitchen lights:

And then, the obligatory bottle shot, which I took while I was in the window:

I'm starting to wonder if I should put a watermark on my pictures, what do you think, is picture theft a big problem these days?  Anyway, I digress.....

All in all, I loved this, the pink microglitter showed up even in low light, and under most lighting it looked like a blackberry colour foil.  I don't own anything like this, and although I don't wear dark colours alot I think this will be this winters party colour for me!  What do you think of it?

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

QVC TSV Nails Inc Haul

Hi All!

Yes I know it's not the weekend yet, but my QVC shopping channel special offer from Nails Inc came today, so I thought I would share it with you.  I know my last 2 posts were also Nails Inc, and I don't want to become a brand bore, but I already know what my next two nail swatch posts will be and they're completely different brands so I hope you'll forgive me!

Am going to TRY and keep this relatively short, as I know I can ramble on, so without further ado, let's go!

Here's a picture of what I bought:

And here's how it came packaged:

Which was fine for me, because I just wanted to get into the goodies, but if I'd have bought this to give as a gift I'd have been a bit disappointed.  The very best thing about this packaging is that it will fit through a letterbox, which is a big step forward for QVC as their boxes are usually massively too big.

So lets get onto the swatches, the first one I want to show you is Pudding Lane:

This is from their much advertised 'Sprinkles' collection.  I've seen alot of twitter posts (retweeted by them) that say oooh sprinkles my nails look good enough to eat, etc, so I was quite intrigued as to what it would be.  It turns out that its just glitter in polish, which I personally don't think looks good enough to eat, but maybe thats just me!  Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike it, but I don't adore it either.  I'm sure at some point I'll wear an outfit that this will be just perfect for.  Application was ok, the base polish was workable enough, but I did find the glitter application a bit patchy, and I had to work with it a bit to get it to a reasonable evenness.  It was quite fast drying, this was 2 coats.

The next polish I want to show you is Portobello:

As you can see from the sticker on the lid, this is listed as a neon.  Don't let my picture fool you!  It is showing as much brighter and much more orange than it was in real life.  It was really like a bright coral colour, but I just couldn't persuade my camera to get near to the true colour.  It wasn't a regular Nails Inc cream formulation, it was quite runny, streaky and sheer.  This is 3 coats and I still had VNL!  Not at all used to that with their polishes!  Also I would say it dried to a sheen rather than a gloss.  Not so happy with this one.

The next one I want to show you is Warwick Street:

I LOVED this! To my mind it was the absolute best of the bunch! It looked weird in the bottle, kind of flat with metallic in it.  It's when I came to apply it that I really appreciated it.  The formula went on like a dream, as you can see it's kind of a light grey with tiny purple, teal & read specks of glitter in it.  This is 2 coats, but I could have got away with one, just lovely!

The next swatch is a bit strange (for me).  I was kind of all glittered out, and I couldn't face putting on and taking off 2 more full hands of glitter so I decided to do 2 nails of each of the next ones.  As it is they both came out super sheer so it's fitting they're shown together:

The pink is Princes Arcade from their 'Nail Jewellery' collection.  Its a mix of purple and holo glitter.  The blue is Sloane Gardens.  They're both pretty much 'layering' polishes, and I think I will do a post about that all by itself.  These two were a bit disappointing but they may have potential.

The next polish is Porchester Square.  As you can see by this swatch my nails were starting to look a bit exhausted:

They're calling this a 'hero shade', I can see why, its a nude minky cream.  This is one coat, back to good ole Nails Inc reliable formulation, I liked this :)

And last, but not least, Cheyne Walk.  I've taken 2 pictures of this as its very different in different lighting:

The first coat was quite sheer and streaky, and I thought I was going to have a loser on my hands, but the second coat seemed to step up to the mark and more than made up for it! Its a purple & grey duochrome which came out lovely & shiny.  Brush marks weren't too bad for a metallic, but it was quite tricky to photograph!

And there we have it, all 7 TSV polishes.  They cost me £28.91 including p&p as the special value price, the collection is still available on the QVC UK website, but  I think it's about £5 more expensive now.  I'm happy with what I got at an average of just over £4 a bottle, and the icing on the cake was the beautiful Warwick Street!

I hope you've enjoyed my review, and thanks for reading!  Feel free to comment if you like.

Until next time.....

MASPOOASE X X X

~Wendy~

Review - Bourjois 1 seconde nail polish

OK, so usually I start off a review knowing whether I like a product or not.  Have decided to do this one a little differently.  At the weekend I saw Bourjois 1 seconde nail polish in Boots on a 'buy 3 get the cheapest free' offer. 

This meant a saving of £5.99, and although so far I haven't found a Bourjois polish I really like, I quite liked the look of these so I thought I would give them a go.  So far I have found that I really like the colour selection that Bourjois do, but their formulations haven't suited me at all, and some of the colours come out a bit too sheer for my liking.

I bought these 3:

06 Rose Cupcake, 14 Rainbow Apparition & 08 Bleu Water, they're shown here sitting on my new box which I love & will do a separate post about

Now, I KNOW I shouldn't have bought the blue, was only thinking to myself on Friday night that I probably have enough light blues, and they're all quite similar, but hey, I just couldn't resist, and I didn't fancy any of the other colours they had, & I had to have 3 to get the offer...

What Bourjois say about it (copied from their webpage):

1 second application per nail. 50 second drying time.
Fan effect brush for the perfect nail curve.
1 nail, 1 coat, 1 second
1 Seconde nail enamel is ultra quick to apply thanks to its patented fan effect brush which adapts to the size of each nail. The one-coat formula, enriched with silicon, dries in 50 seconds, leaving you with beautiful ultra-shiny nails and plenty of time to spare!

All sounds good, right? I did wonder how I was going to get my nail painted in 1 second

So time to give it a go and see what I think....

Coat 1:

Coverage on the creme shades: not bad.  Coverage on the glitter shade: awful.  As dissappointed with that as I was with Max Factor Fantasy Fire.  It didn't dry in 50 seconds on me either.  In fact if you look closely you can see fingerprints in the pink where I tested it at 50 seconds.  In truth the thick coat I put on took a whole 4 minutes to dry, but you could get away with just that one coat so not too bad.

Coat 2:

Definitely enough for the cremes, but in the interests of the review I did another coat anyway. 

Coat 3:

There we have it, three coats & still vnl on the glitter coat.  It has to be said that the glitter coat dried much faster than the other two, and was probably dry on me in 1min 15 secs, but in my opinion you would have to use it as a top coat to get the best out of it, which isn't what it looked like in the bottle.  I tried layering it over both the pink and the blue, but didn't take a pic as I hadn't waited long enough for them to dry and sumdged them (ironic?).  It looked better over the pink than the blue though if that helps anyone?

The one thing that impressed me about this polish is the brush:

It was just the right amount of hard/soft & fanned out really nicely at the cuticle.  If you have alot of trouble with neatness at the cuticle area, this would definitely be for you. 

After I'd done these 3 coats I did another nail really thinly to see if I'd just applied it too thick, I found as its a really runny formula I was able to apply it thinner and get a quicker dry time, but still not within the 50 second mark, maybe about 2 minutes for it to be completely dry.

As with everything, atmospheric conditions, my personal nail, the base coat I used (Nails Inc caviar basecoat) will all affect drying time, and someone else might get a different outcome, I can only state what happened in my particular circumstances.

If I'd bought these from QVC I would be sending them back, but as it is I now have them for good, and will probably use them for something, but they wouldn't be in my top ten.  They will probably make good dotting/nail art polishes due to their thin consistency so all is not lost!

I hope you enjoyed my review and as always please feel free to leave a comment if you wish

- MASPOOASE X X X