OPI The Top 10 mini collection review - first 5

Hi there!

Hope you're well today.  Snow is forecast here AGAIN! Spring is playing hide and seek with us at the moment. 

I picked these pretties up at TK Maxx a few weeks ago, and have had them in my 'to swatch' pile since.  Here's how they look in the box:

Apologies for the slightly rubbish picture.  I didn't find out until it was too late that it was impossible to get the polishes out without wrecking the box.  I believe these to be the 'light' half of the OPI Top Ten collection (Amazon LINK here) but I didn't see the other darker half in TX Maxx.

Without further ado, let's get on with it.  The first in the box is Alpine Snow:

I actually already own the full size of Alpine Snow, and I did a comparison post with My Boyfriend Scales Walls (HERE) which is one of my most popular posts.  The first coat is patchy, but the second coat evens it out, so this is two coats.  It's also pretty fast drying.  I was pleased to find that the brush in the polish was still a pretty decent size, even though it's a mini polish.

Next up we have Bubble Bath:

I also own the full size polish of this one (why did I buy this set haha), and I already knew I didn't like it so much, too sheer for me.  This is two coats.  Of course it would be good for a french manicure, which is probably why it was formulated in the first place.  I noticed that the mini bottles are comfortable to pose with.

Next is Tickle My France-y:

This was also quite disappointingly sheer.  At two coats I still had alot of VNL.  However I do like the colour, so I went with another coat, so this is 3 coats in this picture.  It is a very pretty nude.

Second to last we have Kiss Me On My Tulips:

This is a bright pink that does nothing for my skintone, but no fault of the polish for that.  It reminds me a bit of Orly's Basket Case.  Perhaps I'll do a comparison on the two at some point.  At one coat it still had VNL, but this is two, and as you can see, hardly any VNL left.  Dry time was med/fast.

And last but not least we have Red Lights Ahead... Where?

This is two coats.  Too sheer for me.  It was relatively fast drying though.  Lifes too short for undies on a polish when I have other reds that don't need it.  Not too impressed with this one.

Here's a picture of the brush, which was pretty consistently good across all the polishes:

So there we have it.  That's the whole (half of the) set reviewed.  I paid £19.99 at TK Maxx and to be honest, if you're like me and don't like to see your nail line through your polish, I wouldn't recommend this set.  Oh well, live and learn!  One of these days I'll actually have that blog sale I keep wondering about having, and most of these will probably be in it.  I'm sure there's somebody out there who has the patience to apply more coats than I do.  I can't comment on wear time, as I haven't liked any of them enough to wear for any length of time.

They were all very shiny though, no topcoat in any of these pictures, and pretty fast drying, so it wasn't all bad.  Now I know the brushes are OK, I would buy more OPI minis, but I would check out the reviews first to make sure they're opaque enough.

What do you think?  Yay or nay?  Is VNL a big no-no for you too or don't you mind it?

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Mid Browns - Nails Inc Ganton Street Vs Jessica Guilty Pleasures

I have decided that fate doesn't want me to blog about nail polish at the moment. 

Because of my pesky ongoing achilles tendon problems, I have to have physiotherapy on a Thursday afternoon. 

Because I don't have enough annual leave left for my hospital appointments, I'm having to work on Saturday morning instead to make my hours up.  This is so INCONVENIENT!  Guys and girls who regularly work at the weekends, you have my undying admiration.  I just feel like theres no time to do anything. 

Also, because I'm working on the Saturday, I can't have my usual swatch-a-thon on Friday night.... so all in all it's a right royal pain in the behind.

Well, here's two fingers up to fate, because I've managed to do it anyway!  You may know that I'm craving a dark brown nail polish right now, but with the aforementioned problems I've had to resort to just mooning over web swatches and wishing for things to get back to normal. 

I decided to look through my polishes to check what browns I actually do have, in case I already had one (I didn't but you never know until you look!), but I did find two mid brown polishes which were virtually identical, and similarly priced, so I thought you might be interested in seeing a comparison.  They are, as the post title suggests, Nails Inc Ganton Street and Jessica's Guilty Pleasures.  For a change I will start with the brush & bottle shot:

There you see, pretty similar, right?  The Jessica is a tad warmer, but very similar all the same.  Apologies about the dark corner on the picture, with Autumn setting in it's getting harder and harder to find bright places to put things...

So onto the swatches, I found the best place to show the difference was under the trusty LED craft light.  All pics are two coats with no topcoat.  Nails Inc on left 2 fingers:

Then, amazingly, the sun came out for a moment:

Then it went back in.  So here's a pic in shaded light:

Application wise, there's hardly anything to pick between them either.  If you've used Nails Inc before, this is their usual creme formula, which I like as it's got good coverage and is pretty quick drying.  The Jessica was a teeny tiny bit more sheer on first coat, but by coat two they looked the same coverage-wise.  I preferred the Nails Inc brush, because the Jessica one was a tad softer so therefore not quite as easy to work with, but I really am splitting hairs (LOL) here.

Out of the two, it was the Nails Inc I chose to put on afterwards, it's a Malteser brown, and somehow for a darker colour it seems quite work appropriate, which is good.  Unless of course, you do what I did and put nail art all over it haha.  It didn't exactly work, but I liked the colour scheme:

The Jessica has 14.8ml in and the Nails Inc has 10ml in.  Nails Inc polishes cost £11 and Jessica Polishes cost around a tenner, but I have seen both cheaper on Ebay.  So mil for mil the Jessica is probably better value, but if you're willing to spend more than £10 on a polish that doesn't really matter so much to you.

So there you go!  Formulation and application are both pretty much the same so it just comes down to the tint you like the best.  Hopefully this will prove helpful to someone!

Until next time.....

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

My Glitter Polish Collection

Hi there,

Hope you're all well today, Monday's over with for another week at least.  My weekend went pretty well, despite not actually having achieved much, I chilled out, and that's always a good thing.

Now, as you know, my hands are all dermatitis-y and ugly, and I have a broken nail which I've got patched up, so I was having a think about some posts I could do which didn't involve you all seeing my ugly fingers.  Then I remembered I've been meaning to do a post on my glitter polishes ever since I saw Maybelater's post (link) on her glitter collection.

Well, you don't need to see my fingers for that!  So I got my glitters out, and despite saying I don't like glitters due to the awful removal process, I found I own 50 glitter polishes.

I have tried the PVA glue basecoat thing, but I found it just as hard to remove with or without it, so I don't really wear my glitters much, apart from on special occasions.  I also bought the Andrea Fulerton peel off polish, as I thought that might be a way to do it, but it didn't peel off, so another fail there.

Am so disappointed it's not sunny today, to show these off to their full potential, but I've taken one picture in natural light, and one picture in artificial light for each group of six, so there's alot of pictures!  I hope it doesn't take too long to load up because of this.  Only one way to find out.

Each polish is one coat with no topcoat.  If I've swatched it properly elsewhere in my blog, or used it in a design, I will attach the link at the side.

So here we have our first group:

1) Ruby Pumps by China Glaze (used here)
2) Red Glitter by Barry M (who are as imaginative about names as me haha)
3) #104 by Glitz/Tuesdays Girl
4) Ruby Glitter by Barry M
5) Spangle by Active Cosmetics
6) Amethyst Glitter by Barry M

Daylight:

Artificial light:

7) Confetti by L'Oreal
8) Glitz Gal Gem Crush by Sally Hansen
9) Thunder & Lightening by Models Own
10) Black Polka Dot by Nubar (I was disappointed that this was hex & not circle glitter)
11) Running in Circles by China Glaze (the green version of Ruby Slippers)
12) Fitzroy Square by Nails Inc (Swatched here)

Daylight:

Artificial Light:

13) Pudding Lane Sprinkle by Nails Inc (the blue glitter on mine has started to bleed)
14) Sloane Gardens by Nails Inc
15) Navy Glint by Seventeen
16) Fairy Dust by Elf (doesn't show well, better shot of the flakies later on)
17) Sequin Effect by Nail Pop
18) Hidden Treasure by Sally Hansen

Daylight:

Artificial light:

19) Shepherds Market by Nails Inc (Swatched here)
20) Holo Bar Glitter by Claire's (Swatched here)
21) Silver Plated by Avon Colortrend
22) White Polka Dot by Nubar (again hexes) (Swatched here)
23) Electric Lane by Nails Inc (my fave!) (Swatched here)
24) Pastel Glitter by Claire's (I wish Claire's named their polishes)

Daylight:

Artificial light:

25) Blue Glitter by Claire's
26) Grammercy Glitz by NYC
27) Kingham Street by Nails Inc (Fine Sprinkles collection)
28) Devonshire Place by Nails Inc (Fine Sprinkles collection)
29) Warwick Street by Nails Inc (another one I love) (Swatched here)
30) Market Place by Nails Inc (Fine Sprinkles collection)

Daylight:

Artificial light (bit blurred, sorry):

31) Antique Chic by Posh Polish (love this holo glitter)

32) Golden Goddess by Elf

33) Gold Flecked by Avon Colortrend

34) Yellow Topaz Glitter by Barry M

35) Peach & Green pastel by Claire's (this is curling up in the bottle)

36) North Row by Nails Inc (Swatched here)

Daylight:

Artificial light:





37) I'm Not Lion by China Glaze (Swatched here)

38) Bedford Square by Nails Inc (Swatched here)
39) Shelton Street by Nails Inc
40) I Herd That by China Glaze
41) Rainbow Apparition by Bourjois 1 Seconde
42) Purple Glitter by Claire's

Daylight:

Artificial light:

43) Park Lane by Nails Inc (Swatched here)
44) Buckingham Street by Nails Inc (Swatched here)
45) Fiddlesticks by Butter London (used here)
46) Bow Street by Nails Inc
47) Princes Arcade by Nails Inc
48) Fuchsia Dazzle by Avon Colortrend

Daylight:

Artificial light:

49) Razmatazz by Leighton Denny
50) Cascade by Leighton Denny
51) Fairy Dust by Elf over black (the flakies return!)
52) Sequin Effect by Nail Pop over black
53) Hidden Treasure by Sally Hansen Over black (swoon-tastic but takes forever to dry)
54) Cascade by Leighton Denny over black

Daylight:

Artificial light:

And here they are all together:

So there we have it, all my glitters.  Some I love, and some I'm a bit 'meh' about.  I'm surprised I don't like the fine sprinkles more than I do, considering I love Warwick Street so much.  And pretty much all of the China Glazes have been full of win.

I have to be honest, I thought this blog post would be a breeze, but it's actually been a bit of a pain to do.  I hope you think it was worthwhile!

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

New Essie Haul - Swatches and Review

Hi all!

It's late at the weekend for posting I know, am having to work Saturday mornings again, and it really throws out my routine.  This achilles problem seems to be dragging on and on....

However, the sun actually came out yesterday, and I finally got around to swatching the Essies I bought a week or so ago from my trusty TK Maxx.  Good job too, because it's done nothing but rain today, if it carries on I'll need a canoe to get to work in the morning!

I was so excited when I saw these in the shop, because it actually contained polishes I'd heard of, they were Ballet Slippers, Orange It's Obvious, Tour De Finance, and Navigate Her.  For £9.99 for all four, I didn't need asking twice to pick this set up.  I'd been disappointed with the last set of Essies I got there, reviewed HERE so if I hadn't heard of these ones, I probably wouldn't have picked them up.

The first one I swatched, I nearly didn't bother with, because I knew I wouldn't like it, Ballet Slippers.  I already know it's a sheer and as you know I hate VNL, so wasn't expecting too much.  As it was, I didn't hate it as much as I thought I would.  Here's the pics.  Firstly outdoors:

Next indoors in shaded light:

As I always do, I made notes while I was swatching, and next to this one I wrote, first coat - not even there, which tells you how sheer it is.  The second coat was a bit patchy and streaky, so I did a third coat and this evened it out. It is super-shiny, and dry time was medium.  I don't despise it, so it can't be all bad.

Next I swatched Navigate Her.  This was the one I was most excited to try, as alot of people seem to like it.  The formula was a bit of a nightmare, I had to take off my first attempt to apply this, as it just looked so scruffy.  It managed somehow to be runny without having any nice flowy-ness.  The first coat went on streaky.  I used 3 coats for the photos and it needed them all, as the second coat produced bald patches as it was drying.  Here's what it looked like in the garden:

It's lucky for it that it's such a pretty colour, kind of a pastelly khaki, or I wouldn't consider using it again because of the formula.  As it is, I'll probably get this one out again from time to time.  Here's a pic taken inside:

Next up we have Tour De Finance, I loved the name of this one, I don't wear many pinks but this one has a nice purply shimmer running through it, which gives it a nice depth.  I liked the formula of this one.  The first coat was patchy, but I only needed two coats for these pictures.  Firstly outside:

Next indoors.  This shows the shimmer quite well:

Last but not least, we have Orange, It's Obvious.  In the bottle this is a really bright primary orange.  It had a reasonably good opacity, this is 3 coats, but I could still tell where my nail tips were, so it's not going to be a go-to.  It reminded me very much of Nails Inc's Portobello, which I reviewed HERE it had the same runny formula, but it was reasonably fast drying.  Here's the outside pic:

And here's a close up.  I didn't have any inside pics, as my cuticles were starting to look a bit ick, and this was one of the least disgusting pics I could find out of the ones I took:

And last but not least, here's the brush shot.  It was a wide but flat brush, it was actually very wide, and if you have narrow fingers you might struggle, but I didn't find it too bad.  The green brush is sideways on:

So there we have it, one set swatched, do you own any of these?  What do you think?

Until next time......

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~

Nails Inc Candy Shop Collection swatches and review

Hi All,

A Bank Holiday again hoorah!  What with two bank holiday weekends and a weeks annual leave, the month of May has been very kind to me.  I wish every month could be like this.  And here I am, sitting in the garden blogging, living the dream haha.  I almost didn't bring my laptop outside because I thought dodgy geezers might walk past, see I've got a laptop, and come back in the night to take it.  Then I realised, who am I kidding, they're probably all standing outside the pubs by now, smoking, with no tops on.  And that's just the girls haha

So anyway, I digress as usual.  If you've been following me on Twitter for more than a couple of weeks, you'll know I was in Torquay on holiday not long ago.  I'm wondering whether I should do a post on it, but I never read other peoples holiday posts, so I probably shouldn't.  So, while I was on holiday, I took a day trip to Plymouth.  I didn't like Plymouth much, but it does have a TK Maxx and surprisingly I "accidentally" wandered in and "just happened" to make my way over to the polishes.

What I saw made me happy:

I'd almost bought this at full price on the Nails Inc website, but had decided not to, and I'm glad I waited!  As you can see from the price sticker (over one of the polishes as usual), this collection has been priced, as the Nails Inc collections in there usually are, at £14.99.  As Nails Inc's can go for £11 each, £14.99 for 4 is a good deal!  So I snapped it up.  I was super excited too.  Other half said to me "If I'd known you'd get this excited over some polishes, I'd have bought you some of those instead of taking you on holiday", ha!

So this weekend is the first real chance I've had to swatch them properly, so here I am sharing them with you.  The first one I tried was the one I was most excited about in the shop, Wimbledon, in the shade:

And here it is in the sun, (with a hair that I didn't notice in real life, how does that even happen?):

Now I don't often say this about Nails Inc cremes, but I was a bit disappointed with the formula.  It was pretty watery, and it bubbled a bit too.  It felt.... over thinned.  Maybe as it gets a bit older it may improve.  I wonder if they've tried to make it extra fast drying, and this is the formula they came up with.  It did dry really fast, but when you need more coats, it's hardly worth it.  I had to do 3 coats to get a non-patchy finish, and I was surprised by that, not in a good way.  But still, it is a pretty green-yellow-green colour, and unique in my stash, so I have a feeling that I'll still be reaching for it again, despite its shortcomings.

Then when I was taking Wimbledon off, I managed to break off the corner of the nail on my middle finger, which had been peeling, and had to file my nails down a bit.  That's ok though, they were getting a bit deformed looking anyway, they always curl over on the edges when they get too long.

The next I tried was Oxford, a pretty baby blue.  Here it is in the shade:

This had a similar formulation to Wimbledon, but perhaps a tad more forgiving, as I only needed two coats.  I do like it, but I already own some very similar Nails Inc light blues, so even though I quite like it I'm not blown away.   Here it is in the sun.  As you can see, it dries darker on the nail than it shows in the bottle:

The next one I tried was the final pastel in the set.  Cambridge, which is a delicate lilac.  Oh, just writing this I clicked, Oxford and Cambridge, doh!
Here it is in the shade:

Maybe a little bit too much shade there haha.  Here it is in the sun:

It was the same, slightly disappointing over thinned formula.  Three coats required to eliminate patchiness. 

Now don't get me wrong, it's not an awful formula, it's just that I know that Nails Inc can do cremes better than ANYONE when they choose to, so I always expect great things from them.  Most of my one coater cremes are Nails Inc.  If this had been my first ever Nails Inc purchase, I'd have been wondering what all the fuss was about.  Oh well.

The final polish in the set, doesn't really fit with the theme at all, it's not a pastel, and now I've noticed the name thing, it doesn't seem to match with that either.  I give you Richmond:

Again, it would seem I've slightly misjudged actually how shady it was in that corner, so here's the sunshine version:

Although I'm not the biggest fan of shimmers, this peach with blush colour shimmer would probably be a pretty nice combo if the peach polish wasn't so sheer.  This is 4 coats, and still you see the evil VNL.

In order to make up for that, I'll review a different peach instead, which COULD have fitted nicely into this collection.  It's called You're a Peach, and it came free with Instyle Magazine.  I love freebies, me:

That's more like it!  Two coats for peachy loveliness. 

And just to prove this was a better one for the set, I used the other pastels from the collection for a dotticure over it:

It's a little bit bumpy, could probably do with another coat of Seche, but you get the idea, right?  Somehow it reminds me of pyjama bottoms.

And there we have it, one collection swatched and reviewed, so what do you think?  What's your favourite brand in terms of formula, are there any others that do great cremes?

Until next time...

MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~