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~
