a-england St George

Gird your loins and hide your wallets! Today I have one of the most amazing polishes I've seen in a while, St George, from a-england's new collection, The Legends. I have a mixture of outdoor and lightbox photos for you because I was really doing everything I could to capture just how amazing this polish is. The lightbox photos pretty accurately represent what the polish looks like indoors for me.

What we have here is a scattered holographic polish that I've seen described as dark teal or forest green. Against my skin tone, it certainly does pull more to forest green than to teal, though I have seen some people on whom it does look very teal indeed.

The holographic effect is not very apparent, but it's definitely there. But even when the rainbow sparkles aren't showing themselves, this is still a serious stunner of a polish.

The formula is to.die.for. This is two coats, but that's only because I'm a habitual two-coater. It looked just like this at one coat. The formula is on the thicker side, but not in an annoying way, and it flows quite precisely on the nail. I barely had to clean up at all.

St George instantly shop into my Top 20 polish list - maybe even Top 10. It's that beautiful. I own nothing like it. Get it. Seriously!

The a-england Legends collection can be purchased on Llarowe when it's in stock. You can also order directly from a-england, but you currently have to do so by e-mail because the collection is not up on their site yet. The contact address is hello@a-england.co.uk. They offer free worldwide shipping, and mine took less than a week to arrive. =)

Happy Tuesday! Thanks for reading!

SinfulColors Holiday Collection 2011 - Wish - Swatches and Review

Okay. I am woefully and ridiculously late with this review. There are a lot of reasons why that happened. I won't bore you with the details, but I will offer you my deepest apologies for that being the case. Now that I've gotten that out of the way, here's the actual review.

SinfulColors Holiday 2011 Collection, Wish, consists of five polish shades and two shades of nail art. I used two coats of all colors for these swatches for consistency, with no base or top coat. 

First up, Ruby Ruby, a classic shimmery cool toned red. The color really is just beautiful, but the formula on this one was thick. Really thick. A few drops of thinner fixed it right up, but it was actually kind of shocking to me how thick it was. o.O I've had experiences with Sinful's cremes being on the thick side, but their shimmers are usually okay. One it was thinned though, the application was really great. Honestly, I'm not even holding the thickness against this polish - I've had lots of shades I adore that were really thick when I opened the bottle - just letting you guys know the scoop on my bottle. =)

Next up, Out of this World. I expected this to be silver, but it's really a lovely silvery-white shimmer. I was very pleasantly surprised by this baby. I expected a sheer frosty mess based on what it looks like in the bottle, but it's perfectly opaque in two coats. Great formula, just great. I love this one. Just beautiful.

Next, we have Daddy's Girl, a purple jelly with pink shimmer throughout. This could have used a third coat for opacity, but it's not horrible at two coats at all. Another great formula on this one, it practically applied itself.

Last Chance, my favorite of the collection. Last Chance is an absolutely perfect forest green creme. Its consistently almost borders on jelly, but not quite. It was honestly perfect at one coat, but I did two for consistency. What you see here is NO cleanup whatsoever. None. Stellar formula, beautiful shade.

And lastly, Midnight Blue, an absolutely lovely medium blue shimmer. I like that this one isn't super, super dark. Again, really great formula on this one. Normally the blue would have been my favorite, but Last Chance kind of came out of nowhere with its beautiful formula and took my breath away.

Now, this is the part of the review that's hard for me - the two nail art shades, Flower Girl (the gold one) and Fashionista (the silver one). I am so not a nail art person, apart from the occasional Konad design, so I sort of have no idea if these are good or bad. I did a few stripes and some dots with them, and I found them pretty easy to work with. I'm sorry I don't have more of an opinion on these, but I've never used any others before!

In the end, I would say this is a really solid offering from SinfulColors. A couple of the shades really surprised me with how great the formulas were and how much I love the colors - a pleasant surprise is always nice!

SinfulColors offers more than 150 shades of polish. All hues are available for $1.99 at major US drug and mass-market stores, by calling 1-800-448-0763, or online at www.walgreens.com.

Thanks for reading!

** These products were provided by the manufacturer or PR company for review **

Nubar Indigo Illusion

Okay. I have no idea how to describe this polish, but I'm going to try! Indigo Illusion is another of Nubar's stunning duochromes. I would say that the base color is a pale, murky teal. I was expecting to be slightly more blue, but it has a distinct green tinge on my skintone. It has a shimmer that is sort of a lilac color.

The duochrome in Indigo Illusion shifts to a light purple, which I couldn't seem to capture, then all the way to green and to gold.

This polish was a major challenge to photograph, so I finally settled for just taking a bunch of pictures instead of trying to capture the individual color shifts. 

It really is simply amazing, and I own nothing even remotely like it. I was afraid that it wouldn't work on my skintone, but I truly ended up loving it. The formula was flawless - very easy to control, full coverage in two coats. Total love.

Hope you all are having a lovely Sunday evening. Thank you for reading!

Blog Sale Update!

I've updated my blog sale again! You can see it here.

Thanks for looking!

NerdLacquer Shiny

I have to say that I am LOVING all these little boutique polish brands that are giving us such amazing polishes. Has there ever been a better time to be a polish collector than now? 

The latest brand I've tried is NerdLacquer, and I have to say I'm mighty impressed. Firstly, the fact that the polishes have themes like science and sci fi and fantasy and MONTY PYTHON just screams to a geek like me, "Buy me! Buy me!" And so I did. I picked out three of them to try, and I'm wearing the first one today, Shiny. Go Firefly!

Shiny is a pale shimmery blue with fine silver glitter and silver hex glitters. I also think that there's some tiny blue glitter in here, but I'm not positive. It's hard for me to tell even in the macro shot for sure - I actually think the darker specks in this photo are just reflections off the silver glitter.

For a glitter of this type, the formula is really great. It's slightly sheer, but JUST sheer enough that all the glitter and shimmer can be seen through the base color. I only used two coats, and I'm really satisfied with the coverage.

The pictures aren't even really doing this polish justice. It's more shimmery in person. It makes me feel like I have tiny chips of sparkling ice on my nails. Seriously... it's just beautiful.

I really can't say enough good about this polish. Great formula, beautiful and unique color, plus the theme just has me smitten.

NerdLacquer is available here. She's out of stock of a lot of the shades right now though, so you'll have to be patient. =) 

Chemistry 186 - A Beauty From Down Under

This is going to be a short and sweet post today because I don't have tons of time.  One of my buddies, the lovely Kristy from The Polish Haven, sent me this polish out of the blue (pun very much intended) because my love for blue polishes is somewhat legendary.  Chemistry 186 is an amazingly rich, deep blue polish with a gorgeous purple-ish shimmer. The formula is to die for. I had almost no clean up to do at all. Observe.

Gorgeous, right? Just perfect. Thank you, Kristy! I love it so, so, SO MUCH! ♥ 

And now I'm diving back into a work project. At 5:00 pm. Gross. I hope your Monday evening is more fun than mine is shaping up to be! ^.^

Stargazer 305

Sometimes I love it when I'm wrong about a polish. A lovely friend sent Stargazer 305 to me as a surprise. In the bottle, it just looked like a purple shimmer - a very pretty purple shimmer, of course, but it didn't strike me as anything super amazing. It sat on my desk for a couple of days. Then I had major mani indecision the other night and started swatching polishes on one nail. When I got to Stargazer 305, my eyes almost popped out of my head.

First off, what looked like regular shimmer in the bottle turned out to be this INSANE blue shimmer that almost sits on top of the polish. It reminded me a bit of what oil looks like sitting on top of water (minus the rainbows, of course). I was turning my thumb this way and that admiring the shimmer, and that's when I saw the second surprise this polish had in store.

Oh, hai! We're a duochrome! It shifts from that deep purple to an almost fuchsia shade, and then on to a brighter pink that's almost red. I had a really, really hard time trying to capture the most extreme shift though.

Yeah. So what started out looking like an unassuming dark purple in the bottle turned out to be one of the most complex polishes I've ever owned. I took way too many pictures of the magic that is Stargazer 305, and here are some of the best ones.

Just unbelievable. 

Stargazer is a UK brand. According to their website, they do ship worldwide, but I have no idea what shipping is like. There also seemed to be a fair number of listings for Stargazer polishes on eBay when I had a look. They have some metallics that have really piqued my interest too!

Hope y'all are having a great weekend! Thanks for reading!

My First Jelly Sandwich

I got a little surprise in the mail the other day from a friend of mine in the form of Nabi Abysis and Stargazer 305 (which I'll show you in another post). Abysis is an amazing glitter polish with blue hex glitters and normal holo glitters. I swatched it over several shades and couldn't find anything that was really grabbing me, so the friend who sent it to me suggested that I try a jelly sandwich. I pulled out my bottle of NYX Ink and got to work. This was the result.

I totally love this combination. This is one coat of Ink, then one coat of Abysis, then another coat of Ink. One coat of my quick dry top coat made this as smooth as glass. So much depth. 

My bottle of NYX Ink is from the new NYX line, the ones that come in the bottles that are shaped like Lippmann bottles. I really thought this was the same polish as NYX Girls Inkheart, but some of my friends have told me that their bottles of Inkheart are too pigmented to do a jelly sandwich with, so I guess it must have been reformulated when they changed the bottles and the names. The formula on it is really great though, and I can't wait to wear it on its own as well.

The Nabi was thick - like super, mega thick. I had to dump some of it out to make room for enough thinner to get it more workable. It worked just fine once it was thinned, though. For folks who have issues with strong scents, beware - this stuff stinks. I've gotten to a point where Kleancolors don't really bother me anymore, but this was one stinky polish. And I could still smell it for a few hours even after it had dried. And that was with it between two layers of polish. o.O But even so, there are a lot of Nabi shades I've seen that I'm interested in, so I'd definitely try more of them.

I totally loved this mani, and I'm very thankful to my sweet friend for not only the polish, but the suggestion to wear it this way. <3

TGIF!

A Little Announcement

If you know me well, you know that in addition to being obsessed with nail polish, I'm also an artist. I do lots of different artsy things, including making nail polish jewelry. Instead of continuing to sell my jewelry on my blog, I've opened an Etsy store, Noelie's Niceties, so that I can sell my jewelry there, plus anything else that strikes my fancy.

I'm excited! =D

Thanks for reading, I'll have another polish update sometime today!

Nubar Moon Eclipse

Moon Eclipse is the polish formerly known as Moonshadow. I think Moonshadow was a much better name... but I digress. The polish is beautiful no matter what it's called.

I love me a good multichrome, and Nubar makes some of the best. The base color on Moon Eclipse is a deep, rich, smoky berry that shifts to a chocolatey brown and over into a bronzey type shade. I've heard that you can also get it to shift to a greenish shade, but I didn't have any luck getting that to come out to play.

This is three coats. Two was almost enough, but it was a little sheer at two coats. Three was perfect.

Moon Eclipse is a little watery and had a tendency to pool at my cuticles, but I should have been on the lookout for that since it seems like a lot of my duochromes have that problem. Other than that though, the formula was pretty good.

The sun came out today, so I was able to get some sunshine shots of this beauty too.

So amazingly beautiful. *sigh*

Happy Wednesday, my sweet readers! Hope you all are doing well, and thanks for reading!