Wednesday 12 March 2014

Eleka Nahmen by Smitten Polish

Hello ladies!  With the arrival of Spring, and St Patrick's Day around the corner I have the perfect nail polish for you - "Eleka Nahmen" by Smitten Polish.  This is from the "words of magic" collection which take their inspiration from spells and incantations used in popular films and culture.  After a bit of googling I found that "Eleka Nahmen" is a quote from witchy musical "Wicked".

Eleka Nahmen by Smitten Polish - artificial light
Eleka Nahmen by Smitten Polish - artificial light
Eleka Nahmen is one of the most phenomenal polishes I have ever seen, let alone worn.  Like its collection mate (and a personal favourite of mine) Klaatu Barada Nikto this polish has an astonishing amount of sparkle.  On the nail it's simply mesmerising.  Here I'm wearing my customary two coats, atop NE base and beneath SV topcoat.

Eleka Nahmen by Smitten Polish - artificial light
Eleka Nahmen by Smitten Polish - artificial light
This is a lime neon jelly packed solid with ultra-sparkly holo glitter in shades of green and a surprisingly lovely sky blue that really gives this polish an extra pop.  On the nail it looks like crushed emeralds.  I'm actually not a fan of green at all, it's my least favourite colour, and I absolutely love this polish which goes to show just how special it is.  In the shade, with no direct light hitting it, this polish looks like a really fun neon lime polish with the glitters giving it a speckled look.  But 99% of the time, in all types of light, this is a total glitter bomb.

Like Klaatu Barada Nikto the formula is really rather hard to work with due to the glitter content.  It has huge 'clump and drag' issues which can be overcome by using generous coats, and not going over the same strip twice until its mostly dry. Also be warned - this must have topcoat.  On its own this dries to a matt, gritty looking finish, almost like a textured polish, but with a single coat of Seche its transformed.  It's not a 'thirsty' glitter, one coat of topcoat will do the trick for a smooth glossy finish.

Eleka Nahmen by Smitten Polish - artificial light
Eleka Nahmen by Smitten Polish - glitter bomb!
In case the rest of this review wasn't clue enough, I highly recommend this polish.  It's utter amazeballs.  I picked up my bottle from Rainbow Connection UK (link on suppliers page) for £8.20.  Sadly it doesn't look like its in stock at the moment - but Klaatu Barada Nikto is in stock and I would also highly recommend getting your mitts on that one!

I'll also have one final polish from the magic words collection for you another day - they purple offering "Imperio".  Until then, happy St Patricks day!

Monday 10 March 2014

Picture Polish Altered State

Hello ladies! Today I have the final instalment in the Limited Edition Picture Polish collection - "Altered State" (see collection-mates : Aurora, Borealis, Illusionist, Solar Flare, Gravity).  Please excuse the nasty cut on my index finger.  It's not pretty and it stings like a beyotch when rubbed with acetone I can tell you...anyway onto the swatches...

Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light
Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light

Altered State is remarkably similar to Gravity -  it's a Purple-Blue-Magenta multi-chrome (whereas Gravity is Blue-Purple-Magenta) with the 'scatter chrome' finish.  The shade of the blue is different, the blue of altered state is more of a denim/royal blue, and the blue of  Gravity is slightly more green leaning to come out as more of a teal blue in the sunshine.  But in essence, these polishes are very similar and just have the order of the multi-chrome effect reversed.  In each case, in most lighting conditions, the polish will appear to be the dominant colour.  So Gravity looks blue most of the time, and Altered State looks purple most of the time.

Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light
Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light - the dominant colour is purple
In these pictures I'm wearing my usual two coats of colour atop black undies ('Just Black' by No.7) and NE base, finished with HK girl topcoat.  Like all the Limited Edition shades the formula is great.  It's a sheer polish, so you will definitely need some type of base colour if you don't want to wait for 20 coats to dry...

Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light
Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light
This is a very pretty polish, and if I hadn't seen the other polishes in this range I'd think this was amazing. But as it stands, this is my least favourite of the bunch.  In order of awesomeness I'd rank these (best to last) Aurora, Solar Flare, Borealis, Gravity, Illusionist, Altered State.

Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light
Picture Polish Altered State - artificial light

The multichrome effect on Altered State is the weakest of the bunch.  It's almost impossible to catch a glimpse of all the colours on the nail at once.  Your best chance is in natural light, in the shade.  This crappy phone pic shows the best I was able to capture.  Nothing like the wow factor of Aurora, but still a very pretty polish especially with all the sparkly scatterchrome particles which look gorgeous in all types of artificial lighting.


Picture Polish Altered State - natural light
Picture Polish Altered State - natural light
I picked up my bottle of Altered State from Rainbow Connection UK (link in the suppliers list) for £12.50.  It's currently out of stock, but I believe there is a restock due sometime in March so keep your eyes peeled :) 



Saturday 8 March 2014

Picture Polish Ultra Violence

The final instalment in today's Picture Polish blogfest....this is the incredible Collaboration shade "Ultra Violence"...

Clockwork Orange
Welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, welly, well.
To what do I owe the extreme pleasure of this surprising visit?
 
Ultra-Violence is a purple foil glitter with pink sparkly shimmer and adorable pale pink hex glitters.  It's hard to see the link between such a pretty polish and the book-banning ultraviolence of Burgess' novel but hey, if I looks this nice I don't care...

Picture Polish Ultra Violence - artificial light
Picture Polish Ultra Violence
As per usual, I've got two coats of colour atop NE base and beneath HK Girl topcoat.  The formula on this one was reasonably easy to apply for something so glittery.  I only noticed afterwards quite how many of the pink hex glitters were sculling about in the bottom of the bottle, so perhaps if I'd given it a good shake I'd have gotten more of them on the nail.  I did manage to get a reasonable number on there and they were a gorgeous addition.  The flashes of pink sparkle really stand out against the purple and make this a really eyecatching shade.

Picture Polish Ultra Violence - artificial light
Picture Polish Ultra Violence - artificial light
I'm totally in love with this shade, it has all of my favourite qualities...it's purple, its glittery, and it has cute pink sparkles in (I would vehemently deny loving pink if you asked me to my face, because it's not very rock and roll, but I do in fact love pink sparkly things.  Sometimes I'm such a girl *eye roll*)
Picture Polish Ultra Violence - artificial light
Picture Polish Ultra Violence - artificial light
I picked up my bottle from Rainbow Connection UK (link in Suppliers page) for £13.50.  It was totally worth it.  Like the Limited Edition shades this one has gone straight into my top ten favourite polish purchases of 2014...I know the year is young but I predict this one will still be there by the end of the year....highly recommended.

 

Picture Polish Monroe

Continuing the Picture Polish love in....this beauty is "Monroe", a yummy red holo polish from the Australian brand.
Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light
Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light
Monroe is a dark claret jelly packed with sparkly holo glitter.  This had a similar formula to Hope and suffered from some unfortunate streaky, clump and drag issues.  With patience to let the first coat dry this can be fixed with a generous second coat.  Here I'm wearing my usual two coats with NE base and HK girl topcoat.

Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light
Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light
Monroe is a really classy polish, it's a sensible 'grown up' colour and the holo effect is not too blingy (but is sparkly enough to be fun).  In these swatches is appears quite pink leaning, but in real life it is more red than pink.

Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light
Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light
Look how shiny! I was a big fan of this polish, it would be a nice holiday polish come Christmas time but being a classic shade it's one you can wear all year round too (not that I ever pay attention to season when I pick my polish.  If I did I'd have to ignore Spring entirely - pastels? bleurch!)


Picture Polish Monroe - artificial light
Picture Polish Monroe
I picked up my bottle of Monroe from Rainbow Connection UK (link in the suppliers page) for £13.50. It's a really cute shade, I'd definitely recommend this one.


Picture Polish Hope

Hello ladies! Today is a festival of Picture Polish swatches...I'm trying to work through my backlog of unblogged swatches.  "Hope" is a dark blue holo polish, and was a Collaboration shade released in 2013:
 
Picture Polish "Hope" - artificial light
Picture Polish "Hope" - artificial light
Pictured here I'm wearing two coats of Hope atop NE base with HK Girl topcoat to finish.  The formula on this one was really tricky to work with.  It's so densely glittered that there's a lot of 'clump and drag' with this polish and it was hard to even it out.  The best option is to wait until the first coat is really dry before applying the second (and it's definitely a multi-coater as the first coat goes on pretty streaky).

Picture Polish "Hope" - artificial light
Picture Polish "Hope" - artificial light

Hope is a deep navy jelly with tons of holo glitter and light blue hex glitters.  The hex glitters seem to prefer to stay stuck to the sides and base of the polish bottle (you can see them bunched up below the text on the bottle in the pic above) - I didn't manage to get many at all on the nail despite shaking it quite hard before hand.  You can see one lonely hex glitter on the bottom of my thumb nail here...these give a pretty effect, I'll have to try fishing for more next time.

Picture Polish "Hope" - artificial light
oooh shiny :)
Hope is a pretty shade, but not nearly as sparkly in real life as I was expecting.  I think this is due to how dark the base shade is.  If you're in the market for a dark blue glittery holo then I'd say look no further than Smitten Polish Klaatu Barada Nikto.  This offering from Picture Polish is a great polish, but overall I was a little underwhelmed by it, especially given the spendy pricetag.  There's a lot of comparisons online with Picture Polish Cosmos, which is also a blue holo, but being a lighter shade of blue I think the sparkle might pop more on that one.


Picture Polish "Hope" - artificial light
Picture Polish "Hope"
I picked up Hope from the lovely Sally Magpies (link in Supplier page) for £13.50.

Picture Polish Gravity

Hello ladies! Continuing with the series of Limited Edition Picture Polish shades today I have Gravity to show you (you can see also collection-mates Aurora, Borealis, Gravity, Altered State, Solar Flare and Illusionist)....

Picture Polish Gravity - natural light
Picture Polish Gravity - natural light
Gravity is a blue to purple duochrome with the same holo shard glitters that Solar Flare has.  Like Solar Flare , Gravity has a more subtle duochrome effect than Aurora. In the shade, you can see both of the main colours on the nail at once, but most of the time this polish appears completely one colour of the three: teal blue, royal purple and magenta.

Picture Polish Gravity - artificial light
Picture Polish Gravity - artificial light

I'm wearing two coats of Gravity atop a couple coats of 'black undies' ('Just Black' by No7) with NE base and HK Girl top coat.  Like all of the Limited Edition collection polishes, this is a relatively sheer polish that applies smoothly and evenly, formula is fantastic and the brush is easy to use.

Picture Polish Gravity - sun light
Picture Polish Gravity - sun light
This is a gorgeous polish, like its collection mates this is something really special.  Picture Polish is a bit on the spendy side, but for these polishes I'd say they're worth every penny.  With my love of metallic purple polishes Gravity really appeals to me a lot, but being objective I would rank these polishes (first to last) as Aurora, Solar Flare , and Gravity.  That being said, these are some of my favourite polishes in my entire collection, so third place ain't bad.

Picture Polish Gravity - artificial light
Picture Polish Gravity - artificial light

I picked up my bottle of Gravity from Rainbow Connection for £12.50 (link in supplier page).  It's currently out of stock, but a restock is due sometime in March...

Next up will be Altered State, the last of the collection that I picked up.  I have no idea why I didn't buy Illusionist at the time, I think I had some mad idea that if I left one behind that was evidence that I'm capable of restraint, which we all know is a lie.  So I'll be eagerly awaiting the restock too....



Wednesday 5 March 2014

Picture Polish Aurora

Greetings Ladies!  Allow me to introduce you to one of my favourite polishes of all time....Picture Polish "Aurora"....

Picture Polish Aurora - artificial light
Picture Polish Aurora
Aurora is, bar none, the most astonishing multi-chrome polish I have ever seen.  Like its name suggests, this polish is the embodiment of the Northern Lights.  The colour shift is predominantly Emerald - Magenta - Purple but there are hints of blue and gold peeking through.  As if all that wasn't excitement enough this polish is also packed with multichrome glitter that is similar to Ozotic 528 (hardly a big surprise given that Picture Polish is made by the same company as the now-discontinued Ozotic).
Picture Polish Aurora - artificial light
Picture Polish Aurora - one bottle, a rainbow of colour
Pictured here I'm wearing a couple of coats of Aurora over a plain black polish ('Just Black' by No.7) to make the colour shift pop.  As usual, there's NE base underneath is all and HK Girl topcoat to finish it off.

Picture Polish Aurora - artificial light
Picture Polish Aurora - a chameleon polish
This polish simply has to be seen to be believed.  Sadly this is really limited edition.  Originally it was announced there would only be 800 bottles worldwide and that customers would be limited to purchasing one bottle each.  Nail polish addicts worldwide went absolutely crazy trying to get hold of it and it sold out in tens of minutes.  Then miraculously they announced that a further 1000 bottles were going to be made available.  That's some smart marketing right there...

Picture Polish Aurora - natural light
Picture Polish Aurora - natural light
The best colour shift is seen in natural light, in the shade.  It's then that you see several colours on the nail at once and it's 10x more beautiful than this crappy phone camera picture suggests.  In fact it was so pretty that I actually had to drive with gloves on because the effect was so distracting I was worried I was going to crash my car.  I'm absolutely serious about that.  This here is crash your car nail porn. In artificial light, most of the time this polish appears one colour, but whichever colour it picks is GORGEOUS...sit back and enjoy the show:

Picture Polish Aurora - artificial light
Picture Polish Aurora - artificial light
This emerald green shade is the dominant colour, and its a beautiful jewel tone, I'd love a polish that was just this single colour all the time. 

Picture Polish Aurora - artificial light

and it's also a lovely royal blue....


and a fabulous magenta/purple....

It's so many colours, and all of them gorgeous. What I loved about this polish were those moments when three or more colours were on the nail at the same time, the combination of the green and the pink is just astonishing. 

I bought my bottle from Sally Magpies (link on supplier's page) for £13.50.  There will apparently be a restock of this shade sometime in March (at Sally's and at Rainbow Connection).  So get your clicking figures at the ready ladies because you're not going to want to miss this. 

I predict that this will be my favourite polish of 2014...

Also check out collection-mates Borealis, Gravity, Altered State, Solar Flare & Illusionist.

Tuesday 4 March 2014

Picture Polish Solar Flare

Hello Ladies! I've got something very special to share with you today..."Solar Flare" by Picture Polish.  This is one of the recent Limited Editions that Picture Polish released in a frenzy of smart marketing. They generated so much hype in the build up to their release that these sold out almost immediately.  Luckily I managed to get my hands on most of them so I'll be sharing them with you over the next few posts...

Picture Polish Solar Flare - artificial light
Picture Polish Solar Flare - artificial light
Solar Flare is a Russet-Gold duochrome polish with a dusty holo finish and scattered shards of sparkly holo particles.  It's astonishingly beautiful. As a duochrome the shift is quite subtle, the polish does have a dramatic colour range, from a russet brown through to an olive gold, but the colours don't appear on the nail simultaneously - it looks one colour all of the time, but that colour changes.  Most of the time the dominant colour is the russet brown seen in the top left picture above.  Each of the three colours are absolutely gorgeous and the scatter holo and dusty finish is stunning. 


Solar Flare - this russet brown shade is the dominant colour on nail
Solar Flare - this russet brown shade is the dominant colour on nail 
In these pictures I'm wearing two coats of Solar Flare on top of two coats of 'Just Black' by No7.  Using a black undercoat on any duochrome polish really makes the colour shift pop.  I also have NE base and HK Girl topcoat to finish this off.

Solar Flare - the gold shade pops at more extreme angles relative to the light source
Solar Flare - the gold shade pops at more extreme angles relative to the light source
I'm absolutely in love with this polish.  Application is flawless, and the finish is just incredible.  It dries naturally as glossy looking as the HK topcoat you see here, but I added topcoat to extend the wear time.

The finish really reminds me of an A-England polish with extra scatter holo shards I did a quick in-bottle comparison of Solar Flare with a couple of my favourite A-England polishes; Briar Rose and Briarwood.


Picture Polish Solar Flare compared with A-England polishes
top (l-r): A-England Briar Rose, Picture Polish Solar Flare, A-England Briarwood
bottom (l-r): Picture Polish Solar Flare, A-England Briarwood
The dominant shade in the Solar Flare looks to me like a cross between Briar Rose and Briarwood, although of the two I think it's most similar to Briarwood.  The A-Englands are two of my favourite polishes, so having Solar Flare embody them both, PLUS be a duochrome, PLUS have the big sparkly scatter chrome particles is almost too much excitement for me to handle.

This polish is utter amazeballs.  I can't recommend it highly enough.  And if you think this is swatch porn just wait till you see collection-mate Aurora....

I bought my bottle of Solar Flare from the lovely Sally Magpies for £13.50 (link to the shop is on my suppliers page).  These shades should be getting a restock soon, so keep an eye out.....