Nails Inc November - Lowndes Court

Soft blurple with fine ice blue shimmer  

Lowndes Court is a deep blurple with fine ice blue shimmer

Application was good.  This dries with a soft almost satin finish

Swatch shown is 2 coats, no top coat

I love a good blue and this one is also slightly unusual.

This isn't a current colour but is available from ebay.

Nailgirls - Blue #1

Blue/blurple shimmer   

Nailgirls is a new brand to me, I've seen them on other blogs but as they only seemed to be available from their website and there had never been a must-have colour I hadn't got round to picking any up.  But then they cropped up in 4-bottle collections on Cocosa which is one of those private sale sites (a high-end one at that!).

Nailgirls polish retails at £10.50 and the 4-packs were £17.00 so not a bad deal although obviously you couldn't choose the shades...

So enough gabbing, here is the snappily named Blue #1

Nailgirls bottles are large, 15ml and the same shape as Pop Beauty and very similar to American Apparel

Blue #1 is a blurple leaning blue shimmer with silver, blue and purple fine shimmer.  

Application was ok, the formula was kinda thin - I have 2 thick coats on my ring finger and 3 thin coats on others.

It's a pretty colour but not massively unique...

Anyone else tried nailgirls polish or been to their salon in London?

Pop Beauty Nail Glam - Midnight Minx

Blurple shimmer with fine glitter

Midnight Minx is a bluely blurple shimmer with fine blue and magenta glitter that you can hopefully just see in the bottle shot.

Midnight Minx is from the Autumn 2012 collection and I picked it up in the ASOS sale.

Swatches are 2 coats with no top coat.  I've seen other reviews that show this with one coat but there's no way my bottle was going to be opaque at one coat!

It's not a very shiny finish so would definitely benefit from a nice glossy topcoat.

Nails Inc - Belgrave Place

Blurple creme

Another classic nails inc colour is Belgrave Place, a deep blue creme with a good dose of purple. This isn't a particularly unique colour, I've used this in a previous comparison post but still a great colour/polish.

Belgrave Place is a great blurple, though of course given the challenges of photographing purples this shows more blue in the photos than IRL (I have tweaked these pics to attempt to make them more colour accurate)

It's very opaque, swatch shown is 2 coats with no topcoat, I probably could've done 1 thick one...  And it's super glossy.

And, before I forget, this is one of the nails inc colours available in the US from selected Sephora

W7 - Blue Lagoon

Another W7 for you gals - I found the old photos I took, no mean feat as I have over 2000 images (multiples of each colour) in my unsorted swatches folder - eeek!

Boy this one's a beaut!


Sun



Shade

Blue Lagoon is a wonderful blurple with silver glitter

Perfect coverage in  2 coats, no topcoat.  Again I'm very impressed with the quality and coverage of a pretty cheap polish - nice!

Barry M - Indigo

After the disappointment of the Lil Blings I thought I'd share a recent polish that exceeded my expectations.

A few weeks ago I shared Barry M Mushroom which I'd been seeking after seeing mentions in blogland. As Barry M was 2 for £5 it seemed rude not to get two, I was looking for Dusky Mauve, the Chanel Paradoxal dupe but no luck so I picked up Indigo instead.





Indigo is a stunning blurple creme- this is 2 coats, no topcoat. I tweaked the first photo to make it more colour accurate - all others pics are as is and not colour accurate, all polishes are more purple and less blue.

As soon as I applied it I thought it might be similar to several others in my collection, namely Collection 2000 Parma Violets, Nails Inc Belgrave Place, Models Own Blu Gem and Bourjois Bleu Violet so I thought I'd do some quick comparisons.


l-r Bourjois Bleu Violet, Collecion 2000 Parma Violet, BarryM Indigo, BarryM Indigo

Although it doesn't look like it in the picture Bleu Violet looked a total dupe IRL whereas Parma Violets was slightly darker and more purple


l-r Models Own Blu Gem, Nails Inc Belgrave Place, BarryM Indigo, BarryM Indigo

As you can see these weren't as similar as I thought, Blu Gem is lighter and Belgrave Place is lighter still and has more of a dusky tone. And Blu Gem is not as shiny as the others.

All of these are 2 coats with no top coat.

I swatched Indigo right after Mushroom and loved it so much I reapplied it as a full mani after the comparison shots and wore it on my recent 4-day business trip to Germany. I wasn't expecting too much from a £2.50 polish and took remover and other polish with me expecting to have to replace it, but it held up amazingly well.



This pic is after 4½ days - unfortunately as I'd already swatched the colour I didn't make note of the base or topcoat but IIRC it was a nails inc basecoat and either nails inc or seche vite or Diamont as top coat!!

I love this polish, IRL it's much more intense that the pics show and the wear was amazing for me with any polish let alone a cheapie!

Anyone else had amazing wear from cheap polish?

Bloom - Yeojin II

I'd been wanting to try Bloom polishes for a while and finally found some in Superdrug in Sheffield - I've never seen them in any of the Superdrugs round my way.

Bloom is an Australia brand, created by Natalie Bloom back in 1993, and now includes a full range of cosmetics and skincare.

I only bought a couple of polishes as they're quite spenny, about £8 each IIRC.

First up is yeojin II, part of the designer collection and named after Australia designer Yeojin Bae.

It's a blackened blurple, very blackened, in fact it looks black almost all of the time!

Check out the pics taken in different light and see if you can spot a hint of purple in any of them?!

 
 


Nope, me neither. To be fair I can see a hint of blurple in some of the bottle shots but on my nails it's just black.

This is 2 coats with no top coat - it's very glossy (and very black...)

Formula was fine and you can see how opaque it was in two coats

So overall this colour didn't really work for me, it's dark, dramatic and glossy but you might as well wear black.

Models Own - two colours that look the same, but aren't

The final two cremes in my collection are Betty Blue and Blue Gem. Due to the problems in photographing purple they may appear more similar than they really are.

Betty Blue is a mid blue creme with a slight jelly feeling. Whereas Blue Gem is a definite Blurple, but of course in the pics it looks more blue than IRL.


Betty Blue
3 coats, no topcoat

Blue Gem



I had a few problems with Blue Gem, it's almost like the pigment isn't mixed properly into the polish. It doesn't help that Models Own polishes don't come with ballz, but both in the bottle and on my nail I was aware of an odd red cast to this one - almost like a matt red shimmer in the polish. You'll probably have to click to bring up the big pics to have any chance of seeing this.

3 coats with topcoat.

This polish was also kinda thin - you can see it still looks a bit streaky and odd after 3 coats. As all the others were fine I'm tempted to think I just had a slightly duff bottle here. Anyone else had problems with any Models Own polishes?