Alix Avien - 243 (Paradoxal dupe)

Purple/taupe with purple shimmer

I picked up this polish on hols in Turkey last year, from a quick google search I'm pretty sure it's a native Turkish brand which is cool.

Obviously it's not the most unique of colours, I'm sure it was created as a dupe for Chanel Paradoxal, but hey, it's a good dupe and was a lot cheaper than Chanel!

Swatch shown is 2 coats with no top coat.

Formula was gloopy and a little tricky to work with.  I wore this on holiday and it lasted well

It's pretty of course, just like the original!

Spain Haulage

Spanish, French and German/European brands...

Apologies for the delay in posting, dear readers, I've been away for a week in Mallorca with my Mum for a relaxing holiday and didn't manage to post anything in the week before or create any scheduled posts #badblogger

We had a lovely relaxing week, the weather was fab, 25°C+ and lots of sunshine.  We shopped, swam and generally relaxed.

I managed to fit in a little polish shopping, we were staying in a fairly small town so there wasn't much opportunity but it did have a few of those perfume/cosmetic shops.  Not an extensive range of brands, I saw OPI and Essie, but I decided to focus on brands that were new to me and some of the new Essence polishes as Essence isn't available in the UK :-(

I'm not sure if these are called LOOK or OK or something else entirely!  They're made by a company called  Impacto Cosmetics based in Valencia.  The bottles are 12ml.  And that's about all the info I can make out from the tiny, tiny print on the bottle.

 Two luscious green toned polishes from Rare and Lola .  The Rare bottle is 10ml and the Lola 11ml.  These two brands are both based in Madrid, Spain but the polish is made in France.

And lastly the Essences I picked up.  Unfortunately we were severely restricted on weight with our (shared) suitcase so I couldn't pick up as many of these as I would've liked...

I quite like the new bottles, they're pleasantly stubby and chunky.  I do hope they haven't mucked about with the brush though.

And on the right is Essences take on the double-ended layering polishes called Nail Colour³.  I chose Midnight Date/City That Never Sleeps as  CTNS looks like an interesting glittery/flakey purple/green combo.

Smallish but hopefully interesting haul.  Looking forward to swatching these soon as my ring finger nail is finally growing back, all my treatments and a week in the sun seem to have done the trick!

RBL - Grunge

I'm off on holiday today! A week in Chamonix, in the French Alps, with my lovely man and his three equally lovely kids, all boys, aged between 11 and 15.

We're staying in a lovely apartment with views of Mont Blanc and have lots of fun stuff planned.
Despite being a well known ski resort, Chamonix is a great summer destination if you're not looking for sizzling temperatures and sandy beaches. The ski lifts are open throughout the summer so it's easy to do stunning hikes, there's also rock climbing, ice caves, white water rafting and the much loved luge - lots of stuff to keep teenage boys occupied!

I am taking a couple of mini bottles of polish with me but with our packed, outdoorsy itinerary there won't be much time for nails so I wanted to wear something low-key, long-wearing that wouldn't show chips too much but that I'd feel comfortable in (I'm not really a sheers kinda girl) so I finally decide on Grunge from Rescue Beauty Lounge.



Grunge is another of those greige/taupe/nude colours that's tricky to describe. It's not quite mannequin hands with my skin tone. I'd say it was a light taupe with a fair amount pinky lilac tones. There's also a very fine, unobtrusive/invisible silver shimmer there.

Of course it has the renowned RBL application qualities, this is two coats over Barielle Hydrating Ridge Filler, a coat of Nails Inc Albert Bridge and topped off with Seche Vite to dry.

I picked this up with a few other RBLs in their last 50% off sale. I'd heard great things about the polish before but I really couldn't justify the high price tag and hefty international shipping charges.

But thanks to that amazing sale and my wonderful polish enabling pal Carl, who lives in the US and is willing to act as my US postbox, I managed to get my hands on some, including all the blogger special editions.

And fortunately, or unfortunately as I now want more of them! they completely lived up to expectations. All opaque in barely two coats, amazing formula and gorgeous, edgy, unique colours. Definitely in the same ballpark as Illamasqua for me. If only they weren't so expensive.

Fingers crossed my mani lasts a few days and see you all in a week!