Maybelline MNY - 549 Midnight Taupe

Dark taupe creme  

549 Midnight Taupe is a dark, slightly purple leaning taupe creme.  The name suits it very well.

Swatches are 3 coats, no top coat.  This polish was pretty sheer on the first coat but does build eventually.

I'm not sure how long I've had this polish but check out that pigment separation?!  I did shake the bottle vigorously to mix it back up but it wasn't shifting.

This reminds me of buying custom mix paint colours from a DIY store -  it starts with a tin of base colour (usually pretty pale) and then type in a code for the colour you've chosen.  Intense pigment gets squirted into your pot but often you're watching thinking 'Why is that mustard yellow going into my blue paint?! - did they type in the wrong code?'  But somehow it comes out right once it's all mixed up.

Who would've thought that this purply taupe would contain so much khaki green pigment!

Maybelline - MNY 446

Grey/taupe shimmer with holo sparkle  

Blimey, somehow I lost a whole month to work, Christmas and general busyness....

Anyhow, on with the show...

MNY is a younger, funkier branding for the  Maybelline range.  In the UK I think it is, or was, exclusive to Superdrug but I first discovered it in a drugstore in Germany a few years ago.

Blurred close-up to show the holo...

Unfortunately the MNY polishes don't have shade names only dull numbers so here is 446....

This is definitely an unusual colour/finish.  Primarily it's a grey/taupe shimmer but there's also a strong blue/silver foil flash (can you even have a foil flash?) and then to finish off there are fine holo sparkles.

The base colour changes a lot with the light, sometimes it's cooler and grey, sometimes warmer and almost brown.

There's a lot going on, but I'm a big fan of taupe and grey and who can resist holo sparkles even if they're very fine and not massively visible?!  A win...

Alessandro - Stone Washed topped with Maybelline Polka Dots in Chalk Dust

Dusty blue creme and a black/white glitter topcoat.  


First up an Alessandro polish in Stone Washed

Stone Washed is a fantastic mildy dusty blue creme.

It's super shiny and a one-coat-wonder!

This is a 10ml Alessandro.  Stoned Washed is from the Denim Diva collection and has a matte silver lid rather than the usual glossy black.

To me this isn't the colour of stone-washed denim at all, but it is gorgeous!

So I decided to try out one of the Maybelline Polka Dots topcoats which are somewhat similar to the nails inc sprinkles and much more similar to the L'Oreal confetti top coats.

Stone Washed topped with 1 coat Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots in Chalk Dust

Chalk Dust has a clear base with black & white matte different sized glitter.  Coverage is very good and with just a little work you can get a great effect from just one coat.

I wouldn't say the effect is much like Polka Dots but I do like it a lot!

The other colours in the Polka Dots collection have coloured jelly bases which probably makes Chalk Dust the most versatile.

Maybelline - Atomic Violine

Dusky purple with foilish shimmer

Maybelline- Atomic Violine

Atomic Violine from the Forever Strong range (with extra Iron!) is a slightly dusky purple with blue, pink and purple foilish glitter

Application was fine, swatch shown is 2 coats with no top coat

This was super difficult to remove for some reason, like it welded to my nails... Maybe I should do a wear test on this one.

Maybelline - Colorama Cherry Sweet

Raspberry jelly with fine glitter

I thought Cherry Sweet was going to be super sheer so I decided to avoid the pain of building it to opacity and go for the shortcut of layering it over 2 coats of Ciate Marilyn (a red creme).  Since then I've seen Cherry Sweet on a couple of other blogs and it seems to only need 3 coats for opacity - my bad!

Cherry Sweet is a raspberry jelly with fine pink & silver glitter.

It's pretty and the glitter payoff is pretty good - I must try this again on its' own.

Mini Germany Haul

Hey, I'm back from *another* trip to Germany. Unfortunately the strong storms in the UK last week meant our flight was delayed and we got back a day late.

Sadly this didn't give me more time for polish shopping as the town we were staying in, Herrenberg, is pretty small and didn't have any great places to buy polish.

I did pick up a few from Ihr Platz, the local drugstore though - hey what's a business trip without polish!


Catrice LE's


More Catrice LE's and a sparkly Maybelline

And these were waiting for me when I got home



Swatches to follow