nailbox - October Review

Yey, October's nailbox is HERE and the colours are perfect for my 30 Days of Colour Challenge. This month we have an autumn themed box with three gorgeous polish for the season.

First up is Rimmel's 'Caramel Cupcake' what a great name and also a lovely polish. This was opaque in two coats and it's been a while since I bought or used any Rimmel polishes and they've made the brush much thicker. Just one swipe with this bad boy and my little fingers where DONE!

Really liked this polish and used this as my base and to create the gradient on the manicure below. 

Next is another Gel Effect polish from Nails Inc, I think this is the third polish I've received from nailbox from this brand, This is a gorgeous burgundy/purple colour and one of my favourite colours. This again was opaque in two coats and in the gradient came out much brighter than in the bottle.

Last but not least is a effects polish from Essie called ' Summit of Style' a lovely packed glitter polish with gold glitters of two different sizes. No need for fishing with this glitter just one dip and apply to the nail deposits plenty of glitter. In fact it's so packed in the bottle I wasn't sure if it was in a clear base or if there was black glitters in there too.

This month's nail care items were some nail scissors, useful because I'm always hunting for my pair, and some Drying Drops from OPI. I did use these when doing my Thanks Giving manicure, bit hard to tell if it dried the polish any quicker as I ALWAYS use a quick dry topcoat. Also when applying to the nails I wasn't sure how to apply it so it covered all my nail. Something to experiment with, if you have any tips or experience with drying drops let me know.

Here is the manicure I created using all the polishes in this month's nailbox and is also my manicure for the next prompt in the 30 Days of Colour Challenge 'Fall Gradient'. 

Green Base and Tranquility

Day 15's theme was simply stated as 'Green Base'. Green for me is a funny colour, I do have quite a few polishes in varying shades of green but tend not to reach for them often. 

I copied this design from a picture online but I can't find it now, may have been Pinterest. What I like about this design and not something I do very often is having the two middle nails different to the rest. I used a thin nail art brush for the stripes of colour on the middle nails and topped everything off with China Glaze 'Golden Enchantment'.  

The next day's theme is Tranquility and I've wanted to do a sea type of design for a while. Orginally I'd seen the Nailasaurus Beach Wave Mani. But then when looking though her Blog I saw her Water Colour Gradient manicure and opted for this instead.

I found the video after doing the manicure, so first attempt was a bit of figuring it out. It's OK but next time I'll work longer at building up the colours and merging them into each other.

The ideas was that this looks like the seas which the sound of I find quite calming and tranquil.

Rimmel LONDON - Salon Pro in Purple Rain

A trip into Warrington yesterday to purchase a Helmer unit to store all my nail polish in (more about that later when I've assembled it and filled it), led me to have a mooch around the shopping center there too. I was hoping to find some Essie in the colour above, I was looking for something purple but on the blue side in a cream with no shimmer.

It was slim pickings in Superdrug who didn't have any Essie at all and then I stumbled on a shop called Urban Beauty who had a number of different brands (some of which I'd never heard of before) and some OPI for £6.99, a small number of Essie and some Rimmel Salon Pro polishes.

The first polishes I bought were Rimmel, but I've never tried these Salon Pro ones before. The colour is 'Purple Rain' and exactly the shade I was after! It was a little thin on one coat and two coats seems to suffice, on reflection in the sun, it needs three.

The bottle is 12ml or 0.4 fl oz so larger than the normal Rimmel polishes and cost me £2.50 I think, usually these are £4.49 in the stores. The label says these polish have lycra in them, so I'll see what that does for the wear time and chip factor. Overall for that price, great colour and finish.