Shatter the Scales

Another purchase from Poundland, this time a green glittery Shatter polish by OPI in the colour 'Shatter the Scales'. 

I noticed that eBay now has a flood of these Shatter Glitters from OPI being sold, so it looks like stocks may be low in any stores now.

Any-hoo I layered this lovely Green Shatter over Sally Hansens complete manicure polish called 'Dorien Grey' and overall very happy with the results. Think for Christmas this would be very festive layered over a red polish.

OPI Shatter Polishes at £1

So then, good news my nail polish lovers! I heard on the inter-tubes a rumour that PoundLand shops were selling OPI polishes. Note to self don't ask the shop assistant how much anything is...

Anyway, I checked out my local Poundland, or maybe it was PoundStretcher and no joy, but yesterday when shopping for halloween type cake decoration in the next town I popped in to the Poundland there and I FOUND some. I picked up a Black Shatter (pictured above) and a Green glitter shatter called "Shatter the Scales". They had a silver, gold and a brown/purple one too. But as I'm supposed to be on a 'NO BUY' I contented myself with just the two and picked up a couple more for chrimbo presents. But if you want to try a Shatter and you love OPI get yourself down Poundland, just don't ask how much!

OPI Berlin There Done That

So since picking up my first OPI at Duty Free on the way back from Budapest, I always make sure I have a peak in duty free when ever coming back from hol's. My recent travels have taken me to Berlin where I went to run the marathon, and on the way back I was sure to take a look at the OPI stand.

There are three or four OPI polishes I'd really like to pick up and they had a few of these at the Berlin Airport, OPI 'Ink', 'My Private Jet' and most of the new San Francisco range. However I resisted the temptation, not only as they were $12 each but I'd ordered a few more OPI polishes from the Euro Central range before I went away.

But one remaining polish I was after is 'You don't know Jacques'. So whilst looking around the Internet to pick it up at a good price, I came across OPI's Germany collection. Amongst this collection stood out the above polish called 'Berlin There Done That' which I thought very similar in shade and colour (On reflection You don't know Jacques is much darker). So I had to grab it at a very reasonable price of £7.95 with free P&P from diamondskh on eBay. 

Great polish as always from OPI and a great colour for autumn and for work. I finished the manicure off with GOSH's 'Galaxy' polish on the accent nail for a bit of sparkle. 

China Glaze Fairy Dust

After covering myself with China Glaze's 'Howl you doin' the other week I fancied a bit of sparkle. So I thought I'd try out my newly purchased 'Fairy Dust' by China Glaze. 

I thought this was a discontinued polish, but I think it is still available in the brands main range. It's a great micro-glitter polish that can add a dash of sparkle to any manicure.

Here I've used it as a topcoat over Sally Hansen's 'Thinking of Blue'. I really like the complete salon range from Sally Hansen and have bought 7 of these polishes now from eBay. Along with the above I've also bought 'Midnight an NY' which is a gorgeous black creme with tiny micro multicolored sparkles. I've not tried this polish on yet and not sure of the sparkle is going to translate on the nail, but we'll see.

The 'Fairy Dust' however does deliver! You can layer this up for more sparkle, but I think one coat is enough especially as you want to see the base colour show through. Looks great and the sparkles catch the light whether inside or out, almost giving a galaxy effect. Perfect to brighten up any manicure.

GOSH

In pursuit to find the perfect nail varnish brand my latest trial and testing has led me to this brand called GOSH. I watched a great Nail Polish Swap video on YouTube from one of my favourite Vloggers Lindsey does nails and she received one of these polishes in the colour 'Galaxy'. I managed to pick this up in my local Superdrug for £3.99 and they were selling these polishes 'buy one, get one half price'. So I bought this colour too called 'Mysterious Mauve' I love the bottle top and also this is a Special Edition polish too.

I don't know anything about this make-up brand or purchased any of their products before. The polish is great, especially for the price, and this manicure has lasted me about a week. Again you can see some tip wear here, but I think this may have been related to shrinkage using Seche Vite top coat.

I used the 99p Clare's polish I picked up the other week on my ring finger, I think it's called 'Gun Metal'. I'd recommend GOSH polish, especially if bought on the Superdrug deal. They don't seem to have a wide range of colours in any of the shops I've seen it stocked in, however there are more colours to choose from online at Superdrug. 

One bottle too many...

I've been a bit greedy this month and ordered a fair amount of polish. Including most bottles from China Glaze's 2013 Halloween collection, Monster Ball. I had to order from eBay and Nail Polish Direct to get the polishes that I wanted and the above happened in the first parcel that arrived.

This is what was left of the 'Howl you Doin' polish which seems to have snapped at the neck although well packaged. I don't know how this has happened and I could smell the polish even before I opened the parcel. That's not the half of it either, I got it all over my hands, it was all over the other bottles and all over my current manicure. Having said that and my nails were a bit of a mess, including swatches of cotton, the polish is gorgeous and probably my favourite out of the ones that arrived.

I seriously think I have a problem because this parcel arrived this morning and I had to open it before going to work. This made me late due to the mess and clean up operation that needed to be completed before I could go anywhere.

To note, along with order I also acquired China Glaze's 'Fairy Dust' which bloggers refer to quite a bit. I'm not sure if it is discontinued but I got it at a great price on eBay and will post soon when tried out.

Leather Look Varnish

I have a thing for this colour at the moment and was keen to try a leather look varnish to see what it looked like.

Excuse the chips, I have been wearing this colour since Sunday last week and it's lasted incredibly well considering I used no top coat.

This Burgundy varnish is from Claire's and has a textured finish and not quite what I was expecting from a Leather look varnish. It's quite shiny and not matt as I'd thought, I did experiment with a matt top coat but it really looked better without.

This little badger cost me £4.50, and they have this varnish in various other colours. They also had a load of 9ml bottles at the counter for 99p, so I had a rummage. More about that later...