Tuesday 25 June 2013

Review of 'NYC Quick Dry Nail Polish' in 'Raindrop'

Hi everyone! So here is yet another review of a NYC nail polish! This time I opted for 'Raindrop' which is a pale pastel like blue (I think I might be right in saying powder blue?) as the sun is still shining, or at least trying to, and now we have had the longest day it is technically summer in England! So again this bottle is £1.79 on it's own or as I bought it on a 2 for £3 deal in Superdrug.

I assumed that all Superdrug stores stock this brand but when I went into Bath to do some shopping I popped into Superdrug and couldn't find it anywhere. I found this a little strange as this shop is much bigger than the small one in my town so I'm sorry if the Superdrug near you doesn't stock it but I guess you can always order online (:


Right on we go! Of course first I applied my trusty base coat but it really doesn't matter what base coat you use - this was just a cheap one that does the job from Collection.


Then on went the first coat. As I have found with pretty much all of the NYC Quick Dry nail polishes, you can't leave it with one coat. It's a little streaky and I found this one went on a little more unevenly than the others but that could be something to do with it being in my hot bag all day!



But of course with the second coat it looks great! It is now really opaque and is a gorgeous summery colour.



Finally I added the top coat and cleaned up any rogue polish from my skin and it's all done!



I love this colour and it's a steal for £1.79! My friend asked me where I got the polish from as she loved the colour and of course I was only too happy to let her know! Thank you for reading (:

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Review of 'NYC Quick Dry Nail Polish' in 'Lincoln Square Lavender'

Hi everyone! So again another of my current favourite nail varnishes at the moment: NYC Quick Dry! If you haven't read my previous blog post you will not understand my obsession with this brand! They have recently been on offer in Superdrug: 2 for £3 which is an absolute bargain! And they are only £1.79 by themselves anyway!

So I chose this one as another summery pastel like colour. Although the name suggests lavender it is in no real way any sort of shade of purple - which is my understanding of the colour lavender! But the colour is such a nice dusty sort of pale pink colour and is something that you could easily wear without attracting too much attention  if that is what you are after.


So of course I applied my base coat first. I can't stress how important it is to wear a base coat. Not so much with this sort of shade of pink but last summer I made the fatal mistake of painting my nails a lovely grass green colour without a base coat!!! My nails were stained so bad and I had to keep painting them just to hide the fact that I was stupid enough not to use a base coat! Sorry, I went off on a bit of a tangent there! So yes, this is the base coat I always use from Collection for I believe £2.99.



I then applied the first coat of colour and as I've noticed with this range one coat just doesn't give me an opaque enough colour but it wasn't awful and I always apply a very thin coat as for some reason regardless of the varnish being quick dry or not it still takes a while to dry! (Personally I blame my poor circulation!) Again please ignore the mess of my painting - I will sort it out at the end!!!!


Still a little bit see through 
I then applied the second coat and immediately looked so much better and more like the colour in the bottle.


Much better!
Recently, I've been pretty obsessed with the fashion of having an accent nail. For anyone who doesn't know (sorry, but where have you been?!) it's where you paint one nail slightly different to the rest whether that be a contrasting colour, glitter or beaded!

I decided to use another one from the NYC collection! I was debating whether to do this as a separate review like last time but as I only did only 2 nails I thought I'd just make 1 extra long review.

So this is the 'NYC Expert Last Nail Polish' in 'Gramercy Glitz' and it's a gorgeous really pale pink in the bottle but could easily go on any nail varnish colour as it isn't hugely pink on the nail. Again I got it in a 2 for £3 deal and on it's own it's £2.49.


I went on really easily and smoothly and there was a fair amount of glitter on the first coat but as I was using it on only one nail I really wanted it to stand out so I ended up putting on a further coat to make it really noticeable.

One coat of glitter on my ring finger
Two coats of glitter - much more sparkly! 
I then finished it all off with my make shift top coat - a clear nail varnish from 'The Natural Collection' at Boots.

It's not actually pink! 
Et Voila! All cleaned up and looking lovely! I think it looks so cute and girly as it's not in you face like brighter shades are but that's the joy of pastel colours!



I would really recommend both the base colour and the glitter nail varnish as they are just so pretty and you really can't go wrong for £3! Thank you for reading (:

Monday 10 June 2013

Review of 'Blaze Solar Active Nail Varnish: Pearl to Blackberry'

So I bought this polish over a year ago in an attempt to get around the school rules of no obvious nail varnish as inside it is a pearly colour but then as the sun hits it it turns into a deep purple. I'm not sure how much I paid for it but I think it was around the £6 mark from Amazon.

As this was over I year ago I do believe that the brand has changed name to 'Ruby and Wing' and from doing a bit of searching are now sold in bigger bottles for just under £10 with a lot more colours available than when I bought mine.

Inside colour in the bottle
I was so excited to test it out when it came but the problem with living in England is there are very few days of bright sunshine in a row. You do need bright sunshine to experience the full effect as I found out when I went out when there was only a little bit of sun it didn't change fully and transformed into a horrible grey colour.

So this is what it looked like on in bright sunshine:

Inside and outside on the nail and with the bottle
I found that the pearly was very streaky even after a couple of coats but this was unnoticeable outside. I also found it annoying that you can't apply a top coat otherwise it blocks the UV rays from changing the colour of the polish. This meant that my nails chipped even quicker than usual.

As much as I loved the concept of it I needed about 5 coats to get a super noticeable colour change. Personally I wouldn't recommend this colour in particular - I only chose it to fit with school rules as the only other option was clear to black which isn't really my style! But I love the idea and I'm considering buying a different colour from the new range to see if the formula has changed with the brand. However I would definitely check other peoples reviews before buying as £10 is quite a bit if it turns out to be rubbish!! Thank you for reading (:

Friday 7 June 2013

Review of 'NYC Expert Last Nail Polish' in 'Lights-Camera-Glitter'

I started with a base colour which if you haven't already you can check it out HERE as I'm not too keen on putting glitter on without a base colour as I just don't think it looks as good unless you wear about 5 coats to get it strong. This doesn't apply to all glitter nail polishes - I do have some that cover the whole nail in a coat so it would be pointless applying a base colour first as you just wouldn't be able to see it!

So I bought this polish in a 2 for £3 deal on all NYC nail varnishes in Superdrug but the nail varnish is only £2.49 on it's own so a great bargain!


I put on a first coat and to be honest I wasn't too impressed! As you can see there are tiny glittery bits and the slightly larger pieces of blue and silver glitter. These larger pieces didn't seem to distribute too well on my nails. Some only had 1 or two pieces whereas others had 5 or 6! It's not a major thing but I felt it could have had a higher consistency of the large pieces in comparison to the smaller ones. It did however slide on smoothy and the brush was pretty good at doing the whole nail in 2 streaks.


I waited only 10 minutes and it was completely dry - which was a bonus as it wasn't advertised as a quick drying nail polish!

I then applied another coat only to try and even out the spread of the larger pieces of glitter and it didn't look so bad.


 To finish off I applied a coat coat which was actually just a clear nail varnish from The Natural Collection at Boots. I believe I'm right in saying on its own it's £1.99 but often there is an offer where you can get 3 for £5! It has gone slightly pinky as I put it on top of a red that hadn't fully dried but this is only noticeable in the bottle - it looks crystal clear on the nail!


I then cleaned up all the mess on the skin with a couple of cotton buds dipped in nail varnish remover and voila! There you have it!



To be perfectly honest I wasn't overly impressed with this glitter nail polish as even though it's cheap; in comparison to some of my other glitter varnishes from Barry M it just isn't up to scratch and they were only £2.99 so not that much difference! There a probably quite a few better ones on the market for only a slight bit more as I felt this one just didn't look as good as I hoped it would! There is nothing wrong with the varnish itself so if you like the effect then go for it! For me though it just wasn't what I was looking for. Thank you for reading (:

Thursday 6 June 2013

Review of 'NYC Quick Dry Nail Polish' in 'Blue Sky'

Recently I've been buying so many nail varnishes from this brand because they've been on offer in Superdrug! I bought this colour along with 2 others on a buy 2 get 1 free offer. Even so, they are only £1.79 each so perfect for anyone like me, who is on a budget, but still wants to look good!

NYC - In a New York Minute Quick Dry Nail  Polish in 'Blue Sky' 

I picked up this 'Blue Sky' colour because it's got a nice fun summery feel to it and my collection is lacking in blues and pastels!

Firstly, I applied my go to base coat.

Collection 2000 - Nail Care 2 in 1 Base Coat and Ridge Filler With Keratin


This is from Collection 2000 (although I think it's now just called Collection) and I got it for £2.99 in Boots. I always use it as my base coat because it's cheap and does the job! Not much else to say on that...

Then I applied the first coat of colour. I noticed it was in some places a bit thick and others it was very streaky. However a plus was that it did dry really quickly and glides nicely over your nails. Please ignore how messy they have been painted - I sort it all out at the end don't worry!


Little bit streaky
After the second coat had been applied it looked a lot better - pretty much the colour on the bottle! This coat took a little longer to dry as I wanted to make sure it was fully smudge proof! But still only about 30 minutes.
I like the fact it is quite strongly pigmented as it means that after 2 coats you're ready to go! I've got some nail polishes that can take 3 coats before the even slightly start to resemble the colour in the bottle.



I didn't apply a top coat as I usually would because as you can find HERE I added a coat of glitter on top as something extra.

Overall I really loved this product because the colour was gorgeous, it was pretty good quality for the bargain price and dried pretty quickly! I'd definitely recommend this product! Thank you for reading (:

First Post!

Hi everyone! So... this is my first post on my brand shiny new blog! "What's this blog about?" I hear you ask! Well, I hope to mainly focus on reviewing different nail varnishes and maybe a few other products. I might put up some everyday what I'm doing kind of things as well but we'll see how it goes!