Eerie is Emily (of Very Emily)’s creation in collaboration with piCture pOlish. It’s a soft lavender shade with holo particles which peek out in the sunlight. You can read all about Emily’s inspiration here. I love that the tagline for this polish is a Captain Janeway quote! As a kid, I remember watching Star Trek with my dad on the weekends and just thinking she was the coolest lady on TV! Now every time I catch a glimpse of the Eerie bottle, it reminds of those Sundays.
So you might have heard of this novel turned movie phenomenon, Fifty Shades of Grey? Even if you’re not a fan of E.L. James’ work, OPI have released a collection of shades for all the lacquer lovers out there to mark the release of the movie. I was very excited for this collection as I do love dark tones and I think grey is such a classy colour to mix in to any look. While I wasn’t blown away by the polishes here, one does stand out for me. Read on for my swatches and thoughts on the collection.
If you’re a seasoned stamper like me, you’ll know that nothing compares to chrome finish polishes when you want to get the job done. When I first heard about the new Colour Chrome collection of 10 polishes from Models Own I immediately got to wondering how they’d hold up when put to the test. So, naturally, when I got my hands on a select few of them I went straight to work trying them out with some different designs.
As you can see, they don’t disappoint in the stamping department. I stamped them over Cirque Memento Mori which is a flawless deep black and they held up without any issues (the designs are from MoYou Fashionista Plate 05). They’re all very opaque which makes them ideal for the job. The consistency is quite creamy and easy to work with but I think that once they’ve aged and thickened up a little, they’ll be even better.
If you’re in the UK and are into your stamping, or even just a beginner, I’d seriously recommend investing in a few of these as I collections like this never seem to be around for long. I’m going to snap up Blue and Gold as soon as they’re in stores.
As for wearing them alone, it’s advised you ditch the base coat and top coat and just apply 2-3 coats of the chromes over freshly buffed nails. I was curious, so I tried both anyway! Base coat is a no-no as it gets dragged around by the chrome and makes little unsightly lumps underneath. Top coat is a-okay as long as you wait until the colour chrome is completely dry first.
This swatch is two coats of each with no base or top coat. From thumb to pinky, the shades are Rose, Cerise, Olive, Mauve and Indigo. You do have to use a very light hand and use as few storkes as possible to get a decent finish. Each shade has its own level of streakiness and they cling to any ridges or imperfections on your nails which is, I suppose, why it’s recommended you buff before application (I skipped that step, oops!). I’ve never been a fan of the all-over chrome look and I think I’ll only use these for stamping but I could be converted by Mauve and Mauve alone!
The full collection of 10 Colour Chrome Shades will retails at £4.99 each. They’ll be available at modelsownit.com from 29th January, from UK Models Own bottleshops on the 31st January and Superdrug stores nationwide on the 11th February.
Matte glitter has made it’s way in to the mainstream this year. One of the offerings is Rimmel’s Pop Art Top Coat and it’s the first one I’ve tried myself. The polish is a glitter topper with uniformly sized hexes in a selection of bold colours.
Whenever I’m faced with a mutli-coloured glitter, I always have trouble deciding what base colour to pair it with. As you can probably see, this time I just gave up on the decision altogether and tried it over almost every colour of the rainbow! Turns out it perfectly compliments any shade so I needn’t have worried.
I had to use two thick coats of Pop Art, plus some dabbing, to get decent coverage and it still clumped in a few places. I found it a bit tricky to get enough glitter on the brush at first but there’s definitely a knack to it which I soon got the hang of. Despite the thick coats, once I added my top coat, it all dried nice and quickly so I wasn’t left with the ‘layered’ feeling – when you know the top coat is dry but everything underneath is still squishy and liable to shift about!
ILNP’s fall collection touched down a few weeks ago and you probably shouldn’t go and look at it because you will only end up spending all your money! The collection consists of 11 polishes – some are multichromes re-imagined with a holographic twist and the others are straight up holos including a silver to rival the best of them.
When piCture pOlish asked if I’d like to work on a collaboration shade (like that’s even a question?!?!) I had a few ideas in mind that I’d been storing away in case I ever got the chance to create my own nail polish. In the end I settled on a turquoise with gold glitter. I wanted it to look like flecks of gold as seen through deep, tropical waters and the result is absolutely on point! The blue base is very pigmented but still has a smooth, jelly-like consistency that allows for the gold glitter and shimmer to peek through.
As for the polish itself, it has piCture pOlish’s standard 5-free formula and the base leans towards a jelly but is more pigmented than a true jelly. You can quite easily get it opaque with two thick coats or three thin ones – I used three thin coats for this swatch with a top coat. Thanks to the insanely smooth formula, you can even use it as a topper over another polish. So far I’ve discovered it looks great over white and blue. And finally – it’s not gonna stain your nails! I know staining can be an issue with many turquoise and other blue shades so I’m very happy that noone will be suffering because of me.
Fool’s Gold is everything I hoped for and more. It’s a shade that has spent years living in my head so it’s surreal and incredible to see it so perfectly crafted in real life. The team at piCture pOlish got it right on the very first try – they’re truly masters of colour to have created this beauty from nothing but a few pictures and a brief description of the way I envisioned the polish. I think it’s a fresh and unique glitter polish and I really hope that you guys are as blown away as I was when I first laid eyes on it!
