NOTD: Orly Le Chateau and China Glaze I'm Not Lion

Hi Everyone,

This is actually my earliest post in a while! It's really surprising actually, I didn't really start doing anything until about 4pm today so I thought it would be a late one, especially because I got up a couple of hours earlier than normal... 

I had to go and feed my Mum's dogs because she was away dropping my brother off to start uni, that took ages, and the 15 minute walk home took ages because I stopped to get sausage and chips (so much for healthy eating). Then I had to put my son to bed and eat my dinner! It was nice not to have to cook, and I have nothing in the house so I don't know what I would have made anyway!

I have a NOTD post to show you today, and I have a confession to make: I have no camera. When I was away a couple of weeks ago I seemed to misplace it. I don't know if I left it at the hotel (I called both hotels with no luck) or at my boyfriend's parents' house, or in our car which is currently being fixed. So hopefully it'll turn up. So these photos were taken with my iPad. I know phone pics etc are a real blogging no-no, but I had no other choice and I really wanted to show off these nails!

I wanted something autumnal as the weather is getting colder, but I also wanted glitter. So I chose Orly Le Chateau, which I picked up a while ago in a set from TKMaxx and China Glaze I'm Not Lion. I'm loving that polish, I've only had it a month and this is my third time wearing it, that says a lot for me! 

Le Chateau is from the Holiday Soiree Collection for Winter 2011. I got this, Ma Cherie (from the same collection) and Lucky Duck (from the fall 2011 Birds of a Feather collection). It's a very blackened teal, near black and it's so glossy! This is what the creme from the Nails Inc Blair Duo should have been, in my opinion, because it was a disaster. This was beautiful, one coat was nearly opaque but I used two coats for the photos. 

I used three coats of I'm Not Lion, and one coat of Seche Vite on all nails.

Natural Light

Sunlight

Sorry about the photos! I need to see if I can borrow a camera from my Mum or something for future posts until mine turns up/I get something else sorted. I do have another camera but no memory card or cable... Luckily the camera on my iPad isn't too bad. I have some posts ready to go as well with the photos done so I should be okay for a little while anyway.

See you back here on Monday, have a lovely weekend!

China Glaze - I'm Not Lion

Hi Everyone!

What a busy day I've had today! I had my buggy blast exercise class today and I'm aching so much! We did a lot of boxing, and even though I had to leave slightly early today, I can really feel it in my arms and stomach. I think when we have a bigger house I'm going to get a treadmill and a punchbag and have a little gym room. I love running but I'm always worried about my arms and stomach, so I think getting into casual boxing a bit would really help that...

Today I have a polish that I bought as a little birthday treat for myself. I'm not lion is from the China Glaze On Safari Fall 2012 Collection and it's a gold glitter. But it's not just any gold glitter, this could be my favourite ever. I don't actually think swatches online did it justice!

It's really hard to see the different colour glitters in here, there are gold, holographic and beige glitters, but I'm sure I could see green too! The best chance you'll have of picking out the colours is in the shade, because in the sun this is so sparkly. My camera had a couple of bright spots because it couldn't deal with that much sparkle!

The photos below show three coats, but two were fine for full opacity. 

Natural light

Sunlight

And here's a little video, my camera would NOT focus, it was too sparkly...

I hope you enjoyed the video! The music is Arctic Monkeys Fake Tales of San Francisco... It's one of my favourites!

I bought this from Nail Polish Direct here where it retails for £5.45. I think I might have to pick up a couple more from this collection, I'm a big fan of it! 

Do you have any favourites from this collection? Let me know!

Birthday Nails!

Hi Everybody! 

I hope you all had a lovely weekend! I did :) It was my birthday yesterday so I had an eventful day. My family came over to my house to give me my presents, I got very spoiled indeed! And then we went out to TGI Fridays for lunch. I ate more than I have in months and was very bloated and uncomfortable for the rest of the day and didn't need any dinner! In the evening I went to a local pub with my boyfriend, brother and a couple of his friends to do a pub quiz, which we won!!!!! We watched the Olympics Closing Ceremony afterwards so it was a lovely way to round off my day!

Today I was meant to be doing an activity that my brother had organised... One of my presents from him was a Segway Rally experience day, but the nearest available date is in October, so I'll be booking it for then!

Anyway, I did a special manicure for my birthday which was kind of thrown together last minute before I went out for the meal. I didn't have much time because I did a mani-pedi for my Mum! 

My brother bought me China Glaze Luxe and Lush, and I decided to incorporate that. I already had it but the formula on my bottle was horrific so I was glad to get a new one!

I won't go into details about the polishes I used but it was one coat of Cult Nails Nevermore, one coat Gosh Galaxy (swatches and review coming soon), one coat Luxe and Lush, and then one coat Models Own Disco Heaven. I used two coats of Seche Vite. 

Here it is:

I decided to mix it up a bit for the evening and added a matte top coat. I'm not sure how I felt about this, but it looked better in real life than in the photo! It looked like frosted glass! 

I'm really excited to show you all another of my birthday polishes. It's one I've wanted for ages but my brother is just waiting for it to arrive then I can have it!

Hope you liked my birthday mani!

Don't forget, you still have five days to enter my Olympic Giveaway to win a bottle of Barry M Jewel Britannia!

Candeo Colors Zef Production Seconds

Hi guys!

Just a quick post from me tonight. I've been doing my guest post for Island Girl Insights and I'm really tired now! That and my son has been really ill for the last two days, I'm beat... And I have a playgroup to go to tomorrow, I need some real downtime! I was so relaxed last weekend and now I'm super stressed out again!

Anyway, I have a really pretty polish to show you tonight. I mentioned in my Five Favourites post that I had indie polish fever, and this is just one of the polishes I picked up recently. I got this in the last Candeo Colors opening, I couldn't believe I managed to snag three polishes... It was my third time trying to get some Candeos, sitting there until the shop opened refreshing and refreshing! I wanted the real Zef, which has an extra type of blue matte glitter in, but it had sold out, this one was on the third page tucked away on its own so I think a lot of people missed it. I've noticed some people online saying that they got the real Zef just without a label on, so I don't know what happened with it all.

My Zef has large pink squares, medium and small blue hexes, and small pink and black hex matte glitter. If anything, I prefer it without the extra blue in because in my opinion there isn't enough pink! 

Here's a macro from the bottle:

Application on this was good, no issues with glitter coverage. I managed to get loads of pink on my left hand but I was really fishing for it for my right hand! The photos below show one coat over China Glaze Electric Beat.

Natural light

Sunlight

I love this. I'm really happy with the layering combo and I have plenty more in mind. This is a really original glitter and I'm so happy I managed to get it. I am in LOVE with matte glitter!

The original Zef costs $9 on the Candeo Colors site but you can also get this brand at Llarowe. This version, the production seconds costed $5 in the last opening, I'm not sure if it will be available again.

China Glaze 3D Prismatic - Optical Illusion

Hi guys,

I hope you're having a good week so far. I'm so depressed today... This is the view that I have to look at all day:

The weather has been so bad! It's July and we're on a severe weather warning!!! I feel like I'm not going to get a summer. I need some sun, I'm pale and miserable...

So here's some glitter! I bought this a little while ago after I saw some swatches online. Optical Illusion is from the 3D Prismatic Collection and it has a blue/purple duochrome as well as different sized glitters. 

This went on really smoothly and I only needed two (thick coats) for the pictures below.

Natural light

Sunlight

Colour shift

Macro

I love this! I've heard it looks great over black as well so that's something I'll definitely be trying out too. 

I know this is really easy to get hold of in the USA, but if you're in the UK you can find it at Nail Polish Direct here for £5.45. I've mentioned this site before and I highly recommend it! I'm planning my next purchase as we speak!

Nail Mail and haul!

Hi everyone,

I've had such a busy day... That's all I ever seem to say these days! My Mum rang me at 9.30 to ask if I wanted to go to the gym so I did that, did a bit of shopping, came home and did some washing, then went for a walk with my Mum and her dogs, then finally at 7pm I had my first meal of the day! Then I planned a guest post for another blog and took half the photos I need... The life of a single (while the bf is away) mother and nail blogger is a very busy one! Now I'm going to sit and watch some TV and eat chocolate brownies, only a couple I promise!

The polishes I bought today evened out at about £1 each which is amazing in my opinion!!! I'm sure my boyfriend will agree too if he's reading this! Most of these are for my upcoming guest posts over at Island Girl Insights but a couple are because I NEEDED them!

Revlon, MUA, 2true and NYC Colors goodies!

The MUA polishes are always £1, which I think is really good, they're small bottles but it means that you can get lots and mix and match. I got the 2true polishes in a 2 for one, and I saved money on the NYC ones because I bought two (one was to add to my giveaway). On my way out of town I thought I'd stop in Poundland. I'm always checking in there for nail polish, mostly because I always hear Americans saying they find great old discontinued shades in dollar stores. Anyway, I found these Revlon polishes in there! The green on the left is a matte finish, and I'm sure it's an old bottle because it had leaked all over the place and was sooo gloopy!!! The other four are amazing though, great formula and great shimmery glass fleck appearance.

When I was feeling stressed this afternoon trying to tidy up, the post lady arrived at my door with some nail mail! I got my two Ozotic polishes from the Llarowe birthday sale and my first order from Nail Polish Direct. They sell China Glaze, OPI etc for more reasonable prices than other sites. I bought one of the China Glaze Prismatic colours as well as Barry M Hologram Hexograms, it was cheaper there than on the Barry M site with free delivery, and I've wanted it for ages so I thought I might as well buy it! 

Here they are!

Pretties!

I haven't done a haul post like this in ages so I thought today was the right time! See you back here tomorrow for a normal post!

Jubilee Manicure!

Hi guys,

It's a bit of a late post from me tonight, I went out for a lovely meal with my boyfriend. His parents looked after our son and it was lovely to have a bit of time off. If you're from the UK you'll know today is the first day of a four day weekend, and if you're not British, you might have heard something about the Jubilee, or you might not! Today is the first day of the celebration of the Queen being on the throne for 60 years! We get a four day weekend this weekend, so everybody is in the party mood.

I'm not really a Royalist, but I'm all for celebrating, so I thought I'd plan a subtle nod to the Queen. I'm not great at nail art, so I couldn't do anything too elaborate. I settled on a Union Jack accent nail!

The polishes I used for this were: China Glaze Sea Spray (it's the closest thing to white I have with me!) and 2true shades 1 and 2 for the blue and red. I painted on one coat of Sea Spray, then did the red cross and diagonal lines, then put a little bit of blue in the corners. 

I'll have full reviews of the 2true shades probably next week. They're both highly pigmented shimmer polishes that have a glass fleck effect. They're so pretty and cover perfectly in two coats.

Here's the outcome of my manicure:

Natural light

Flash

Macro, look at that shimmer!

I was so pleased with how this turned out, despite my lack of nail art skills! Hope you like it too!

China Glaze Sea Spray

Hi everyone,

Hope you're having a nice day, the sun is out again today here so I'm hoping to get outside in a bit! I'm posting earlier today because I have a bit of time, also I've noticed that I get around double the hits when I post earlier in the day, so I'm hoping more people get the chance to enjoy my blog if I make some more effort and post at a reasonable hour!

Anyway, today I have one of my favourite polishes to show you. It's by China Glaze and it's called Sea Spray. This came out in the Spring 2011 Anchors Away collection but I only got it about a month ago. It's a very greyed out pale blue creme with a stunning soft shimmer to it. I don't own anything even remotely similar to this! It's just beautiful! 

The China Glazes that I've used so far (with the exception of For Audrey) have had a brilliant formula and this was no different. It went on very smoothly and only took two coats to reach opacity. The dry time was good as well considering I didn't use any topcoat.

The photos below show two coats of Sea Spray.

Natural light

Flash

I know I'm slightly late to the party with this shade, but I absolutely love it. It is so muted and subtle, which I love in a creme. The only complaint I have is that it doesn't pull as blue on me as I would like! It looks more of a greeny grey! But the shimmer looks so pretty and the colour is just perfect!

China Glaze Smoke and Ashes

Hi everyone, 

I hope you've all had a lovely day. I've been pretty busy on this rainy Bank Holiday Monday but I'm still managing to post at a reasonable hour which makes me very happy! Other things making me happy today are:

1. The sun came out for about 10 minutes. I got so excited I had to post a picture on Instagram (@truly_polished).

2. Dollish Pollish had a mini restock of her leftover polishes and I got some! I may or may not have posted a little while ago that I missed out. There was a HUGE amount of buzz about the last restock and it sold out within about 30 seconds... I was one of the people clicking refresh from 10 minutes before and I still missed out! Anyway, I noticed a tweet about three minutes past 8 saying there would be a mini restock at 3pm EST, which I was sure was 8pm my time! I checked and it was true! I got Heart of Glass by refreshing and clicking add to basket, then I checked out because I was so scared my basket would empty!!! Then I composed myself, went back and tried my luck with a couple more. I tried the same technique and got Putting on the Ritzzz and Spank You Very Much. I feel bad because I know I got my polishes because someone else's cart emptied, but when I get my pretties, the guilt will all fade away!

Anyway, enough of all that and on to the polish! I have China Glaze Smoke and Ashes for you! This polish is from the Hunger Games Capitol Colors collection (inspired by the Hunger Games movie). I used this as a base for Luxe and Lush a couple of days ago but here it is on it's own. This is a very blackened green glass fleck polish, there aren't enough like this around, let me tell you!

The formula on this was amazing! It was a one coater for me, but I did put a second coat on to see if it changed the look of it, which it didn't! 

Now for some photos! All of the photos were taken in normal, natural, regular daylight. Luckily (seeing as there is no sunlight!) I think this polish looks better like that so you can see the glass flecks...

Natural light

Side view - look at those glass flecks!

Macro

This is the polish I was most looking forward to from this collection, and it really didn't disappoint. This kind of colour is perfect for when I'm in a bad mood and I want to show it with my nails! I also wear colours like this on my toes all the time. Right now I have Cult Nails Living Water on my toes but I think this will be finding its way onto them soon!

China Glaze Luxe and Lush

Hi guys!

I'm so sorry I deserted you all, I really never meant to. I went on holiday with the best of intentions to post every other day, but I just didn't have the time. When I'm home, blogging is just another part of my daily routine, I can do it at the end of the day when all my jobs are done, but on holiday it's totally different... I didn't have internet in the room, so I had to go downstairs to use a computer in the lobby. Also, the computer I was using was an absolute NIGHTMARE! I hate Windows with a passion, ever since I got my MacBook Air nearly two years ago I haven't looked back! This computer was a relic... 

Anyway, I had a lovely time. Malta is so beautiful, I went two years ago and have wanted to go back ever since. My son seemed to like it too, I think (like me) he belongs in a warmer climate. I was so gutted to come back to the grey skies and rain, but life is life! 

The one disappointment of the holiday was the lack of polishes! I wanted some Layla ones to bring back but they only had the magnetics when all I wanted was a few holos! So I ended up not bringing anything back with me... It's okay though, I have so much to show you all, and I got some amazing HITS nail mail today too, ten polishes to be exact, including the whole Phenomena collection, the first of which will be up on here tomorrow.

Today I have a China Glaze polish to show you. I got this in a swap for a bottle of Max Factor Fantasy Fire. Luxe and Lush is from the Hunger Games collection that came out a couple of months ago. It's a flakie with a colour shift. However, this isn't the same as other flakies, the flakes are really big.

The formula on this was terrible, the worst formula I've ever used. It was like trying to apply jelly onto my nails. I'm going to have to put some thinner in this when I want to wear it again. For the photos below I used two coats of Luxe and Lush over Smoke and Ashes from the same collection (I'll be reviewing that soon!) This dried horribly, so I really needed a coat of Seche Vite to smooth the polish out.

All of these photos were taken in natural light. I didn't use the flash and there was certainly no sunlight!!!

Straight on, the colour of these flakies is like nothing I've seen before

Here you can see the colour shift

Side view, glossy Seche Vite!

Overall I do like this polish and once I get some thinner, I'll wear it again. I particularly like flakies like this on my toes, I wore Nubar 2010 on my toes for about 4 months and this is a really chunky version of that. 

This polish is readily available in the USA but in the UK you can probably find it on eBay, or alternatively get some polish buddies over in America to send you some!

As a side note... If you follow me on Twitter you'll notice I posted about having my own domain name! You can now find my blog at www.trulypolished.co.uk! I really wanted the .com but it was already taken unfortunately! Also, I've FINALLY set up an Instagram account, you can find me at @truly_polished on there, and on Twitter if you don't follow me already. Don't forget about my 30 follower blog giveaway! I'm only counting followers on here because all the companies etc that follow me on Twitter will mess up the selection. So if you want to be in with a chance of winning two (probably three actually) polishes, start following me on here, I'm only 8 followers away!

I'll be back tomorrow with a gorgeous HITS Phenomena........ See you then!

Nail mail, and beautiful swaps! Oh, and a little haul...

Hi guys,

Today is a super late post because I've been at the gym! I ended up going with one hand polished and one hand naked nails because I was going to swatch one of my new polishes to show you tonight but I really wanted it to be in the sunlight and I didn't have my camera with me when it was sunny because I was at the supermarket!

I got this nail mail on Thursday afternoon after an infamous attempted delivery slip arrived at my house on Wednesday, story of my life! I was just expecting the one parcel because I only got one slip but I had two packages secured onto a box with elastic bands! So almost everything I was waiting for! One online order and two of my three remaining swaps.

Here they are!

See individual pictures of each polish by group after the jump!

China Glaze for Audrey and Models Own Indian Ocean

Hey everyone!

Today I have one of the new Beetlejuice SS12 polishes to show you. This shade is called Indian Ocean and it is a sheer blue duochrome that shifts from gold to pink. I only bought this colour from the new collection because I want to wait and see how strong the duochrome is on the others before I buy them. I bought four from the last Beetlejuice and was really disappointed with two of them so I wasn't about to make the same mistake again!

I will wear this polish on its own at some point, but for these pictures I chose to layer it over For Audrey by China Glaze, which I just received yesterday!

Breakfast at Tiffany's is my favourite film, so I knew I had to have this near-true Tiffany blue! Application was okay on this, two coats gave me adequate coverage, but the drying time was CRAZY long!

I then added two coats of Indian Ocean and was in love! The blue base of it took away from the minty green-ness of For Audrey and gave it such a beautiful shimmer! I even got complimented on this today!

Inside in the shade

Outside in the sun

Macro

This polish is so pretty, I just wish it looked better with my skin tone. That doesn't matter to me though, I'll still be wearing this again! You can find it at Boots or here for £5.

More Nail Mail!

Hi guys, another post for today!

One of my favourite things is shopping online. I buy stuff most days but what I hate is when I miss the postman for some reason! Especially when I've ordered more than one thing so I don't know exactly what I've missed when I see my attempted delivery slip! 

When I got home last night I had TWO of these slips! I'm waiting for a few swap packages, and a lot of online orders so I was really curious to find out what I had missed, so today I rushed down to the sorting office to collect my things. 

It was some serious nail mail! One package was from a polish buddy, Crystal from Crys Loves Polish and the other was an order from Llarowe. 

I did a swap with Crystal for two bottles of Max Factor's Fantasy Fire and she sent me Essie's Absolutely Shore and Navigate Her, as well as China Glaze For Audrey. She added an image plate for good measure and sent me such a cute little card!

For Audrey, Navigate Her, Absolutely Shore

My Llarowe order included a couple of the HITS No Olimpo polishes plus two polishes from Up Colors, one holo and one flakie.

Rosa Star, Balada, Hefesto, Apolo

I can't wait to swatch all of these!!! I really can't pick which one of these is my favourite!