Wingdust Gilt-y Pleasures

Hi Everyone,

I hope you guys had a great weekend! I went up to Manchester to visit my brother. I've never been to Manchester before so it was nice to go up and see where my brother lives. I stayed at his house Friday and Saturday night and came home late last night, so it was a very busy few days. We did a little bit of Christmas preparation and went to the Sealife Centre yesterday and it was lovely.

Tonight I have another polish from my Rainbow Connection haul - I know, when will it end, I've still got so much to show you... I may have even bought more last week...

Tonight's beauty is from a fairly new to me brand called Wingdust and it is amazing. It is called Gilt-y Pleasures and t has gold and silver flakes in a clear base, with the addition of blue iridescent flakes and sort of little glass flecks. I had wanted a flake top coat for ages and couldn't decide whether I wanted silver and gold, this took the options out of the equation for me!

I am in love with this polish and it is very special to me now as it is what I was wearing when my fiance proposed to me. I'll always remember it for that, and it has now been immortalised as I took the pictures for my new blog header just after I did these swatches, so if you're wondering what I'm wearing in that cartoony picture, this is it!

The formula is perfect on this, the photos below show just one coat over Cult Nails Nevermore. As you can tell, the silver flakes are bigger in size than the gold ones. You can control them enough to split them into small parts while applying this, but I like it this way... My engagement ring is platinum and I so I prefer the gold to be more of an accent here with the silver matching more, just my preference though!

How pretty is this?!

Flash

Natural light

Sunlight

I am just in awe of how pretty this is. I've actually worn this three times in the 5 or so weeks that I've had it, which is a lot for me. Next on my list is pairing this with a pink... I'm half set on Essie Spaghetti Strap and actually have it on my dining table ready to paint on, buy I might go for something paler. Decisions, decisions...

This is in stock now on Rainbow Connection here, and it's currently on sale for £9.81 instead of the original price of £10.90. I'm not going to lie, I bought a backup bottle in my most recent Rainbow Connection order. This polish means too much to me to even consider running out!

Definitely check out the other polishes Wingdust have to offer. This and Steel Town Girl are my first things from them and I just love how delicate their polishes are. So pretty and the way they work with colours and finishes with the gold and silver flakes is beautiful!

What do you think of this polish? Do you have another gold or silver leaf topcoats? What are your favourites? I'd love to know!

H&M New Moon & Barry M Watermelon

Hello!

I hope you all remember who I am!

This is my attempt to get back into the swing regular blogging! I've been all over the place recently with the move, but now I've come down to my Mum's house for a couple of weeks so I've been uprooted again! I had a great routine in November, but after that, everything kind of went downhill so I'm hoping that I can get that back again! First step is a lightbox, I want a proper set up for my nail photos. And the next step is an organised stash. I'll feel much better when I have my polishes organised in my Helmer (which I put together the other night) and I can see what I have and haven't posted...

Anyway, tonight's post is a kind of followup to this post. I wanted to layer New Moon over something else so you could see the flakies better so I chose Barry M Watermelon. The photos below show one coat of New Moon over Watermelon. These pictures were taken a while ago when there was a bit of sun!

Natural light

Sunlight

Here you can see how translucent the flakies are

Macro from the bottle

Isn't this pretty. I'm dying to see this over black, so I'll make sure I do it as a NOTD post for that. 

This polish retails o £1.50 at H&M, what a bargain! 

You can buy Barry M Watermelon for £3.99 from all of the usual outlets.

I have some pretty polishes to show you soon, but they're at home so it'll have to wait a couple of weeks. In the meantime I have other posts planned! I'm really hoping to get back to three posts a week minimum, or four if I can manage! 

Right, that's all from me this evening, I didn't have a great night's sleep last night, then I woke up with a banging headache... Then I had to pack up everything and drive 260 miles! I'm exhausted! 

See you soon!

NOTD: Utopia and New Moon

Hi Everyone,

Hope you all had a good weekend! I cooked my Mum dinner on Saturday at her house and watched X Factor, and did nothing on Sunday. Yesterday I went to Cheltenham, and can I just say, now I understand why my boyfriend said long distance driving is tiring. 220 miles, and 2 hours there and back and I was mentally and physically exhausted, hence no post!

And I'm ill... And my son is ill. #1 on my list of things I currently hate is people bringing their sick kids to playgroup. Poor Caleb hasn't had a break... Now he has a cold and conjunctivitis. And I can't breathe through my nose because I instantly caught his cold!

Anyway, tonight's post is a NOTD. I wanted something girly and almost princessy, which is really unlike me! I knew just what I wanted, and this looked just as perfect as I thought it would!

Utopia is a very pale pink, in some lights in looks almost lilac and in others almost white. It has a great formula and for me two coats is enough for full opacity. Utopia is one of the best loved Models Own colours, but personally it never appealed to me, I prefer darker colours... I bought this during the 50% off sale celebrating 100,000 likes on Facebook to see what all the fuss was about. £2.50 wasn't a bad price (I bought 21 polishes in the sale so the cheaper the better) and I can definitely see it now. I'll have swatches of this up on it's own soon I think.

New Moon is one of my newer polishes. I bought this the week before last in H&M. I first saw this on the Nailasaurus Blog (you can see Sammy's post here) and wanted it immediately, but I couldn't find it anywhere! It's distinctive because it's in a really small bottle with a strange purple metallic lid, not like the normal bottles, but I couldn't see it. Anyway, when I was paying for various other items, my friend was in the cosmetics but, and I asked her to try and find a gold flake polish and she found it! For £1.50 it's a total bargain! It's a clear polish with gold flakies. Not colour changing, just kind of translucent. It's so pretty!

Here it is, the pics below show two coats of Utopia, one coat of New Moon, and one coat of topcoat.

Daylight

Natural light

Flash

Macro

Doesn't this look so pretty together. I think the macro shot and the flash shot show the translucent element of the flakies best. These feel the same on the nail as the flakies in Nubar 2010 and the such like, they lay flat and they don't eat topcoat. 

I'll have swatches up soon of New Moon over some other colours, but until then I'll say this... BUY THIS IF YOU CAN! For £1.50 you really won't find anything as subtly beautiful as this...

Now pardon me while I wallow in self pity until my cold has gone! At least my nails look pretty.......

The Next Two Weeks and a Bit of Seduction

Hi Guys, 

I'm sorry I didn't post yesterday! My boyfriend came home today and so I had a lot to do before he got here... This means ten million loads of washing so there is enough space in the laundry basket for his pile of clothes that he never fails to bring home after a trip offshore. Anyway, I failed miserably in my task. My washing machine wasn't working last week so everything built up, and three loads later I still hadn't made a dent in the pile! 

Anyway, I decided to edit a bunch of photos and write posts that I can schedule to cover this week and some of next week. I figured sacrificing my post last night was for the greater good. I'm going to be so busy this week!

Here's what I have to do:

• Wrap presents for my son (his first birthday is tomorrow)
• Make sure he has an amazing day
• Take him to playgroup in the morning to see his friends on his birthday
• Bake a ten inch Victoria Sponge sandwich, making sure it isn't dry
• Colour white fondant icing: light blue, dark blue, red, yellow, green and black
• Ice the ten inch cake with a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse scene
• Ice a six inch dummy red with yellow stars
• Somehow cover a makeshift polystyrene dome in black fondant and make some black fondant ears
• Make sandwiches, cupcakes, sausage rolls (cook, not make)
• Source a pasting table from somewhere
• Host a party on Saturday
• Pack on Sunday/Monday
• Take a ferry over to Holland to visit my Dad for 8 days

So as you can see, blogging really doesn't have a place in this schedule! And needless to say, I'll be so proud of my cake no matter how it turns out that I'll be taking photos to post!

Anyway, tonight will be pretty brief on the polish front, this was really to let you know what will be going on over the next week and a half! 

This polish is one of my favourites. I raved about this collection, bought the whole thing and posted it all, but I didn't post this polish for some reason! It's Cult Nails Seduction and it's from the Divas and Drama Collection. I wore it a while ago (short nails) and so I snapped a few pics, but it was raining, so I could only get a photo in the natural light, not sunlight!

Seduction is a multicoloured flakie. My favourite thing about it is the blue, I just love blue flakies! Here is two coats of Seduction over one coat of Nevermore:

Natural light

You can buy Seduction here and Nevermore is also available from Cult Nails and both retail for $10. This is limited edition so get it before it's gone. I have a backup of this that I may use for a giveaway one day, maybe a big one, like if I ever get to 250 far in the future! I have a feeling that by that time you won't be able to get hold of it and I won't want to give it away!

See you soon!

PS: This is a scheduled post! Did you realise? I'm going to try and keep them as natural as possible because there's nothing I hate more than reading scheduled posts where it's obvious they were written in advance. What I'll do is, I'll pre-write them and then add on a bit more before the schedule time to make them a bit more personal.

NYC Colors Ink Stain and Nail Pop Pearl Effect

Hi guys,

I can't believe it's the end of the week! I've been so busy so I'll be glad for the weekend to arrive... I'm a bit annoyed though because I don't get a lay in! I've got a plumber arriving at 9am (!!!!!!!!) to service the boiler. I'm not an early riser, not in the slightest. Everybody told me that would change once Caleb was born, and yes, we had nearly 9 months of getting up in the night and then up at half 7 in the morning, but now he sleeps until 10am every day, so I can still get up late every morning, which is amazing! 

I had planned something cooler for today's post, but I was so tired last night that I just wasn't up to it, so I thought I'd just try out and untried. 

Up until a couple of weeks ago, the only NYC Colors polish I owned was Lexington Yellow. And possibly a blue? I'm not 100% sure on the blue, I'll have to root through my stash. But when I was buying a black polish for Charlotte, the winner of my last giveaway, I picked up Ink Stain. It's a very dark shimmery blue. This is from their "Expert Last" range, rather than the "In a New York Minute" polishes that I usually go for. 

Formula wise this was brilliant, ideal for how I apply my polish. I polish in thick coats, and this was great in one, but I used two anyway just to make sure...

Then I thought I'd add something on top. I thought of stamping, but I was really short for time today before my son's baby music class, so I went for flakies instead. I chose Nail Pop Pearl Effect, which has dark blue flakies. It's pretty much the same as the Nails Inc Gossip Girl Serena Collection duo. I bought it from Superdrug a while ago and haven't really worn it, but I used it in my Happy Mothers' Day Franken a while ago.

Here are some pics, I'm wearing two coats of each polish with a coat of Seche Vite:

Natural light

Flash

Overall, I'm not crazy about this combo to be honest. I love both polishes on their own, but I think I should have used a teal holo flakie or a darker base. I'm so glad I got around to using Ink Stain though, it's really similar to one of my long time favourite polishes - Collection 2000's Electric Punk.

If you'd like to buy either of these polishes, NYC Ink Stain retails at £2.49, and Nail Pop Pearl Effect for £5, both are available at Superdrug.

Have a great weekend!

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!

Nails by Topshop Gypsy Night - Slightly Pic Heavy!!!

Good Afternoon!

I've got a Topshop nail polish to show you today. I am a huge fan of Topshop's clothes and I do shop there a lot, but this is actually my first nail polish from them. I'm usually quite wary of clothes shop cosmetic ranges because I think brands should stick to what they know and on Topshop's case that is clothes. However, I think I may have to take that back after Gypsy Night!

I read about this polish a while ago and needed it straight away so I bought it online with a couple of things. Gypsy Night is a black jelly polish with a lot of gold microglitter, small holographic glitter and copper/green colour shift flakies.

All my photos show two coats of Gypsy Night with a coat of Seche Vite. I got a little bit of shrinkage with this, sorry! First I planned on using my Nº7 top coat so I didn't wrap my tips, then I couldn't find it and had to get the Seche Vite on ASAP while the polish was still wet so it didn't crinkle up! So massive apologies for that!

Inside in the shade

My camera did NOT want to focus on this! All the different types of glitter was throwing it off! This means of course that I had to take a few pictures! Click "read more" to see the all of the photos and the rest of my review.

piCture pOlish Festival

Evening guys,

I'm posting a bit later than I wanted to today, I managed to fall asleep at 5pm for two hours! I went for a really long walk today to do a nail polish haul so I guess I just got too much fresh air!

Anyway, I told you I had a gorgeous flakie to show you didn't I? I bought this from Llarowe in January and I'm so in love with it! It's no secret that I'm gutted I didn't get my hands on Unicorn Puke or Clairvoyant, so I was waiting patiently (okay, maybe not so patiently!) for a multicoloured flakie, and this was worth the wait!

Festival has a clear base with multicoloured flakies suspended in it. My favourite flakies are the ones that have a lot of bright blue in them, and this one is a turquoise explosion. It has a lot of bright pink as well. Turquoise and pink together remind me of drawings I used to do of my name on MS Paint when I was younger!

The formula of this polish was a little bit thick, and meant that sometimes I had gaps with no flakies near my cuticles, but that was easy to fix. I'm more than willing to put up with a thick formula for this effect!

This covered okay with one coat, but two coats was so much better. This is one of those polishes where it goes on thin for the first coat then the second coat seems much thicker and more densely packed with flakies. I've included a one/two coat comparison just to illustrate my point!

In these photos I'm wearing two coats of Festival over two coats of the black polish I swatched yesterday.

Comparison: One coat on my index finger and middle, three coats on my ring finger and pinkie

Outside in the sun

The flash really showed off the turquoise

This polish is so beautiful! It's available here at Llarowe where it retails for $16.50. Llarowe ships internationally and from personal experience, I've found their customer service to be really good!

I'm travelling to the Netherlands tomorrow afternoon to see my Dad for 10 days, but don't worry, I'll be swatching as much as I can with the new polishes I bought today. I'm hoping to find a few continental beauties out there too!

I've also got a gorgeous post for tomorrow, it's a good one!

"Happy Mothers' Day" franken!

Hello everybody,

Happy Mothers' Day to all the Mums out there, hope you all got very spoilt today! 

Here is the franken I made for my Mum for her present. I took an empty nail polish bottle and filled it to just under a third with clear polish. Then I added two thirds of Pulsating (see yesterday's post) and filled the bottle to the top with the Nail Pop Sequin Effect shade 24 polish that I used in my franken, as seen here. To top it off I added five measures (with one measure being enough to fill the end of a straw) of my imitation Spectraflair scattered holographic pigment.

Indoors in the natural light

Here I'm wearing three coats of my franken with one coat of Seche Vite. Click "Read More" to see the rest of my photos

My pink franken!

Hi everyone,

Today I have a franken I made last night. I really wanted to paint my nails but nothing in my stash caught my eye, so I took matters into my own hands. I wanted something girly but classy and I wanted flakies!

The polishes I used were:

Rimmel Coralicious 

Saffron glitter polish - Colour 04

17 Love

17 Simply Pink

Wet'n'Wild White nail polish

Nail Pop Pearl Effect 20

Nail Pop Sequin Effect Shade 24

I really wish I'd have written down how many drops I used of each, but this was purely an experiment. It was a few drops of each and then some clear to make the glitter and flakies more visible.

The formula on this was a nightmare! It was an off the cuff frankening session, so I didn't have a proper dish or anything. Instead, I used a piece of cellophane! I was also doing it in front of a fan heater because my boyfriend has set the heating to switch off at night and I don't know how to reset the boiler! This all meant that the polish was drying as I was trying to get in on the brush!

I used two coats of my franken with one coat of Seche Vite for the photos below

Divas and Drama - PRE-SALE

Hi everyone, 

I just thought I'd let you know that the amazing Divas and Drama collection from Cult Nails is available to pre-order today until March 18th. The collection costs $30 + shipping, which is $11 to the UK. 

L-R Scandalous, Enticing, Manipulative, Seduction

I actually bought this last night, I thought I'd have a look on the site and they'd put it up a bit early. Pre-orders will ship no later than the first week of April.

Order yours here: Divas and Drama Pre-Sale

If you haven't seen any swatches yet, you can find them, along with the story behind each colour, on Maria's blog, the R3 Daily here: R3 Daily

Personally (and I don't think I'm alone here!) I'm most excited for Seduction and will 100% pick up another bottle (or 2) of that when they're available to buy separately as Limited Edition items. I'm also looking forward to Manipulative, I love a good turquoise, and this one even has a subtle colour shift shimmer!

Cult Nails - Toxic Seaweed

Hi guys,

Today I have my first ever Cult Nails polish to share with you. I bought Toxic Seaweed after it caught my eye when I was browsing their site. I'm a sucker for green nail polish, and this one has a great Cult Nails twist on it! I'm still gutted I missed out on Unicorn Puke/Clairvoyant (now discontinued) so I got 2 bottles of this as I knew it would be heading into the Limited Edition section, which it now has.

Cult Nails is a still relatively unknown brand to the general public, even more so in the UK. This really needs to change! This is by far the most original polish brand I've ever seen. The majority of the colours are created from ideas that Maria (the blogger behind the R3 Daily blog) receives in tweets and comments, meaning that the customers really get what they want. All polishes are 4 Free (free of toluene, formaldehyde, DBP, and camphor), not tested on animals, totally cruelty free and vegan friendly.

Toxic Seaweed is a forest green jelly packed with gold and green microglitter and... FLAKIES! Flakies are my all time favourite nail polish effect so I love this polish. The flakies shift from copper/red if you look straight on, and green if looked at from the side. I feel like I've seen this colour shift a million times but it looks beautiful in this polish. The formula was great and I used two coats for the photos below with one coat of Seche Vite.

Outside in the natural light

I got a bit pic heavy with this one, so click "read more" to see the rest of my photos!