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Monday, 2 April 2012

Independents Week - Pretty And Polished - Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am

Hi Goddesses






Welcome to Independents Week, where I'll be shining the light on some independent brands, most of whom sell on Etsy.  I have more of their polishes than I can use in a week, so these posts will continue beyond Friday.





As you know, I'm a sucker for a good glitter, and I've had this little beauty lying around for ages.   This is from an Etsy Store called Pretty And Polished which is run by Chelsea McDonnell.   She creates some lovely glittery polishes, which are all a little bit unusual.  You're probably more familiar with Jawbreaker, which is very popular, but as white does nothing for me, I went for the darker ones.





This is a berry jelly, quite deep, but still slightly non-opaque after 3 good coats.  It's loaded with with silver and blue glitter in tiny and medium pieces, which clash beautifully with the warmth of the berry.   It looks particularly good in the sheltered light of my car (which you won't see here, aarrggh) where the glitter gives a cold, voltage-laden flash which is quite breath-taking.





This is also a bit of a glitter sandwich, and as I've still not perfected those lol, I'm happy to use this as a substitute.  It builds nicely, and it actually didn't bother me that it retained it's slightly sheer quality - it's beautiful enough to get away with it - although you could wear something like  OPI Malaga Wine under it to save the layers.





Because of the varied size of glitter, you need to be careful how you apply this.  It's important that when you dip the brush back in the bottle, you let it go and let it sit all the way down in the neck.  This way, you'll continue to pick up the larger pieces which tend to settle at the bottom.  If you just gently dip your brush into the surface of the polish, you'll only get the smaller pieces, and your mani won't look as good.  The photos you're seeing are of my left hand; I was lazier with my right, and the lack of big glitter stopped the polish looking as good as it could.





One other thing.  I've been really tired this last week, so this ended up on my nails through 3 days of work and plenty of typing. I know a lot of people worry about the quality of non-brand polishes, but really, you can't complain about the durability here.  This was 3 coats and then 1 layer of Poshe.







You can buy Chelsea's polishes at her Etsy store here.






Enjoy xx :)