Drool Britannia - UK Polish Round-Up and Swatches

Hi Goddesses

It’s been a couple of weeks since I did a Drool Britannia post, and whilst I am still working on swatches, I do have quite a lot of little snippets, so I thought I’d do a little gossipy round-up post for you …. If that’s ok ;)

Firstly – bargain hunting!   I’ve mentioned before that w7 is a great cheap British brand.  They do a lot of normal colours, and also some quirky bits too.  Well, my local Factory Shop (discount store) currently has them at £2 a bottle, so I had to grab a few.

Firstly I picked up a couple of bottles of white and black as they are great for nail art, and then these 2 bright pinks, for hot summer manis.

W7 have a new range out called the Suedes, and I picked up these 4.

And they also have a couple of new sparklies, and I picked up these 3 pretties (coming to the blog v soon.)  Space Dust, Space Debris and Moonlight (which may be an older one).

I also managed to pick up Cuticura intensive hand cream for just £1 for 75ml – super bargain!

Rimmel have also released a new line of polishes called Salon PRO.  These are retailing at £4.49 for 12ml, which allows Rimmel a little price hike.   I do like the bottle shape though, and it’s got a wide brush.  Obviously I bought the purple to try and you’ll see it here soon.

I have a love / hate relationship with Nails Inc, as some of you may know.  Although they make lovely polishes, I don’t think they deserve an £11 price point.  They do however, do a bi-monthly deal on QVC for about £30, and this was what was in this month’s box –

There’s been a bit of a hoo-hah this month.  The box should have come out last month, and it was also supposed to have some different polishes in it, including a Hot Pink Leather.

Sadly, I’m not in love with any of the polishes, but that’s not entirely Nails Inc’s fault.  I am rapidly approaching a point where I feel I “have” most of the colours, and that’s part of the problem with this collection.

Royal Mews is a subtle holo – it’s not silver or beige, but somewhere in between, and has a subtle peach to pale green bend.  It’s nice, but I don’t love it.

Pembroke Square is a dark plum Leather Effect polish, and I just do NOT understand what it’s doing in a box of summer polishes.  This is deepest darkest dark … it screams November … weird.

Featherstone Street is a shimmery pink – bright, nothing  out of the ordinary – and St James Square is a lovely turquoise, but too similar to many I already have.

Hampton Court Palace Gardens is a pastel orange as well as a bit of a mouthful!  It’s also almost a dead on dupe for Barry M Mango.

The collection is rounded off with Brighton Feather Effects (dupe for Barry M Sour Apple Confetti polish) and the Nails Inc Express Remover Pot (which I still haven’t tried even though I think I have 3 of them now haha).

Hope that's enough to keep you drooling for now, and I'll be back soon with some British swatches :)  xx  Enjoy

Drool Britannia - Accessorize Dragonfly and Bumblebee

Hi Goddesses

Today sees the start of a series I've threatened for a while - Drool Britannia, dedicated to celebrating and showing off the best of British nail polishes.  Let's forget the bit where I said this was going to happen in February lol.

Accessorize is a quirky little UK brand.  It's a spin off from Monsoon, and it's a girl's paradise - hats, bags, hair stuff, stationery ..... and polish.   They do cute little SMALL bottles of polish, which although reasonably priced, start to seem expensive when you compare how much you get in them to a Barry M.

Anyway, they've always been quite innovative in what they do.  If you're looking for something a little different, special or sparkly, Accessorize is the place to hit on the High St.

So a couple of months ago they released a whole range of speckled polishes, hot on the heels of Nails Inc (too expensive) and w7 (waaaay cheap).   They all have cute garden names too :)

Dragonfly is the green one, and it's a really interesting shade of green - quite cold and melodic.  There is a really lovely tone to it - and you know I don't do green!

The glitter in this one is a lilac-purple and the 2 clash beautifully.  The only issue is that within a month I ended up with 2 other polishes very similar to this, and it suffers by comparison due to a lack of complexity.

Bumblebee is .... not yellow.  Lol.   I don't understand why it's called Bumblebee when it's orange and black, but hey ho! 

The orange in this is a lovely deep burnt shade rather than a neon bright.  I can also see this working well at Hallowe'en.

You'll see both glitters look quite dense.  I used 3 coats as I wanted total opacity without undies.  For a sparser look, just pick some undies of a similar colour, and you'll be good to go.

Neither of these are complex by Indie standards - it's just standard, one size hex glitter, but it's great to this sort of stuff on the High St at a good price point.   And if you can't find the High St, you can also pick them up on the Accessorize website HERE.

Enjoy xx :)