Birthday Polish Haul

I turned 27 last wednesday, and I got some amazing polish-based presents from  Mr Painted Claws and from my bestie and Chief Enabler Rachael (of Racho's Nail Love).

Just to warn everyone in advance, this is gonna be a fairly pic heavy post - and these are just the bottle shots! I haven't even gotten time to think about swatching the lot!

Nails Inc Lucky Dip

Nails Inc sent me a delightful email last Thursday night - Friday, it proclaimed, was to be a lucky dip sale. 7 Nails Inc polishes from a selection of either Special Effect, Metallic or regular polishes for only £18.

I nearly had an aneurysm. I snapped up one of the regular lucky dips, which brightened my Monday by arriving super fast!

I love Nails Inc polishes - up until now I only had the three, two of which were snagged from giveaways with Glamour magazine and the other which I got for free when I signed up to the Nails Inc VIP program. The two polishes free with Glamour were Motcomb Street. a super dark navy (almost bordering on black) and Elizabeth Street, which is baby pink. My freebie for joining the VIP program (which is totally worth the £5 yearly fee - everyone should check it out) was Blenheim Terrace, another dark blue which I can only really describe as "like TARDIS blue, but a bit darker". Lovely colour, more things should come in TARDIS.

So, my 7 new polishes arrived, putting my total stash up to 118!

Left to right these beauties are...

• Keats Grove, a rich red-brown
• Gosfield Street, another shade of TARDIS
• Marble Arch, a pink-lavender-ish shade
• Walton Place, full on Barbie pink
• Westchester, a rich dark red
• Parliment Hill, concrete grey but without the horrid texture
• And last but not least Covent Garden, another dark shade of TARDIS

I'll try to get these swatched in the coming weeks, even though a couple of the colours aren't really my usual thing. This was the reason for getting the lucky dip though - force me out of my colour comfort zone. Who knows, I might end up loving every single one of them!

Totally regretting not getting a metallics dip though.

New polish

This week's haul is actually a lot larger than this post, thanks to a saturday morning spent shopping with my biggest enabler, Rachel from Racho's Nail Love, but I'm focusing on my favourite two new polishes - NYC In a New York Minute in Park Avenue and Revlon Sweet Nothings in Nude Nightie.

Park Avenue is a lush cool, neutral brown which goes on quite streaky and thin at first, but rapidly thickens up with another coat. The polish is super quick drying which is a complete must for me - I'm terribly impatient with my nails and have a nasty tendency to ruin mani's within about half an hour because I've gone to bed or sat on my hands or something equally silly.

The Revlon Sweet Nothings is only on my ring finger in these images - its a delightful, sheer and shimmery topper which looks a pale lemony yellow in the bottle. It isn't until you get it on top of a colour that it gets interesting; the pale yellowy colour pretty much disappears, leaving behind a polish base colour that is slightly lighter but covered with a cute pink shimmer.

The flash really shows up the shimmer on the topper, and the neutral tone of the Park Avenue below it.

More New Polish!

As you may have guessed by now, I'm totally hooked on scouring for polish bargains. Mostly they're coming from Poundland and Poundworld, as they seem determined to sell every bottle of Sally Hansen ever made for £1 each. This makes me incredibly happy as they were still selling the Complete Salon Manicure range in Boots for £6.99 last time I checked.

I've bought far too much in the last week.

For the grand total of £24, I've managed to get myself Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Black Platinum, Gilty Pleasure, Grass Slipper, Calypso Blue, and Green Tea; BarryM in Foil Effects Silver, Peach Melba, Teal, Tnagerine and Gelly Watermelon; also Rimmel 60 Seconds in Sky High (to replace a bottle I had ages ago that seperated badly), Rimma Lycra Pro in Aqua Cool and Revlon Hot for Chocolate. My other half, like a complete sweetheart, sneakily bought me a bottle of Essie Bahama Mama as I've been eyeing up the colour for absolutely months but I'm far too cheap to pay full price for a bottle of Essie.

New Polish

Instead of going shopping for something useful yesterday, like snow boots or a super warm jacket, but instead I went to TK Maxx and Poundland and bought more polishes.

These three were £1 each from the pound shop. I've gotten quite a few of the Sally Hansen polishes lately from there - 7 Insta-Dri and 3 of the Complete Salon Manicure.

I also managed to find something entirely fabulous in TK Maxx, although it was slightly more than £1...