NOTD: H&M "Wintersky"

H&M Wintersky is like the winter sky at twilight, a mix of silver, pale blue, pale pink and darker blue. It is really a multi chrome, i.e. it flashes different colours depending on the direction of the light and the direction you are looking at it. It is also unique in my stash, and at around £2 is a must have in my book.

On to the swatches, all are three coats (multichromes are often quite hard to get opaque), with Poshe fast drying base coat and top coat, in natural light.

I must admit, I bought this on a nail polish sale page on Facebook. I can't remember the last time I went to H&M, I think I blotted out the awfulness of the shop!  I missed a trick though, as Wintersky is the loveliest silvery colour and I adore it. Still can't bring myself to check out their other polishes in person though, and as for Top Shop they can forget it!

NOTD: Leighton Denny "All About Me"

On my nails today is this beauty, Leighton Denny "All About Me". I can't remember where I bought this, possibly from eBay, although this is core collection so you can get it from M&S or the Leighton Denny site amongst other places.

One thing that has surprised me is that I like pink on my nails. I always assumed, given my goth background, that I would go for darks and black. But there is nothing more cheery than a bright splash of pink on your nails! Also I think it surprises other people that I like it too. All the swatches below are three coats, in natural light.

Love, love, love it! Leighton's polishes can be on the thin side, so I generally use three coats and this was no excecption. Base and top coat are my usual Poshe fast drying base and top coat.

Do you wear colours that would have surprised your teenage self? Do you wear any colours to shock other people?

NOTD: Cult Nails "My Kind of Cool Aid" and a haul photo

This is another US brand, although I think they may be boutique rather than indie (and no, I don't know the difference really!).  I bought this ages ago from Harlow and Co, a Canadian company that aggregates indies and international polishes, and luckily ships to the UK.

My Kind of Cool Aid is a dusky lilac with a silver shimmer. It went on well, and I only needed two coats for these swatches. First up, no flash.

 Second with flash, you can see the silver better here.

 Lastly on the arm of my new settee, in daylight.

Finally a gratuitous post shot, thank god it was only me in!  In my defence, this is a redelivery of two days plus that day's post, so three days worth in total.  But they are all for me *embarrassed*, a mix of nail stuff and some Lego.

I had high hopes of My Kind of Cool Aid; on paper it's the dusky lilac that I like, with a subtle silver sprinkling. Cult Nails have produced one of my favourite ever polishes, Let's Get Dirty. However although it went on well, I have similar in my stash and probably wouldn't reach for it again.

Anyone admit to any polishes that they wanted for ages and then felt let down by it?

NOTD: Liquidus Nail Gloss "Moonstone"

Today's NOTD is by a US Indie maker, Liquidus Nail Gloss. The polishes are all  named after precious and semi precious stones, and I picked up minis of Moonstone, Arsenic and Pyrite from the Etsy store. I like getting minis of indies, as I'm often wary of the quality, plus when you are paying over £8 postage from the US you need a few to make it worth your while!

 

Onto the swatches. Moonstone is gorgeous! It's a sheer, glowing, sparkly bright baby blue. It looks like the blue of the neon tetra fish, in both colour and vividness. I used three coats here, it would have been OK with two but I don't like visible nail line (VNL).

Another shot. I really must get to grips with my camera and light box and stop using my phone.

This was another I didn't want to take off! Am I the only one who has a stash of untrieds that turns out to be hiding an absolute classic?

NOTD: Leighton Denny "Lilac Lust"

Today's post is about the closet I ever get to nail art. I used three coats of Leighton Denny Lilac Lust (which I got in a set from QVC), and the flat rhinestones are OPI "I Snow you Love Me", individually placed. To get the glitter in place I used a dotting tool to pick them up from the brush. I don't see how you can use this polish any other way, to be honest, as the glitters are too big and random to do a normal glitter top coat. However they work perfectly as flat rhinestones!

Lilac Lust is from Leighton Denny's winter 2013 collection, and although it looks in the bottle as though it will be a shimmer, it is really a crème. As with all Leighton's polishes I find that two coats are too sheer and patchy, but a third evens things up and gets rid of VNL (visible nail line).

You can buy Leighton Denny in M&S now, as well as John Lewis on the high street, or online from their own site and various others if you search. I bought I Snow you Love Me (from the Christmas Mariah Carey collection - sad face) from Nail Polish Direct.

NOTD: Liquid Sky Lacquer "Wine and Roses"

As I've been a bit lax in keeping up with my blog (six weeks without a single post!), I've decided to do some short posts showing what I've been wearing recently. 

The first of these is Liquid Sky Lacquer "Wine and Roses". This is a thermal polish, which changes colour depending on how warm or cold you are, which usually means you have different colour tips to the nail bed. Wine and Roses is a pink/burgundy with a slight scattered holo effect. It sat in my untried for ages, and then once I'd put it on I didn't want to take it off as I was completely enthralled by the colour change in my nails! It's quite hard to get a picture of the tips one colour, as soon as I looked at my nails with the camera they'd changed colour!

The next picture is cold (to be honest they looked like this a lot of the time!). You can see the scattered holo in this.

This is warm, a pastel pink (although you can see the tips just starting to change).

 

I bought this myself from Rainbow Connection, which has had a very bad impact on my bank balance since opening in September!

Mini music review: White Lies "Big TV"

This is the first album for ages that I have been looking forward to.  I absolutely loved "To Lose My Life...", it is an album that I listen to at least once a week and all the way through. The music is great and each song is like a mini story.

The second album, Ritual, was a grower and I'm not totally sold on it still. Perhaps the fact that it coincided with my redundancy after 11 years has somewhat coloured it for me. There are a handful of good tracks but I tend to listen to them by themselves.

Big TV is more like To Lose My Life than Ritual. Hooray! I think I've already listened to it more times than its predecessor.

You can listen to a sample of Big TV on Spotify.  If you like Maximo Park or Tears for Fears, you might like White Lies too.

The album described in one word: cinematic
Good track/bad track rating: 10/12 (and one of those is 0.49s!)