Wednesday 14 May 2014

The Neverending Pile Challenge - Giveaway/Blog Sale

Hi guys, and welcome to another day of the neverending pile challenge.  The prompt for today is to use a polish you won in a giveaway, or bought from a blog sale.  A little while back, you may remember the wonderful Debbie from The Crumpet reached a million pageviews, and held the most EPIC giveaway ever.  Well, I was lucky enough to be one of the 32 winners, and this is the prize I picked - Pretty Serious - They Came From Beyond Space II collection, very kindly donated by Sally Magpie's.  I honestly wasn't expecting to receive the whole collection, and was just blown away by Sally's generosity when I unwrapped them!  I can't thank these 2 ladies enough, so I'll just say ladies, you fucking rock! Thank you! <3 <3
*In case you hadn't guessed already, this is one picture-heavy post ;)

Before we get into the swatches, can we just take a minute to admire this gorgeous packaging!?
Being a bit of a bargain hunter, I'm not normally bothered by frills, but these boxes are just gorgeous!  I love everything about them, and the soft-touch lids on the bottles are awesome too.  Not only do they feel lovely, and also make it easier to get a good grip on the lid, so they're useful too.

Anywhooooo, why don't we have a look at the actual polishes now! :D To save repetition, all of these polishes are 2 coats, no top coat, and no undies.  Application on all of them was nice, they glided on smoothly and evenly, dried reasonably fast, and had good opacity at 2 coats.  They also have the coolest names ever!

First up is Surfing Alien, a textured silver glitter, with 2 different sizes of hex glitter.  A very nice polish, if not the most unique shade.  I think I may have 2 dupes for this, but I'll be talking about that in more detail in an upcoming comparison post.





Dimension X - a sandy gold textured glitter, with 2 sizes of hex glitter.  I really like this one, and think it's the perfect polish for representing sand in nail art.  The shade, the texture, everything - it's just perfect IMO.  I really like this one :)




Deep Space Destroyer - a soft green that I'm not sure how to describe - kind of like a mint green with sage green undertones?  I dunno, but it's bloody pretty though!  Also a textured glitter with 2 sizes of hex glitter, I didn't expect to be overly keen in this, but I ended up really liking it. Definitely one of my favourites.




Next up is Warp 11, an icy blue textured glitter with 2 sizes of hex glitter.  This one is also very pretty, although I think I may have a near dupe for this one too :)




Next up is Cosmic Comet, a medium purple textured glitter, with 2 sizes of hex glitter.  No major shock, since it's purple, but I love this one.  Again, I think I might have a near-dupe, but I think CC may turn out to be a deeper purple.




Starship Doom - a charcoal grey textured frost, with silver, green and pink micro-shimmer.  The shimmer is a bit more noticeable in the bottle, but it's still visible enough on the nail to make this polish a lot more interesting than a plain charcoal texture.  This one was a little bit sheerer and thinner than the others, and I had a teensy bit of VNL at 2 coats, but I was happy to leave it like that.  You may also notice that my nails are a pinch shorter in this photo, as I didn't quite manage to swatch this one before my most recent cut down.



Can you see the pink flashes near the cuticle in this photo? They were a real bitch to photograph! :D

Next up is Robot Monster, a taupe textured glitter with major undertones of plum running through it, and 2 sizes of hex glitter. This is probably the most unique colour I've ever come across.  I'm not really a fan of taupe's/brown's of any kind, but this baby has really won me over.  It's stunning! And, no, I definitely don't have any dupes for this :D




And lastly, my absolute favourite from the collection - Menace from Mars.  A shimmery vivid red texture, that looks like velvet in the bottle.  The textured finish is very hard to describe - it's not exactly sparkly, but it's not flat either, it just kind of glows!  I don't have the OPI Brazil sands to compare, but from the swatches I've seen online they look fairly similar when textured.




This looked so good in the bottle that I couldn't resist seeing it with top coat, so the next lot of photos is with 2 coats of HKGirl.



Just amazing!  I literally have no words to express how much I love this with top coat!  It looks like someone's pressing red velvet up against a window, and it literally glows!  Just phenomenal! Pee your pants pretty! :D

Phew!  So, what do you guys think of this collection?  Personally, I love it, they are all very pretty, but my top picks would have to be Menace from Mars, Robot Monster, Deep Space Destroyer, and Cosmic Comet.

And thanks again to Debbie and Sally for their awesome kindness <3 <3

Don't forget to check out what the other ladies have for today's prompt in the thumbnails below. :)




3 comments:

  1. Wow, I had forgotten how lovely these polishes are. I love the PS packaging too, its so fun

    ReplyDelete
  2. These are amazing! I love Starship Doom, that one looks so unique, like black tourmaline. You're so lucky to have won them all! I recently won a giveaway (my first), but the prize is still on it's way to me... 2 Polish Me Silly neon top coaters... can't wait till they get here!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Omg ! Menace from Mars is amazing , specially glossy , just love it Hun ,
    What a fantastic prize , am so jealous :) xx

    ReplyDelete

I would love to hear what you guys think! There's no captchas, and you don't need an account to comment!
All comments are moderated by me, so I will always try to respond as soon as possible : )