Nails - OPI Mad As A Hatter

Hi everyone. Apologies again for having disappeared for a while, i've really been trying to knuckle down and paint every single day. I should be doing that anyway but i've had a big crisis of confidence lately and hadn't been. And then i wanted to catch up on everyone's posted I'd missed so i did that before writing my own posts.

Anyway here's just a couple of photos of a manicure (and i use this in the loosest sense of the word :P) i did recently using OPI's Mad as a Hatter polish. I have a stupid story about this. Basically i missed out on getting the bottles cheap from one of the US sites (i forgot the first rule of shopping: 'thou shalt buy when you first see') and didn't want to spend £10 on a bottle of polish so i bought the mini set of all 4 Alice in Wonderland polishes even though i had no interest whatsoever in the 2 reds. When i got it i was so enamoured by Absolutely Alice and Mad As A Hatter i decided i had to get full bottles of those 2 and sell on the mini set. I've never used up a nail polish in my life, but.... well i needed the full bottles! XD

 

 

Mad As A Hatter is a multiocolored glitter in a clear base. As you can probably see the colour looks very black and silver overall but there is red, blue, green and purple in the mix as well. These were the best pics i could get but it's a lot more exciting in real life. These photos show 4 layers with top coat (i use Collection 2000)

This and Absolutely Alice are the first OPI polishes i've ever tried and, while i still wouldn't pay £10 for a polish unless i was totally besotted with it like these ones, they probably have the best formula i've tried so far. Usually with glitter polishes i need to do at least 3 layers before they look remotely opaque and at first i thought these would be the same. The first coat was very thin and sparse but when i added the second i was shocked that it was somehow practically opaque already! But i was also amazed at how quickly this dried, after about 30 - 45 seconds each coat would be completely dry. So i did 4 coats of polish to make it absolutely opaque as it was just so easy to apply! (sick of reading the word 'opaque' yet :P). It also lasted brilliantly, after 5 days of wear i had a tiny amount of tip wear and one chip (and that came about from me biting my cuticle so it was my fault) but i felt like a change and took it of then, i don't know how long it would have lasted if i left it.

So yeah, i'm really really happy with this, even though i think the UK price is stupidly expensive.

While i'm talking of polishes i've had a rather frustrating time lately relating to them. I basically decided that, as i have a little bit of money lately and have become raher obsessed with polishes, i would do a big haul from one of the US sites which sell polishes cheap. I ruled Head2toe beauty out as they don't ship China Glaze to the UK so i went to 8ty8 and started filling my basket. When I'd finished my (shamefully large) haul and went to check out i saw that they ask international buyers to email them first if they want to know approximate shipping costs. So i did so and got a reply (which was very quick so that's good) saying that they weren't actually taking any international orders at the moment and won't be for at least 2 weeks due to a backlog of orders. So then i decided to go to Transdesign which i had heard great things about from other UK polish hounds. They used to do flat rate shipping boxes for polish at a really reasonable rate (i think around $18 for up to 9 polishes and $50 for up to 50 polishes or something) but apparently not anymore :( Now it seems that no matter how many polishes you have in your cart (i had less than 9 when i tried to check the shipping price) the international shipping will be over $40 because apparently nail polishes are hazardous. I've emailed them about it because somewhere on their site it still mentions the flat rate boxes but still no reply and it's been about 4 days now so i doubt i will get one :/

So now i think i will be forced to beg someone in the US to let me ship to them and then pay them the money to send them to me (like many of you kindly offered when i wanted some stuff from Sephora but i didn't take anyone up on it because i realised i didn't have enough money at the time) but that's so annoying :( Boo on you transdesign! So if anyone's up for that i would be in your debt. Or if anyone knows any websites that sell polishes to the UK for reasonable prices (i'm interested in color club, OPI, China Glaze and Orly mainly) please tell me and i will be very grateful.