Last Friday's Manicure

A little while ago I bought some Accessorize nail polishes in the Superdrug 3 for 2 on cosmetics offer. One of them was the Illusion Electric Blue colour. I'm a fan of Orly's Cosmic FX collection and own 4 of the 6 colours. I had my eye on the bright blue but didn't get around to buying it, then I saw that Accessorize had released some polishes which were really good dupes, and at half the price. The Accessorize polishes retail at £4 for 10ml which I think is pretty darn good considering my favourite brand is OPI and they cost more than double! Having said that, you do get an extra 5ml with OPI. Anyway, Orly is another high end nail brand, their polishes are around £8.95/£9.95 for 18ml over here in the UK but are harder to get hold of. Unless it is a colour you are going to use very often the large bottles aren't nessesarily worth buying so Accessorize is definately worth checking out.

The formula of Accessorize's Electric Blue seemed a little runny compared to OPI and Orly and the brush is on the narrower side. I personally like OPI brushes because they are easy to apply with due to the wider tip and you get a much more even coverage. Due to the brush and the formula being on the thin side, I did find it more difficult to get even application. After a couple of nails I started to get the hang of it and loaded the brush with more lacquer. I used 3 coats but it was actually opaque in 2 but due to me not applying evenly on some nails I did an extra coat and then I had to do an extra coat on the other nails to make them all the same.

The colour is gorgeous, it is like a bright cobolt blue with purple and lighter blue flecks in it. There sometimes seems like there is a turquoisy shade in there too. I really like duochrome polishes, I'd say this is one of my favourites because even when you are in an area where the duochrome doesn't show up all that well, the colour is still lovely.

Having applied this polish on Friday evening, I've still got a nice looking manicure (apart from the smudges due to my clumsiness) The colour is still strong, doesn't seem to have dulled at all and there is only minor tip wear. I did use OPI Nail Envy as my base and top coat (I would recommend making sure you do use a base coat to prevent staining and a top coat to prolong the colour and seal it in) followed by OPI Drip Dry Drops and OPI Avoplex Cuticle Oil, as per my usual nail painting method.

This photo shows some of the purple flecks in the polish - hard to capture

- Jennifer