Wednesday, March 9, 2011

A England - knightly shine

The other day I received another three bottles of the knightly A England polishes, sent to me by the incredibly nice brand owner Adina. Check them out!

First, Avalon.




Two coats - index nail is three because I messed it up. This being a purple and all, it's not entirely color accurate in my photos. They have undergone a bit of color correction, but let's pretend it's obvious that this is a red leaning purple. It's filled with pink and blue shimmer, making it an overall typical royal purple - however, I have searched my entire stash of more than a hundred purple shimmers, and I do not have a dupe, and very few similar ones. It's glowing, and gives a duochrome impression, though I can't find any actual duochrome pigments in it. I like this one more than I anticipated!

Next, Lancelot.



One (1) coat! And now you're thinking "is this a black creme?", but no, it's not. It's a deep, deeeep, and yes, almost black, purple red creme. I'd call this one a true eggplant color. Adina herself describes Lancelot as an "intriguing mysterious black red garnet", and it does sound more Lancelot-ish than ...eggplant. Most of the time, you won't be able to tell it's anything other than black - not even the sun would bring out the red tones - but sometimes knowing is enough, and is truly gothic, and yes, it is vampy. And, it's incredibly pigmented. Almost ridiculously!

Last: Galahad.



Two coats. This name I actually had to look up - evidently there are limits to my knowledge in ancient celtic mythology. Nonetheless, this one is a tad washed out blue, on the warmer side. At first I thought just like I did with Avalon - "I should be able to come up with something similar!" - but after comparing it to this and that, it turns out that it's a whole lot more unique to my collection than I could have imagined. Apart from this, it's also very nice, and fairly pigmented - overall a great polish.

Just as with the first three A England polishes I tried, I'm very impressed with the formula, pigmentation, brush and control. I have no problems doing nice manicures with these lacquers, even though Lancelot is so darn pigmented that if you do land even the littlest amount in your cuticles, getting it out will be quite some work!

At first glance, these colors may not seem all that unique, but as you have probably guessed by now, I was surprised at how unique they really are. If you explore the entire range of A England, you'll find many of our most loved nail colors, but they have been done with a little twist. This leads us to the two reasons why the product is worth its pricetag - not only is it a great premium polish, but the true nail color nerd will also experience tht little tingling feeling when looking at them.

I know this is another very positive review for A England, but I am impressed. Now all that is missing for this brand to make it into the deepest of my heart, is a good green color.

To find out more about A England, visit the website.

Swedish word of the day:
hjälte -noun hero
Some of these might be to some.

6 comments:

  1. These all look so good.
    I love Galahad best, partially for the name and partially for the color.

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  2. Wow those are nice! I really like avalon!

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  3. Weirdly, I really like Lancelot. It just looks perfect and I imagine it would be soooooo shiny with two coats.

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  4. The purple one was very pretty

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  5. OMG, I love those so badly... In real life, I'm a scholar in Celtic culture and English Medieval literature, so you can guess how tempting those are (I tried to resist, but three of them are on their way to me right now...). I have to comment though on you not knowing about Galahad because of your "limited knowledge of ancient Celtic mythology" (technically though Arhturian legends are not part of Celtic mythology, but that's just me nitpicking): Galahad is part of the much later traditions of Arthurian literature, when Christianity became involved with the Grail Quest (what is called the French tradition, taken back to English language by Malory in the 15th century), so he's not part of the "famous" characters like Merlin or Guinevere. So I guess you're far from being the only one who didn't know about him, or about Elaine, his mother.
    I'm done with being a medieval geeky pain in the ass ;)

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