London Day 2 - More classic views, some guards and many lovely shops

Needless to say, all pictures in this message are copyrighted to ©Minnie for The Purple Fairy Book

Bien entendu, toutes les photos de cet article sont la propriété de ©Minnie for The Purple Fairy Book

Ready for another dose of holiday pics? Here's day two, when we hopped on the bus again to get to Buckingham and the Changing of the Guards, and took some pictures along the way in the morning light: Tower Bridge, the Tower, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, and then the Guards at Buckingham Palace. Then St James' Park and more guards ;)...

Prêtes pour un autre post pleins de photos de vacances? Voici donc jour 2, où nous avons repris le bus pour aller à Buckingham et la relève de la Garde, et avons pris des photos dans la lumière du matin: Tower Bridge, la Tour, le London Eye, Westminster Abbey, la Relève de la Garde à Buckingham Palace, et ensuite St James' Park et encore des gardes ;)...

And then in the afternoon, we went to Covent Garden. Covent Garden is the theatre/opera area but it's also an ancient market that has become a gallery of adorable and trendy shops. Here we found a Moomin shop that got the Finland-lovers that we are all crazy and jumping all over, another Disney store (and believe it or not, but Minnie found something there that she hadn't found in Oxford Street!!), many cupcakes and tea shops, as well as many interior decorations stores.
More pictures after the jump!

Et l'après-midi, nous sommes allées à Covent Garden, le quartier des théâtres et de l'opéra, mais surtout l'ancienne halle du marché qui est devenue un adorable concentré de boutiques trendy et adorables. Nous y avons trouvé une boutique Moomin, et en bonnes amoureuses de la Finlande que nous sommes nous avons sauté partout en criant, une autre boutique Disney (et croyez-le ou pas, Minnie a réussi à trouver des trucs qu'elle n'avait pas vu à la boutique d'Oxford Street), et plein de petits salons de thé/boutique de cupcakes trop mignonnes, ainsi que des boutiques de déco qui donnent envie de tout acheter!!
Les photos sont après le saut!

Sneak Peek at A-england The Legend... and an upcoming treat!

 I cannot resist showing you what I've been playing with since yesterday noon... Yes, your eyes are not deceived, you're looking at some of the new Legends from A-england! And at the new shape of my nails too... after trying to go with square, I realised I didn't like my nails in that shape, and I suspect it makes them break more easily, so I'm trying a rounder shape and it makes me like even my nubbins!

So here's a glimpse of Bridal Veil, Ascalon, St George, Order of the Garter and Princess Sabra. And yes, I'm yearning to have Dragon and Princess Tears, because those five are so amazing, diverse and mesmerizing that I can't get enough!

I'm still without computer and having to borrow Minnie's, but I'm doing my best to put everything back in order, catch up with all my draft articles so that I can show you those beauties asap!

And now for the treat: I'm coming close to my 200th post, and I've decided there will be some kind of contest or give-away to celebrate, and some bonus points will be awarded for people who've been my readers before the contest starts (we all know how contests make blogs popular). So if you haven't commented yet, now is the time to do so, just to show me you exist and you read me :)!

A england Perceval and comparisons

Hi! We're reaching now the last of my Mythicals from A-england, but fear not my ladies, I received something today that promises many beautiful pictures and reviews...

As you know, I'm not much into red when it comes to nail polishes. I love red in clothes and accessories, but it's quite a classic color for nails and it screams "old lady" to me. Maybe one day I'll have to come back on these words, but I don't think you'll see a red cream on my nails anytime soon! This being said, I have to admit I had been intrigued for a while by the only red in A-england's range, Perceval. 

Bearing the name Perceval gives big shoes to fill, those of the knight who found the Grail. Perceval's father had died as a knight and so his mother wished his son to be ignorant of anything that pertained to knighthood, adventures and wars. It is this innocence that made him the perfect candidate for finding the Grail which was being kept by his uncle, the Fisher King, an impotent monarch who would be deprived of his strength for as long as the Grail quest wasn't completed. But Perceval had a lot to learn, and when he first saw the procession of the bleeding lance and the Grail, he didn't dare to ask what it was. Thus, he lost the opportunity to save his uncle and was shamed in Arthur's court.

The story of Perceval was left unfinished by Chrétien de Troyes and many continuations were written, attributing the completion of the quest to Perceval, Gawain or Galahad (Lancelot's son), but I really find it interesting that Adina from A-england chose to associate him with the color red (the bleeding lance?), while Perceval is usually linked with innocence and purity.

Now on to the polish. You should be used to it by now, it's A-england's quality, so flawless application, it evens itself like butter, opacity in two coats, quick drying and highly glossy finish. You see it in two coats without top-coat.

And while I don't have many reds, I still found comparison material (sorry Barbara, this was done before you asked for a Sanguine comparison, I promise I'll do it another time!). So here is Nubar Contempo top-coated on the pointer, China Glaze Short and Sassy on the middle finger, OPI Diva in Geneva on the ring finger and A-england Perceval on the pinkie.

As you can see, the only one that can really compare is Nubar Contempo (when top-coated of course), but still it has a blue flash that's absent in Perceval. 

I'm almost done with the pictures that were taken before the holidays, and so very soon you'll see my new pretties (and my nubbins!!).

London 1 - classic views of London on Day 1 and some crazy places

Needless to say, all pictures in this message are copyrighted to ©Minnie for The Purple Fairy Book

Bien entendu, toutes les photos de cet article sont la propriété de ©Minnie for The Purple Fairy Book

Ok, so now that Blogger is done annoying me, I can publish some pictures! These come from our first 24h and the first part is pretty classic: Oxford Street, St Paul's Cathedral at dusk, the Tower Bridge, a typical pub facade, the Tower of London, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square and Haymarket (near Picadilly Circus). During two days, we had taken tickets for the touristic double-decker which is quite a good solution when you don't know much about a touristic city, that's why many pics are taken from quite a high viewpoint.

Je mets la version française ici vu le nombre de photos, je ne vais pas les poster deux fois. Donc, voici les photos de la première journée, cela reste assez classique, Oxford Street, la Cathédrale St Paul, le Tower Bridge, une façade de pub, la Tour de Londres, Big Ben Trafalgar Square et Haymarket (à côté de Picadilly Circus). Pendant deux jours, nous avions pris des tickets pour le bus touristique, qui est une solution assez sympa quand on ne connaît pas trop la ville et qui permet de prendre des photos d'assez haut.

Second part of the pics is after the jump, and there are a lot of them, they concern two crazy places we've been to, first the Disney Store on Oxford Street (seriously, you expected Minnie to skip that?) and then the M&M's World on Leicester Square. I kept the pics small for practicity but you can click them to make them bigger.

La suite des photos est après le saut, y'en a beaucoup, et elles viennent de deux boutiques très sympas: le Disney Store d'Oxford Street (vous pensiez vraiment que Minnie allait passer à côté??) et le M&M's World de Leicester Square. J'ai laissé les photos toutes petites vu la quantité mais vous pouvez cliquer pour les agrandir.

"Whosoever draweth this sword from the stone..." A-england Excalibur & comparisons

Hi there! Feeling much better today, so I've started to work early on some of the many things I have in mind for this blog. I shall make a proper post about that (be it only to have it written somewhere!) but if you follow the Facebook page (and if you don't, it's here), you've seen that I've linked all the articles of January on the page and will now update regularly (silly me had not seen the super easy way to do that in one click -_-).

But today, I shall focus on the most legendary of all swords, that belongs to the only king of the Britons, Arthur, once and future king. It's not at all the one in the picture above (that one is in Oxford and illustrates a quote from John Bunyan's Pilgrim Progress), but since I'm starting today to show you pics of the London holidays as well, it's a good introduction. So, enough blabbering and on to the polish of the day: Excalibur from A-england, a fantastic silver chrome perfectly matched to Arthur!

This first set of shots is with one coat. As you can see, it's really opaque and there are only slight brushstrokes, but otherwise it's perfect.

In this second series of shots, I compared Excalibur to China Glaze Millenium (on the middle finger) and Zoya Trixie on the ring finger. As you can see, Excalibur is quite close to Millenium but not as chromy (chromish? chromey?) and mirror-like. Only... that was with one coat of Excalibur. Having learned with Arthur how it could look very good with one coat but so much better with two, I made another comparison, applying two coats of Excalibur on all my fingers but one, on which I applied Millenium. Now, can you guess which is which?

Yes, under some angles you can see a slight difference and guess that Millenium is on my middle finger, but truly, irl, I declare the two very very close twins. Millenium is a very hard to find polish, so if you dream of a silver chrome, I can only direct you toward A-england Excalibur.

Since this is already one hell of a post, I shall be publishing the first holiday pictures in a separate message later on.

If the world is to end this year....

 ... at least I'll face it standing straight! 

Sorry for posting erratically lately, I'm a bit under the weather (but I know why and it's only a passing phase for a good thing) and, having broken some nails badly during the return trip from London, I don't know when I'll feel like swatching polishes again, so I want my archives pics to last a bit... Buuuut, to make myself forgiven, I want to celebrate this very special day with you. For years, I've been drooling over corsets, not wanting to go for bad quality and yet not having the means to pay for good. And today, thanks to a Facebook contact, I found the corset of my dreams for.... *drumroll* 45 euros shipping included. I couldn't resist, so here's my precious and you can check the shop here.

OPI Holland - Wooden Shoe Like to Know

Today I'm proposing you a little break from A-england Mythicals by going back to my beloved OPIs. You know what they say about the Internet, everything you write leaves a trace. Well, I guess I can only eat my tongue now after having written this  months ago and then discovering that some shades from OPI's Holland collection for Spring 2012 stole my heart! Among those is Wooden Shoe Like to Know, a beautiful taupey-brown with gorgeous golden and pink shimmer. Application is super easy, opacity is perfect in two coats and it dries quickly to a gorgeous shine. You see it after three days, there's a bit of tipwear but nothing much really, so I'm definitely in love!!

A-england Arthur and comparisons

Like so many before me, I've fallen prey to George RR Martin's Song of Fire and Ice series, and it seems only fitting to have iron claws while reading the plots and battles around the Iron Throne? So here's a very mighty king giving his name to an armour-colored polish, Arthur, still from A-england.

A gorgeous gunmetal grey with a metallic finish, it could be a one-coater, but I realised that a second coat was erasing the few brushstrokes, so what you see here is two coats, over basecoat and under topcoat of course. 

As usual, application was flawless and it dried quickly. With the number of polishes I have, it is rare for me to have a bottle that looks seriously emptied, yet China Glaze's Awaken is among those few, so I was happy that at first sight, Arthur seemed a twin brother. As you can see on the comparison below, there are slight differences, Awaken (here in the middle) is a tad bluer, and OPI's Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous (on the right) differs in the finish.

A-england Merlin

I'm baaaack!! And damn, the trip in London was fantastic, but I shall tell you more about it in the days to come as I'll show you some pics. For now, I'm catching up with everything I wanted to programm during my absence, because in the meantime, I've gotten another ton of new shinies to play with!

So, last post was showing you A-England's Camelot, the beautiful one-coat black cream, and today I use it as a base to show you the magical Merlin. Merlin is a silver glitter made of square particles, which make it very unusual, very sparkly and very hard to photograph! Some time ago, Livingston USY left a comment asking me if Zoya Luna could be layered over another polish or had to be worn alone, so I decided to present the following layering experiments: one coat of Merlin over Camelot on the left (index finger), two coats of Merlin over Camelot in the middle (middle finger), and one coat of Luna over Camelot on the right (ring finger).

As you can see, Merlin can be both layered or worn on its own, you just need two coats if you put it over a silver base, but Luna's milky translucent base makes it unfit for layering, it definitely has to be born alone.

And then, just for fun, I went to add a magical touch of Merlin over all the creams I have from A-England, so from left to right you have: Camelot, Guinevere, Elaine, and Merlin on its own in two coats.

Finally, I couldn't resist adding A-England Merlin over LM Cosmetic Merlin, to add a touch of silvery magic over the wizard's blue robe, and I'm completely in love with the combo!