Hi there!
I've been on a sort of spending ban ever since I bought my car. Owing £4k makes me uncomfortable and I cannot wait to get that debt paid off....but Christmas and offers are killing me and I've ended up succumbing to so many deals and eBay especially!
Have you ever bought nail polishes off ebay before? I'm always dubious but can't resist especially when some of the ones I wanted were limited edition and only sold in shops for a number of weeks.
Recently I have picked up polishes from Essie and OPI and kept my fingers crossed they were genuine.
First up at the OPI polishes, both from the James Bond 007 set that came out last Autumn/Winter time. I'm a HUGE james bond fan and couldn't resist collecting them all. But unfortunately for me at the time I'd been out of work for almost a year because of uni so having minimal funds left meant I couldn't afford all of them even in the Christmas sales. So it has long been my mission to get my hands on all of the colours (aside from the real gold flake top coat....£30 for a nail polish I just cannot justify!)
2 that I was still missing were Live and Let Die, a dark green gold shimmer polish and You Only Live Twice; a red/pink shimmer.
Both of these looked gorgeous in the bottle and in online pictures so seeing them on ebay for around £6 instead of £11ish I was excited to use them.
Live and Let Die is shown below:
These pictures were taken with 2 coats of polish and one of top coat and you can see that they come out very uniform and not streaky at all.
The colour is a lot darker than I thought it would be and the shimmer doesn't show up as much which was a bit disappointing.
It's more of a sludgy green in comparison to how it photographs in the bottle but it might get used over the winter months.
Excuse the awful lighting...I had to take a picture super quickly as I got to work as the lab seems to kill any manicure I have within minutes!
Again this was uniform and opaque in 2 coats and seemed to come out more true to colour than the previous polish.
These pictures were taken with 2 coats of polish and one of top coat and you can see that they come out very uniform and not streaky at all.
The colour is a lot darker than I thought it would be and the shimmer doesn't show up as much which was a bit disappointing.
It's more of a sludgy green in comparison to how it photographs in the bottle but it might get used over the winter months.
You Only Live Twice is shown in the pictures below:
Excuse the awful lighting...I had to take a picture super quickly as I got to work as the lab seems to kill any manicure I have within minutes!
Again this was uniform and opaque in 2 coats and seemed to come out more true to colour than the previous polish.
I'm glad I didn't pay full price for these polishes....not only did they not come out as I imagined after comparing them to my other Bond polishes they are most definitely fakes!
The labels on the bottoms are not the same font or size and these 2 polishes smell very strongly in comparison to the others. This is an unfortunate part of ebay and what tends to put me off in the first place as you never know what chemicals were used to create them and they aren't regulated at all.
I highly doubt I will use these again as I'm always wary of suspect chemicals....definitely learnt my lesson with OPI polishes!
The labels on the bottoms are not the same font or size and these 2 polishes smell very strongly in comparison to the others. This is an unfortunate part of ebay and what tends to put me off in the first place as you never know what chemicals were used to create them and they aren't regulated at all.
I highly doubt I will use these again as I'm always wary of suspect chemicals....definitely learnt my lesson with OPI polishes!
Essie polishes were a different story!
I purchased these three from 2 different sellers who I will link below.
I purchased these three from 2 different sellers who I will link below.
After a quick browse one day on ebay I couldn't resist snapping up Recessionista and Miss Fancy Pants. Both of these are my favourite colours for winter; I love berry shades on my nails and nudes are always welcome particularly Essie ones! I believe they are from a previous winter collection though I'm not sure which.
I bought them from this seller who has a range of products including Essie for a mere £3.62 so I snapped them up and they combined postage for me too which is always lovely.
Beyond Cosy is a polish that I have previously bought in the Winter Collection from Essie last year (see here) and I've used this one plus Leading Lady quite a bit since! I knew I was going to have to pick up the full size one soon and luckily for me Fee from Make Up Savvy put up this post with a link to a discounted version on ebay I couldn't help it!
I ended up getting it from this seller who Fee mentions in the same post and it's such a gorgeous colour!
Here's a design I did with Beyond Cozy underneath and Recessionista on the top; its one of my favourite ways to wear metallic and glitter polishes!
The flash used above is my awful iPhone flash and is very blue so the colour is not very true here but the gold glitter shines so nicely!
I have used Miss Fancy Pants since purchasing it but didn't take a photo. As I already owned Chinchilly (also by Essie) it was only natural that I compare the two and found that they are very similar, which MFP being slightly lighter.
The picture below shows Chinchilly just for reference; I'm sure MFP will make it into a NOTD soon as I can't stop using any of them!
What do you think about buying cosmetics off eBay?
Most of the time I avoid it but nail varnish is normally ok; save for the OPI ones as they're such big money makers!
Do you like my purchases? Will you be buying any of them?
L xxx
