Introducing A England

Sometimes when you are surfing around you find the most amazing stuff. I present to my tiny but hopefully faithful followers: A England. I think it's A England. It might be A-England, but regardless, it's awesome.

This is an indie brand from...imagine this, England. It has a small line of colors right now, but the ones they have are inCREDible. This collection is called "The Mythicals" and all named after the Arthurian legends, something close to my heart anyways, so that alone is a selling point. We're talking about someone who just bought lipsticks off Sephora because they were called Howl and Growl. Yes. Not the wisest of people. Growl is dark eggplant matte. I'm thinking...with a little really light iridescent lipgloss I might actually be able to wear this...it's Illamasqua so we know it will be good. I digress. Again.

Here is the haul:

I went for the base and top coats because as we know, I'm kind of operating under the notion that some polishes will perform better with their own stuff supporting them. The Base Coat is called The Knight and the Top Coat is called The Shield. Awesome. Those will be the top of the little pine tree o polish I made there. Then starting with the pretty light tealy blue and working r-l and down we have: Galahad, Morgan Le Fay, King Arthur, Lady of the Lake, Lancelot and Tristam.
Here's a label shot, which you won't be able to read, but you can see what the bottles look like:

I don't know, you can read them.
These are so pretty I about started drooling and kicking myself for not just closing my eyes and buying the whole stupid collection. Morgan Le Fay is really a shimmer top coat, which is designed to go over any of their creams. Lady of the Lake and Tristam do not need that, they're holos and totally gorgeous. Tristam is blue, presumably because of his sad relationship with Isolde? :D I don't know but I have a swatch of that, more on him in a sec. Lancelot is black. And I mean, BLACK. Black cat, black sportscar, tar black. I was surprised, I hadn't remembered ordering that, probably it looked amazing with Morgan Le Fay. In which case, shouldn't that be named Guinevere? Ha. Told ya I like Arthurian legends. I can make cheeseball jokes all day. In checking to make sure I had the right linky at the bottom here, I checked this out, and it's "black red garnet". Hm. In the bottle he looks BLACK BLACK BLACK. I'm intrigued! We shall see!

A England happens to be running a free world-wide shipping if you just buy something from the collection sale right now. If I didn't already have Zoya and BB Couture hauls (Not to mention 3 Illamasqua lipsticks because I'm stupid) on the way, I'd totally go back for more. I signed up for the newsletter or whatnot so I will try to keep that posted because from what I've seen already, I might have a new fave. However, as this is posted to run through January(!), I will probably be back for the rest. Read on and you will see why I say that.

I couldn't take it, I knew I had to get the BB Couture chipped mess off and Tristam (my favorite hero of the legends anyways) was calling to me. Try me! Try me!! I'll save you from nail boredom! Who cares if you have talons any raptor, including the veloci variety, would envy? You can do dark vampy polish on claws and not look...just bad. DO IT!
So I did. One nail because I couldn't take it.

Check this shit out:

Now...what I want you to keep in mind is this is ONE coat, over the magnificent but day glo bright Daisy Dweller from BB Couture. It covered it and I mean right now. This stuff is OPAQUE. You can see a little Daisy Dweller at the cuticle because I wasn't being careful. My nails are WAY too long to wear anything this dark right now. It was so amazing I had to get another shot. Actually, I have 4, I'm just trying to get you the best.

Yeah. Against my black pants. This is sunlight through the window. Couldn't you just die?? You can keep your stinking Starry Starry Night from Essie. I'll take this baby. This isn't just a starry night, this is a starry night with a fractured Aurora Borealis all over itl Can't wait to wear this for real. It's like, Nfu-Oh level holo...without the sketchy animal cruelty issue, which is why I don't put Nfu-Ohs on here. Love them, they're amazing, but are the critters safe? Dunno. So I haven't bought any more and I haven't worn them since I made this choice. I did email A England before I ordered, they are cruelty free
BUT!
Gorgeous. And the coverage and application? Shhyahh! The formula is amazing. We shall see if the others colors are as great. This could obviously be a one coater. It's definitely back-up bottle worthy and I never say that.

If you're interested in checking them out yourself, to the best of my knowledge these are only available from their website and you'll have to deal with the BPS conversion but look at that again and tell me you care. I'm waiting....that's what I thought.

www.a-england.co.uk

Something cute and nice on the website is that the founder, Adina Bodana, or at least I'm assuming she's at least guiding this process, puts on little tips of things you can try with the polish. For example, they suggest deepening Lancelot but alternating it with Camelot, which is the true black of the collection. . If you go to the about page, the end of Ms. Bodana's bio says the exact same feeling about nail polish that I have: "Painting her nails through the bitter sweet stages in life has been a constant moment of enjoyment and empowerment. Sometimes a way to start a conversation, then share an impression, a smile, a story." Yep. That is also why I write this blog and couldn't have said it better. I like it. I think you can expect to hear more about A England from me!

And check this out! http://www.a-england.co.uk/content/somedays This is a little page about what your mood may be and a color suggestion. That's fun! Just found that!

Happy Polishing, ladies of the lakes!