A England Briar Rose Swatch and Review (Bonus: Iron Throne Bottle Shots)

End of the week! OH MY LORD, I never thought it would come!!! IT'S HERE! IT'S FRIDAY! *crying* So I'll be making some changes to Claw of Cthulhu for the next while - it's been a while (a while meaning almost two years) since I've updated some content, so don't mind the mess in the meantime! I've also added a new category called "the Iron Throne" up at the top. It's to signify that the polish passed with flying colors in my review and I REALLY, REALLY like them. Speaking of which, that Iron Throne is going to make another appearance. Right now.

Enter A England Briar Rose.







Yes. So much yes.

Briar Rose is from the Burne-Jones Dream Collection, which is based on the Legend of Briar Rose series of paintings by Edward Burne-Jones. (Check it out here on Wikipedia.) A England Briar Rose is - for lack of better terms - flawless. It's a subtly holographic pink toned red. Formula wise, it knocks it out of the park - smooth, timely drying, and a natural glossy finish. Here is my swatch in two coats:











I loooooove this polish. I think if you're looking for a strong holographic polish, you might be disappointed. It's a holographic polish but not as linear as some are. I still think it's very pretty and just the smoothness of the look is more than enough in my books. I haven't tried the rest of the collection yet, but man, it's off to a great start. Also Game of Thrones won't be on this weekend because it's an American holiday on Monday and apparently everything revolves around America so baby Iron Throne will ease my fixings for now.

TGIF or what? Any plans for the weekend? I am totally ready for couch, sleeping in, oversized t-shirts and no pants.

A England Tess d'Ubervilles Swatch and Review (Also: Photo Real Talk)

It's Monday everyone and as per the fact that it is Monday, I am.... groggy! Yay! I've got several things to share with you today, obviously nail polish and then as you know, I am always pushing to improve Claw of Cthulhu and I am contemplating changing the way I do the photos but I need your feedback! Read below and let me know your thoughts; I would love to hear them!

Today I am sharing my first A England! Woooo! My nail polish BFF Caitlin always, always gushes about A England the same way I gush over Rainbow Honey so I decided to take a dive into some A Englands the last time I placed an order with Nail Polish Canada. Here A England Tess d'Urbervilles, which I believe is named after one of Thomas Hardy's novels entitled "Tess of the d'Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented". I am not going to pretend that I actually know this novel thoroughly so instead I am going to link you to the Wikipedia page, hehe. A England Tess d'Urbervilles is a vampy seductive deep forest green with hints of radiant green shimmer, peeking out from the dark abyss.





Formula-wise, it applied evenly in two coats. I found that it dried with a very dull finish so I topped it off with some Seche Vite and the glossy touch was needed to bring Tess d'Urbervilles in all her glory. I really, really love the A England bottles and am starting to fall in love myself so I hope I don't feel any weird urge to collect them all just as I do with Rainbow Honey, haha!

OK now for some real talk. About photos.

Typically I've photographed my swatches to showcase the polish. Colour-wise, I don't shoot to flatter, I don't correct the saturation or hue, or change the colour. My goal is to make the polish as colour accurate as possible. On the flip side of things, my skin tone is not colour accurate. I always thought to showcase the polish, but would you find it useful to see how the polish compares against my weird Asian skin tone? Does it matter?

Technically speaking, I shoot my photos with a compact camera - a Panasonic Lumix GF-1 with a 20mm f/1.7 - into a DIY lightbox made with a transparent Rubbermaid storage container, with black posterboard lined on the bottom and back, lit with 4 desktop lamps with white compact fluorescents. (Wow, I totally felt naked for a moment there, haha.) I usually leave my camera set to AWB (automatic white balance), which is fine - but I find the GF-1 to naturally shoot a bit "colder" on the automatic white balance setting. I experimented by "calibrating" my white balance to base itself on a white piece of paper and then well... Here are the results:









And just to compare to some white business cards:



I would ABSOLUTELY LOVE it if you could give me any feedback whatsoever on how you feel about my photos here on the blog. I do have quite a bit of backlog photographed the way I usually have been - but would you rather see how my Asian skin tone stacks up against the polish shade? Also - do you have any A Englands? Are they a "Pokemon" polish company where you gotta catch em all?