Glam It Up A Gear!

Hello! Exciting post today. Since I've had this blog (so one year!) I've always entered competitions and giveaways whenever the prize was pretty polishes. I've never won anything, but last week I found out that I had won two separate competitions! I was so pleased, because both prizes were polishes I really loved/wanted.

One of the prizes, which I've mentioned in a previous blogpost, was from Rebecca of Lane's Lacquers, who held a giveaway to celebrate the new year. I won the full set of Barry M textured glitter polishes plus one surprise polish, which turned out to be Diamond Glitter, another fab Barry M polish I don't already own! I received these today and can't wait to start using these on my nails, especially the pink shades. Thank-you again to Rebecca for the giveaway :-D

The second prize I won in January was just as awesome. It's the Models Own/Fiesta collection, Glam It Up A Gear. I lusted after this little set a lot when I first heard about it through other blogs. The colours matched three of the shades that the new Ford Fiesta was available in. The only snag was that this set was never available for purchase- the only way to get your hands on it was to test drive a new Fiesta, and then you'd receive the set. However, the reason I wanted this was because I already own a Fiesta, it's not the newest one but it's the car (and shade) I wanted for years and years before finally buying it (second hand but still beautiful) In June last year.

So yeah, I desperately wanted this collection, mainly for Hot Magenta, the deep pink shade that matches my car. I even tweeted Models Own to find out if there was a way to get it apart from the test drive (I didn't want to have to pretend I wanted a brand new car etc!!) but they didn't get back to me. When I saw this competition, which was run through Facebook, I decided to enter. I thought there wasn't much chance of winning because Ford were probably advertising the competition too and thousands of people would enter. But a few days into January I got an email saying I had won a set! I was totally thrilled, but didn't mention it on the blog because I couldn't quite believe I'd won - I wanted to wait until the set was in my hands. Which happened a few days ago when it popped through my letterbox! My car was very happy:

...and so was I! I obviously picked Hot Magenta to try out first, and added an accent nail of Candy Blue.  I found that the polish was quite thin but otherwise applied well! The magenta is a really beautiful shade, with a really subtle shimmer when it catches the light. The blue has a much more obvious shimmer, it's really stunning, I actually think I like it more than the magenta. The only issue I had with the blue was a bit of staining despite using a base coat :-( I still love the shade though, I don't own anything like it!

I then decided to try another manicure with these shades, using all three. I'm not so keen on the gold shade, which is called Fashionista. It's a weird kind of metallic colour, not a proper yellow gold. For this manicure, I started with a base of Fit For A Queen by Ciate. I then used a make-up sponge to dab the three colours randomly all over my nails. I'm not sure what this was supposed to look like and whether I like it or not, but here's the result anyway!

I've yet to take a pic of Hot Magenta next to my car, because it was dark when I finished playing with these, and I'd changed my manicure ready for the weekend before I had a chance to go outside! I definitely want to do a comparison between the polish and the car colour though, so I will post that when it's done! x