Femme Fatale Lime Thief - swatch and review

Femme Fatale Lime Thief

What a gorgeous combination of colours and such an evocative name - the name reminds me of William Morris' Strawberry Thief, a textile design inspired by blackbirds stealing fruit from the artist's garden.

Femme Fatale Lime Thief is a bright lime green jelly polish with hexagonal glitter in various sizes in red, lime green and emerald green. I've seen it looking great alone as a jelly (check out Ida's lovely swatches to see this) but I wanted a more vibrant effect so I layered it over GOSH Early Green, a bright leafy lime that's maybe just a tad more yellow than the base of Lime Thief (have a look at this post for my pictures of Early Green on its own and with a black glitter).

This is two coats of Femme Fatale Lime Thief over one coat of GOSH Early Green. I used a coat of Gelous and a coat of Seche Vite quick drying topcoat to smooth the glitters out. Application of Lime Thief is flawless, and I was working from a mini bottle. The glitter comes out of the bottle easily without fishing, and spreads across the nail without clumping. The combination of colours is perfect - green and red are complementaries after all!

Femme Fatale Lime Thief

And a couple of macros to finish with.........., and by the way, I cut my nails square; they're perhaps a bit shorter than I'd really like right  now, but I wasn't getting on with those rounded corners from my last couple of posts at all - I know I like square or pointy, and nothing in between, so I must have been having a bit of a funny moment when I rounded my corners. Never mind, I like experimenting, and they're only nails, they grow back quick!

Femme Fatale Lime Thief

Then, just for fun, the day before I took this off, I added a bit of simple geometric nail art with striping tape and black polish. I used American Apparel Hassid here - it's a very dense black and I only needed one coat. I'm always amazed how much something like this can totally transform a mani - and it's a great trick for extending the life of a mani another day or two if you're bored with it or its become a bit worn looking!

Femme Fatale Lime Thief was sent as a sample for review. You can buy this shade directly from Femme Fatale (shipping worldwide, or check their list of international suppliers for other shipping options) at their website.  I purchased GOSH Early Green at my local Superdrug earlier this year. American Apparel Hassid was a gift from a friend a while ago.

Gosh Frosted Sand - Silver & Purple

GOSH Frosted Silver and Frosted Purple

I'm not sure about textured polishes, so I've held off buying any of the OPI Liquid Sands, since none of the colours yet have really called to me, but when I saw these 'Frosted Sands' shades from GOSH in Superdrug the other day I couldn't resist. Especially as they were buy one get one for half price - so I bought two! There are just three colours in the range, Frosted Silver, Frosted Gold and Frosted Purple. Frosted Purple is actually a very pretty lavendery-gunmetal. I really don't get along with gold nail polish at all, so the choice of two from the three colours was very easy for me!

I decided to try them together as a gradient; I applied one coat of Frosted Purple, then added the gradient with the two colours painted directly on a damp make-up sponge. I went over the gradient twice to get a good density of colour, but even so the mani was very quick and easy to apply. And the two colours are made for each other!

GOSH Frosted Silver and Frosted Purple

Here are a few macro shots to show the texture a bit better.  I really like how the texture worked out on the mani; I'm not sure if it would be quite so good if I'd just brushed the polish on but the sponge application technique isn't a lot of extra effort even if you're only wearing a single colour, so I'll probably sponge the last coat if I wear either of these colours alone in future.  I'll certainly be checking out the GOSH stand again to see if they release any other textured colours; I like these a lot!

GOSH Frosted Silver and Frosted Purple

I purchased GOSH Frosted Silver and Frosted Purple from my local Superdrug last week.

GOSH Early Green with Pahlish Marbles on Glass

GOSH Early Green was one of those colours that leapt off the shelf and shouted 'buy me'! I love greens of all sorts, but especially fresh, spring greens. Early Green is lighter and fresher than Rescue Beauty Lounge Abiquiu and more yellow than Illasmaqua Smash, which are two of my favourite greens in this part of the spectrum. I'm too lazy to do a comparison swatch right now, but MishMreow has a really helpful comparison of GOSH Early Green with Illamasqua Smash and Radium.

Although Early Green is awesome on its own, I really wanted an abstract, glittery mani today, so I decided I'd pair it with a fairly complex black glitter, Pahlish Marbles on Glass. Marbles on Glass has black glitters of various sizes in every shape I can think of (hexagonal, round, square and bar), and some tiny colour-shifting iridescent glitters which glint blue and green at certain angles. And just for an extra bit of fun, I fished out a few red matt glitter squares from another polish to add an extra highlight to some of my nails. The inspiration for these colours is my Madagascan Giant Day Gecko - he is about the same colour as GOSH Early Green and has random red markings (many pictures of giant day geckos!)

Here's the finished result; this blurry, kind of abstract picture shows how the iridescent glitters catch the light and really sparkle:

 GOSH Early Green with Pahlish Marbles on Glass

This is what it looks like most of the time:

 GOSH Early Green with Pahlish Marbles on Glass

This is two coats of Pahlish Marbles on Glass. The base of this polish is pretty thick, and the glitter is dense, so a dabbing sort of application is needed and after applying the glitter the surface of my nails was quite rough and lumpy. To apply the red highights, I just picked the glitters I wanted from the the stem of the polish  brush with a fine (cheap) nylon paintbrush and dabbed them onto my nails. Then two thick coats of Gelous and a coat of Seche Vite to smooth everything out.

GOSH Early Green is far too nice not to include pictures of it on its own before the glitter. This is the first GOSH polish I've used, and I was surprised by how nice the formula is. I was expecting this to be a streaky horror, but it was great at just two coats and Seche Vite!

 GOSH Early Green 

And finally, just to put the colour in context, I'm holding a daffodil bud here - Spring is on the way :)

 GOSH Early Green 

I purchased GOSH Early Green from my local Superdrug yesterday - GOSH  polishes are currently half price (£2.49), but I didn't notice how long the offer was for. I purchased Pahlish Marbles on Glass directly from the maker at her etsy shop; I've had this colour for a while now and I think it may be discontinued.