Color Club - Girl About Town Collection

Before I start, I wanted to explain the long break between posts. It was my birthday a couple of weeks ago and as a special treat I went to hospital to have a knee operation. Obviously this wasn't ideal but if you've ever been on the wrong end of a waiting list you'll understand. Needless to say, between the painkillers, the physio and the crutches it's been a little tricky to polish and even harder to take any photos. Hopefully I'll be getting back on track soon - assuming the incoming wintery weather doesn't slow me down!

Anyway enough about me, I wanted to kick off with an autumnal collection from one of my absolute favourite nail polish brands. Color Club is an American company, and it's not easy to find in the UK, which is such a shame because everything I've tried from them has been amazing. I picked up this box set of six polishes and a top coat at TK Maxx a little while ago but I believe the Girl About Town collection was released for Fall Autumn last year in the US, and is still available here. These aren't your average Autumn colours either, and there's a nice variety of finishes too.


First off is Silver Lake, a gorgeous, soft grey creme. I used three coats plus top coat in this photo but could probably have gotten away with two. The well-pigmented formula applies a little streaky at first but is easy to even out. This is a lovely neutral colour and I think the cool, blue undertones suit my pale skin. It would also make a great base for nail art, and it makes a nice alternative to the usual nude polishes.

Next up is Williamsburg, a stunning blue glitter. The dark blue jelly base is packed with fine glitter and is easy to build up to an opaque finish. I used two coats and top coat. This is a more subtle, refined glitter polish. I think it feels special and glamorous without being overly bling-y.

East Austin is an eye-catching bright pastel orange creme. Yes I know the words 'bright' and 'pastel' don't normally go together but this is one of those colours that looks like a faded neon. I love this sort of colour, and it's really flattering on most skin tones. Unfortunately I needed to use four coats (+ top coat) for this photo. Normally this wouldn't bother me when I love the end result BUT I do have a dupe for this colour.

Models Own Beach Bag (from the Polish for Tans collection) is an almost identical faded neon peach polish but it only takes two coats for full opacity. To compare I used Beach Bag on my middle finger, with East Austin on the others. East Austin might be ever so slightly brighter but really it's impossible to spot the difference.

Now, the exciting one, The Uptown is an amazing purple flakie glitter polish. I used three generous coats and top coat, which gave an almost-opaque finish. The blurple jelly base is packed with small iridescent flakes of glitter that apply smoothly and easily to the nail. These glitter pieces shine beautifully when they catch the light, shifting between red, gold and green, perhaps more easy to see in the bottle but the effect does translate to the nail. As for the jelly base, it is quite sheer, and you can see a little VNL in the photo, so I would prefer it layered over a solid base colour, but really the glitter is so dense that you can definitely get away with wearing it alone. I kept this polish on for about five days and it wore beautifully, no chips at all, though as you might expect it was terribly hard to remove.

Next is perhaps my favourite of the collection, Wicker Park. It's a delicious creme polish; a bright, soft, orchid purple colour. The funny thing is I saw people wearing this on Instagram and was really jealous and grumpy that I couldn't buy it, then realised I already had it in my stash! (Hoarder-problems!) Application of this was OK, it needed three fairly generous coats and top coat, to get a smooth finish. I'm happy to deal with that though to get this great colour.

Lastly, my least favourite, Pearl District. Here I used three coats and top coat, the third was really only to minimise the brush strokes. As you can see in the photo, this polish has a traditional metallic frosty finish, but my natural nail texture still shows through and the brush strokes can be a pain. Personally, metallic/pearl/frosty polishes just aren't to my taste, but if you do like them then I guess this would be lovely. It's a pretty antique gold colour, which is nicely autumnal, and could be useful under big Christmas-sy glitters.

As you can probably tell, I really loved this collection. I love the fact it's not just traditional Autumn colours, there's great variety in both colour and finish - a neutral, a neon, a pastel, a glitter, a metallic and a fab flakie. Plus I know that the top coat that's included in the box is really good, I'll be saving it for when my current OPI one runs out. Admittedly, most of the polishes needed one too many coats to achieve an opaque finish, but I can forgive that when the result is this pleasing. All in all I think this is a beautiful, creative and interesting mix of polishes, and for the £9.99 I paid it was a complete bargain.

Amy

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