Illamasqua Gamma Toxic Nature Collection

I finally submitted my postgraduate application yesterday, a few days early too! I’ve been working on it for weeks so I’m quite glad it’s gone so I can’t stop re-writing it. I’ll have free time again! Yay! It was the one good thing that happened yesterday, the rest of the day just felt horrible. Feel free to skip my moan if you like :P

<moan>I had to do a presentation yesterday, it was awful. It had a really strict time limit of 20 minutes, with 5 of us having to present, which is about 3-4 mins each. A whole chapter summarised in 3 minutes is horrible. We had to write scripts so we knew how long it would be, there was too much information to do my usual thing, which is just learn it and know it. I’m normally fine with presentations if I know my stuff. I very much dislike reading from a script. As I’ve mentioned before I’m dyslexic and trying to read from a script and the added time pressure…not good! I managed to forget to move onto a slide, lose my place more than once and in general I was a driveling wreck. I was completely bummed about it. How can I be absolutely fine without a script, doing a 20 minute presentation on my own, but as soon as I have a script and only 3 minutes I become an idiot. Very annoyed at myself. Anyway, I’ve got one more presentation left on Thursday, it’s just me and I know the topic so I’ll be fine. Although I’m concerned I’m going to take part in a repeat performance. By just not having a script I’ll be happier, I prefer to just chat about the topic, that way you can re-word anything that elicits a furrowed brow! </moan>

I feel better for my moan :P Onto better topics!

Grab your sunglasses because this is bright! So bright in fact that my camera had a lot of trouble even focusing on it! I love Illamasqua products, but I’m normally too out of pocket to buy them. I picked up this and Bacterium from the new Toxic Nature collection with my Asos Groupon voucher. I had to try this one first just because it was so bright and fun. I really love how Illamasqua create collections with a great theme running through them. Toxic Nature has a mixture of earthy, dirty shades and bright, radioactive shades. Illamasqua describe it as “an atomic-botanical environment”, sounds great!

This polish is really bright and even strangers commented on it. It’s a really great colour, probably not a great match to my pale/yellow skin, but I like it! I think it would great with some black polish. I might tape some bits off and give it a go before I remove it. I’ve not tried taping off polish without my quick drying topcoat, so it may end up a disaster, but I’ll give it a go. If it’s awful you won’t hear anything about it on here, you can just assume it was a catastrophe! :P

The polish itself is fantastic, as with all Illamasqua polishes it applied easily and perfectly. I put on two coats to even out the colour, but it was pretty good even with the first coat. It dried really quickly to a smooth, shiny finish. Most neon polishes dry matte, but this polish is nice and shiny even without a topcoat (I haven’t used a topcoat in the pictures). Although, now I look at the pictures the polish doesn’t look very shiny. This is because if the light was shining on my nails, my camera couldn’t focus on the colour, so I had to turn my nails away from the light to get the true colour to be captured. The polish dries as shiny as normal polishes, it is definitely not a matte finish.

Illamasqua polishes are also pretty hard wearing. I’ve had this on for two days and it hasn’t got a scratch or a chip on it even though I’ve done all my housework. Not bad! :)

What do you think? Are you happy to wear such BRIGHT, brights? Or should it be left to someone with not such a deathly skintone? I always read that brights look better on tanned or darker skintones. Oh well, when have I ever done what is best :P Hope your all having a lovely week so far and enjoying the lighter evenings! xxxx