New Design! Starring A-England: Tristam

What better way to celebrate a re-design than with a brand new brand of nail polish!

A friend recently told me about this new English brand of polish that did a some amazing quality and more importantly unique polishes. Well, of course I had to find out more! It took a bit of wheedling but she finally gave me the name A-England and a website address, so off I toddled and boy was I not disappointed.

There's not a whole lot of information about A-England out there, after some googling all I can tell you it's a brand new company and it was started by Adina Bodana who is originally Italian. They currently only have one collection of polish out called "The Mythicals" and all their bottles have excellent and relevant names.

I always approach online shopping for things I haven't seen with my own eyes with a certain amount of trepidation, after several impulse buys have left me rather disappointed *Yes I'm looking at you Illamasqua Scarab & Viridian *cough* so I bought the two colours that were recommended to me: Tristam and Lady of the Lake.

So, now onto the fun stuff!

Lady of the Lake and Tristam

Lady of the Lake is a deep velvety purple base with tiny iridescent holographic particles and Tristam has the same particles but with a gorgeous slate blue base.

As blue is my favourite colour I went with Tristam for this week's nails, keep watching to see the Lady in action in the future.

So... Tristam. Awesome name? Check. Gorgeous Colour? Check. What more could a girl ask for? Well Tristam is the guy that just loves to keep on giving. It's January 2011 and I already want to declare A-England my new favourite polish brand of this year. Tristam was an absolute dream to apply, fast drying, not too thick or runny, applies perfectly smoothe and has lasted me for nearly 2 weeks with only the slightest tip wear. If Tristam was an actual guy I think he'd probably be Mr Perfect.

Tristam in natural light with no flash (and a touch of Konad)

This is the most colour accurate picture I have of Tristam. It's a very deep muted slate blue, sometimes almost navy when not in direct light and the best thing, its pretty unique. I don't have another colour even vaguely close to this, and I'm sure by now you know how much I love blues! 

Tristam with flash.

Of course the most important thing about a holo is, obviously, the sparkle and Tristam has it in spades!

Embrace the sparkle!

Imagine if you will a girl standing in her bathroom holding a bottle of nail polish in one hand, a camera in the other and a flashlight in her mouth. This is what I had to do to make Tristam to really sparkle for me, but it was so worth being caught and laughed at by the boyfriend for this picture. (well, til he realised it was his flashlight ^^)

Token blurred glitter shot.

The picture below needs to be enlarged to show exactly how good this polish is. I applied him over my usual 1 coat of Essie Billionails with another coat on top and there's no chipping, flaking or any other sort of nail disaster going on, just the tiniest bit of tip wear on my ring and middle fingers and some nail growth below.  Colour me impressed!

2 weeks down and he's staying strong.

Overall I cannot rate this polish highly enough, a definite A+.  The packaging was cute (although personally I'm not a big fan of reflective silver lids) and the brush was good quality but nothing unusal. I am so impressed that a new brand can release this high quality of product and frankly I cannot wait to see their next collection (whilst secretly hoping for more amazing - and possibly bright?- holos!). While I wish that I could keep this brand to myself, I had to share because this brand deserves recognition and everyone deserves gorgeous nails.

Tristam and Lady of the Lake are available from www.a-england.co.uk at £9.50 each and as a major plus they also ship internationally from the UK. 

 Next time on PolishedUp!: Our 2 year anniversary giveaway.