UK Indie Week - UK Indies All Week! Iconic Effect

Greetings All!

Today is the final installment of these posts. While not a comprehensive catalog of all the UK polish brands available, I hope it gives you an idea of all the different beautiful types of indie polish we can get over here! With recent postage restrictions, and the ever rising cost of international shipping, international indies are becoming harder to get *sniff*. However the UK indie scene seems to be exploding at the moment, with more new brands scheduled to appear this year. So in fact it's still very easy to get that indie fix here in Blighty! Plus you get to support our very talented polish makers.

International readers, I apologise that the majority of these brands are not available to you - our postal service really seems to hate polish at the moment! You can get Nelly Polish in dried form, and until tomorrow Pocket Money Polishes has a pop up shop open, and there is still some very limited stock left if you live in the USA. Apart from that, you can't get your hands on these - sorry. I wish I could change that for you.

Today is the turn of Iconic Effect, a shop that has only been open for three months but already has released a wide range of polishes - glitters, cremes, holos, all sorts! I have four beauties for you today, which hopefully show their range a little bit.



Princess Drops was sold out the first time I went to buy it, but fortunately they have restocked it a couple of times, and I finally snagged a bottle. This is a super cute, girly glitter topper. I'm wearing two coats over Sally Hansen Barely Bluebell for these pictures.

Pastel stars, hearts, flowers and diamonds, with small hexes and holo glitter. Once upon a time I was mainly a fan of star glitter, but I love it all now - hearts, flowers, butterflies, give me them all! I love the subtle sparkle over this green-that-is-called-bluebell, although this polish is bound to be super versatile.

Clear Blue Skies I got in a swap with Charlie from Pocket Money Polishes. As you might expect, it's a bright sky blue colour, with silver glitter. That's all it looks like in the bottle, but on the nail it also has subtle iridescence and holographicness! I've used three coats here.

You can just see a hint of the special sparkle in amongst the silver glitter (they're the finer glitter particles). My camera has never been one for picking up holo, and this is quite a subtle 'sunshine holo', best seen in the sun! It was a lovely surprise though, and just makes the polish a bit more special.

Disco Lights is an eye-catching mix of black and neon hexes in a clear base. I've used two coats here over Collection 2000 Angel Wings, a very pale grey.

Firstly, I should point out that some of the thinner, less opaque neon glitters (purple, I'm looking at you!) have broken up a bit. Just something you might want to bear in mind. Personally I really like the effect! I think the little flakes help to break up the uniform look of the hexes, but it might not be everyone's cup of tea. As they are quite thin, this does look best over a light base. I'm enjoying the pale, dull grey and black next to the bright colours. Apparently we refuse to put the neons down, so the trend in Autumn/Winter is going to be pairing them with greys and neutrals. Looks like neon might have converted me by Christmas.

Neon Lights is similar, black and neon, but it has different colours, smaller black hexes, and black bars. This is two coats over white.

Yeah, I know. Bars. Big beggars too! I must be getting better at manipulating them though, because these gave me very few problems. They were also fairly easy to remove from my nails too, for the couple that wouldn't co-operate. This has more thin glitters in, so white would be the best base, and again there are a few little flakes of the purple glitter, but I like it. I would be interested in trying it over some different colours (I want to try a pale blue and make the yellow go green!).

You can buy Iconic Effect polishes here, and keep up to date with their restocks etc on Facebook, because a lot of their polishes sell out quickly!

Although UK Indie Week is now over, I'll still do my best to bring you the latest and greatest home-grown indies!