notd | vamped

Révérence de Bastien No. 14 | Skull Ring

I just couldn't wait to get the nail polish that came in this month's Birchbox onto my fingertips. My collection of dark nail polishes is very limited (My nail polish collection seems to exclusively be formed of bright colours, who would have thought it?) and this beautiful deep dark red is a very welcome addition.

The formula on the other hand wasn't so great, and as far as I can see the £14 price tag isn't justified at all. It chipped within two days (that's with a base and top coat) and took three coats to be fully opaque. It had a tendency to pool at my cuticles as the consistency was quite thin and runny, but at least the drying time was pretty fast.

I teamed my cheapy £1 skull ring with my freshly-painted nails too - I don't believe in buying expensive jewellery, let's just say that unless it's made of pure diamonds and blessed with the souls of a thousand kittens you can count me out. I don't even adorn myself in trinkets that often (bar the standard stud earrings) so I don't see that much point in spending over £15 on jewellery (I'm looking at you, Topshop) that is of only marginally better quality than Primark. If you look hard enough you can almost always find a good dupe on eBay as well (case in point: this ring).