NOTD: Illamasqua Caress and Models Own Blizzard

As promised, my NOTD featuring Illamasqua Caress. Feeling inspired by the recent weather I decided to pair this with a glitter top coat by Models Own. Aptly named Blizzard.

Sorry about the random piece of glitter stuck to the lid. That stuff gets everywhere!

Caress is a beautiful powdery pastel blue. I'm wearing two coats here, the first one was mostly opaque but there were some small patchy areas. It has a fairly shiny finish but I used my Barry M 3 in 1 to create a high gloss shine. It's slightly thicker than some of the polishes I'm used to and I ended up putting too much on and had to wait an absolute age for it to dry! It was literally still squishy and susceptible to dents 6 hours later. That was totally my fault though and I'm prepared to admit that. The size of the brush is very comfortable. I utterly detest skinny brushes and this one was thick enough for me to get full coverage in 3 strokes, perfect!

Models Own Blizzard is a glitter topcoat containing silver and iridescent hexagonal and square glitter pieces of varying sizes. Application was okay. I had to blob it on a bit to get even coverage and it occasionally dug into the polish where it wasn't quite solid (I know, I know, my fault) which is how I got that sexy lumpy effect. I actually started on my right hand and put this over every nail but it was just too much! So I now have one full hand of blizzard and one hand of just index finger blizzard. It's an interesting look that I don't think I'll sport again... but oh well. I actually really like how cute it looks with just one nail! The colours are very pretty and cool and go well with Caress. Definitely a match made in Wintery Heaven.

As I was painting away I realised that I may have a potential dupe in my collection...

W7 in shade 11 is almost identical! It has a slightly thinner formula and leans a fraction and I mean just a tiny teeny bit, darker. Caress is a full on pastel blue. Both utterly beautiful and practically impossible to tell apart. W7 is of course a much cheaper brand than Illamasqua so it's well worth keeping an eye out for shade 11 if you like the look of Caress. I actually picked it up in a box set of pastels at TK Maxx in the Boxing Day Sales. Caress is still available in the Illamasqua Sale for £5. It looks a touch more grey to me in the stock photos which is why I was surprised to find a dupe. I was hoping for it to be more accurate to what was on the website but ah well, it's still a beautiful shade!

What do you think to this shade? Will you be buying Caress or looking for some cheap dupes like 11?

Lauren