I love red nail varnish. In fact I love red. Currently, I have a matching red handbag, red scarf, and red leather gloves (which I bought way before the Mr Selfridge TV show popularised them … get me being ahead of a trend for a change!) And throughout the winter so far, my nails have never matched.

But today I decided to change that. My favourite red is Revlon’s All Fired Up, but I thought I should delve into my untried stash once again, and so I did. I came out with St James from Nails Inc.

The polish was one of those that came free back last November with the December 2012 issue of Glamour magazine. My lovely husband drove round all the local supermarkets until he got me all four polishes – what a star!

So, St James is a lovely, pillar box red. It actually has the tiniest hint of a shimmer, but you can’t easily see that unless you’re right up close and looking for it (and wearing your extra-strength reading glasses, in my case). And anyway, it doesn’t seem to translate onto the nail (even inspecting closely with the aforementioned reading glasses!), and just has a perfect scarlet cream finish.

I only did two coats, but can see a light bit of visible nail line, so perhaps would do three next time. Despite adjusting the colour balance of the image, I couldn’t get a faithful reproduction of the colour. I’d say it’s a darker, deeper red than this in real life.

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