Mini MakeUp Haul

I'm in the market for some new makeup and although I'm still figuring out the whole BB cream thing, I think I've got my head around the right foundation for me! 

My friend Ben introduced me to Benefit's POREfessional which is a pore reducing cream with a slight tint which really does work, although can dry my skin a little in places. This retails between £20 and £25 and so far has lasted me a couple of months as I only use it on my troublesome areas.

It's fast depleting however so whist in BodyShop, purchasing foundation in Pasty Northerner, I enquired about their pore minimiser and face primer. I've been using a MUA eye primer but don't use an overall face primer and whist BodyShop were doing a 3 for two on this and that, I thought I'd have a go at their versions. Not tried them as yet so we'll see if it stands up to the Benefit product. But with the BodyShop deal this little bundle cost me £27.50 and they throw in a small Perfume oil for free. I chose Indian Night Jasmine, from the selection they have to offer.

Had a mooch round a few other shops for NP, but not much doing. It also seemed that all the shops had damaged goods, smashed eye shadows and wonky NP bottles. Must have been a collision on the M6 with a large makeup lorry, no one was hurt though and they all looked fabulous.

The last little purchase was Mac's Studio Finish concealer, a great little pot to dab your brush in and cover up those red and bumpy areas. £15 for this, but lasts ages and has a great formula, matt and not greasy at all, I've not found another concealer that is anywhere as good!

Zoya Gem - A Disappointment

Time to try out my latest purchase. Zoya's 'Gem'! What a disappointment, that lovely gold shimmer you see in the bottle doesn't show up on the nail at all.

The colour, although gorgeous, shows up very purple on the nails and not at all the deep red you see in the bottle either. I tried an accent nail in China Glaze's 'Electrify' to try and bring some sparkly to the manicure, but I think the red and the gold glitter are completely the wrong colours to pair with this polish.

I cooked dinner after painting my nails and chipped the hell out of them, so redid the accent nails with Color Club's 'The Uptown' which works so much better!

This is a flaky polish in a sheer purple base, I swatched it over a blue polish to see what effect it would give. The gold/copper flakes you can see above looked pink over the blue polish, so something to experiment with. 

I do like the combination above, just disappointed with the lack of dimension on the Zoya polish. If it had looked as good on the nail as it did in the bottle, no glitter would have been needed!

Sally Hansen SugarCoat

Had a mosey in the local Poundland t'other day, and picked up a couple more of the Sally Hansen SugarCoat polishes. These are matt textured polishes and I picked up this one in 'Laughie Taffy' and a light blue one called 'Royal Icing' which is a sheer pale blue polish with a pink/gold shimmer.

Much more interesting than the other colours I have in the collection. I have swatched 'Royal Icing' and will need to layer it over another colour as I think it's too sheer to build up to be completely opaque on it's own.

They had more colours and wished I'd picked up these too, so will keep my eye out. What I love about these textured polishes is, that it's such a lazy manicure. No top coat needed! The above was two coats and I always use OPI's Nail Envy Original polish as a base. 

One thing to note, it may be a lazy manicurist's polish, but it was a BUGGER to get off! 

Alien Nail Fest

This Bank holiday weekend I went to visit some friends down South and took along with me some polishes to create this matt finish manicure I saw on Pinterest. 

My friend agreed to help me with the task, and we practised with variations of top coat under the glitter or over the glitter, in the end we did two coats of Illamasqua's 'Faux Pas' topped with OPI's Matt Top coat and sponged OPI Silver Shatter and Orly's 'Fowl Play' on to the tips of the nails.

It didn't quite work out as the image on Pinterest but I really like how the Shatter looked when sponged on the nail and not painted. I'm going to try this effect on it's own with the different coloured shatters I've not used yet. So anyway you can see here that you can tell where the glitter has been applied as the tips are shiny but putting the matt top coat over the glitter really didn't work either, not sure how to make this work.

So I also did my friends nails and she wanted a gradient, so we used a pale mint green polish, Illasmasqua's 'Muse' and a Revlon, I think, polish in a dark blue to create the gradient below.

This was a practise to see if the colours would blend before doing the whole manicure, worked out pretty well I'd say. Then we topped off with a shimmery top coat to seal the design in and give an extra sparkle.

Whilst down South we ventured into London and taken to a Whole Food's Market in Kensington. This place is amazing, so many different brands and foods that you don't see in everyday supermarkets. Every kind of cheese, spice, pulse and grain you can think of, a real foodies paradise... They also sold Nail Varnish...

I restricted myself to one. They stocked Zoya, Butter London, Spa Ritual and one other brand I can't remember the name of. I wish I'd bought the Spa Ritual one I had my eye on too, but I'll settle for this polish called 'Gem' from Zoya.

Look at the colours in the bottle! It looks like a nebular of something equally spectacular in space somewhere. However it does NOT translate onto the nail. As always the formula on Zoya polishes is perfect and the colour is gorgeous, you just don't get the gold swirly cloudiness on the nail.

Spring Pastel Gradient

Having watched JessFace90's Favourite Green Polishes video on YouTube and The Nailasaurus's tutorial on Gradient nails I wanted to do my first Spring manicure.

I don't usually wear light colours and pretty much the only pastel colours I own are these Models Own Fruit Pastels polishes.

It's hard to pick the gradient out on the picture and according to the other half (who is colour blind) on my nails too. He says they look all one colour, white.

I picked 'Blueberry Muffin as my base and 'Apple Pie' for the tips. I started off trying to follow the Nailasaurus video and blend the polishes before dabbing them on my nails with the makeup sponge. This, for me, was unsuccessful. So I adopted the technique I used with the glitter gradient I did a few weeks ago, and painted the tips and used the sponge to work the colour up my nail. 

The left hand as always, worked better than the right, next time I'll try with a contrasting colour, as the above, perhaps, was too subtle. Good colours to practise with though!

Mini Haul and Revlon Chroma Chameleon Mani

So I mentioned previously that I bought 16 polishes in one day, and here they are in all their glory. Starting off with the three Revlon chroma chameleon polishes. The above mani was with the 'Colbalt' colour and has a slight shift from blue to purple in the bottle, however on the nail it just looks metallic blue. I topped my accent nail off with OPI's 'Polka.com' but was a bit of a rushed mani as you can see and I've taken the polish off.

The other two polishes I bought were 'Topaz' and 'Gold'. The picture above captures the colours really well in the bottles, unfortunately the effect doesn't translate on to the nail quite as much.

The next four polishes are Sally Hansen, the two on the left are from the Xtreme Wear range and are 'Kiwi Bikini' and 'Pinch of Punch'. The two on the right are from the Sugar Coat range and are both matt textured polishes, the black is call 'Lick-O-Rich and the yellow is 'Sweetie'. I've not worn any of these, but I think I'll give the yellow an outing in the Spring/Summer.

All these polishes so far were a £1 each Pound Land including the seven Sinful Color's below. Only the brown in these polishes claims to be a Matt polish however most of the colours when swatched seem to be too. Not a problem for me as I top coat everything anyway.

The Fuchsia colour at the front of each picture is called 'Dream On' and is gorgeous bright fuchsia colour, I've not captured it well on these pictures as it's much much brighter.

Left picture shows from left to right, 'Ruby Ruby', 'Timbleberry' (A lovely coral colour), 'I Miss You' (A blue, silver, and purple glitter is a purple base) and 'Dream On'.

Right picture from left to right 'Dream On', 'Savage', 'Nirvana' (The matt brown polish) and 'Cool Gray' which I used in my second geometric manicure.

Swatch above shows from left to right, 'Nirvava', 'Timbleberry', 'Dream On', 'I Miss You' and 'Savage'. The colours again aren't true to the polishes themselves and I'm starting to lose the light now, but you can see these have a matt finish.

The last two polishes I bought were GOSH in 'Berry Me' a gorgeous burgundy/purple polish and Color Show 'Nearly Black' which is a matt textured polish from their Crystallize range. (Swatch on the right). It has purple, teal and gold micro glitter in a dark brown base. Interestingly enough I thought this polish was the same as a matt glitter polish I bought from GOSH called 'Frosted Plum'. I swatched them both when doing this blog post to compare. Turns out the GOSH polish is an exact dupe of Barry M's 'Countess' from their latest textured range. I cannot tell the difference!

So that was my 16 polishes in one day adventure. Most at a bargain price, keep checking out your local Pound Shops they seem to get new polishes in all the time and both of the Sally Hansen polishes I have never seen before. The Color Show was buy one Maybelline product and get another half price at Superdrug so that cost me £2 and the only polish I paid full whack for was the GOSH. But I really wanted a polish in exactly this colour. 

All in all a successful shopping trip and I endeavour to wear them all within the next couple of months, so far I've worn 4 so not bad. I have some work to do...

Born Pretty Holo Polish

I have been searching for a Holo Polish similar to OPI's 'Original' from their first designer range and came across these Born Pretty polishes on eBay. 

This was exactly what I was looking for, and at the great price of £3.78 with free P&P all the way from Japan. I didn't realise until the polish came that it was a 6ml bottle. But that was my fault for not reading the description properly, I was probably distracted by the shiny things!

Any-hoo proper pleased with this polish, two coats and it looks marvellous. What is the likely hood of me getting though the 100's of ml of polish I already possess anyways! 

Born Pretty have an online store with all sorts of nail gubbins! Including all sorts of Holo Polishes in different colours, however they seem a little more expensive on the site than on eBay, so shop around.

Glitter Gradient

Fancy night out last night to a rather fancy restaurant, and wanted to do something sparkly with my nails to match my dress.

Plumped for Zoya's 'Toni' as the base colour, a lovely rich dark burgundy with matched the colour of my dress perfectly and such a great polish. Practically a one coater if you know what you're doing. I don't so had to touch up a few patches.

Then over the top I'd daubed some of this lovely light gold glitter to create a gradient effect. This is from a brand I found at Tesco called Along Came Betty and the polish is called 'Swag'. It's a mini polish and came is a set with duo-chrome polish called 'Dollar'.

The right hand actually came out much better than the left, as I'd got the hang of it by then. I used a cut up make-up sponge to smudge the glitter polish once applied to the bottom of my nail. I was a bit heavy handed with the first hand and needed to cut a smaller piece of sponge so the glitter wouldn't end up over the entire nail.

Happy with result and eager to try some more gradient/glitter combinations with blues and purples, my favourite colours.

Geometric Nails - Part 2

I have a confession to make. 

When shopping the other week.

 I bought 16 polishes in one day! 

However... 14 of these were from Pound Land and included the above Sinful Colors polish in 'Cool Gray'.

Pound Land have a great selection of Sinful Colors, the Boots near me who were carrying the brand seem to have discontinued them and no longer do. I bought several Sinful Colors, 3 of the Revlon Chameleon polishes, 2 Sally Hansen Sugar Coats (a textured polish) and 2 Sally Hansen Extreme Wear polishes which I've never seen anywhere in the UK before.

So work night out in Manchester and I chose the above manicure, could have spent a little more time on these as the blue was a little messy. I used scotch tape to create the triangles and Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure in 'Blue Rose'. Might be why the blue is so messy, the brushes on these polishes are like shovels.

Other news, started to see people talking about the new OPI Sheer Tints polishes, these are coloured top coats that you can layer over each other and other polishes. Temped to buy the minis set to try them out which you can get at Amazon. However I came across the post on Pinterest on how to make your own Sheers Tints Polishes.