Clinique - A Different Nail Enamel for Sensitive Skins - Swatches & Review

Until very recently I wasn't aware that Clinique were bringing out a range of nail polishes! They did have nail polish in the past but I don't remember it ever being anything to shout home about.
Indeed the fragrance free brand has launched a new line of twelve core colours and nine limited edition Summer 2013 shades (see UK website for more details).

This nail enamel claims to be "different" as per the name and why is that you ask? Well, according to Clinique it was specifically formulated to minimise skin and eye sensitivity. They are also 5-free, but I thought established 5-free polishes were already kinder to skin? Check out Lipglossiping blog for more information on the formula and what the Clinique PR team had to say about it.

Today I'll be showing you 6 different shades. A mixture of some core line shades as well as some limited edition ones. You'll notice I have also filed down my nails quite a bit, it's much easier to swatch with shorter nails. All swatches are two coats although I would recommend three coats for the jellies.

Happy is my favourite from the bunch. A hot coral creme with pinkish-red undertones which is quite hard to capture on camera.

70o and Sunny (LE) is a bright sunflower yellow creme. Most yellows are streaky and this one is no exception. However, the formula was quite good to work with and therefore quite easy to minimise streakiness.

Black Honey is deep blackened cherry red jelly which is perfect for fall. The fact it's a jelly means that it doesn't apply so dark on the nail that it looks completely black as some of these polishes often do.

Hot Date (LE). An interesting purple jelly. With only two coats, you can see the magenta undertones in there that for some reason my camera picked up. It's slightly darker and more true to bottle colour in person.

Party Red is a classic fire engine red creme. As with the other cremes in this collection, opacity was great.

Juiced Up (LE) is an orangey coral jelly. Not as bright as Happy but still a must have for summer if you don't feel like wearing an in-your-face neon.

The bottle shape isn't my favourite (they remind me of Nails Inc bottles only thinner), but the embossed chrome metal caps are quite sleek and do keep with the Clinique image. The whole bottle is very clean (no writing whatsoever) with only a small sticker at the bottom showing the polish name. For a list of ingredients, you must refer to to outer paper packaging the bottles come in.

Although I was impressed with the formula on these, including the jellies; each 9ml bottle comes with a price tag of £12 which I know is a lot more than what a lot of people would pay for polish, myself included. People with sensitive skin prone to allergies and irritation should give this polish a go and see how it compares to their regular polish.

These are now available online at www.clinique.co.uk and at Clinique counters from 31st May 2013.

*The product featured  in this post was sent to me for review.

Pastel, Gold and Daisies

I'm trying to hold onto Summer as much as I can. We've had an unusually hot weekend here which was awesome but I know temperatures will start falling very soon and it will be time to embrace Autumn!

I've felt like wearing yellow for the past couple of days and I finally got around to it. I was only planning to wear a pastel yellow on it's own but as it turns out, the formula on this polish was very streaky so I had to cover it up with some stamping.

This is 2 coats of "Yes Love" No243 I usually buy Yes Love polishes in €1 stores when I go on holiday to Portugal. They are extremely cheap and always have a really fantastic range of colours and finishes. The formulas are hit and miss but I suppose you can't expect too much of a €1 polish.

I stamped with Cheeky CH16 and randomly dotted some gold shimmer onto the daisies (Miss Sporty Gold Backstage).

Going Bananas Leopard

Seems like forever since I last posted. I've been on a much needed holiday and my nails have grown quite a bit since the last time I posted. I'm going to try and keep them like this for a while, either until I scratch myself or they start getting in the way! Lol!

A very simple mani today. Leopard accent stamped with BM221and some loose glitter placement on the other nails.
The base colour is Going Bananas by H&M, which has been sitting in my untrieds stash for over a year. It's a soft, light, almost pastel yellow with green  and pink shimmer which was impossible to capture on camera. It reminds me of Chanel Mimosa!

H&M polishes are good, I don't own many but have never come across a really bad formula. The one thing I hate is the shape of the lid! The plastic square bit isn't detachable like Butter London, which makes for really awkward application.

Citrus Stripes

Today, I've put my scotch tape roll to good use again and have some "nudies" and some diagonal citrusy stripes for you.
Very rarely will you see a glimpse of my natural nails! Too much polish all the time means they are usually very stained and I don't often bother to scrub the staining away when I'm just going to be using more polish that stains the next day! However, I've been trying some very light and soft colours lately so I grabbed some lemon juice and baking soda and got scrubbing and buffing.

The base colour is in fact no colour at all, it's just base coat and for the stripes I used Barry M Lemon Ice Cream and Essence Wake Up, sent to me by the lovely Nihrida.

Papa-paparazzi

A while ago I was looking at "Lady Gaga nails" on You Tube and came across some really cool designs! There were quite a few clips on how to do nails like her Paparazzi outfit which I found really cute so I thought I'd give them a go!

I used Beauty UK Yellow Peril as a base colour and a dotting tool to draw the Mickey Mouse heads. The very thin gold french tips are made of striping tape.

Some Old Flowers...

I was clearing up some of my computer folders and came across this design dated 27th October 2011! I have no idea why I haven't posted these before. Probably because they were done in October and I was waiting for Spring to post them and then completely forgot about them!

It was quite a while ago but I'm pretty sure I used Sammy's You Tube tutorial on how to create quick and easy flowers. I've recently done another set similar to this which turned out much better so I guess my nail art skills have improved slightly in the last five months! However, I still wanted to post these because I really like how all these colours go together.

I used OPI Fiercely Fiona as a base colour and the following polishes for the flowers: Barry M Black, Miss Sporty Pop Fiction and Orly Glitz & Glamour.

The Crackling Girl On Fire!

All this week, running up to Friday when the much awaited Hunger Games movie is released, I will be posting a HG inspired mani and my China Glaze Capitol Colors which I got in the mail last week!

I actually did this mani a couple of weeks ago, my nails are much longer now! I was toying with the idea of doing a water marble with red, orange and yellow but I really suck and those and, well... I'm really lazy!!! So I went for the much quicker and easier option!

Cinna would totally approve of Katniss wearing crackle right? Especially matte c'mon!!! Lol!

Bzzzzz...

I went to a barbecue at a friend's house yesterday and saw a few bumble bees whilst we were out in the garden (really??). It's been quite warm here lately, although not so much today!
I already had yellow on my nails from yesterday because I was thinking of doing a lightning bolt tape mani with it, so why not use tape to make something that resembles a bee (plus it's way easier than the lightning bolt)!

Here is my interpretation of the bee manicure - using tape. I can't really draw so I don't think I would even be able to draw a bee and I couldn't help but add a little fimo for extra cuteness :)

And here is a pic of my little tiger Eggbert munching on my living room plant that we always try to rescue from him. Don't worry, it's not poisonous, we've taken a sample to check! He would be munching on those bees in the garden if I let him!

Yellow Peril - Beauty UK Glam Nails

I only bought this bright yellow polish because I needed to do some nail art and all I had were pastels but it looked so vivid and pretty that I decided to do a full mani with it :)

Yellow Peril is a true bright yellow, what you would think of when the word "yellow" was mentioned; similar to a taxi sort of yellow! I was afraid application would be a nightmare but I was wrong. The formula was good, not streaky and it only needed 2 thick coats for opacity. I'm probably not going to wear this colour for the next few autumn/ winter months but will definitely be wearing it again come spring/ summer next year!

All in all I'm happy with this polish, not only because I found a good yellow which actually suits my skin tone (although I'm a little pale at the moment) but also because it only cost me £1.99!

My nails are getting a bit long again, grrrrr! Time to file them down a bit!

It's been quite warm here for the past couple of days. Most probably the last warm weekend of the year! This was the colour of the sky yesterday evening when the sun was setting. Absolutely stunning!

Electric Purple Zebra & (an attempt at) Summer Flower Garden!

Hi everybody. Hope you all had a nice weekend! This will be a very quick post today but I have a couple of stamping designs to show you, for which I used China Glaze Electric Pineapple and OPI Fiercely Fiona as bases.

Here is the first one. I stamped using BM16 and Mavala Mexico, and then added some purple tips also with Mavala Mexico:

The second design didn't come out so well. I knew what I wanted to achieve in my head but it didn't really translate to the nails. Afterwards I realised where I went wrong. The orange polish I used was too sheer and although it was good for stamping, it wasn't so good for tips. Also, I don't really like the way the 2 flower colours meet :-(
Using yesterday's swatches of EP and FF as a base I stamped with BM06, Missguided Misstaken and Collection 2000 Ninja.

The LA Colors Seashell & French Tips Incident!

Right, so this mani wasn't supposed to turn out like this whatsoever! I had something completely different in mind. As the polish is called Seashell, I was going to stamp little light brown shells to keep with the beach theme. A sparkly beach! And then it all went downhill from there!

The polish applied relatively well but it was sheer so I added 1 coat of Barry M Lemon Ice Cream base colour before 2 coats of seashell. Then it all turned into a mess!

The drying time was so horrible that I found it hard to actually believe that any polish would take this long to dry, even with 2 coats of SV! The second coat of SV even made the polish lift from the nail a bit. I waited about 30 mins before using scotch tape for the tips and this created massive bubbles of air underneath! I was still trying desperately to salvage this mani, even without my little seashells.
The only thing I could think of was  nail stickers to cover up some of the mistakes. But guess what? As I added a top coat over the stickers, they started curling up at the edges (which has never happened to me before with these stickers)! That's it, I was so annoyed I gave up and this mani came straight off. And not so long ago I was raving about LA Colors, maybe I just got a bad bottle :( *sigh*

Citrus Punch Mani - Fruity Nails

Hi guys,

The weather was so dreadful here yesterday that this morning when I woke up, I decided I wanted something even brighter than bright, more summery than summer. I typed the words "summer nails" into google and I got lots of flowers, neons, fimo and watermelons. I've already done watermelon nails a couple of weeks back (which I will show you later) so I wanted a different fruit and that's when I came across some videos on Youtube.

Hope you are all feeling fruity today !!!

Here are my lemony-lime nails:

Products used:

* Barry M - Lemon Ice Cream
* Vital Make-up - No19
* Nail Star Nail Art Brush - White




xoxo

Star Nails - Funky French Tips

Hi everyone. Today I wanted to show you a mani that I actually did a couple of days ago but didn't have time to post. I was just playing around with colour combos when I came across a post by Emerald Sparkled
in which she used yellow and purple. I thought the colours looked funky together :-)

I used a pastel yellow (Barry M Lemon Ice cream) as opposed to a more vivid bright (sorry, camera was playing up):

Then I stamped with BM21 and the stamping polish I used was OPI Lincoln Park After Dark. The purple didn't come out as accentuated as I wanted it to...oh well !!!

I didn't want to leave it at the BM stamp so I decided to add some sort of funky French Tips (if you can call them that)...they are Lincoln Park After Dark polish with yellow glitter on top. Hmmm... not quite sure what to make of "V" shaped tips !!!