Pink Wednesday!!! - OPI Panda-monium Pink

Panda-monium Pink is part of the OPI Hong Kong Collection Spring 2010 and is my second bottle from this collection. I also have Lucky Lucky Lavender which is in fact very similar to this pink because they both have a bit of lilac in them.

Panda-monium Pink is a light, pastel pink creme with cool undertones. I found the formula to be on the thin side, very sheer and needed 3 coats for even coverage. It also applied very streaky which granted, is the case with a lot of these milky based colours but even the 3rd coat didn't even out the streaks. Only a coat of SV helped smooth it out a little.

In spite of the consistency and application, I still love the colour. It reminds me of candy floss.

                           

Accessories Haul & New Haircut

This isn't a nail related post (sorry) but I just needed to share my new haircut and as a consequence of this, a recent accessories haul (pic heavy) :)

Most of you probably wouldn't know this about me but I've recently cut my long, mid-back length hair into a very short boyish cut. Since I was a little girl, I've always had very long hair, so I was really scared that it wouldn't suit me or that it was going to turn out crazy and then what? I would have to wear a hat until it grew out...Lol!
Anyway, I'm really happy with it. I can't believe I didn't do it sooner. It's waaaay easier to wash, blow dry and style. However, as a result of the haircut, I look about 16 and because I'm only 5"3", my friends say I look like a little teenage girl. Better than looking like a teenage boy which I did the other day when I wore a tracksuit and trainers. Here is what is looks like:

So...because I don't want to look like a boy, I've recently been on a rampage slowly stocking up on girly accessories (I don't wear skirts or heels very often so that doesn't really help either).
I never really wore accessories when I had long hair apart from a pair of studs every now and then, so roll on the chandelier earrings, costume rings, layered medallion necklaces and girly hair clips! Here are a few things I bought:

Bows are from Claire's, other hair clips from Primark and from a stall seller in Brighton. Bracelets are from Topshop as is the Turquoise ring with red rhinestones. Butterfly ring is from Select, pink & white vintage ring is from Primark and the smaller turquoise ring my mum brought me back from Thailand.

Earrings are also a mixture of high street shops and Camden Town market stalls.

Horn necklace is from a thrift market, owl and bug from Primark and the layered keys necklace I put together with a pearl necklace my grandmother gave me, some keyring stones and charms and the larger key is also from Primark.

Mavala Mexico & Metallic Grapes

Hi everyone. Today I wanted to show you a shade by Mavala which I actually swatched about a month ago but just never got around to posting this one.
Mavala Mexico (30) is a deep purple creme which looks uninteresting in the bottle and in between all my other more exciting purples, but on the nail and in the light you can detect tiny amounts of blue and fuchsia micro-shimmer. It was completely opaque in 2 coats and has very good and manageable consistency. I really like the dainty little bottles as well :)

I then used BM05 and GOSH Metallic Purple to stamp grapes on the left side of the nail and added french tips with the same polish. This polish dries quite fast on the plate so some of the stems didn't transfer onto the nails :(

Glittery Budding Flowers & Oh My Pink!

Hi Everyone. Today I wanted to show you a couple of mani's I did using Nails Inc OMP as a base colour.
Well, the Lightning bolt tip mani you are about to see was actually done a few weeks ago but I completely failed at what I was trying to achieve - simply adding lightning bolts to the tips :( Jane would be so disappointed in my actual lack of a lightning bolt! Lol!

Anyway, here is the flowery mani I created. I used Konad White Stamping polish and BM16 but just to jazz things up a bit, I stamped diagonally instead of stamping the whole nail plate. I then added some bullion beads to the center of the flowers and a line of silver glitter for that extra sparkle.

Pink Wednesday - Nails Inc. OMP (Oh My Pink!)

A few weeks ago, Nails Inc had a collaboration with Fabulous Magazine here in the UK where they were giving away 2 bottles in exchange for collecting 3 tokens from the News of the World newspaper (now non-existent). The papers were about £1 each and 2 Nails Inc polishes are worth about £22, so a bargain really!
The two colours were Atomic (which I have included for you guys in my giveaway) and OMP (Oh My Pink!).

As is the case with all my Nails Inc polishes, OMP was an absolute wonder to work with! A raspberry creme shade with defined undertones of red makes it a rose-reddish colour, almost like amaranth. It's a highly pigmented one-coater (so no problems with opacity) although the pictures below are 2 coats for smoothness (and because I can't help it but always use 2 coats)!

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.

Comparison - China Glaze Electric Pineapple & OPI Fiercely Fiona

I bought these 2 polishes about a week apart. China Glaze Electric Pineapple had been on my wish list for a while but then I came across OPI Fiercely Fiona on sale and got that one too. Only after I had them side by side on my shelf did I realise that in fact, I didn't quite need the two of them...silly me! However, at least I can do a comparison for you guys.

EP, a yellow-lime green creme, is my 3rd polish from the Island Escape Collection. I had read a few reviews on this one, other bloggers found it to be on the thick side and only needed 2 coats for full opacity. I had a different experience with it. Mine was very thin, I had to be extra careful not to flood my cuticles and although I did 2 coats, a 3rd coat was most definitely needed. It was a bit on the streaky side but it does even itself out, especially after a top coat.

FF from the Shrek Forever After Collection, is also a murky lemony yellow but has less of a green cast to it than EP. In my opinion, application on this one was very similar to EP, the formula is quite thin and needed 3 coats for opacity. Having said that, in the world of notoriously bad yellows, this would probably come out on top in terms of application.

So, all in all, they aren't exactly dupes and a lot of polish fanatics would be able to distinguish between the two colours (especially irl), but if they weren't side by side but I would have to look pretty close and still find it hard! I love both colours but for my skin tone I prefer FF.

Burt's Bees Honey & Grapeseed Oil Hand Creme Review

A couple of weeks ago I got 2 bottles of this little-bit-of-heaven-in-a-tube in the mail as well as some Lemon Butter Cuticle cream (which is standard as I can never run out of this stuff).
I'm not sure if any of you have tried the Honey & Grapeseed Oil Hand Creme but I'm totally in love with it at the moment.



Picture courtesy of http://www.burtsbees.com/


I'm all for earth-friendly, natural skin care but I'm often disappointed with these so called "natural/ fresh/ handmade" brands because sadly their products don't work as well as many regular brands - Lush, I'm talking to you (apologies to any Lush fans but none of their products agree with me)!
Needless to say I'm quite impressed with this hand cream. Burt's Bees website says:

"This natural hand cream provides daily therapy for extremely dry hands using some of nature's most moisturizing agents like honey, jojoba oil and rosemary extract. Reveal hands that are naturally soft to the touch, smooth and healthy"

Although I don't have extremely dry and chapped hands as I'm quite good with applying my hand creams liberally, my mum, an avid gardener who doesn't wear gloves a lot of the time, does have dry and cracked hands. I gave her one of my tubes and after 9 days of using this cream everyday, her hands became much softer and some of the cuts she had on her hands have begun to heal.

I also love the consistency of this cream. It's different and interesting, somewhat like a heavy mousse. It's thick enough to deeply moisturise your hands but seeps into the skin really well without that greasy residue. However, I may be slightly biased here because I'm generally a fan of very heavy, thick, nourishing hand creams!

The smell - my mum doesn't like the smell, she says it's too overpowering, then again, she doesn't like honey! Me on the other hand, the fact that it's a natural product with a strong smell is what I like. It smells distinctively of honey (what a shock!!) and even after initial application where smell is stronger, the subtle after-smell is even lovelier.
Burt's Bees have quite a large hand and foot product selection, I'll definitely be wanting to try them out!

A 75g bottle retails for about £9.99.

Flowery Half Moon Mani

Hello everyone. It's Wednesday but I don't have something pink today...sorry! I will dip back into the pink stash soon :-) However, taking yesterdays Color Club Best Dressed list mani, I decided to create some half moons as I hadn't done this in a very long time. In fact, my first ever post in this blog was a violet and purple half moon mani!!

I swapped the colours around on the ring finger to create a bit of a change and added some blue sticker flowers because although half moon manis are awesome, it looked too "naked" without them!

                          

In the nude: Colour Club Best Dressed List

Today I opted for a little less colour and went for a warm nude tone.
Best Dressed List from Color Club is from their Spring 2010 Rebel Debutante collection. This tone of nude is slightly darker than most of my other nudes, you can most definitely see the light brown in it but that's one of the reasons I went for it. I think it's really soft and complements my skin tone. Nudes are almost always my go-to polishes and this one is a keeper.

The formula is really good, applies evenly with no streaks. Then again I've never really had many problems with the Color Club polishes I own. So far their creme formulas are pretty consistent. This is 2 coats:

  

Eco Warrior Mani

I love green and I love stripes (vertical, horizontal, diagonal, you name it) so I tend to do quite a few of these although my last one was quite a while ago which you can see here. I added the little fimo leaf to this one for good measure!

I called this mani Eco Warrior because I could only imagine a warrior princess in a green full body leotard, with a sparkly green cape and her nails done like this, lol! Then again, considering that only 1 of the polishes I used - Nubar Earth - says it is Formaldehyde, Phthalate and Toluene free, this mani would probably suit Poison Ivy better.

Polishes used: tips - Nubar Earth (which you can see swatched on its own here), middle - Make Up Academy Shade 13, near cuticle - Miss Sporty Green Lemon

Pinkyberry & Old English Roses

Yesterday I showed you my first franken polish which I named Pinkyberry. As the colour is a cross between pink and a light shade of berry, it reminded me of old English roses painted on a porcelain tea pot :-)
I stamped roses using BM14 and Konad Silver stamping polish. The Konad silver and gold stamping polishes aren't as heavily pigmented as the other Konad colours, therefore not as good (imo) for stamping.