The not so scary Halloween mani

I didn't do any Halloween nail art this year. I'm not very good at themed manis and even worse at freehand. I suppose I could have used some BM plates but I rather admire what other bloggers have been creating. I have seen some amazing Halloween manis floating around this year :)

So, trying to at least keep with Halloween'ish colours, here is a not-so-scary scotch tape mani in orange and black. You can tell by the title, I had no idea what to call this one!

The burnt orange polish used is Metallic Mango by Milani. Orange is one of my least favourite colours, I'm not even sure why I bought this one, I think it was really cheap on Ebay! It's a shame I won't use it much because it's orange as the formula is amazing! The consistency is perfect and so manageable I didn't even have to do any clean up. Perfect is 2 even coats!

Victoriana Teal Chevrons

I wasn't sure what to do with yesterday's mani. I fell in love with Victoriana so much that I didn't want to "ruin" it with nail art. Then again, I can't leave a mani alone, especially if I'm in the mood to do my nails again but don't yet want to remove my good polish! So I went for the safe option - tape! I was going to just go for french tips but instead decided on french tips with a twist!

Keeping with the blue, green, teal, silver micro-glitter, etc, theme; here are some Victorian(a) inspired teal chevrons. Additional polishes used were Zoya Trixie and Nails Inc In Style free polish in Teal.

butter LONDON - Victoriana

I'm so excited to be posting about this polish. It is my first Butter London ever and it didn't disappoint!

Victoriana is a faded blue with a hint of green and packed with silver micro-glitter. The colour is so vintage yet quirky! It's from the Fall 2010 collection, which was a tribute to fashion designer Alexander McQueen.

The formula is amazing to work with, it is thick but easily manageable. It is highly pigmented so the coverage is amazing from the word go. The pics below have 2 coats out of habit, no top coat:

Milani Hi-Res

I had heard many good things about the Milani holos so when I placed my Beauty Joint Kleancolor order a couple of months ago and saw that they also sold Milani, I thought this would be my chance to try it (we don't get Milani here in the UK).

I used 1 coat of Milani Hi Res over 1 coat of Rimmel London Perfect Plum. I wanted it to be completely opaque and also use less of the Milani to achieve this.

Hi Res is such a soft and dreamy purple. The rainbow of colours (red, green, gold and blue) in all their holo goodness add to that fairytale feel it has. I love it! This one is definitely a keeper for me and the price is amazing ($3.99) considering how good the formula and the overall polish is.

Golden Nightmare - Kleancolor

I swatched this polish a couple of weeks ago and was really excited about it until I saw quite a long vertical crack on the side of the lid! I knew this would mean the polish would most probably be quite thick and gooey but that was nothing a bit of thinner couldn't resolve. I then opened the bottle and oh no! The brush was a mess!!! Generally, I very much like Kleancolor brushes but the bristles on this one were all over the place! Needless to say it was a nightmare to control the polish on the brush and to even keep on the nail plate. Lets just say I had a lot of clean up afterwards! I will have to decant it when I get an empty bottle.

Anyways, onto the polish. Golden Nightmare is a black creme packed with golden glitter (depending on the lighting, it can also have an olive tinge). The glitter really comes alive in direct sunlight but gets somewhat "lost" in the black when indoors!
You know those polishes that are supposed to be a 1-coater but we end up applying 2? Well, this one is truly a 1-coater. It's so pigmented, I've never seen anything like it (maybe it's because my one was quite thick because of the crack?!)

I've seen quite a few comparisons of Golden Nightmare and China Glaze Wagon Trail and although the colour may be similar, at a glance Wagon Trail has micro-glitter whilst Golden Nightmare has extremely coarse glitter. 2 coats of regular top coat didn't smooth it out, maybe SV would... Oh well, I feel "badass" wearing coarse glitter anyway!

Tutorial: Colourful Rays of Light

I had a request on FB and a couple on here asking me to do a tutorial for the Colourful Rays of Light mani I did a few days ago. It's basically using striping tape over a base colour to create thin lines showing through a darker colour! Here is a very simple and easy tutorial on how to achieve that in 4 steps. I'm no good at explaining things so bear with me :)

Step 1:
After prepping you nail, paint 3 stripes of any colours you like. They don't have to be perfectly straight as you will be covering it later.
You can also just use 1 base colour on the whole nail if you prefer.

Step 2: After your base colour(s) is dry, lay down your striping tape in any direction you would like the final pattern to look. (I bought my striping tape on ebay, 6 rods of various colours for £1.89). You can also use regular scotch tape but I prefer striping tape as I'm too lazy to sit there and cut lots of very thin strips.

Step 3: Apply your second coat of colour all over your nail and the striping tape. 

Step 4: Remove the striping tape, one piece at a time whilst your polish is still wet and you're done!

If any of you guys decide to give this mani a go, I would love to see what you create :)

Glossy Box - October

This is my first ever GlossyBox. Yay!! I decided to join the GlossyBox monthly subscription instead of the Budoir Prive after reading quite a lot of comparisons of them on other blogs. The box actually arrived promptly on Tuesday, a day after the Glossy Box team sent me an e-mail to say it had been posted but it was at my mum's house where I get all my packages sent to. Speaking of packages, I love the way it's packaged, all wrapped up so neat and chic. The box itself is a keeper!

For anyone who doesn't know about GlossyBox, in a nutshell it's a monthly subscription service which you aren't tied into and can be cancelled anytime. It costs £12.95 (£10 for the box and £2.95 for postage). Each box contains 5 luxury miniature products from generally well known brands (I think the October box has 6 products because it's their 6 month anniversary). The cost of the contents usually outweighs the cost of the actual box which makes it worth your money. In this box, the Leighton Denny nail polish alone is worth £11. My husband did the maths for me and all the samples and full sized products together are supposedly worth £51.30!! Wow!!

It's always fun having a little box of surprises arriving at your door every month :)

* Dermalogica Age Smart MultiVitamin Thermafoliant
* Dermalogica Age Smart MultiVitamin Power Recover Masque
* Leighton Denny Expert Nails Colour and Care in Babydoll 
* Stila Smudge Stick Waterproof Eyeliner in Moray
* Robert Piguet perfume samples (3x)
* Dermalogica Age Smart Renewal Lip Complex & Dermalogica Beauty Bag

My verdict - My main problem with subscriptions like this was the possibility of getting only 1 product I like/would use and 4 that I would never touch. That isn't the case with the October box. Other than the Perfume Samples (which smell OK'ish but I hate the silly little vials), I would use every single item in this box. I love Dermalogica and currently use their Dermal Clay Cleanser, I've never tried their Age Smart range so this is the perfect opportunity.
I swatched the Stila Eyeliner and the colour is just so pretty, different from anything else I have. And of course I'm super happy I got an awesome nail polish with this box :)

17 Magnetized Green

Remember the post I did on the Nails Inc Magnetic Polish? Well, I was wondering when drugstore brands would embrace the trend and start creating some affordable magnetic polishes. I know a lot of people aren't into the magnetic trend but I have to say I'm really liking it right now! It's an extremely easy way to have something cool on your nails without spending too much time on them!

Boots have now launched the 17 Magnetized polishes. They come in 4 colours (Gun Metal, Lilac, Blue and Green) and retail for £5.99 (although they are £1.00 off at the moment). They are also exactly the same as the Nails Inc Magnetic polishes, from the bottle to the formula.

I wasn't expecting the quality of this polish to be as good as the Nails Inc ones but was I wrong! The formula is very pigmented so it will cover well in just one coat although I always apply a base polish so I don't use too much of the magnetic one. The effects it creates are almost like 3D which isn't the case with all magnetic polishes, it's got a lot of depth and dimension to it.

The magnet on the cap also has that little curved rest for fail proof application, what a genius idea! I'm so clumsy that if I had to hold a magnet as close as I could to wet polish, I would most definitely mess it up!

What do you guys think of the magnetic polish trend? Better or worse than shatter/ crackle?

First picture has a top coat, other 2 pics have no top coat:

Here is a pic of the bottle with the detachable cap:

Purple Embelished Half Moons

Today I have a mani from the vault to show you as I still haven't removed 17 gold glitter crackle from my nails. I'm trying my best to keep a mani for longer than 24 hours, especially if it's still intact.
I like to see my nails polished all the time but I also have to take it easy on them as they are still peeling around the sides and I think it's the harshness of the acetone.

Onto this mani. Not much to say really. It's been sitting in my "to post" folder for a long time now! I got this idea from a picture I saw on Sephora's website whilst browsing. The model was wearing some sort of stiletto extensions and I'm not a fan of extensions but it still looked really cool.

I love half moon manis and need to start doing a few more of these but I wouldn't necessarily wear this one for very long because the rhinestones would start to fall off!

17 Gold Glitter Crackle & Femme Noir

There has been a little bit of a hoo ha about this new 17 black/ gold/ glitter crackle, at least as far as I'm concerned because a) I've seen it being raved about in a couple of blogs, b) I heard 2 girls talking about it in Starbucks on Friday and c) my friend bought it and she hates crackles more than anything!

As you know, I'm not a big fan of crackles either. I just can't seem to make them work (unless I'm using it for some type of nail art only). I wanted to like them, I really did but deep down the love just wasn't there, Lol!

So, I don't know why I gave this one a go! I think it was partly because I told myself that it's not just a normal crackle, it has coarse glitter in it! It also reminds me of some sort of reptile skin. And... I can't believe I'm saying this but I quite like it! I won't be using it regularly but it's a good polish to have when you want to jazz up a chipped mani in a rush!

I was a bit lost as to what colour to use as a base so I decided to use a complementary colour instead of going for contrast - Miss Sporty Gold Backstage which is a very soft champagne kind of gold.

If the pics looks strange it's because this is my right hand. I never photograph my right hand but I messed up my left hand by layering on the crackle too thickly :(

17 are also running an offer at the moment. If you purchase any three 17 products, you get a free "Femme Noir" gift set which contains:

*17 Ultimate Volume LipGloss in Very Berry - This is one of those highly pigmented lip glosses. It has pretty good staying power, I wore it to dinner and when I got back home, there were still signs of it! However, I wanted the colour to be closer to the box image, I like that very dark stained berry colour, it looks so vampy!

*17 Glitter Eyeshadow in Night Sky - A charcoal eyeshadow with almost invisible duochrome glitter. I had to use a wet brush for the swatch below as the eyeshadow on it's own didn't impress much.

*17 Liquid Liner in Black - not much to say anout this one. Looks like a standard black liquid liner and I'm not sure about quality and durability yet because I haven't tried it.

Colourful Rays of Light

I have a mani from the vault to show you as I'm still wearing Fields of Gold on my nails. I'm trying to change my nail polish less often now because all the polish remover is causing havoc on my nail plates, even though I use acetone free remover (most of the time)!

I did this tape mani a couple of months ago and I'm happy with the way it turned out. I like how the lighter colours contrast with the black. I'll definitely try this again with another light vs. dark colour and maybe different tape patterns :)

My favourite pattern is on the pinky, which one do you think is nicer?

Honey & Lemon Face Mask

A couple of weeks ago, in my continuous quest for clear skin, I posted about using lemon juice as a facial cleanser/ toner. It worked for me in terms of drying out some of my spots and diminishing some of the oil, especially on my T-zone. However, I had to take a break because it was drying out my skin TOO much.

Continuing with my home made natural skin care experiment, I tried the ever so popular Honey and Lemon face mask. Honey is antibacterial, hygroscopic and a source of antioxidants. You can read all about it's properties here. Paired with lemon juice, I thought these would be my 2 miracle ingredients.

source: google images

How to prepare/ use the mask:

- Simple. Just put a couple of spoons of honey enough to cover your face, in a bowl (I just use supermarket branded or Rowse) and add the juice of about 1/4 of a lemon. Mix well together.

- Apply all over the face with a spatula and leave for 10-15 minutes.

- Rinse with warm water and pat dry. Apply your regular moisturiser.

Verdict:

It's unbelievable how smooth your skin feels after this mask. Whilst I was using this mask (every other day for 2 weeks), I was at that happy point with my skin! I could pull off the tinted moisturiser only, sheer coverage, dewy look. When I stopped using it, a couple of days later, some little spots came back around my chin and you lose that smooth effect of course. So, if you want that clear and smooth skin, you have to keep using it frequently. I use it 2x a weeks now.

What are your experiences with natural face masks. Do you prefer them to packaged ones?

Fields of Gold

Here is another Franken I created a while ago. It's an olive green full of green (duh!) and gold shimmer, hence the name! I used micro shimmer for this one as I had already created a similar franken with coarse glitter.
I was going for the "old Egyptian gold" look but it turned out slightly lighter. I still like this colour, it's unique, I don't have any other olive greens like this!

The formula turned out really good. Not too thick and opaque in 2 thin coats. Drying time was average.

You have probably noticed that I filled my nails right down. They are starting to peel around the nail walls which isn't good and the little bumps are visible underneath some polishes. They are as strong as they were before so I don't know what's up with the peeling. I've started using Rimmel Stronger Double Duty Base Coat: Strengthens and Protects, we'll see how that goes.

What do you think of this olive green shade? Yay or nay?

Talk about a bargain!

I love it when I can get my hands on a bargain!!! I've been getting trigger happy on Ebay again and have bagged myself some pretties from La Femme and Milani recently:

* La Femme polishes - Egyptian Gold, Azure, Saphire (purple glitter - this one looks used!), Odyssey
* Milani - Metallic Mango, Devoted 2 U

I grabbed Fudge by Collection 2000 on my way home from work today. The colour isn't all that exciting (at least in the bottle) but I just loved the name...yum!

The UK distributor for Nubar was having a sale so I couldn't help but order Reclaim and Violet Sparkle. I love it when I don't have to pay full price for stuff :)

I also grabbed a few accessories from Primark. You know how it is when you walk into Primark...you were meant to just buy some tights and end up with a load of stuff because everything is so pretty and cheap.
I bought 2 adorned headbands to compliment my short haircut and a new make-up travel bag (although I already have 5). The red and pink vintage flowers reminded me of a make-up pouch my grandmother had when I was little :) Each of these items were only £1.50 each!

Starry Starry Lightning Bolts

This is my second attempt at recreating Jane's lightning bolt mani. Are her manis awesome or what?! My first attempt turned out crappy but hey! Learn from your mistakes! I get really lazy doing these types of manis because I have to wait ages for the polish to dry in between applying each layer to create the lightning bolt. It's definitely no quick mani!

I'm not 100% happy with this one either but at least I was able to do a double lightning bolt. The only problem really, was keeping the tape straight and on point enough to apply the 3rd polish layer/ 2nd part of the lightning bolt!

Tell me what you think! Are you guys patient enough to wait for these types of manis to dry?! I'm thinking maybe just accent finger next time! (Oops, and excuse the dry hands, I should know better!)

Hello Kitty - Corall Summer

A couple of months ago I showed you the H&M Hello Kitty Pink Summer which is the pink sister polish to this one. This one is called Corall Summer (not sure why it's spelt like that)!

As with the pink version, this polish is absolutely amazing. It ticks all my boxes which is always a bonus for a cheap polish (£2.99). The formula is excellent, it's opaque in 1 coat (but the pictures have 2 of course) and drying time is faster than the average polish. It's such a pretty shade of blue as well and look how cute the bottle is - like Ciate but without the bow!

Get your hand cream freebies now!

If you live in the UK, you will probably have seen that this month's issues of Marie Claire and In Style are giving away 4 L'Occitane and 2 Cowshed hand creams. If you haven't, hurry out to get yours!

Each of the Cowshed hand creams are worth £8:
Cow Slip - Soothing Hand Cream with essential oils of sweet orange and peppermint
Cow Pat - Moisturising Hand Cream with essential oils of grapefruit and coriander

All L'Occitane creams are worth £30. I went to quite a few newsagents but have so far only managed to find 2 of the 4: the Original 20% Shea Butter and limited edition cocoa flower. I still need to find Desert Rose from Morocco and Egyptian Hibiscus.

On my way home I also went to Sainsbury's and couldn't help but pick up a tube of Dirty Works Your Soft Touch hand cream. It looks so vintage, it reminds me of Soap & Glory, just cheaper!

If you want to keep up with any offers/ freebies, check out Make up savvy, she always knows when and where!

Autumn is here to stay now!

Here is somewhat of an autumn mani...finally!!! I've been meaning to post it for so long but then it got hot here again in late September/ early October so it seemed a little out of place. Now it's definitely cold again! Brrrr!

This was based on a post that nihrida did as her entry for an autumn nail art contest back in 2009.
I used yesterday's Kleancolor Cappuccino as a base, some sponging and bm205. It gave me a chance to do some stamping which didn't turn into a complete failure...my stamping abilities are usually mediocre!