Monthly Archives: January 2012

NOTD 28012012

Whoo. Been a while since I’ve done a NOTD. I’ve been meaning to, I wanted to show you guys a new polish I picked up. Instead I got inspired by cakes and Mr Kipling again and came up with this notd. Missed a little on my pinky and didn’t clean up my nails, sorry, but after I’ve written this post, I’ve decided it’s coming off.

*Cringes at that chunk on my pinky* I did my ring finger first and my nail art pen was like.. nope! D: Ended up using the brush tip instead. This nail art was done without the use of any tape. Always ends up disasterous for me and frankly, I’m not that patient!

Clear base coat
BeautyUK – Frozen Kingdom (secondary base)
Barry M – Strawberry Ice cream
Barry M – Lemon Ice Cream
ELF – White (in my nail art pen for the details)

Anyone else want cake?

Fearne – Beauty and the Bag

Just a quick little post on the Fearne cosmetic bag.

You may or may not of heard about the new(ish) Fearne range at Boots. Here we have Beauty and the Bag from the new range. I quite like the bag. Rather unique. Inside it you get some black tissue paper with goodies wrapped inside. You get a palette/trio,  sliver glitter eyeliner, black mascara and a pink lipgloss.

They’re pretty standard. Nothing impressive to be honest. Usable, but very very average.

This is the From Dusk Til Dawn Eyes palette that comes in this bag. Looks cheap but the design is quite nice.

Colours aren’t anything special.

This is them swatched WET. I couldn’t get anything out of them dry, I would have taken a photo of it, but it would just be of my plain hand. D:

So yeah. This is not worth the £20 it costs. At least you get a nice bag eh? the only think I like is the scarab theme. The colours of the palette are kind nice but.. no good if I can’t use them dry! Disappointed, I was quite excited to try these out. At least it’s usable wet and the other products are usable, even if they’re nothing special. So not a complete waste. Just try not to smell or taste the lipgloss…

£20 from Boots.

This product was sent to me by a PR as a gift. (not neccisarily for review) I have not and am not being paid for writing about these products and have written with honesty, as always.

Barry M Eyeshadow Trio – Delicious Diva

I fell in love with Barry M, the first time I ever tried their products. I tried their Nail Paints, Liquid Eyeliner and Dazzle Dusts. I remember accidentally buying Glitter Dust because of the package being so similar, I wasn’t too wild on those but everything else, I’ve whole heartedly adored.

I really adore the designs Barry M come up with. Their eyeshadow trio packaging is so cute! I love the floral design. I’ve been wanting one of these for a while but have been waiting for an offer.. and to have money. I finally got my hands on one so lets give it a go shall we?

Pretty, I like the design that is embossed in to the eyeshadows. The little leaves are so cute and go well with the outer case. So pretty, right? The shadows are soft, but not too soft that they crumble, they have the perfect consistency, and they’re spot in with their level of pigmentation and shimmer.

When I hear Barry M, I think bright, pigments, even with seemingly more vanilla colours, they’re still really bright and pack a punch. Perfect. And these are dry swatches too, imagine wet!

Barry M eyeshadow trios cost £5.99 and are available from Superdrug and Boots instore and online and also on Barry M’s website.

This product was sent to me by a PR as a gift. (not neccisarily for review) I have not and am not being paid for writing about these products and have written with honesty, as always.

Fantasy Fire with Barry M Bright Purple Base

My post on this polish originally was so popular, I decided to do a follow up on using a polish as a base coat.

This is it with a Purple base. I was trying a Barry M polish and thought I’d see how it fared as a base for Fantasy Fire. It looks better in person of course, slightly more colourful, but I definitley prefer it using BeautyUK Electric Blue as a base. The colours come out a lot more and it’s more midnighty than purple. I wanted to take a photo of it but it didn’t work.

I’ve had this on my nails for THREE days now. Not a single chip.. on my left hand. I had the beautyUK on my right hand and it is significantly chipped. Bummer but I didn’t use a base or a top coat. I was rushing to get my other hand painted the day after I painted the left before I went to view a flat. Lol!

What do you reckon. Better than the polish on its own?

Soap & Glory – Flake Away

Flake Away is a body polish from the lovely Soap and Glory. As you can see in the above image, I have a big full size pot, and an iddy biddy 50ml pot. I had the little post first, I hadn’t tried it but it smelled divine. I didn’t want to use it cus just look at that pot! It’s so cute! I got 3 for 2 on stuff at boots and got me a full sized pot. Now I’m 50-50 on if I should have tried something else. Well I say that but not quite true. It’s more.. I’m not equipped for this product! Read on to find out what I mean.

When you first open the pot, it’s very dense. The smell leaps out of the pot and punches you in the face in the least obnoxious way possible. It’s mild enough but it definitley is there. Not a bad thing, the fragrance itself is gentle but your nose wouldn’t miss it.

Of course, when you open the pot, it’s a load of gritty stuff, to be honest, once I broke the dense top of it (it’s softer after you crack in to it) it didn’t look how I expected it to. It does kind of look like something you’d grit the roads with though put some on your body and it looks kinda more like sand. I probably should have took a photo of it on my hand to show you.

Body polishes never really look attractive do they? Yes, I sort of neatened up my pot for you there. XD That’s after I’ve used it twice by the way. You don’t need to be stingy with the stuff. I was quite generous with it, just so you know.

So here comes why I’m 50-50 on it. My home, we don’t have a shower. Come on, surely you can put two and two together? I didn’t. Body polish + Bath = Messy Disaster. Especially this. The first time I used it, my skin was smooth and moisturised but felt a tad oily after, of course some grit left on me though. How can you wash it all off in a bath? We have a shower attatchment though. Basically you attatch a couple of rubber bits to the taps et voila. Our cold tap is very high pressure, hot, not so much, so if you get tepid water, you’re lucky. The second time, I used the shower to rinse it off,  while buffing myself off with a shower puff. (co-incidentally, soap and glory, and I have two now thanks to mum getting me the shower set at xmas, with a shower cap, Clean, Girls, fragrance and body lotion because Boots were out of the Big Splendour. Bless her <3 ) Actually, it’s not just me who has a billion of the things, right? Is there any escape! XD They can come in handy for things though.

Anyway, back to my point. The second time, was way more satisfactory. I think it’d be much better if I had a shower (duh) but I’m a sucker, and I really like scrubs, but this is the worst scrub I have ever used in a bath, it leaves a load of oily residue and sort of floats on the top in it and covers everything so you can’t escape! It says to rub in until most of the grains are gone but this didn’t really happen for me!

You can’t break away from the Flake Away! Haha. I think it’s all because of the Shea Butter to be honest. Using it in the shower, I can’t imagine having a problem. And of course, the pot would look great sitting in your bathroom anyways!

RRP is £6.64 for the big 300ml pot or RRP for the litle 50ml pot is £2.35 and you can get it online from Soap & Glory or from Boots in store or online. Also, their shower puffs are £3.57 if you somehow don’t have loads like I do!

Max Factor Max Effect Mini Nail Polish – Fantasy Fire

Post Updated: See edit at the bottom of the post. *facepalm* I’ve had numerous messages telling me it’s meant to be layered, several of these have just been downright rude and I’ve deleted them, well a couple of comments and a few e-mails.) it’s all well trying to “tell” me something but to be all omg r u stupid.. no. get stuffed when you can’t even write a sentence in English. I’m not a beauty expert, I just write my honest opinions. I know now it is meant to be layered, so stop telling me!

Pictures just can not capture the extrodinary beauty of this polish. I saw its gleaming pearlescent colours and just had to get my hands on it. £3.99 for a tiny polish though… The other couple of Max Factor minis were great though and this is just one that HAD to be added to my collection. Plus things have been so horrible lately, I deserved it. Going in to Superdrug to get their wipes but no make up would have been torture anyway.

I’ve looked on the net, and I can’t find much about this polish… strange. I wanted to see if others had the same experience as I did. It’s a beautiful looking polish and it looks good on… eventually!

Blue and purple with copper shimmer. Looks pretty doesn’t it? Unfortunatley, to get it to look this good, I had to apply SIX coats! It is so thin on. And of course, what happens when you put lots of coats of polish on? If you don’t sit there for an hour not touching anything, they get messed up. That and of course, it’s a mini, there isn’t much in a bottle anyway. So how much can you get out of it? Only time will tell. Who is patient enough to do 6 coats anyway? It took ageeeees. I just really wanted to see how it’d look in the end. Perhaps a blue base coat first might be good and then paint this stuff over it. I’m not even sure. I don’t know how many coats you’d need as this is my first pearlescent polish, but I was thinking three, maybe four?

As beautiful as this polish is, I don’t think I’d repurchase before experimenting more (as I have a feeling if I use this a couple more times, it’ll be empty!)

EDIT: As people keep seeming to miss this despite linking it to numerous people, here is it layered, as it should be, posted a few days later. *sigh* And both of my posts were still the first posts to come up on google at the time so I had no info on this and have never had a “layering” polish like this before, so I didn’t know. See the other post. I know it’s meant to be layered. I did not when I first tried this and wrote this post, so please, stop telling me things I already know.

Max Effect Mini Nail Polishes are £3.99 and are available in Superdrug, Boots and online.

E.L.F Brightening Eye Colour – Nymph Dreams

This is the quad I used here in this FOTD. The packaging looks really cheap.. well it is, this thing only costs £1.50! What do you expect? Not much room for your brush in there either.

The colours in this are so gorgeous. I love them. When i saw this, I HAD to have it. At 40% off of course. ELF is the DFS of the make up world I recall someone saying. If you pay full price, you’re a wee bit daft as they have sales quite often.

I bought a few of these quads as well as some brushes and other bits and bobs in the sale. I’m so glad I didn’t pay for them full price. The brushes are fabulous for their price though. I love their Studio brushes.

I had to go over some of these swatches numerous times. The gold-yellow is very smooth, soft, gorgeous really, but the other three colours? Not so much, they don’t pick up anywhere near as nicely and aren’t as pigmented as I hoped. I used a LOT on my FOTD and it still wasn’t as bold as I’d hoped, even wet. Aside from the yellowish gold, they don’t blend too well either, unfortunately. Bummed out because this colour set is really nice!

Will I repurchase? no :( Would I reccomend? no :(

E.L.F is available online and costs £1.50

Overhaul

I’ve re-done the blog layout. Keeping with my pink though of course!

What do you think? Do you like the new header, too? My butterfly will be back eventually but this is a new laptop, I need to find the PSD off of my external. :> Instead I quickly whipped up a lippy and nail polish vector for the header, yes I illustrated those myself. :)

Thoughts?

Shop the Stash – 1

If you’re anything like me, you have a LOT of products that need using up. Half opened things everywhere? Yup. That’s me. Especially bath products and stuff. I’ve been debating doing one of these “stuff I’m using up” posts for a couple of weeks now and decided I’d do a few installments of it with my massive collection, wading through it. I’m going to avoid buying any more products till I’ve used these up. I have a few new products I bought from the Body Shop in their 50% dealyo because I wont buy them full price and I kinda want to justify having a loyalty card.

I’ve gotten much more indulgent with bathing. I used to buy body scrubs a lot as I got through quite a few, now I wonder why I have so many!

Garnier Exfo-Brusher Wash

I’ve had this product for quite a while. Over 6 months maybe? I’ve decided it’s time to use it up. There’s about 2 thirds left of it. I didn’t find it did too much for me though it did leave me feeling exfoliated and fresh faced, I didn’t find it helped my oily skin or spots, instead I’m virtually married to Witch Oil Control Foaming Face Wash instead. It’s not bad enough to just throw away, it’s usable.


The Body Shop – Pink Grapefruit Body Wash

I got this not too long before Christmas and keep forgetting about it. This is one of the products I’m using because I’ve gotten a good few shower gels from the body shop. I got a Papaya one and a Cranberry Joy one both for £2 (I also have the hexagon Cranberry Joy tin which I’m using the showergel from which will probably be in the next shop the stash) and I also got a giant Strawberry Shower Gel for £7.50 (Down from £12) so I should probably start using this up.

I really love the smell of this, but at the same time I hate it, it makes my mouth water because it smells delicious. It smells like Starburst. I’d get this again, but only perhaps after I’ve gone through the rest of my body shop things.

Treacle Moon – That Vanilla Moment Body Scrub

This scrub is kind of divine. I say kind of. It’s ever so gently in its exfoliation, not quite my preffered type but it smells so gorgeous. The beads mostly float in the bath tub. It’s a bit weird but I don’t dislike it. It’s perfect to use daily in my opinion, but I only exfoliate a couple of times a week so it’s a little to gentle for my liking. I have a few other, more rough scrubs but I wont use them until I get through this.

So, that’s mine, what are yours? I have plenty more products but a few at a time aye? Do you like these kinds of posts?