It's begining to look a lot like Christmas.... part 1

With the festive season, galloping closer and closer (seriously time seems to be flying by) my mind turned to present buying and I thought I put together some kind of gift guide.  I thought I'd be obvious and start with a bit of  nail theme and thanks to a tweet from Stephanie from Imperfectly Painted, I have the craziest nail related gift I've seen to show you.


For the polish lover:


The nail brand Julep, started a monthly box scheme in the US, similar to those offered from Birchbox, Glossy Box et al. Every month, you get a selection of their products and they call their subscribers mavens.  So on to the gift, and forgive me if it's out of most of your price ranges (it's totally out of mine!!) , Julep are offering the chance to become a lifetime maven with boxes every month for life, for the bargin price of $10,000.  The full deets are here. If you are interested go with the quickness as there are only 10 of these available. (If my loved ones are reading and have had a recent windfall I know nothing about, this is not what I want for Christmas! - Just so we are clear!) 



Nail polish lovers will be happy with anything that's a little bit different or unusual, that could be a new polish brand or an unusual finish particularly a holographic or flaky polish (that doesn't sound that nice really nobody wants a polish which flakes they want one with flakes in it á la nubar 2010 - see here and here ) 

Cult Nails Iconic - one of my favourite polishes

Here I was going to suggest Cult Nails Clairvoyant, this was originally released as a limited edition called Unicorn Puke (see here for the swatchaholic's amazing photos) but it's sold out, but they still have loads of amazing polishes left and a Black Friday - Cyber Monday offer on, which ends on Monday.  Polishes are retailing for $7.75 instead of $10 and the base coat and top coat are $6 instead of $8, shipping usually costs $8 to Ireland.  Also beware of import duties etc, so don't order too much that you get caught for them (anything less than €22 is ok in Ireland). 


My other suggestion is A-England, they are an English nail polish brand, who have some lovely polishes and some of them are holographic!  They retail at £9 each and have free worldwide shipping. 




For the polish novice:


First up, do your non-nail polish wearing friends a favour, you know the ones who say they never have time to paint their nails and comment that you must have loads of free time on your hands to be able to paint you nails, introduce them to fast drying topcoat and maybe base coat too!

Picture from Seche.com

My personal favourite is Seche Vite  and you can find it on beautyemporium.ie for €9.55 delivered here. (This is one of the new bunch of Irish beauty sites that have popped up lately, I've ordered from them and the service was excellent, my order arrived super quick.)  Other fast dry top coats people recommend are the Red Sally Hansen one, Essence, Poshe and Cult nails. 


Even better, you can put together a mani  kit (well you could buy one but one you put together will be better )  you could pick up a couple of polishes, maybe Essence, Catrice and Elf are all cheap but generally very good (see here, here and here for inspiration).  Add in a nail file, I know glass is best but I could never find one I was happy with, top and base coat as above and there you have it.  You could also add, your favourite hand cream, cuticle remover or oil, toe seperators (although I always use a rolled up tissue), orange sticks, I'm sure there's some things I forgot.   


If you feel that neither of the above ideas will sway them to enjoy your love of all things nail polish, what about a voucher for a mani/pedi.  There are caveats associated with this, never ever give a voucher for somewhere you wouldn't be happy to receive a voucher for yourself and this might just be my friends but I know that some of my friends would consider a pedi as some kind of torture, since they hate people touching their feet and one doesn't even like strangers touching their hand.  


If you think none of the above will win over your friend you better catch the next non- nail related part of the gift guide.  


Is there anything I left out? Let me know! 

I'm still here.....

I've written this post in my head a hundred times but haven't been able to find the right way to do it, so I thought I better write something.  Long story short, my life (mostly work) went a bit mad for the last couple of months and when it finally calmed down I got sick.  So, finally I'm getting back to normal  and I'm going to try and get back to posting on the blog.  I've not had time to paint my nails properly in ages but have still been buying so have a long backlog of things to share. 


Talk to you soon xx

Revlon Facets of Fuchsia

Today's NOTD is Revlon Facets of Fuchsia, a dark purple glitter polish with microglitter and larger hexagonal glitter in an almost black jelly base.  I have to say I picked this up about 4 different times before I bought it, I'd seen the pictures everywhere, I knew that it was dupish to Deborah Lippman Bad Romance (There's a comparison here on Bright Lights Big Color, the base colour of Bad Romance is slightly darker) and everyone loved it but I wasn't sure I even liked it.  Finally, it ended up following me home from Boots one day and I thought I better try it, well consider me surprised, I loved it.  In fact it reminded me of one of my favourite polishes of the last year, China Glaze Mummy May I, except this contains additional hexagonal glitter.

The glitter gives the polish a lit from within type of finish and mean it catches the light all the time but it's still subtle enough for work. The pictures show 2 coats with a coat of seche vite on top, the seche vite more or less removed the glitter bumpiness from the finish but you might need two coats if you wished to eliminate it completely. After the first day of wear I had two tiny chips on the tip of my baby finger and index fingers but the never got any worse and weren't joined my any friends in the five days I wore this polish. 


When I bough this it was on special offer it Boots for €6 but I think the usual price is nearer €8, but this gets a giant thumbs up from me, go get it! 


Edited to add: Dollyrouge's comment below reminded me, I forgot to mention removal. It was a giant PITA! It seriously was the hardest polish I've ever found to remove, I have a small bit of L'onglex with acetone remover left (which I can't find anywhere to buy a replacement) and I save it for hard jobs like this and normally it removes glitter polish with ease. Not this one, it was glued on!  


Have you tried this? What do you think?

Essence Choose Me

Today's NOTD is Essence Choose Me. This is a beautiful Blue-y green duochrome glitter polish that reminds me of the sea. It flashes from blue as shown in the below photo, to a sea green (which I couldn't capture at all!) . It's very much in the same vein as Zoya Charla, OPI Catch Me in Your Net and Orly Hayley's Comet, while I don't have those other polishes I believe this a dupe for them.  

And really close up

Application of this was perfect, although I always this the brush is a little stubby on the these colour and go polishes, but it's perfectly fine to work with and it's just me nitpicking, for less than €2  I can live with it!  The pictures show 2 coats topped with a coat of seche vite. Wear was good I got  about 5 days out of this before minor chippage started appearing. 


I have to say this was a grower on me, I loved it in the bottle and was slightly dissapointed when I first put this on first but the more I wore it, the more I loved it particularly the duochromeness of it! 


Have you tried this or one of it's many dupes? What did you think? 

Best in Beaut.ie Awards

(picture courtesy of Beaut.ie)

A couple of weeks ago (ummm 3 at this stage! Bad blogger!) myself and the little sister took ourselves of to Dublin to attend the Best in  Beaut.ie beauty awards. The awards were organised by the very lovely beaut.ie sisters Kirstie and Ailsling  Beaut.ie McDermott (who will hence forth be known as the mothership of Irish blogging, since they have been called this so often recently!)  in conjunction with West Coast Cooler.   If you haven't already checked out their blog, you should once you finish reading this post,. The blog is 5 years old, in fact they are celebrating their birthday this month, and they already have one book under their belt, with another on the way shortly. You should definitely check out the blather posts, which is a daily open post were people discuss anything from beauty to current affairs. 


The awards were not only voted for my Beaut.ie readers but the shortlist also came from their readers, so these were definitely a true reflection of what Irish (since they are a Irish based blog the majority of readers are Irish!) gals use and love.

Mmmmm west coast cooler!! 

(picture courtesy of Beaut.ie)

We arrived at the very lovely Dylan hotel and promptly were given a glass of west coast cooler and found some beaut.ies I'd met before and some I hadn't we had a great evening chatting and catching up lubricated by copious amounts of West Coast Cooler - which I hadn't tried before and actually it's quite nice! Then, the awards themselves were announced you can find the whole list here. I'm going to talk about the nail related ones but you definitely check out the whole list, some strange things won awards like the winner of the Best Skin Care Tool was the humble facecloth!


Best Polish brand was won by Rimmel, see the runners up here. The best base coat award went to OPI base coat, see the runners up here. The best top coat went to Sally Hansen Diamond Shine Base and Top Coat, runners up here. The best nail tool went to Boots Buffing Block, see the runners up here. The best hand cream went to (one of my favourites) L'Occitane Shea Butter Hand Cream, see the runners up here. Last but not least the best footcream award went to Scholl Cracked Heel Repair Cream, see the runners up here.


After the awards were announced, we had some more to drink and some more chats and got given lovely goody bags, the contents of which are below, 

From L-R : No 7 Lash Adapt Mascara, Sally Hansen Cafe Au Lait, Rimmel Vinyl Addict Max Lipgloss in Addictive (this has the most mahoosive applicator see below!)  I'm dying to try the Sally Hansen polish, because they've just started carrying them in Ireland but I've yet to find somewhere that sells them,

Some Kiehls samples which came in a lovely bag which didn't make it into the photos, I've been dying to try Kiehls for ages so was very happy to see these. From Clockwise from the top left, we have Ultra facial oil free lotion, Creme de Corps, Midnight Recovery Concentrate, Epidermal Re-Texturing Micro-Dermabrasion, Rosa Artica. 

There was also some bottles of West Coast Cooler in the goody bag but they didn't make it to the pictures..........

I just had to show this, the Rimmel lipgloss pictured above has the largest applicator ever, see below for pictorial evidence, there's Benefit lipgloss on the left for comparison, it's ginormous! 

So what do you think of the winners, are your favourites among them? Have you tried any of the winners, what did you think?

What I picked up in Spain

As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I was recently in Spain for work. While I didn't have much time for the shops unfortunately, I picked up a few Essence bits in a cosmetic shop (kind of like a pharmacy without the drugs!). The selection there was much bigger than that which we have any where I've seen in Ireland - the stand was about 3 times bigger and a lot of the extra was nail stuff.  They had lots of nail stickers and much more polish as well as stamping kits. I only picked up a few things hoping to get back but never made it. 
So here's what I got.


From L-R , the stampy set, two extra plates 01 have fun and 02 style it up!, Nail  Art Twins 02 Julia and Nail Art Special Effect Topper 02 Circus Confetti.

And in more detail.


The stampy kit, this cost €3.49. This contains  a stamper (on top), a scraper (left) and one plate (right)

The two plates, have fun on the left and style it up! on the right.

The two polishes Nail  Art Twins 02 Julia, on the left,  and Nail Art Special Effect Topper 02 Circus Confetti, on the right. Circus Confetti looks very Happy Birthday-esque to me on first look and Julia is a chunky holo glitter. Both of these  are very sparse so a base coat will be needed with them. 

I also popped into H&M and as well as buying a few dresses I picked up these Moody Model,  from the last post and one more polish I can't find anywhere (which has made me mad!!!- I'm pretty sure it made it home with me, unlike my phone charger but that's a whole other story!)  




I did find a Sephora but didn't pick up any polish there, it was quite small and any that I liked the look of were out of stock :( 


Expect some stampy manicures soon, just as soon as I manage to get to grips with it!  

H&M Moody Model

Today's NOTD is H&M Moody Model, a lovely deep teal cream.  I picked this up in Spain for €3.99 and if memory serves me right they are €4.50 here in Ireland. ( I live nowhere near a H&M). I picked another H&M polish and a few more things, in Spain, which I'll show you in the next couple of days.

This has amazing application,  the polish applies really well it's not too thin or too thick and it's very pigmented, pictures show two coats with seche vite on top, if I did the coats a little thicker it might have been a one coater. This is one of the new bottles and the new cap isn't great, because it's so big but I found holding it sideways made it easier to apply the polish, and as soon as you have worked out a way to hold it, it becomes less of an issue.

17 Lemon Soda

Today's NOTD is 17 Lemon Soda, a yellow pastel cream from Boots cheap, cheerful and on trend brand 17. I picked this up ages ago but it was still on their website when I checked, so I think it's still available.  The picture below was taken with the flash but it is pretty colour accurate (I did take pictures in natural light but my cuticles were so horrible I couldn't possibly bring myself to show you!!!) 

Application wise - This wasn't great but it also was not as bad it as I thought it was going to be. Pastels are historically tricky to apply, as are yellows, so let's face it, it was never going to be easy! The pictures show 3 coats and most of the issues were evened out by then, the coat of Seche Vite on top didn't hurt matters either!  This wore well and I think I got about 5 days wear out of it before there was chippage (Surely this is a word?! If not it should be!). 


I know yellows are a bit of a marmite issue with people so what do you think?  I think this was one of the nicer yellows out there. Are there any other yellows you'd suggest?

What did I pack?

Those of you who follow me on twitter will know that I was away in Spain for work last week, so I thought I'd do a quick post on the makeup and beauty stuff I brought with me.  I thought I packed light but when it was all sitting on the table I realised how much I brought! (I've not included any nail varnish and removed duplicates.) 


Skin care, hair care etc, 

 

My favourite moisturiser is this Liz Earle one, so that was a must, but I also brought the benefit samples I received here, to try out also. Burt's Bees are one of my favourite brands and the people I like best know that so often buy me the mini kits for presents.  The Milk and Honey body lotion smells yummy and moisturises well but is also very soothing after being in the sun. The Soap Bark & Chamoile Cleansing cream is lovely and one of my favourite cleansers, the fact it smells like sherbet helps too! ( I also brought some No7 Makeup remover wipes with me too, just for heavy duty makeup). The Hamilton Everyday Face Sunscreen, is my favourite, as I'm often allergic to suncream, it also is brown(but it doesn't even out your skin tone like a tinted moisturiser) in colour (like a tinted moisturiser) which means your face doesn't get shiney after you apply it . The Umberto Giannini Curl Scrunching Jelly, just doesn't suit my hair at  the moment unfortunately, I've tried and like it before but I'm having bad hair at the moment! Instead of polish remover I brought these wipes they are not very nice, but easier to transport. Finally, I rarely go anywhere without a bottle of tea tree for spots and cuts (and usually a bottle of lavender for sunburn, bites etc, but I couldn't find it when I was leaving!)

I tried to keep make up to a minimum and knowing that it was going to be hot and foundation was probably going to melt off, I decided to bring 2 MAC samples I'd got at the counter when I was looking for new foundation, in case I did want to wear any (they are the two little pots)  and my battered (it generally lives in my handbag!) Bourjois powder. Eyeshadow wise, since it was a work trip, I kept it very safe. The Rimmel quad doesn't have great colour payoff and was a panicked airport buy! The 17 trio, is good for a smokey eye. That's an ELF eyeshadow brush in the picture too, I have a few of these from both the £1.50 range (like this one) and the Studio range (£3.50) and I like the cheaper ones better.  Mascara is probably my favourite bit of makeup, although since I started wearing my glasses all the time earlier this year, I find I don't wear it so much.. This one is Maybelline One by One Volum' Express (I've no idea why they felt the need to remove the E in Volume?!?), it has a spikey brush and I think it gives good length and definition to my lashes. Also pictured are Benefit Cha Cha tint and a small High Beam, that I got with Glamour last month, I've used both of these every day.  I'll talk about the lipsticks and glosses, further down, so that just leaves the Benefit Tweezerman Tweezers, which I love, and MAC Fix +, which I also love but it comes into it's own in a hot country, particularly when you keep it in the fridge. 

I thought I'd do the lipsticks and glosses seperately, from L-R, Benefit Who are you wearing?, Elf Mineral Pagent Princess,  Elf Mineral Runway Pink, Elf Mineral Pouty Petal, Elf Mineral Party Pink, Benefit Do Tell, Benefit Flirt Alert, Mac Russian Red. Swatches below in the same order.  (Pictures are clicky for larger images as always!)

Phew - I didn't expect this post to be quite so long!  Is there anything I should have brought and didn't? Whenever I'm going away I pack things that I wouldn't mind losing because they were cheap or easy to replace, one because I'd lose my head if it wasn't attached and secondly because I've arrived sans luggage one too many times! What are your must haves for holidays?


Edited to Add: I got the inspiration for this post from Karen at http://www.lovelygirliebits.com, and wrote it about 2 weeks ago, but didn't get to post it due to blogger/lack of internet issues, but I've seen loads of people do it in the mean time.

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17 Catwalk Couture

Today's NOTD is 17 Catwalk Couture, a turquoise polish with a hidden shimmer. Well, the shimmer was visible on the outside of the bottle but  I couldn't spy it in the polish when applying nor when I was wearing it, so I guess imperceptible shimmer is the right description here. I picked this up as one of polishes I bought when I got the 17 Nail Bar in a Bag  The bottle contains 15? ml and despite it saying on the shelf €4.59 it scanned through at €3.99 (as did the other polish I bought). Let's see what it looks like,  shall we?

I took pictures of this in all types of light - all combinations of  natural, artificial, flash and  no flash and this was the most colour accurate, but it's still a bit paler than it was in real life.
Application of this was perfect - no issues at all. Everytime I use a 17 polish, I think I don't like the brush but actually I think its the stubbyness of the handle I don't like, the brush it quite large and fans well so can paint a nail with one stroke. The wear wasn't great on this, on the second day I got chips on 2 fingers. I happened to be wearing  H&M Turquise Kitty on my toes at the same time and the colour is very similar but the shimmer is more evident, looking back at that post, I found that, that polish chipped quickly too! 

Beaut.ie Benefit Event

On Saturday, I took myself off to Dublin for a Benefit event organised with the lovely Kirstie and Aisling of Beaut.ie and Maggie and Annie (the daughters of one the benefit founders) to coincide with the launch of Cha Cha tint. I had missed previous get togethers so I thought this would be a great time to meet the other beaut.ies! It was so nice to finally put faces to blog names and twitter names!  Having first met up with the girls ( from Claire, Cornflakegirl, Aifs - who has the most amazing benefit collection ever, Art Donatella, Action Mags, Sile C, Bride and Joy, Lovely Girlie Things, All Made Up and I think that's it) we actually missed the demos but all had our make done by the very lovely benefit make up artists. Having made our purchases we got a fab goody bag, I bought Cha Cha tint (it would have been rude not to!) Being a bad blogger even though I had my camera with me I took not one photo! - but you can pop over to Beaut.ie for some.  I know I don't normally do make but let's have a little goo at Cha Cha tint.


Cha Cha tint is coral coloured cheek and lip tint a la benetint. I love it on the lips and am still getting used to applying it to my cheeks! (If only I could have been watching myself as the girl was doing my make up!) Here it is in the bottle 

Swatches of cha cha tint - on the left as it is, yes, scarily bright!  and on the right it's blended out, not so scary now is it!  

and here's the contents of the  goodie bag 

A lipgloss, a benefit tweezerman, which I'm dying to try and will not lose as I do all my other tweezers, and some samples of the new skin care range. 

The lipgloss is 'Who are you wearing?' and I was actually told by a benefit counter that it was discontinued a couple of years ago. So I'm delighted both to see it obviously wasn't and to get a new one! 

How cute is the skin care packaging?! On the left Triple Performing Facial Emulsion(?!) and on the right It's Potent eye cream. I'll let you know how I get on with them, after I've used them for a while.


Sorry this turned in to quite a long post but I had a fab day and it was so lovely to meet some lovely beaut.ies!  

17 Nail Bar in a Bag (GWP)

I was in Boots over the weekend when I noticed this gift with purchase (GWP) and thought I'd do a quick post about it in case those of you near a Boots hadn't seen it. The gift is called Nail Bar in a bag and is free with 2 17 purchases. (I bought two nail varnishes which cost €3.99 each - although the shelf said they cost €4.59 each)

Once you open the very cute bag and open the pink tissue paper, you get  a pink leopard print nail file, some heart shaped nail stickers, Knockout Red (left) and Pink Grapefruit (right). 

So, if you have a boots near by rush out and get one before they're all gone! I'll probably try out the polishes in the next few days along with the other 2 I bought (Woo Me and Catwalk Couture) if there's one you'd like to see in particular, let me know and I can do that first! 

Barry M Dusty Mauve

Today's post is Barry M's Dusty Mauve, which is one of the many dupe for Chanel Paradoxal. The polish is a smokey purple colour with purple shimmer running through it, as seen in this close up of the bottle. 

I expected to love this as I loved it in the bottle, I loved swatches I saw on other blogs  and the base colour of the polish is very similar to Models Own Purple Grey, which I loved, but actually I wasn't a fan, the only reason I can come up with is that I felt that it pulled quite brown on me a lot of the time - I guess this is something to do with my skin tone.  The application was great. The wear was really disappointing on this I had a chip on one nail the first day, quickly followed by a lot of tipwear and a lot more chips.   So, for once with a Barry M polish,  colour me not impressed!

China Glaze Broken Hearted

I couldn't bear to take of the Accessorize polish in the last post, but I still fancied a change, so I went pursuing through my stash to find something to put over it. I toyed with matte topcoat or flakies a la Rainbow/2010/Hidden Treasure, before settling on crackle, pink crackle.

I thought I was over crackle but hadn't used this yet so thought it was due a use before I completely made up my mind. I really wasn't feeling this at first but so many people complimented me on my nails and were asking how I did it, that I started to think I'm not bored of crackles but I am jaded of the fact that every company either has them out or is about to release them, so I keep seeing press releases, etc. 


I actually found the application of this far from perfect, the formula was weird a bit thin and thick all at the same time, but it cracked well, so it's not too bad. I'm wearing if for just over 24 hours as I type and there is a slight bit of tipwear but I have been wearing the base polish for 3 days so it might be due to that.


What do you think are you over crackles or just fed up of every company jumping on the band wagon?

Accessorize Electric Blue

Now, don't pass out from shock but I've a nail post for you and hopefully many more to follow! I've finally got lots of the major work stuff out of the way so can go back to working normal hours, so should be able to post more often (in fact you may soon be wondering " Does that one ever shut up!" ) Today, I have an Accessorize polish from Superdrug called Electric Blue. I picked this up in England when I was there for work about 6 weeks ago, to the very best of my knowledge, Superdrug in Ireland does not stock this brand. The polish is a royal blue jelly base with blue and purple glitter. First up some bottle pictures, in real life it's definitely easier to see the purple in the bottle than on the nails. But I can not get the purple to show in it's own right in the pictures, it is showing in the fact the blue colour is much richer, if that makes sense.

And now on the nails, 

Application-wise, the first coat was a little sheer and I thought it was going to need a lot of coats, but a 2nd coat did it. The pictures show 3 coats, the minute I saw the pictures I knew it would need a third coat but the naked eye two is probably sufficient. For a glitter it has a very smooth finish, however I still popped a coat of seche vite on top. The bottle holds 10ml and the lid is very big, which makes the brush a little short, it's a little difficult to manover the brush and control the polish but it's not too bad.  I think I paid £4 for this. 


Have you tried any Accessorize polishes? What did you think?  I picked up a few of these so expect them to show up soon!  I'm going to try and get some more photos of this to see if I can capture the purple glitter any better, I'll add them in the next couple of days if I can. 


Just before posting, I checked the Accessorize website and it seems you can order the polishes and all the makeup online, the delivery cost is £7.95, to Ireland (and most of Europe)

The one in which I apologise and make a confession …..

Ok, so I know I've been more than a little MIA lately, and for that I’d like to apologise, every time I think I have the back of my work broken I seem to get more to add to the pile. I keep saying to everyone, family friends, people who want me to do work for them, “Another couple of weeks and I’ll have a life, I just need to get X, Y &Z out the way and then it will quiet down”. The reality is that hasn't happen but is going to have to, because I can’t keep working this much or I’ll collapse. I’m not leaving work till 9 pm most days and then trying to do more work at home and I can’t remember the last time I had a day off.  

So apology out of the way it’s confession time, and the two are related (and this is where I should have but in an uber cute picture to distract you but I didn't!).  I have painted my nails once in the last month (so that explains the lack of posts then!! ) I’m just so shattered by the time I get a chance to paint them that I can’t bring myself to do it!  Although I have still been buying polish, so once I get back to being able to muster some energy to paint my nails, I have loads to show you.  In the meantime, I’m having a stern word with myself and teaching myself how to say no! 


In the meantime if there is anything you'd like to see drop me a comment and I'll add it to the list! 

Color Club Revvvolution

Today's post is Color Club Revvvolution, a charcoal grey holographic polish. This one is totally, totally, love! The holo is amazing and the for the very odd lightening situation that the holo doesn't show up the base colour is still nice. I've included a good few photos to show the varying degrees of holo goodness, you see when wearing this. (I have no idea what is on the side of my pointer finger, either remnants of the last polish I was wearing or pen, that I didn't wash totally off  - I manage to come home from work with pen or whiteboard marker over my hands most day - and the lovely macro setting that makes polish look nice also picks up things that aren't visible to the naked eye, so apologies!) 

The pictures show two coats and the application was perfect. The wear on this was good too, I think I got about 5 days out of it. I have nothing bad to say about this one, but a little bit of a caveat. I bought this on Transdesign before Christmas, but I have also heard of a not so holo version going around, I'm pretty sure this is the good version. So buy online with caution. I believe Color Club were aware of the dud version and were looking into the problem.


Have you tried Revvvolution? Any other suggestions like it?


What do 

Essence Black Out

A couple of weeks ago, I realised I that in my collection of around 170 polishes, I didn't own a black polish, a shocking omission really (like, how was I ever going to let my inner rock chic out?!). I was in boots and bought what the nice lady assured me was a black no 7 polish (it was sitting on the counter beside the till and I had a voucher for no 7)  but, alas,  when I got it home realised it was just a really dark purple polish but more on that another time. So the search continued, I wandered in to a local pharmacy and found an Essence limited collection called Black and White, and perhaps unsurprisingly there was a black polish in the collection, so I promptly purchased. Black Out is a black polish with what essence call a "soft touch finish", the finish looks kind of  like plastic as seen in the photos below,

The application is ok, you have to be a bit careful to make it even, as it doesn't have great self-levelling properties and the polish is a bit thick. The soft-effect finish means it isn't as harsh as just black polish. The more you wear the polish, the shinier it becomes from hand washing and hand cream applying. While the finish changes over time, the polish does have good wear, I've no worn it twice and got 4 days before it chipped and in fact the polish chipped before I got tipwear.


I think that this a good dupe for Illamasqua Scorn, which matches their nail quills. (more info from Scrangie here), but I haven't seen Scorn in real life, so I'm just going by photos.


What do you think of this finish, it's not quite matt and not quite cream?

Cult Nails Iconic with China Glaze Cracked Concrete

Happy easter lovelies hope you are all having a lovely chocolate filled day! 


I loved Cult Nails Iconic I had to wear it again, but I decided to go for a little twist. I had also ordered some of the China Glaze Crackle polishes (except for the black, since I already had the Barry M black, and White because it reminded me a bit of tippex!). So I put the grey China Glaze, called Cracked Concrete over Iconic.  I think this is a fab combo, so on to the pictures and you can see what you think! 

Like always, you can click the pictures to see them bigger. The lovely glow in Iconic peeps out through the crackle and it is really lovely. The wear of this combo was really good, I think that I wore it for nearly a week with only the minimum of tipwear. 


When I went to order the China Glaze crackles, they were sold out on Transdesign where I normally order my polishes from, so I ordered them from Head 2 Toe Beauty instead. The arrived very quickly and I had no issues with the order. 

Ramblings and Some Nail News

If you are not inclined to Ramblings of any sort I suggest you skip to the 3rd paragraph for nail news.


Firstly, I didn't think I'd have to write this again but apologies for the complete lack of posts. Every time, I think I have my life calmed down, I either have work or real life explode in my face. To be honest, I have 11 months of study left (or pay any way) so the next year or so is likely to be extremely stressful, and while I'll do my very best   to keep on top of blog things.


Those of you who follow me on twitter probably know I was away last week, for work. The idea was I'd work Mon- Thurs lunchtime and take the rest of the week off until I flew back Saturday night, so I could do some shopping and catch up with friends. On Thursday, I spent the rest of the day with my  friend and her daughter, before going to meet my other friend for dinner and so I could stay with her. Despite my best plans, I ended up working most of Friday and only got to hit the shops for about 2 hours, and London was hotter than Hades.


While wandering around the shops, I popped into Boots Carnaby St, I was surprised to see that they had the Orly minis in already, at £5 each I decided it was almost as cheap to get full sizes online, plus there was nothing that caught my eye. Right below them though, were a new professional line from Models Own, much as I would love to show you a bottle shot here, I can't! The bottles are square, to differentiate from the usual range and the retail at £8.  I had a good rummage around and decided that while a lot of the colours were quite safe, I found one called midnight something ( a quick look on the horrendous boots website tells me the only thing it can be is madnight blue), a starry starry night -esque navy polish with silver glitter.


Up I wander to the counter, and the guy says "you can't buy that, it's been recalled", so since I really wanted the polish I tried to push it a bit, but there was no go, his supervisor told me to go pick another colour, whereby I pouted and said "I didn't want another colour, I wanted that colour". Realising it was futile, I wandered off.  


The next day, I was in boots liverpool st and what do I spy with my little eye but another models own pro stand, and nestled in there is the polish I want. So we start, the same drama all over again, and again 24 hours later they can't sell me the polish because it's been recalled. This guy is a bit better and suggests he'll find me a similar colour from another range. and is very worried something might happen to my nails if he sells to me, because the recall may be safety related. The whole bloody thing takes so long, I miss my train, which nearly makes me miss my plane.


I did manage to pick up some polishes in superdrug but I'll save that for my next post as I've rambled on so much today!  


Have any of you manged to buy any of the Models Own Pro polishes?I can't find much info on them on the internet, so I'm assuming that they are very new, have you seen them? Is it just me they won't sell them too?    

Cult Nails Iconic

Before we get to the lovely polish, I just wanted to apologise for being a bit random with my posting at moment, work is taking up the majority of my time at the moment, I'm quite behind with that too and things are getting done by deadline rather than importance, which I hate!  Things will hopefully calm down for me in early to mid April, hopefully, you can stick with my sporadic posting schedule until then! 

Today's NOTD is Cult Nails Iconic, when I saw the original pictures I thought this was the Cult Nails Polish I'd like the least, but in fact it's my favourite.  This  a raspberry polish (jelly I think - I should have written that down sorry) with flakies á la Gosh Rainbow/Nubar 2010/ Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure etc etc. 


Pictures below taken, in sunlight, or what passes for sunlight around here!

I think that these pictures are pretty colour accurate, but I'll caveat that with, when this arrived it looked nothing like I expected it to based on the pictures I had seen. I'm not sure it's loveliness transfers into the photos I've seen. The wear was good on this too, I wore this for 5 days before I started seeing a little amount of tipwear. The application was perfect too, as they say, it went on like butter.  I think this is my favourite of the 4 Cult Nails Colours, at the moment anyway! 

What do think, have you tried this or any other of the Cult Nails polishes?

China Glaze Hey Doll

Today's NOTD is China Glaze's Hey Doll, from their autumn collection called Vintage. This definitely one I wouldn't pick for myself, so unsurprisingly this is one that I recieved from my sister for Christmas.  The colour of this one is quite hard to describe, but it's a coppery colour with a bit of pink in it, like if you could get rose copper, in the same way you get rose gold. (This was the most descriptive way I could come up, I'm sure there's a much better way to describe this colour!) The polish is a foil finish.  On to the pictures which can describe the colour much better than I.

The application of this was perfect, and none of those brush marks which are synomous with this type of finish. I ended up wearing this for nearly a week and the wear was perfect.


All in all, this one impressed me, when I first saw it I wasn't sure I'd like it, but it won me over in the end. The colour is quite work appriopriate and the application and wear are both good!