I’m back!
After all my stress the last few weeks with funding/job applications and ‘the interview’ I was very happy to get away for a bit. I’ve been in the Midlands this week visiting my family and friends. Much fun to be had! It was my birthday last Saturday and I actually share my birthday with one of my sisters. She always organises a BBQ for our birthdays every year, so it’s a great excuse to go and visit everyone for a week.
I don’t have any pictures from the BBQ, but I’m sure there are plenty of pictures of me holding my new great nephew and looking scared to death! He’s only 9 weeks old and he’s the cutest little thing! I haven’t held a baby for years and tbh I’m not sure what to do with one, so every picture is of me concentrating on not breaking the baby! I managed to feed him ok eventually, but when I tried to wind him, he fell asleep! Bless!
My OH could only attend for the weekend because he had to go back to work on Tuesday, but I did get to drag him around the fields I used to play in when I was younger. We pranced around a bit in the long grass and took some pictures. Southampton doesn’t exactly have a countryside feel about it. I miss having fields around me, they always look pretty, no matter the weather!
Now to catch up on blogs and work! I want to do it in that order, but I probably have to do work first, boo! I hope everyone had a lovely week and I look forward to catching up on posts! xxxx
Miss Sporty Lasting Colour Nail Colour
I have no idea what this polish is called because it doesn’t seem to have a name, or even a number. I picked it up because I had a Boots voucher in the post to pick up a Miss Sporty polish for £1 or something to that effect. I picked up this bright pink colour. It’s a Barbie pink, but it has slightly metallic/shimmery look to it. I’m not sure how to describe it, but it looks like the pictures! :P It’s a little sheer. Even after three coats I still have a VNL, but it’s not too bad and I don’t mind a VNL. It dried pretty quickly and it did last, chip-free until I took it off about 3 days later.
Do you like Miss Sporty polishes? What would you name this polish?
Lumos High Speed Top Coat
Finally I get around to posting my review on this! First my top coat history. I’ve tried most cheap drug store top coats, 17, Models Own, No7, Collection 2000 and a Sally Hansen, but I can’t remember which ones now, I think one was the diamond shine one. They were all fine, but didn’t dry very quickly and often bubbled my polish after a few weeks of use. I finally picked up a quick drying top coat as drying time is the priority for me due to clumsiness! I first tried Essie Good To Go. It was definitely fast drying, very shiny and I was happy with it until it became “the amazing shrinkage top coat” after a few months! Then, I had a big strop and threw all of my top coats out. I realise now I should have tried a thinner one before I got a strop on and threw them out, but I’ll know for the future! :) I didn’t use a top coat for a few months and I was surprised how shiny some polishes are even without a top coat, especially OPI polishes, but I couldn’t really wear glitter polishes without a top coat, they were scratchy and very slow drying.
So I kept my eye out for good top coat reviews and saw Charlotte from Lipglossiping review Lumos base and top coat. She really liked it and said that there were mini bottles for £3.50 including postage on eBay so I thought I’d give it a try. They are still there if you want to grab one yourself (Lumos mini eBay). Most quick drying top coats are around the £8 mark, so a mini bottle to try out sounded great and if it wasn’t so good I won’t have lost to much money on it. The bottle is so small and cute!
Aww, look how cute it looks next to the other polish bottles!
The bottle may be a tiny amount (around 4ml), but it lasts for ages! I’ve just reached the end of the bottle after 6 weeks and I’ve used it about every two days. For the last quarter of the bottle the brush didn’t reach the bottom when I dipped it in. When you screw the lid on it almost does, but I don’t want to screw the lid on every time I want to do another nail! I don’t think this problem would occur in a full sized bottle, it’s just a tester bottle after all. That is the only negative thing I have to say about this top coat.
As for the positives. It isn’t at all thick when you apply it, it’s quite running, which I like. Essie Good To Go annoyed me sometimes because it was quite thick and used to drag my polish if it wasn’t dry enough, especially with a glitter polish. This would lead to the base of my nails being bare and my tips having too much glitter and it hanging over the edge of my nail so much that I had to file it back again! I probably should have left it longer to dry before putting my top coat on, but in comparison to the thinner Lumos top coat, it doesn’t drag at all even if the polish underneath isn’t quite dry.
Another positive is that it dries really quickly – so quickly that by the time I’ve painted both hands it’s already nearly dry. However, a negative to this is I can no longer use the excuse of ’my nails are still drying’ to get out of chopping vegetables for dinner!
Lastly, a massive positive for me is that this polish has not changed in the time I’ve been using it. It doesn’t show the slightest sign of getting thick and horrid. Nor has there been any shrinkage of my polish at all!
So to recap:
Positives
- Super fast drying
- Very shiny
- Hardwearing
- Not thick
- No shrinkage when the polish has been used for awhile
Negetive
- I have the mini bottle and the brush does not reach the bottom so I’m having trouble using it when I get to the last quarter of the bottle.
I have just order the full size bottle and matching base coat. They are available on eBay for around £18 including postage for both of them, which I think is worthwhile seeing as the full size bottle are 15ml so it should last me more than three time as long.
Here are a few of my recent manicures using the Lumos top coat so you can see how it looks.
Have you tried Lumos? What did you think of it? :) xxxx
Aussie Lusciously Light Event
Quick catch up! Sorry for the long pause in posts this week, but I finally had an interview for a phd position and was quite preoccupied with general preparation and fretting! I think the interview went well, so I just have to wait and see now. I’m off to visit my family for a week now that all the interview stress is over, so I’ve scheduled some posts to make up for my absence :) It’s really annoying that I can’t seem to comment on people’s blogs on my phone, so I will only be on Twitter while I’m away and I won’t be able to comment :( If anyone knows how to comment from a phone let me know though, would be nice :)
The Aussie Lusciously Light event was last Saturday and it was a lot of fun. It was nice to meet lots of lovely people, even if I was socially awkward!
I met up with Leisha of Cutie-cle in London to do some nail polish shopping first which was really fun. Although there are very few stockists of nail polish, even in London! We went to a Sally’s who did have China Glaze and OPI, but not everything and the display was pretty demolished already! We also found the OPI stand in Selfridges and they had all of the OPI Designer Series to tempt us, they look fantastic under the shop lights, it was hard not to buy them all!
This is what I wore on my nails for the day. I recently picked up some Bourjois So Laque polishes and wanted to give them a go. First I used Rose Satin (the pale pink) and then I taped off the tips to add some Beau Model (a turquoise/blue/green/hard to describe colour). I had to use two coats of Rose Satin to get an even finish, but I could get away with only one coat of Beau Model. Next to the rosy pink the turquoise blue looks more of a minty green. It’s really difficult to describe the colour, but it lies somewhere between blue and green, that I know! :P I wanted to add another stripe of yellow on the tips, but I was using Rimmel Sunshine and it was quite sheer, so I only had it on my thumbs. Please excuse ‘the claw!’ nail picture, I wanted to get my thumb in the shot.
I wanted my nails to match my dress I was wearing. I wore a lovely floral number, it’s my only option as I couldn’t really wear my usual black to a Spring/Summer themed party! :P
The room it was held in was amazing! It looked very cool with the bubble machine and balloons!
It was a really fun event, the brilliant ladies who organised it did a really amazing job! There was a lovely lunch with cheesecake dessert(!), a candyfloss machine, champagne tasting, a photographer and great hairdressers! I had my hair done and I said to do anything to it. It was sectioned up, wrapped around tin foil and heated, then backcombed into a large rock n roll giant curly hair do! It looked pretty awesome, I’m really surprised how large it was! It’s pretty different to my usual hair which I normally wear straightened.
I also learnt that I cannot pose for photos without looking stupid. I need to devise some sort of photo face to use that is acceptable and not demented! :P Seriously though what are you meant to do with your arms when you pose for pictures? I just look really awkward :s
(picture belongs to tissueclouds)
It was fun to meet lots of fantastic bloggers, everyone was so nice! There are lots of pictures floating around, but the lovely Maria of tissueclouds took some great pictures like the one above (more here) and she wore the most beautiful vintage dress!
There was also the lovely photographer Sam Whitney taking lots of pictures all day. I had my picture taken after my hair was made gigantic and again I only have my two faces of demented or slightly sarcastic. I shouldn’t be allowed out!
I had a really great day, it was fun meeting such lovely bloggers :)
Topshop Cloud and Models Own Sterling Silver
Another stubby nail post! I didn’t change my polish very often when they were short so I think this is the last super short post you will see. I quite like grey nails and I really liked it with the silver accent. The silver was super shiny so all my pictures are quite poor for seeing the silver nail, sorry! But it does show that it was shiny! Also, talking about shininess, my topcoat is very shiny, check out my window reflection! I’ve almost finished my Lumos review, so that’ll be up next, sorry to take so long writing it. :)
I used Topshop Cloud and Models Own Sterling Silver in this mani. Cloud is a great polish, it is a one coater which is always nice. I like the shade of grey too because it isn’t a washed out grey, nor too dark, it’s definitely a dark rain cloud grey. Sterling Silver is similar to all the other Models Own foil polishes, fast drying and very shiny and metallic. The Models Own foils are some of my favourite polishes. I recently bought another, Green Flash, and can’t wait to try it out :)
To stick with the cloud theme I took this picture from my office cubicle the other week, before the last week of rain/wind and hail! I thought it looked heart shaped, but when I showed my OH he said it looked like a stetson, too much Doctor Who that is! I miss Doctor Who already. Everything I’ve watched recently has either been cancelled or ended for summer. This morning I actually sat and watched 4 episodes of the 1960′s Batman with Adam West. It was awesome in a super cheesy way. I’m slightly ashamed to say I’ve series linked it to record on Sky+…Holy pun-tactual daytime TV Batman!
(from ctk86 on deviantART)
Missguided Misscellaneous Nude and Mac Soiree
I went to see X-Men-First Class at the weekend. It was really good! I had very low expectations due to the third X-Men film being a bit crummy, but I really enjoyed it! They didn’t wreck any of the characters which is always good, but I would prefer if the films matched the comic more. The cinema is about a 30 minute walk from my house and it was only slightly raining so me and my OH wandered down there. We ate lots of sweet popcorn for lunch and when it was time to leave it was absolutely chucking it down with rain! We got pretty wet walking home, I happened to wear my hoodie that acts more like a towel then a coat, yuck! Also, what is with large dents in the road near pavements where rain water builds up into giant puddles and cars drive through and soak people on the pavement?! If you’re in a car, you are already happier and dryer than me, don’t get me more wet! The only part of me dry was my socks…until you decided to create that large wave that went in my shoes! *shakes fist* I laughed at the time, but I had to squelch my way home! I just wanted to cuddle up under a blanket when I got home. It’s been so cold this week I’ve been grabbing my warm fluffy socks a lot, much toastier! :)
Here are the pictures of my stubby nails from during my exams. They are so short and sad looking. I used Missguided Misscellaneous in Nude, which was free in Cosmo last year. It’s a nice nude polish that suits my yellow skin tone. I quite like nude colours on short nails and this is the one I like to reach for most if I want nude nails. It’s a great polish, two coats for opacity and it dried quickly and is really shiny even without a top coat.
I also added Mac Soiree as an accent nail. It’s one of the only golds I can pull off with my skin tone, I really like it. It only needs one coat really, but I tend to put on two just to make it last. Soiree dries really quickly so I added my top coat to that finger first and than did the rest and some of the gold sparkle came off on the top coat brush and transferred to the nude fingers. You can kinda (not very well) see on my middle finger in the second picture. It left a really nice subtle gold shimmer which I liked. I wish I had a sheer gold sparkle polish to do it properly! I know CND has lots of lovely sheer sparkly top coats, I have the Amethyst Sparkle one, but they are quite pricey. Does anyone know of a cheaper alternative?
Hope you are all dry and warm! :) xxxx
Eyeko Cosmic and Mac Bad Fairy
Hello! I’m back and blogging! Hopefully more regularly now the exams are over and I’m working again. I’m just temping for now, but it’s better to be doing something rather than sitting at home fretting about finding work! I have taken many a picture of my nails and other make up things I’ve used lately, but I’ve only just got around to taking them all off my phone and cropping them. I have enough pictures for about a month’s worth of posts! I have really been slacking on the blogging front *slaps wrist*. I’m all set now, back on the horse, upping the ante, not putting off until tomorrow what I can do today, out of the woods, into the clear, it’s a piece of cake, easy as pie, I’m fresh as a daisy. Ok I’ll stop…I love cliché phrases! I have a thing about them. I love how many they are and that people say them without realising and that you can have a conversation using only clichés and still convey meaning. I’ll stop beating around the bush… :P
I have a couple of pictures with my stubby nails, but they are horrible, so I put this mani up first because it’s much nicer and I have nails again! :D My favourite black polish is Eyeko Cosmic. It’s not a true black, it has lots of subtle multi-coloured micro glitter in it. Inside it looks plain black, but put a light on it and it looks lovely! I tried to capture the glitter in the pictures, the last overexposed flash picture kinda shows the amount of glitter. It’s a great polish, two coats to be opaque, fast drying and the glitter is fine enough so that it’s not bumpy. Also, it’s really easy to remove, no tin foil fingers with this polish!
I also added Mac Bad Fairy as an accent finger colour because it’s one of my favourite polishes and I thought it would look nice against the black. It’s a very thick polish and I find it needs 3 coats to look its best so it feels pretty thick on my nail, but it’s pretty so I don’t mind! Also, look how shiny and non-bubbly my nails are! Really love this Lumos top coat, you can even make out the reflection of my window in the first picture!
Sorry about the overexposure. I never use my camera flash for this reason, it makes everything look this way! It’s not so bad though as it does show the level of glitter in the polish and my middle finger looks quite cosmic and night-sky-esque.
I’m liking accent nails at the moment so expect to see a few more! :) What do you think of accent nails or multi-coloured nails? Do you like them, or do you prefer one colour? xxxx
Tape Manicure Fail
I forgot about this post. It got lost in my drafts after I was in two minds of whether to include this tape manicure in a post, but then I went to the trouble of doing the hideous thing I might as well! :P
I threw out all my old top coats and bought a new one after this bubbly disaster! I saw a post a little while ago on Lipglossiping about Lumos top coat as a non-gloopy, non-shrinking alternative to Seche Vite. I ordered a mini bottle from eBay to test it out, only £3.50 including postage, bargain! I’ve been using it for a month and I really like it. In fact I’ve used half of the mini bottle already. I will definitely grab a full sized bottle next time and perhaps try their base coat too.
My previous attempt at taped tips (Principality of Sealand Nails) I really liked and it lasted over a week, so I thought I’d go for something similar.
I used Revlon Plum Seduction as a base, taped off the tips and used Models Own Snow White, taped off the tips again and used OPI Charged Up Cherry. I thought these looked ok together, kinda reminded me of candy canes! I like the white stripe separating the colours, but my application was a bit crummy this time. I have a very ridgy index finger nail and my tape refused to lie flat so my line looks rubbish. The rest of the nails weren’t too bad though. After a few hours I thought I’d add a top coat. BAD IDEA! All of my top coats have wronged me lately, either by being gloopy or shrinking my lovely polish! Only Models Own 3 in 1 had not incurred my wrath so I put that on. Moments later lumpy bubble city! I hate you crummy old top coat, to the bin I cast you all! Lumos is my only topcoat from now on :)
Have you tried Lumos top coat and base coat? What did you think? I’ve quite impressed so far with the top coat. I’m going to write a review on it now as I keep forgetting, but as my spoilers in this post suggest, I love it :P
A-Z of Me
I’ve seen this on so many blogs and seeing as I’m changing my nail polish less often due to stubby short nails and my cold has made my skin look awful, this seems like the best time to do this kind of post! :P
A. Age: 24.
B. Bed Size: Double, but I have to share it and it has wooden sticky up bits on each corner that I batter my limbs off daily!
C. Chore you Hate: All of them, but especially washing pans. I can’t stand wet food, wet mashed potato makes me feel really ill!
D. Dogs: None. I have a fat cat though! He’s got so big, he weighed 5.3 kgs (around 12lbs) at the vets last week!
(Ziggy with his legs tucked under him, he has cute black spots on the back of his front legs)
E. Essential start of your day: A shower. I can’t open my eyes without a warm shower.
F. Favourite Colour: Red.
G. Gold or Silver: Silver, but I do also like rose gold.
H. Height: 5ft 5, I only know this because I had to measure myself for a graduation robe this week. I was surprised that I was that tall. I always felt I was short.
I. Instruments I play: Bass, guitar, clarinet (although I haven’t played that for years) and most recently I’ve bought a ukulele and a stylophone that I’m learning to play. I also want a harmonica after seeing Ezra Furman & The Harpoons supporting Art Brut last week. It’s some great 50′s style, American, harmonica, indie rock!
J. Job Title: Jobless bum, but my last job was as a research assistant.
K. Kids: None. I’m on the fence about the whole idea.
L. Live: Yes, I am alive…and I live in Southampton, or Scumhampton as it is lovingly referred to.
M. Mum’s name: Judy.
N. Nickname: I think everyone always calls me Gem. I do cringe when someone calls me Gemma, I’m not sure why, seeing as it is my name. It just doesn’t feel like my name because no one ever calls me it.
O. Overnight Hospital Stay: None, except maybe when I was born.
P. Pet Peeve: People being mean for no reason. I try to be nice to everyone and I get very ‘mother hen’ if someone is horrible to someone.
Q. Quote from a movie: Evil Ed from Fright Night – “Oh, you’re so COOL, Brewster!” This is one of my favourite movies and I loved Evil Ed. They are currently remaking it and I’m not sure how it’s going to be, but it does have David Tennant in it as Peter Vincent the vampire killer. Fright Night was awesome due to the 80′s cheese, I can’t wait to see how they remake it.
R. Right or left handed: Right.
S. Siblings: 3 older brothers and 3 older sisters.
T. Time you wake up: If we are talking natural rhythms then I wake around 11am, but it’s not very often I get to wake at that time!
U. Underwear: M&S! I love M&S bras! Since they started stocking larger sizes I can now own more than 2 bras! Before I could only get bras from Figleaves, which tend to be quite pricey.
V. Vegetables you dislike: Most of them, but I do eat a lot of the veg that I do like. I can’t stand broccoli and cauliflower, the texture makes me feel ill.
W. What makes you run late: The internet! The first thing I do before I’ve even opened my eyes is turn my PC on. Web comics are normally the culprit of my lateness. Favourites are: Questionable Content, xkcd, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, Luke Surl, all mostly geek humour.
(image from-xkcd)
X. X-rays you’ve had done: I think only my teeth at the dentist and my legs. I was an annoying child that fell out of trees/off playgrounds/over own feet a lot. I only broke my leg once though, but I walked around on it for 2 days which resulted in a rather long time in a cast up to the top of my thigh. Going to the toilet was amusing!
Y. Yummy food you make: My OH does most of the cooking, but I make an awesome mince and tatties!
Z. Zoo animal: I haven’t been to a zoo since primary school. From what I remember I loved the penguins because you could watch them swimming underwater.
I love reading these kinds of posts, so I tag you to do it if you haven’t done it already :)
Deborah Lippmann Bad Romance (take two)
I love this polish, it’s definitely one of my favourites. I have already made a post on Bad Romance, but I had stubby, short nails at the time so I thought I’d put up a better one! :)
Previously when I’ve used Bad Romance it’s needed 3 coats to make sure the black is opaque and it makes the polish a little too thick for my liking. So this time I first put on a light coat of Eyeko Cosmic and then 2 coats of Bad Romance. It’s a shame the black in Bad Romance completly obscured the glitter in Cosmic, it would have looked nice, but never mind, at least it left me with opaque black and the lovely purple glitters without having to do several thick coats of it.
I kept this on throughout revision time so I could look at my pretty nails when I needed a break for boredom! :P These are the last pictures of my long nails before the pre-exam chop down. They are staring to grow back, but they still look rubbish.
Left hand…
Right hand…it has more purple hexagons.
I thought I’d show you both hands because the right had more hexagons. That’s one thing to remember about polishes with chunky glitter or hexagons, you need to make sure you don’t have a finger with no glitter and others this loads! This polish pretty much looks after itself though, I didn’t have to fiddle with it too much to get the glitter to sit right.
I bought myself Across the Universe after finishing my exams, but I haven’t tried it yet. It looks awesome in the bottle though, I’ll put up a post of it soon. I have a cold at the moment, so I’m just sat around sneezing and coughing a lot, fun times! At least I have Spotify and Youtube videos to keep me entertained and occupied. Anything to distract me from this tickly cough! At least it stops me from dwelling on the uncertainty of my future…how gloomy a topic! I never realised how much I liked knowing what my next step was, i.e. school, college, work, uni…now what? I didn’t know what I wanted to do for a job when I was at school and I kinda hoped I’d of figured it out by now. Did/do you know what you want to do? Or am I the only weird person with no idea? :P
About me
My name is Gem and I am a psychology graduate in the south of England. I like shiny and sparkly things, but I am also a total nerd. ^.^
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