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
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
George by Asda Ultra Violet
I have had my first two exams, just one left next Tuesday and my time at university has come to an end! My first exam was awful. The questions were awful and I didn’t know how to answer any of them, even though I spent more time revising that topic than anything else! *grumble* The exam the following day was much better though. I had to complete two questions out of four and I could have done a really good job on all of them! I really enjoyed that topic though, it was about the social psychological issues relating to sexual health of young people. I love a good debate and that topic is full of them. One exam question was to suggest new policies, so I was happy to make up wacky policies for awhile! :)
I can’t believe uni is over. What’s scary is I wanted this day to come for so long, now I’m annoyed about it because I need to find a job. Unfortunately I didn’t get postgraduate funding so I won’t be staying on to do a PhD, which is a little upsetting. I wasn’t too upset because I knew it was a long shot in the current economic climate, but I still hoped I’d be able to stay on and do research as I really enjoy it. Oh well! I’m trying to keep a focus on finishing my exams first, then worry about ‘the future’.
In more fun news, as a reward to myself so being super awesome during one of my exams and finishing uni I decided to buy myself something. For ages I’ve wanted a ukulele and a stylophone, so I bought myself them! Whisking it’s way to me is a gorgeous, shiny red ukulele! Strange things to buy? Yep. Completely awesome things to buy? Definitely! :)
Also, I’m going to see Art Brut again next week! :P I made a big deal about it last time, so I’ll try contain my excitement this time :) Current favourite song from the new album is Bad Comedian which sports the line, ’He dresses like he came free with the NME! How can you bear to hold his hand? I bet he signs his name in Comic Sans!’ <3 Aww, Comic Sans, “the most controversial font of our time”. Soo friendly! <3
Anyhoo, to pictures of my lovely long nails which I am mourning the loss of. I write faster with short nails so I cut them for my exams. I liked them the length and shape they were, but alas they had to go. I picked up this polish in Asda when I went to visit my family last month. It really stood out from the others on the huge stand of super cheap, but very nice polishes because is has a lovely blue/purple duochrome in it. Of course it is a nightmare to photograph, but I manged to get one, out of focus but accurate picture of it.
The polish was quite fast drying, but it was very sheer. I definitely needed 3-4 coats to get this finish, but it’s a gorgeous colour so it was worth it. I will definitely pick up more of these polishes if I see a colour that I like, for £1.50 you can’t go wrong!
Here is my out of focus attempt to capture that duochrome. My silly phone camera was obsessed with focusing on the background of everything that day. You can see the base of my nails are more purple? That’s what the polish looks like in real life, but I couldn’t capture it in a normal shot.
I gave myself the day off today from revision. Instead of resting or doing something fun I cleaned the windows, I was really bored not revising. I’m not right sometimes. When my instruments arrive I’ll be able to play with those instead! Do any of you lovely people play instruments? Or want to play one?
I hope everyones exams are going well and everyone is having a lovely week! :) xxxx
Zoya Blyss
Ok brain, I will let you have a break and update the blog. But you MUST go and revise more afterwards, deal? Deal!
Yes, revision has made me go slightly mad. I now talk to myself a lot. Normally I stick to clichéd motivational phrases or random insults. They either encourage me to work or at least entertain me. I am currently revising attachment theory and I have decided I am insecurely attached and a bit of a weirdo. I’m glad I didn’t take the clinical module this year, I’m sure I would have diagnosed myself with everything! OK! 10 minutes and get back to work brain!
This is my first Zoya polish. I’ve seen so many lovely swatches of Zoya I am quite pleased to finally try one for myself. I really love this colour. It is fuchsia pink, with a purple flash in it. The polish needed 3 coats to be opaque and for some reason was still a little sheer on the tips of my nails. It isn’t very noticeable, but still, I thought it was a bit strange. The polish dried really quickly, so the multiple coats wasn’t too bad. I really like the colour. I do have other colours similar to it, but they are cremes. This colour with the subtle purple flash is very pretty and I think I will wear this often. Although I might reserve this for when I’m taping off the tips and painting them another colour. Before I removed this I added another coat to see if I could even out the sheerness on the tips, but it didn’t seem to make any different unless I really slopped it on.
I wish all the best to those of you suffering the pain of revision and exams at the moment! Remember, it will all be over soon, at least that’s my comforting thought at the moment :) For those of you not doing exams, I am very jealous, but have a lovely week anyway :P
I’m slacking a little on reading blogs and writing them at the moment due to exams, but I’ll be back in less than 2 weeks! To celebrate the freedom from exams and my blogs 1st birthday I am having a giveaway! If you haven’t yet entered the link is just below or the link at the top of my sidebar. I’m giving away a set of Filthy Gorgeous polishes or your choice of 3 Barry M polishes. Go and check it out! xxxx
Click to enter my 1st Blogiversary Giveaway!
BB Couture Hermosa Surfer Girl
I recently bought this and one other polish in a blog sale from Jenni at nailPolishUK. It looked gorgeous in the bottle and from some swatches I googled it looked great too! It looks such a pretty pink in the bottle, filled with gorgeous multi-coloured, micro-glitter. The main colours I see in the glitter are green and gold, but it does depend on the light and angle. The base is a jelly pink and it needs at least 3 coats to be opaque. I could have easily put on another coat, but three seemed enough. Only if I held my hand up to the light could I see a visible nail line. It dried in a reasonable time, not very quickly, but for such a pretty glitter I don’t mind!
The finish isn’t too rough for a glitter polish, and I really liked the finish so I didn’t put a topcoat on (also all my topcoats are in the bin having annoyed me!). This polish lasted really well, as most glitters do. I had it on for 4 days and not a hint of a chip! To be honest I didn’t want to take it off, I really love the look of this polish. I’m interested to see what it looks like with a topcoat when my new one arrives.
This is my first BB Couture polish and I am impressed, I like the bottle and the polish is lovely and really nice to apply. I’ve seen a couple of other BB Coutures I want to pick up, they seem to have some great colours.
What do you think? Do you mind wearing glitter polishes without a topcoat? If it’s too rough I need a topcoat, but if it’s a fine glitter I don’t mind so much :)
Giveaway post coming soon! xxxx
Nails Inc Pallmall and Eyeko Chi Chi
Short post today, so sleepy!
I always wanted to try Eyeko Chi Chi polish. I love glitters and I don’t wear them enough. Chi Chi is a rosy pink glitter in a sheer pink base. It applies quite well and needs about 3 coats for the cover to be opaque. It dries pretty quickly for a glitter, which is always nice! Plus it was quite smooth after it was dry so I didn’t need lots of topcoat to make it smooth.
I put 3 coats on my ring finger to match my Nails Inc Pallmall polish. I think it jazzes up the more sensible look of Pallmall quite nicely. I think I’ll put it on all my fingers next time, it’s such a pretty glitter! :)
I added the glitter on just the one finger to test it while I was sat with hair dye on. I touch up my pink slices every 1-2 weeks, but so far I’ve normally had dark coloured polish on or at least I’ve not noticed this before. It might be the new dye, but look at my stained polish when I washed my hair dye off! That’s from only shampooing my hair! It’s a good job I have polish on all the time or my nails would be permanently stained. Maybe the pink dye would counteract the yellow staining from polish? Who knows! :P
The dissertation is nearly done! I just need to cut out 700 words and I’m finished! Easier said than done when you realise the word limit is 4000. Cutting out 700 words is a large chunk to remove without taking out important bits. I have a long night ahead!
I tried to finish before the weekend as I went to a wedding on Saturday, but it’s a beast of a document, so I’m still slaving away. The wedding was lovely though, very nice day, but after all the lovely weather the past few weeks it absolutely chucked it down! Now it’s back to lovely weather again, so unlucky for them! We weren’t really outside much so it didn’t really affect the day which is good though. It stopped long enough for them to get all the picture taken :)
Anyway I better get back to cutting out words! I’ll be so happy when I’m finished and can go back to reasonably normal stress levels! Hope you all had a lovely weekend! xxxx
Nails Inc Pallmall – Bridal nails
I have been busy this week/weekend finally finishing my draft of my research project! Woo! I just need to have a read through and jazz it up! Quite happy for that to be almost done, it’s my last large piece of coursework for my degree. 4 more weeks, 1 presentation, 1 small piece of coursework and 3 exams and I’m done! :D
Also, as I mentioned in my previous post, my niece went into hospital and had her baby boy! He’s a month early, so they are being kept in for a couple of days. I hope to go up and visit them soon, can’t wait to see them. I’m now a great-aunt! I didn’t ever want to be a great-anything tbh, makes me feel old! Although I think my mum has it worse, she is now a great-granny! :P
After seeing so many Royal wedding posts, nail art etc I felt a little left out. I wasn’t that bothered about the whole thing, in fact I slept through it. But I was surprised to see that it seemed as if the couple actually liked each other. It was quite sweet really! To be somewhat topical and after stealing the idea for Jenni’s blog, I thought about doing a bridal type nail thing. I decided to wear the most bridal colour I owned and I found this bottle tucked at the back of my nail polish draw. I bought it as part of a mystery pick n mix offer awhile ago, but never tried it. It is a little bit boring so I can see why I left it. However, it is perfect for a neutral, veiled white, nail colour.
I forgot how lovely Nails Inc polishes are to use and wear. This was two coats, I assume it isn’t really the kind of polish you wear opaque and I didn’t fancy putting 5+ layers on to test it :P It applied really nicely and dried quickly and super shiny! It is a sheer, frosty, pearly-white colour which wasn’t at all streaky, which I was very pleased about. Most frosty polishes I own are a nightmare for streakiness. I think it’s quite a nice bridal colour, quite natural, but still polished. Really nice polish, I must try more Nails Inc, the quality is great :)
With all this wedding talk recently, I remembered I was planning a wedding. I am not good with decisions and planning so I did ignore it all for awhile. I’m going to a family wedding next weekend, so I may get back into the idea a little bit more. I just wish someone would do it all for me, and preferably pay for it! :P I probably wouldn’t wear my nails in a traditional neutral colour for my wedding day. I’ll probably go for pink glitter or something. I’ll have to think about it, start with the little decisions! :P
What would/did you wear on your nails for your wedding day/special occasions? xxxx
Illamasqua Bacterium and Revlon Beach
I’ve been coding questionnaire data for a full two days. I feel like my eyes are going to fall out! I can’t really complain, it is easy money :) It was extra nice because I was offered to code the data unexpectedly, so I’m happy to grab myself some pocket money. I gave in my previous job last autumn to concentrate on my final year at uni and I’ve had to be quite money conscious this year. It’ll all be over in 7 weeks though! Scary stuff, I can’t wait :D It’ll be nice to have a job again :)
Here is a NOTD from last week when I had Bacterium on. Bacterium is a lovely and unusual colour, but when trying to decide what would go with it I wasn’t quite sure what to use. I have a lot of polishes yes, but I mostly have one of every colour and very few shades in between. Primary colours were not going to work with this little beauty, a neutral would be a bit boring, a glitter would be pretty crumby in the colours I have (pink glitter is a no no)…I needed something equally dirty.
I recently picked up one of the new Revlon scented polishes in Beach. It is a dirty, lime green colour so I thought it would match quite well. I was browsing these with my OH in toe and a girl from one of the make up counters started talking to us about the new scented polishes. I explained to my OH that they smell like the colour, so coloured like bubblegum=bubblegum smell. I listed another couple than got the this one. Coloured like sick=smells like? I can’t go anywhere without embarrassing myself…
Anyhoo, I taped off my now rather long tips (you can tell when I don’t have to use a pen for awhile :P), and painted on some Beach. It covered Bacterium really well and I think it matches nicely. The polish in the bottle just smelt like normal polish to me, but I have a couple of the Rimmel scented polishes and they were the same and only seemed scented when the polish was dry. When Beach was dry it didn’t really smell, maybe I need a full manicure to smell it. I’m not really sure what Beach should smell like, maybe seaweed or salt water? I’ll put this on properly when I change my polish and I’ll do a proper review.
I know these are quite ugly colours, but I really like them together. I feel like they should be worn by a sludgy super hero baddie called Sludgelor! He dirties up people houses when they are out at work. Only the mighty Roomba can defeat him, mwahah! Ok, too much sugar for me, I’ll put the lollipops away…
Does anyone else have Beach? What does it smell of? I don’t know what it could be. I want it to be candyfloss and fresh cooked donuts, but I doubt that. I used to go to Skegness as a child and the best part about the seaside for me was the poor diet I would maintain all week and the donkey rides! I was quite disappointed when I moved to Bournemouth and it wasn’t the same kind of seaside as Skegness. It was more posh, with no donut stalls or donkeys! Very upsetting.
Also, where did the nice weather go? I had to wear my winter coat out in the rain today, I even had the heating on for awhile! I hope that you are all somewhere with nicer weather! Enjoy the rest of the week xxxx
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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