Katy Perry OPI The One That Got Away
I recently picked up the OPI Katy Perry mini set and I really like all the polishes. I LOVE Teenage Dream, but all of the polishes are really nice. There’s a mixture of colours and finishes and this one is a pretty purple shimmery foil-type polish. It’s like a purple base colour with very fine pink/raspberry micro glitter, which you can probably detect most in the last picture. I really love this colour, I have a soft spot for raspberry pinks and shimmers.
The application of this polish was nice and easy, two coats and done. The only down side was on removal of this polish it really stained my nails! I’m not talking a slight tinge either, I mean my nails were just completely stained a weird pinkish, yellow all over were the polish was. I always have minor yellow tinged tips due to excessive nail polish wear, but this polish was crazy for staining.
I’m not sure if it’s my Lumos base coat that is not very good at preventing staining or if this polish is just a stain monster. The Lumos base coat doesn’t seem very substantial, you can definiately see my nail ridges more with this base coat, but I do like the way it dries instantly. For now I’ve swapped back to my Nails Inc Kensington Caviar base coat. It takes a lot longer to dry, but it feels like you have a thick, substantial base to layer the colour on top. I’ll try this polish again with a different base coat when I’ve grown out my staining a bit! :s
This next picture shows the raspberry microglitter the best.
Has anyone else found that this polish is a stain monster? Although really I don’t mind, it’s such a pretty colour, I don’t mind putting up with a little staining :P
OPI Designer Series Tapestry
Hello again! I am a bad bad blogger. Yet again I go MIA without warning, I do apologise for my slacking of posting and commenting. I have been reading, but only in motion. I scroll through my Google Reader during breaks between running participants and hope to absorb all the lovely blog posts in a super fast blur of info, chat and beautiful pictures.
I am going to Marseille next weekend, my first time abroad and it’s to a psychology conference. I’m presenting a poster of my findings, but I still didn’t have enough data, so the last few weeks have been a mad rush of begging anyone to participant in my experiment so I can actually present my poster rather than a blank sheet of paper! :P I finally got the final participant at the end of last week and I’ve spent the weekend analysing my data and making my poster for the conference. Luckily my data looks good and the poster is almost done. Now I just need to get it checked by my supervisor and get the thing printed! Phew, I’m shattered again just thinking about the last few weeks. I’ve even been pulling 9am-7pm most days, in what can only be described as the world’s hottest cupboard with an eye tracker in! The eye tracker I use is actual housed in a Faraday Cage inside another larger room, so you can imagine the temperature with two people, two computers and only about 8 square feet of space! :S
Anyway…breathe! All I need to sort now is what I need to pack to travel abroad. I know I need a passport, and I assume a European plug adapter…I’m not sure? Any tips for a newbie travelling abroad would be greatly appreciated! :)
Now, I have still had just enough time to paint my nails still. I have priorities :P I’ve been painting them just before bed when I watch an episode of something to wind down. I picked up this lovely polish when I met up with Leisha in London. We found the rather beautiful OPI DS stand and both wanted them all! It took us quite awhile to pick a favourite, but I picked Tapestry, a warm, pink-orange colour with lots of holographic shimmer. I love this polish and I have already mentioned my love for the purple version Extravagance. I just love the holographic shimmer, it looks beautiful in the sunshine. This is two coats. It applies really nicely, these are some of the best polishes I’ve used, not only because they are pretty, but because they are so easy to apply and fast drying.
I wore this polish to my interview my my PhD place with a smart black dress and suit jacket. The colour is not too garish that it looked out of place, it was smart enough to be acceptable for the office, but shimmery enough to be special. The below pictures I took while I was waiting on a bench outside in the sunshine before my interview. I arrived ridiculously early because I was so nervous about being late, even though it was only a 5 minute walk from the office I was working in! Isn’t the polish lovely in the sunshine? :) Just after I took this picture a random black cat came over to the bench and sat next my me and my OH while we stroked it. It even tried to sit on my OH’s lap! Did the black cat give me good luck for my interview I wonder, seeing as I got the place? Maybe! :P
Anyhoo, I have lots of pictures to write into posts for you lovely people that are still reading this. I apologise again for leaving you all and not commenting. Hopefully when I get back from the conference all will be back to normal and I won’t have so much rush to get work done :) Hope you are all having a lovely summer! xxxx
Graduation! OPI Princesses Rule!
Hi there! Sorry for the unannounced absence, but I graduated last week, woo! I got to wear a silly gown and hat and prance around outside like I was one of the cast of Harry Potter! Luckily I had lovely weather and got to take some lovely pictures in the sunshine by the duck pond. There were plenty of little ducklings swimming around to coo over too, awww!
I also got some extremely good news three days prior to graduation. Remember all my moaning and groaning about having no future after I’d finished uni after I was turned down funding for a PhD in Psychology? I was moaning about having to get a ‘real’ job and having to dye my hair and be sensible and well…I was generally a grouchy git tbh. I applied for a place on another PhD course called Web Science. It was funded by Gordon Brown a few years ago and mostly focuses on mixing other disciplines with computing science to explore the web. Well, I had an interview for it and last week found out I had a funded place on the masters and PhD Web Science programme! So that’s me set for four years now! It really hasn’t sunk in for me, but I’m very very pleased about it! I can relax a little now :D
Anyway, I cannot have this post without my NOTD for graduation. First I was considering trying to match my nails to my gown hood which was a pale turquoise and gold, but I couldn’t find the right shades so I decided to keep my nails quite neat and neutral and opted for pink with sparkles.
I recently picked up OPI Princesses Rule! from Beautique.com when they had an offer and I got OPI Past, Present and Fuchsia for free. How could I turn down such an offer?! :P First I put on a coat of my trusty Eyeko Petite polish to cover up any staining on my nails and to even the colour out because OPI Princesses Rule! is quite sheer. Then I added one coat of OPI Princesses Rule! to make it lovely and sparkly. The shimmer is really dense so I only needed one coat. Lovely polish and I know I am going to have fun layering it on other colours too.
Congratulations to everyone else who has graduated in the last few weeks or is about to graduated! I hope the weather is lovely for you, but not too hot, those gowns are not fun in the heat! :S
GlossyBox June featuring OPI Designer Series Extravagance
This is a late review I know, I’ve already had my dispatch email for this months box! I was distracted by stuff, better late than never!
BioEffect EGF Serum – The super serum from Iceland. I hadn’t heard of this before, so when I received my box I just slopped some of this on when I got out the shower. You only need a few drops, but my skin felt really nice, even straight after applying it, so I looked it up online. When I found out that the sample alone is £8 and a BioEffect full sized bottle (15ml – hardly what I’d call full size!) is £125, is was a bit shocked and didn’t want to like it! However, it did leave my skin feeling plumped up (if that makes any sense) and it looked quite radiant, which my skin doesn’t really ever look. After researching it I also realised it’s best to apply it at night, but I apply a Benzoyl Peroxide gel at night so I haven’t been using the BioEffect. If I don’t use the Benzoyl Peroxide I turn into a painful, giant spot face, and I didn’t want to risk that! :S I don’t apply much of the BioEffect serum and I concentrate around my eyes as I’ve read that it can be good for dark circles, and I have quite severe dark circles. I’m not sure if it has reduced my dark circles, but my skin is much nicer and clearer around my eyes. The colour seems more even and I no longer have any combination skin around my eyes where it is dry and oily at the same time! I quite like using this just as an eye serum, at least it will last longer that way! :P I cannot afford to repurchase this, but if I had money to burn I think I would.
Batiste Original – Ahh, the box booby prize. I never use dry shampoo and the times I have tried it I can only really use the one for dark hair, the original makes me look like I had a fight with the baby powder bottle :P
Perles de Lalique – A perfume. Now, I’m not even going to pretend I know anything about perfume. I have two I like, Chloé, which is quite a fresh, flowery smell and my Litchi Milk Tea perfume oil from Haus of Gloi, which is very sickly sweet and I love it. This perfume smells like perfumes counters. It’s nice, but not special or different. I have been using it, it’s definitely nice, but I wouldn’t repurchase, I like what I already use.
Mama Mio Omega Body Buff – Again this is a really nice product, but for £23 for a full sized bottle, it’s not worth it for me. You apply it to dry skin before you shower and it contained ground up pumice stone. It’s a nice scrub, it smells lovely and left my skin smooth and soft, but most scrubs do and you can get them for a little cheaper! :P
Lastly, my favourite part of the box!
OPI DS Extravagance - The Designer Series have a “diamond dazzle”, it’s not a pure holographic polish, but it sure is pretty with it’s scattered holographic effect! I really like this and I actually bought a full size one (Tapestry) of these from Selfridges as a birthday pressie to myself. The whole range is gorgeous it was hard to pick just one. They look amazing in the sunshine and they are a pleasure to apply. These pictures show two coats and I didn’t even need to clean up my nails after application, the formula and the brush made it really easy to apply. The last picture is taken with the flash to show how sparkly the polish is.
So there you go, just in time before the July box arrives. I do like the GlossyBox idea, but as soon as they start charging postage I will probably abandon ship. I’m happy to pay £10 a month for a box of goodies and I enjoy trying out new things, but I wouldn’t pay more than £10- they are samples after all. I’m still looking forward to the next box though :)
Hope everyone is having better weather than I’ve had here all week. I have to packed a rucksack with clothes for all seasons when I walk into work! It’s raining, hot, sunny, windy, thunderstorms and even hail one day! I graduate next Thursday, so I hope the weather is nice to me that day. I’m not sure how I will cope with heels, a giant black cloak and a silly hat if it’s windy and rainy outside! Comedy photos at least :P xxxx
Katy Perry OPI Teenage Dream
I know, I know…I’ve been slacking on blog posts since I got home. I got out of the habit and I’ve been running experiments all week, or attempting to anyway. Let just say me and the program are not friends right now and I’ll fix it tomorrow. It’s been a bit of a mad week. I finally got my journal article fully published and it’s missing the abstract! Production glitch they say *facepalm*. Anyway my apologies, it’s no excuse, I shall try harder from now on :)
This is what I wore on my nails the week I was away. I love this polish, I actually have worn it on 3 separate occasions since I got it. It’s a pale pink base with fine pink/silver glitter and larger round hologram glitter. The polish is quite sheer so I first put on a coat of Eyeko Petite polish to give my nails a pale pink base and to disguise my nail line. I then put on two coats of Teenage Dream. It is definitely a glitterball polish, I really like it. The glitter on it’s own is awesome, but the hologram glitter really catch the light and reflect it, as you can see in the pictures, they reflect every colour in the rainbow!
This polish dries quite quickly, but the finish is a little rough so I prefer to add top coat. The polish lasts for ages. I had it on all week and only had chips on my thumb/index/middle fingers on my right hand on day 5, and they were only minor. Due to the pale and glittery nature of this polish I could touch the chips up and carry on wearing it for the rest of the week. This is a great holiday polish, it’s glitzy, pale pink nails go with most things and it lasts! I got quite a few compliments on them.
Do you like these kinds of glitters? I love the small, dense glitter and the larger holo glitter, I think they look great together. Although I don’t like the OPI Miss Universe idea, the Crown Me Already! polish looks like a similar polish but in silver, if it is I want it! :)
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
OPI Charged Up Cherry
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a good old nail post! I chopped my nails off after my last post and I hated them! They were all stubby and horrible. I’ve had a manic week with lots of assignments due (I just this minute submitted two essays!) so I’ve just been slopping on quick drying polishes like Essie Bermuda Shorts. I figured you wouldn’t want to see the same polish over and over on my short stubby nails!
Now they have grown back a bit though I’m happy to showcase this pretty, neon, salmon(?) pink, Charged Up Cherry! It’s pretty bright! It looks like quite a nice boring pink in the bottle, but the name does hint at the almost neon glow it gives off! It does seem a tad more neon in person, but the pictures aren’t far off. I must invest in a camera in the summer.
This is a super Spring colour. I’m liking all the brights that are popping up this Spring. I definitely need to pick up some of the polishes from the Illamasqua Toxic Nature collection, especially Gamma, it looks great! But for now I will settle with this one :)
I bought this from a blog sale a little while ago and it applies quite nicely. It really needed 3 coats, it was very streaky on the first coat. The second coat evened out the colour but it still looked patchy in places, the third sorted that out though. It dried pretty quickly, even with 3 coats, I think it was all completely dry in less than 15 minutes.
I really like this polish. I expect to be wearing it a lot throughout the Spring and Summer :) Now for the pictures!
I also want to note that I am not wearing topcoat on my nails. This polish dries this shiny, which is unusual for a bright polish. I’m very anti-topcoat atm because I’m half way through my Essie Good To Go and it has ridiculous shinkage! It’s fine and dries quickly and looks good for a couple of hours. Then BAM, shrinkage up from the base of the nail, from the sides and the tips, even if you seal the edge. It’s not even slight shinkage it’s about 3-4mm off each edge! I have some cheap topcoats, but they don’t dry very quickly, or bubble, or both! So no topcoat for awhile because it keeps ruining my pretty paint job!
In awesome news I’ve bought tickets to Art Brut’s album launch gig! Yay! I knew they were touring in late May/early June, but that was no good for me as that is exactly when I have my exams. I didn’t want to buy tickets and get my exam timetable and not be able to go, I would’ve been really sad! However, yesterday Art Brut released their album launch gig tickets and it’s during the Easter break, so I snapped some tickets up and now I am super duper happy! I’ve missed the last 4 gigs I’ve wanted to go to because of assignments or exams, but this one I’m going to! :D Happy happy, joy joy!
What do you think of the polish? Are you liking bright colours now that Spring appears to be here? :)
Hope you are all having a lovely week and looking forward to the weekend! xxxx
OPI Ruble For Your Thoughts
Hello! I have had a pretty nice day today. A break away from work and all its horrors! I made my way to DFS and bought a sofa. I won’t get it for 3 months, but I have set the ball rolling for incoming sofa goodness! The local DFS isn’t very local and I had to get a taxi to the industrial park it is in. A taxi works out much cheaper than the bus, which says a lot for the public transport in this city. The industrial park has a massive M&S and Sainsburys so I spent the rest of my afternoon in there. I bought some goodies, which I’ll post when I’ve taken pictures- it was too dark when we got back.
It’s so nice to go to the big versions of stores, they are completely different to the smaller ones. My local M&S, for example. is rubbish. It has 3 floors of nothing. The clothes are bizarre and only for those over 90 and the food section is tiny and depressing. The M&S I went to today had clothes I could actually wear in it! The make-up section was about 10 times the size and they even had bras in my size! So, I had a little shopping splurge while I was there. :) My poor OH was left on the husband seat outside the changing rooms in the bra section, trying not to look creepy sat surrounded by bras. Poor guy.
I also raided the baby clothes in Sainsburys. My niece is having a baby boy soon and they had such cute little outfits! I bought a tiny little checkered shirt, so sweet! It was so nice going to a shop that had nice things in it. Sainsburys had some amazing deli counters, so I’ve stocked up on strange cheese and things for awhile :)
Anyhoo, I finally got around to doing my nails! I bought some OPI’s from Nikki’s Nails in a blog sale. I didn’t have any OPI’s and wanted to try some. I picked up Charged Up Cherry, Have a Tempura Tan-Trum and this one, which is Ruble For Your Thoughts. It is from the Russian collection and seemed an appropriate first choice to try because I’ve just started watching Babylon 5 again from the start. If you haven’t seen it, basically it’s a sci-fi shows about a space station and war. The second in command is an Russian woman called Ivanova, who is played by an American actress who makes no attempt at sounding Russian, but often tells people she is. This became a running joke with my friends to randomly announce yourself as Russian. Strange I know. I’m talking utter nonsense today, but basically awesome Russian themed woman=awesome Russian themed nail polish…on to the nails!
I am trying out GIANT pictures in my posts instead of the small pictures that you click to enlarge. I think I’d change my layout soon, as the width of my posts in restricted a bit. It’s always good to have a change anyway, unless I break the site again! :s
Here is my giant hand, trying to hold the bottle. The colour is a little washed out in this picture, the ones below show the true colour better.
These pictures show the real life colour. It’s hard to describe. It’s a reddy,pinky,coppery colour. I like it. I wasn’t too sure I would like it because the first coat was all streaky and horrible, but after two coats I really liked the colour. You can still see my nail line if I hold my hand to a light, so I could really have done with another coat. Alas, my quick drying top coat has gone all thick and yucky and I didn’t want to wait for another coat to dry. (Also, note my pretty floral dress background. I’m pretty much living in this dress atm! Spring is approaching, which means it’s dress time! ;) )
What do you think? Hope you are all having a lovely weekend! Also it’s the last few days to enter my giveaway, it ends on Monday! :)
Don’t forget to enter my giveaway and thanks to those who have entered already! 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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