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
Missguided Misschievous
I picked up this polish as a freebie with Cosmo last month. I also have another Missguided freebie polish from last year that I love. Although these polishes are actually really good, I should actually buy some myself.
This polish is a lovely tomato red, opaque in 2 coats. These pictures are without top coat and the polish is so shiny I had a bit of trouble trying to get a picture that was in focus! The formula for this polish is amazing. It’s thick, but not too thick, it covers up any ridges or imperfections in your nails and leaves a really shiny, glossy colour.
Jen from nailPolishUK recently posted about a Missguided polish yesterday and basically said it all in her post. Great polish formula, needs more colours! :D
This polish also lasts really well, I keep this polish on for nearly a week with no chips, pretty good! I really don’t own many red polishes, I think this is my only tomato red one. I always skip them when I’m polish shopping because I think I’ve probably got enough reds already with it being the classic polish colour. You have got to have some good reds though :) Are there any colours you avoid or tend to go for when you’re out shopping?
To make sure I don’t go MIA for another week, while I’m away in Marseille suffering in the heat (I’m not good with heat, any more than 16 degrees and I’m in need of an ice pack! :P) I’m going to schedule some posts. I’ll do a mixture of lipstick/nail swatches and reviews to keep you entertained :)
Also don’t forget to enter my Aussie-versary giveaway! It closes this Friday and I need 7 people to receive a Aussie Summer party pack, there ‘s popping candy, or and Aussie haircare, ofc :P xxx
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
GlossyBox
My GlossyBox arrived this morning just as I was leaving the house for my last university lecture! Double happy times! :) The GlossyBox was packed in a cute pink box and the goodies inside were all wrapped up with black tissue paper and pink ribbon, nice first impression.
Inside there were five products to play with, one being the infamous NARS Orgasm Illuminator.
For more pictures and chat about the products in the box I have continued after the break. I know there will be a lot of posts regarding this so I thought I’d spare you if you don’t want to read anymore :)
Sleek True Colour Lipstick Coral Reef and Candy Cane
Final scheduled post! I am actually home now, but completely shattered! I’ll be back reading and commenting as soon as I’ve had enough sleep to function properly again! :)
Sleek have launched 20 new shades of their True Colour lipsticks, in two finishes, Sheen and Matte. I’d seen a number of swatches on blogs and they looked like quite fun and bright colours. I especially liked Coral Reef from swatches, I have a slight soft spot for orange toned lipsticks at the moment!
I had to go into town anyway to buy a suitcase and hair dye, strange combo I know, but it shows my priorities :P While I wandered towards the run down shopping centre where all the alternative shops are to search for a hair dye similar to the one I use normally, I spotted that the town centre has two Superdrugs, within about 2 minutes walk of each other. Very weird. But I thought I’d nip in anyway to save me from the pain for entering Boots on a Saturday! I spotted the Sleek stand with the new lipstick and all the tested were brand new, the stand will never look that nice and tidy again! There is currently an introductary offer on the lipsticks of 2 for £6, so I got busy swatching and picked out two colours.
I noticed that the sheen finish lipsticks seemed the swatch smoother and brighter than the matte finishes and I don’t normally like matte finishes so much anyway, so I picked up two sheen colours. The sheen finish is creamy and moisturising.
I knew I wanted to grab Coral Reef and I just picked my favourite swatch for the second colour, I picked Candy Cane. From the tubes the colours don’t look very different, you definitely have to swatch these colours to see what they look like.
(Candy Cane – Coral Reef)
These lipstick swatch really smoothly and feel really soft and moisturising. They are also very pigmented and these swatches were just how the colour came out after a swipe or two.
This is Coral Reef. It’s a lovely orange with a lovely sheen finish. It applies really nicely and it is super bright, but wearable. It has quite good lasting power, they pretty much last until you drink or eat. They need a little top up after that, but not a full re-application.
Next is Candy Cane. Seeing as I just picked this at random because it looked pretty on my hand in Superdrug, I absolutely love this. I think the name is perfect for it. It’s a happy, pinky/red colour, again with the lovely sheen. This one lasts well also and I know I’m going to get a lot of wear out of this one. I can’t pull off bright pink lipsticks, I look a little scary, so this is a lovely pink/red, but it’s still a nice bright colour.
What do you think? Have you tried these yet or have your eye on any? Has anyone tried the matte ones? I am curious about them. I’m never sure about matte lipsticks, I find they show off my dry skin on my lips, never a good look! :)
Hope you’ve had a lovely week/easter weekend enjoying the lovely weather! Speak to you all soon xxxx
Principality of Sealand Nail Art
I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but I went to see Art Brut this weekend! :P It’s not like I mentioned it several times or anything and was all excitable. It was the album launch gig and it was awesome, the new album sounds great. I like getting new albums, but I find it takes me a few listens to get into it. Maybe it was because it was live, but it sounded great from the first listen. Art Brut then performed a second set of all the classics, it was a great night! I loved the Buffalo Bar too, I wish there were decent bars where I live, it’s just scummy student bars, no indie bars in sight, bah! Also, how cute is the hand stamp?! :)
Now the title of this post says what is on my nails, but it doesn’t make much sense why I would paint the flag for the Principality of Sealand on my nails to go to a gig. I shall explain! One of the new Art Brut songs is about Sealand and apparently the Prince and Princess of Sealand were at the gig on Saturday. Sealand is a former World War II sea fort, 6 miles off the coast of Suffolk and it was claimed as an independent sovereign state, you can read more on the SealandGov website or Wikipedia page.
Principality of Sealand Flag
So there you go and here are my nails! I first painted my nails with 17 Knockout Red, a great one coat red. Then due to my lack of quick drying topcoat I waved my hands around for awhile. I left it about 30 minutes to make sure it was dry. I didn’t want to tape off the ends and then to rip the tape off and take the base polish with it! It was fine luckily :) so I taped off the nails at an angle and painted the tips with Models Own Snow White, which could have done with another coat as the red does show through a little, but because it such a small section I left it. Again, there was more waiting and hand flapping. Finally I taped off a smaller chunk for the black tips for which I used Nails Inc London Nights. More flapping…than before bed I throw on a quick topcoat to make it shiny because the 3 polishes had slightly different finishes and it looked a little bit strange. At last I was done!
I did this all in the evening and I cannot take pictures without daylight due to a cheap and nasty phone camera, so theres no step by step shots unfortunately. When I have a job in the summer the first thing I intend to buy is a nice camera so I can actually take pictures at other times rather than a couple of hours around midday! :) Also, I realised I can’t take picture outside in the sunshine. All my outside pictures of London are all bleached out. A camera is definitely high on the want list!
This is possibly the most time I have ever spent on one manicure! I really like it though, it came out better than I thought it would. I must invest in another quick drying topcoat to speed up the drying time so I can do this kind of thing more often :) I’m getting better at placing the tape so I don’t get any polish bleeding under it, my last attempt at a tape manicure resulted in me having to paint over the join between the colours, so this is a great improvement! :)
I had a lovely time in London, it was just a shame I couldn’t stay for longer. I stayed in a hotel I like in Regents Park so spent the day after the gig floating around the park in the sunshine, it was lovely, I didn’t want to leave! I did get rather toasted though, so my skin is now a normal skin colour compared to the blueish tinge I normal have going on. Should have packed suncream instead of 4 pairs of socks! :P
Hope you are all enjoying this lovely weather, now to catch up on the many blog posts I’ve missed! Have a lovely week! xxxx
Missguided Lipsplash in Chilli Red Free with Cosmo
I picked up this free with this months Cosmo. It is from Missguided who also gave out free nail polish in a magazine last year (review here). The polish was very nice so I was happy to try the gloss. There was a choice of three colours. Chilli Red, Clear and Caramel which is a nude colour. I picked up the Chilli red because I have plenty of clear/nudes glosses. I have plenty of red too, but never mind that! It comes in a rather attractive square tube and has a doe foot applicator. I like the packaging, it is clean and simple. Now as for the colour…as you can see below it looks pretty red in the tube!
However, this is not the case when swatched. It isn’t a very opaque gloss, it comes out more of a sheer red. That’s fine though, it’s still pretty, but it would have been awesome to be the same colour at the tube as I really like that red. Although I only tend to expect opaque glosses from Illamasqua who make the most awesome opaque lipglosses! In the picture below I tried to layer the gloss to see if it could make the colour a bit stronger, but it wasn’t working.
The gloss itself smells really nice, a pleasant fruity scent. It is not a sticky gloss, in fact it is quite a nice consistency. It goes on smoothly and it lasts a reasonable amount of time. It will stay there until you drink anyway. It’s quite a nice colour on my lips, but it is more of a pink than a red gloss.
Finally, a scary FOTD, please be kind! :) I don’t normally put my face up here, but I was in a good mood when I was swatching. I am wearing my usual Meow Cosmetics primer/foundation/top coat, Mac Mineralized Blush in Gentle, L’oreal Volume Million Lashes Mascara and Missguided Lipsplash in Chilli Red.
I’ve been busy rushing to finish lots of bits of work before my supervisor goes away for the week. I’m quite happy that my PhD application is being handed over to him so I don’t have to work on it anymore. I feel like I’ve been working on it forever! Now I just need to concentrate on the rest of my ‘to do’ list! :/
Hope you all have had a lovely week and are looking forward to a fab weekend! I’m so happy with all this sunshine and it being light when I go home for a change. It’s surprising what getting up and going home in the dark everyday does to your general disposition! We just need to wait for the weather to warm up now. There’s something a little weird about going outside in a big winter coat, gloves and sunglasses!
Anyhoo, I have sorted out lip swatches for all the Shiro Cosmetics Intertubes I ordered that I showed last weekend. I’m just writing all the text for the post now and I’ll put it up tomorrow. :) xxxx
Mac Viva Glam Cyndi and Lustering Lipstick
Hello lovely people! I’m in a rather good mood today. I’ve have a busy week and now I have a weekend where I have a social life for once! I am going to watch The Usual Suspects today. It’s one of many classic films I have never seen and I’ve been told I MUST see it. I’m not very good at watching films and here are loads I haven’t seen or have only seen the start of, I think I’m easily distracted. *ooh a butterfly* Anyway, it’s playing at a local cinema that plays mainstream films as well as independent, art-house and cult films. It’s a great little place, there’s no popcorn, but there is a bar :p I really need a nice laid back weekend, far too many early morning this week!
On to the lipsticks! I bought these awhile ago when I realised I didn’t have any nice red lipsticks. I had red lip tints, balms, glosses, but not lipstick and it is one of those things I felt everyone should have! Especially after seeing the red lipstick series being featured on Lipglossiping the last few months. Such pretty pictures of lovely ladies in their red lipstick! So I went on a hunt for a red lipstick that would suit me! I have thin lips, so I didn’t want a red that was too dark or harsh looking or I’m going to look silly. I have not yet perfected the art of re-drawing my lip line, although I’d love to give it a go without looking scary.
I ordered myself Viva Glam Cyndi as a good red starting base and sneakily added Lustering into the basket as well, just because I wanted it and was feeling slightly devil may care that day. They look quite similar except one leans towards pink and the other leans more towards red.
I really like them both! They have been getting a lot of wear recently where I’m trying to try more bold make up (I’m aware this isn’t very bold, but it’s a step towards it!). I wore my Viva Glam Cyndi into uni last week and I’m sure people thought I’d gone mad. I think it’s because I look like a total scruff most of the time with my hair in my face. Hair in front of face does not go well with lipstick wearing and definitely not with lipgloss wearing! I actually feel quite smart with my lipstick on, but I am slightly obsessed with checking if it needs touching up! :)
I really like Lustering, it is really easy to wear and I think suits my skin tone (not that I’m any good at figuring that kind of colour matching out!). Mac says that Lustering is ‘outspoken pink’, I’m not sure if that is how I would describe it! It doesn’t really look like the colour swatch on the website! Luckily I wasn’t disappointed because I googled swatches before ordering, but none of them looked like the colour Mac show!
Lustering Swatch from Mac
Viva Glam Cyndi is a lovely red and is a bit strange in that it seems to look different on everyone if you google swatches. Mac says it is a light, reddish coral, I guess that sounds about right, must better than the Lustering description anyway! :P I really like this red, I feel like I can wear it out without being to self conscious, always good! :)
(Lustering on the top and Viva Glam Cyndi on the bottom)
What do you think? :)
Also, have you ever noticed how website swatches never seem to be very accurate? It can’t be due to a difference in monitors or graphics because Lustering is way off, from neon to darkish pink! I really prefer to buy things online, it’s so much easier. Everything tends to be in stock and you often find better prices than in the shops, but I do often get little colour surprises, thank goodness for google and beauty bloggers! :D
Hope you all have a great weekend! Have fun! x
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
Eyeko Vampira and Mac Bad Fairy Tips
I’ve had one of those weekends when you feel really crumby and just sleep and melt into a non-existance. I’m feeling better now…in time for Monday morning ofc :P
I’ve been watching lots of dvd’s this weekend and I’ve got back into watching excessive amounts of X-files after Channel One was axed by Sky last week. Where will I get my Star Trek fix now?! Bah! I was really enjoying watching the old early 90′s episodes, they were super cheesy. I’ve also been listening to David Ford constantly, my LastFm account makes me look a bit obsessive. :s I cannot wait till his gig at the end of the month.
I also developed a fascination with subtitles. I dry my hair in front of the TV in the living room. If I dry my hair upstairs the room gets to hot and I keel over. My hair is getting long and taking ages to dry so I’ve been putting the news on with subtitles while I dry my hair. Everyday without fail there are always mistakes in the subtitles. Some are just silly and don’t make sense, but sometimes you get a word that is wrong that changes the whole meaning of the segment and totally throw me. This one occurred this morning:
“The floods are already effecting poems in Australia.”
After my double take I saw that ‘poems’ should have been ‘homes’, but my brain had already decided that all these Australian poets were writing lots about the floods. It made perfect sense. The floods are absolutely horrible and I assume poets will write about them, but I doubt that would make international news…
Anyway back to random rambling that makes slightly more sense! :)
This is another random taping of nails manicure. I really enjoy doing these and they are a great idea when you have premature tip wear on the polish you have on, but are too lazy to remove it just yet. :)
Here is Eyeko Vampira as the base. I had some minor tip wear on my index finger, but I had to be quick to go ot to a birthday party. So doing the tips was a great answer to my problem!
I taped off the tips are random angles used Mac Bad Fairy. Over black Bad Fairy looks good with only one coat, which is quite important when using tape. I normally just tape it off, slop some polish on and take the tape off straight away. If you let the polish dry a little, the polish will probably come off with the tape, not so good when working with a polish that needs multiple coats.
I really liked the combo and I got quite a few compliments on them. Bad Fairy really shines under those harsh bar lights!
I would definitely do this combo again, but maybe do the tips all the same or another pattern, the colours really looked nice together! :)
Now for lots of pictures! I hope you all had a lovely weekend! :)
Subscribe
Bloglovin’
Giveaways
Peonies and Lilies is having a giveaway to celebrate her blog being 2 years old! It ends on 2nd September.
Aussie Aussome Volume Tribe
Eyeko Ambassador Code
Use my Ambassador code E13203 to receive a free gift with all purchases over £15/€18/$20 at www.eyeko.comWhere Are My Knees Pledge
Blog Awards
