Overglaze: the latest gossip

Can't get your hands on 'Rainbow', the gorgeous discontinued 'flakie' top coat from Gosh? Not a problem. Inspired by the main female characters (Blair, Lily and Serena) of the 'Gossip Girl' American TV series, Nails Inc have released 3 gorgeous collections of special effect nail polishes. Don't call them 'flakies', these are 'overglaze' top coats, dahling!

Using hand cut particles, overglaze top coats will give your nails a futuristic finish which is bang on trend for this season. Applied over a deep glossy nails inc polish, overglaze provides a unique and exciting look for your nails

Meet Blair, a Teal black Blair nail polish teamed with Privileged blue / green overglaze top coat

This is Lily, a Plum black Lily nail polish teamed with High Society red / green overglaze top coat.

and last but not least, meet Serena, a patent black Serena nail polish teamed with It Girl electric blue overglaze top coat

Now, I know what you're going to ask. Can you buy the overglaze top coat separate? No, as far as you know you can't and you need to buy the whole collection, which is £20 per 'character'. But if you don't mind spending £17.50 in Chanel polish, then £20 in a collection of 2 polishes, with limitless combinations brought with the fancy top coat shouldn't be too much a problem :P

Do the nail polish correspond to the personality and look of the characters of the series? I couldn't tell you, I need to confess that I've not watched the series, but boy these polishes are gorgeous and get me more excited than any magnetic polish could ever do!

What? Nails Inc Gossip Girl Special Effects Overglaze Polishes
How much? £20 for one set of 2x10ml bottles
Where? Nails Inc website.

Read more ...

A rainbow in Soho EOTD & Review of the Soho Bright Eyeshadow Palette

I don't know about you, but when I think about Beautyuk, the first item which springs to mind is the 10 eye-shadow palette, in particular the almost iconic no.2 'Soho Bright Palette' which I would like to call the 'rainbow mini palette'.





I am first and foremost a bright eyeshadow lover, a fussy one at best so I was a bit apprehensive to purchase this one in case I would be disappointed, even though I really liked the earth child palette and the day and night palette. Why? Because  Soho Bright contains yellow and orange, colours I tend to use a lot, and I am extremely fussy when it comes to these colours. To give you an example, I own a 120 palette containing galore of yellow eyeshadows and there is none I like in them, they're always too greeny, or not bright enough, or something else, they're not quite right. So, from the outset, even before purchasing it, I didn't give much hope to this palette to impress me.






I was pleasantly surprised. As with the other palettes I've tried, I couldn't fault its pigmentation. The shadows are very soft, easy to blend and mostly shimmery, apart from the neon pink and the lavender maybe. The greens and the deep blue on the top row were my instant favourites and I knew straight away that I wanted to play with them first.


As with the other palettes, the shimmer in this is definitely there but not in your face and very easy to work with. There is one shadow though which i can't see myself getting a lot of use for: the very light 'sky' blue near the yellow which is way too metallic and shimmery. Now if only they did put a true red in there, that's my only regret really.





swatched over nyx jumbo pencil in milk




How did the orange fare? It's ok, but it's hardly going to replace my favourite orange: the one in my 120 palette, which was the first shadow I hit the pan of!
The yellow surprised me, I would have preferred a totally matte yellow but the shade is spot on and I will definitely use this. Overall, I like 8 shadows out of 10, which is extremely good value when you think the palette is only £3.99

The look I created today is very predictable, so please consider this look as more like an eyeshadow swatch rather a unique avant garde work of art lol. I used 5 colours from the palette, the black from the Day and Night palette and my favourite highlight colour, Vanilla from Mac.

















Would I wear this look out? Oh my, totally! Can you eye spot other colour combinations in this palette? 

Read more ...

Ruby Ribbon Nails, from Revlon & some Rainbow too. NOTD

I know, I know. I just posted a red manicure yesterday and here I am with another red manicure. For my defence, this one is ruby, it's not red :P Plus, You'll see how gorgeous it is and you understand immediately why I just had to post it as soon as I finished playing with it.

I was very fortunate to win 'Revlon Ruby Ribbon' at Perfectly Polished Nails blog giveaway but never got round playing with it until today.  I was not going to post pictures of it tonight. I was not even going to do both my hands it. I was only wanting to swatch it quickly tonight and wear it another time but before you know it I had both my hands done. The following pictures show 2 sloppy coats on all the fingers, and 3 coats on the thumb and index finger.






I had seen previous pictures of Ruby Ribbon before (for some reason, I keep on calling it 'velvet ribbon) but was really curious about trying it out for myself, and was very suspicious about whether or not I would like it on me. I am not a 'matte finish' type of person, have never experimented with matte polishes before and for me the first duty of a nail polish is to be glossy. It's a bit a like a shampoo I guess. It's meant to do lots of foam on your head, otherwise something is not quite right. So in my head, I was not going to like ruby ribbon on my nails. Well, reality turned out to be totally the opposite. I love it and I have never experienced a nail polish like it.





And what an experience it was. First impressions were not overwhelming. The bottle looked and felt quite big in the hand (but admittedly less heavy than an opi bottle) and I was not a fan of the gold lettering on the cap. It looks a bit too classic and 80's for me. Opening the bottle and I began to ask myself why on earth they could call this a matte polish, as it looks just like a regular polish with some sort of silver shimmer running through it.







Now, I was expecting a very troublesome application. I was expecting not to have the time to place it properly on the nail bed and seeing a streaky mess drying it too fast before my eyes. Oh my, this polish totally proved me wrong. The formula was just a dream and so easy apply. It applied very smoothly and started to dry out glossy. I was still asking myself why this was called a matte finish. And then it happened, the polish started to go dull at first, it felt like the light had been switched off from it. Seconds later, the dull had gone and was taken place by this beautiful finish. I am not sure how to describe it but it's gorgeous: semi matte muted glazed finish with a lovely sparkle and definitely not dull.






To say that this polish messed with my head and emotions (I know, I probably need to get out more) is an understatement: I went from massive doubts, to liking it, to not liking it and then to love it again. I still can't believe how easy this was to apply: this was not supposed to happen. I probably will end up not liking it, as I believe that the longevity of matte polishes is much shorter than a traditional polish, but for now, after my first play with it, I am in love. For a first flirt with matte polishes, I think I definitely cheated here as I would not call this a true matte but I feel this is just enough matte for me and would not like it any matter.


Would I choose this red polish over a traditional glossy red for a special night out? I am divided. I will always prefer a glossy finish (and I think the world - aka your typical average man - are not yet ready for semi matte polishes yet) but this polish is so quick drying, it really impresses me and is perfect for last minute manicures to match last minute changes of outfit. So yeah, one could say I am in love with this ruby ribbon of gorgeousness…


More experimentation below. This is ruby ribbon with a top coat of  my latest acquisition (landed today, thank you Rosalyn from Primps and Preen!! ) and much lusted after Gosh Rainbow. Not convinced this is the best combination, and I think I’ve ruined the red a little bit but I thought I would share the pics anyway. I will review Gosh Rainbow in more depth in another post.

Read more ...

Alice in LambriniLand

Avant-Propos: Glossary of Essential Terms

Makeup Contest: Excuse to have fun with makeup and green light to make a fool of oneself on YouTube
Mad Hatter: Annoying Character in Alice in Wonderland, remixed by Tim Burton. Trying to understand his nonsense will drive you mad
Lambrini: Cheap wine you get at the Spar just to get cash back.





So there I was, on Easter Bank Holiday finally setting to do my entry to the fabulous and most talked about make up contest on YouTube Land: The Alice in Wonderland Contest hosted by the most talented makeup gurus out there at the moment: GoldieStarling, Letzmakeup, Glitterdollz7 and last but not least, the beyond gorgeous HollywoodNoirMakeup.
Tim Burton's film left me really unimpressed (see my full review here) and the character of the Mad Hatter annoyed me till no end. On a makeup point of view, I was shocked to see the contrast between the pretty bright promotional posters and the doom and gloom 'reality' of Wonderland.





While Avatar had left me totally amazed, (this was the last movie I saw) Alice in Wonderland left me in a bad mood, honest! So I wanted to channel this negative energy into makeup. My idea was to create a brighter, more feminine and sexy look inspired by the colors of the Mad Hatter. No gloomy and lame tea party in sight, I had envisaged this look to be bright, fun, wearable at some fancy cocktail party!

So to get in the party mood, being Easter week end and that, I thought I would treat myself to a glass of lambrini. Before you knew it, half of the bottle had done and I had become tipsy midway through and was asking for tips on twitter how to sober up. Will spare you the fastidious details of the adventures of descent into LambriniLand. Have a look at the (not so happy) ending instead. If you behave, I might post an orange ‘blooper’ picture at the end of this post.


 



 


More pictures and fancy music in my video if you’re not perturbed yet. So, so so, where are the jungle frizzy orange eyebrows? Oh I tried, you bet I tried but it looked so spaced out and I really wanted to keep this look as much wearable as possible.  Because you’ve been nice reading all this, I thought I’d show you as well my attempt at orange eyebrows.




Bwhahahhahaahaha

p.s Consumption of excessive amounts of alcohol will not help with makeup application. It might however give you the false illusion that you’re doing a marvellous job.

Read more ...