NOTD: O.P.I. Pink Flamenco

Well hello my Darlings. I hope you are all feeling gorgeous. I really felt the need to do my nails tonight and wanted to try one of the nail polishes from my Olympia Beauty Haul. Please click the link to see that post Link :)

I was feeling a Barbie Pink shade so I went for this amazing Nail Lacquer from O.P.I. named Pink Flamenco. This is my first time at trying an O.P.I. polish. I found this easy to apply and it covers nicely with one coat, but I prefer two. This retails on lenawhite.co.uk for £10.50 for 15ml. I think this is a fantastic shade, but I have tried other nail polishes of this quality for less cost. I managed to get this at Olympia Beauty for £5.70 so I'm happy.

Have you any favourite O.P.I. Nail Lacquers? Do you prefer them to other nail polishes? What are your most loved pink shades?

Love to you all

Boudoir Privé September Box

Hey Sweethearts. I hope you have had a good day? In today's post I want to show you the products that I received in my September Boudoir Privé box which is named 'Les Indispensables'. 

First up is the Tropic Skincare Body Smooth. This is said to be 100% natural, enriched with nourishing Sea Minerals, Jojoba and Macadamia oil to smooth, polish, energise and hydrate the skin. It claims to buff away dead skin cells leaving your skin feeling smooth and soft. With top notes of Lemon Myrtle, mid notes of Bergamot & base notes of White Patchouli to invigorate & refresh your senses. On the website tropicskincare.com it says that you can use this on any skin that is rough or dry, but that it is highly recommended for feet. On the leaflet that came with the box this month it says that you are meant to rub this onto dry hands for 20 seconds, rinse with warm water and pat dry. I presumed that it was a hand scrub only before checking the website. This retails at £11.95 for 80ml or £19.95 for 200ml.

This reminds me of being a kid as it smells of sherbert. This is quite a small sample so I think I will try it on perhaps my hands and feet.

Secondly is Agent Provocateur L'Agent. The information on the leaflet says that this is a seductive scent that will turn you into the centre of attention making you feel sexy, mysterious and captivating. It instructs you to apply this perfume to bare skin, focusing on your pressure points. This retails at £50.00 for 50ml or £70.00 for 100ml. Here is a link to agentprovocateur.com. The website describes this perfume as a provocative potion, dark and mysterious, that captures your senses in a flight of florals, intoxicationg amber and erotic musk.

When I smelt this perfume I didn't think sexy, dark or mysterious I'm afraid. I will take this to work to give it a chance, but it doesn't blow me away.

Third up is the Macadamia Hair Repair Healing Oil Treatment. Supposedly suitable for all hair types. This should make your hair visibly smooth, frizz-free and shiny. It is meant to repair hair that is damaged over the summer. You can apply this to either wet or dry hair, focusing on the ends. You can also use it overnight. This retails at £5.75 for 10ml or £29.95 for 125ml. Here is a link to macadamiahair.com. The website also says that it has natural UV protection which extends the life of color treatments and that it also reduces drying time by an amazing 40-50%.

I really am not sure how it can help to reduce drying time? If anyone knows the answer to this please tell me. It probably will smooth out the hair as most oil treatments do?

The fourth product is the Colbert MD Nourish: Eye Cream. HRH Kate Middleton and Sienna Miller use Colbert MD skincare daily apparently. This eye cream is said to rehydrate the skin around your eyes, reducing puffiness and dark circles. It instructs to apply it around and under the eyes, morning and night. This retails at £90.00 for 15ml. I almost said the word OUCH! Here is a link to colbertmd.com. The website makes these claims:

Key Ingredients

Ascorbyl Glucoside A potent Vitamin C derivative, lightens dark circles and reverses aging dyspigmentation.

Aescin  Improves microcirculation and reduces puffiness, while fighting inflammation.

Alpha Bisabalol  Accelerates cell healing and controls redness.

I was a little disappointed by the amount in this sample. The little pot is not even half full. You may not be able to see that in this photo. For this price though I am not too surprised. I would not pay this amount for this product and I haven't even tried it yet. Real world people! I would also describe this as having a quite pasty smell.

The fifth item is this Zoya Nail Polish in Marina. This is from Zoya's new 'Smoke & Mirrors Collection' for Autumn/Winter 2011. It guides you to use a base coat, 1 or 2 coats of this shimmering polish and a top coat. This retails at £9.98 per bottle. I'm sorry I couldn't add a link for zoya.com as I couldn't get onto the website :(

I do not have a nail polish in a shade like this and I have never tried a Zoya polish before so I am happy to try this. I really like the way they have added added samples of other colours and an information leaflet. This would encourage me to look at other shades. I am also thinking of using the packaging of these samples to put in a couple of pictures for my desk at work :)

The sixth product in my box is the Boogie Nights Eye Pencil from Cargo Cosmetics. The leaflet says this stunningly wild eye pencil will make your eyes pop. A perfect shimmery pencil for day and night wear. It says to draw along upper eyelids or for extra impact apply to lower lids also. These retail at £13.00 for a set of five. So that works out to the value of £2.60 each. I could not find these on the website so I'm not sure if this is old stock? Here is a link to cargocosmetics.com

I will use this pencil. I do not own any Cargo Cosmetics products so I look forward to trying this. The shimmer seems quite good in this pencil.

The seventh and last item in this month's box is this postcard from Mai Couture with a 2-1 Blotting/Bronzing Papier attached in Light-Medium. Light-Medium is recommended for all skin colours. This blotting paper is meant to eliminate oil and add a bronzing shimmer to your skin. You are meant to press the paper firmly on your face, neck and décolleté. It can be worn over moisturizer or foundation as a setting powder for a more glowing complexion or simply as a touch up throughout the day. It's also paraben and talc free. You can also purchase a wallet to keep your blotting papers in. This retails at $24 for 100 sheets or $36 with the wallet. Here is a link to maicouture.com

I personally do not usually suffer from oily skin so I have never used blotting paper. I am not sure if I did how I would feel about the bronzing shimmer at the same time as I like to control where I am applying my bronzer. I will try it though. I am not sure why the details for this are not included in the information leaflet. Perhaps because there is a wee bit of information on the postcard?

All in all I don't think it's a bad box. I think the top products at first glance for me are the nail polish and the eye pencil, but I am sure I will get my use out of the other products.

Did you get different products to me? Did you like them? I look forward to seeing what I get next month.

Love to you all

Old Hag Witch for Halloween

Hello again Beauties. I can't believe it's Sunday already. Time seems to be flying by lately. This post today may well freak you out so please BE WARNED! This is not exactly me on my best looking day. 

With Halloween approaching next month I thought it would be interesting and quite fun to have a go at creating some fun and freaky looks. I am no expert in doing this kind of thing. This was my very first attempt, but if you are interested in seeing how I created this look then please read on.

Step 1: I applied a sample that I have of Estée Lauder Double Wear Foundation in Bone in quite a heavy layer using only a make-up sponge that came in a pack of various make-up sponges from the 99p Stores. I did not apply any face primer beforehand. I did not use any concealer or powder either as this look is meant to show imperfections and not be pretty. Here is a link to the foundation Link :). Here is also a link to the 99p Stores Link :).

Step 2: I applied Illamasqua Cream Eye Shadows in Command and Entangle to contour and shade the darker areas shown in the photos. I applied a little more Entangle for extra definition where I wanted more depth. I did this using another make-up sponge that I was in the pack I got from the 99p Stores. Command is a mid pinky brown, satin finish. Entangle is a dark slate grey, satin finish. 

Step 3: I filled in the eye brows with a Primark Eye Crayon in Black. I brought the eye brows to a point in the centre to make them look more evil. I also used this same crayon to line the eyes, draw in the frown lines and other creases around the face and neck. I kept working the cream eye shadows and this crayon together using my fingers and a small make-up brush that came in a palette. 

Step 4: I added highlights above and below the creases and contours using the Illamasqua Cream Eye Shadow in Grace which is a white, satin finish. Here is a link to all of the Illamasqua Cream Eye Shadows Link :).

Step 5: On my teeth I used my Sleek MakeUP Kajal Eyeliner in Nocturnal to give them that rotten effect. My Kajal Eyeliner was broken when I bought it so at least I found a use for it. Be warned though this does feel gross on your teeth. Here is a link to the Kajal Link :). 

Step 6: On my lips I used a mixture of the Primark Eye Crayon and the Illamasqua Cream Eye Shadow in Entangle.

Step 7: I used some eye lash glue from a pack of false eye lashes that I purchased from Poundland to add a couple of Coco Pops as warts to my nose and chin. As you can see I shaded in these ares prior to applying the warts. I used tweezers to do this. Here is a link to the eye lashes that I bought Link :). I did not use the eye lashes for this look though.

Step 8: I popped on the grey, centre parted wig that I got from the 99p Stores. I did not brush it. I ruffled it between my hands as I didn't want it to look smooth.

Feel free to use products that you already have for this look. You do not need to use exactly the items that I have :)

PLEASE BE CAREFUL WITH THIS LOOK IF YOU HAVE SENSITIVE SKIN AND/OR IF YOU ARE UNDER THE AGE OF 18. I HAVE NO IDEA IF THIS LOOK WILL CAUSE BREAKOUTS ON OTHERS AND I DON'T WANT ANYONE SWALLOWING EYELINER THAT HAS BEEN APPLIED TO THEIR TEETH!

Well done if you made it to the end of that. I hope you like this look. I am planning on doing other looks on the lead up to Halloween too. Are you planning on doing any Halloween looks? Any tips for an amateur?

Love to you all

My 1st Olympia Beauty Visit/Haul

Hello Sweethearts. I hope you are all well? I attended Olympia Beauty for the first time on Sunday 18th September and had a great day. I got so many fab purchases that I thought you may like to see.

Me getting ready to go. Now onto my purchases :)

These Queen Nail Lacquers were £1.20 each, but if you bought 5 you got 1 free so I paid £6.00 for all of them. Such a cheap price and fab colours, but they do not have names/numbers. I have never heard of Queen before and I am not sure where you can buy them, sorry.

I do not own any China Glaze Nail Lacquers so I just had to get these to try. These were £3.95 each. Left-Right: Purple Panic (Neon), Pool Party, Yellow Polka Dot Bikini & Shocking Pink (Neon). Here is a link to the China Glaze website Link :).

O.P.I. Nail Lacquers in Left-Right: Color So Hot It Berns, My Chihuahua Bites!, Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It, OPI On Collins Ave. & Bright Lights - Big Color.

O.P.I. Nail Lacquers in Left-Right: That's Berry Daring, Altar Ego, Pink Flamenco, Princesses Rule!, Charged Up Cherry, Rosy Future, Señorita Rose-Alita & Got A Date To-Knight!

O.P.I. Nail Lacquers in Left-Right: Purple With A Purpose, Mod About You, The Color To Watch, Steady As She Rose & A Grape Fit!

O.P.I. Nail Lacquers in Left-Right: Blue My Mind, Dating A Royal, Funny Bunny, DS Bold, Bring On The Bling & Blue Shatter.

As you may be able to tell I went a bit crazy at the Lena White O.P.I. stand. I have never tried an O.P.I. polish before either and as they are spoken so highly of I just couldn't resist getting such a huge variety. These were £5.70 each. Here is a link to the Lena White OPI UK website Link :).

These Brushes were from Crown Brush. The two on the left were either £3/4? The large brush on the right was £9 and is so soft. There were no names/numbers on these brushes.

This brush was also from Crown Brush. This is called IB119 Deluxe Crease. This was either £3/4? Here is a link to the Crown Brush website Link :).

These Girls With Attitude Designer Tattoos were only £1 per pack so I got two. I think they will be really pretty around the wrist. See the link here for their website Link :).

This Glitter Body Art Kit contains 20 stencils, 7 pots of glitter, 1 bottle of adhesive and a set of 3 brushes. This I believe cost £12. I have had one of these butterfly tattoos put on my hand at another show before and thought it may be fun to try myself. The glitters I can use for nails or make-up too so I think it was worth getting. 

I also bought some tattoo stencils and glitters that were not included within the kit. Left-Right: 13 stencils, Glitters in Black, Red, Gun Metal, Raspberry Dazzle, Gold Dazzle & Royal Blue. I think this was 4 stencils for £1.00. I got 1 free. I also believe it was 5 glitters for £5.00. I got 1 glitter free. Here is a link to the website here Link :).

These StarGazer Permanent Tattoo Pens come in a variety of colours and I got most of them. I also got the Correction Pen as I am sure I will make mistakes. I thought this would be another fun way of experimenting at creating my own tattoo designs and great for some of the shades to double up as eye liner/lip liner. Although they say permanent the swatches I did on my wrist at the show came off when I had a shower so do not let this worry you.

Left-Right: StarGazer Violet Mascara, StarGazer 106 lipstick, StarGazer Glitter Shakers in UV Pink & UV Yellow.

In total I paid £60.00 for all of the StarGazer products. I think they charged me a bit less than they should have as I bought so much and they threw in this bag too. Here is a link to their website Link :).

Peggy Sage Paris Eyeliner in Ocean. This eyeliner is a fantastically bold blue. I had not heard of Peggy Sage before so I bought 4 of these in case I didn't find them anywhere. I am that in love with this colour and at £4.40 each I thought they were a steal. Unfortunately the peggysage.co.uk website is down so I can not put a link in, sorry.

It was so busy at Olympia Beauty, but so worth going. I only wish that I had now attended the Make Up Theatre to see David Horne from Illamasqua and Louise Constad from MAC, but I got so wrapped up in all the lovely things that I missed the seminars.

Please note that all the prices in this post are what I paid on the day and may vary from the usual pricing!

Did you attend Olympia Beauty? What wonderful things did you buy? Did you attend any of the seminars? If so, did you find them interesting? 

Love to you all

 

 O

NOTD: Red With White Polka Dots

Hi you wonderful lovelies. I always feel much better after painting my nails and wanted to show you how I painted them today.

Firstly I applied this gorgeous rosy red classic shade from pearlfashionuk.com. The shade is called Signal Red. I purchased this at a beauty/fashion show before I began blogging so I am not too sure of the price. Unfortunately the website does not show you prices unless you log in, sorry. I applied two coats here. It went on very smoothly. I think this looks very nice as it is, but to pep it up a bit I added a bit more.

Next I used my Nails Supreme Nail Art Pen in White. As you can see I did 3 rows of 3 dots with 2 rows of 2 dots in between them. I hope that makes sense. I think it's a simple, but effective look. 

You simply pop the top off of the pen, squeeze the pen a little and dot onto your nail. I always do a couple of dots on my hand first to get used to the pressure before applying this to my nails and to release any trapped air in the pen. 

If you were to unscrew the pen there is a brush inside so that you can use it as a nail polish too. This pen is from the Nails Supreme Silver Gloss Range which includes a pack of ten nail art pens in various colours for £19.99. Please see the link here :) 

I also have the Nails Supreme Gold Shimmer Range which is also £19.99. Please see the link here :)

These nail art pens are what first sparked my interest in nail art. I think that they are perfect for beginners of nail art and at approximately £2 per nail art pen they are fab!

Are you a fan of nail art? What are your favourite nail art pens? Have you used these or other pens and come up with some great designs?

Love to you all

NOTD: StarGazer 'Shake & Bling Challenge'

Hi again my Beauties. I am very excited about today's post as it was fun to do and I am very pleased with the results. I was contacted by StarGazer's PR to do the 'Shake & Bling Challenge'. The idea is that I had to pick a pack of Nail Diamonds, along with a Polish, a Glitter Shaker and a Nail Art Pen of my choice from StarGazer.

These were the products that I chose. Left to right: Opal Nail Polish in 241, the Nail Art Pen in Silver and the Glitter Shaker in White. The Nail Adhesive is shown here, but the Nail Diamonds are not as they were so small I don't think you would be able to see them. Here is a link to them on the website Link :)

Opal Nail Polish 241 ~ £2.00

Nail Art Pen Silver ~ £3.00

Glitter Shaker White ~ £3.00

Nail Diamonds Clear ~ £2.50

I did not pay for these products. They were sent to me in order to take part in this challenge, but all opinions in this post are my own.

I was allowed to use any base coat and top coat that I have of my own so I used my Rimmel base coat and my Seche Vite Top Coat. Now I had to create my own nail art design with all of these products, explain how I did it in a blog post and tweet about it. So here is what I came up with.

Step 1: I applied my Rimmel Base Coat.

Step 2: I applied 3 coats of the Opal Nail Polish 241. I usually only apply 2 coats of any nail polish, but this has a slightly translucent finish and my yellow stained nails were showing through. The third coat solved this easily and as it dries so quickly this wasn't a problem, I love that this polish has multi tones to it. I would describe it as a soft pink with a holographic twist.

Step 3: When I applied my 3rd coat of polish to each nail I sprinkled the Glitter Shaker in White all over each nail so that it would stick to the polish. Make sure when doing this that you have something underneath your hand for the excess glitter to fall onto. This is a really pretty glitter as it has other colours reflecting within it. I think it matches really well with this polish. This glitter can be used on nails, hair and the body.

The Nail Art Pen can be used with the pen part if you wish for dotting etc, but I did not use this part.

There is a pin attached to the bottom of the Nail Art Pen which I believe is for unclogging the nib of the pen part when the polish dries up in that area.

Step 4: I used the striper brush part of the Nail Art Pen in Silver to apply a french tip to my pinkie and middle fingers and my thumb only. I found this much easier to do a french tip than using a regular nail polish brush as it did not overlap onto my skin at the edges of my nail so there was no mess for me to clean up. A great discovery.

Step 5: I then applied one square/diamond Nail Diamond to each hand and the smaller Nail Diamonds in various ways to the nails as in the photos shown. I found it very difficult to use the nail adhesive that came with the nail gems as it kept on sticking the diamonds to my tweezers so I just applied a little of my Seche Vite Top Coat to where I wanted the nail diamond to go and they stuck nicely.

Step 6: I finished off with a coat of the Seche Vite Top Coat all over each nail and voila my design was done.  

I am heading off to Olympia Beauty tomorrow and will definitely be seeing what I can find at the StarGazer stand. Will any of you Beauties be there? Did you take part in this challenge? If so what design did you come up with? Did you like the products? Have you got any StarGazer nail or other product favourites? Tell me what you think of my design.

Love to you all