Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Revlon Facets of Fuchsia

Today's NOTD is Revlon Facets of Fuchsia, a dark purple glitter polish with microglitter and larger hexagonal glitter in an almost black jelly base.  I have to say I picked this up about 4 different times before I bought it, I'd seen the pictures everywhere, I knew that it was dupish to Deborah Lippman Bad Romance (There's a comparison here on Bright Lights Big Color, the base colour of Bad Romance is slightly darker) and everyone loved it but I wasn't sure I even liked it.  Finally, it ended up following me home from Boots one day and I thought I better try it, well consider me surprised, I loved it.  In fact it reminded me of one of my favourite polishes of the last year, China Glaze Mummy May I, except this contains additional hexagonal glitter.












The glitter gives the polish a lit from within type of finish and mean it catches the light all the time but it's still subtle enough for work. The pictures show 2 coats with a coat of seche vite on top, the seche vite more or less removed the glitter bumpiness from the finish but you might need two coats if you wished to eliminate it completely. After the first day of wear I had two tiny chips on the tip of my baby finger and index fingers but the never got any worse and weren't joined my any friends in the five days I wore this polish. 


When I bough this it was on special offer it Boots for €6 but I think the usual price is nearer €8, but this gets a giant thumbs up from me, go get it! 


Edited to add: Dollyrouge's comment below reminded me, I forgot to mention removal. It was a giant PITA! It seriously was the hardest polish I've ever found to remove, I have a small bit of L'onglex with acetone remover left (which I can't find anywhere to buy a replacement) and I save it for hard jobs like this and normally it removes glitter polish with ease. Not this one, it was glued on!  


Have you tried this? What do you think?

Tuesday, September 13, 2011

Essence Choose Me

Today's NOTD is Essence Choose Me. This is a beautiful Blue-y green duochrome glitter polish that reminds me of the sea. It flashes from blue as shown in the below photo, to a sea green (which I couldn't capture at all!) . It's very much in the same vein as Zoya Charla, OPI Catch Me in Your Net and Orly Hayley's Comet, while I don't have those other polishes I believe this a dupe for them.  



And really close up






Application of this was perfect, although I always this the brush is a little stubby on the these colour and go polishes, but it's perfectly fine to work with and it's just me nitpicking, for less than €2  I can live with it!  The pictures show 2 coats topped with a coat of seche vite. Wear was good I got  about 5 days out of this before minor chippage started appearing. 


I have to say this was a grower on me, I loved it in the bottle and was slightly dissapointed when I first put this on first but the more I wore it, the more I loved it particularly the duochromeness of it! 


Have you tried this or one of it's many dupes? What did you think? 

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Best in Beaut.ie Awards

(picture courtesy of Beaut.ie)


A couple of weeks ago (ummm 3 at this stage! Bad blogger!) myself and the little sister took ourselves of to Dublin to attend the Best in  Beaut.ie beauty awards. The awards were organised by the very lovely beaut.ie sisters Kirstie and Ailsling  Beaut.ie McDermott (who will hence forth be known as the mothership of Irish blogging, since they have been called this so often recently!)  in conjunction with West Coast Cooler.   If you haven't already checked out their blog, you should once you finish reading this post,. The blog is 5 years old, in fact they are celebrating their birthday this month, and they already have one book under their belt, with another on the way shortly. You should definitely check out the blather posts, which is a daily open post were people discuss anything from beauty to current affairs. 


The awards were not only voted for my Beaut.ie readers but the shortlist also came from their readers, so these were definitely a true reflection of what Irish (since they are a Irish based blog the majority of readers are Irish!) gals use and love.



Mmmmm west coast cooler!! 
(picture courtesy of Beaut.ie)


We arrived at the very lovely Dylan hotel and promptly were given a glass of west coast cooler and found some beaut.ies I'd met before and some I hadn't we had a great evening chatting and catching up lubricated by copious amounts of West Coast Cooler - which I hadn't tried before and actually it's quite nice! Then, the awards themselves were announced you can find the whole list here. I'm going to talk about the nail related ones but you definitely check out the whole list, some strange things won awards like the winner of the Best Skin Care Tool was the humble facecloth!


Best Polish brand was won by Rimmel, see the runners up here. The best base coat award went to OPI base coat, see the runners up here. The best top coat went to Sally Hansen Diamond Shine Base and Top Coat, runners up here. The best nail tool went to Boots Buffing Block, see the runners up here. The best hand cream went to (one of my favourites) L'Occitane Shea Butter Hand Cream, see the runners up here. Last but not least the best footcream award went to Scholl Cracked Heel Repair Cream, see the runners up here.


After the awards were announced, we had some more to drink and some more chats and got given lovely goody bags, the contents of which are below, 

From L-R : No 7 Lash Adapt Mascara, Sally Hansen Cafe Au Lait, Rimmel Vinyl Addict Max Lipgloss in Addictive (this has the most mahoosive applicator see below!)  I'm dying to try the Sally Hansen polish, because they've just started carrying them in Ireland but I've yet to find somewhere that sells them,


Some Kiehls samples which came in a lovely bag which didn't make it into the photos, I've been dying to try Kiehls for ages so was very happy to see these. From Clockwise from the top left, we have Ultra facial oil free lotion, Creme de Corps, Midnight Recovery Concentrate, Epidermal Re-Texturing Micro-Dermabrasion, Rosa Artica. 


There was also some bottles of West Coast Cooler in the goody bag but they didn't make it to the pictures..........

I just had to show this, the Rimmel lipgloss pictured above has the largest applicator ever, see below for pictorial evidence, there's Benefit lipgloss on the left for comparison, it's ginormous! 

So what do you think of the winners, are your favourites among them? Have you tried any of the winners, what did you think?