17 Catwalk Couture

Today's NOTD is 17 Catwalk Couture, a turquoise polish with a hidden shimmer. Well, the shimmer was visible on the outside of the bottle but  I couldn't spy it in the polish when applying nor when I was wearing it, so I guess imperceptible shimmer is the right description here. I picked this up as one of polishes I bought when I got the 17 Nail Bar in a Bag  The bottle contains 15? ml and despite it saying on the shelf €4.59 it scanned through at €3.99 (as did the other polish I bought). Let's see what it looks like,  shall we?

I took pictures of this in all types of light - all combinations of  natural, artificial, flash and  no flash and this was the most colour accurate, but it's still a bit paler than it was in real life.
Application of this was perfect - no issues at all. Everytime I use a 17 polish, I think I don't like the brush but actually I think its the stubbyness of the handle I don't like, the brush it quite large and fans well so can paint a nail with one stroke. The wear wasn't great on this, on the second day I got chips on 2 fingers. I happened to be wearing  H&M Turquise Kitty on my toes at the same time and the colour is very similar but the shimmer is more evident, looking back at that post, I found that, that polish chipped quickly too! 

Beaut.ie Benefit Event

On Saturday, I took myself off to Dublin for a Benefit event organised with the lovely Kirstie and Aisling of Beaut.ie and Maggie and Annie (the daughters of one the benefit founders) to coincide with the launch of Cha Cha tint. I had missed previous get togethers so I thought this would be a great time to meet the other beaut.ies! It was so nice to finally put faces to blog names and twitter names!  Having first met up with the girls ( from Claire, Cornflakegirl, Aifs - who has the most amazing benefit collection ever, Art Donatella, Action Mags, Sile C, Bride and Joy, Lovely Girlie Things, All Made Up and I think that's it) we actually missed the demos but all had our make done by the very lovely benefit make up artists. Having made our purchases we got a fab goody bag, I bought Cha Cha tint (it would have been rude not to!) Being a bad blogger even though I had my camera with me I took not one photo! - but you can pop over to Beaut.ie for some.  I know I don't normally do make but let's have a little goo at Cha Cha tint.


Cha Cha tint is coral coloured cheek and lip tint a la benetint. I love it on the lips and am still getting used to applying it to my cheeks! (If only I could have been watching myself as the girl was doing my make up!) Here it is in the bottle 

Swatches of cha cha tint - on the left as it is, yes, scarily bright!  and on the right it's blended out, not so scary now is it!  

and here's the contents of the  goodie bag 

A lipgloss, a benefit tweezerman, which I'm dying to try and will not lose as I do all my other tweezers, and some samples of the new skin care range. 

The lipgloss is 'Who are you wearing?' and I was actually told by a benefit counter that it was discontinued a couple of years ago. So I'm delighted both to see it obviously wasn't and to get a new one! 

How cute is the skin care packaging?! On the left Triple Performing Facial Emulsion(?!) and on the right It's Potent eye cream. I'll let you know how I get on with them, after I've used them for a while.


Sorry this turned in to quite a long post but I had a fab day and it was so lovely to meet some lovely beaut.ies!  

17 Nail Bar in a Bag (GWP)

I was in Boots over the weekend when I noticed this gift with purchase (GWP) and thought I'd do a quick post about it in case those of you near a Boots hadn't seen it. The gift is called Nail Bar in a bag and is free with 2 17 purchases. (I bought two nail varnishes which cost €3.99 each - although the shelf said they cost €4.59 each)

Once you open the very cute bag and open the pink tissue paper, you get  a pink leopard print nail file, some heart shaped nail stickers, Knockout Red (left) and Pink Grapefruit (right). 

So, if you have a boots near by rush out and get one before they're all gone! I'll probably try out the polishes in the next few days along with the other 2 I bought (Woo Me and Catwalk Couture) if there's one you'd like to see in particular, let me know and I can do that first! 

Barry M Dusty Mauve

Today's post is Barry M's Dusty Mauve, which is one of the many dupe for Chanel Paradoxal. The polish is a smokey purple colour with purple shimmer running through it, as seen in this close up of the bottle. 

I expected to love this as I loved it in the bottle, I loved swatches I saw on other blogs  and the base colour of the polish is very similar to Models Own Purple Grey, which I loved, but actually I wasn't a fan, the only reason I can come up with is that I felt that it pulled quite brown on me a lot of the time - I guess this is something to do with my skin tone.  The application was great. The wear was really disappointing on this I had a chip on one nail the first day, quickly followed by a lot of tipwear and a lot more chips.   So, for once with a Barry M polish,  colour me not impressed!

China Glaze Broken Hearted

I couldn't bear to take of the Accessorize polish in the last post, but I still fancied a change, so I went pursuing through my stash to find something to put over it. I toyed with matte topcoat or flakies a la Rainbow/2010/Hidden Treasure, before settling on crackle, pink crackle.

I thought I was over crackle but hadn't used this yet so thought it was due a use before I completely made up my mind. I really wasn't feeling this at first but so many people complimented me on my nails and were asking how I did it, that I started to think I'm not bored of crackles but I am jaded of the fact that every company either has them out or is about to release them, so I keep seeing press releases, etc. 


I actually found the application of this far from perfect, the formula was weird a bit thin and thick all at the same time, but it cracked well, so it's not too bad. I'm wearing if for just over 24 hours as I type and there is a slight bit of tipwear but I have been wearing the base polish for 3 days so it might be due to that.


What do you think are you over crackles or just fed up of every company jumping on the band wagon?

Accessorize Electric Blue

Now, don't pass out from shock but I've a nail post for you and hopefully many more to follow! I've finally got lots of the major work stuff out of the way so can go back to working normal hours, so should be able to post more often (in fact you may soon be wondering " Does that one ever shut up!" ) Today, I have an Accessorize polish from Superdrug called Electric Blue. I picked this up in England when I was there for work about 6 weeks ago, to the very best of my knowledge, Superdrug in Ireland does not stock this brand. The polish is a royal blue jelly base with blue and purple glitter. First up some bottle pictures, in real life it's definitely easier to see the purple in the bottle than on the nails. But I can not get the purple to show in it's own right in the pictures, it is showing in the fact the blue colour is much richer, if that makes sense.

And now on the nails, 

Application-wise, the first coat was a little sheer and I thought it was going to need a lot of coats, but a 2nd coat did it. The pictures show 3 coats, the minute I saw the pictures I knew it would need a third coat but the naked eye two is probably sufficient. For a glitter it has a very smooth finish, however I still popped a coat of seche vite on top. The bottle holds 10ml and the lid is very big, which makes the brush a little short, it's a little difficult to manover the brush and control the polish but it's not too bad.  I think I paid £4 for this. 


Have you tried any Accessorize polishes? What did you think?  I picked up a few of these so expect them to show up soon!  I'm going to try and get some more photos of this to see if I can capture the purple glitter any better, I'll add them in the next couple of days if I can. 


Just before posting, I checked the Accessorize website and it seems you can order the polishes and all the makeup online, the delivery cost is £7.95, to Ireland (and most of Europe)