Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Elf Mint Cream

Next up another ELF polish, this time ELF Mint Cream. So, I really am not feeling this polish, I love the idea of mint green nail varnish, but it gives me lobster hands! Although I do like this version better than the Essie alternative Mint Candy Apple, comparison pictures below.

Ok so now for some pictures of the lobster hands, I’m not sure what to be more apologetic over the lobster hands or the terrible application that I wasn’t aware of until I saw the photos. You’ve been warned!


Elf Mint Cream


The application was actually better than some pastel colours, which tend to be streaky. The first coat was horribly streaky, but it evened out on the second and third coats. The only complaint would be the couple of stray long hairs on the brush of the polish which contributed to the horrible application.

I wore Mint Cream for 3 days before I took it off, there were no chips and no obvious tip wear. Mint Cream was £1.50 from the Elf website.

I then did a comparison between Mint Cream and Essie Mint Candy Apple, the application of both was very similar. The first coat of both was a streak-fest and I felt that the ELF polish actually applied slightly better.

From L-R, Essie MCA, Mint Cream, MCA, Mint Cream.


Essie Mint Candy Apple Elf Mint Cream


I so smudged my baby finger, for some reason my pinkie always squishes into the finger beside it! Personally, I prefer the ELF polish to the Essie, what do you think?

Friday, October 12, 2012

Nail It for Charity


From the Nail It for Charity Facebook page

Hello lovelies, extremely long time no talk, I shan't start a monologue as to why my blogging has been sparse, but I'm trying to finish my thesis and that is taking all my time and energy at the moment (and I may never ever be finished!).


I couldn't let this week pass without mentioning the Nail it for Charity event, it started on Monday and finishes on Saturday, so there's two days left. The idea is raise money through nail related events, for three amazing charities - DEBRA Ireland, The Jack and Jill Foundation and Raynaud's & Scleroderma Ireland. I personally know of the amazing work the Jack and Jill foundation do and am lucky enough to have no personal knowledge of the other two charities.



You can support the charities in a number of ways. Get a manicure for €10 in one of the supporting salons, find the list here, go to a participating Clarins counter for a 15 minute hand treatment for a suggested donation of €5 (list here) or organise your own event (info here).




Realistically, it's too late to organise anything too big but why not have the ladies (and men) around for wine and a manicure session over the weekend? You can donate any money raised on the website. If wet nails would get in the way of the wine drinking you could always use something like these halloween themed impress nails.





Have you or are planning on doing something this week for Nail It for Charity? 

Nail It For Charity 


Monday, July 9, 2012

Cult Nails Cruisin Nude

Today's NOTD is Cult Nails Cruisin' Nude. When I first applied Cruising Nude, I loved it, a nude creme with pink shimmer what's not to love. The colour kinds of reminds me of rosegold. The pink shimmer is pretty noticeable, if not obvious and makes this polish stand out from all the other nude polishes out there. 


Click to see the shimmer! 




 The application was really good, the polish maybe a little too thin but no issues with it. The pictures show three coats and I really think it need the third coat to eliminate visible nail line, but you could get away with two.   In the cold light of day, however, the colour just does not love my skin tone, I think it needs to be a smidgen lighter or darker. It seems in artifical light, it looks better on me but unfortunately in sunlight I mean daylight (there is no sunshine here!)  it kind of gives me dead hands. So I think this one to put away until summer, if that ever happens,when maybe my hands will be a little more tanned. But if you are darker or paler than me, it should work for you.    



Do you have any polishes which you love  but they just don't love you back?


Cult Nails polishes contain 15ml, cost $10 and are available from the Cult Nails website, www.cultnails.com.



Friday, June 8, 2012

Angelica Sapphire

Angelica is a relatively new to me brand of polish I first started hearing of it last summer and my little sister bought me some for my birthday in August, so they've definitely been around that long. I only remember seeing mentions to this brand on Irish blogs and a quick google shows the same, although they have a co.uk website with a UK address but sem to only reference stockists in Ireland.  So it looks like if you live outside Ireland you're not going to be able to get you hands on this brand.  In Ireland, this was first stocked in Penneys (the Irish version of Primark) but I've recently started to see it pop up in chemists too.  


The bottles are very like the old H&M bottles except the cap is white not black and contains 10 ml. They retail for €2.75 and there's a pretty wide range for a new brand, there are crackles, glitters, glitters which glow under UV light and I think they are called Jewel polishes, like today's polish.  Angelica are not 3 free, the first ingredient on the list is Toulene and Formaldehyde shows up on the list too, as does camphor, it's not as smelly as I thought it might be though.


bottle




Sapphire is dark royal blue polish with silver micro glitter ( only visible in the bottle not on the nail)  and  there seems to be a purple shimmer in the bottle.   The purple shimmer reminds me of OPI Russian Navy, in that it's visible in the bottle but not when applied, and this polish is like a not so dark and more royal blue version of Russian Navy.  On the nail, it has that lovely lit from within look to  it. 


Photo with flash. 






Natural light - No bottle because my mother took one look at it on my nails and demanded to borrow it -  she hasn't returned it yet!


In application, I found the polish a bit gloopy it could probably could have done with a couple of drops of thinner. The brush wasn't as stiff as I would of liked and  it didn't fan on the nail, but application was pretty easy. The wear was quite good on this, I took it off after about 5 days due to tipwear.


Have you tried Angelica polishes or is the fact they are not 3-Free off putting to you?

Tuesday, June 5, 2012

Cloud Mani - My first attempt

Earlier today, I was catching up on my Google Reader blog posts, when I read this post which linked to Nailside's Cloud Mani Tutorial and then I lost about 2 hours of my life reading loads of posts on this blog! (Silly internet time vortex!) 


Fast forward a couple of hours and I'm sitting in front of the telly, trying to avoid thesis writing (my avoidance and procrastination skills are, alas, too good!) and I started playing with some polishes and ended up with my first attempt at a cloud mani. It had seemed easy enough, even I could do it.....


I hadn't planned on doing this and was just messing around with some polishes, so there's no undies (undercoat) under my  'clouds'.  I'm usually rubbish as nail art but I was quite impressed with the way it turned out, so wanted to post it!




NYC Spring St
Natural light.


No 7 Totally Teal
Flash


The teal colour is No 7 Totally teal and the orange is NYC Spring St and I topped it with a coat of Seche Vite. I think the teal looks most true to life in the natural light photo and the orange is more true to life in the flash photo.  I'll do proper posts on both of these soon. I had a little bit of drag with the topcoat on my  ring finger. I'll also point out the colour choice was a bit random as I just chose from the polishes on the table in front of me and it's not intentionally in the colours of the Irish flag. But I guess this could make an appearance during the Euros with a white base and a proper green. 








Saturday, May 5, 2012

Essence Nail Art Kit - Marble Mania - UPDATE

Just an extremely quick post to update about the Nail Art Kit a few posts ago.  I said at the time, I thought the brush might be a little bit too floppy to be any good. Well after a lot of playing around with it, I haven't changed my mind. I found the brush to be rubbish, it didn't hold polish well and was way to floppy to use it with any precision.




So instead, I bought these off ebay, a full set of brushes and a set of dotting tools. They cost about €4.50 altogether including postage from Hong Kong. I haven't had a chance to play with them yet (stupid work making me all busy!), but I'll update when I do.  However, don't hold your breath for any amazing nail art, I'm afraid I was born with out the artistic gene! 


  







Wednesday, April 25, 2012

Ren Moroccan Rose Otto Body Wash

Today's post is a little different, I recently won a prize over on the lovely Fluff and Fipperies (if you haven't checked out this amazing blog yet, do as soon as you are finished reading this post) from beautyboutique.ie. The giveaway was to advertise that for every purchase of Ren Moroccan Rose Otto Body Wash, you got a free Essie Chocolate Kisses. So I won one of each! The offer is still on, as is an offer of 3 free samples with each Ren purchase.  

So I don't normally blog about things related to skin care because I have stupidly sensitive skin and it takes a bit of a push for me, to try new things because of the fear of a reaction. One of my favourite treats is a nice shower gel, well you use it everyday so I usually have 3 or 4 on the go. I'm the same with shampoo and conditioner as well and even toothpaste, I get bored of using the same things all the time and need to rotate.  There's usually one or two original source ones in there ( I'm liking the shea butter and honey one at the minute), a J&J baby one and one that's a bit of treat. My usual treat one is L'Occitane Verbana, which I love, or the Elemis frangipani one but I mix it up a bit, particularly now I'm bathless and can't enjoy my Aromatherapy Associates bath oils :(  




Anyway, on to the Ren product., I don't loads about Ren but they don't contain parabens, sulphates, mineral oil and assorted other nasties, so that's always a plus.  I have no pictures of it before it was used, as my mother held it hostage!  I get my post sent to my parents house because there's usually someone there during the day and Rose is her favourite 'flavour' of body products, so there was no way it was coming home with me, once she knew what was in the package -which, incidentally arrived very quickly.  I bartered with her by giving her a L'Occitane shower gel, that someone bought me as a present and I can't use because the smell is so overpowering it gives me a migraine. 








I really like that it has a pump, it means you're not using more than you want, you really don't want all your €20 shower gel spilling and going down the drain. Although, I don't know if the pump will mean the last bit is harder to get out, we'll have to wait and see.  The smell of this is really delicate and in no way overpowering, it reminds me of turkish delight. I think that's because it's Rose Otto and not Rose Absolute, which I should really ask the da mammy since she is qualified in all things like this. 




I tend to use 1-2 pumps on a shower puff or exfoliating gloves in the shower and we're good to go. It's not drying and slightly moisturising. I don't usually use body lotion after using this beause it smells so nice and get away with it. It doesn't bother my dry sensitive skin, so I'd rebuy this and I'm looking forward to trying some more Ren products. 


Have you tried this or any other Ren products? Any suggestions of what I should try next? Do you splash out on shower gel as a treat or just use whatever is on special offer, or a little of both like me?

Thursday, April 19, 2012

Max Factor Fantasy Fire





Max factor fantasy fire, what to say? Firstly it's amazeballs! Secondly it's dupeish to the most beloved discontinued polish ever Clairins 230 (aka Unicorn Pee ). The third thing to add is, that this is most definitely a top coat, I've seen some people bemoaning that 6 coats later it's still not opaque. Stop, put it atop of what you are already wearing particularly if it's a blue, green or purple and prepare to be amazed! 


The sun didn't play nice the first couple of times I wore this, so I decided to show you some bottle and nail wheel pictures today and since I took these eleventy-billion pictures (this post has been a long time in the making), I managed to get some natural light photos of it on my nails so these will follow, shortly.




Some bottle pictures to start. Here and elsewhere, you can click the pictures to make them bigger, so do it!





So I said it was dupeish to Clairins 230, I don't own the Clairins polish so can't do a full comparision but in the bottle they look similar, layered over another polish they look similar, but on their lonesome on the nail they look different. The Clairins is a red base and the Max Factor is a purple base but because there are both so sheer it's seems to not matter one jot. Fantasy fire definitely has the green flash, just like Clarins 230.  The green flash was hard to pick up but I think you can see hints of it in the second bottle picture and the last nail wheel picture. 


In retrospect, I should have rotated this photos  The four polishes use are Green : OPI Jade is the New Black, Blue: OPI Dating a Royal, Navy :  Essence Midnight Rocker , Purple Revlon Rock.





The last thing to say is the bottle is tiny (6 ml) and costs €5.49 ( around £3.99, I think) and only seems to be available in the UK and Ireland. In Ireland, I've only found this in Boots, other chemists which do Max Factor don't seem to have this, so if you want this you'll have to get to your nearest Boots. 

Have you tried Fantasy Fire? What do you think of it?

Thursday, April 5, 2012

Essence Nail Art Kit - Marble Mania

The current essence collection on stand is the marble mania collection, I picked up the nail art kit yesterday and none of the polishes, they weren't really floating my boat. The full details of the collection are available here.  I thought I'd do a quick post as the collections can move quite fast. 

Essence Marble Mania
The kit contains 2 orange sticks, 2 pieces of sponge and a stripper brush.  The pink card also contains instructions for use of the stripper brush, the sponges and a how to marble.

marble mania

The stripper brush. 


Essence stripper brush


And a close up. 

Essence stripper brush

The bristles are extremely long and fine, and I'm not sure they are stiff enough to accurately control the brush. I've only had a very quick play with the brush but found it hard to control and a little bit floppy. Perhaps, with a bit of practice I'll get better.  However, I caveat the last statement with the fact that I'm extremely challenged when it comes to nail art, so it is probably me that is rubbish and not the brush!

I've added a picture to show the brush in comparison to a regular nail varnish brush (Cult Nails top coat), so you can see the difference in size.


 The nail art kit retails for €2.79, so it's as cheap pick me up. I need a bit more time to play with it to decide if it's worth it, but for €2.79, I won't be crying if I don't get too much use out of it!  


Monday, March 26, 2012

Another way to follow

Just an extremely quick post today, to add to this post, on ways to follow the blog.  I recently joined hellocotton, so if you prefer this way to follow blogs, you can follow this blog there either by follow this link or press the little gadget over there on the right.  (If you are reading this on hellocotton, hello!) 


If you haven't heard about hellocotton, it's a website that collects all your blog subscriptions together and is slightly more interactive, than say bloglovin. You don't need to have a blog to have a profile, but you can only follow blogs which have a profile on hello cotton.  


Have you tried hellocotton? What do you think? 



Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Catrice Run Forest Run - St Patrick's Day Mani

Having to find a chemist over Christmas to get a prescription filled for the Granny, led me to a chemist I don't normally go to (and totally out of my way) and when in there I spied a Catrice stand, finally! I was in a hurry that day and kind of forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago, when I was walking by with little bro and little sis on the way back from the bro's birthday brunch - Ok, I totally engineered the walk by with the sister when the brother was in the loo.  He wasn't best pleased when he realised what we did and wanted out pretty pronto, but we got a bit of look and when I saw this one, I knew  I had to have it for the name alone, even better it was half price and better again I had no cash on me, so little sis bought it for me!(Thank you lovely!)  


After that long spiel, today's NOTD is Catrice Run Forest Run, and this ended up being my St Patrick's day mani.  I shall spare you my thoughts on Forest Gump, which is one of my faves - but I totally love the name of this polish! Unsuprisingly, Run Forest Run, is a forest green creme polish. 


Natural Light ( That's not a chip on my pointer, it's light reflecting. )

Flash Picture 

The first coat of this was patchy and uneven, but the second coat evened everything out. I used Cult Nails base and top coat with this (more on this at a later date - also when the bottles were sitting on the table I noticed the bottles are the same).  So far we have an amazing names, great colour and ok application, unfortunately wear wasn't great.  On the second day of wearing, I spent more time than usual in the kitchen and got major chippage on my right hand and shortly after the polish on one nail popped off.  I'm not sure if this is to do with the polish or maybe Catrice doesn't want to play nice with Cult Nails - even though they are bottle twins. I've heard of polish popping off but it has never happened to me before, which is why I'm wondering if it's a topcoat/basecoat not playing well with the polish issue. 

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Essence Applause Applause - The glitter

We saw the creme side of Applause Applause yesterday, so now for the  second side of Applause Applause which is a red glitter in a clear base.  Now I imagine you are all yawning in the background, because there's loads of red glitters out there but this one is pretty unique, it's got your regular red glitter and also red square glitter. Off the top of my head, I can't think of another polish like it, there probably is one, though!
Picture with flash.


Natural light

Nail wheel shows from L-R, two coats of the creme, two coats of creme with one of glittter, one coat of glitter, two coats of glitter and 3 coats of glitter. (Click on the picture to make it bigger and see the two different types of glitter )


Again no issues with application or wear, other than the fact I couldn't open the other side of the polish with wet nails.  I'm dying to try the glitter side over black I think it will be gorgeous.   I paid €3.99 for this which is a pretty good bargain for 2 polishes! This came in two other colour combos,  pink glitter/ pink creme and gold glitter/ black creme, but I didn't feel the need to buy either of those.




Have you tried any of the Circus Circus polishes, should I have picked up one of the other 2? Are we liking the whole 2-1 design?

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Essence Applause Applause - The creme

Today's NOTD is Essence Applause Applause, this is from the Circus Circus collection. It's two-sided polish with a red creme on one side and a red glitter in the other. I bought this polish before Christmas, but Circus Circus is still the collection on both my local Essence stands, one in Penneys and one in a local Chemist (which usually updates first).




 I'm going to talk about the glitter tomorrow because I couldn't open that side, when my nails were wet!  Essence call this a colour polish ( 3 colour I can understand but I could rant about this but I won't)  and suggest that you can either wear each polish alone or combine them to create a unique polish. 


The polish is beautifully pigmented and was fully opaque in one coat but the pictures show two coats. I thought the application might be a bit difficult with the double ended bottle but once you got a good hold on the bottle it was fine. I wore this for two days before adding the glitter side and the wear was fine (I realise that it looks like there is tipwear in the photo but I think I had some shrinkage from my topcoat).  All in all, a very nice, highly pigmented, red creme with no application issues.  

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Google Friend Connect and all that jazz!

This post was actually scheduled to post last week and with everything that's going around here I never noticed it didn't post, I think I've edited to read correctly now the GFC changes have (kinda?!) happened but apologies in advance if my tenses are wrong!  I promise to come back with some pretty nail polish to show you soon, but unfortunately both blogging and painting my nails are quite low on the to do list at the mo'.


Since, rarely an hour goes by that I don't read either on da Twitter or in my google reader consternation at the fact that Google is dropping Google Friend Connect (GFC) for non-google (blogger) supported blogs, I thought I'd do a quick post on it.

1.  As things stand, this is a blogger blog, so it won't lose GFC in March.  So if that's how you follow, you can continue doing that. (This stands for all blog with 'blogspot' in the url or a phrase like 'powered by blogger' at the end of the page and/or the blogger toolbar at the top of the page.)  It is however likely that GFC will be dropped from blogger blogs eventually as Google have said they are no longer supporting it.

2. It seems that most, if not all non-blogger blogs have lost their GFC connection (if that's what you'd call it) by now.  So, if you haven't heard from your favourite blogger lately this is probably why, so you are going to have to find a new way to follow them. (Most blogs have similar options to those listed in point 3) 

3. If you decide that google friend connect is no longer the way you want to follow my blog, on the right of this post  you can subscribe to the RSS feed using your favourite way. Mine is to use Google Reader which means that posts arrive in to my Reader account shortly after they're posted.
Or you can subscribe by email, so posts are emailed to you, shortly after they are posted.  Again, there's a little box to the right of this post to do this
Or you can follow this blog (and loads more)  using bloglovin'   (again look right for the link....are you sensing a trend here?!)
Finally, you can follow @NailishRambling on twitter and I'll tweet when a new post is ..ummm... posted. (again you'll find a link to the right of this post!)  

Even after writing all the above, the song is still in my head. I'm afeared I might be singing " And all that jazz ...." for the rest of the night. (I don't actually know any other words, so the same line is going round and round, even though I've been to the show a couple of times and think I own the dvd! I've also nearly dropped my laptop of my knee a couple of times, doing *jazz hands* , so if you never come back I understand! ) 

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Revlon Rock

For Christmas, I got 2 lovely Revlon polishes from little sis and bro, called Rock and Star.   Rock is a purple cream and Star is a topcoat with silver and blue micro glitter and holographic hex glitter.  They picked these up in TK Maxx and I hadn't heard of them before, so a little google showed them up on some blogs in Summer 2010, possibly a US only release?.


Today I'll talk about Rock and update on Star tomorrow.  Rock is perfection in a polish, it applies very easily. The pictures show two coats. My camera didn't want to pick up the purple goodness of this polish but these pictures are pretty colour accurate. The bottom picture is maybe a bit dark but it shows the dustiness in the colour of the polish.






Application was fine, the polish was very pigmented and the pictures show 2 coats with a coat of seche vite on top. Also the wear was good on this. I'm really starting to like Revlon polishes and they weren't really on my radar before Facets of Fuchsia.  

Have you tried this polish? Are there any other Revlon polishes I need to check out?



Sunday, January 8, 2012

H&M Miss Stone Heart

Today I have for you a H&M polish called Miss Stone Heart, I totes love this name and it's a medium grey kinda stoney coloured creme polish with a hint of lavender. It's a little more grey and dark than China Glaze Agent Lavender, and a little bit darker and more lavender than Orly Mirror Mirror.  








Application is good on this, if a little streaky and it dries a bit matte so you definitely need a top coat with this.  I don't love this new H&M bottle (I'm sure I've said this before!), the large cap is awkward to hold when painting the nails and it never closes flush with the bottle (just like the ELF bottles, which drives me a little bit crazy!)  At time of writing, I've been wearing this polish for 4 days and wear is fine, I'm starting to get a little tip wear but that's about it. 



Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Chanel Peridot

Happy new year! I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas and for those of you back to work today (like me!), the bang back to earth isn't too harsh! 


Today's NOTD is Chanel Peridot, I'm sure you've seen this a million times already. This is my first Chanel polish I bought this more for the name than anything else, as an August baby peridot is my birthstone and I really don't like it in jewellery so why not in a polish. I bought this way back in August and by the time I got around to writing the post, every second post in my reader was peridot related, so I held off posting (for much longer then I planned!). 


 Peridot is a pretty unique polish, but I'm sure dupes will appear sooner or later, a duochrome foil which flashes between gold and green. I've tried my best to capture both  colours in the picture and I think they are pretty colour accurate. 




I thought this was quite work appropriate but I was chatting to my boss this morning and he commented on it, he usually only comments when I wear blue nail varnish. (He always comments on Blue, so much I try not to wear it around him!) I wonder if the duochrome-ness means that it's more eye-catching than you'd expect. Anyway, I love it and that's all that matters. I find the green flash shows better in low light, but the gold is definitely the predominant colour.




The application was pretty ok (better than all those Chanel horror stories lead me to believe anyway!) although I found the long skinny brush a little unwieldy. Foil polishes, usually show up every lump and bump on your nail and this is no different, however the brush strokes aren't as visible as I was expecting, in fact they are pretty non-existent.


The wear on this was actually amazing,  I know Chanel polishes are known for being chippy, but I wore this until it chipped. I was pretty fed up of it by the time I got the chips, it was day 10. I applied over a coat of CND Stickey and then popped a coat of Seche Vite over it.  


There you have it the story of my first chanel, not as bad as I thought it would be!   Do you have it? Love it? Hate it?