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!

Natural light.

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. 

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?

NOTD Essence Underwater

Today's NOTD is Essence Underwater, I picked this own up a little while ago but hadn't got around to wearing it.  It's a blue frost with shimmer, I've included a super-duper zoomed picture to show the shimmer. You may have a different version to this, in between taking the pictures and writing the post, I saw this post on Nihrida's fab blog, showing two versions of this. This is version 1, in Nihrida's post but I really like version 2 as well, so I'll keep an eye out for the other version.

And here we go on the nail.

 

After a couple of days wearing the polish, I was desperate for a bit of a change but didn't have time to change my whole manicure, so I applied a coat of No7 matte topcoat.

I really like this matte, aswell. You mght notice my pinky looks different, well that's because I applied a different matte topcoat to it, but more on this in another post. 

No7 Grey Skies Revisited

Like I said yesterday I loved this polish so I played around a bit with it. I thought that Nubar 2010/Gosh Rainbow/Sally Hansen’s Hidden Treasure (pick your own particular flavour!) would look lovely over it. I also wanted to see what it would look like matte, both on it’s own and with Nubar 2010 over it.  Again, the same apology about hang nails from yesterday! (sorry!)

From L-R (Pinkie to index)  Nubar 2010 matte, Nubar 2010, Matte, Normal.

Daylight, no flash

Daylight, flash

Artifical light

The polish matte reminds me a little of a blackboard, not in a bad way but it’s not my favourite.  I love the Nubar 2010 over it, espically the matte version on my pinkie. The next time I'm going out and have the time I'll wear Grey Skies with Nubar 2010. 

NOTD No7 Grey Skies

Today, a new polish from No 7 called Grey skies. This is a  lovely dark grey creme. It’s not too dark that it looks black, so it’s just about a perfect dark grey.  I loved this! Before we see the pics, an apology: I normally take pictures of my left hand and these are of my right hand because I got some cuticle stains on my left hand. My index finger has some hang nails, I didn’t realise how horrible they looked, until I saw them on the screen, sorry.

Daylight, no flash

Daylight, flash

Artifical light

So I love the colour, it dries quite a bit darker than the bottle colour. The application was ok, the polish was a little thin and pooled at my cuticles, I got some stains on my cuticles when I tried to clean it up. I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, I find the No 7 bottle easy to knock over, because it’s quite tall and skinny. The wear on this wasn’t great, I was wearing the polish a little over 24 hours before I got a chance to take the pictures and I had tipwear, so I had to reapply the polish for the pictures. I’m not sure, if it was because I was particularly hard on my nails or they wear on the polish is just bad, so I will give it the benefit of the doubt.

No 7 polish retails for €9.75 and the bottle contains 10ml.

NOTD 17 Peacock Matte

So like I mentioned yesterday, I really wasn’t feeling the 17 peacock, I wore it to work and hated it. I was really looking forward to taking it off but work was really hectic and I was really late and way to pooped to do a mani. So I threw a coat of No 7 Matte Top Coat on top. 

Here’s the pic

I actually liked this much better  and ended up wearing it for a few days. The wear was really great, I know mattes don’t wear as well usually. 

No 7 is a Boots brand, the matte top coat is a limited edition and costs €9.75. (I used a €7.50 off No 7 voucher I had, so it cost me €2.25). Application is fine, although I don’t love the No 7 bottle, it’s so tall and narrow, it’s easy to knock over.  The bottle contains 10 ml. 


Comments, suggestions, just saying hi, all appreciated! 

Haul

I took a few days off over the last week, I just wanted to get a few things done before Uni, started back.  Of course, this necessitated a couple of visits to Boots, where *ahem* some polishes may have sneaked their way in my basket!

From L-R, No 7 Matte Top Coat, No 7 Grey skies, Barry M Vivid Purple, Barry M Raspberry, 17 Ruby Dazzle, 17 Peacock and 17 Exquisite.

I was really excited to see Barry M in Boot’s, we’ve never had it before. Although, because it was new, the stand was ransacked. The Barry M polishes cost €4.50, but were on offer 2 for €8. The bottles hold 10ml. I’ll go back and get more soon, when the stand is refilled!

The two No7 polishes cost €9.75 for 10ml. They're a great thing to use the €7.50 of No7 vouchers, if you have any floating around!  The 17 fast finish polishes cost €4.29, but were on offer 2 for €6.50 according to my receipt, there was no sign. The lasting finish was €3.99. I would have got another polish if I had known about the offer. The 17 polishes are 8ml. 

My Stash

Today, I thought I'd post a few pictures of my small stash, so to start off here's a picture of most of my polish stash. I found a few more lying around the place after I took the pictures and I know my Mum and sister have a few too. I must make a spreadsheet because I have no idea how many polishes I have, I guess around 60.

Next up, The OPIs

The China Glazes.

The Orlys and Ruby&Millie.

Elf and No7

Essence

17

Collection 2000, Rimmel, Maybelline and H&M

Essie, Claires and mini OPIs from the Spanish collection

That's it for now. Have a great weekend!