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.

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.

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?

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. 

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! 

  

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?

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?

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. 

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.

The stripper brush. 

And a close up. 

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!