It's begining to look a lot like Christmas.... part 1

With the festive season, galloping closer and closer (seriously time seems to be flying by) my mind turned to present buying and I thought I put together some kind of gift guide.  I thought I'd be obvious and start with a bit of  nail theme and thanks to a tweet from Stephanie from Imperfectly Painted, I have the craziest nail related gift I've seen to show you.


For the polish lover:


The nail brand Julep, started a monthly box scheme in the US, similar to those offered from Birchbox, Glossy Box et al. Every month, you get a selection of their products and they call their subscribers mavens.  So on to the gift, and forgive me if it's out of most of your price ranges (it's totally out of mine!!) , Julep are offering the chance to become a lifetime maven with boxes every month for life, for the bargin price of $10,000.  The full deets are here. If you are interested go with the quickness as there are only 10 of these available. (If my loved ones are reading and have had a recent windfall I know nothing about, this is not what I want for Christmas! - Just so we are clear!) 



Nail polish lovers will be happy with anything that's a little bit different or unusual, that could be a new polish brand or an unusual finish particularly a holographic or flaky polish (that doesn't sound that nice really nobody wants a polish which flakes they want one with flakes in it á la nubar 2010 - see here and here ) 

Cult Nails Iconic - one of my favourite polishes

Here I was going to suggest Cult Nails Clairvoyant, this was originally released as a limited edition called Unicorn Puke (see here for the swatchaholic's amazing photos) but it's sold out, but they still have loads of amazing polishes left and a Black Friday - Cyber Monday offer on, which ends on Monday.  Polishes are retailing for $7.75 instead of $10 and the base coat and top coat are $6 instead of $8, shipping usually costs $8 to Ireland.  Also beware of import duties etc, so don't order too much that you get caught for them (anything less than €22 is ok in Ireland). 


My other suggestion is A-England, they are an English nail polish brand, who have some lovely polishes and some of them are holographic!  They retail at £9 each and have free worldwide shipping. 




For the polish novice:


First up, do your non-nail polish wearing friends a favour, you know the ones who say they never have time to paint their nails and comment that you must have loads of free time on your hands to be able to paint you nails, introduce them to fast drying topcoat and maybe base coat too!

Picture from Seche.com

My personal favourite is Seche Vite  and you can find it on beautyemporium.ie for €9.55 delivered here. (This is one of the new bunch of Irish beauty sites that have popped up lately, I've ordered from them and the service was excellent, my order arrived super quick.)  Other fast dry top coats people recommend are the Red Sally Hansen one, Essence, Poshe and Cult nails. 


Even better, you can put together a mani  kit (well you could buy one but one you put together will be better )  you could pick up a couple of polishes, maybe Essence, Catrice and Elf are all cheap but generally very good (see here, here and here for inspiration).  Add in a nail file, I know glass is best but I could never find one I was happy with, top and base coat as above and there you have it.  You could also add, your favourite hand cream, cuticle remover or oil, toe seperators (although I always use a rolled up tissue), orange sticks, I'm sure there's some things I forgot.   


If you feel that neither of the above ideas will sway them to enjoy your love of all things nail polish, what about a voucher for a mani/pedi.  There are caveats associated with this, never ever give a voucher for somewhere you wouldn't be happy to receive a voucher for yourself and this might just be my friends but I know that some of my friends would consider a pedi as some kind of torture, since they hate people touching their feet and one doesn't even like strangers touching their hand.  


If you think none of the above will win over your friend you better catch the next non- nail related part of the gift guide.  


Is there anything I left out? Let me know! 

I'm still here.....

I've written this post in my head a hundred times but haven't been able to find the right way to do it, so I thought I better write something.  Long story short, my life (mostly work) went a bit mad for the last couple of months and when it finally calmed down I got sick.  So, finally I'm getting back to normal  and I'm going to try and get back to posting on the blog.  I've not had time to paint my nails properly in ages but have still been buying so have a long backlog of things to share. 


Talk to you soon xx

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?

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? 

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?

What I picked up in Spain

As those of you who follow me on Twitter know, I was recently in Spain for work. While I didn't have much time for the shops unfortunately, I picked up a few Essence bits in a cosmetic shop (kind of like a pharmacy without the drugs!). The selection there was much bigger than that which we have any where I've seen in Ireland - the stand was about 3 times bigger and a lot of the extra was nail stuff.  They had lots of nail stickers and much more polish as well as stamping kits. I only picked up a few things hoping to get back but never made it. 
So here's what I got.


From L-R , the stampy set, two extra plates 01 have fun and 02 style it up!, Nail  Art Twins 02 Julia and Nail Art Special Effect Topper 02 Circus Confetti.

And in more detail.


The stampy kit, this cost €3.49. This contains  a stamper (on top), a scraper (left) and one plate (right)

The two plates, have fun on the left and style it up! on the right.

The two polishes Nail  Art Twins 02 Julia, on the left,  and Nail Art Special Effect Topper 02 Circus Confetti, on the right. Circus Confetti looks very Happy Birthday-esque to me on first look and Julia is a chunky holo glitter. Both of these  are very sparse so a base coat will be needed with them. 

I also popped into H&M and as well as buying a few dresses I picked up these Moody Model,  from the last post and one more polish I can't find anywhere (which has made me mad!!!- I'm pretty sure it made it home with me, unlike my phone charger but that's a whole other story!)  




I did find a Sephora but didn't pick up any polish there, it was quite small and any that I liked the look of were out of stock :( 


Expect some stampy manicures soon, just as soon as I manage to get to grips with it!  

H&M Moody Model

Today's NOTD is H&M Moody Model, a lovely deep teal cream.  I picked this up in Spain for €3.99 and if memory serves me right they are €4.50 here in Ireland. ( I live nowhere near a H&M). I picked another H&M polish and a few more things, in Spain, which I'll show you in the next couple of days.

This has amazing application,  the polish applies really well it's not too thin or too thick and it's very pigmented, pictures show two coats with seche vite on top, if I did the coats a little thicker it might have been a one coater. This is one of the new bottles and the new cap isn't great, because it's so big but I found holding it sideways made it easier to apply the polish, and as soon as you have worked out a way to hold it, it becomes less of an issue.