NOTD: Models Own in Juicy Jules and Barry M Gelly Hi-Shine in Prickly Pear

It's taken me a long time to purchase any of the Gelly Hi-Shines from Barry M and I'm not really sure why... Fast forward from 3 weeks ago and I've now got a mini collection of six shades which I'll be reviewing once I've finished swatching but, spoiler alert, I really like them! Prickly Pear is a beautiful pastel lilac which is perfect for Spring. I decided to pair it with Models Own Juicy Jules just to inject a little girly glamour into the look. I've recently been on a week long varnish ban to give my nails a rest since they were beginning to get a little dry and even flaky in some places. I can report that after some intensive moisturising they're back on form and look lovely and healthy! I definitely recommend taking a week out and applying some thick moisturiser (I used The Body Shop Shea Body Butter) if your nails are looking less than perfect. It felt really weird having naked nails for so long and I feel much better now I have my colourful talons back!

I think this is a fab combo. Sadly the glitter wasn't photographing very well but I can assure you it looks lovely and catches the light beautifully with pink and green shimmers. I'm wearing two coats of Prickly Pear here and one coat of Juicy Jules. This is the first time I've tried to do something like this using a glitter polish but it was really easy and worth the little extra effort.

Have you been embracing the Spring shades lately (despite the weather not cooperating)? What do you think of my look?

Lauren

NOTD Barry M Black and MUA Nail Constellation in Libra

I was very lucky recently and won a giveaway from the lovely Jasmine at Oh So Flawless (thank you!) Included was one of the fairly new MUA Nail Constellations which are a high street dupe of the Ciaté Caviar manicures. They come in a few different colour mixes and I got Libra which contains mostly black beads with a few turquoise. I figured that it would look best over a plain black background and I found a Barry M one in my collection that I hadn't tried yet.

The Barry M Black was streaky on the first application but fully opaque on the second coat. It also dried fairly quickly which is great. The Nail Constellation managed to thoroughly confuse me. It literally couldn't figure out how to open the damn thing! I pulled off the tip and nothing came out... turns out I was being an absolute fool. The entire cap comes off (with a bit off effort) and there is a small piece of plastic sheeting covering the beads. Despite there being an applicator tube I decided it would be easiest to go for a dipping method and promptly poured some into a bowl. The hard part came later when I was trying to put the excess back in the bottle!

I decided to opt for an accent nail rather than a full manicure because it just seems so much easier to wear! The beads themselves stuck very well and I loved the black on black. I think the amount of turquoise beads wasn't very well thought out though. It's practically impossible to achieve even spacing so they just look a bit random and out of place. Not that the colour even mattered, because within a couple of hours the turquoise beads had turned silver. As soon as I got them wet the colour disappeared which is a bit disappointing. Despite the issues I actually really did like the look and they lasted much longer than I thought they would. I always imagined caviar manicures to be more of a one night deal but these lasted a good few days until I took them off (because the Barry M polish had chipped.) I did lose a few on the first day when I pulled something out of my pocket but they mostly stayed put when the polish solidified. I think this pot is going to last absolutely ages, you need hardly any for the look. I'm not sure if I'll buy any more though simply because I'm not sure how much I would wear them. I'm very happy that I got the chance to try them out though, thanks again Jasmine!

You can buy MUA Nail Constellation at Superdrug or on the MUA website for £3. (Bargain!)

Have you tried these or the Ciate manicures? Would love to know what you think!

Lauren

Display Picture Lip Make-Up Ingredients (a.k.a The £5 Perfect Red Lips!)

I've had a few people give me some lovely compliments on the make up that I'm wearing in my profile picture. I've already shown everyone what's on my eyes through this post but I have yet to share my lipstick secrets! I decided it would be nice to do a kind of mini tutorial for it.

This is Barry M Lip Liner in Red, £2.99 and Natural Collection Moisture Lipstick in Cherry Red, £1.99

Step One: Line your lips with the pencil. It doesn't have to be perfectly neat and feel free to create more of an exaggerated lip shape. I like to make my cupids bow a little rounder when I do this look.

Step Two: Fill your lips in with the pencil. I find that this one is really smooth when you warm it up a little bit and doesn't feel drying or uncomfortable at all. It's actually a fantastic matte look on it's own which I think looks gorgeous with some retro curls! 

Step Three: Go over your lips with your lipstick. You can do it from the tube but a lip brush will create a much more precise line. You also want to neaten up any splodges (as I've had to do!) and optionally, pop a little concealer around your lips to make the edges really sharp and pronounced. If you want to add some serious staying power, apply a little translucent loose powder to the lips through a piece of single ply tissue. You could also add a bit of gloss to the centre of your lips for a really shiny pout.

I love this lipstick. It's so shiny and beautiful (and cheap!) It does transfer really easily though, so you definitely want to add some powder if you're going to be drinking or eating. I think this is such a festive look and I love wearing red around Christmas. 

I hope you liked this little tutorial!

What are the ingredients for your perfect red lip? And have you tried either of these bargain products?

P.S. I discovered today that a few people are following me on bloglovin' so I've decied to sign up and claim my blog! It's told me to paste some code in a new post...

Here goes nothin' 

<a href="http://www.bloglovin.com/blog/4325113/?claim=5qm8ptuyxpb">Follow my blog with Bloglovin</a>

Lauren

Yet Another Mini Haul: Bargains Galore!

I got paid on Monday which meant that it was time to stock up on essentials (and a few non-essentials.)
Heres what I managed to grab:

My first stop was Boots to check out the haircare. I was actually looking for Tresemme dry shampoo since I had seen it reviewed and recommended recently by Harriet here. But it just so happened that all the VO5 products were a 3rd off there. I ended up picking VO5 dry shampoo (usually £3.49) simply because I love a bargain! There was a volumising version but it claimed to be for fine hair so I'm not sure it would have done anything for me. Best to keep it simple.

 I also picked up the "treat me right" intensive conditioning mask. (usually £4.39)

This looks like just the thing to treat my Winter hair. Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner (£3.79 each) was also on buy one get one free, and I'm nearing the end of my current Tresemme bottles. I picked up the "Hello Hydration" set which smells absolutely beautiful. I love coconut scents as they always remind me of being on holiday!

Also on offer was cotton wool, cotton pads and buds at buy one get one half price. I use the pads all the time for cleansing, toning and nail varnish removal, so I may as well stock up whilst they're cheap! (£1.39 for pads)

At Superdrug the first thing I saw was my all time favourite deodorant, Dove Cucumber and Green Tea, on better than half price so I immediately put one in my basket. I've recently tried two different Sure deodorants (thinking that a different scent would be better than the first one) and I was so disappointed. I'll never cheat on Dove again, it wasn't worth it.

With the 3 for 2's still on at Superdrug I picked up two new Barry M varnishes. (£2.99 each)

I picked "Black" because I wanted to try out a galaxy manicure and I'm hoping this will make the ideal base. "Nude" was chosen because I wanted a pale neutral base to try out Jasmine's marble nail art tutorial that you can view here. My third item was the much talked about Undressed palette from MUA (£4):

I was a bit torn between this and Heaven and Earth, but the matte shades won me over. I have no matte eyeshadows! Really excited to start using this. Just as I was trying to leave the store an eyelash curler caught my eye. I've actually never used one before and since I've started blogging I've seen no end of talk about the Shu Uemura Eyelash Curler and thought that maybe a curler was something worth investing in.

This beauty from classic, cosmetic power-house Revlon was £2 off and I really couldn't say no to £3.99!

Have you taken advantage of any of these offers? Have you tried any of the products I picked up? Let me know your opinion in the comments.

Lauren

NOTD: Barry M Indigo

I think the premise of Saturday Manicure is officially over since my weekends have been ridiculous recently. Perks of working in retail I guess, sigh. I also have to apologise in advance for my shoddy brush work and the fact that the paint has been indented with all sorts of horrific marks! Boo. But here goes.

 I have a ton of Barry M polishes. They are great value at £2.99 and come in a huge array of shades. Indigo is a beautiful deep blue. It's almost navy under artificial lighting but shines a lovely dark prussian blue in the sun. It definitely leans more purple than green.

As always application was very easy, the varnish is smooth and the brush, though not perfect, is a good shape to fill the nail in 3 strokes. The first layer of this varnish goes on very patchy but after a second coat it has perfect coverage and a high shine finish.

My right hand fared a little better.

I've already had a few compliments on this lovely shade and I think it would look even better with a fine glitter topcoat in gold or silver. Very "midnight-sky" looking. The Glamour Glitter from Nails Inc and Glamour magazine would be ideal. Barry M Nail Paints such as Indigo can be bought from Boots, Superdrug or direct from the Barry M Website for just £2.99.

Have you tried Indigo? What do you think of Barry M nail varnishes in general?

Lauren

Review: Barry M Lip Paints: Part 3, Peach

The long awaited third instalment is here! In all honesty I've been putting this off because I don't like the way it looks on me and I wanted to find a way to make it work. Plus it's good to have some variety on here. Without further ado:

Peach 54 £4.49

This was the only paint I bought out of the Ultra Moisturising range and it was purely because I want to see how the colour would look on me. It looks like a really nice peachy nude in the bullet. Again, same cute packaging and no strong scent.

It was really difficult to get an accurate picture of this on me. In actuality it is really really bright peachy-orange. Like when they would give you a "skin" coloured pencil in school, that was the colour. I'm sure that this would suit some darker skin tones as it is though. It needed to be really toned down to make it wearable for me personally. 

I blotted quite a lot of the colour, evened it out with my finger and then applied a translucent peach gloss over the top. there was still plenty of colour pay off but I would actually wear this in public! It's really a shame because I loved the texture of this and it was so matte and smooth and pigmented. 

You can see in this swatch how much more smoothly it applied.

What do you think? Have you tried Barry M's Lip Paint in Peach?

Review: Barry M Lip Paints: Part 2, Vicious Violet

The second lip paint that grabbed me was a seriously raunchy deep pink/purple shade called Vicious Violet. This was again part of the Ultra Moisturising range.

It's not very easy to tell from the picture but this actually has tiny pieces of bright pink shimmer running through it which just looks gorgeous. Out of all my colours this is the one that I was the most excited about trying. Just as with Flamingo Peach, Vicious Violet applied really smoothly and evenly. The colour is super pigmented but it came out quite a bit more pink than what I was expecting from the bullet.

I am seriously impressed with this colour and I feel like I'm going to get a lot of use out of it. I also feel that it made my teeth look whiter, but I think I may have just been blinded by the colour. It's definitely a great Autumn/Winter lip shade. It also made me feel super vampy!

Will you be picking up Vicious Violet any time soon?

Lauren

Review: Barry M Lip Paints: Part 1, Flamingo Peach

Okay, so I am a serious lipstick virgin. My profile picture is the only time I ever wore lipstick and I was too cowardly to even go outside in it. In the desire for true make-up freedom I bravely took a walk today to take advantage of the 3 for 2 offer on cosmetics at Superdrug. I am now the potentially proud owner of 3 Barry M lip paints.

The first shade I picked up is part of the newer Ultra Moisturising range (I have heard that the usual lip paints can be very drying so this range is great proof that Barry M are listening to their customers.) The packaging for this range is really nice. Sleek square tubes in a hot pink shade, a black band around the middle and the Barry M logo in black on top. All in shiny plastic.
Flamingo Peach (161) is a very bright, deeply pigmented peach/coral shade. I also think that it looks ever so slightly metallic.

Barry M Ultra Moisturising Lip Paint in Flamingo Peach (No 161) £4.49 from Boots or Superdrug

Application was really easy. Super smooth and the colour went on quickly. I've had it on for half an hour now and it still feels really moisturising. I'll update on longevity in a few hours after a couple of drinks! I feel like the colour pay off is very true to the shade you see in the bullet which is always a bonus.

Update: After 5 hours, an indian meal and two drinks the colour was still clinging on! Admittedly it was more of a stain at that point with a little bit of product around the edges of my lips. Topping up at the 3 hour mark would probably be ideal. It did start to feel a little bit drier when I went for a walk in the cold so I suggest topping up with a balm in that situation.

Here it is on me! I have fairly pale skin that sometimes suffers from dryness. 

I love this colour on me. It's definitely a statement shade but still really wearable. It feels like more of a Summer colour but I think I'll get some use out of it this season anyway :)

What do you think of this colour? Or Barry M Lip Paints in general?

Lauren