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: Essie, Bikini So Teeny

I've actually had this little gem knocking about in my collection since December when I picked it up in a spur of the moment TK Maxx haul and have only now tried it. This is my first ever Essie polish and I have some mixed feelings...

Essie polishes come in rectangular bottles, contain 15ml of product and retail at £7.99 each. This shade is from the Summer 2012 collection and was enormously popular at the time. I'll admit, I'd been lusting after it for an absolute age. I'm a huge fan of pastels and pale blues are a particular favourite of mine so it was only a matter of time (and TK Maxx sales) until it was with me. Bikini So Teeny is a beautiful cornflower blue which can read almost sky blue in artificial light. The pale shimmer running through it makes for a really multi-faceted colour and I constantly find myself looking at my nails when I'm wearing it.

I really like the packaging of Essie polishes, they're very distinctive and the raised logo on the glass gives them a slightly higher end feel. The biggest disappointment for me was how sheer this shade is. I ended up having to apply four coats which is absolutely ridiculous. I could still see the faint outline of the white tips after that. The drying time was fair but nothing to get excited about. BUT, the wear time is outstanding! It's been a week now and there isn't a single chip. I applied it without a base coat or top coat and it's still just as perfect as when it was first applied. For that reason alone I can understand why Essie is so raved about. However, I'm usually the sort of person that changes my nail varnish every two or three days so longevity isn't so much of a selling point for me personally so I wouldn't pay full price for them. Luckily there are a few great bargains around and you can usually find select colours on Fragrance Direct for £1.99 each.

Final Verdict: Takes several coats to reach opacity but lasts forever when it's on. Beautiful colour.

Do you have a favourite Essie shade? How often do you like to change your nail colour?

Lauren

NOTD: Technic Celebration - Illamasqua Creator Dupe?

I've been lusting after Illamasqua's Creator ever since I saw a swatch of it. It just looked so mystical and it reminded me of  Prometheus (because I'd watched it the night before and I'm impressionable like that.) But like a lot of things that I want, I couldn't justify the price, particularly at £13.50 for a single nail varnish. Imagine my excitement when I came across Technic's Celebration! A possible dupe for £1.25? It immediately found it's way into my Love Thy Make Up Haul.

Celebration consists of 15ml of silver glitter suspended in black polish that is contained in a heavy based glass bottle. The packaging is sleek and functional but nothing special (and heavily borrowed from OPI's design.)

I was immediately disappointed by how sheer the base of this polish is. It came out as a dark milky grey colour and the opaqueness above was achieved with three coats of it. Saying that, application was very easy and the glitter spread evenly across the nail which can be a difficult thing to achieve in polishes like this. It also dried extremely quickly so it didn't bother me too much that I had to layer it up. The glitter is also much larger than in Creator so the galaxy effect is sadly lost; even more so because of the layering required. It's possible that it would be a lot less clunky-looking with a single coat over a black polish but I haven't tried it yet. Regardless, I actually really like this polish. I found myself looking at my nails a lot and even got a few compliments! The only problem is that on the third day of wearing it I experienced some rather vicious chipping. Admittedly, I should have used a base coat but it still surprised me that the lasting power was so poor! The remaining polish was an absolute nightmare to remove too, so if you do try this I recommend using a thick base coat.

Final Verdict: Definitely not a perfect dupe but a great alternative for people looking for something similar at a fraction of the cost. Nice effect but the lasting power and opacity could be better.

What do you think to this polish? Know of any other bargain Illamasqua dupes?

Lauren

NOTD: Technic Carnival "Jawbreaker Nails"

Yet another product that I received from Fiona today! Clearly the girl knows how to put together a giveaway. So many gems!
I've seen this particular nail varnish all over the blogosphere and beyond being hailed as a dupe for OPI's Rainbow Connection and Deborah Lippmann's Happy Birthday (which will set you back more than £10) - and a fabulously cheap dupe at that. Sadly I don't have Rainbow Connection or Happy Birthday to compare but there are a ton of comparisons out and about on the internet!

Here's a slightly blurry photo to give you a good idea of what's inside Carnival. It contains a mix of medium and small sized hexagonal glitter pieces in gold, red, blue, green and silver suspended in a fairly thick, clear polish. A lot of people have worn this over a nude base but I personally wanted it to really jump out and decided to apply over white polish.

I plumped for White Tip by Famous. I actually bought it about 18 months ago and the company has since gone under a serious rebranding so I can't comment on the quality of the products that they now make but I can say that they're a hell of a lot cheaper! I bought mine in my local Superdrug (Famous counter has since disappeared) but you can find the products online here. Not a lot can be said about White Tip, it was opaque in two coats and had a fair drying time.
Technic's polishes come in OPI-shaped bottles and contain 15ml of product. The glass is thick and heavy based which makes it much less likely to tip over than some other brands. Application was a bit awkward and did need some "blobbing" to get it spread evenly across the nail. I found the best technique was to brush it against the tip of the nail (leaving a big blob of glitter on top) and then apply from there, dragging it backwards down the nail.

Once dry my boyfriend took one look at them and declared that my nails looked like tiny jawbreakers! I thought that was so adorable and had to agree! They certainly do have a jawbreaker-esque feel about them. I wore this to my cousin's 14th birthday party and she and her friends loved them. Seal of approval if I ever heard it. Like pretty much every glitter polish, it's a pain to remove, but I think it's worth it.

So there you have it, an amazingly cheap glitter polish that's near impossible to hate, despite the blobbing. I've seen people saying that they've found this for 99p but the cheapest place I've found it (and from a company I now trust) is at Love Thy Make Up for £1.25. Technic is a company that is fast cementing a place in my heart and I actually bought a whole host of Technic goodies that I can't wait to share with you!

Have you tried Carnival or either of the dupes? Do you have an Technic recommendations?

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

NOTD: Illamasqua Caress and Models Own Blizzard

As promised, my NOTD featuring Illamasqua Caress. Feeling inspired by the recent weather I decided to pair this with a glitter top coat by Models Own. Aptly named Blizzard.

Sorry about the random piece of glitter stuck to the lid. That stuff gets everywhere!

Caress is a beautiful powdery pastel blue. I'm wearing two coats here, the first one was mostly opaque but there were some small patchy areas. It has a fairly shiny finish but I used my Barry M 3 in 1 to create a high gloss shine. It's slightly thicker than some of the polishes I'm used to and I ended up putting too much on and had to wait an absolute age for it to dry! It was literally still squishy and susceptible to dents 6 hours later. That was totally my fault though and I'm prepared to admit that. The size of the brush is very comfortable. I utterly detest skinny brushes and this one was thick enough for me to get full coverage in 3 strokes, perfect!

Models Own Blizzard is a glitter topcoat containing silver and iridescent hexagonal and square glitter pieces of varying sizes. Application was okay. I had to blob it on a bit to get even coverage and it occasionally dug into the polish where it wasn't quite solid (I know, I know, my fault) which is how I got that sexy lumpy effect. I actually started on my right hand and put this over every nail but it was just too much! So I now have one full hand of blizzard and one hand of just index finger blizzard. It's an interesting look that I don't think I'll sport again... but oh well. I actually really like how cute it looks with just one nail! The colours are very pretty and cool and go well with Caress. Definitely a match made in Wintery Heaven.

As I was painting away I realised that I may have a potential dupe in my collection...

W7 in shade 11 is almost identical! It has a slightly thinner formula and leans a fraction and I mean just a tiny teeny bit, darker. Caress is a full on pastel blue. Both utterly beautiful and practically impossible to tell apart. W7 is of course a much cheaper brand than Illamasqua so it's well worth keeping an eye out for shade 11 if you like the look of Caress. I actually picked it up in a box set of pastels at TK Maxx in the Boxing Day Sales. Caress is still available in the Illamasqua Sale for £5. It looks a touch more grey to me in the stock photos which is why I was surprised to find a dupe. I was hoping for it to be more accurate to what was on the website but ah well, it's still a beautiful shade!

What do you think to this shade? Will you be buying Caress or looking for some cheap dupes like 11?

Lauren

NOTD: Nails Inc Kensington and Revlon Sequins Topcoat

I've been waiting for a good opportunity to use these two little gems and I thought, why not try them together?

I don't think I can be sorry enough for my shoddy application. It's like as soon as I don't do my nails for a week I completely lose any control over my hands. Complex tasks become impossible. Believe it or not this was my second attempt. It was even worse than this to begin with.

I've only very recently started using glitter because something in my head was telling me it was childish. But then, what's wrong with having childish girly nails? I'm coming round to it! I utterly adore these two colours and think they work together beautifully, but I'm still not sure. It's coming across a bit "dotty" and reminds me of a very glamorous snake, when I was actually going for more of a "fairytale woodland" motif. Maybe I'm thinking about it too much.

I used just one coat of Kensington over a clear basecoat, it honestly didn't need any more. It was totally opaque and the coverage was just perfect. I absolutely adore Nails Inc polishes. They dry so fast and I haven't had a problem with any of them. I can only thank my lucky stars (and TK Maxx) that I was able to find so many for so little money! This gem worked out as only £3, which honestly, is nothing for the quality. I don't really mind that they're probably all from two seasons ago, besides, life is boring when everyone's wearing the same thing.

I picked up Sequins for free when I purchased 3 Revlon products. Bargain! Especially since they were on 3 for 2 anyway. How could I not? I imagined that I would be doing a lot of blobbing with this in an attempt to get even coverage, but it was surprisingly easy to work with. The particles are suspended in quite a thick varnish so you get a nice coating on the brush, and if you get it right with first sweep, you're done! I had to blob with a couple of my larger nails, but I'm very impressed! For a free nail varnish it's surpassed all expectations from me and if you can find it I definitely recommend it.

What do you think of this manicure?

Lauren

P.S. What do you reckon to the photos? I requested some advice from another blogger recently and she suggested my photos could be a tad better - which I absolutely agreed with. I'm trying a slightly different set up and I've edited them a bit. Do they look a bit weird and fake? or no...? Would love some feedback!

Christmas NOTD: Nails Inc, Aldford Street

As you all know I was recently very very lucky and won a giveaway from Ellie at Misellyre which included three Nails Inc polishes. The second I saw Aldford Street (a bright gold glitter) I knew it would be adorning my fingers for Christmas.

It's not quite so thick as it looks on my fingers because I painted on four gorgeous layers of the stuff. I was originally going to do just one layer over a layer of Barry M's Nude, but comically I literally could not open the bottle so I had to give up on that. Frankly I'm glad I did because I don't think it would have looked half as nice as this does! I didn't really need four layers, I just kept on painting away because it was so pretty and I wanted to see how good it could get (seriously good.) It's a beautiful multi-faceted shade that includes tiny specks of green and pink shimmer sparsely strewn throughout the polish. You can't see them straight away, in fact I've found that they can only be seen in low artificial light. It dries amazingly fast and is a lot more forgiving to smudges (I had one teensy accident on my right index finger when I put my socks on)This is actually my first ever glitter nail varnish and if they're all like this, then I'm a convert.

What's your favourite glitter polish?

Lauren

NOTD, Nails Inc: Holland Park Avenue

It's been a little while since I've given myself a manicure because I just haven't had the time to wait for it to dry properly! This is clearly also the case with the one I gave myself last night because I immediately smudged it whilst getting something out of the oven. Oh well. Here's how lovely it looked before that mishap:

Holland Park Avenue is a beautiful brown/grey shade. It's what I'd probably refer to as a strong neutral (not sure how accurate that is but it's how I group my nail varnish collection!) I've actually seen it look more khaki in low lighting and I really like the tough military feeling it gives me. The top image is before I applied a topcoat and it's still fairly shiny, but I like my manicures super glossy!

Application, like all Nails Inc polishes, was really easy and it dried much much faster than my Barry M ones. The only thing I would change is the width of the brush, it's a little on the skinny side for my liking. As you can see, the colour is really true to what's in the bottle and you get a large amount of product.

Nails Inc polishes usually retail for £11 each but I picked this one up as a part of a set of ten recently at TK Maxx for the bargain fabulous price of £29.99. It isn't a colour I would have immediately bought on it's own, but I'm so glad I got it! View my haul here.

What do you think of this colour? Do you own any Nail Inc polishes? And if you do, which is your favourite?!
Let me know in the comments.

Lauren

NOTD: MUA, Plum Noir

I picked this shade up in my fairly recent Superdrug/MUA haul and it was staring at me longingly this morning. I usually try nail varnishes in the order that I buy them, so I'll always wear them at least once, but I put this one off for a bit because honestly I was worried that I would hate it and I didn't want to hate anything from MUA! Luckily this was absolutely not the case and I couldn't be more thrilled with the results!

It's a really beautiful purple magenta and just perfect for this season. I can also see it being a nice Summer colour because of how pink it leans.

£1, MUA website or Superdrug

Ignore the revolting ex-sticker patch. I toyed with trying to edit it out but I'm a complete novice and I'm certain it would have ended up looking even worse!

The thing that I was worried about most with the MUA polishes is that the brush applicator would be of a really low quality. In actual fact, this is my favourite applicator that I've ever used! It's shaped in such a way that it fans out slightly across the nail. I can paint my little finger in one stroke. The formula of this is quite nice too, I'm wearing two coats here and it's mostly opaque - one of my fingers on my right hand just would not even out, even after 3 coats, but I'm pretty sure it was down to my poor application. My only small negative is that the blocky top made it slightly difficult to manoeuvre around my nails, but this is only a little gripe. For just £1 this varnish is fantastic. I'm already on the look out for my next MUA nail purchase.

What do you think of this shade? Which MUA nail varnish should I pick up next? Suggestions please!

Lauren

P.S. Hello to all my new followers!

NOTD: Barbara Daly, Wicked

Recently my boyfriend's Nan gave me a Barbara Daly nail varnish called Wicked because she felt that it was too dark for her (because of her age apparently? I personally think if you love it, you can rock it, any age) and she was feeling generous!

I genuinely believe that this is the most interesting shade I own. It's a deep, dark, shimmery purple that leans chocolate brown. If that sounds amazing it's because it is! When my colleague first saw this she thought it was shimmery brown and I totally understand why she thought that. It's so multi faceted. I've seen this look black, brown, reddish, purple and even sort of navy in different lights.

This is how it appears in the bottle.

I apologise for the messy bumps in my nails, I had to wait for a day before I could photograph because I lost the day light (again.) Believe it or not, I'm wearing just one coat of Wicked in these photo's. I am so impressed! It was smooth and streak free, the brush was a great shape for even coverage and it wasn't sheer in the slightest. I've been wearing it for 3 days now and it's still in great shape. There is minimal chipping around the edge of a couple of nails but I think this may be down to my shoddy application and the fact that I work with my hands a lot. The big problem is that I could not find this anywhere online and I fear it may have been discontinued. The Barbara Daly polishes usually cost £6 which honestly, I don't mind paying for such a great quality product. I have never tried anything else from the Tesco make up line by Barbara Daly so I can't comment on any of the other products.

If you do manage to find this polish I urge you to pick it up because it's such a great Winter shade and it's so interesting!

Have you tried any of the shades from the Barbara Daly range? What do you think of this colour?

Lauren