Wednesday 5 December 2012

Pink sparkle nails

I love having my nails done. I do them every colour, have had gel nails, acrylics and pharmacy diy fake nails. I'm not a big fan of having my nails "undone", so a few times a week I change my nail varnish and often buy new brands to try them all out. NYC is a brand I am loving at the moment. Available in a few pharmacies around the country and in some Penneys (the one on Mary Street for sure anyway). Apparently nothing in this brand costs over €3.99? I think. And the quality of what I have tried is not bad at all. Today I've done my nails in their "In a New York Colour Minute Quick Dry Nail Polish" in the shade Lincoln Square Lavender. Firstly I love the colour, although it's called Lavender, its more pink than purple. It's not an in-your-face kind of pink either, just a kind of dusky girly pink. It has a super shine, which I love in a nail varnish! It also dries pretty quickly which is great, you don't have to worry about smudging your nails a half hour after you have painted them. And, the most important thing to me in a nail varnish, staying power, no you won't still be sporting perfect nails with this nail varnish, but it did stay completely chip free for at least three days, which is usually long enough for me to get sick of the colour anyway. At least with this I changed my nail varnish because I got bored rather than because my nail varnish was horribly chipped like I often do. So yeah, over all, a big thumbs up for this nail varnish and at €1.29 its definitely worth a try at least.

So today I gave myself pink glitter nails. How girly! But there you go.
So first I started with a two coats of NYC Lincoln Square Lavender polish
So that's the colour of the polish after two coats. You could get away with one cot, but I always use two, no matter what the brand as I think it gives it a nicer finish.

I then coated each nail in clear polish (I use Sally Hansen "Miracle Cure", I also use it as a base coat) and then dipped each nail in this gorgeous mother of pearl colour glitter I got in Penneys as part of a four stack for €1.50.
The glitter I used


And the finished product!
And there you have it. Not everybody's cup of tea, but I love them! They have resulted in glitter getting everywhere though, but that's the price you have to pay for sparkle!

Monday 3 December 2012

Beauty on a Budget


Lately I've been reading so many beauty blogs and loving them all! I have such a love for make up and fashion that I thought I'd keep track of all the things I'm trying, things I'm loving or hating, etc. I also have a serious challenge to my make up addiction - being a poor student! While I adore high end brands like MAC, Bobbie Brown and how I loved my YSL foundation, however, since returning to college last year my income has been reduced to...well, very little. It certainly doesn't lend itself to my shopping habit. While I miss being able to shop when and where I liked, I am also enjoying the challenge of finding great bargains and little gems  in the pharmacy aisles. My aim is to find a high quality low price alternative to all the things I loved getting when I was a full time worker. Ok, it may not happen, but I'm enjoying trying.
My current loves for cheap little make up gems includes Kate Moss' range of lipsticks for Rimmel. Now previously I was very small minded when it came to lipsticks. I liked MAC MAC MAC and only MAC. There's nothing worse than putting on your lipstick, heading out, thinking it looks fab, then glancing in a mirror to realise there is not a trace of your lipstick left. Enter MAC, you put on MAC lipstick, head out for the night, return home, fall asleep, wake up, head to college, glance in the mirror and you still have some colour on your lips. I love love love it! Needless to say I have been very slow to try new brands when I have found one I love so much. Well Kate Moss' lipsticks from Rimmel were my first non MAC lipsticks in a long time and I must say I am so impressed! I originally went looking for a vampy red, I love red lipstick but never got a deep sultry red. I like other Rimmel cosmetics so thought I'd give their lipsticks a go, I also saw them mentioned on some other blogs over the past while so I may be a bit late on the bandwagon but anyway. Also, with Boots being the wondeful place that it is, I realised, with lipstick and Rimmel clarifying powder in my hand, that it was 3 for 2! So I got another lipstick. The two lipsticks I got were in 107, this was the deep vampy red for nights out and 101, a light dusty pink (I think, I'm not great at describing colours!) which I plan to wear during the day. Both were about €6 each, so huge bargain if you ask me!
So firstly this is the packaging of the lipstick. Nothing overly special, but I quite like it :)

Above is the shade 101 which I think I'll mostly use for day time. I wore it the other day, all day and only really had to reapply it once or twice and even then it was just to freshen it up, not because the colour had disappeared. It also feels really moisturising. I have quite dry lips and I didn't feel my lip going overly dry of flaky while wearing this, so big thumbs up there. I'm not sure if the colour is very well captured here, I'm still trying to get the hang of my boyfriend's super fancy camera. I think it shows better in the swatches I will post further down.

Here is the shade 107, again the colour isn't captured to it's best here I find it a much richer red, it looks brighter here than it actually is. I haven't tried this properly yet, other than sticking it on my lips to see how it looks. I think I'll wear it for nights out, maybe during the day if I'm feeling brave (I have only just started wearing lipsticks in the day time, so I'm easing myself in :P). It goes on lovely, really vivid colour. If the staying power of 101 is anything to go by, it should last the night, maybe not into the next day like MAC, but that may not be a bad thing! I'm looking forward to trying this one out properly.


And here are swatches of each one. So the lighter one is 101 and the deeper one is 107.

So there you have it I may start to step away from the MAC lipsticks for a while and see what other gems the pharmacy brands may have to offer.