Tuesday 13 November 2012

Dotty/Movember Nails With Flocking Powder

Hello lovely people, how are we enjoying the cold/wet November with exams looming ever so much closer. Yup, got my exam timetable, and even though I only have one class test, I still have a heck of work to do D: (hence why this will be a speedy post)

Moving away from such disgusting topics, I decided to jump on the flocking powder bandwagon (ebay has lots of choices!) and have a little experiment with beardy/moustachey nails since it's Movember and all :)



Kinda Dalmation-ish?


Yes, those are actual googly eyes (again, ebay for bargainous choices!). Doubt they'll last the night, but they look good/kinda odd in the photo :P

If you're up to date on the whole flocking thing then you'll know how to apply the wonderfully fuzzy stuff. If not here's a teeny lesson! If you're using it as a design, then do your design in whatever colour and dab on the appropriately coloured flocking powder with some tweezers. Press down with a phalange, then blow/brush off with a fan brush (they finally have a use!). Then you're done :) If you're using the powder as an accent nail and using it over the entire nail, then let once coat of polish dry thoroughly, apply a 2nd coat and apply powder while it's still wet, no top coat needed!

Oh, and hello to my new followers :D

Tuesday 6 November 2012

Boots Haul #1

Boots it's one of my greatest problems in life. It just steals all my money. They have SO many that I rarely come out with nothing, especially since i have a lip balm and nail polish obsession :p So this is my latest haul :) Not sure if this will become a regular thing, but hopefully these posts fill in the gaps I tend to leave between nail posts :(

First off is one of the new Nivea lip butters, in Raspberry Rose. You HAVE to try this out, it smells of raspberry ripple, and feels so good on your lips. It lasts a long time on your lips considering butters tend to be more greasy?...feeling, and you can feel it nourishing your lips against the cold autumn days. Despite being a Body Shop hoarder, I don't get on well with the infamous Lip Butters. They just sit on my lips,not really moisturising or nourishing them. Does nourish and moisturise mean the same thing? :p



Despite it being a milky pink, the colour barely transfers to your lips. If you're an avid balm applier like me, it does make your lips eeeever so slightly pale pinkish but nothing too disgusting. From what I could see, the other flavours are original, vanilla & macademia and caramel cream, HOW amazing to the last 2 sound? They're around the £2.50 mark, so you can easily pick up one or two, with a spare fiver ;)

Boots currently have a buy one, get one half price on selected beauty products, so I obviously picked up some polishes (the nivea butters weren't in the deal unfortunately). I had a wee look in the maybelline stand as they have a few great colours in their selection. However, most of the colours I wanted weren't stocked yet, so I picked up Extreme Blackcurrant and a fast dry topcoat.



I recently tried the Extreme Blackcurrant, and it applies opaque in 2 coats, but I applied 3 as per usual. It's an almost black purple, with slight red tinges to it, definitely lives up to it's name! The top coat semi-sucks though. It streaks like hell, on designs AND plain colours, but it did dry in a pretty average time for a fast dry topcoat.


I've been wanting these pair of tights for ages, but I always forgot to pick them up. Theyre just standard grey wooly tights with white polka dots, but I thought they were pretty cute and would be nice for this cold weather.


I have ridiculously long hair (just to the bottom of my ribcage) so brushing my hair is a necessity, a necessity that I find long, boring and quite painful at times. I did invest in a tangle teezer but I left it in edinburgh when i went back to my Mr Lacquerised's home, so I picked up a  random cheapy brush. I didn't realise till now how good the tangle teezer was. This brush really drags through my hair, but I guess it gets the job done and it was cheap. And it's orange, one of my favourite colours :)

 


Nontheless this cheapy brush is quite decent on my thick and long hair, so chances are that it should be okay on standard hair. The bristles are cushioned and the ends are covered, so it's a comfortable experience for the scalp! :)

Being Chinese and having typical Asian hooded eyelids, eye make up doesn't really factor into my daily make up routine or make up stash, other than standard foundation/concealer/powder/mascara. But I use a Botanics facial brush/scrubber thingy to cleanse my face which I obviously don't want to use near my already damaged eyes (very strong glasses prescription!), so I bought some standard cheapy eye make up remover stuff to take off my base make up. I previously used the little pot of eye make up remover wipes, which were good as they're oil based (also good for removing some of Revlon Colourstay foundation before proper cleansing btw!), but they hadn't had any left in stock when i went :(



Given this is Boots basic brand, I expected it to be sucky, and it pretty much is for mascara, but that could be due to me using waterproof mascara. It's a clear, gel formula, with not much of a scent. It basically feels like water, and it does require a few swipes to get off the base make up around my eyes, but it does the job and not even that expensive, around the £1.50-ish mark.

I rarely tie my hair up in public - usually only at night when I braid it to prevent me or my boyfriend being strangled in our sleep, or if I don't want my hair in  my face when I'm studying at home. So I bought some of those elastic-y non-snag hair bands that come in a hand y box, since I am notorious for leaving my hair grips and bobbles to be sucked up by the hoover...


When I first started using these kinds of hair bands, they kept snapping on me as I used to tie my hair SO tightly as I was sure they'd just slip out of my hair, but I slowly realised that they don't need tied round that much to be secure, around 2 times to tie up a braid.

My boyfriend's slightly crazy, yet lovely aunt bought me a cheeky present the other week, and it was quite a good pick despite me not actually talking about polish brands with her (I've done her nails once or twice). I've been admiring the Hed Kandi range by Models Own for a long while (especially the orange!) but I still haven't gotten round to buying anything yet.



Disco Heaven is a gloriously glittery gold polish with random sparse flecks of blue glitter. LOVE.


Another hair thing again. I really should've bunched these together. Meh. Anyways, having long hair, I find washing and drying my hair a chore, and the ends of my hair weigh down my roots so my hair looks rather limp at the top, but overly thick at the bottom, which isn't the hottest look. So I use this voluminising Tresemme dry shampoo to help keep my hair on balance.

Despite most people being a Batiste fan, I find it too chalky and white against my black hair, whereas Tresemme isn't quite as chalky, and generally comes out transparent with a few random moments of white. not sure if this si something to do with shaking the can before spraying or whatnot though.

Out of all these products, the dry shampoo is the only repurchase, but I'm forseeing that I may try and grab all of the Nivea Lip Butters at some point :)

I hope you enjoyed my first Boots post :D


Monday 5 November 2012

Starbucks Nails!

It's that time of year again when the Starbucks red cups are out, the grass is crunchy in the morning and Primark has cosy tights out...I hate this time of year tbh. I'm just not made for cold climates, and Christmas was never a big deal to me. But I do like christmas patterned clothes and the odd christmas film :p

I've always favoured Starbucks over Costa, think they have a better variety...and I'm not 
 a huge fan of the colour red either :p

So thought I'd give Starbucks nails a go, after having a...craving?...to use Barry M's Spring Green. It's just so vibrant and bright without being too neon, and aaaaalmost the right shade for Starbucks :p




I'd like to apologise for various things. Such as the scary demonic face of the logo, the streakiness and the overall blurriness :(
None of my tools were small enough to do the face, so I resorted to a sharpie, which was also slighty clunky, but I got sick of trying to do the face so I left it. The streakiness is due to me using a new fast dry topcoat (Maybelline) and it just being overall crap - no speed drying, and lots of streaks. BOO. And the blurriness is due to me still sucking at taking photos and not using a stand.tripod type device :P




In all honesty, I have no idea what the friiiiick was going on with this hand. Being left handed, I was aiming to do something easy, but it kind of ended up being a garbled mess :p The middle finger's supposed to be the little brown slips they put round the takeaway cups and the pinky/thumb ended up being a disjointed version of the bottom of the starbucks logo :/

I much prefer my right hand as that had the better designs, so i may have to keep my left hand in hiding for the rest of the week :p

I've been pondering to do an extra theme to my blog. Being an avid fan of Boots, I'm thinking ofpost ng Boots haul posts along with my usual nail art posts. Just because I'll probably not be doing many designs on the run up to exams (ERMYGADZ EXAMS), and I do have quite a spending issue when it comes to Boots :p Anyways, I'll see how the Boots haul posts do, and see if I'll continue it on or not :) I'm not intending for this to become a beauty blog (I'd be the worst beauty blogger ever haha), but just a few comments on anything I bought, plus I usually always buy a nail polish whenever I go to Boots :p