Getting Out Of The Rut Day 2

Here's another look I've done with products that had been sitting unloved in my make up drawers. Products used (other than my staples which I will do a separate post about) were Mac Surf Baby! Cheek Powder in My Paradise, Barry M Dazzle Dust no. 26, Mac pigment in Spiritualize, Urban Decay 24/7 eye pencil in Vacancy and Mac Kissable Lipcolour in Exxxhibitionist.

 Here are the products I used:

I'm really enjoying this and will continue to post pictures. Hope you like them.

NOTD: Models Own Blooming Pink with Barry M Pink Sapphire Glitter

I have a nice cheerful mani to share with you, this is Models Own Blooming Pink topped with Barry M Pink Sapphire Glitter polish.

I applied two coats of Models Own Blooming Pink which had a very nice, easy to apply formula. Then followed by two coats of Barry M Pink Sapphire Glitter which was a little hard to get to apply evenly. Two coats did the trick and the result was this shimmery, glittery pretty pink mani.

Both polishes are permanent, so easy to find and are both very cheap, Models Own polishes cost £5 each and Barry M glitter polishes cost £2.99 each, but there's usually some sort of an offer on these either at Boots or Superdrug.

See more pictures after the jump!

NOTD: Sally Hansen Fire Opal Nail Glaze in Flame Opal

This week is the second week of the Easter school holidays and I haven't had any time to take any photos of new products, in fact I haven't actually bought much make up lately. I've mainly been focusing on nail polish (yes, I know I was supposed to be on a nail polish no-buy, but that didn't happen). So while I take time off of testing and reviewing new products, I thought I might as well try and get through my long back log of nail polish pictures. Normal service will resume next week.

Today I have Sally Hansen Fire Opal Nail Glaze in Flame Opal to show you. I really love Sally Hansen Nail Prisms for their amazing duochrome quality and when I heard about the Nail Glazes, I thought I'd ought to try them. Just like the Nail Prisms, these are also very sheer and look best when applied on top of a black polish (by Barry M). The Nail Glaze was terribly runny and took 3 coats for a good enough coverage. It was nowhere near as duochrome as I expected it to be. Also it took forever to dry. And when I say forever, I mean it!

I applied it around 9 pm and it was still soft the following day, it never really dried down properly despite using a quick drying topcoat. As a result I ended up with a very messed up middle finger nail, the polish basically got scrunched up when I was getting ready for bed. Really not great. The only one positive quality of the polish was that it didn't chip on me for 2 days (which is a big thing for me).

These Sally Hansen polishes aren't available in the UK, I bought mine on eBay for a few dollars.

See more pictures after the jump!

Barry M Bold Purple Waterproof Eyeliner Review and Swatches

A little while ago I told you about two shades of the Barry M Waterproof Eyeliners, Bold Gunmetal and Blue (click the link for my review), and now it's time to tell you about the purple one. I think this one is my favourite of the 3. It's a gorgeous purple with fine micro glitter, absolutely stunning.

In fact I've found that it's a nearly exact dupe of Mac Designer Purple Pearlglide eyeliner, which is one of my favourite purple eyeliners. The staying power of this one was slightly better than the other two as well. I didn't test whether it's waterproof, but it did stay on my lower lashline all day without smudging or fading, so that's good enough for me. Luckily the micro glitter doesn't irritate my eyes, in fact the pearlglides sometimes do, so in that respect I like this eyeliner better than Designer Purple.

These eyeliners cost £3.99 each and are similar size to the Urban Decay 24/7 eyeliners, although it doesn't say anywhere on the product or the Barry M website. I'd estimate it to be between 1 and 1.2 g.

A lovely, soft, creamy, long lasting eyeliner at the fraction of the cost of other brand's very similar product. What's not to like?

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

Barry M Bold Gun Metal and Bold Blue Waterproof Eyeliner Review and Swatches

I bought these Barry M eye pencils a little while ago when they had a 3 for 2 offer in Boots and there was a very pretty nail polish I wanted to get. So you know, started looking at other things to make use of the promotion (as you might have noticed, I do that very often!) and came across these eyeliners. I thought for £3.99 each (well, one was actually free) they were worth a try. Luckily I was right.

They are very similar to Urban Decay 24/7 eye pencils, soft and smooth, very easy to apply, but dry down quickly and don't budge for hours. The shades I got are Bold Gun Metal which is a shimmery silver/grey colour and Bold Blue which is a shimmery medium blue colour. Bold Blue has slightly more micro glitter to it, but it's by no means glittery. I also bought Bold Purple subsequently which I'll be reviewing separately.

Both eyeliners stayed on my waterline fairly well, probably for about 4 hours, and on my lower lashline all day. These are supposed to be waterproof and I have tested Bold Gun Metal in the swimming pool and it did smudge, not terribly badly, but it did. I'm not that fussed, but if you are looking for a truly waterproof eyeliner, these might not be the ones for you.

Bold Gun Metal isn't too similar in colour to any of the Urban Decay 24/7 eye pencils I own (it's quite a bit darker than Gunmetal and less shimmery), but Bold Blue is a dupe for Deviant, I swatched them side by side and you can't tell the difference. If you like blue eyeliners, this may be good news for you, as these are similar size to the Urban Decay ones (doesn't actually say anywhere, but I estimate between 1 and 1.2 g) and only cost £3.99 each, plus there's bound to be an offer on them at some point.

All in all these are nice, creamy, long lasting eyeliners, but not as waterproof as they claim to be.

See more pictures including swatches after the jump!

NOTD: Team GB / Jubilee Nails

Yes, I know, I'm a few months behind, but this mani reminded me of last summer with the Queen's Golden Jubilee and the London Olympics. I used Barry M Jewel Britannia glitter nail polish on top of Max Factor Odyssey Blue nail polish.

Taken without flash in direct sunlight

I used 3 coats of Odyssey Blue and then topped it with one coat of Jewel Britannia. Both polishes for great, Odyssey Blue was smooth and quick drying and Jewel Britannia had a very good glitter coverage in just one coat. It has small holo glitter as well as medium size red, blue and silver round glitter. Very British looking indeed. The mani lasted for 3 days with very minimal chipping and it was so pretty, very sparkly and unique.

Max Factor Odyssey Blue is a mini size and costs £3.99, Barry M Jewel Britannia was a limited edition shade and I can't find it on any website anymore. For reference though, Barry M glitter polishes cost £2.99.

See another picture after the jump!

NOTD: Barry M 344 Magnetic Gold Sparkle / Moon Dust

I'm still on the fence about magnetic polishes, even though I always get lots of complimentents when wearing them. I'd only owned 3 of them so far (one Nails Inc and 2 17 ones), and decided I wasn't going to get any more. I don't hate them but they can be quite fiddly. However, then I saw the recent shades Barry M had come out with and decided I had to try them out. I also like it that they come with different pattern magnets, so you can mix and match.

Magnetic Gold Sparkle (or as it's now been renamed Moon Dust) is an antique gold colour polish with gold sparkle. None of my other magnetic polishes had sparkle, so I thought this might look quite interesting. I didn't anticipate just how gorgeous it would look once I've put the magnet over it, in fact both my daughter and I exclaimed when we saw the result, it's truly striking.

You get silvery stripes as well as darker gold ones with sparkle, neither colour actually resembling the colour of the polish in the bottle. It's like two colours had been mixed together and then separated by the magnet. The effect is almost 3D, and it appears to move as I move my hand. I have had many compliments when wearing it, the beauty of these magnetic polishes is that they look like you've had your nails done whereas you can do them quite easily yourself.

I do find them a little fiddly to use, sometimes the design doesn't come out as sharp and sometimes I manage to touch the nail with the magnet. I also found that the stripes got a bit messed up when I applied the top coat, I don't know if maybe waiting a bit would've helped. Wear time wasn't that great, it started chipping on me within the first 24 hours. This isn't unusual, but not every polish chips on me on the first day, so I'm still not too happy about it.

I used two coats on most fingers, but some of them I had to redo several times, so I just kept applying extra layers. It dried fairly quickly and other than the top coat's brush leaving slight marks in the design, the polish was pretty easy to use.

Barry M magnetic polishes come in 5 shimmery shades and 4 non-shimmery ones, and they come with 5 different magnets (one each). They cost £4.99 each and you get 10 ml for your money. Of course there are usually deals on in either Superdrug or Boots, so keep an eye out!

See lots more pictures after the jump!

This Month I...

Rather than just doing a post about products I've finished this month, I've decided to do more of a summary of the last month and all beauty related happenings. So here we go.

Last month I...

• finished 3 products. It's been a slow month, what can I say? At least it's more than nothing, eh? One of the products finished was Maybelline Lash Stiletto mascara which I really enjoyed using and would definitely consider repurchasing if I didn't already own 20+ mascaras. It also lasted for ages, I don't even remember when I first started using it, it didn't go bad or dry out, just simply ran out eventually. 
• have overspent by about £250 again. I think I should just up my budget, because it's clearly too low. Or maybe buy less make up and spend less money. (Crazy talk, I know.)
• have bought another lorry load of nail polishes. I know I'm crazy, I have been buying nail polish all the time, but there are so many pretty colours! I have also discovered a couple of brands (namely Glitter Gal and A-England) I'd not heard about before and they both happened to be holographic nail polishes which is my weakness. 

Here are some pictures of the pretty polishes I bought in April (some reviews will follow eventually, let me know in the comments which ones you're interested in the most). First up, A-England holo polishes:

Princess Tears, Lady Of The Lake, Ascalon, Tristram, Princess Sabra

See lots more pictures after the jump!

My Ever Growing Nail Polish Collection Part 3 - GOSH, Models Own, Dior, Chanel

As promised, here's the third and final part of my nail polish collection overview. If you missed part one and part two, you can check them out here and here.

So let's just get on with it shall we? Any questions, please feel free to ask in the comments!

My GOSH nail polishes

See more pictures of my collection after the jump!

Nails Inc. The Westend - The Glitter Crackle Polish That Doesn't Crackle

Title says it really. Very disappointed in this, because I was really looking forward to a pretty blue glitter crackle topcoat. I ordered this and The City (review to come soon) at the same time as Farringdon which has a different texture to this and The City, much smoother and more opaque. Sadly this in particular is a very runny polish with not a very good coverage, so it's hard to have an even distribution of glitter on the nails and it just doesn't crackle.

If you look really close at the pictures below, you can just about spot some very very slight cracks, but since the glitter is so uneven anyway, it's hard to say what really caused the gaps. And for £11 a pop that is pretty poor. Shame as it is a lovely colour, and it looks pretty cool over a black base (I used Barry M Nail Paint in Black under it), but it doesn't crackle.

I have notified Nails Inc. about this and I believe a lot of other customers have too, and they have offered to replace my glitter crackle polishes with their regular crackle polishes free of charge, plus I don't even have to return these glitter polishes. Still, I would've loved to have some nice glitter polishes...

See more pictures after the jump!

Another Barry M Lip Laquer Crayon review

After saying (here) that I wasn't too keen on the more red shades of these, I decided to get shade no. 2 (Cherry Red) after all. This one is a pinky red, similar to Party Pink, just more red, and every bit as sparkly and pretty. Having tried it on, I'm happy I got it, although it is definitely a very loud shade of lipstick, it goes very well with the neutral eyes I'm wearing today. Definitely recommend this to anyone looking for an easy to apply pinky red lipstick. See some pictures...

Top Cherry Red, bottom Party Pink (with flash) Without flash

Without flash in natural sunlight

Barry M Lip Laquer Crayon in Party Pink

Look at this little treasure I've found! *drumroll* Introducing Barry M Lip Laquer Crayon in Party Pink (shade no. 4). What we have here is a lip pencil/crayon in a beautiful shimmery fuschia colour that is very easy to apply, is pretty long lasting (I didn't fully test it, but it did last for 2-3 hours on me with eating and drinking and I still had some left, but I had to remove it then), and is absolutely gorgeous! I picked it up in Superdrug and it cost £4.95, so it's great value as well. (It's also available on www.barrym.com ) They come in 5 colours (Scarlet Red, Cherry Red, Mandarin, Party Pink and Ballet Pink), but as I don't really use red or orange lipstick, the other colours didn't appeal to me that much (plus Ballet Pink is a very pale pink, again, not for my taste). But I do like this one very much. See some photos...