Orly Rage

I spotted this polish on a Youtube video quite some time ago and decided to buy it, I have no idea why but I've only used it twice and I've had it since about April.

Its a beautiful Rose Gold foil shade. The times I've worn this I've had lots of compliments as its so eye catching.

This is 3 coats but you could get away with 2. The wear was really good, it lasted for 5 days!

OPI I Eat Mainely Lobster

Another polish from the Touring America Collection that caught my eye, I Eat Mainely Lobster is a gorgeous coral polish with subtle shimmer.

This is 3 coats which I needed for full opacity, applied easily and lasted really well. I am loving OPI at the moment, it has to be said. This is a must have from the collection.

OP My Private Jet

I've read there have been a few versions of this polish, I'm not really sure what the other versions have been like but when I spotted this in Sallys recently, I had to have it.

Its a gorgeous holographic brown, which catches all the colours under most lights. This is 3 coats which I felt it needed but it applied easily and again, lasted well. I can see me getting lots of wear out of this in the winter.

OPI My Address is Hollywood

When I saw the pictures from the Touring America OPI collection this is one of the colours I knew I NEEDED. I placed a little order on eBay and had my polishes within 10 days, this is the first one I applied.

Its a lovely rose pink with a subtle shimmer. Application was 3 coats for full opacity, I do love this shade and I'm glad I bought it.

Blog Sale MAC, Nars, Illamasqua, Estee Lauder...

Hello! 

Time for another blog sale, I was very brave today and decided to get rid of anything I either haven't used for a long time and things I am unlikely to ever use. So here we go. 

Sorry for the rubbish pictures, my camera is broken! 

If you think my prices are too high, make me an offer! 

Some people are having problems replying, if so email me xjenniex2003@hotmail.com

 

Estee Lauder Double Wear Foundation 2C1 Pale Almond 02, just over half left its too dark for me £10 inc P&P

Nars Dogon eyeshadow duo used 2-3 times £18 inc P&P 

Urban Decay Sin cream highlighter £8 inc P&P

3x MAC Depots in an Elf palette, Satin Taupe (used has a slight dip), All That glitters (used probably about half left) And Naked Lunch which turned to a funny consistency when I depotted it (in the oven!) Now when i swatched with my finger I got a lot of colour off but not sure how a brush would work, it was brand new when I depotted. £10 inc P&P 

Front Cover custom palette - I've forgotten the names of the colours but there's a light shimmery cream, a gold/bronze, a deep sparkly purple, and dark sparkly blue/navy. £7 inc P&P

Illamasqua Purity and OPI I want to be A-lone star £5 each inc P&P 

11 Loose eyeshadows, 3x Barry M 24, 39 & 100, Accessorize Molten Truffle, GOSH Mink, 1 small MAC Pigment 'cheers my dear', 3x MAC Glitter samples 3D Gold, Grey Glitter & Jam Session. 1 MAC pigment Sample 'Mauvement' £11 inc P&P for all of them 

Sonia Kashuk Foundation Brush SOLD& Eco Tools Concealer brush £3 each inc P&P 

GOSH Bubblegum...

Having £5 in my pocket burning away one day whilst browsing the aisle's in Superdrug I decided to try another GOSH polish seeing as I was really impressed with Lavender Love. I've really wanted a good bubblegum pink for a while that is pretty opaque in not many coats, Bubblegum caught my eye.

Eek! Ignore the cuticles, they look very painful here and were mega dry!

Anyway, as you can see, a true bubblegum, Barbie pink! I love this colour, it brightens up dull outfits and is just a really pretty polish. The wear was pretty good too, I think I got 4 days wear out of this which is good for my nails.

This was £5 from Superdrug.



Battle of the Neutrals....

I think you all know I love neutral coloured eyeshadows, and in fact I have far too many. However this week I have bought 2 new palette's and had to come and tell you about them!

Since I got my Urban Decay Naked palette, I think I have used it about 90% of the time, the other 10% is when I've wanted a bit more sparkle so have used my MAC Pigments but I will always reach for my Naked Palette as its so versatile. However, some of the shadows are getting really dipped and I'm worried I'm about to hit pan. After seeing lots of blog posts this week about the new Sleek 'Oh So Special' palette I went straight out to buy it, and I'm glad I did!

You can see the beautiful shades and I have to say this is the best offering we've had from Sleek for a while. It does remind me of the Storm palette but I like that this has more Matte's and less gold and bronze. I think Gateau is a pretty good dupe for Sin from the Naked palette (review is here) which is my most used shadow. Gateau looks good with The Mail and Boxed in the crease, or with just Wrapped Up in the crease and outer corner. I love Glitz for a gorgeous shimmery blue smokey eye. I got this for £6.99 from a lady on our local market but she also has an eBay shop here. You can also purchase it from Superdrug.

After buying this I saw lots of talk on Facebook and Twitter of the new MUA Pro range, I've had a look in my local Superdrug and it hadn't arrived yet so on my trip to the Trafford Centre today (I passed my driving test! I can do all the shopping I want now) I had a look in Superdrug and spotted the stand. Luckily they had the Heaven & Earth palette in and I picked it up and went straight to the till. A few people have likened this to the Naked palette and I have to say, they're right. This is a fabulous palette, for only £4 you get 12 fabulous eyeshadows with great pigmentation. I think MUA could become the new Sleek with these new palettes as the Sleek ones did used to be £4.99 and have recently shot upto nearly £7 (which IMO is still a bargain). These MUA palettes will definitely catch the eye of many teenagers trying to make their pocket money stretch, or in fact anyone with a love of makeup!

Gorgeous colours! You can there's some lovely taupes, bronze, gold and creamy colours. The third shade on the bottom row is a fantastic dupe for Sin - even more so than the Sleek dupe. However my camera just would not pick the colours up. I haven't used the palette yet but they feel the same as the single eyeshadows from MUA and I love them, and feel they last a good amount of time. I'll definitely be looking at the other palette's once they come into my local store (to find out if your store will have the pro range check out these links stores and additional stores)

I'd like to say I won't ever need another neutral eyeshadow again, but I'd be lying as I just can't resist buying them. Have you tried either of these?

Orly Cotton Candy...

Hello lovely followers!

Sorry for the long gap in blog posts, I've been on holiday and have been feeling a bit lazy with the blog lately but I'm feeling a bit more motivated now.

You'll have seen this polish in my eBay haul and it is my favourite of the ones I bought.

Its a beautiful creamy peachy pink colour which I have been loving for the short spells of sunshine we've had. It does take three coats for it to be opaque but I find it dries quite quickly. It lasted 3 days (which Seche Vite) before peeling off.

If you don't have this, and peachy pinks are your thing - you need it!

Nail Haul...

I have been wanting Orly Rage polish since I saw it on Fleur in one of her videos so I went to http://stores.ebay.co.uk/enchantedbeautyspot after seeing loads of posts from people buying polishes cheaply. I thought it was a bit pointless only ordering one so I ordered another 3! I ordered 12 days ago, it cost me around £18 including P&P for all 4 of them and there was no customs charge.

l-r Orly Cotton Candy, Orly Rage, China Glaze Spontaneous and Nubar Amazon Coral

I also ordered a sample bloggers pack from Vivalanails. I did get the last one but haven't got round to using it. This one is nail wraps, I have used nail wraps before and wasn't keen but we'll see how these ones turn out (if I can figure how to get them on!). The "Burberry" wrap is rather questionable.

17 'Coral Pop'....

I went to Boots a couple of weeks ago intending to buy Barry M Peach Melba, however they didn't have it (and neither did the 2 boots in Manchester city centre! Do Boots just not sell it?) so in the mood for a new polish I wandered around and the new Supreme Shine polishes from 17 cosmetics caught my eye. I picked up Coral Pop, a beautiful bright pinky coral shade.

It was easy to apply, opaque in two coats and dried pretty quickly. However, these are supposed to be 10 day wear polishes. Say hello to my chipped index finger after 2 days...

I really don't have much luck with 17 polishes, they always chip quickly on me. But this is a gorgeous shade, you can't see the true shade in these pictures but its very wet and dull outside so the light out there won't pick it up either.

This was £3.59 I think from Boots.

Lost Treasure....

Do you ever tidy up and put away a random makeup bag away and for months wonder where you put it?

I did this, only it has been gone for about 3-4 years. It wasn't lost - it was in a cupboard I very rarely go in, it was even at the front of the cupboard!

Inside was a 2 ended pencil sharpener (which I needed so I was very happy!), a Body Shop Highlighter that looked like a Nars Multiple and also seemed to be unused, and a Liz Collinge eyeshadow. I'm not even sure if you can still buy Liz Collinge makeup but I was so pleased when I opened it and saw the shade...

Its a gorgeous bronzey/taupey colour, my favourite type of eyeshadow! Its so soft and pigmented, applies and blends like a dream.

I've been using it a lot since I discovered it, I can guarantee when I first got this eyeshadow I will have dismissed it and said "I'm not wearing brown eyeshadow" but now I love it! Here's today's makeup with the eyeshadow...

Collection 2000 Lasting Finish & MAC Studio Fix foundation

Witch concealer

MUA Powder

Xen Tan bronzer to contour

Beautyuk baked blush in shade Royal Rose (I think?)

Urban Decay Sin highlighter

Liz Collinge eyeshadow in Truffle

Loreal gel eyeliner

Estee Lauder Sumptious mascara

Benefit lipgloss 'Who are you wearing?'

Aussie Lusciously Light Challenge...

Not long back Aussie set us Angels a challenge. We could chose to do the Lusciously Light Self challenge or Lusciously Lighter Style. I chose Style as I'm not feeling upto changing too much of my lifestyle or diet at the moment!

I'm glad I chose Style as its been quite fun to take part in. The lovely people at Aussie have sent me 2 different style Wigs to try and then I will be going to a salon and getting a new style.

The first wig was a sleek black bob with a fringe - it reminded me very much of my mum's hair (which isn't a bad thing!)

Hmmm...I'm not keen. Its too dark for me and I don't like the fringe.

Prepare yourself for this one...

I think I should win a prize just for posting a picture of myself in this wig for all of the Internet to see!!

Its safe to say I will not be having my hair cut like this.

So the wigs have helped me know what I DON'T want! But what do I want in my Lusciously Lighter Style?

Well here is my hair now...

Its not been cut since September (oops!) I dyed it not long back and it went a big darker than I'd like and it hasn't faded as quickly as I wanted it to.

I do want to start to go lighter (again I know, I will not be doing a home bleach job this time!) I'm thinking about caramel highlights. But I don't know what to do with the length. As I said on my last post it's gone very thin. I don't really have much time to do much other than dry and straighten it.

What do you, my lovely followers, think I should do? You have until Friday to let me know...

Hair loss..

Have any of you ever suffered from hair loss?

For the past couple of months I've noticed after brushing my hair, drying it, straightening it I will get up and my bed is covered in my hair. Not just a little bit, quite a lot.

And then a couple of weeks ago I noticed it has gone very thin on my scalp and you can actually see my scalp a lot more than you used to, I've always had quite thick hair and I can tell how thin it is now. I don't over dye my hair, I don't use loads of heat on it and I haven't bleached my hair for about 7 months now.

I'm nearly 100% certain its down to stress. As you know I lost my nana at Christmas, which has knocked me and I still really struggle with that. Then we lost my husbands Gran very recently, which whilst she wasn't my gran its not nice to go through us both losing our grandparents so close together. I've been taking driving lessons, I had my test (the same day as my Husband's Gran's funeral! Not a good idea) and failed, but before it I was very worked up about it. But mostly its the fertility problems we've had that have caused me most stress, its been over 2 years since I had my ectopic pregnancy and I still can't get pregnant. In February we were told to start saving for IVF. Now IVF costs a lot of money (around £8000, you can do egg share to make it cheaper - around £1000 - but I'm not sure how I feel about donating my eggs), because we already have Alice we get no help, and my infertility is unexplained as there are no problems (only having one tube doesn't hinder fertility that much apparently). Anyway so I have spent the last few months completely stressed out about this which I know doesn't help but it's hard not to. It feels better writing it down and sharing with other people, especially because this will explain why my blogposts are so thin on the ground, I just have no motivation to blog with all of this going on.

If you've suffered from hair loss/hair thinning did you find anything helped it to stop falling out or to grow back? I'm very paranoid about it now its getting to summer and I like wearing some of my hair clipped back and when I do that you can clearly see my scalp.

GOSH Lavender Love...

I spotted this lovely weeks ago but have been talking myself out of buying it because I thought I had dupes at home.

However, today I succumbed and I don't think I do have a dupe of this gorgeous colour.

Without Flash

Its a beautiful cornflower blue, a brilliant colour for spring. Application was easy, it dried quick, you could get away with one coat with this but I used two.

Lavender Love is Limited Edition along with two other polishes, a lilac and a stone/beige - I have also been lusting after both of them! These are definitely worth a look next time you're in Superdrug.



OPI Not Like the Movies...

Like most people I recently purchased the £20 ASOS voucher from Groupon for £9. There was no clothes on there I wanted, I'm on a eyeshadow ban and I got impatient before they loaded the Illamasqua Toxic Nature Collection and ordered that direct from Illamasqua. So I spent days deciding what to spend my voucher on.

The new Texas Collection by OPI appeared so I decided to do some googling for swatches (Anyone find they can't purchase makeup without doing this now?) and popped I Vant To Be A Lone Star in my basket and this little lovely from the Katy Perry collection.

Sorry for all the photo's, this was so hard to photograph I just decided to show you the best ones I got (even those didn't capture the true colour of this polish.

Indoors...

Outdoors...

I think the outside ones show the colour to the most true shade. Outside it came across as mostly purple with flashes of green down the sides of my nails, inside it looked silver. Nonetheless, it's a gorgeous duo-chrome polish and I'm glad I chose it!

Illamasqua Stagnate...

Another product from the Toxic Nature collection. This is one I wasn't so sure on as other people's swatches made it look a lot like Models Own Purple Grey, or just like any other "greige" type colour, I was asking about on Twitter for more swatches when the very lovely Karleigh offered to send me hers as she wasn't very keen.

I'll show you a picture but will warn you, I have some very dodgy false tan on that's fading so badly on my hands and its very obvious!

You can see it is just a standard purple grey colour, but its a very nice one! I loved the application and finish. No bubbles, dried quickly and my nails feel lovely and smooth. Its not very "Spring-y" but I still like wearing it.

Available from http://www.illamasqua.com/ and http://www.asos.com/ for £13.50

Aussie Lusciously Light Conditioner...

I was recently sent the new Lusciously Light Aussome Volume Conditioner from Aussie and have been trying it out so thought I'd let you know how I got on with it.

The new range of lighter conditioners contain lightweight conditioning ingredients designed to not weigh hair down. They still have the same lovely Aussie smell and still make your hair very soft.

Unfortunately this gave me such an itchy scalp, and on further inspection it had really dried my scalp out and giving me a little bit of dandruff. I've stopped using it now and the itching has calmed down so its all I can think it can be as I haven't used anything different.

Apart from the itching it did make my hair feel nice and not weighed down at all. Maybe I just have a very sensitive scalp.

Recent Buys...

So rather than a few little hauls I saved everything for one big haul!

This has all been bought over the past month, I have had my birthday which is why there's more than I would usually buy.

3x Barry M Instant Nail Effects

Estee Lauder Double Wear (repurchase)

Maybelline Eye Studio Drama Gel Liner

got2b volumising powder

Estee Lauder Pure Colour Crystal Baby lipstick

China Glaze polishes Ruby Pumps and Naked

Seche Vite

Illamasqua Purity

Urban Decay cream Highlighter in Sin

Urban Decay 24/7 pencil eyeshadow in Rehab

You've seen the post on the Barry M Polishes, I think I've already reviewed Double Wear. But I will tell you what I think about the other things..

I love the Maybelline liner! I was going to buy a Bobbi Brown gel liner but I saw this in Boots on offer for £5.99 I decided to give it a go and I haven't been disapointed. It goes on easily, its well pigmented and it stays put. I would definitely reccomend you try this, I've used MAC Fluidline and I would say its better.

I'm not so sure on the volumising powder, I have used the Label m powder before and hated it. This one at least isn't visable in my hair but I don't think it really works? Maybe I'm using it wrong but I rub it in my hands like it says then massage it into my roots but it just falls flat. This was on offer for £2.04 at Boots, I probably wouldn't have tried it otherwise.

I saw the Estee Lauder lipstick in a Pixiwoo video and thought it looked lovely so thought I would treat myself to this when I bought Double Wear (I also got a free gift because I bought 2 items). Its a nice lipstick, it applies nicely, its not drying and quite glossy. But I'm not wowed by the colour, I like it and wear it but it looks so different to how it looked in the videos I saw it in. I think these are £18 but Debenhams had 10% off.

I got the China Glaze and Seche Vite from Sally's, I think I paid about £5 for the China Glaze and £6 for the Seche Vite. I love them all, Ruby Pumps is a beautiful red, though I didn't expect it to be so sparkly.

And finally the last two items from Urban Decay. They're new releases from them for the spring and had only come in the day before I bought them, but I knew before I went shopping I wanted them.

The Sin highlighter is beautiful and so creamy, and the eyeshadow pencil is fab. The colour is like a taupey brown, they dry so quickly so you have to apply it over Primer Potion to give you chance to blend it out. I've worn this lots but everytime forgot to take a picture for my blog, next time I will remember!

Illamasqua Purity..

As soon as I saw the images of the new Illamasqua collection "Toxic Tale" I was intrigued, they seem quite whimisical and the mix of colours really caught my eye.

Image from http://www.illamasqua.com/

A couple of the nail polish's were what I was most interested in so on Friday I ordered Purity from the Illamasqua website. It came this morning and I applied it straight away. The only other Illamasqua nail polish I have is Jo'Mina which I LOVE! I love the colour, the consistency and the longevity. And Purity is no different ( though I can't speak about longevity as I had to post this as soon as I finished applying.

One coat was patchy, but the second coat finished it perfectly. This is perfect for spring and I can see I'll be getting lots of wear out of this.

Did you get anything from Toxic Nature?

New Barry M Instant Nail Effects...

My Barry M order finally came today (not too bad I ordered about 4.30pm on monday) and straight away had to have a go with the new Instant Nail Effects.

I only ordered pink and white but I'll most likely get the blue one when they become available in the shops.

I'm wearing Nails Inc Denim polish underneath...

White Frost (excuse the orange fingers!)

Pink Fizz

Both work the same as the black and are just as good! I like having a bit of choice now and not just black. I do wish they'd have included a silver though.

The new Instant Nail Effects are available from the BarryM Website for £3.99.