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January 2011 - Imagination In Colour

Monthly Archives: January 2011

A Little Shoe Shop and a Clipper Teeeea

January 28, 2011 2 Comments

Shoes

Due to my having applied to 5 universities, all requiring interviews and whatnot, I as usual was not prepared properly. I’m not going to lie, I’ve put on at least a waist measurement or two since I last wore smart trousers, and so by last Friday I was feeling a little panicky (probably in part due to exam freaking-out-ness) as I wouldn’t have time before my interview (this last Wednesday) to get clothes that actually fitted and more importantly some nice shoes. Exams really are the bane of my life, I have to do so much revision to even attempt at getting a semi-decent grade, resulting in me holing myself up for the days running up to each exam. Hermit much?
So anyway, since I can’t get nice shoes anywhere but Brantanos and Evans due to my size 8/9 wide, high-arched feet (ugh!) we had to trek to Cowley to Brantanos. Luckily there is a Matalan and TK Maxx right next door 🙂 My intention was to get some dolly shoes, and, OMG, there were literally about 20 pairs in my size! I practically cried with happiness, I NEVER get choice in shoes. And to make the day even better, I fell in love with a pair of the most gorgeous boots. Since my old boots died a painful death (by rabbit), I managed to persuade my mum that I was worthy of some new boots. I tried them on, size 9 right? THEY WERE TOO BIG. I swear it must have been the most happy shoe shopping experience of my entire LIFE, I downsized to an 8 and they fitted me very comfortably, WITH SOCKS. I thought I must be dreaming, lol. So off my happy self went with my means of payment (mum – sorry!) to the checkout. So good!
Next we went to Matalan which isn’t really interesting since I only got interview clothes. So here are the shoes:

These are the dolly shoes; sooo cute, they are very comfy, kind of a happy medium between slippers and tougher dolly shoes. The support isn’t fantastic but worth it for the beautifulness of them 🙂 I think they disguise the size quite well, I wouldn’t look at them and think ‘monster feet’ lol.
The brand is “Red Level”, and the name of the shoes is ‘Showbiz’ in black, which come in sizes 3-9. £18.00 at Brantanos.
And here are the holy boots, size EIGHT! I love them. Due to my high arches they aren’t 100% comfy but then that is always an issue between my feet and anything with a heel. otherwise they are very roomy around the ankle, which is lovely.
A lovely snug fitting around the feet, but a fantastic wide-but-not-obvious ankle. This is great for those of us with cankle and calf anxiety! I was reading up about cankle-hiding shoes (not that I have cankles, but my ankles aren’t as ‘defined’ as one might like, maybe I have water retention, who knows???) and I read that low-top shoes, like these boots, are great for it because the leg looks as though it ‘grows’ out of the boot. I put this to the test and I really have to agree, my legs look slimmer than they normally do with heels. I would even go so far as to say I prefer these to my old boots for that reason.
They have a very rounded toe, more rounded than I would normally go for but having worn them a few times (as you can see!) they really have grown on me. So so happy with these shoes, despite the excessive ‘clopping’ along the street, so I am endlessly grateful to my mum for these. (And of course the brand for finally embracing those of us who need a foot-and-leg-ego-boost!)
The brand is “Caravelle”, and the name of the shoes is “Datto” in brown, which come in sizes 3-9. £36.00 in Brantanos.
Clipper Tea

Whilst pondering the box of the Clipper Green Tea that has become my life, I noticed a small box that said something to the effect of “Want to become a Clipper Tea Taster? Visit this website…” etc etc. So of course, being the tea addict I am, I immediately – well, I lie, not immediately, rest assured I waited for the kettle to boil and for my tea to infuse slowly and adequately – went off to visit said website and sign up. I didn’t actually anticipate receiving anything ever because surely hundreds of people will have done the same thing, right?
Pleasantly surprising me, less than a week later, this arrived through our letterbox:
Obvs I have blanked out my address as I know how popular I am and I don’t want EVERYONE knowing where I live…
Even a voucher for 50p off!
Brewing instructions… well it gives you something to read!
The unbleached teabags. Personally, I’m a fan, it’s better for you, better for the environment…
Firstly these teabags are just a free welcome sample so I won’t be offending Clipper Tea by saying this 😉 but I find these teabags a bit earthy in taste (well obviously not the teabags themselves – I meant the tea…) and I am not wholly converted, I am still a loyal fan of dear Yorkshire Tea with their Rainforest Alliance alliance. But seriously, for the environmental aspect of things I am totally in favour of Clipper Tea, well… I don’t know, Rainforests are important too… maybe I’ll just take turns. Clipper Tea are very environmentally friendly in that all their boxes are recycled cardboard, they don’t bleach their teabags and they are generally much more aware of the environment. I love their packaging, it is always so lovely (talk about consumer directed image) and was tempted by the Raspberry tea. I am converted to this one, what a lovely brew, very very satisfied customer! The only downside to Clipper is that their environmental friendliness comes at a price. And I do mean literally – moneywise you get a lot less for your money with Clipper. I will take this opportunity to counterbalance the negatives with: their coffee is soooo lovely! We have used it since forever so there you go Clipper. And I’m sorry.
Yet more blog posts to come… I haven’t even covered Christmas yet!
Emma xx
Disclaimer: Everything apart from the Clipper Tea sample mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Long Time No Post…

January 27, 2011 Leave a comment

So, having finished all my January A level exams, not to mention undertaking a gruelling (not really) university interview, I have allowed myself a week to relax. In this week I fully intended to blog a lot more, but my lazy self quite clearly has not. With four nights of relaxation left perhaps I can catch up. 🙂 
On the very day of my last two exams, having been totally stressed out about them, when I’d finished Andy and I  hit the town for some retail therapy, or should I say nail polish purchasing. 🙂 I ended up buying 6 nail polishes… more about that later (oh and I went back again today – oops!)
Firstly I’d like to show you my Tron nails, inspired by this video by KlairedlysArt. I wore these on Friday 21st January so apologies for the lateness… I’d been lazy (again) and had already been using the base colour the day before. And (worse) I’d worn another nail polish the day previously to that and painted over them! Oh dear… so I ended up with about 5-6 coats, whoopsie. Anyways, here are the pictures: 

Left hand: I used one rhinestone on the thumb and gave up, it somehow looked too bulky with all my tiny dots 🙂
Right hand.



For this I used a base of Max Factor Nailfinity in 882 Angel Nails. I love this colour, it’s a really stunning pink-toned silver foil. It doesn’t even show brush strokes! I think I bought this for £5.99 in Superdrug, but it’s around in Boots and Tesco and probably many other stores for the same price. I believe Boots are doing 3 for 2 currently on selected Max Factor products, including the Nailfinity range (irritating – I would have waited!). I am still lusting after their colour “Midnight Plum”, which was swatched in Boots but sold out. I haven’t found it anywhere! 🙁 I will do a swatch of Angel Nails in the near future.
Max Factor also do much smaller bottles (Max Colour Effects)  in some lovely colours but something in me just can’t justify spending £3.99 on 4.5ml when Nailfinity is 10ml! Money stealers 🙁


Anyways, before I start rambling off on that tangent any more, I also used 8 Rio Nail Art Pens. These were in blue, red, yellow, silver, metallic pink, green and white (for the dots), and for the black lines I used the black pen. These were given to me ever so kindly by Andy’s family for Christmas, I was so happy to receive them as I love anything arty and it has merely spurred on my nail obsession. These really are good, I find them easy to control and the pen part doesn’t let too much polish out at once. They dry super fast, and they even provide you with a pin to unstick each pen if it gets dried up at the tip! Love these.


So what I did was I just drew the lines in black as neatly as possible (I came a bit of a cropper when it came to doing my right – dominant – hand!). Next, I just did the coloured dots very much in a random order until it looked right.


Ever since I first saw KlairedelysArt’s tutorial for this I was desperate to do it, so I used it as a relaxing few minutes from my revision for each nail. I found her tutorial by searching ‘Tron makeup’ in YouTube. This was because Andy and I went to see it in the Christmas holidays and I fell in love with the film, I think I enjoyed it even more than he did!


I really enjoyed wearing this, it made me feel very colourful and happy every time I looked at my nails.


More blog posts coming up as I have muchos muchos to talk about and many more pics 🙂 


Emma xx


Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

NOTD

January 13, 2011 1 Comment

So here are my nails of the day. Well if I’m being totally honest, I wore the Barry M 294 Cyan Blue alone with base and topcoat (and because I was saving time I still have Wednesday’s nail polish on underneath – oh dear!) all day, then this evening added NYC Long Wearing 105 Starry Silver Glitter on top to hide the sheet marks which had become all too apparent! So here they are:

Without flash in false lighting.
With flash in false lighting.
It is impossible to capture the actual look! The glitter in the NYC Polish is actually tiny silver glitter granules combined with larger, circular glitter pieces in pink and blue,despite the fact that some of them are reflecting yellow! It is also a lot more glittery than the pictures would have you believe.
Please excuse the condition of my hands – they really suffer from dryness in the winter!
Barry M Cyan Blue – 2 coats.
NYC Starry Silver Glitter – 1 coat.
Barry M 3 in 1 as base and topcoat.
I first used the Barry M 3 in 1 for basecoat, then the other polish from Wednesday. On Wednesday night I covered that (lazy!) with Barry M Cyan Blue, 1 coat. I then let it dry for the rest of the evening, but managed to take about half the polish off when cleaning up – oops! So had to apply another coat. I then added a layer of Barry M 3 in 1 as top coat and let that dry for an hour and a half, but apparently that wasn’t long enough as I woke up in the morning with horrendous sheet marks! I suffered it for the day 😛 and when I got home covered it up with the NYC Starry Silver Glitter.
NYC polish is really quite thick, but applies very smoothly and does not dry as you are applying – always a bonus – but then dries very fast once left alone. The larger glitter pieces make the finish rather bumpy to the touch, so I fixed that by adding a layer of Barry M 3 in 1, and they are now very nearly smooth! I am very pleased with the NYC polish since it costs just £1.99.
I have to say I also love Barry M Nail Paints purely for their beautiful colour, but I have always found them quite difficult to apply thinly, I don’t quite know why since their consistency isn’t thick :s maybe it’s just me. But they too are very cheap, just £2.99! Can’t complain really. I love the Cyan Blue though, a really gorgeous sea-blue, can’t decide whether I prefer it to Pure Turquoise or not!
The 3 in 1 is £3.99. It dries very quickly over totally dry coats, but if the nail is even slightly not-completely-dry, it will take for EVER to dry.
I love this glitter topping though, it adds a lot of fun to the nails, and for £1.99 you just can’t go wrong!
Emma xx
Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.

Nail Polish Collection As Of 13th January 2011

January 13, 2011 6 Comments

Considering I only had about 4 nail polishes at the beginning of December… I have gone a bit nail polish mental! 🙂 Maybe it’s just the colours, I hate routine and since buying/receiving all these polishes I have been changing them every day lol – until my nails split at which point I realised I should really consider the health of my nails before abusing them 😀 they are happy nails now though. So here we go:
L-R: GOSH 60 Lambada, Rio Nail Art Pen Red, Collection 2000 Hot Looks 29 Big Hair, Rimmel 60 Seconds 300 Movie Star, ChitChat Sweet Maple, Barry M 136, Rimmel Lasting Finish 050 Tangerine Queen, Rio Nail Art Pen Yellow.
L-R: ChitChat Seamoss, Barry M 290 Spring Green, Rio Nail Art Pen Green, Rimmel Lasting Finish 238 Forest, Collection 2000 Hot Looks 37 Bongo Beat, Boots 17 Fast Finish Peacock, Boots 17 Fast Finish Catwalk Couture, Barry M 295 Pure Turquoise.
L-R: Essie Lapis of Luxury, Barry M 294 Cyan Blue, Rio Nail Art Pen Blue, Barbara Daly Aqua Shimmer, 2True Glossywear Shade No. 14, Barry M 292 Navy, Barry M 312 Indigo, Barry M 161 Vivid Purple.
L-R: Barry M 308 Berry Ice Cream, Natural Collection Lunar Haze, Collection 2000 Hot Looks 42 Teeny Bikini, Barry M 165, Rio Nail Art Pen Metallic Pink, L’Oreal Resist & Shine 603, Unknown Makeup Palette Nail Polish.
L-R: Max Factor Nailfinity 882 Angel Nails, L’Oreal Resist & Shine 103, Maybelline Forever Strong Pro 76 French Manicure, Unknown Makeup Palette Nail Polish, Rimmel 60 Seconds 805 Grey Matter, Rio Nail Art Pen Metallic Silver.
L-R: ChitChat Starshine, NYC Long Wearing 105 Starry Silver Glitter, Max Factor Nailfinity 133 Extra Frost, Rio Nail Art Pen White, Rio Nail Art Pen Black, Sally Hansen Nail Shine Miracle Top Coat, Barry M 54 Basecoat Topcoat & Nail Hardener 3 in 1.
If you haven’t heard of ChitChat, it’s from Poundland (don’t judge me ;)) they aren’t actually that bad, they have a much nicer smell than most nail polishes (though I don’t know whether that means they are cheapie harmful fumes!!!) and they do look really lovely over the top of some polishes. They are too sheer really to wear alone, and I wouldn’t say they are of great staying quality! Hence why I would only use them over the top of another polish.

The two unknown polishes are from a makeup box given to me for my birthday last year, which I would definitely recommend. It isn’t tested on animals (BUAV approved), and the eyeshadows particularly are of fairly good quality considering the price. It’s called PrettyPink, and is (or was!) from Argos.
In total I think I have 42 coloured polishes and 2 Topcoat Basecoats, and I don’t think I’ll be stopping any time soon!
Emma xx

Disclaimer: Everything mentioned in this blog post was either bought by myself with my own money, or given to me as a gift from friends/relatives. All opinions expressed here are my own.