Yearly Archives: 2011

Spring Time Nail Art

April 9, 2011 4 Comments

First of all I still had the M&S; Duck Egg polish on, and didn’t want to take it off so did this over the top. I used GOSH Wild Lilac and the silver polish “Moonshine” (to make it shimmery) from Poundland mixed together on a piece of cardboard with a cotton bud stick (all cotton removed ofc), and then dabbed it onto my nails using a cheapie foundation sponge, from a pack of 25 I also bought at Poundland.
Originally I intended this as a gradient effect but as you can see that didn’t exactly happen lol.
I then topped it with Barry M’s Pink Iridescent to make it even more sparkly and because it didn’t look right on its own, I used my Rio Nail Art pens in black and white and just dotted the flower petals and switched colours for the centre.
A bit boring I know but it gained some interest at school 🙂
And if you’re wondering where the splodges came from it’s because I can’t sit still to save my life, even when nail art is at stake!
Hope you are all well, my GOSH Golden Dragon polish arrived today so I’m feeling very cheerful 😀 revision here I come…
Emma xxx
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.

Marks & Spencer Duck Egg (EM)

April 7, 2011 2 Comments

I realised I haven’t really gone into detail with the M&S; polishes. For just £3 you have a full 8ml of polish. The back label claims that the polishes are “High gloss, fast dry, chip resistant.” I agree with two of these three claims. The polishes all have so far been fast dry, and as far as I can see chip resistant (apart from on my split, peeling index nail, which to be honest is only to be expected).  However, I do not agree with the high gloss claim. I would put a polish by Barry M, BeautyUK, GOSH etc in the high gloss category, however I’ve found that the Marks and Spencer polishes, thus far, are incomparable. They have a lovely finish but it’s very muted in that it is not glossy whatsoever. I’m sure a topcoat would solve this issue but I don’t have one since wasting a good £10 on a particularly bad one, but that’s another blog post 😉

Anyways, this is my third and penultimate M&S; polish, as you can see all three so far have been blue-based:

If you click on the photo it will enlarge it, you may even be able to see the green shimmer!
3 coats.
This baby is beautiful right? Well what you can’t see (damn you camera!) is the gorgeous green shimmer packed into this polish, I mean it is stunning! I always worry with shades this pale that they’ll cause havoc clashing with my pale skin, but this one is just perfect. It’s a very very pale blue base with the pale green shimmer and has a gorgeous pearly shimmer finish. I can’t fault the colour. I don’t know if anyone remembers when the Body Shop used to do polishes as a permanent line, but I had three, one of which was a pure white polish with green shimmer and ever since that one dried up I’ve been desperate to find a dupe, and I reckon this is about as close as I’m going to get.
The formula I’m not as amazed by, it was a tiny bit on the thick side and resulted in a couple of tiny bubbles but that’s possibly because I haven’t yet mastered the art of applying a thin layer of quick-dry polish! Nevertheless the bubbles are barely visible IRL and really aren’t a problem.
This took 3 coats to reach full opacity, which I’m not fussed by myself as it’s a quick-dry polish and doesn’t look too bad at 2 coats if you’re in a hurry (I wore 2 coats all today and only added a third for the photos – hence the messy cuticles!)

This is surprisingly flattering to my skin tone and I imagine will be for darker skin too. I can’t tell you how much I love this polish (although I say that every time right? Lol, maybe I’m just psycho about colour!)

The photos are somewhat deceptive because the green shimmer is very much more visible to your real eyes, but was just impossible to capture. So frustrating!

To begin with I wasn’t sure about the name, but looking at it on my nails it really does capture the blue-green combo of duck egg, if in a slightly more unique way, perfect naming is my verdict 🙂

This one I also love too much to take off right away so I’ll be trying some nail art tonight (if I don’t fall asleep first!)

I can’t tell you how much I recommend the M&S; polishes, if only for their unique shades, I am awestruck 😀

Hope you are all well and smiling, I’m so relieved it’s nearly the Easter holiday because with my paper round I just never get a lie-in during term-time, even if it is only an extra half an hour! Also lots of revision to be getting on with 🙁 Ah well.
Emma xxx


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.

Marks & Spencer Lagoon (RC)

April 5, 2011 3 Comments

First of all does anyone have a clue what the weird (RC) and (M2) etc naming code is all about on the M&S; polishes?
Here is the most beautiful blue shimmer ever. Well apart from Barry M Navy. And many others. Actually I’m just a blue addict full stop…

3 coats… Look at the beauty 😀
This polish has a cobalt blue base packed with greeny-blue shimmer. It’s beautiful, it absolutely gleams in all lights. This is perfect for those of you that love blue nail polish but feel that Barry M Navy is just a bit too dark for your liking. Trust me, despite having a dark base, this one is bright! A male friend even told me today that he liked this colour and that it suits me and I should wear it more often! (Rare moment!)
Application-wise this polish has been perfect. It dries very quickly and is totally opaque within 2 coats. The only reason I added a third is because I had a bit of tip wear on my index finger where my nail is totally split underneath… but you weren’t to know that 😛
I would most certainly recommend this polish to ANY blue polish lover. It kind of reminds me of ice and winter, I love it! Can definitely feel some nail art coming on with this one. I don’t want to take it off yet, which is rare for me, usually polishes only last one day on my nail before I’m itching to wear a different one! 😀
I just wanted to draw your attention to the BUAV Bunny logo in the bottom left corner. This essentially verifies that the brand is Cruelty-Free, which I haven’t yet seen on any other drug-store brands! (Urban Decay and Too Faced are BUAV Approved by the way, you can find the list of approved brands here.)
Oh and how cool is this pen?! My mum picked it up from her 4-day Vet conference, which is where all my freebie pens come from! They always have weird animal drug names on haha. This is the sort of thing that appeals to the child deep within me haha.

Hope you are all well, I am feeling rather cheery today, I’ve had a haircut which I’ve finally worked out how I want to wear it, it’s cake day in Chemistry tomorrow, I won a Twitter giveaway from Daisy at Daisy Loves, I won some national Creative Writing competition for something I can’t even remember what it is! I’ve got GOSH’s Golden Dragon somewhere in the post, I’ve lost weight in 3 weeks and everything has gone right for a change! Andy’s business is really starting to take off,   Let this be noted as a very high point in my mental state lol. Probably won’t last the week given the mounting pile of revision awaiting me. Work Experience next week and a blood test at the hospital because my GP surgery don’t have the equipment to find my veins, apparently I have really deep veins.

How are you all? Are things going right or wrong for you? By the way I honestly don’t mind if you want to use my comments box to vent or whatever, I know you probably won’t want to but I’m totally okay with it, it’s your chance to share your opinion 🙂
Emma xxx

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.

Accessorize – Shade 9 Fudge (My go-to base colour)

April 5, 2011 2 Comments

Please excuse the lack of cleanup – I was about to use this as a base colour and thought I’d show you what I use first!
1 coat!
You know when you have a really sheer nail polish that just won’t build up to an opaque finish? I’ve had this issue so many times.. I decided back in January that the only remedy to this was to paint my nails an opaque colour so that the nail line wasn’t visible. I remember reading on someone’s blog (I can’t remember whose I’m sorry!) that they use a white base colour which I suppose planted the seed in my mind and when I saw this near-skin-colour polish the seed blossomed and I just knew this was the one I’d use.. haha. I know that Liloo blogged about this a few days ago but I promise I didn’t steal the idea from her! (Even so go and check out her blog post, it has two much cheaper options for this trick). If you want evidence I used it with 17 Pink Grapefruit in this post!

So the Accessorize polish. This is fab, £4 in Superdrug and I think (although I’m not certain) that Accessorize polishes are sold in Accessorize too.  I know they’re available on the website (under ‘Lifestyle’ of all categories!) Fudge, along with all the others I’ve tried, dries very quickly with a satisfactorily opaque finish. If I was going to wear this alone I would add an extra coat as you can still just see some of the natural nail underneath but one coat serves the purpose for this trick.

Does it work? Yes! I’ve had no issues with using this with a base, it applies thinly and dries quickly so saves a lot of hassle in applying coat after coat of a sheer polish and waiting for each one to dry! All you have to do is paint one of two coats of said polish over the base colour et voila.

I know this tip is by no means original but if it helps just one person then my post is justified 😉 Apologies to everyone who’s ever posted this tip before!

I may have another post up by the end of the night, another M&S; polish 😀
Emma xxx

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.

Marks & Spencer Bright Aqua (M2)

April 4, 2011 2 Comments

So I went a bit crazy on Sunday and bought 4 M&S; nail polishes. But they are so unique and beautiful! Here is the first of the 4.

This has more green in than you can see here. Absolutely stunning! It’s a turquoise-green shimmer, but it has a very pearly appearance on the nail. It’s kind of iridescent. I haven’t seen anything like this one before, even Andy told me I “MUST get that one!!!”.
This polish dried fast, with a gorgeous finish, and best of all, all Marks and Spencer beauty items are BUAV Approved, which is like the Holy Approval of Cruelty Free, and being that I am very uncomfortable with the current laws on cosmetic animal testing I am all for it and will be going back to M&S; for more.
I have had two problems with this polish. This particular one was so sheer:
This is one coat over a clear base coat (excuse my stained nails!)
I decided to start again. This time I applied base coat, and a nude polish as a base (I’ll post details of this in my next post) to cover over my nail lines and staining. This worked much better and the colour you see in the second and third photos are with 3 coats. It really didn’t need a third coat, two worked fine, but I went to bed soon after applying the second and woke up with the most offensive sheet marks ever, so I added an extra coat to try and salvage the polish before school.
My only other issue was that while the first coat dried super duper quickly, the second coat took ages to fully dry (as in to a state where it doesn’t dent easily) hence the sheet marks. However the third coat applied 8 hours later dried really fast again, which had me a little confused. Oh well!
All in all the hassle is totally worth it for the price (£3) and for the BUAV seal of approval! And to be fair the hassle wouldn’t have been hassle if I had just waited for the second coat to dry like a normal person would.
Hope you are all well, keep a look out for the 3 upcoming M&S; polishes! The next one I’m wearing is called Lagoon 😉 guess what colour it might be?
Emma xxx

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.