Tag Archives: Ciaté

According to their website, Angel Wings is a new release from Ciaté. Angel Wings is a beautiful pure white shimmer (how cute is the name?!). This has to be the best way to wear white polish – pure white cremes are just a little too tippex-y for my liking, but something about the cleanliness of white is appealing. Add in shimmer and it’s soft enough to take away that corrector-pen edge – it actually looks incredibly sophisticated. This is something I’d definitely consider wearing on my nails or toes on my wedding day!

 It’s not often you get a pure white shimmer with absolutely no duochrome… and I love it! There’s something so pure, polished and clean about it, like virgin snow! The polish is somewhere between shimmer and frost. Soo pretty!

Application:

The photos show 3 coats on all fingers except my middle finger, which has 4 coats. The polish is opaque at 3 coats. Despite this, I quite like the effect at 2 coats – you can just about see the free edge and some of the pink of the natural nail shows through, giving a lovely glowy effect. The polish dries quickly. It’s worth mentioning that any imperfections will show through this polish (see my index finger for reference!). If you have ridges, I’d recommend you use a ridge-filler before applying Angel Wings. Also, try to paint in a straight line from the cuticle to the edge, because wonky brushstrokes do show up! I want to also mention how easy it is to apply this polish thanks to the long handle and the flat, roughly 5-7mm wide brush. For me at least, this was a dream to apply, requiring next to no cleanup, which is practically a record for me!

I love love love this polish, way more than I thought I would. Ciaté Angel Wings retails at £9. Worth it? I think so. For a bottle of 13.5ml, which is also 5-Free, it’s still £2 cheaper than OPI and is a pretty unique polish, in my eyes!

What do you guys think? I absolutely love it! It just looks so elegant. Also a perfect base for nail art or layering, methinks!

x

Disclaimer: This product was sent to me by Ciaté as a gift, but not for review purposes.

Sooo… I’ve always been one of those ‘oglers-from-afar’ when it comes to American nail polish brands (purely because of the price), I usually pick out my favourites, put them on a wishlist then realise the wishlist total comes to £100+ and think “Oh my God, step away from the laptop Emma, put your debit card DOWN!”. So it’s quite rarely that I actually buy more than one polish from a collection, and if I do so, it’s usually long after I’ve seen the collection. But then OPI came up with the wonderful glitters of the Muppets Collection and I am on such a glitter kick that of course, I had to have them! That and the fact that ASOS had a 25% for students day meant that I simply couldn’t resist. I bought three of the six glitters in the collection, the first of these being Rainbow Connection.

I wanted to not only show you Rainbow Connection but also what it looks like layered over different polishes. So here we go 🙂 lots of pics btw, hope I don’t crash your browsers!

Click on the pictures to enlarge!

 

1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats Ciaté My Fair Lady

 

2 coats Rainbow Connection over 2 coats My Fair Lady

So hopefully these pictures give you an idea of how the polish looks alone. As far as I can work out, there are 6 colours involved: orange, yellow, turquoisey-blue, green, red-violet, and silver. There are 2 types of glitter involved – small hexagonal glitter and large hexagonal glitter. It’s important to be aware that this larger glitter doesn’t always lie flat and can catch on things, which is why, every time I’ve worn this, I’ve worn a generous coat of topcoat.

Black: Rimmel Black Cab. White: Barry M Matt White.

Index and middle fingers are both 1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of the base colour. Ring and pinkie fingers are both 2 coats of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of the base colour.

I looooove how it looks on the middle finger!

The coloured glitter really ‘pops’ when layered over the bold black and white – I love this combination, particularly over black.

Thumb to pinkie finger (base colours): Boots 17 Fury, Barry M Spring Green, Barry M Yellow, Missguided Misstaken, Eyeko Saucy Polish.

All shown with 1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of base colour.

Thumb to pinkie finger (base colours): Barry M Cyan Blue, GOSH Attitude, Barry M Bright Purple, Boots 17 Pink Grapefruit, Rimmel Your Majesty.

All shown with 1 coat of Rainbow Connection over 2 coats of base colour.

I don’t know about you guys, but I definitely prefer Rainbow Connection over black, white, dark blue, gold, or silver. Somehow the rest just don’t do it for me, but I hope I’ve helped someone in doing this 😛 I did notice, just by the way, that Rainbow Connection does look a lot better over shimmer polishes than it does over cremes, so maybe I’ll do another post on that soon!

I have to say… there’s something about this one that makes me think ‘treasure trove’! I’m not so keen on Fury on its own as it clashes with my skin a bit, but paired with Rainbow Connection it looks ah-may-zing!

Application:  Rainbow Connection itself is those six different colours of glitter (and 2 different sizes) suspended in a clear base. The glitter is rather sparse, but in my opinion, that makes for a rather good layering glitter 😛 it was quite easy to push the glitter into place if you’re that way inclined, but it does give a fairly even spread of glitter. I have no idea how many coats it would take to make it opaque 😛  It did require quite a thick coat of topcoat to ensure that the larger pieces of glitter weren’t semi-attached and ready to cling onto any loose material it could get hold of. The polish dried quickly so the topcoat requirement wasn’t a problem. I did notice that without the top coat, the clear base seemed to dull the glitter almost, and the topcoat certainly brought it to life!

Now I know that this is VERY similar to Deborah Lippmann’s Happy Birthday, some bloggers go so far as to say they are dupes, but after careful research on Google 😉 I discovered this wonderful Happy Birthday vs Rainbow Connection comparison. So for those of you who are wondering, the general consensus is that they are not dupes – the hexagonal glitter in Happy Birthday is considerably smaller than in Rainbow Connection.

This one will be PERFECT for the party season! 😛 I personally loooooooove this polish to bits, and I have had so many compliments on it at university. People have started paying attention to the fact that my nails are different practically every day – haha! Sorry this is a bit of a long, wordy post, I just seem to have so much to say! 😛

Also, kudos to ASOS Customer Services – at the checkout I was only given 20% off but they refunded me the extra 5% off within 2 days of my order!

Hope you are all doing well my lovelies, give me your thoughts on Rainbow Connection!

Emma x

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.

Hello all 🙂 hope you’re all doing alright?

I’ve never been a huge nude-lover (polish-wise!) largely because there’s something just a bit funny to me about the whole mannequin-hands look – like the nail bed is longer than your finger… huh? Anyway, Ciaté My Fair Lady came free in an August issue of Marie Claire. I wasn’t overly keen on it to begin with due to the aforementioned aversion to nudey nails but it was Ciaté so I wasn’t going to pass it up 😉 And I have to say it’s totally grown on me – probably because it’s so sheer that at 2 coats you can still see the nail line, and it’s slightly more pink than my natural nail colour without being a creme so it looks quite nice… here I am, waffling again. Anyway, hopefully you get my drift!

So I wore ‘My Fair Lady’ for a day and then was still feeling in the nudey nails mood, but I wanted to add just a hint of sparkle. Enter Claire’s Accessories Gold Glitter! Observe:

I absolutely love it. It won’t be everyone’s cup of tea (mmm tea…) but I kind of feel very sophisticated and polished with it on 😛 I sometimes get a bit tired of brights and darks and feel like my nails need something a lot paler to balance me out, and this did the trick nicely. Don’t get me wrong, My Fair Lady was lovely on its own but this kind of has that extra oomph without being too ‘look-at-me’. It’s kind of subtle but shows that you pay attention to your nails 🙂 and nice and work-appropriate too. More waffling…

So, My Fair Lady applied beautifully, glided on my nails perfectly (the Ciaté brush is a godsend… explained here) and while it’s very sheer, that’s exactly what I want in a nude polish, although I know that most people don’t feel the same way! I’ve worn this before with 4 coats and it still wasn’t totally opaque. It dried quickly too which is good. It’s also not quite nude, it has more yellow and a hint of pink, kind of like the inside of coffee chocolates in Thorntons 😛 I wore 2 coats. Also it lasts well, 2 days later and I still don’t have any tip wear. It covered up/evened out my nasty stainage nicely too 🙂

I have two niggles with the Claire’s Gold Glitter. For these nails, one of the niggles turned out to have a nice effect actually – what I can only presume is supposed to be a clear base has turned a kind of orangey-pink colour in my bottle. It was this way when Andy’s family kindly gave it to me for my birthday, but they also gave me two other Claire’s Glitters which both have clear bases so I think it’s meant to be clear! If I had really cared about preserving the base colour in the look I would have minded, but actually it gave a nice warm peachey glow to my nails so that was actually quite nice :). You can see the difference between My Fair Lady’s bottle colour and the colour of my post-glitter nails in the 2nd photo.

My other niggle is that the glitter doesn’t spread all that evenly but it’s not such a problem as the polish dries super fast so you can just go over it again until you have the desired effect. I actually only used the 1 coat for this look. It does dry a little grainy so it’s worth having a topcoat handy if that bothers you.

All in all I’m very pleased with both polishes as well as the overall look of my nails 🙂

I realise that My Fair Lady obviously is no longer available as it’s not part of Ciaté’s permanent line, but there are a few floating around on eBay here. And pretty much all Claire’s Accessories shops stock the Gold Glitter amongst many other fabulous looking glitters (oh and did you know they sell Justin Bieber’s Nicole By OPI range?! Me neither!).

Hope you’re doing alright my lovelies, I know I promised a giveaway but I now only have 99 followers because 2 people unfollowed and 1 person followed so I feel a bit of a fraud doing a 100 follower giveaway haha so there’s just 1 person to go!

Emma x

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.

This came with my July GlossyBox, which, for those of you who don’t know, is a box containing 5 samples of ‘luxury’ products costing £10 (but £12.50 inc. P&P; from September) which comes around on a monthly basis. Once you have signed up, they will automatically take the money each month until you unsubscribe. Last month there was an uproar on Twitter because the box contained a small bottle of Batiste Dry Shampoo which isn’t ‘luxury’, although frankly compared with the price of the other products, I think it’s a bit greedy to expect all expensive items! I just think it’s a shame to see a brand new company get so much grief for one little mistake. Anyway, those who unsubscribed after that apparent outrage will probably be kicking themselves this month, as the July box was fab! Even better- it arrived on my birthday!
In my box I received a pack of Nouveau Lashes, Ciaté Nail Polish, Weleda Pomegranate Body Oil, Illamasqua Lipgloss in Explode, and the only sample sized product is the Xen-Tan lotion (in dark – I’m a bit scared to use it haha!)
So anyway, onto the nail polish. FYI, Ciaté is 3-Free (free from formaldehyde, dibutyl phthalate and toluene).

1 coat – hopefully you can see the very pink jellyish base! This s reminiscent of China Glaze Strawberry Fields, and I actually wore my nails all day in Oxford like this as I loved the bright pink!

Left: 1 coat. Right: 2 coats. Huge difference!!

The gorgeous yellow-orange shimmer in the bottle.



This is my first bottle of Ciaté, I’ve always admired their polishes online, but never got round to buying one as I never managed to decide which one first! I have to say, as a first taste of the brand, I am SUPER impressed. The polish has a pink jelly base, with tons of yellow-orange-red shimmer, which I assume accounts for the red effect as the layers build up! I ended up applying a third coat, but if you don’t have nasty stained nails like mine, you could easily get away with 2. coats.
This polish is easily mistaken for a classic red shimmer in dim light, but as soon as you get under a light or into natural daylight, or even better, sunlight, this polish lights up like a fire! The blend of orangey-reddy-yellow shimmer makes it look like glowing embers, and you occasionally catch a hint of the pink base. Can I emphasise how amazing this polish is any more?
Onto application. I’m in love. You know that myth that you’re supposed to do three strokes with nail polish, middle then 2 sides? I’ve never ever been able to do that until I used this polish. The brush is firm enough to control the polish, but soft enough to maneuver it neatly around the curves of the nails. I love it! The handle is long, allowing for good hand control, and the brush is the perfect width and density – not too thin and not too thick. According to the GlossyBox notecard, the brush has 250 bristles, though it doesn’t explain why haha.
Ciaté polishes retail for £9.00 from the Ciaté website, or from the Powder Rooms. I would seriously recommend this fiery red to any of you! Well worth the £9.00 for 13.5ml, if you compare with OPI’s average £10.50 for 15ml in the UK and China Glaze’s average £8.00 for 14ml, plus the application makes it all the more amazing.
Just wanted to say a quick thank you to all of you who said Happy Birthday in the comments on my last post, it made my day to a) know that you care and b) know that people actually bother to read my ramblings! I promise I will work on cutting down the waffle but thank you so much
Emma xxx