exposed - glamour puss

Hi everyone!

This was going to just be another post about my current nails, but I'm so disappointed with one polish and impressed with the other that it's more of a little review as well as showing you what's on my nails!

This is Glamour Puss by a brand called Exposed which I'd never heard of before. I found a site here selling the polishes for £3.99, but I found this in an independent beauty supply shop in a local town for £1.99, so it may be worth checking out local shops first. They also had some Sinful Colours and W7 polishes but I'd heard of those before so was interested in seeing what it would be like. They had a ton of gorgeous shades and I'm definitely planning to go back and get others, but Glamour Puss totally caught my eye! It's basically blue and purple glitter in a clear base and it's just so beautiful!


On the left is one coat and on the right is two.

Personally, I'm pretty impressed with the coverage of this polish. It's not opaque in one coat at all but sometimes you don't want that, if you have a colour underneath you want to show through. In two coats it would have been okay to leave but I did a third just to get it totally opaque:



As you can see, it's more than fine in three coats! I loooove this polish so much! It was such a great price and the formula, application etc I found to be really good. I'm sure it's not everyone's cup of tea as it's quite 'out there' and for me it's not something I'd put three coats of on every nail, but it's great when you want something a bit more fun and pretty :) Overall I'm super happy and very interested in trying other colours from this brand.


This is how it looks in daylight, the colours really come out in this picture.

Now I just want to give a quick mention to the nude colour - this came in a gift set by Champneys and I suppose I shouldn't have expected anything more from a gift set nail polish by a brand that isn't known for it's nail polishes. This took well over three coats, I lost count, the finish is horrible, it takes forever to dry and as you can see that many coats still didn't make it opaque. I've just checked the bottle and it says 'Apply 2 coats' - I highly disagree!

Anyway, enough moaning, if that polish had been as good as Glamour Puss, I would love these nails even more, but I do really like them anyway because of Glamour Puss :)

Hope you liked!

Have you tried anything by Exposed before? Any colours to recommend?

MUA heaven and earth palette

Hi everyone!

Today I have a post about the MUA Heaven and Earth Eyeshadow Palette. This has been talked about quite a bit on blogs, albeit a while ago (I'm late to the party, I know!), and a few people have mentioned this being a possible dupe/alternative to the Urban Decay Naked Palette. I don't own and have never seen/swatched the Naked palette so I won't be making any comparisons here, but I thought I'd do a post about my thoughts on MUA's offering.

The first thing I'd like to talk (rave) about is the price of this. £4! I know I said I wouldn't compare this to the Naked palette but the one thing I will say is that as far as I know that costs over £30, and I just can't justify that cost! £4 though I can happy justify and am very pleased I spent the money. This works out at something around 30-35p per eyeshadow which is amazing. For that sort of price, you might not expect much, but you'd be wrong.



As you can see, this palette is full of neutral browny toned shades. For me this is perfect, I rarely branch out into very daring or bright colours as I just don't feel comfortable doing so. So the majority of my eyeshadow collection is colours like these. There is one shade that is obviously the highlight and a couple that can work as highlights but also colours for all over the lid.




I think in general the whole 'neutral' spectrum is covered in this palette - of course there are lots and lots more shades, tones etc, but I think for the most part if say, you were travelling and this is all you had, you'd be able to create any neutral eye you needed to. Some of the photos in this post were taken over a month ago when I bought this, but the two above were taken this week and so you can see which ones I've been using. My favourites so far seem to be the two bottom left ones, which I've been liking wearing together. I haven't used the more gold and olive toned ones yet although looking at the swatch photo below, the gold one looks really lovely with the darker brown next to it!



As you can see, pigmentation varies especially when it comes to the lighter colours, but overall I'm incredibly happy with the quality of them - these swatches were just one swipe of my finger, so quite impressive really. I find these blend into each other pretty well as they feel so soft, so I find it quite easy to blend say, a darker brown in my crease with one of the lighter shades.

Overall, I really like this palette and am so glad I bought it! Since I've had it this has definitely been my most used eyeshadow product by far, I just feel like this has everything I need! I would definitely recommend this to everyone, I especially think it would be a great affordable choice for people who are just starting out with eyeshadow as it's such great value and yet you get 12 colours to play around with. So, I pretty much just love this :)

Do you own this palette? What do you think of it?

Hope you liked!

dotty nails

Happy May everyone!

Bit of a short post from me today to show you my current nails.

They're pretty simple really, but I'd had the urge to do dots on my nails for a few days and this is what I came up with. Not very spring like I know, but it fits in with the weather we've been having really!

I do like these nails, I think the colours go quite nicely together. It's a quick and easy way of still looking like you've made an effort with your nails. I must say though I'm not overly happy with how the gold turned out, it shows the brush lines SO easily! I wish it could look like it does in the bottle but I have a feeling that's not going to happen! I love the grey though - on some of my nails it was fully opaque in just one coat, amazing!


Products used were Barry M - Grey and No 7 - Hot to Trot.

I do want to get back into doing a lot of nail art but I can't find my dotting tools (used a hair grip for this!) at the moment so thought I would start off fairly easy.

I hope the lengths of my nails aren't too annoying, I've had quite a few break recently but looking at my ring finger in comparison I'm starting to think I prefer them a bit shorter now! I can't bear myself to cut it though, because of how hard I find it to grow them, which is why they're all different lengths!

Anyway that's all from me, I feel like I've written quite a lot for a post about nails haha!

Hope you liked!

spring pastel nails

Hi everyone!

Quick post from me today to show you my nails of the moment :)

I thought it was about time to get into the spring pastel trend, but I don't usually follow clothing trends, so an easy way to do it was on my nail. I thought about doing some sort of nail art but have been stuck for ideas so I went for a bit of colour blocking :) I started with the brown but then thought yellow might look better, and then couldn't decide, which is why I have one odd colour on each hand. Looking at pictures I think I prefer the yellow hand!




Colours used:

OPI San Tan-tonio (posted about here)
OPI Stranger Tides (posted about here)
Barry M Peach Melba
Barry M Berry Ice Cream
Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream
Barry M Lemon Ice Cream

No idea what happened with the ridging on my left hand, I think the top coat must not have dried as quick as I thought it did!

I don't have much else to say about these, other than that I'm really happy with them and catch myself looking at my nails quite a lot - it's been a while since I had anything other than a block colour on them!

Hope you liked!

opi - san tan-tonio

Hello!

I'm back with a post on the other OPI nail polish I bought - San Tan-tonio. I love the puns they use for their names! This was in the Texas collection but from a quick search there are still places online selling it.

This is much less of a unique colour than Stranger Tides which I posted about here, but it's a great neutral colour without being too pale and washed out.



As you can see, it's a pretty standard chocolatey brown. It actually reminds me a lot of Barry M - Mushroom but annoyingly I can't find it to compare. I did search online to see if anybody else made the same connection but it looks like not, so maybe when I find Mushroom I'll be able to notice the difference. I had a look back at my older posts and I used Mushroom in this post but because it's just for details I can't really tell. Any thoughts?

Anyway, comparisons aside I do really like this. It's not offensive and so easy to wear but without being boring. I like the formulation and how the polish wears but I definitely back up what I said last time - I struggle to believe OPI is worth the price tag. They're nice as a treat and when there are unique colours but aside from that I'll stick to the drugstore. Especially with this polish, because it's not all that unique, I wouldn't repurchase. That being said I am enjoying wearing it and if I ignore the price it is a really great nail polish.

Hope you liked!

What do you think of this colour, and OPI polishes in general?

collection 2000 cream puff - fairy cake

Hi everyone!

I recently picked up this Collection 2000 Cream Puff  Moisturising Lip Cream - I only really bought it because it was 3 for 2 in Boots, but  had seen a lot of great things about these products so thought I'd give it a go. I debated over which colour to get and am really pleased with the one I got and think I will be adding to my collection!

I got the shade Fairy Cake which is a corally reddy pink colour - specific I know! I'm not great at describing colours but it is really lovely. I thought it may be a little bright but I have worn this all day without feeling too self conscious, and at the same time I think this could work really well for the evening.

I never hesitate in saying that I'm not a fan of lipglosses. I hate how sticky they are, how they don't really last or dry, and how my hair always gets stuck to them. Thankfully this definitely isn't something I'd call a lipgloss. It's not the sort of consistency you could call a lipstick, I think a lip paint would be a good description, although their choice of lip cream works too. The consistency is thick and covers the lips in colour. The finish isn't fully matte but isn't glossy either, it's a nice in between.

I tried to take pictures in different lights to give you different ideas of the colour.

While I've not owned this for long, so haven't tested it all that much, it lasted through me eating a lollipop with only a little fading which I am super impressed with! Without eating/drinking it lasted for hours, it just needs the chance to dry first.

I definitely agree with what others say about this not being moisturising in any way but I can look past this because of all it's other great points. One of which is the smell! I know that's not a hugely important factor but this smells GORGEOUS! To me it smells like vanilla buttercream, it's amazing! Luckily it doesn't taste like it too or it would never last on my lips :D

Overall I just really like this product and am definitely planning to buy other colours. It would cost £12 (just under, technically) to own all 4 and there are often offers like 3 for 2 on in places like Boots, although when you think of the price of something like MAC, £12 for 4 is a complete bargain! I had sort of high expectations for this product after seeing so much said about it but I can safely say it has exceeded all those expectations! I love it :)

Have you tried any of these? What did you think?

opi - stranger tides

Hi everyone! 

I want to start this by saying that I believe this product has been discontinued, but I bought mine very recently and I believe there are also ebay sellers you could get it from, although to be honest I haven't looked. That being said, I still wanted to show you this!

The product as you will have guessed from the title, is OPI - Stranger Tides from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection.

This is the first OPI nail polish I've ever tried, being put off the price. I will say I'm still not sure they're worth paying over £10, but I can kind of see why people are so willing to pay that on a regular basis. I don't have anything that's similar to this and can't think of anything I've seen that is.

This is a pale greeny grey, that's the best I can describe it. I've had a look online and OPI descibe it as an "uncharted shade of oyster with a green hue" which I think works too. I just love how unique it is.

From first experiences I quite like OPI, the brush is a nice size and the polish isn't too thick and gloopy and I found it dried quicker than I expected it to. I haven't had it on for all that long - around a day, but so far haven't experienced any chipping or tip wear at all. 


Overall I'm happy with my purchase and glad to have this in my collection! I'm not an OPI convert and will still buy the cheaper brands, but I will have a look at OPI from time to time.


Hope you liked! Have you tried this or any other OPI polishes? Are you a fan?