A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

Because there can never be enough cerulean blue glitters in the world. Enjoy.

Butter London Scallywag is priced at £11.95, and available to buy online from powderrooms.com

Alessandro International are not a new brand, infact the German company have been around since 1989 but it’s only now, in 2013, that they’ll finally enjoy a UK launch at Professional Beauty next week.  Focusing on the professional market, the nail, hand and foot care brand are renowned for their unique Colour Code philosophy which ensures that all 99 of their shades are available across the three systems that they offer:

NAIL POLISH – For all those who love classics and make new decisions every day: non-permanent Durability up to 1 week.

LAC SENSATION – For all those who wish for long-lasting colour joy: Semi-permanent durability up to 3 weeks.

COLOUR GEL – For all those who want to be faithful to their favourite colour in the long term: Permanent durability up to 6 weeks.

I have two shades* from the range to show you…

Toffee Nut is a creamy, mid-toned nude with a well-pigmented formula that feels a little thick but spreads quickly and smoothly across the nail. The colour isn’t quite to my taste but it gives a clean, conservative look.

Berry Red is more my cup of tea, with its blue flashes and delicate shimmer.

Both polishes offer great coverage in only two coats but benefit greatly from the addition of a top coat. My nails are also suffering from a little damage right now and if you suffer from ridged nails, these will require a base coat before they’ll disguise any such thing. Drying time was very impressive, each coat was touch dry within 5 minutes.

If you want to find out more about the Alessandro International, head to stand I22 at Professional Beauty London, taking place at ExCel on 24-25 February 2013

* press sample

I am quite fussy about glitter, and this one’s on my shit list. Which is quite surprising considering that I thought I’d love this and hate Gobsmacked (reviewed last week). My tastes have swapped places – what’s going on?!

So what is it that I don’t like about Fairy Cake?

Well… it’s mind-numbingly un-unique when it could have been great. Described as a “full coverage, silvery, multi-colour iridescent glitter suspended in a light grey base”, I wanted it to embrace that grey base with fervour and imprint an alternative take on a holo-explosion. And it’s just another “opaque in a couple of coats” glitter. The holo isn’t even that spectacular. It’s a bit too sandy, a bit too chunky. There’s no “edge” to it. And “edge” is precisely what I love Butter London for delivering.

Butter London Fairy Cake is available to buy online from powderrooms.com, priced at £11.95

* press sample

When I first saw swatches of this nail polish appear on the web, my nose wrinkled with disdain.

“Ugh. Lumpy.”

You see, I’m a simple girl (shut up) and I like simple nail polishes. I like shiny cremes, holos, and duochromes. And that’s it. I rarely bother with nail art, which is just aswell, because I’m not very good at it, and I just can’t be faffed with other embellishments.

I decided that, in the case of Gobsmacked, I’d probably like it with a thick coat of Gelous but that without, it could do one.  But then I applied it…

… and I really liked it.

It is lumpy, but in a way that somehow just misses setting my teeth on edge.  It applies nicely in three smooth coats and gave me no drying issues.

Which means that I probably owe a silent apology to all brands that have since followed suit with texture-based collections. I have quietly vomited in my mouth when perusing swatches of concrete, leather, and velvet.  Perhaps I’ve been wrong all along but the thing is, each time I look again…. I still want to rip my nails off in protest.

Butter London Gobsmacked is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online from www.powderrooms.com

* press sample

Spring is sprung, the grass is ris. I wonders where the birdies is?

China Glaze have released their latest 12-piece Avant Garden Spring 2013 collection, comprising of two halves.  One, distinctly pastel and the other… an altogether brighter affair.

Pastel Petals

The Pastel Petals (shown above) feature six soft shades including:

Life is Rosy: blushed mauve
Pink-ie Promise: iridescent baby pink
Tart-y for the Party: light lavender creme
Fade Into Hue: periwinkle creme
Keep Calm, Paint On: sea foam green
Dandy Lyin’ Around: shimmery vanilla icing

Blooming Brights

The other half of the collection is comprised of six brighter shades, known as the Blooming Brights and includes:

Budding Romance: moss green
Sunday Funday: bright blue
Fancy Pants: indigo with pink and purple shimmer
Snap My Dragon: bright red with pink shimmer
Passion for Petals: bright salmon-pink
Mimosas Before Manis: coral with a light wash of shimmer

Are any of these pretties calling to you?  I’m tempted by Fade Into Hue (can’t get enough periwinkle!) and Tart-y for the Party but I can’t say the bottle shots are knocking my socks off.  So, their Tranzitions collection was a disaster (trust me, I have a sample that I can’t even bring myself to assault your eyes with) and their Spring collection is uninspiring… you know what’s next though don’t you?

OMG HOLOGLAM *runs around, multiple flails* (and they’ve been swatched already!)

Roll the hell on Summer 2013!

French brand, Kure Bazaar claim to offer the next generation of nail lacquer with a range of shades that offer fashion-forward colour alongside the ethics of a natural formula.  The “4 free” range (no formaldehyde, no dibutyl phthalate, no synthetic camphor, and no toluene) indeed offers a full spectrum of shades from its library of 37 colours.

I’ve got three here to show you, and from this small selection* I have nothing but praise.  The trio of shades featured below gave me fuss-free application, rich pigment and high shine.

From left to right: Cappuccino (also featured by LondonMakeupGirl here), Hipster, and Rouge Flore.

Each bottle contains 10ml of product

The above swatch shows three coats, Cappuccino is a fairly neutral-toned nude shade which should suit many skintones and certainly doesn’t appear too orange-toned against my cool, pink skintone.  The formula is thin on this one but offers good coverage.  If you don’t mind a little VNL, you could be done in two coats but I prefer a fully opaque look, for which, you’ll need three.

Hipster is one of four shades in Kure Bazaar’s Jeans collection, it’s a dusty blue… darker than cornflower but with the same soft leanings.  It’s certainly not a primary type shade but makes a great year-round blue for those who prefer toned-down brights to pastels and neons.  Again, three coats are shown but two would probably be sufficient if you weren’t needing to swatch them for photos!

I have a huge fondness for clean reds, and Rouge Flore is indeed a beautiful red with a great very-nearly-one-coat formula.  The above swatch shows two coats.  Rouge Flore is a warm red with enough orange to deliver retro leanings but not enough to make it an obviously orange-toned red (this makes more sense in my head than it does once typed out!)

Each shade applied beautifully and was dry enough between coats within the 10 minute mark.  Each image shows a top coat applied for extra shine.  I don’t comment on longevity because most polishes stick to my nails like glue anyway, sorry I can’t offer advice on that score.  I feel the brush is a little on the small side (think old style Essie brushes), and that these are quite expensive at £14.95 a-piece (considering you only get 10ml of product) but I can’t fault the formula, pigment, or application on the ones I’ve tried.

Kure Bazaar polishes are available to buy instore and online at selfridges.com, also online at beingcontent.com.

* press sample

Tired of all the glitz and sparkle that Christmas brought with it?  No, me neither (come back Christmas!)

Seeing as we have a whole year to get through before we can once again feel the warm glow induced by too many mince pies,Twiglets, and glasses of Baileys – let us all take a moment instead to bask in the glory that is this beast of a glitter polish from Butter London.

Lovely Jubbly is indeed, rather lovely with a party-on-your-nails mixup of glitters.  I spy blue, magenta, red, gold… and you know the best of it?  Opaque in two coats… three if you’re being pernickity.  Of course, it’s an absolute arse to remove and needs a full layer of thick top coat to get rid of the gritty feeling.  Some of you may not mind the rough, glitter finish but it makes me want to take an industrial sander to my nail beds.  Don’t do that.

Butter London Lovely Jubbly is available to buy online at www.powderrooms.com, priced at £11.95

Awesome, red nail polishes rock my world – especially when they’re squishy jelly-cremes like this one.  China Glaze’s Igniting Love is on the warm side of neutral with those retro-leanings that can make or break a red – in this case, the shade has a strange combination of tomato-tones with a hint of pink, I think my photo picks this up quite well and it ensures that Igniting Love works really beautifully (if I do say so myself!) with my cool skintone.

The formula on this one was great, it applied smoothly and two coats was the perfect amount for an opaque finish.  The photo above shows the polish without a top-coat (hence the small amount of nail ridge that you can see on my middle finger), and although this polish doesn’t *need* a top coat per se, it really sings if you treat it to one.

China Glaze Igniting Love* is a perfect example of a super-bright red polish, the kind that will stop traffic.  Especially if you hold a stop sign in your hand whilst wearing it.  Um.

Available online, priced  from £6.95 at BeautyBay.com and www.thebeautypartnership.co.uk

* press sample

I’m really sorry to do this to you but I’m about to feature a super-pretty polish that you can’t get anymore.  And when I say “sorry”, I mean, “not at all”.  You see, I would have featured this one earlier but I have a shoebox in my cupboard full of those naughty polish purchases that are usually made upon impulse and when the postman brings them to my door… I shove them in my shoebox until such a time that my shopping guilt has passed and I can go rummaging for treasures.

Well, I must have been very naughty because this one was bought back in February and I’ve only just pulled it out now.

It’s an absolute stinker of a polish and I’m sure I’ve contracted finger-cancer seven times over since applying it, god knows what it’s got in it… you see, it was an eBay purchase from Hong Kong, a brand I’ve never heard of… and I’m not exagerrating when I say that it stinks.  It could clear a room faster than a fire alarm.

But look!  LOOK!  It’s so sparkly and pretty!

The above photo shows ONE coat over a purple creme, the top photo shows three coats over a bare nail.  The formula is pretty horrible to be fair, thick and gloopy but it does spread evenly with a bit of patience.  It’s a very slow drier too, almost like a gluey resin on your nails – I was worried that I had infact, picked up a gel polish that would never dry without curing!  But it is just a regular polish…. albeit in dire need of a quick-dry solution painted ontop.

I think I paid around £2.50 or something for the polish, if you’re keen it might pay dividends to save a search on ebay for something like “glitter 189 polish” or simillar, I think that was how it was listed.

Do you like it?

I’m starting to wonder if and when Butter London are gonna run out of these cutesy “British” slang terms… I reckon that when inspiration is at its lowest ebb, someone in the office sticks an episode of Only Fools and Horses on the DVD player.  “Alright me old china?” <— Butter London Spring 2016 name right there.  Naturally, the polish would be an off-white cream, somewhat like a glaze.  Can I make money doing this?  Hands up if you’d give up EVERYTHING to name nail polishes for a living.

Butter London Shag from their Autumn/Winter 2012 collection is a clear nod to the season’s hues.  Reminiscent of fallen Autumn leaves (before they’ve turned mouldy), with a dazzling metallic finish that glimmers beautifully in the late afternoon light.  Well, what little we have of it.

The formula on this one was a dream and the above photo shows two coats – the polish applied smoothly and dried to a shiny finish, the above photo shows no top coat.  If you had the opportunity to conceive a Butter London polish, what would you call it and what would it look like?

Butter London Shag is priced at £11.95 and available to buy online at www.thepowderrooms.com

You know I’m a sucker for a pretty duochrome right?  And if you don’t… STOP READING THOSE OTHER BLOGS, FFS.  Anyway, I spotted these duochromes from Bad Apple Cosmetics last night and a little googling revealed that you’ve probably all known about them for some time – I’ve never been too quick on the old scoop front, or really, anything. at all.

I don’t know much about the brand behind the colours, other than they’re British, and they make somewhat pretty polishes and nail wraps (boo to fiddly nail wraps – has anyone got the hang of keeping those things on longer than 3 hours yet?)  The polishes are priced at £9.95 each on their website, apparently the usual price is £14.95 *insert raised eyebrow here*.

Slightly more tempting is the fact that there are a few available on their Amazon storefront for £8.99 each with free shipping.

Have you tried any of the polishes from the line?

Sometimes, things are worth putting in a little bit of effort to get a great result.  I stalked Mr. L online for about 9 months, and 12 years later – we’re still together… but despite this, trust me when I say that some thingsreallyare worth the effort. Bwuahahah! (just kidding Pauly!)

China Glaze Whirled Away is reminiscent of Lynnderella’s much sought-after Connect the Dots – since when did the big brands start duping the indies?!  It’s a mix of white and black hexagonal pieces suspended in a clear base with black bar glitter.  Frankly, there’s too much base and not enough glitter, which makes it a bit of a pain in the backside to apply – but did I mention that it was worth the effort?

After realising that I couldn’t get the glitter pieces to apply properly in the normal manner, I started simply dabbing them on and hoping for the best, praying to the gods of top coat that all would end well.  Thankfully, they answered my prayers and ever since, my nails have been receiving admiration left, right, and centre!

In the above photo, I’ve applied Whirled Away over another polish from the China Glaze Cirque du Soleil collection: Def Defying.  A slightly putrid, yellow-green that was opaque in two coats.  Perfect for Frankenstein nails, pretty much revolting to my sensibilities!

China Glaze Whirled Away is available priced at £6.95 from BeautyBay.com and www.thebeautypartnership.co.uk

* press sample