A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

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

The moment I saw this Butter London beauty in the bottle, I was smitten.  I love copper polishes, I love smooth glitters, I love my polish with just a hint of eccentricity.  Meet Butter London Scuppered, a polish that simply ticks all the right boxes.

Whoever thought to throw a scattering of green micro-glitter into the mix of what is otherwise, a rather sensible (albeit beautiful) polish, is a diabolical mastermind.  In amongst all this coppery-green madness, there’s another component – a shift of pink and a lighter gold that gives this shade an almost duochrome feel in the right light.

The formula is also wonderful, the above shows three coats – each of which applied smoothly, dried quickly and behaved impeccably.  I think you could probably get away with two coats, but don’t quote me on that.

It’s Autumnal, it’s Christmassy, it’s fun – what’s not to like?

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

* press sample

So, it’s the first of December…  Duhn, duhn, DUHN!

I would do pinch and a punch and all that crap but I’ll leave it for my tweets where you can unfollow me without it costing me ad revenue.

BUT, seeing as it IS the first day of the final month of the year… the month filled with fairy lights, gifts, booze, food, and tinsel – I’ve got one hell of a festive NOTD for you.  Infact, it’s SO festive that if you cross your eyes, turn off the overhead light and whistle the Colonel Bogey tune, you can make out the image of Baby Jesus on my pinkie.

Hallelujah!

China Glaze It’s A Trap-eze!* is a pretty cool (if not quite biblical) nail polish for the party season from the brand’s winter Cirque du Soleil collection.  It actually reminds me of speckled eggs… which in turn, reminds me of that speckled frogs song (…five little speckled frogs…), which in turn, reminds me of being a kid – and really, that’s no bad thing.  I know the world is going crazy for these glitters that play havoc with my OCD tendencies (…sat on a speckled log…) but have you ever tried to create symmetry with this polish genre?  It should have been one of Hercules 12 tasks.

The formula is pretty neat, the polish is packed with irregular-sized, multi-coloured glitter and the base colour – a very pale grey – is particularly runny yet doesn’t give me any pooling issues.  You can tell that this isn’t quite your standard formula (…eating some most delicious grubs *yum YUM!*…) and has been more or less engineered to compliment this particular polish format.  The above photo shows the coverage you achieve in three coats… it builds very quickly both in base pigment, and in the amount of glitter that accumulates on the nail bed.  I need two layers of top coat to stifle the cringy feeling I get from heavily glittered fingertips, or you could use something thicker like Gelous.

My OCD may not like it, but I do!

www.thebeautypartnership.co.uk

* press sample

You guys seemed to be quite taken with the trio of duochrome polishes I blogged about last week, so when I was in London, I picked up three of the Miss Sporty Metal Flip Duochromes to give away.  Ok, it’s not the most valuable competition I’ve ever held, but for those of you who can’t get your hands on these babies, well… it’s hopefully still enticing!

Aren’t they pretty?  They look like miniature galaxies swirling around the bottles!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck ladies!

T&C
1. Start date for this competition is 28th November 2012
2. Closing date for this competition is 5th December 2012
3. There is one prize to be won, a trio of Miss Sporty Metal Flip Duochrome Nail Polishes (worth £1.99 each). No cash alternatives.
4. Competition is open worldwide.
5. Lipglossiping.com is the sole promoter of this competition.
6. Only one entry per email address will be accepted.
7. Personal details will not be kept or forwarded and are only used in the context of this competition to inform the winner(s) of their prize status.
8. Three winners will be selected at random from all entries received.
9. Winners will be notified within 5 working days and will be expected to reply to an email sent to the address used to enter the competition within 5 working days or risk forfeiting the prize.

Lilac… Icicle… yeah, no I’m not sure what happened with my attempt at a post title either. The thing is, I love the combination of glitter tips and pastel nails – it’s probably my favourite nod to nail art, I only wish I could get a proper glitter gradient going, as opposed to just a splodge.  Having said that… doesn’t it look super wintery?  I feel a chill everytime I look at my fingers, and it’s got nothing to do with the hangnails looking back at me either!

The base colour is another Miss Sporty polish, Miss Sporty Lilac to be exact… look at me regressing back to my teens!  I’ll be loitering with intent in Claire’s Accessories next, eyeing up the Bieber head boppers.  Anyway, there’s not much to say about this polish other than the fact that it’s £1.99, has a nice brush, and is opaque in two coats.  It doesn’t give me a stress aneurism when I try to apply it.  Basically, it’s all good.

The glitter is courtesy of OPI’s Disco Ball Sparkle, an oldie from the Reflection Collection.

Do you wear pastel nails with glitter tips?  What are your favourite colour combinations?