A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

I like grey nail polish. It’s edgy enough for old people to look at your nails like you must be satan’s lovechild but not so edgy that it makes your boss search for valid reasons to move your desk into a cupboard.

CarolynK’s Helga is a neutral, concrete grey creme with no discernible jazz about it.  A straight-forward what-you-see-is-what-you-get shade that applies smoothly in a couple of coats.  It’s part of the Carolyn K London Neutrals Nail Paint Set which offers a trio of work-appropriate shades.

The set is reasonably priced at £12.99 and available to buy online from www.powderrooms.com

If you’re anticipating the warmth of Spring as eagerly as me, you may be interested in pre-empting the vibrancy with a little treat from LVX.  The vegan nail brand’s products are formulated without the use of Formaldehyde, Formaldehyde Resin, DBP, Toluene, and Camphor making them not just 3-free, but 5-free!

Midori* is a retina-searing chartreuse creme that applies smoothly, if a little thinly, in two coats.  The chunky square lid removes to reveal a slim handle for painting.  I found the formula to be quick-drying but prone to pooling at the cuticles, thin layers are the way forward but thankfully the pigmented creme is opaque in two coats.

LVX Nail products are priced at £10.99 each and available to buy online from www.cloud10beauty.com

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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

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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

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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

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Is it glitter season yet? Is it? Is it?

It is, isn’t it?

The lovely Sirvinya bought me this glitter-tastic Pure Ice nail polish in Cheatin‘ while she was on her travels to the U.S. last year and I’ve used it as a layering polish a couple of times – it looks absolutely beautiful, as I’m sure you can imagine, over both blue and purple shades… injecting that little bit of OHGODGLITTER into any manicure you desire.

The above swatch shows three, fairly thick coats – it’s not the best worn on it’s own and I’ll probably stick to layering with it but I thought you might appreciate a swatch while I’m slowly going through and re-organising my polishes.

Which reminds me, how do you organise yours?  By colour or brand?  Too. indecisive.

Most people dream in black and white.  I dream in red holographic.  Or, at least… I dream OF red holographic.

This isn’t a bad attempt at it, but it’s doesn’t quite cut the mustard in the same way as Glitter Gal’s incarnation of red rainbows.  The holographic is there but it’s very sparse and subtle.  That’s not to say that this isn’t a very pretty red polish with a hint of holo, because that’s precisely what it is.

I bought this one a couple of months ago and sadly I’ve only gotten round to swatching it now that the weather is too overcast, dingy and downright depressing to get any holo effect to show up – but, you get the idea.

Catherine Arley polishes are best gotten hold of via an eBay search, they’re pretty inexpensive.

Q: Why did the elephant paint his toenails red?

A: So he could hide in a cherry tree!

No, I didn’t break into a smile either.

Daft jokes aside, if you’ve always been looking for an elephant-coloured nail polish, your search is over. Elephant walk is an odd blue/grey shade that does indeed remind me of Dumbo.  The silver shimmer clearly seen in the bottle, is distinctly lacking once on the nails, which is a shame because I could really imagine it making a difference.

As things stand, it’s a nice two-coater but ends up reminding me of a poor-relation to something like Butter London’s Lady Muck.  Sigh, I wanted that shimmer in it!

Nevermind, at least you heard a really shit joke today.

China Glaze Elephant Walk is available to buy instore at Sallys or online at BeautyBay.com, priced at £6.95

Tell me a really bad joke!

If Kalahari Kiss is a Caramac bar…. then Desert Sun (sticking with the confectionary theme) would be a… a radioactive Daim bar?  It’s like caramel, gone a bit nuclear.

Desert Sun is a dirtied orange, very Autumnal and kinder to us cool-toned skintones.  It reminds me a bit of those giant orange slugs!  You know the ones I mean!

Now that I’ve completely put you off the actual colour, I should say that the formula on this one was nice, opaque in two coats – none of that runny but thick crap, it’s just thick.  But in a good, spreadable way.  Two coats are shown without a top coat.  I know, glossy right?  I’m liking this formula.

China Glaze Desert Sun is available to buy online at BeautyBay.com, priced at £6.95

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Today’s NOTD features a new shade from the China Glaze On Safari collection, it’s an unusual one for me to pick out to wear… warm-toned nudes are not my cup of tea, even though this one does actually look quite like a cup of tea.

Look.

Or as my ma would call it, “gnats piss”.

Ok, it’s not really very tea-like after all is it?  I got carried away with that one.  Still, it’s a pretty edgy choice for my tastes and I kinda like it.

The formula was good, better than CG’s summer offerings which were all-at-once watery and thick – this one applies smoothly with a good amount of pigmentation that provided full opacity in just two coats.

China Glaze Kalahari Kiss is available to buy instore at Sallys and online at BeautyBay.com, priced at £6.95

What do you make of the shade?  Would you wear it?

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Sink or swim?  I’m definitely sinking this week but I’m not going down without a fight!  Splish Splash feels rather apt and this beautiful cerulean blue is a dreamy shade.  Again, I had issues with thickness and pooling at the edges of the nail bed… thin coats are a must, but the polish redeems itself with a no-nonsense coverage that’s done in two coats.

All of the shades in this Summer Neons collection have benefited from a top coat to bring back the shine that these neon formulas often lack upon dry-down.  The shimmer gives this sea-blue a real kick and sparkle that does it complete justice in the sun.

China Glaze Splish Splash is available to buy instore from Sallys or online at BeautyBay.com, priced from £6.95

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I’m not really down with surfing jargon but I have totally watched Point Break as many times as the next girl, perhaps even more… sometimes in slow-motion too.

hang ten (verb American) – to ride a surfboard (at near-optimum speed or full stretch) with the toes of both feet hooked over the front. From the jargon of American surfers since the early 1960s. The phrase is sometimes used figuratively to mean something like ‘go full-tilt on a risky course.

China Glaze’s Hang Ten Toes might not make me think of Keanu Reeves or Patrick Swayze (rip) but it does make me think of long Summer days and sand between my toes.

Hang Ten Toes* is a superbly vibrant, hot pink with a silvery shimmer that gives the polish some blue flashes in the right light.  It’s a more wearable neon pink than some, though still impressively bright.  The formula was good, a little thick – as with the whole collection so far, it needs a small amount of care and attention to prevent pooling at the cuticles.  That’s the price CG have decided we should pay for impressive opacity in only two coats this time around.

China Glaze Hang Ten Toes is available to buy instore from Sallys or online at BeautyBay.com, priced from £6.95

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