Spring Cleaning... Or (nail) Polishing.

These title puns are getting out of hand ;)

Hope you're all good gang. Today I'm going to be displaying my latest Spring nail polishes:

Left to right: (top) Seche Vite top coat, OPI Original Nail Envy.
(bottom) Pop Beauty Nail Glam in 'Lavender Love', Orly's 'Oh Cabana Boy' and Ciate's 'Strawberry Milkshake'.
(P.s. Sorry these pics were taken without a flash, I think my camera might be broken. Cry.)

If any of you have seen my nail polish collection post, you'll notice ALL of these are new. OOPS. But to be fair to me (or, to justify it to myself) I do change up my nail colour all the time. Plus, I had been looking for the perfect collection of nudes. Primarily for Spring and Summer, also because they can be worn all year round. By nudes I mean a selection of nudes and very pale pastels; I'm not best friends with beigey nudes, especially not on my nails. I do have a couple of Essie colours, which I love, but I like to try out new brands (All of these brands were new to me, bar OPI). And I'm glad I did:

Ciate's Strawberry Milkshake is a very decadent nail polish. I got it from beautybay.com for £8.50, which is expensive for a polish. However you're paying for quality. The packaging is beautiful. The colour is like that of a Frijj strawberry milkshake. It's a slightly brighter pale pink than is showing in the picture. I am in love with these pale pastel shades at the moment. I have some pastels from Models Own and I just find them a bit bright for everyday wear in Spring. So, in love with this colour, I was ready to bid farewell to polish shopping. But you know how it is, you're on Asos looking at the sale, you head to the beauty section and down the side the devil's advocate is flashing 'Products you may like' at you... Which leads me to:

Asos, £6.50

Pop Beauty's Lavender Love is what I imagine Essie's Lilacism to be like. A very pale lavendery lilac, verging on off white, it gives the most subtle colour to the nails without being over-powering. I am in the most pleasent depths of love with this! It is EXACTLY what I've been looking for. This and the Ciate polish are just perfection. Plus they look super cute together. It's the sort of colour a beauty addict would look at and appreciate, but your boss isn't going to ask you if you've been finger painting. Unlike with this polish:

Freshly painted to swatch, hence the Nail Envy all over my finger. Oops.

Orly's Oh Cabana Boy is a gorgeous neon, electric, hot Barbie pink. I bought it on a whim from Cheapsmells.com for £5.45. I was ordering more Macadamia hair oil and errr 'broused' a little too thoroughly. My bad. I'd heard Fleur from FleurDeForce discussing it and just pressed buy before I knew what had hit me. When I was waiting for it to come I was a bit wary of the obnoxiousness of the colour. I mean I love my brights but this is seriously 'plastic fantastic'. Low and behold, I am in love with it. It's the perfect toe colour. I haven't painted all my finger nails with it yet, I'm not sure it's hot enough at the moment, but it just makes my feet look all 'I'm-on-holiday-having-fun-relaxing-and-tanning'. Amazing.

A quick pat on the back must also go to my base and top coat of choice. I feel like these two products are seriously hyped up and pricey, but for good reason. I got the OPI Nail Envy with a voucher for my birthday. It retails for £18.65 in Boots, which makes me seriously sick in my mouth because I love it and can't face paying that much. It works as a base and nail strengthening treatment. I had a devastating moment last week when my thumb nail broke off by about an inch. It was beautiful. Sigh. But I'm sure this bad boy is stimulating growth, and for that I am ever thankful. Also the Seche Vite top coat. I was mega wary when I got it because it says 'This product is known to the State of California to cause birth defects or other reproductive harm'. However I read this blog post -http://lacquerglamour.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/seche-vite-and-toluene-harmless-or-harmful/
- and I felt reassured it was safe enough to use. It leaves a surprisingly glossy, high shine finish. Plus it speeds up the polish drying time (I'm excited to use it on Essie polishes because I swear they don't even dry overnight. ;)). My friend even asked the other day if I'd had my nails done. Serious swoon.

What's your favourite neutral, pastel polish for spring? Is there one I need to know about? Do you have/love any of my faves? Let me know :)

Livvy xo

The Nail Varnish Collection.

Alright girls, hope you're all loving life :)

It's time for the big one, my nail varnish collection. I'll warn you now it screams 'addict!' I've photographed my storage for it, then the polishes by brand then a miscellaneous pile at the end. I started off with 57 nail polishes. Eeeeek! I've narrowed it down to 44 now. I know that's still criminal, but you never know when you'll need 7 shades of blue. Right? :/ Haha.

So first off I'll show you how I store them:

My drawer top with my polishes, sprays (deodorant/hair spray), a fruit bowl of body products, 2 spare purses and some lip balm. It looks a bit cluttered but I love that shabby-all-over-the-place-chic thing :)

Up close: My nail polishes in a rose styled white wire rack from BHS.

The empty rack with white card in, to stop the polishes from going walkies, and a turquoise butterfly hair clip my Mum got me from Turkey.

Up close: The white card is just cut to size and folded in half. I saw DollyBowBow use this trick on her Youtube channel :)

I love my pretty wire rack. It doesn't take up much space and I can easily pull them out to have a look at. Originally I had them all on a drawer to lined up, but I kept knocking them over. Not practical. I feel like the rack is a good compromise between sensible and aesthetically pleasing. :)

On to the actual polishes, I'll just name the brands and put close-ups of a few faves. If you want to know a specific shade please do comment and ask, I'm more than happy to check for you:


Essie. Definitely my fave brand for wearable daytime neutrals. Although, you'll notice those shades are few and far between. ;)

Models Own + Models Own Pro (which looks a beautiful, shimmery emerald green in the bottle - it comes out almost black on my nails though. Sigh).



Barry M. - A.k.a. I have a serious issue. They're so affordable at £2.99 each and for the most part they only need a couple of coats. And the colour range is immense... I realise that has lead me to a few faux pas (bogey green, I'm looking at you) but we live and learn.



Boots No.7 - I.e. The crusaders of the £5 off voucher. Theses are of surprisingly good quality and the speed dry ones are complete gems. I'd never pay £7 for them though. Have a word Boots!

Revlon. Dribble. Facets of Fuschia (left) is my favourite. The more coats the better. Chunky glitter in deep purple, it's just pure heaven. In fact, all the Revlon formulas are beautiful and they have some gorgeous unique shades. Serious thumbs up.

Rimmel. I wouldn't write home about Rimmel polishes as they're quite translucent and need a good few coats. Disco Ball, however, (second from the left) is amazing! It looks silver, but it sparkles like a rainbow and looks like the night sky over a deep blue. A must have at only £2.99 (well I got it for £1.99 on offer, BARG!)



Max Factor. Don't buy these. They're practically see through. It's such a shame because I love their colours! The only reason I have so many is because I bought 2 to get a free gift box, which the other 2 came in. Luckily for Max Factor their Masterpiece mascara was in the gift or I would have been put off for life.



OPI. I love this polish. OPI is £10.99 or there abouts in England though, that's insane! I got this as a gift, I really can't justify spending that much myself (she says, wait until we get to Nails Inc.). That's the cost of 3 Barry M's with some change left over. It is incredible though.



Nails Inc. Oh the beauty. The one on the left is limited edition. It was hideously expensive, I only bought it because I saw Anna from ViviannaDoesMakeup wearing a similar colour which I thought was this. It was actually a previous limited colour and a dupe for Essie's Ladylike, which I bought because it actually looks nothing like this on. On the flip side Victoria, on the right, was free in a magazine (was it Glamour? I can't remember) and I LOVE it. It's like a deep blood red. Paints on like a dream.



I don't even know... I think they were my Mum's. Possibly Marks+Spencers? I just included these to indicate when hoarding goes too far. Oh dear.



Miscellaneous: (Top Left to Right) Miss Sporty x2, MUA, ELF, M+S
(Bottom Left to Right) Miners (No idea, my friend stole that from her Mum and gave that to me when we were about 9. Oops), 17, M+S, Collection 2000 & M+S. Standouts are the blue Miss Sporty, it's a really unique, fun colour, the 17 magnetic blue (which creates a cool way effect, plus it just gets extra points for having a magnet!) and the turquoise M+S colour. Beautiful.

Now for my close up:

Magpie.

Classic.



And that's my humble collection. I managed a small purge, ridding myself of these few:





Max Factor's water in a pot and Barry M's vomit shades took the main hit, along with a few others claiming their pensions. (Nice bit of celotape on my drawers, Christmas left overs. Can't buy class.)



It might not look like many to get rid of, but to be honest I'm always changing up the colour of my nails. My lipstick collection is more of a cause for concern, but I'll save that for another post.

I hope you've enjoyed looking at my stash, it took frickin ages to photo/write. I'm appreciating pro-bloggers more!

Do you have a nail varnish collection? What's your ultimate fave polish? Are you team neutral or brights?Ta for reading and please follow/comment if you liked my post,

Livvy xo

Question of the Week - QOTW. (1)

Alright gang, hope you're all dandy :)

I've decided I'm going to do a QOTW for beauty/make-up or maybe even fashion things. I'm still learning about all this stuff so I'd really appreciate the Beauty Blogger Community's help :)

So my question for this week is:

Does anyone else find it difficult to apply mascara to the eye opposite the hand they right with? I.e. I'm right handed and my left eye always looks a little off. I can never get the inner corner without splatting black over my face. Any tips for me?

Ta for your help in advance ;)

I pinky promise my next post will be my nail varnish collection. I've already taken the pics of it! :)

Livvy xo

Naked Hue.

Hey everyone, hope you're all cheery :)

I'm just about to photograph my nail polish collection, but I thought I'd quickly whack a little update post up first. The other day I got a very special delivery and I thought I'd show you what I got:



Urban decay Naked Palette.



MAC 'Hue' lipstick. Hello massive camera shadow ;)

I really shouldn't have bought these, but I've been lusting after both for about 3 months. Neither I could justify spending so much money on, however sheer desire eventually won. ;) The Naked palette was £35. Anyone who's read more than one beauty blog will know what it is, the ultimate cult eyeshadow palette. With it's little sister the Naked 2 palette having been just released in the UK (on the Debenhams website at least), you may be wondering why I bought the original? The simple answer is, I just prefered the wider selection of brown tones. I love it! Although now ViviannaDoesMakeup (how do I tag people? I feel like I'm robbing her info lol) bought MAC Soba recently and posted about it. Oh my gosh, it's like a dark chocolatey brown eyeshadow. I need it. Apparently an addict can never have enough ;) Hence why I'm doing my nail polish collection now, I'm desperately trying to convince myself to cull a few! Eek.

The MAC Hue lipstick (£13.50) is permanently listed in people's favourites on Youtube. As I mentioned in a previous post, I'm not the biggest 'nude shades' fan, but I'm learning to appreciate them. I am in love with this lipstick and I can't stop wearing it, but I can't put my finger on why? It's a paleish pink (nowhere near as bright or pale as the 'Saint German' shade - I'm trying to branch in to subtle) and really creamy. It almost feels like a lipblam and as a Glaze finish it is very sheer. My lips are SO dry though so it still looks a bit patchy. Can anyone recomend a really good lip scrub? I have Lush's Pow Wow popping candy scrub, it's okay but I need a miracle worker! Anyway, I piled my purchases on to my face, as I'm prone to, and this was the finished look:



FOTD



Naked and Buck eyeshadows, Max Factor Masterpiece and YSL mascaras :)

Firstly I know that's a really weird angle for a FOTD, but I used my MAC Fix+ and it gave me MEGA SHINE. Lesson learnt. I like the matte shadows with the lipstick because I think they make a quite natural but put together look. I'm also a new found fan of foundation in a shade that matches my face, although I'm not sure I'll ever be converted fully from my 'foundation tan face' love. ;)

I love how this is my version of a short post. Oops. I'm going to photo my polishes right now so I don't forget, so stay tuned and please follow my blog if you're a fan of nail polishes/obsessive collections.

Ta, Livvy xo