If you follow me on Instagram or Twitter, you’ll probably know that in December, I swatched all the colours from Ciate’s Mini Mani Month advent calendar. I decided to make a post featuring my favourite colours, and there’s a link below to take you to all of the swatches from the advent calendar on my Flickr account!
Starry Night from Ciate’s Mini Mani Month Advent calendar: nail swatch
I’m a big fan of Burberry beauty, and a recent convert to Dior, and I picked out my favourite hot pink, baby pink and really red shades from the brands to create three simple Valentine’s Day looks!
From the top, Vogue is my latest lipstick purchase – an outrageously girly hot pink from Dior which goes nicely with their new limited edition spring Bloom nail varnish. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it makes a lasting impression!
For a more subtle and romantic look, one of my favourite neutral pinks is English Rose from Burberry – and now a matching shade of nail varnish has been launched as part of the brand’s neutral shades. I can’t wait to try it!
Finally, what could be more classic than a red lip paired with red nails? Dior’s 999 is probably the most famous red shade on the market, and was reformulated in 2013 for Dior’s 60th anniversary and based on lipstick 9, the first lipstick Christian Dior ever created. Rich, deep and flattering, the colour also comes as a nail varnish – both perfect for a Valentine’s Day look!
I’ll be doing a post on Vogue and Bloom and the two 999 colours soon, but in the meantime, how about I leave you with some pictures from my visit to Christian Dior’s house in Granville? It’s now a museum dedicated to the fashion designer, and is definitely worth a visit!
It seems as though gold is definitely in this year, and in honour of the season (and in order to satisfy my window shopping habit) I’ve put together a collection of some of the hottest items in this season’s most festive colour! I was inspired by Burberry’s beautiful gold beauty collection – and when I saw Mulberry’s new Metallic Mushroom range, I knew there was no hope for resisting…
You guys know I’m a bit of a Burberry girl at the moment, so when I saw the new festive collection (complete with gold packaging) as part of Burberry’s new beauty range for Christmas, I pounced right away! I bought Trench Kiss (which is available as a lip mist all year round) and Soft Gold as a nail varnish. I’m saving the nail varnish post for tomorrow, but first, here’s the lovely packaging it comes with!
Love the postcard and the beautiful little gold card attached to the bag! I’m overflowing with Burberry bags at the moment, because the lip mist and nail varnish came in separate ones. Who’s complaining? Not me!
Anyway, Trench Kiss is a very neutral, nude colour, with a gentle, moisturizing finish that’s very sheer. It’s £22.50 and available from the site here in a regular silver edition, and here in festive gold. I am so impressed with the finish on Burberry’s lip covers and lip mists. They slide on like a dream, and feel gorgeous on your lips.
Check out the rest of the Burberry beauty Christmas range here, and come back tomorrow for my nail varnish post! (And check out my post on other A/W 2013 Burberry nail polish here!)
I’m really getting into the Halloween spirit here, and this is my third and final Halloween nail tutorial. (You can see my post about a pretty starry night tutorial here, and a pumpkin confetti tutorial here.)
As I’m going to be dressing as Medusa this Halloween, I thought a snakeskin mani was the only appropriate choice for nail art! Luckily, it’s pretty easy to replicate this.
Indigo Skull Scarf, Alexander McQueen
All you need is are two contrasting colours, some lace, and a makeup sponge. I’ve found that this effect works best if you use a dark colour underneath and a lighter colour on top. My tools are in the top left, and my first attempt is on the top right. Bottom left shows you how to place the lace over your varnished nail: basically, paint your nails as usual with your base and colour, then stretch over the lace and sponge the lighter top coat over the top, very sparingly. You then end up with the effect on the right! I used Ruby & Millie in Green, and topped with Revlon’s Gold Coin. Then, a slick of Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat, if you’re happy with the look. But me, I’m NEVER happy…
Snake Finger Tip Ring, ASOS / Grey Snakeskin Bag, Primark / Snake Bracelet, ASOS / Snake Necklace, eBay / Grey Skull Bracelet, Links of London
The top two images are the plain snakeskin mani, but if your base colour is very opaque, you can paint that over the top again, and get a really subtle snakeskin look, especially if you use a metallic glitter like I did…
But wait! There’s more!
Emerald Ring, Primark
If you’re going the whole hog, you may as well add some OPI Matte Top Coat, too! I found it really makes the snakeskin effect pop through the opaque layer…
Any plans for fancy nails this Halloween? Is anyone going to try out these tutorials? Let me know below!
Another manicure inspired by Pinterest (specifically this one), this is pretty much a copy, except it’s matte. So, in essence, it’s a completely original idea I had all by myself. Hooray!
I’ve been totally obsessed with matte nails for ages, and it’s fascinating what a difference it can make to the overall look just to take off the shine. Somehow it looks more… I’m trying to think of a word other than polished, but I can’t. Holy contradiction, Batman!
At my local Boots, I found a grand total of three different orange polishes and ended up plumping for Maybelline Orange Attack, as it was the most vibrant. I always use Nailtiques Formula 2 Plus on my nails, as they are very weak and need all the help they can get. After that, a couple of coats of Orange Attack, then a couple of L’Oreal Confetti Top Coat, then one of Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat. Then, the finishing touch – a swipe of OPI’s Matte Top Coat to finish.
An easy, effective Halloween manicure that looks much more complex than it actually is. One word of caution – the Confetti Top Coat is incredibly difficult to remove! You have been warned… WHOOOOO! (Insert spooky sound effect.)
Food, Fash, Fit’s photostream on Flickr.
I’ve noticed a lot of traffic coming my way from people searching for Ciate’s Mini Mani Month. So, here is a sneak peek of every single bottle inside the advent calendar, for those of you (like me!) who just can’t wait until December! Just click above to be taken to my Flickr photostream.
Following their runway show at London Fashion Week, Burberry has just branched out into a new range of nail varnish for autumn and winter 2013. The key colours that are available to buy individually (priced at £15 each for 8ml) are Black, Oxblood and Stone. (You can also buy the colours from LFW in a limited edition box of six for £90.) When I visited Burberry’s flagship store at the weekend, I picked up the Stone and Oxblood colours, as I couldn’t resist – even though the range was so new, they didn’t even have testers available yet!
As you can see from the picture above, the silver patterned cap comes off to reveal the applicator and brush top underneath – so you don’t have to struggle with a giant, rectangular handle when applying. However, I wonder whether the bottle top is a little too small for ease of use – I definitely struggled to get a neat finish with the Oxblood colour. The nail varnish is marketed as a quick drying formula – and that is definitely the case, because this dried superfast even though I couldn’t apply it evenly thanks to the thickness. I ended up using two coats and topping off with Seche Vite for a glossy finish.
Oxblood is just another trendy name for dark red that comes back around every A/W season, it feels like – although I get the feeling that this season no one can decide whether it should be called burgundy, oxblood or berry. Either way, I love it, and although you can argue there are differences between all these colours (berry is more purple… burgundy more bright) it certainly doesn’t matter to me about the specifics of the pantone chart. Dark red rocks, period. (Urgh, should I leave that in? Yeah, go for it.) Funnily enough, the sales assistant told me that the staff at Burberry’s stores aren’t even allowed to wear the Black or Oxblood colours, as their uniform guidelines specify only natural colours for nails. But, apparently, they are protesting about it!
This is Stone – and I really like it! I have a big crush on neutrals and Ciate’s Cookies and Cream is one of my favourite colours. (Favourite of all time is probably still China Glaze’s Fast Track, but I’ve not even done a post about that! Hmm!). Now, this colour is beautiful, but considering the price makes it almost triple what Ciate costs (£9 for 13.5ml) I’ll probably not be making a lot of repeat purchases. I found this colour slightly easier to apply – perhaps because the shade is lighter so I didn’t notice mistakes as much, perhaps because I wasn’t as tired this time around – but I still think the squared off brush needs to be a little more shaped to help application.
I think I’ll plan a neutral nail-off at some point in the future, between Fast Track, Cookies and Cream, Stone and whatever else have knocking around here! Do you dig neutral nails, or do you prefer a bit of drama?
If you followed my blog last year you’ll know I had a blast with the 2012 Ciate Mini Mani Month – an advent calender with a new Ciate shade every day! Not only is it great fun to try out new colours, but it’s also a great no-calorie alternative to choccies.
Ciate have relaunched the calendar for 2013, and it is available for £42 (plus p&p) from Selfridges here.
From the looks of their sneaky preview that was uploaded to Facebook today, we’ll see the return of the micro-pearls (it looks like there are at least a couple!), and the glitter/confetti topping (perhaps the fourth bottle from the left on the front row…) plus some shimmers, metallics and some lovely pastels, as well as more neutral and classic shades. Is that a full size bottle I see on the far left at the back? Maybe for Christmas day? Last year there were some exclusive glitter formulas for the calendar, so hopefully we’ll get the same this year! Ciate have confirmed that the line-up this year will be brand new with no repeats, so I’ll definitely be loading this into my virtual shopping basket come tomorrow…
When I saw this pin on Pinterest a while ago, I knew I had to make my own version! Creating using dotting tools, this simple manicure doesn’t take too much skill to create, but it certainly makes an impact. So, I ordered some tools from eBay, and got to work…
Thanks to Ciate’s Mini Mani Month, I had plenty of colours to choose from, so I decided to layer my Porchester Square mini from Nails Inc (which I got in my first GlossyBox back in November) with dots from Dangerous Affair, Power Dressing and Cookies and Cream.
First of all, I painted my nails with Porchester Square (really good formula, only needed one coat!) and then, when it dried, I dipped the largest dotting tool into my first colour, and just blobbed circles of varnish on the nail. A tip for this is to not use too much, as you end up with a raised bump of paint which takes forever to dry, and looks a bit weird. Dab on one colour, then allow to dry before placing the second – the paints will mix otherwise. And, it looks really cool if you can overlap some too!
Here’s the finished product! I thought this was fun – and the colours really worked well together too, but of course, you can use any scheme you like for a special event. I’ll definitely be doing this again.
Anyone else tried the dotty manicure?
Food, Fashion and Fitness 