NOTD - Putty and glitter

Morning!

Excuse my erratic posting at the moment, I have a cold so my usual late night posts ahve been replaced with sleep, and it's my first born's 4th birthday on Monday and we have visitors etc over the weekend, so I'm not sure what I'll manage! I'll schedule a post this evening for sometime over the weekend to keep you amused!

Anyway, the untried challenge is still going strong. Today is the last day of September, and my god I'm going to splurge. But I've rehomed my untrieds into a much smaller box, and there are about half the polishes in there that were there at the start of the month. I'll do my last manicure of the challenge tonight and then have a week every month where I go through them. I'm glad it's over, and glad I did it but it was a pain when I wanted a particular colour but didn't have any! I stuck to it though and each manicure I've worn this month has had at least one polish from "the box".

The manicure I'm showing you today used two polishes, but only one I hadn't used previously. I bought a set of three icing polishes on ebay on a whim, a matte pink, a purple, and this one, a sort of pale grey colour. It reminds me of window putty (in the days before uPVC) so that's what I'm calling it. It was a pain to apply as although it was listed as new there was only about 2/3 of the bottle left and the brush didn't reach down far enough. Only needed 2 coats though. Then I topped with it ELF Golden Goddess which is gold micro glitter and gold holo hexes in a clear base.

It lasted really well, and instead of taking it off because it chipped like usual, I only took it off when I was bored of it. I should have mattefied it, but I forgot.

That's all for this morning loves, how are you all enjoying this crazy weather?! I hope it stays for Ollie's birthday on Monday!

Hx

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Boudoir Prive - a catalogue of errors with a happy ending - Zoya Neeka

Hello

I caved in and subscribed to Boudoir Prive, one of the three or so beauty boxes floating around at the moment. Basically, you pay £10 and get sent a box of 5 or 6 high end beauty, health and lifestyle samples every month. You know me, I'm a budget kinda girl and I'll never pay full price for something if I can help it, so I never get anything "high end". Anyway, I opted for Boudoir Prive over the others for no other reason than I had a code to get my first box for half price. I signed up on something like Augus 18th (so way before my no-buy started :p ) and they told me I'd be debited on September 5th for £5 and receive my box sometime mid-September. Fine. Except that a few days after I was meant to be billed I had an email saying my payment hadn't gone though but not to worry they'd try again in a few days. I knew I had enough money in my bank account to cover £5 (I'm broke but it's not that bad yet) so I went to their website to try and check the details they had for me. I couldn't check my card details through the account section on their website so I emailed their support team, and the FAQ's said I would have a reply in 48 hours. I didn't hear anything for about three days, then had an email saying my box had been despatched, so I assumed the payment had gone though. Then, I had another email confirming that it hadn't gone through, and I would need to purchase a one-off and continue my subscription next month. Wut? One person said the box had been despatched, one person said it hadn't. Of course, not wanting to miss out (as I had heard rumours of what was going to be inside) I emailed back asking for clarification, before I bought another box when one was already on the way. before I heard anything back, I came home Friday morning after the school run to find the box on my doorstep (gotta love Royal Mail) and an email later in the day saying my box was free of charge because of the confusion. Phew! I appreciate that the period around the despatch of the boxes is a busy time for the people at Boudoir Prive, and confusion is bound to come about, but they dealt with it well and I will continue my subscription - for another month at least.

Anyway, rant over, let's get to what you're really here for. I had heard on the downlow that there would be a nail polish in this months box, and oh boy what a nail polish! Zoya Neka from the new Smoke and Mirrors Collection! My very first Zoya. From what I've seen on other blogs different people got different colours, and I'm glad I got Neeka. Dusty purple with gold and pink micro glitter? Don't mind if I do. I love love love it, unfortunately, the shimmer doesn't show as well on the nails (2 coats) as it does in the bottle, but it's still yummy. I stamped over it with Miss Sporty Electric Beige.

I'm now pining over Jem and Yara from the same collection, thanks to getting some nail spoon things in the Boudoir box, but there's no way I'll ever be able to afford them, especially at over £9 a bottle. But Neeka I got for free (even if I had paid the £5, or heck even the £10 I would have loved it just as much), it's gorgeous and it's my first (and probably only ever) Zoya.

If you got a Boudoir Prive box, wha Zoya did you get? If you haven't signed up yet, and you want to give it a go you can use the code 1box12 until 29th Sept to get your first box half price. You can thank me with a "bisous" apparently.

Hx

PS Would you be interested in seeing my collection swatched on nail wheels?

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NOTD - Milkshake and leopard print

Hi guys,

I'm feeling pretty rough so this will be short and hopefully sweet, and then I am taking my flu-ridden arse to bed! I said the other day I had broken my no buy as the old man bought me two polishes for hitting a weight loss milestone, and one of them was Collection 2000 Hot Looks Milkshake. These polishes are only about £1.79 for an 8ml bottle but at the moment they are 2 for £1.99 in Superdrug (I have my eye on another couple...). Milkshake is a nice nude-pinky-brown that was opaque in 2 coats. I then added leopard print to ring finger and thumb using MUA Shade 4 and the other Hot Looks polish I got, All That Jazz. So, even though I added 2 polishes to my untrieds I used them straight away, and can cross MUA Shade 4 off the list too...

I love the look of this manicure, it looks clean and on trend - very yummy Mummy of me!

What do you do to jazz up plain manicures? Are you a fan of an accent nail?

Hx

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Pink Wednesday - I have really bad breath in the morning...

Hello and happy Pink Wednesday! Missed it last week, I did try a pink polish but my LO was poorly and I had to pick him up while the polish was still wet so I took it straight off and went for something different (and not pink!) This is  2 coats of Models Own Pink Blush with 2 coats of Revlon Galaxy on top. Pink Blush is the last of the Models Own polishes I got in the 50% off sale by Models Own, and much as I love Grace Green I think I saved the best to last. It's a Barbie pink creme that applied nicely, but dragged a little so make sure your base coat is completely dry and your brush is well loaded. I got revlon Galaxy as I was looking for a sparse black glitter in a clear base and this is as close as I could get. As well as the black glitter it has holo glitter and silver hexes. It's discontinued, but I got mine easily and cheaply on ebay, and I'm sure I've seen it on market stalls and discount stores like Savers too. It's not in the least bit gritty, so you could even get away with no top coat. A lazy girls glitter! Removal will be via foil mind you...

Then because glitter looks all pretty mattefied, I mattefied it.

Think I preferred it shiny, it looks a bit chalky with the matte top coat. But I still love it. Sometimes the simple ideas are the ones you like the most :)

Hx

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NOTD - MeMeMe Pin-Up + Elf Dark Navy Funky French

Another two polishes ticked off the list! I wore this one a few days ago. The MeMeMe polish is one of their old ones that I picked up in Savers a while ago - it's in the old style bottle but the brush was still good - not like their new mega-huge perfect-nail-in-one-swipe brushes, but still good. I don't wear red often but I have no idea why as I like it on my nails. 2 coats and it was super shiny so silly me didn't use topcoat (I'm dangerously low and don't want to buy any) and there was major tipwear at the end of day one, so I covered it with thin french tips in ELF Dark Navy and eeked it out for another day. Both polishes are definitely keepers.

ooh...shiny...

I don't know how many reds I have in my collection, but it's not as many as the pinks or purples. Are there any you'd recommend? I have been swatching on nail wheels and reds are next on my list to do, so I'll show you that soon.

In other news, I've broken my no-buy. Well sort of. My other half got a fantastic new job yesterday, and today I reached a milestone with my weight loss (I've now lost 10% of my starting weight!) so he treated me to two new polishes. Collection 2000 Hot Looks polishes are two for £1.99 in Superdrug at the moment and he treated me to Milkshake and All That Jazz. I've been craving a nude but don't have any in my untrieds so I'll wear Milkshake soon!

Hx

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NOTD - Playing with pigment again

This time not quite as successfully. I used W7 Graphite as the base and an emerald green Collection 2000 Dazzle Dust. I was seriously impressed with Graphite. A chrome-y silver that was perfectly opaque in one easy coat. Perhaps a teeny bit brush strokey, but I can deal with that. It might even be good for stamping, I'll test it out and let you know. It dried fast and because I wasn't expecting it to be a one coater I applied a second to stick the pigment to. This pigment didn't work as well as the Models Own one I used in my first pigment manicure, perhaps the texture is slightly oilier and therefore it's less "lose". It was certainly harder to cleanup. I like the look of the mani anyway, and it's still intact after a day of wear.

Sorry it's a bit messy still, I couldn't find my clean up brush and had t use cosmetic cotton buds, which are good but just not thin enough.

In  other news, I changed my blog layout (in case you didn't notice!). I couldn't figure out what the problem was with the old layout when viewed in Firefox so I started again. And then the header didn't match so I changed that too. It's not perfect, the header is a little blurry and I haven't got my columns right but I'll perfect it over time! Hopefully it's working now, but if you spot anything not quite right, or you don't like the dark background or have any suggestions, please please let me know!

Hope you all had a nice weekend :)

Hx

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I don't usually do this but...

...this is such an awesome prize I had to share it (and get myself an extra chance of winning teehee). Since Orly is so lame here and I don't even think they launched this collection in the UK, and OPI Merry Midnight is very hard to find, I'd not even given a second thought to getting my hands on them and just drooled at the various other bloggers sporting it instead. But now the gorgeous Colour Coated is giving two away to her lucky readers! You can win a set of the two (they're very very close dupes, as you can see by her post) or Fowl Play on it's own, so there are two chances to win! Just visit Jasmine's beautiful blog here or click the picture to enter!

Hx

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