Nails Inc Gossip Girl Inspired NOTD - Chanel Black Pearl and GOSH Rainbow

I've seen quite a few posts over the last few days about the new Nails Inc Gossip Girl collection.  Basically, these are a nail colour with a sparkly, foiled over-glaze, sold at an eye-watering £20 for a set with the two polishes.  There are three colours to choose from, although I think they all look pretty similar to me!

I was reading Le Petit Jardin de Liloo's post on the new collection, where she mentioned that the over-glazes are very similar to Rainbow by GOSH (which is sadly now discontinued).  I do own Rainbow (I think I got one of the last bottles in the country), and I decided to use it to create my own Nails Inc Gossip Girl inspired/dupe nail look.

All the Gossip Girl colours are dark, in blue, black and deep maroon.  I don't own a pure black nail colour, but I do have Black Pearl by Chanel which is blackish/dark green/petrol, so I used this as a base colour.  I used two coats of Black Pearl and then put on a coat of Rainbow.

I'd not used Rainbow for ages and had forgotten how lovely it is - it has large flakes of foiled glitter in green, yellow and red depending on the light - you can see all the colours on the same nail.  It also dries smoothly (unlike some other foiled glitter polishes) and for some reason, I think it dries very quickly and speeds up all the undercoats drying as well.  It acts as a tough top coat, lasting for ages.

If you've got Rainbow, you can easily recreate the Gossip Girl Nails Inc polishes look using cheaper nail polishes - you definitely don't need to spend £20 to get this look!

Other than these sets, has anyone found a good dupe for Rainbow?  I'd be really interested to find out!

Thanks for reading! xx

My Nail Polish Collection - The Greens

So yesterday I posted my blue polishes - today it's the turn of the greens.  I seem to have quite a few green polishes - really quite amazing, as I never thought I'd be wearing green on my nails.

From left to right: Accesorize Aztec, Illamasqua Veridian, Chanel Khaki Vert, Mavala Bronze Green, 17 - not sure of the name, I think it has something to do with mints, Revlon Minted, Revlon Emerald City.

Here's another one I forgot to include in my earlier photo - Nails Inc Neal Street.

I've done NOTD posts of the Nails Inc, Accesorize, Illamasqua and Chanel polishes, but none of the others.  I've not even worn Emerald City yet.  I really loved the colour of Minted and have tried to do a good application of it for a NOTD post loads of times.  Unfortunately the formula is terrible - one of the worst I've ever used.  It bubbles, is streaky, needs about 4 coats to turn opaque, takes forever to dry and chips like anything.  I've never successfully applied it.  It's strange, as I love all the other Revlon polishes I've used.  My favourite colours are Veridian and Khaki Vert, although shockingly, I've only used each one once.  And I went to a lot of trouble to get Khaki Vert as well. 

Are you a green polish fiend? 

Thanks for reading! xx

My Nail Polish Collection - The Blues

As promised - here's a blog post!  Today I've been sorting out my nail polish collection and tidying it into a new box.  Before I started blogging I rarely used to wear colour on my nails, but now I wear lots of outlandish colours and I think that nail polish is one of my beauty 'things'.  I've rushed out to buy the latest Chanel must-have and gone to considerable lengths to get my hands on certain colours.  Gone are the days of having a french manicure and a few reds, pinks, lavenders and a single brozey/gold polish which all fitted neatly into a small makeup bag.  Over the past 8 months my collection of polishes has expanded rapidly and I've had to change my storage several different time!

I know that I still don't have a huge collection - I have around 60 polishes, and I must admit that there are some that I've never worn, and some polishes that cost a lot of money and I've only worn once!!!  There are also a lot of brands I've never tried - China Glaze, Barielle, Orly and Leighton Denny are all on my wish list of brands to try. 

Rather than bombard you with a huge post full of polishes, I thought I'd break them down into colour groups.  So first off - the blues:

Left to right are Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe, Marvala Smoky Blue, Nails Inc Diet Coke Collection Denim, GOSH Gypsy Blue and Rimmel Sky High.

I've done NOTDs with the Lippman and Mavala polishes, but none of the others, so let me know if you're interested in seeing them.  I've worn all of them except the Nails Inc polish, and I like the colour of all the polishes.  I've bought all of these polishes over the last year - if you'd told me I'd have 5 blue polishes a year ago I would've laughed!  I bought the Rimmel one first, last spring, and I thought it was quite a bold and daring colour at the time.  I restricted its use just to my toes!  Now I'd think nothing of wearing the Mavala polish on my fingers to work... oh how things have changed.

By the way - I have the blue Mac Wonder Woman polish on order as well - I can't wait!

I have a few more of these colour themed posts to come - let me know if you're interested in seeing any NOTDs of any of the colours.

Thanks for reading!  xx

The Beauty Diet Update – How am I Doing?

Well I’m nearly a month into my Beauty Diet and Project 15 Pan and I have a few updates for you.  I’ve used up my Liz Earle shampoo and conditioner, and finished both of my facial exfoliators.  I was sad to use up the shampoo and conditioner, as I really rated both products, despite initially taking a few goes to get to grips with the shampoo.  I won’t do a review of these here, as they’ve been a popular choice with the blogging community and I’m sure you’ve read any reviews on them.  Suffice to say,  I will be repurchasing them in the future, and I cut the tube of conditioner to get three extra applications from it.  I was hoping that the exfoliators, along with a dermabrasion scrub I have would last me until the end of February.  However, I clearly didn’t have as much as I thought left, so I’ve finally finished my ‘bad’ exfoliators after about 6 months of use. 

Before I started my Beauty Diet, I did have two Christmas gift sets on order from The Sanctuary (at £9 each, they were a bargain).  They both contain facial scrubs, and I can nick my boyfriends facial scrub which I love, so I'm not going to run out any time soon! 

One of my goals was to not buy any shower gels for a whole year.  I thought that this would be a tough challenge.  However, we’re nearly at the end of January and I’m still on my first shower gel, which wasn’t a large bottle,  and I usually have two showers a day!  At this rate, this challenge is going to be a piece of cake!  

I try to use up my ‘worst’ shower gels first, so at the end of the year I’m left with my most luxurious.  I chose what I assumed to be a cheap and chemically shower gel I received in a gift set at Christmas, toffee apple body wash.  However, I’m seriously impressed with my choice!  It smells lovely, it produces loads of lovely thick suds, and despite its bright blue colour, it doesn’t irritate my skin at all (something I’m prone to).  The gift set I received it in also contained a chocolate shower gel, a toffee apple and a chocolate body lotion, a soap that looks and smells like chocolate and a sponge that looks like a piece of chocolate cake.  I had assumed it was a very cheap pressie, but clearly I was wrong.  Looking at the packaging, it is a Boots product, so I can’t wait to try out the other bits in the gift set.

I’ve nearly finished using up two body moisturisers, which I already had on the go before I began this challenge, but I’m not quite there.   I’ve been trying to moisturise my body every night before bed, but I have slipped a few times.

In terms of my spending, I haven’t been completely saintly, but I’ve been pretty good.  I did purchase Across the Universe nail polish by Deborah Lippmann (£16), but after the lengths I went to get it, I’ll forgive myself that!  I also purchased 8 bottles of Diet Coke to take advantage of Nails Inc polishes offer.  Although this cost just over £9, I do drink lots of Diet Coke, so I don’t actually count this as breaking my Beauty Diet!  I have also spent all my boots points (around £18) – it’s astonishing how many essentials I’ve needed this month – everything seems to have run out at the same time.  Toothpaste, deodorant, cotton wool, plasters, paracetamol, tampons, savlon and I’ve no points left! 

Today I took the decision to buy some products in Boots that I really needed.  First of all I got some Flexitol Heal Balm, as my feet are currently in a terrible state, and have got to the stage where they are actually painful.  I have inherited bad feet from my Mother, and I’m not pleased!  If there was one part of my body I could swap, it would definitely be my feet.  I also purchased some Scholl Skin Softening Cream, as I find that this also works a treat.  I’ve no idea why I got both products – I just couldn’t chose I suppose. 

I also decided to buy some new shampoo.  Once I’d finished my Liz Earle, I moved onto a some bottles of shampoo and conditioner from The White Company.  However, they did absolutely nothing for my hair.  The shampoo smelt like an old fashioned perfume (not in a good way) and the conditioner didn’t penetrate my hair at all.  I decided that I couldn’t stand a whole month of using them!  I’m going to leave them at my parent’s house next time I visit as ‘emergency’ shampoo and conditioner, as I’m frequently in London overnight, but I like to travel light and usually never bring either product.  As neither of my parents use conditioner, if I do decide I need to wash my hair, I usually end up having to buy a full sized bottle (hence the conditioner mountain). 

I bought a shampoo by Naked.  I’ve not tried this brand before, but I’ve seen some rave reviews from other bloggers, so I thought I’d give it a go, particularly as it’s free of parabens, sulphate, nasties etc.  It cost a very reasonable £4.06, although there was a 2 for £6 offer on in Boots (which I resisted).  I’ve no idea why I bought the shampoo for long and straight hair.  Although my hair is now shoulder length, it’s far from straight.  I think something took leave of my senses in Boots today...

So, I’ve slipped a bit – I’ve spent around £30 on essentials and one luxury purchase and another £9 on Diet Coke (with free nail polish) and £18 worth of Boots points.  That’s actually quite a lot of money and it makes me realise how much I usually fritter away on beauty bits and pieces.  I’m not going to be too hard on myself in February, as I’ll definitely want to get some things in preparation for my holidays.  However, I hope to not buy any beauty products until my payday on 26^th February. 

I will update separately on my Project 15 Pan.  Sorry for rambling on! Thanks for reading!  xx

NOTD - Nails Inc Neal Street

I love that Nails Inc name their polishes after streets in London.  As you may know, I'm secretly a Londoner, and I do loads of work in the Big Smoke, so their polishes are evocative of places I know.  I work for retailers all over the city, and last week, a job I was working on in Neal Street was causing me no end of grief.  So I thought I'd wear Nails Inc Neal Street in an attempt to neautralise all the stress that the real Neal Street has been causing (it's one of my favourite places in London as well, so I was praying this would work).

So Neal Street, is a thick, greeny/turquoise polish that applies pretty true to the colour in the bottle.  It applied quite well, with not too much glooping or bubbling, and although I could've got away with a single coat if I'd been in a hurry, I used two.  However, this is a matte polish, although it doesn't say so on the bottle anywhere. I didn't like the effect of the matte polish, it was just too dull, and didn't work at all well with the colour, so I painted over it with a glossy top coat, which worked perfectly!  I find that Nails Inc polishes are notoriously bad at chipping, so it would definitely need a topcoat anyway.

Why is it that my NOTD photos always feature a random cat hair on my fingers???

I liked the colour, nice and bright, but not too over-the-top. Unfortunately, it didn't stop my work problems, but it did cheer me up a bit!  The downside is, it chipped after 1 day, and tip-wear also started after one day.  In the photos it doesn't look so bad, but my other hand was awful, and I've tried to hide the thumb of my left hand in the photos, as it chipped beyond belief!  The photos were taken after 3 days.

I'm not bowled over by Nails Inc polishes.  I love their colours and the concept, but their staying power is quite bad, especially as they're not a cheap and cheerful brand.  I was also annoyed with this polish, as it didn't say it was matte anywhere.

Thanks for reading!  xx

NOTD - Children In Need 'Spotty' Manicure

I know that this is a bit late, but I wanted to show you my Children In Need manicure, that I wore yesterday.  We had a dress down day at work, where we had to wear something spotty and give money to Children In Need.  As I don't own anything with spots apart from one pair of socks, I decided to give myself a spotty manicure.

I started by using a French manicure tip colour as a base.  I'm not sure of the brand, just one I'd had knocking around for a while.  It needed two coats to get an opaque base, and it was a terrible, gloopy polish.  Nevermind, I was going to cover up my mistakes!

I then used Nails Inc polish in St Johns Wood and GOSH Gypsy Blue to dot my nails.  This was a little bit tricky, but I quite liked the effect.  It took a while to dry as some of the dots were quite thick.  I alternated the colours on each nail.  I didn't use any fancy tools, just the brush for dotting, hence the dots varied in size and thickness.

I had quite a lot of comments on my nails, including from random people in shops, as well as friends.  People were asking me where I had them done, which was quite a compliment!

This was a fun and relatively easy thing to do to my nails, and it was nice to do something a bit different, which had a purpose, for a good cause. 

Did you do anything special for Children In Need?

Thanks for reading!  xx

Reminder of my 100 Followers Giveaway - Ending Soon

Hi - just a little reminder that my 100 followers giveaway ends tomorrow night at midnight.  You can enter it here.  Hurry for your chance to win!

Thanks for reading! xx

CLOSED! 100 Follower Giveaway - Nails Inc, Marvala Elle, Soap and Glory, No. 7, NYC

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED

Hello peeps!  I have noticed that I now have over 100 followers to my blog!  That's amazing, as I haven't been blogging for very long, so thank you to everyone who reads my blog!

As a little thank you to my followers, I thought I'd have a little giveaway.  I'm pretty skint at the moment, so it's not the most amazing giveaway, more of a token of my appreciation.

Anyway, here are the goodies!

Nails Inc polish in Duke Street

NYC Perfect and Reflect Concealer Palette

Sexy Mother Pucker lip gloss by Soap & Glory

The Essentials Palette by No. 7

And Marvala Nail Polish in Elle (I forgot I had picked up two of these!)

So how do you enter?  Well, firstly, you MUST be a follower.  New followers are of course always welcome, but not if you've only set up an account to enter giveaways.  Then leave me a comment saying 'enter me'.  Please either make sure you leave your email address, or have it easy to find on your blog so that I can contact you if you win.

You can have a second entry by tweeting about my giveaway, making sure you mention @bristolbeauty in your tweet.

The giveaway closes at Midnight on Saturday 23rd October, afterwhich I will pick a winner at random using Random.org.

That's it!  Thank you very much followers!  Mwahhh! xxx

THIS GIVEAWAY IS NOW CLOSED 

Elle 25 Year Anniversary Event at Harvey Nichols, Bristol (and haul)

Hello lovelies!  I thought I'd tell you about an event I went to on Tuesday evening at Harvey Nichols in Bristol.  It was an Elle beauty event to celebrate their 25th anniversary.  I paid £15 for the evening, with the promise of demonstrations, goodie bags, cocktails and canapes and the Elle beauty team on hand.  The ticket price was redeemable off the price of purchases.

I'd never been to an event like this before, but from reading other people's blog posts about the previous Elle events in Harvey Nichols in London, Leeds, Birmingham and Edinburgh, I was quite excited.  It's a shame that I left disappointed.  Yes there were cocktails and canapes, but as I'm on a weight loss challenge at the moment I had to stick to a glass of OJ and resist the canapes.  But where were the demonstrations?  I was there for almost 2 out of the 3 hours and in that time there was just one proper demonstration, a makeover by Shu Uemura.  All the counters were offering make-overs, but as I hate other people doing my makeup, I decided to resist.  I did have a hand and arm massage from Jo Malone which was really lovely and has made me really want the orange blossom scent from the range.  But other than that, there was little else going on.  At the Nails Inc counter, you still had to pay for a manicure; I would've thought for a special event like this they would have been free.

If you've ever been to Harvey Nicks in Bristol, you'll know that it is very small.  There isn't a huge number of beauty counters, so it was actually quite difficult to spend two hours looking at all the products, even for a beauty addict like me!  Some of the counters had loads of extra staff who weren't doing a lot, whereas others had only one member of staff who was busy and harried (Chanel).

I eventually couldn't resist the hard sell any longer, and got out my credit card (I know I'm supposed to be on a spending diet...).  I bought 3 Nails Inc polishes for £20, but got £15 off from my ticket price.  I then spotted a little shelf of Butter London polishes.  I'd not seen these in the flesh before, but I'd been craving All Hail McQueen, so I bought that for £10.  I also bought two tubes of Sexy Mother Pucker lip gloss from Soap & Glory.  I then decided to buy Chanel Intimitable Intense Mascara... Whoops!

What I was sorely disappointed in was the lack of swag.  I entered a Laura Mercier competition, but other than that, there were no freebies at all.  Where was the promised goodie bag??!!  That's half the reason for going!  There also didn't seem to be any Elle staff on hand, or if there were, they didn't identify themselves.  When I bought my Chanel mascara, the Chanel lady was busy carrying out another make-over, so a different member of Harvey Nicks staff served me.  She asked me if I wanted a bag for my mascara - come on, it's Chanel!  Of course I want a bag for that!!!  She also didn't give me any free samples.  I'd seen the proper Chanel lady filling up her customers bags with freebies!  So I left with nothing that I hadn't paid for.  It was a poor show from both Harvey Nicks and Elle.

Anyway, after my rant, here's my haul:

Nails Inc polish in St John's Wood

Nails Inc polish in Neal Street

Nails Inc polish in Duke Street

Butter London polish in All Hail McQueen

Sexy Mother Pucker by Soap and Glory

Inimitable Intense Mascara by Chanel.

By the way, one of the Nails Inc polishes (Duke Street) and one of the Soap & Glory glosses will be part of a forthcoming 100 followers giveaway I have planned.

Thanks for reading! xx