Bargain Post: Crystal Polish Sets

Now first of all I apologise in advance for going back in time with the quality of these pictures, my laptop decided to break on me so all I have is my phone.

Under stress and with tiredness affecting my brain I have however ordered a brand new pretty shiny white one which will hopefully be delivered on Friday and I can finally get the layout of this blog finished! Anyway, back to the point of this post.

I was wandering around a shop called B&M (imagine half pound shop half furniture store if you can) and stumbled upon these. Now before I go into it, these were 99p each so I'm not even going to bother discussing the packaging, for 99p I'm just glad they didn't pour it directly into my hand and ask me to carry it home myself!

These sets consist of two small bottles, one being a base colour and the other a flaky top coat in a colour to compliment. Being so cheap I picked up all 4 colour combinations that they had.

The first was a black base and a top coat of holographic and white flakes.

Before the negatives with this one I have an amazing positive, the consistency and application of the black base colour was amazing, so smooth and PERFECTLY opaque in one coat. The pictures below are just one coat of this stuff, I was pleasantly surprised as for this price I was expecting a runny 3-coater of a formula. Now the negatives, the flaky top coat is so ridiculously thick that even as someone used to glitter polishes with tricky applications I found this a nightmare to apply. Don't think I have ever come across a formula as thick as this one, it's so bad and so unlike the others I'm actually wondering if I picked up a dodgy batch. So here's the outcome after some painstaking placement attempts with these flakes!

If the formula of this top coat was better and I was able to get a better placement with the flakes I'd quite like this for winter, almost reminds me of snowfall at night.

Next they had a deep red/berry base colour with a gold holographic flaky top coat in an orange jelly.

Once again super impressed with the base colour, opaque in one coat and alone it's quite the lovely shade for Autumn. Then we have the flaky top coat, application on this one is loads better than the first one. Applied fairly evenly and very little fiddling with the placement. Once again the base colour in the following picture is just one coat.

I kinda love this one and I'm not sure why. I couldn't pick up the multiple colours from the holographic flakes but they are seriously pretty. I think this is a good little party and, dare I say, maybe even Christmas polish.

The next is a cornflower blue base colour with a bright blue holographic flaky top coat in blue jelly.

I'm repeating myself I know but once again the base colour is easily a one coater and is also a very very pretty shade for Autumn. I love blues and with the hundreds of polishes I have this colour is nothing like any of the others I have. The application on the top coat for this isn't quite as bad as the first black and white one but it's also not as easy as the berry shade, the flakes in this seem to be a lot denser than the berry shade and so messing around with the placement does get more than a bit annoying and if I'm honest it's not really worth the time.

Slightly disappointed with the top coat on this one but glad I bought it for the base colour alone. The problem with the top coat is that they look holographic in the bottle but once on the nail you really can't see it and it left me feeling very, for want of a better word, blah.

Finally we've got an olive coloured base with gold flakes. No holographic flakes in this one just pure gold.

£5 to the person who can guess what's coming next... the base colour is once again an amazing one-coater. Perfectly opaque on the first try with a smooth application. The flaky top coat on this has the best formula for me, goes on evenly and leaves quite a lot of smaller flakes of gold on the nail.

Another one that part of me loved, something about the gold flakes in this just leave it looking almost luxurious and expensive! Sure it's not the OPI 18kt top coat but it's 99p!

So the base coats are all seriously impressive especially for the price and the top coats add a little bit of fun. Nothing amazing but for 99p each I'd say I was pleasantly surprised. 

That's all for now, hopefully I'll have a new laptop within a day or two as I'm off shopping tomorrow and have a feeling there'll be a few purchases I want to share with you all.

New Look... Coming Soon

As you might have been able to tell I'm halfway through a new look for the blog. The plan was to do it this weekend but I'm away for work for the next week and forgot my laptop so that put an end to that!

Anyway, hopefully be back soon with a whole new look and lots of posts... especially since it's payday when I come back, I can already hear Superdrug and Debenhams beauty section calling my name.

October Wishlist: Quirky Jewellery

Alright so it's only the start of October and I have already wishlist-spent my entire pay for October haha. I got most of the Autumn clothes I wanted last month but this month I'm looking at accessories and shoes. Now I'll start off my saying that I love my jewellery a little bit different, and also by saying that I cannot ever justify spending large amounts of money on jewellery because the likelihood is that within two weeks it will be lost. It's a terrible habit but I can almost guarantee that it will happen no matter how careful I think I'm being. It's a curse of sorts, I'd be more annoyed about it but right now I'm just thankful this curse has moved onto jewellery instead of phones (4 iPhones in one year thanks to my bad habit of losing my things!).

Anyway as you can probably tell by my blabbering it's late and I'm tired, you know that kind of tired where you're so sleepy that the last thing on your mind is sleep and you feel like you could talk for hours. Yeah, that's me. So here's my little wishlist, all saved on ASOS awaiting that glorious day that is payday.

October Jewellery Wishlist by lisab2187 featuring asos jewelry

Ted Baker ring
£41 - asos.com

Me Zena curb chain necklace
£18 - asos.com

Me Zena double chain necklace
£34 - asos.com

Asos jewelry
£3.67 - asos.com

Me Zena ring
asos.com

Me Zena butterfly clasp earring
£26 - asos.com

Maria Francesca Pepe earrings
£89 - asos.com

Me Zena ring
£48 - asos.com



Have you had any quirky jewellery finds recently? Please share in the comments, I'm always on the lookout :)

Barry M: Crystal Glaze review

...And we're back in business!

Here goes my first post in a little while. So happy to have the time to blog again and what better way yo start than to talk about one of my favourite brands; Barry M.

Now I bought pretty much all of the new Autumn collection as soon as they were released and have used a lot of them other the last week or so but for now we're focusing on the Crystal Glaze top coat as I've been wearing this a lot and getting lots of compliments on it. It's so pretty even in the bottle it draws attention.

Like pretty much all of us beauty bloggers I first tried this over the new Barry M shade Berry Cosmo. This looked so beautiful and gives an almost oil slick effect however there won't be any pictures as we've all seen that before by now.

First off I want to talk about the application, the crystal flakes in this spread easily and evenly on one coat, there's no pesky little flakes left sticking up they lay beautifully flat and dries very quickly. When I first tried it I was amazed at how easy it was, I've tried similar products before and had pieces sticking up and hated it but this is so simple to apply and dries pretty quickly especially as you only need a single thin coat for the desired finish.

Once I'd tried this over Berry Cosmo I started to wonder which of my hundreds of other shades this would work with and so I grabbed a nail wheel and got painting. Some of the colours I picked because they were my favourites and others because I was just curious as to how it would look.

Some of them I'm not even going to show a detailed picture with as it just didn't work. As you can see above this top coat really only works well with darker colour. With pale and pastel colours it does add a somewhat pretty accent but if I'm being honest I probably wouldn't waste the product or my time by applying this over such shades.

That said I did find a couple of amazing combinations. First up is Crystal Glaze over my absolute favourite shade from Autumn last year, Barry M's Watermelon from their Gelly collection. I'd been waiting for the cooler weather to start wearing this again and once I'd seen it with Crystal Glaze over the top I was even more excited. I don't have the best camera in the world so the pictures don't quite do it justice but you can see just how beautiful all the different colours are.

You can also see in the above pictures what I was talking about over the lighter/pastel shades. Above Watermelon I tried it with Barry M's Blueberry Ice Cream which I think was from the 2011 Spring release if I remember correctly. It does look pretty but it just doesn't allow the beautiful colours of this top coat to show as much as the darker shades do.

So that's Crystal Glaze making one of my favourite shades even better, so imagine how excited I was when I tried it over another favourite shade and it look amazing! This time was another Gelly but this time from this years Summer release, Blue Grape. I was always planning on bringing this shade through Autumn with me and now it'll be on those tips even more with this Crystal Glaze adding to it's amazing-ness.

Blue Grape is juuuuust dark enough to allow the multiple colours in this coat to really be shown off. Again, not the best picture quality but sadly until I win the lottery or marry rich this is the best I can do haha.

I hope this gives you an idea of how to best use this top coat and if you've found any other good combinations for this please leave it in the comments so I can try it out :)

I'm Alive!

Hey everyone!

Just a very quick update to let people know I am in fact alive! Between working 6 days a week and celebrating my brothers engagement I've barely had time to breathe let alone blog. I just wanna thank my new followers and let you know I will be checking out your blogs tomorrow when I finally have a day of rest!

Also thanks to my current followers and commenters, I have read and appreciated every single one I just had no time to reply. I cannot wait to get my beauty blogging fix tomorrow but for now all I have time for is my beauty sleep fix.

Expect a brand new post tomorrow and I'm excited to see what all my gorgeous fellow bloggers have been up to.