A Makeup & Beauty Blog – Lipglossiping

Whenever I get given one of those nifty till spits treating me to X amount off Boots No7, I make a beeline.  Well, two actually… my first port of call are the brushes, I must have a million No7 brushes that I always take with me on holidays.  You know the sort of thing… not so rubbish that they’re unusable, not so amazing/expensive that you’d cry if they got bent out of shape! Makeup bag staples.

My second stop-off is in front of the Boots No7 Stay Perfect nail polishes.  I’m a little bit reluctant to hand over full-price for the range but when you’ve got £3 off… well, things don’t seem quite so expensive after-all!

Especially when they look as pretty as this…

How lovely is that teal?  Next stop, it’s going on my toes!

I generally find the No7 formula to be a two-coater, the brushes have improved recently and now I can generally cover the nail in 3 strokes with an extra one thrown in to tidy up.  Drying time is average but the gloss is usually out of this world.  My biggest bug bear with the formula is that so many of the strong shades stain my skin and require more acetone in removal than I’d usually like to use.

Despite the moniker, Stay Perfect doesn’t actually stay all that perfect.  I usually get significant tip wear within a few days and the odd chip here and there, noteworthy for someone whose nails rarely suffer from chips!

That being said, I’m almost tempted to forgive it for being such a rich, glossy shade that looks as though it’s been poured on rather than painted.  Lush.

Boots No7 Stay Perfect Nail Colour in Cruising is priced at £6 (without a voucher) and available to buy instore and online at boots.com

Are you a fan of the No7 Stay Perfect nail range?

* press sample

Butter London’s Slapper, a.k.a the hardest nail polish to photograph in the world, ever.  It’s a super-bright teal which definitely leans more green than blue.  It’s more vibrant and a bit deeper than my photograph shows.  I was getting massively frustrated trying to capture the shade until I google image’d it and it turns out that I’m not the only one who suffered!

Unlike the others that I’ve tried from the Spring/Summer collection, Slapper went on like a textbook nail polish dream, the above photo shows two coats of perfection – the shade gave me no issues at all.  This season’s brights from the brand have all been edgier than the traditional summer neons though practically as bright and eye-catching.  The subtle nuances and retro-leanings have ensured that they stand out from the other releases, though so far, the formula has been a little unpredictable.

Butter London Slapper is available to buy online from PowderRooms, priced at £11.95.

From pale to dark, teal is the perfect blue/green combination and it’s everywhere this season.  I thought I’d swatch the cream teal nail polishes in my collection to give you some alternatives to Estee Lauder’s Teal Topaz spring sell-out polish.

From left to right: Estee Lauder – Teal Topaz  |  Misa – Dirty, Sexy, Money|  Barielle Shades – A Bouquet For Ava  |  American Apparel – Peacock  |  Ciate – Superficial

If shimmers are more your cup of tea, don’t forget that March is Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month and Lena White are donating £1 to Ovacome – the ovarian cancer support network – for every sale of OPI’s Teal the Cows Come Home.

Are any of these shades catching your eye?  What’s your favourite teal?

If you’re a little colour-shy when it comes to your eye makeup, coloured liners are the best place to start.  You can introduce a full spectrum of shades without turning too many heads just by adding a pop of colour to the waterline.  My favourite way to wear brights is with a flash of colour just beneath my lower lashes, it brings brightness to my eyes and makes me look a lot bolder than I feel!

Estee Lauder have released two Intense Kajal Eye Crayons this Spring, a chunky pencil with a creamy formula that lends itself well to both lining and using as a shadow.  If you’re looking for that pop of colour, might I point you in the direction of 03 Dramatic Teal, a shade that I can see flattering most, if not all, skintones.

Not much to look at in their generic stubby pencil-form, these crayons glide without pulling and yet remain firm enough to achieve some truly precise strokes across the eyelid.  The tip stays strong despite pressure and deposits nothing but creamy colour in its wake.

You need to allow around 2 minutes for the pencil to set fast and if your eyelids are particularly oily, you may find these migrate a little.  For normal complexions, these should set and hold throughout the day.  The only time I had any bother was when wearing a moisturising primer, combined with a cream foundation and to be fair – I was an oil-slick by lunchtime everywhere.

Both shades are limited edition, if you pick up one thing from the Spring Collection, let this be it.

Estee Lauder Intense Kajal Eye Crayon in 03 Dramatic Teal & 01 Dramatic Black are priced at £17 a-piece and available on counter and online from boots.com – the teal appears to be sold out everywhere else!

Estee Lauder are really hitting the nail on the head (pardon the pun) with the shades recently no?  They’ve revamped their line of lacquers and have blown the cobwebs away with a real injection of colour.  Teal Topaz features in their Spring 2012 collection of Arizona-inspired shades and this one is a corker.  But does the formula live up to the kerb appeal?

Honestly?  Not quite.  The above photo shows three coats, and for a bold creme of this type, I’d usually expect to need only two – and the reason it needed three coats was a patchy application.  Whilst I’d mostly covered the nail bed after two applications, it just hadn’t applied smoothly enough to leave it without a final coat.  The formula is also fairly thick, which contributed to a little drag… it’s nothing terrible, but at its price point – I’d expect not to have these issues.

On the flip-side, it has great shine, dries quickly and hasn’t given me any wear issues.  I do love these teal shades and this one I’d imagine to be particularly flattering on all skintones.

Estee Lauder Pure Color Nail Polish in Teal Topaz* is available to buy on counter and online from Harrods, priced at £14.00 for 9ml

* press sample

Let’s kick off the week with another nail polish swatch, again from Leighton Denny‘s new Atmospheric Collection.  Your Planet or Mine? is a beetle’s wing duochrome that displays mostly teal with flashes of vivid purple around the edges.  It scores extra points for providing such good coverage after two coats.

Duochromes are notoriously sheer and after a single coat, I thought this one was heading in the same direction.  Thankfully, the second topping pulled it all together and I was done.

If you love this kind of colour-shifting gorgeousness, you might also want to check out: Ciate Starlet and SpaRitual Health, Wealth and Happiness – both of which, provide similar effects but with enough differences between all three to warrant purchases.  Enabler? Moi?

Leighton Denny’s Atmospheric Collection is available to buy online priced at £11.00

I’m a bit late with this one… oooooh about… *counts on fingers*…  8 months late?  Anyway… this was really doing the blog rounds back when Spring had barely sprung.

And I have to say… I don’t really get it?

I was expecting to see some magnificent colour shifting between the teal and green and there was nothing.  Ok, so it was slightly more green in some light, but really?  You U.S girls didn’t miss that much.

A true blackened colour, Mr. L had a hard time believing it was infact anything other than black polish on my tips.  Sparkle was VERY well hidden and the whole manicure looked a lot flatter than I had hoped it would.

Application wasn’t too problematic… 2 coats with a brush that was a little too firm for me.  The streaking on the first coat shocked me, the brush practically drags the polish across the nail bed.  A thicker 2nd coat solved this though.

Wear on Lancome’s Pop Petrol has been decent enough, no chips until the third day and tip wear (despite the v. dark colour) has been negligible.

This is a polish that I picked up from a counter bargain bucket last week.  Lancome are obviously shifting the last of their Spring collection, so if you wanted to get your hands on a shade that would happily suit Autumn/Winter – now’s the time to do it!  Original price £14.50, I paid half that.

A stand out from the collection, Aquarius is a beautiful metallic mermaid teal that screams summer!

Application was sadly a bit of a PITA, you need at least 3 coats to achieve a good-looking finish owing to a slightly patchy formula that seems to apply extra-thinly in some areas despite care and concentration!

However, once applied… it’s a beautiful hybrid finish with just as much shimmer as metallic.  I doubt it’s a hugely unique shade, but I imagine it will be the jewel in the collection for many.

See my other swatches from the collection here and the Urban Decay Summer of Love Nail Kit as a whole, here.

Superdrug is a must visit for high-street huntresses, however, unless you have a particularly strong constitution I suggest avoiding visiting during school holidays or Saturday afternoons as you may struggle to get near the stands amid a wash of pre-teen girls and a fog of impulse body spray.

N.Y.C is not a brand I’m familliar with (yet!) – a little like Barry M and 2true, I’m slightly intimidated by the colours and the plethora of plastics, shrinkwraps and security tags attached the products in a vain attempt to stop the afore-mentioned pre-teens from nicking the goodies.

I was looking for some cheap polish for a mid afternoon pick-me-up and this colour caught my eye, it’s a shimmery metallic blue/green which totally reminds me of a bluebottle fly (you know, the pretty shimmery bit!).  Anyway, application is easy with a surprisingly good brush which makes for a full nail application in a couple of simple strokes.  It’s pretty sheer, and needed 3 coats to achieve the colour payoff as shown on my natty nails – something which I’d usually moan about, but application was so smooth that I didn’t struggle at all with 3 thin coats and didn’t grow any new grey hairs in the time it took to dry.

Price was a very reasonable £2.93, but Superdrug are currently offering 2 N.Y.C Nail Glossies for £2.99 (bargain!) so if you want to try some new colours now is a good time to have a look!

3 days after application – lasting well with no chipping yet!

[starreview]