So, there’s a product called Summer’s Eve. It’s for destinking your stinkbox, of course. Because our vaginas are creepy and gross and unnatural, y’know. And in order to sell this product, Summer’s Eve thought it would be a good idea to take on some race issues as well. Oh yes folks, black and white and latina talking hand vaginas! Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?
But what of teh menz? They’re going to feel left out, right? Not if Stephen Colbert can help it!
On a trip to the pharmacy this morning for medication for a teenager who is suffering from the Worst Cold Ever I spotted a stand of cosmetics which was new to me.
The brand is SAX Cosmetics, and a quick Google search reveals that they are an Australian company – their website can be found here. In fact they are the same Australian company who make MIKI nails polishes, and The Body Collection body care range.
The SAX makeup range consists of the standard lipsticks, glosses, eye pencils, shadow pallettes, foundations, blushers, bronzers and concealers; and prices are very reasonable with most products being under $20.
Of course as a beauty blogger it would have been remiss of me to come home without something from the range, so I picked up a Creme Eye Definer in charcoal for $16.90.
This is a wind-up style eyeliner, but be aware it’s not retractable. So don’t be winding the whole thing all the way out – it won’t go back in! And then there will be tears.
The other end of the eyeliner is a densely packed foam rubber smudger with a wedge shaped tip. Frnakly this isn’t much chop – it rubbed off more than it smudged.
The eyeliner itself, as its name would suggest, has a lovely cremey consistency and goes on smoothly. I do have an issue with the name though – to me this shade is lighter in colour than I would imagine a charcoal to be. Which is actually fine by me, it’s this mid-grey that made me want to buy it because I don’t have any other colour similar in my (vast) makeup collection.
Here it is swatched on my arm; on the left drawn on in two or three swipes and on the right drawn on and then smudged.
I do love this colour. What I couldn’t get the pictures to show was that in certain lights there is an almost denim blue tint to it. I can see me getting a lot of wear out of this.
Despite its cremey texture this eyeliner seems to be pretty budge-proof after it has dried.
Finally, here it is applied quickly under my lower lashline and lightly smudged. I’m not wearing any other makeup in these photos. And my eyebrows need plucking. Please ignore them.
All in all I’m pleased with my purchase – good quality for a good price.
Has anybody else tried products from the SAX range? What did you think of them?
Don’t scented nail polishes make you feel like a kid? There’s just something so deliciously childlike about the idea, and while it’s not a concept that appeals to every nail polish lover I really love them.
There are a few brands who have introduced scented polishes to their lines (Revlon springs to mind) – and now Color Club have introduced theirs in the form of the Wicked Sweet Collection.
Seven shades of neons and brights and all with candy scents to match. Color Club NZ kindly sent me out some to review, which I will do shortly, but right at the moment my nubbinses are more nubbiney than normal, and I don’t think short nails do much justice to polishes on camera. Having had a quick swatch though I can confirm that The Lime Starts Here does smell like lime candy – om nom nom.
The Wicked Sweet Collection is available from the usual Color Club stockists throughout New Zealand, or online from usanailsonline for $11.90. Just be warned that it’s apparently not considered polite to wave your fingers under strangers’ noses and shout “smell my nails”. I try these things so you don’t have to.
Ages ago, I was sent some Wotnot Facial Wipes for review. I’d never heard of that Australian company, so I was very intrigued. I was pretty skeptical, because facial wipes seem to be just another product that all beauty magazines started chirping about at the same time, and because hey, don’t we all have access to facecloths and water anyway?
Then I moved into a house with a tiny sink that’s wedged in an awkward corner and has no hot water. And I started drinking a lot. Well okay, I’ve always been a drinker. But being able to take your makeup off without having to get all twisted up and splashed and soaked as one does? Genius. I have to admit, I am not a facial wipe expert, but these are soft, smell good and don’t leave my skin screaming to be moisturised – although I do follow up with moisturiser, because my face skin is pretty dry.
WOTNOT knows this and has produced a facial wipe so natural your skin will love it as much as you do. WOTNOT facial wipes use a 100% natural cloth which is luxuriously soft and pampering. Our formula is enriched with all natural ingredients including Australian certified organic aloe vera to lubricate and repair, certified organic sweet almond oil to restore lost moisture and calm itch and inflammation, and certified organic rosehip oil for skin regeneration and moisture re-balancing. The certified organic jojoba oil base is easily absorbed to condition skin and eyelids making lashes more lush, while the naturally sourced nutrients like Vitamin E help to heal, nourish and protect leaving the skin smooth, supple and glowing.
They don’t actually remove all makeup – my Maybelline eyeliner and mascara are both apparently made of platinum or something, because I’ve gone swimming for hours in them without it budging, but I like the look of second-day eyeliner anyway. So if you’re looking for an easy way to clean your face that doesn’t make you feel like you’re cleaning a baby’s ass, I definitely recommend these Wotnot wipes.
Last month, it was my birthday. At the time I was sick of theme parties in an all-new-all-angry kind of way, so I decided the “theme” of my birthday party would be “dress up real nice”. Basically, I asked all my guests just to wear whatever made them feel super fancy and nice and amazing.
I spent quite some time thinking about what to wear to this shindig, and then one blessed day it came to me – glitter shoes. Really, really glittery shoes.
However, I am a serious lady on the day-to-day so I knew that these also needed to be cheap glitter shoes. That immediately ruled out 99.99999999999999999999999% of the Internet (also, I am lazy and couldn’t be bothered searching any further after I realised that the glittery Christian Louboutin’s were a touch out of my price range). This left me with only one option:
D
I
Y
To know me is to know my inability to do anything with finesse. I cannot count how many times I have hot-glued my own hand. The other week I made a cushion cover which was AMAZING except that the zip is funked up. Most of my DIY attempts look okay until you turn them over and see the unholy mess I made. This couldn’t really happen with glitter shoes as they would be clearly visible from many angles during the evening.
You might think I would have done tonnes of research then. Nah. This is what I did:
I bought glitter (three colours VERY IMPORTANT), good old PVA glue, and cheap-ass shoes from The Warehouse for 50% off. They weren’t as high as I wanted them to be but this was probs for the best. I already had newspaper, various bowls, and a paintbrush.
Yes, that is gold wrapping paper. I didn’t have any old newspaper and I am awesome like that.
I mixed the THREE glitters together in a plastic cup, thusly:
Then I poured the glue into a bowl, got the glitter back into its convenient sprinkle containers, and got amongst it. Basically, I brushed some of the glue on, then sprinkled that area generously with the glitter mix. Observe:
Yeah, I got glitter all over the joint. It is still all through my flat and the place has been vacuumed several times. Try not to be so…flamboyant…with the glitter, okay?
I would then kinda shake the shoe and the excess glitter fell off. Perfect.
Eventually, the shoes looked like this:
Which I feel is pretty good for shoes that cost $25ish. They also held up well (some mild areas of wear) which is great considering I ran around in these holding various cocktails for many hours. However, I didn’t go dancing in them, which might have been another issue.
If you want to make these, I suggest the following:
I very rarely buy O.P.I. polish in New Zealand stores, because I strongly believe we pay far too much for it compared to overseas prices. Generally I’ll either buy it online or wait for in-store specials.
Sometimes however I can get sucked in by a counter display – in the same way that small children are attracted to lollies at the supermarket checkout -and this is exactly what happened at the pharmacy the other day. Waiting for the lady to ring up my purchases (eyelash curlers, Batiste dry shampoo, Cetaphil cleanser and throat lozenges; since you asked) my eyes fell upon the O.P.I. Pirates of the Caribbean display and like a naughty toddler my grabby hands were all over it.
I did manage to restrict myself to one particular polish that I’ve been lusting after though, and this is it:
Stranger Tides is what I think of as an “Ugly Pretty” colour. The grey/green colour reminds me of that guacamole dip which comes in a jar and contains not a trace of avocado.
Unfortunately the weather is a bit on the cloudy side today so my photos don’t quite bring out the green – in real life there’s more of a green tinge to it. Application was better than I expected for what is really a pastel colour (pastels are a notoriously finnicky lot to apply) – two coats for opaque coverage; the formula was a little on the gloopy side and not self-levelling but my top coat levelled it out nicely so you won’t hear me complaining.
I love Stranger Tides, and there’s a couple of other colours in the Pirates of the Caribbean collection I wouldn’t mind getting my paws on. What about you lot? Have you splurged on any from this collection and what did you think of them?
Hi all, I’m Selina and I’m thrilled to join the team at Pretty Pretty Pretty. Some of you may have followed me here from my other blog Pretty Clever, where I blog about pretty things (shameless plug: go check it out). I’ve previously shared my reviews and photos of nail polish and beauty items over at Pretty Clever, but when Joanna approached me and asked me to write for Pretty Pretty Pretty it seemed an opportune time to change the focus of Pretty Clever to the fashion side of things. So from now on you’ll be able to read about my adventures with nail polish and all things beauty here.
You may have already gathered I’m a nail polish addict. In fact I’m a makeup addict, but nail polish is my drug of choice and I have a large collection. I mean large. We’re talking in the hundreds here. So my first post for Pretty Pretty Pretty is, of course, about nail polish.
Color Club has long been one of my favourite brands of polish – for their quality, color range and price – and when they became available in New Zealand a couple of years ago I literally jumped for joy. There may have been some hand clapping and sqealing too. The lovely people at Color Club NZ were kind enough to send me out some polishes for review, and the two I have for you today are from the Pardon My French Collection.
Pardon My French is a collection of polishes designed for layering and comprises four sheer cremes and three glittery topcoats. It was released in the Northern Hemisphere for Spring 2010.
In the photo below you can see Oh Naturale, with Turn the Other Chic layered over it on two nails.
Now as I said, these polishes are designed to be layered, so the creme bases on their own can be a bit of a pain if you prefer your polish not to be sheer. What you see in the photo is four coats of Oh Naturale – it took that many to get it fully opaque and streak-free. Oh its own Oh Naturale is a lovely peachy orange, but it totally comes into its own when Turn the Other Chic is applied over the top.
Turn the Other Chic is a orange jelly base jam-packed full of glittery goodness. The consistency of the jelly polishes in the Pardon My French collection is like no other jelly polish I’ve ever encountered – it’s super thick and reminds me of jelly that’s been left to half set. Application is more a matter of ‘spreading’ it over the nail rather than brushing it on, so it can take a bit to get used to but it’s so worth it for the end result.
I have a couple more Pardon My French combos to show you soon, but in the meantime have any of you tried the polishes from this collection, and what did you think of them?
Color Club polishes are available in chemists throughout New Zealand, and a few other stores too. Online in New Zealand they can be purchased from USA Nails Online.
Another guest review from Vanessa, yay!
In this post, we go from the wildness of Katy Perry to a more grown-up kind of manicure – Shellac. I’ve been hearing buzz about this for some time, but being on the economical kind of nail enthusiast (read: cheap), I only gave it a go when an opportunity showed up on Grab One for $25.
Shellac is a unique treatment in that it is a polish, applied on top of your natural nails, which is cured with UV light to make it dry super-fast and super-strong. The company which produces it (CND) claims a 14 day life with no chips or cracks.
Thus, on an overcast Wednesday afternoon I arrived at The Nail Studio in Newmarket, Auckland. I was promptly received and shown through to the treatment room, where, with some embarrassment, I explained to the technician that yes, this is only my second manicure, yes, I cut my cuticles off with a pocket knife, and no, that odd yellowing is due to a nail strengthener, not cigarettes. (Anyone else have this problem?)
We began with some filing, the nasty yellow staining being buffed off, and my cuticles being pushed back (all fairly standard, I understand, but rather new to me). From there, a base coat was applied (followed by ten seconds under UV light), two coats of the colour (followed by two minutes each under UV light), and a top coat (more UV light). I went with a pale pink colour, as I had a job interview later that day. Following this, isopropyl alcohol was applied to remove any stickiness from the nail, and some oil to moisturise the nail bed. And a mere half hour later, we were done!
I’ve been pretty impressed with the finish so far. I found myself wincing slightly as I delved into my handbag for my keys, but, reassured by the vigorous way the technician had buffed my nails afterwards, I went for it, and all was well. The lack of drying time once you leave the salon is a huge advantage, and if the finish lasts for the 14 days promised, well, in the immortal words of Arnie, “I’ll be back”. It’s been almost a week so far, and I only have one minuscule chip incurred – very impressive. The shine has lasted well, too – the polish still looks like it has just been applied.
With regards to the removal of the polish: the nail technician said that, while it is recommended to get it professionally taken off, the Shellac can be removed at home by soaking your nails in pure acetone for five minutes.
Shellac is available at a number of salons, and typically costs $50-$65 a treatment.
Thanks Vanessa who accosted me on the street and asked to do a guest post!
As a lifelong devourer of nails, it came as a surprise to me a few months ago that I could kick the habit in a couple of short weeks. My secret? Making them look sufficiently pretty that I wouldn’t want to tear them to pieces. And since then (aided by a surplus of time, due to looking for work) I have been rapidly advancing through Nails 101. Words like ‘jelly’, ‘cream’, and ‘matte’ have become a second language to me. (Although, to be fair, I’m not entirely sure what a jelly is, even though I do use the word).
I started keeping up with nail polish blogs, checking reviews on the polishes I had my eye on before buying them. And it was there I first started hearing murmurings of a mythical ‘shatter’ polish, a fluid of such beauty and novelty it seemed almost too good to be true. Until, one day, I came across a display in Farmers, and lo and behold, there it was. Or should have been, if it wasn’t sold out. A quick word with a salesperson confirmed that this had been the case almost immediately.
Since then, I have checked OPI stands across the country (well, in Auckland and Wellington) for the OPI Black Shatter, part of the Katy Perry collection. And it was in the Queen Street Farmers last week where it finally came to pass that I held one of my own in my hands.
As a connoisseur of cheaper nail polishes (amongst my favourites, Chi Chi’s $8 mini range) this is the most expensive polish I’ve ever bought, but man, was it fun. You need to use it with a coloured base coat – in my case, it was two coats of Chi Chi’s Cyberella (a metallic silver).
The polish itself is very thick and dries extremely quickly – so much that it gathers around the mouth of the bottle in a rather alarming fashion. Application is both tricky and non-demanding – swiping from the cuticle to the end of your nail often results in an uneven distribution of colour, with there never being enough on the brush to reach the end of the nail in an even fashion.
But that’s where the non-demanding part comes in – as the polish begins to crack and fragment, the evenness of the application begins to matter less. In general, I’d say if you’re looking for chunkier pieces of black, put it on thicker, but for a finer, more shattered look, a thin application is best. My application is on the chunkier side (and my apologies for the state of my nails; they’re recovering from years of neglect).
The look? When you’re not directly looking at it, it reminds me of animal print. Which is odd, because I’m not really down with the leopard skin. I’ve really enjoyed having it on my nails – it cheers me up every time I see it, and it is such a joy to apply.
If I ran out, would I buy it again? Possibly, but in a different colour, to mix things up a bit. I understand it is available in other colours overseas, but I haven’t seen it here yet.
OPI polishes are sold in a range of outlets, and Black Shatter retails for $26.90.
Jo asked me to review this self-tan product, and since the weather has changed sufficiently that I can wear tights in the event of an almighty tanning disaster, I agreed.
There isn’t much description on this product, but POD states that it is “Advanced Puraceutical skincare to protect your beauty and enhance your wellbeing.” The blurb on the tube goes on to describe the product as “An all-in-one liquid tan that tans, moisturises, protects and nourishes the body naturally”.
First off, let me say that “puraceuticals” made me laugh out loud. Then I felt bad, because maybe it was a real thing, Megan. You don’t know everything! So I Googled it. Nope, POD made it up. It means products “which are pure (without toxins – such as parabens, sulphates, and harsh chemicals) and over the counter (pharmaceutical or cosmeceutical) anti-ageing skincare”. Their website is actually a great read if you want to learn more about natural skincare, without all the nasty stuff that I usually rub into, onto and around my skin repeatedly and every day.
Okay, so I read the instructions (apply a generous amount, massage in, apply daily until desired tan achieved blah blah) and got stuck into it. The product is white, which alarmed me slightly because I like to see where I am putting the product and therefore usually choose products with a tint. However, no need to be alarmed because as soon as I started spreading the product onto my legs it became clear that it was super thick. You know sunblock? Similar to that (possibly because of the SPF but I rather doubt it). Although this was a bit strange at first, it kind of worked out for the best because you could see where the stuff was going, and it forced you to really rub it in, thus cutting down on streaking.
Now, I like my beauty products to be pretty fail safe, so in the name of science and this review I just bunged the stuff on. I didn’t do the whole “careful strokes using a tanning mitt” system because, seriously, I don’t want my fake-tanning regime to take that much time. I mean, I rubbed it in properly and I half-heartedly exfoliated in the shower beforehand, but I didn’t get professional about it.
And here’s where I put the puraceuticals tag behind me, because this stuff went on pretty damn evenly. It has a smell that I would describe as “herbaceous”, which unfortunately still fades to “fake tan”. However, it wasn’t too strong and I didn’t feel concerned that others would find me offensively stinky. On day one I did have some early concerns that I would turn a bit orange, but I think in the end it was okay. I used it for a second day and I would say that was almost too much tan for me (and I am naturally olive), and perhaps started to look a bit fake. Personally, I’d rather use this once and then use a gradual tan product to keep it topped up for a while.
This product also didn’t cause any rashes or itchiness, and in my opinion did a good job of keeping my legs nicely moisturised all day. Worth trying, although it’s $55 Australian, which puts it at the higher end of the spectrum for me.
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