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Haul

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    Christmas Presents!

    I thought I would quickly share with you guys my ‘main’ Christmas present and show you the polishes I got. I actually only got 4, can you believe it?! I was very restrained whenever someone asked me what I wanted this year. I had to hold back the urge to tell them all I wanted lots of nail varnish since I need to get some money in my savings account in anticipation of something important (hair straighteners, mp3 player – the essentials ya know?!) failing on me and needing replacing since all my appliances are over 3 years old!
    Wow, I sounded a bit like a spoiled brat just there. I promise, I’m not.
    My parents got me this Panasonic Lumix FS30 in my favourite colour – purple! My old digi-cam is super old and way behind the times. This one is great at macro, the pictures are super sharp and it has a nice soft flash – my old cam used to bleach out everything in range and you couldn’t focus on anything closer than about 20cm. 
    I actually almost prefer this camera to my DSLR which I’ve been using for all my blogging and artsy stuff but I’m so loyal to that chunky Olympus despite the fact that the flash has been busted for months now.
    Nail polishes Left to Right:
    Barry M in Bright Purple and Dusky Mauve both from my Grandma
    ELF in Party Purple and Twinkle from my Mum

    The Barry M Dusky Mauve is supposed to be a dupe of Chanel Paradoxal. It definitely looks very close in the bottle, you can see the purple shimmer in the picture (click for a closer look).

    ELF Twinkle is blue and gold glitter in a clear polish which comes out kind of matte but looks better with a glossy top coat.
    Party Purple is a dark purple with silver glitter.
    So look out for these in the coming weeks. I’m really excited to wear Dusky Mauve and see it in sunlight which has been lacking this week. I’ve obviously tried it on but I couldn’t see much shimmer under artificial light.
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    This month’s E.L.F Haul

    I put in this order in the middle of the night on Wednesday and it came on Friday morning – amaaazing!
    I ordered:
    High Definition Powder
    Liquid Eyeliner in Black
    Brightening Eye Colour in Drama 
    Nail Polishes (see below)
    Left to Right
    Matte Finisher
    Innocence
    Purple Pleaser
    Royal Purple
    I spent ages searching for a matte top coat and in the end, ended up doing a swap with Emily from Canada to get my bottle of Essie Matte About You and now there is one available in my country for just £1.50 so I bought it to see how it compares to the Essie.
    You may remember that last time I bought E.L.F nail polishes I was really disappointed to find that the colours that arrived in the bottles looked completely different to how I saw them on my monitor.You can see the post here. This time I wasn’t disappointed at all because I searched for swatches before I decided which colours to buy rather than going by the pictures on the website.
    If anyone would like it, I will do another post similar to last time comparing the colours I’ve got to the pictures on the website, just let me know. And expect swatches of these babies this week as I’d like to contribute something for other people to refer to before buying these polishes online since others’ swatches were so helpful to me.
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    My Viva La Nails Package… Have you got yours?

    In case any of you nail bloggers haven’t heard about the amazing offer at Viva La Nails, you can get a free sample pack of their products worth £20 provided that you review the products on your site. Just click here.
    I ordered mine on Friday 13th and it arrived the next Saturday, since it was posted from Latvia. I had to pay £2.95 shipping so I added a Fimo cane to my order too.
    Here is the stuff that was in my sample pack
    From what I can tell, since there are no clues on the packaging, 3 of the sticker packs (back) are stickers and the other 3 are water decals.
    At the front is a selection of 10 packs of sequins, gems and other cool stuff to stick on your nails. There are some close ups just below.

    The Fimo stick is fun! I’ve seen these before but was always a bit unsure about them because they look really tricky.
    I didn’t buy the special cutting blade because I figured a craft or stanley knife would work fine, which it did. I actually picked up a two pack of stanley knives with spare blades for £1 in a ‘What! Shop’ just for this purpose and they’re more than sharp enough. 
    I was a bit shocked when I saw how small the stick was! I don’t know what I was expecting but it looked so teeny! 
    I’ve cut almost a half of the stick into slices of varying thickness. I was trying to get them as thin as possible but it’s a fiddly job. You can see below the bits of waste I got from some bad cuts, but the it’s minimal compared to the amount of resulting good slices I got.
    I actually found it pretty fun and kind of calming to just sit there and slice this little stick as small as I could, haha. Is that weird?!
    The only thing I found disappointing about the company was that they printed my phone number on to the front of the package under my address. Surely that’s against the Data Protection Act? So if you don’t want everyone from Latvia to your house seeing your personal phone number, don’t give it. I normally wouldn’t but this time I did for some reason :s
    If you are interested in any of these products, keep reading for reviews and if you have your own sample package, please link me to some of your own reviews so I can see the other products the site has to offer. I’m really looking forward to trying the water decals. Hopefully they won’t be too tricky!
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    Stamping, Uncategorised

    A Matte I Don’t Like (and new BYS’s ♥)

    What do you think of this colour mattified? I’m not a fan myself, even though this is my absolute favourite colour!



    Plate: Bundle Monster – BM11
    Base Colour: Glo Baby Glo from Primark – Yes Cyan!
    Stamp Colour: Sally Hansen Chrome – Amber
    Top Coat of Essie Matte About You

    My New BYS’s
    In case you didn’t know, BYS is my favourite brand for Nail Polish. It’s Australian, but a store called QS (I think the name’s changing to Store Twenty One) stocks the range here in the UK.
    I got these two today along with a bottle of Astro Gold for my Mum. Unfortunately, they didn’t have any Tinkerbell, which I really wanted to add to my next giveaway, but I did get a polish to join the giveaway goodies I’m stashing.
    La Di Da is more purple than it looks in the photo, kind of a dusty purple on the nail.
    Fools Paradise is exactly the Turquoise I’ve been looking for. Slightly more green than blue.
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    New Base Coat (and Naked Nails)

    Sorry there haven’t been many Konadicures lately. Hopefully I’m keeping you all entertained with all the other stuff!
    I bought a new base coat a few days ago from TJ Hughes. It’s Sally Hansen Diamond Strength, probably from a few seasons ago, but it was just £2.99.
    I normally wouldn’t pay that much, but my nails are in great need of some strengthening! I’ve been growing them for a while and most of them are going strong but I have a lot of trouble with peeling on my thumbs and index fingers 🙁 so hopefully this will help me get them all to the same length.
    I’ll let you know how it goes.
    Coincidentally, within an hour of buying this, my middle nail broke in the corner and I couldn’t resist pulling it off so I now have a bit of an odd looking nail there. I’ve filed the corner rather than the whole nail and will just file out the missing corner as the nail grows.
    Here are my naked nails. I kind of gave up on trying to whiten them, but the NYC Base Coat I was using before I bought this one seemed to be doing a very good job at protecting them from further yellowing.
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    Swatch, Uncategorised

    Exciting News

    My Swap package arrived from Canada thanks to the lovely Emily over at Nail Junkie. It was sooo exciting. I’ve been waiting over two weeks for it to arrive so it was great fun finally getting to open it!!
    Left to Right
    Claire’s Mood – Peaceful/Confident
    Essie – Matte About You
    Claire’s Mood – Flirty/Shy
    Here are the mood colours on the nail. Peaceful/Confident is good match for the Rimmel Sky High that I mentioned I saw and wanted yesterday.
    (No Top Coat)
     
    Thanks Emily!
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    Best Haul I Ever Did Have (Warning: Long Post!)

    Hey everyone. Sorry I’ve been a bit vacant and aloof the last week. I had to resit one of my examinations today because I only got 34% in the topic when I took it in January. I don’t think it went very well but life must go on. 
    In my sorrow, I headed straight for the shops. Since I was in the city anyway I figured I may as well make a day of it!
    I need a new top coat and I was thinking yesterday about what colours I would like to buy next. So I was on the look out for a Nude (similar or exactly the same as the one in yesterday’s mani) and a Turquoise (similar to my favourite ever nail colour).

    I ended up purchasing FIVE polishes within 30 minutes which is very extravagant for me. Don’t worry about my budget – I dipped into my savings for this spree!

    Left to Right:
    Barry M – Cyan Blue
    Barry M – Mushroom
    No7 – Blackberry
    NYC – Quick Dry Top Coat (Grand Central Station)
    NYC – Prince Street
    So I picked up the Barry M Blue in place of the Turquoise I wanted, and the Mushroom instead of the Nude.
    I have to tell you about the amazing offers I got on these because I am the biggest bargain hunter around. I always have a browse between Boots and Superdrug to see which store has the best offers or prices on the products that have caught my eye. 
    At present the Barry M Polishes are on offer at 2 for £5 in both stores (or £2.95 each). When the price is the same I favour Boots because I get my Advantage Card points in there.
    I also noticed that you receive a voucher for £5 off No7 or Ruby and Millie when you spend £5 in store. Since I was going to buy the Barry M’s for that price anyway, I got the voucher, then ran over to the No7 counter to pick out a Nail Polish. So with the money off, the No7 cost me £1.75!!
    If you are a fan of No7 Cosmetics anyway, when they have this offer on, ALWAYS buy something for £5 before you get your No7 stuff as you aren’t losing out on anything. I basically got my Barry M’s for nothing.
    The NYC polishes were 2 for £3.50 (or £2.49 each) so I got them in there. I think Superdrug is the only official stockist of NYC in the UK along with other brands such as GOSH and M.U.A.
    I saw a turquoise/green colour by Rimmel that I loved called Sky High but it was £3.49 – too much for me to spend on one polish. If it goes on offer I may be tempted to buy it but until then I will be looking out for a budget dupe.
    Also check out PHD’s blog for my entry to this week’s contest – Just Tips.
    Wow I didn’t realise how much I’d written and I still have so much to tell you all! Plus some tags coming up in the next week. Thank you so, so, SO much to everyone who has tagged me for awards!! I haven’t forgotten, I’ve just been rushed off my feet these last few weeks.
    I’m off to watch a bit of Mad Men and try out these babies before I go back to bed since I only got 3.5 hours sleep last night 🙁

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