After all the love I was feeling for Lilac Dream poor old Blue Lagoon was always going to be hard pushed to measure up. Factor in that I didn't even want Blue Lagoon but purchased it in lieu of Beth's Blue it really was on a hiding to nothing! No surprise then that I am a bit meh about this one. Application was great, opaque in 2 coats and its nice and thin - cant stand gloopy polish, did the nails inc caviar base and top, both of which are getting a massive thumbs up from me, especially the base - again hate hate hate thick gloopy base coats that don't meld with the nail but rather sit on it, this nail inc base does just that (meld, that is! m. e. l. d. - great word) so that you get the same application from your polish as you would if it was going straight onto the nail and the top coat gives my nails a super smooth feeling which I love. Lilac dream/nails inc combo wore really well, got from Sunday til Weds pm out of it so am happy with that and was almost tempted to re-do the Lilac Dream was loving it so. In fact am on verge of justifying purchase of Illamasqua Wink on basis that as I love lilac cream above all other then shouldn't I really actually have the mutha of all lilac creams? Now all I need to do is come up with a compelling argument that not even Steve "spend it and die" will be able to refute!
Enough blather here's the pics. Taken outside in light, but nonetheless bloody annoying, drizzle.
(If I seem a little cranky blame the slimfast. Have had to take myself in hand and gone back to the gym and cut out eating in an attempt to kick start a bit of a downward shift in my weight - curvy is good, bloater not so much!)
Hi all, just having a lunch time peruse of the Daily Mail website and spotted an article by Liz Jones on the factories in India that produce our "Primarni" clothes, amongst others. Florence and Fred, Tescos, Calvin Klein and H&M are all mentioned. Really don't like Liz Jones but in this instance I was impressed. There is a link at the bottom of the article to the People Tree website asking you to go to their online petition and they are asking for signatures before the 26th July requesting the Bangladeshi Government increase the minimum wage for garment workers threefold. It will only take a second of your time to sign the petition, so please do. And if you blog and have lots of followers then a link to the petition on your website would do loads more good than it will on mine! Sorry to get all heavy and stuff!
I may have mentioned that I have a gap in my nail varnish collection which can only be filled by a lilac polish. Had I mentioned that? Having resigned myself to the fact that even with 25% off Illamasqua Wink was a bit beyond my means right now I had a look at the Models Own website to see if they had a lilac. Had seen these around and had never been impressed by them, until Nikki started swatching her Models Own haul and then I rapidly changed my mind! That said both her nails and her photos are fab so she did make the polishes look great! Boots in Huddersfield now has Models Own and was doing a 2 for £8 promo!! Wanted Lilac Dream and Beth's Blue, got Lilac Dream (yay) but no Beth's Blue so settled for Blue Lagoon and having just done a couple of hasty swatches am loving it!
Tried photos with the old point and shoot rather than my usual grown up camera, much easier and I think they are in focus too - sometimes it just doesn't pay to complicate things!
Aren't they lovely!
Shimmery loveliness!
Of course because I purchased in Boots and because I am the frugalist blogger I made sure I had enough points (by purchasing boring stuff like Ibruprofen and Anithistamine!) to get these:
Kerr-ching! These Nails Inc base and top coats get a lot of love on other nail blogs so I decided I need them in my life!
Nikki has also been giving love to Soap and Glory Hand Food and seeing as you can pick up a handbag sized tube for £2.50 I thought I ought to give it a whirl, have been using it for a week and I am right with Nikki on this one, its fantastic, works a treat and smells like heaven.
(Nikki is now probably having a "stalker alert" moment! Please bear in mind that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery Nikki!!)
Just because the sun is shining I have done a very rapid, no clean up, no cuticle loving, no base or top coat swatch of Blue Lagoon and Lilac Dream and whats more its on my right hand!! So whilst its not lovely you can at least see the colours on the nail. Going to have a tidy up and do a proper Lilac Dream mani this eve so will add a proper photo tomorrow.
Ok I couldn't wait! Proper Lilac Dream manicure, complete with Nails Inc caviar top and base coat. It's love people! The top and base coat are fab, base nice and thin and top does dry in 45 seconds to a really nice glossy finish am delighted with these. The Models Own polish is thin but opaque, did have a total disaster doing 2nd coat on LH thumb, big drop ran straight off the brush and onto my index finger, as you can see in the pics. Never had that happen before on the upside you get a really nice smooth finish and its not brush strokey at all. And its opaque in 2 coats and do I ever love this colour!
Must remember to take date off on the camera though, how annoying!
Duty free 5am, what else are you going to do but shop! Had cleared a purchase of Clarins Multiactive day cream with his nibs; I have tried all sorts and always end up coming back to Clarins for moisturiser, I know its high end but having used a splash of their sensitive skin toner, a squirt of body shop sensitive skin serum and a bit of eye cream I really only need a smidge of this to make my skin feel, and smell, fantastic!
I was having a peruse then as I have used nearly all my Eau Dynamisant, which is my absolute go to fragrance, year after year - its fresh, clean, crisp and makes me feel happy. The Clarins lady who was testament to the power of their products, 5am she's at work and looks fresh as a daisy, pointed out that the Eau Dynamisant was £22 on its own or £23.95 with a body lotion. Bargain, no decision to be made!
And then because I had now spent over £50 I qualified for this
which contained these
Result! I love the Clarins hand cream (although now thanks to Nikki's Nails it has a rival, more of that later!) the moisturising mask is lovely but at £30 for a full sized tube I would be hard pushed to justify a purchase, although when Em's skin dried out really badly on hols and I gave her a mini facial - she is SOOO blessed to have me for her mum! she loved this and did suggest splitting the price of a tube, so maybe. The lip gloss isn't my sort of thing ordinarily but this was lovely on holiday and whilst I probably wont use it much in real life I will hang on to it for a bit longer as it adds a nice non-sticky shine to my usual Dior lip serum stuff.
Lazy little blogger that I am this week I am making the most of the other fantastic blogs I love to read, first Rebecca's Illamasqua scoop and now this. I absolutely love All Lacquered Up and it was my first ever nail blog, I had no idea there were others out there that were as sad as me and what amazes me is that these people are in the gifted and talented pool of people making up our world, not the drifting and hopeless you might expect for someone obsessed with all things beauty (I count myself in the latter category btw!)! Please, how utterly gorgeous is this graduated mani, from CND teal to sparkly purple - truly inspired!
Been working at the Yorkshire show for 2 days so have wind blown hair, chapped lips and the nails from hell, including a thumb nail that I did my usual self destruct thing on after a few glasses of wine so nothing exciting to post but thought I would mention something I spotted on the fab Nails Etc blog. Illamasqua are having a fantastic promo that allows you to exchange some vile old dried up product and replace it with a new gorge Illamasqua one at a 25% reduction!! How amazing is that and how brilliant that Rebecca spotted it and posted about it. I am so wanting Wink from their pastels collection and a trying to see if I can wangle a trip to the Trafford centre before the end of July, although am supposed to be on a beauty spending ban! Just in case I am good and don't spend I have mailed my cousin Rebecca, totally spend-thrift as she is!, and asked her to do me a guest post if she does take advantage of this offer.
Have felt like a mad scientist all afternoon doing this, been great fun! First of all I cut two swatches of hair.
Then I made up a little of the L'Oreal Prelightening creme. Not as scary as I had thought, there is a bottle of liquid and you add the 2 sachets of powder and the tube of cream, shake and apply. I mixed a little of all three onto a plastic takeaway lid and mixed it with a drinking straw - such a professional!
I also decided to see what would happen if I just applied the Casting Creme Satin Blond semi-permanent to my hair as it is, so I mixed up a dollop using my tried and tested method.
I put a hair swatch in each and made careful note of the time.
Will put Toni & Guy out of business at this rate!
In the meantime I made Emily take some "before" photos for me. Much prefer the back view to the one from the front.
(thank god I decided to switch to smaller photos!) This one does nicely show off the unintentional graduation of hair colour and the nice grey line down my parting though!
After 20 mins I washed the sample that had been dunked in the colour and there was no discernible difference, as I had expected.
I checked the lightened sample at 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60 mins. 60 mins is the maximum time and the results are pretty impressive. If you think orange hair is impressive.
Can you imagine if I was really stupid and had just decided to leave it at that?! Would look like I was supporting the Dutch all the way tomorrow night!
Side note - how come if I was trying to take a photo of my nail it would have been horribly out of focus? What is that all about?
Side by side with original hair colour swatch
Side by side again, this time up against Emilys' left boob - apparently showing them against a black background was vital, for some reason!
So, its orange. Fairly inevitable but doesn't mean it wont scare the bejaysus out of me when I do it for real in a mo!
Luckily I had anticipated that and had selected a Casting Cream colour that deals specifically with the problem of lightened hair looking "too warm" (they mean "orange").
So the poor little hair swatch now gets dunked in a freshly made up dollop of Blond Satin.
And ta-dah!
Blond! Its a really nice darkish beige/blond which looks a bit golden but not really orange.
This time my lovely assistant is Steve - look at the state of those hands!
Now bear in mind the lighter of these two has had an hour dunked in bleach and 20 mins in a colour that also contains hydrogen peroxide and has been rinsed and dried, no conditioner, it is in pretty amazing shape. I am seriously impressed with how soft and shiny it feels and I love the colour.
My only concern is that when I do it on my head it is likely to be very matt, one colour all over and so obviously home dyed, but there's no turning back now. Time to do the deed. Watch this space for the "after" photos...............
(oh god, I am feeling confident. That's GOT to be a bad thing, hasn't it? Wish me luck!)
Post Edit 2 hrs later....
I swear that was the most terrifying thing I have ever done in my life. What I hadn't allowed for was that not all my hair had the permanent colour on, so having gaily slapped on the bleach on tips and ends, leaving for a bit and then working through into roots it quickly became apparent that the re-growth section and the hair that had only had semi-perm colour on it was going to go waaaaaaaaaaay lighter, very, very, very quickly. In the end rinsed the bleach off after 45 mins and then was nearly sick when I looked in the mirror, the roots were totally bleached, no pigment at all, the 3 inches of semi perm had gone very light blond and the rest was orange, really really orange, more orange than the swatch had been and I couldnt leave the bleach on any longer otherwise the top 3 inches were going to be white and the rest orange and the semi-perm Casting Creme wouldnt be able to match it up. Vile moment, hands shaking so much putting on the casting creme and to be honest it was only when it was dry and finish that my heart stopped pounding. It is by no means perfect and I suspect the roots are going to look awful when they start showing, which is likely to be tomorrow! But for now I think I got off lightly - at one point I seriously thought I was going to have to have 6 inches cut off my hair.
Now I need a really, really bloody massive drink, if you will excuse me!
From this:
to this:
Extra Post Edit: Can you hair colour intensify over night? I woke up on Sunday looking like a ginger tom cat - really quite scary marmalade coloured hair. Of course guest house was rammed so had to do breakfast like it but then made rushed trip to Boots, decided on Perfect 10 Medium Ash blond, thank goodness it seems to have worked and has reduced the orange to manageable levels - its chucking it down or I'd do a further photo update. Just shows the quality of stuff these days though, my hair isn't in any worse condition than when I started all this, which is frankly nothing short of a miracle!
Sick to death of my hair. As part of my beauty spending embargo have been home colouring. To be fair am about 40% grey, maybe more and paying £40+ for a single colour, once even more expensive highlights had been ruled out, in the salon seemed nuts. Of course like a fool used a permanent colour that was way too dark and have been growing out since whilst topping up roots with various shades of Casting Creme, some more successful than others. I really want to go lighter again so today have bought a L'Oreal pre lightening kit and a Casting Creme in honey blond - dark goldish blond so not light blond but lighter than where I am now. Am about to cut off 2 bits of hair, one to test the lightening kit on and one to test what would happen if I just applied the Casting creme semi perm colour. Watch this space. !!
But nothing to report. The major downside of being broke is that I don't have money for lovely shiny goodies. I suppose I could blog about my duty free purchases - I got Clarins Multi Active cream, as a purchase that I had told Steve I was going to make and so did on my card and then a sneaky replacement of my Eau Dynamisant!! It was £22 for a bottle on its own or £23.95 for the spray and a free body lotion - you know which one I went for! And my hols got off to a flying start because having spent that much I got a free little make up bag with a mascara, lip gloss, face mask and hand cream. Ok so now I have to take photos of my haul and they can be my first post hol blog post.
Photos coming up v soon.
Am still on a mission for a pale lilac nail varnish too btw so maybe I can shake out all my pockets for enough shrapnel to get one in Leeds on Saturday!
