Chuck out Your Black Liner

Or if chucking out your black liner seems a bit dramatic, at least consider packing it away until the autumn! I love coloured and light eyeliners in the spring and summer.

Today I’ve got some shots of a pink eyeshadow teamed with an antique gold liner. I think it’s a great colour combo for the lighter, brighter days we’re enjoying now that it’s spring.

The eyeshadow that I’m wearing is Magic from the Urban Decay Glinda palette. I like to apply it over a creamy base for maximum colour payoff.

The liner that I used was Waterproof Gel Eyeliner by BarryM in No. 3. I actually picked up this product a couple of weeks back because I thought the colour was interesting but not expecting anything spectacular but I have to say, I think this product is fantastic and I’m really glad I picked it up. It is very long lasting and I just love the colour. I just wish that they had more colours in the range as I would snap up any more slightly unusual colours they came out with. I’ve done another post with more pics here.

BarryM Waterproof Gel Eyeliner No. 3

This is quite a new offering from BarryM and although I’m not the world’s biggest fan of gel eyeliners the unusual colour caught my eye. The RRP is £5.49, which seems quite standard for a Superdrug-stocked kind of gel eyeliner – not so cheap and not so expensive.

The packaging is that common brush-in-lid style of pot that many different brands now use. Personally I find it very useful – not only because you don’t have to go out and buy a separate brush for doing your gel liner with, but also because this is a very nifty way of keeping your brush and product together and also keeping your brush clean.

The product itself is quite thick and creamy and I find it very easy to apply. Just one word of warning – try not to apply more than one layer, and don’t lay it on too thick and it will crack and potentially fall into your eye at some point during the day – ouch! If you manage to apply a nice thin even layer though you’ll have no worries about it coming off during the day. This is a very long lasting product.

The colour pay off is quite excellent which I hope you can see clearly in the swatch on my hand below. It comes up as a lovely and unusual antique gold.

The first time I wore it it did immediately put me in mind of another one of my gel liners, my MAC fluidline in Catch My Eye which I picked up from their holiday collection this Christmas just past (Dec 2012). As I mentioned, I’m not the biggest fan of gel liners but I was drawn to the unusual colour.

A quick comparison shows that while these products are no dupes, it would be fair to consider them as sisters, and both add a lovely subtle metallic gleam to the lashline.

Above: MAC fluidline in Catch My Eye

Left: MAC fluidline, Right: BarryM Waterproof Gel Liner

Left: BarryM Waterproof Gel Liner in No. 3; Right MAC Fluidline in Catch My Eye

Crazy Coloured Nails for Spring

I should definitely feature more nail posts on this blog. I have so many nail polishes and my nails are painted more often than not, but I think I’m probably too fussy when it comes to taking pictures of my nails.

There was the extra-long winter to contend with this year I suppose, which was a constant battle against strangely blue-toned light in all my photographs. And then there are the occassions such as today when I painted my nails with an awesome nail varnish and then, through no fault of the product but rather due to my own impatience and inability to sit still for more than two minutes I managed to smudge and dent it all over the place.

Case in point, Illamasqua’s nail polish in Radium, a shimmery toxic lime green:

This nail varnish has the perfect consistency, is opaque in two coats and dries fast in about ten minutes. I am simply a dope.

I didn’t want to add a third coat of Radium though so I thought I would try to save the day with a coat of crackle nail polish. This is really where crackle nail polish comes into its own, I think. Barry M’s crackle top coat in blue really saved the day.

Bam! Now that’s what I call colour. This is a seriously funky colour combination and the crackle hides all those pesky dents and smudges perfectly. Phew!

Pastel Tipped Nails

So after the first week of sunshine here since summer officially began I painted my nails a bright peachy colour (Peach Melba by BarryM) which looked very summery in the bottle but unfortunately clashed a bit with my pale skin once it was on my nails. It’s also a bit of a difficult consistency to work with and while I did manage to get even, opaque coverage in two coats I really had to be careful when applying the colour.

I decided to add some lilac tips which would clash even more with the peach than my skin which seemed to work and make the manicure much more wearable for me.  The lilac I used was the shade Wink from Illamasqua which turned out to be a good choice as the thick consistency made it much more forgiving than a runnier polish for painting the tips.

I find it very, very difficult to paint tips like this but I’ve tried a few manicures like this lately as I think the end result looks cute so hopefully I’ll get better with practise. I don’t use stencils/templates but just paint the base colour, wait for it to dry then paint the tips freehand.  My technique is to take most of the varnish off the brush on the side of the bottle, lay it on my nail tip, then try to hold the brush still while I rotate the nail to paint the tip.

Some Eyeliners for Spring

Bored of black eyeliner? 

I am at the moment, so here are the alternative colours that I have been wearing lately.

Clockwise from top left: Fashion Secret Gel Eyeliner in Cute Route by Fashionista (around £6), Precision Ink in Scribe by Illamasqua (around £17.50), Sun Club Gel Eyeliner in BBC All Night Brown by Esssence (around 3 euros) , Metallic Liquid Eyeliner in No. 6 by Barry M (around £4.50)

Cute Route is a bright lilac, with a rather nifty brush built in to the lid.

I actually think the brush is quite good and it’s nice to get a brush with the product for two reasons: you don’t have to buy one if you don’t already have one, and it makes the product much more travel friendly (and after all, liquid eyeliners always come with an integrated brush).  This eyeliner is quite creamy and can be used all over the lid as an eyeshadow but worn that way it creases quite quickly on my eyes so I think it actually performs better as an eyeliner.  It lasts all day on me if worn as an eyeliner, although it is the worst performer in terms of longevity out of the selection of four. All in all I wouldn’t buy this product in a very common colour like brown or black, especially not at £6 which could buy a very good quality eyeliner from another brand, but the range does have some interesting colours so they might be worth checking out if you’re looking for a more unusual shade.

Scribe is Illamasqua’s newest shade of liquid eyeliner and came out with their recent Spring Summer 2012 collection called Human Fundamentalism.  It is a very expensive product but I purchased it for being such an unusual shade – glossy opaque white.  I don’t begrudge the £17.50 for the quality of the product but I do feel that you only get a tiny tiny amount for the price – only 1.8ml.  I think that either the price could easily have been reduced or the quantity increased as I think I will use this up quite quickly (I wear liquid eyeliner very often so it’s one of the make-up products that I do tend to use up).

The product is quite opaque although as you will see in the swatches at the bottom if you are drawing a thin line you may need two coats to reach full opacity.  That doesn’t really bother me though as I have a few eyeliners that require two coats and the product lasts all day on me without flaking or smudging even with two coats. The formula is water-resistant but not waterproof which is great as it doesn’t run when I get watery eyes but also it can be removed easily at the end of the day with some normal make-up remover (unlike so many waterproof products that have to be removed with oil).  The applicator is also my favourite kind for liquid eyeliner; a semi-flexible felt tip that makes drawing flicks and wings a breeze.

I bought the brown gel eyeliner when I was in Germany last year for the Eurovision Song Contest.  There are a few drug store cosmetics brands that are available in Germany that aren’t widely available or available at all in the UK, including this brand, Essence which is available in several European countries and America but not the UK to the best of my knowledge.  This eyeliner was part of their limited edition Summer 2011 collection but they are always putting out new limited edition collections so if you come across one of their stands it’s likely you’ll find some interesting products similar to this.  I do like this eyeliner; it hasn’t dried out at all since I bought it, it has a smooth consistency that’s easy to apply, and I like the golden shimmer the colour has to it.  My only complaint is that it smells very synthetic and chemically, but at least once it’s on my eyes I don’t have to smell it!  I’ve tried some eyeshadows from Essence as well and I have to say that they are very good quality given their low price point.

I like to apply gel eyeliners with a rounded brush like the one below.  It’s just a synthetic haired brush that I got in an unbranded large brush set from e-bay about four years ago.  I find this shape easiest to control for both thin and thicker lines.

This metallic pink eyeliner by BarryM is such an interesting colour.  In the close up below  you can see that it’s actually a micro-glitter suspended in a gel, but the glitter particles are so tiny they give a metallic shimmer effect on the skin.  The applicator is a bit hard but it’s still flexible enough to draw both thick and thin lines.  When this shade is worn as an eyeliner it just seems to light up the eyes somehow…I really love the effect.  Definitely worth checking out if you’re interested in a slightly different kind of eyeliner – and for such an unusual shade I think it’s a total bargain at less than a fiver.

Finally here are some swatches on my skin.  I think it’s a nice little colour selection for spring and it makes a nice change to my usual black, blue and green eyeliners.

BarryM Body Glitter Gels and Some Fun Jewellery from Brighton

Just in case you haven’t noticed yet I looooove glitter so when I saw these little sparkly pots for just £2.99 each in Topshop the other week I couldn’t resist.  I usually buy BarryM products in Superdrug but I don’t recall having seen these in any of my local stores which I why I bought them in Topshop instead (the huge Topshop flagship store on Oxford Street sells several different brands of cosmetics and accessories on the ground floor in addition to its own Topshop ranges).

The product is called Body Glitter and it comes in various shades and designs.  They’re available in a range of shades and I picked the two that contained tiny shapes – one with silver stars and one with red hearts, both suspended in an iridescent glitter gel.  I know that you can also buy these tiny glittery shapes loose but I like this glitter gel as it makes them super easy to apply.

I took a few photos from different angles to try to capture some of the effect of the glitter .  The gels are quite concentrated so you do get a lot of shapes even when you pick up just a small amount of gel, and it’s also quite buildable so it’s easy to keep adding more product until you get the effect you desire.

My eyes were a bit sore today so I decided not to wear any eye make-up and just glam my cheeks up with a bit of glitter instead.  I think this is such a fun product as you just need a tiny amount to create a high impact party look - I simply took a bit of product on a finger tip and dabbed it across one of my cheekbones and temple.

Above: dewy foundation, shimmery blush, and BarryM Glitter Gel – 5 minutes to a fun glitzy spring time look!

Admittedly the effect can look like a strange spotty skin condition and dandruff (if you get glitter in your hair) from a distance, but I promise that it’s very pretty when it catches the light!  I enjoyed wearing this today anyway and I’ll definitely be wearing it again.  It was easy to apply and didn’t really flake off, although it would if you touched your face a lot.  It washes off easily with warm water.  I would also just add to be careful not to get any in your eyes as the edges of the stars and hearts would definitely poke a bit – ouch!

In the photos above I’m wearing one of the new pairs of earrings I picked up yesterday.  I went with a couple of friends for a day trip to Brighton which is full of quirky clothes and jewellery shops and I picked up some earrings from a fair trade shop.  I really like fair trade jewellery as it’s often made from natural or recycled materials, it’s creative and it’s usually very well hand made.

I got a pair of bicycles made from wire and a pair of dragonflies made from  tin cans.  There was also some information on the packaging about the community of artists who had made the jewellery.  These were £4 each – which is really good value considering the quality and detail of the designs.  If you like costume jewellery then it’s definitely worth having a scout around a Fair Trade store as there are some lovely designs out there and the stock is constantly rotating too so there’s always something new to pick up.

I also bought this rather sparkly butterfly cuff from a small jewellery store as it was only £12 which I thought was a good price for all the detailing.  It’s inlaid with a ton of glitzy stones in an array of bright colours.

I am so easily suckered in to buying new costume jewellery, even though I know that I have so much already.  I really have to get better at remembering to wear it every day so that I can enjoy what I have more!

Barry M Fine Glitter Dust in Crimson/Pink

Originally I was going to post a look of me wearing this as my eyeshadow today but when I went to take some photos of the product itself for the blog I discovered that it said on the bottom “Not for around the eyes” – whoops!  So please don’t make the same mistake that I did if you have this product as it could cause major problems if it gets into your eyes (the glitter particles could be sharp and scratch your eyes bascially, ouch ouch ouch!)

Anyway I bought this product last weekend when I was feeling in a glitzy mood and the first time I wore it was on my cheeks anyway so I will still get some use out of it on my cheeks and lips.  I only have a couple of boring arm swatches of the product for you today but I’m sure to be using it again this spring so I will update this post when I have more pictures.

NOT for use around the eyes!!

Left: swatched with no base; right: swatched over a creamy base

I’m slightly disappointed with this product for two reasons: one that it can’t be used around the eyes (and also related to that the fact that this fact wasn’t clearly labelled on the stand when I bought it) and two because with a name like “fine glitter dust” I would have hoped for the product to have been pure pink glitter, but in fact as can clearly be seen above it is a silver glitter simply mixed with pink dazzle dust.  Although the effect is pretty it’s really not the effect I was hoping for – I wanted a coloured glitter, not a glitter suspended in pigment that will colour my skin.  I probably wouldn’t mind so much if I were primarily going to use it as an eyeshadow but really why would I want to for example dust my shoulders with this when it will leave them a blotchy pink shade instead of just with a fine dusting of glitter?  I don’t feel like I’m explaining myself very well but I hope you can see my point!

Barry M fine glitter dusts cost under £5 each and are often on special offer so at least they never break the bank even if you are disappointed in a particular shade.

Birch Bark Nails

I’m back!  I finally got round to fixing my laptop.  To be honest I was kind of enjoying the peace and quiet that having a break from my laptop turned out to be!

Anyway to ease myself back into the habit of blogging I thought I’d start with a really quick post to show how I’m wearing my nails at the moment.  I picked up a couple of new BarryM Instant Nail Effects crackle nail polish in blue and white (around £4 each) on Friday and painted them over a greige (I used Smoky Canvas by Revlon).  I think the nails with the white crackle on top really look like silver birch bark.  I quite like this colour combination.

While I’m blogging I might as well pop in this photo of the eye make-up I wore today.  Spring seems to be in full swing here in London now so I wanted to wear a bit of green and channel some zingy spring energy.  I used the Nars eyeshadow duo in Rated R which I bought recently. The colours are really bright, just how I like them!

Festive Nails

What better way to start the countdown to Christmas than with some sparkly metallic nails?  I used a Barry M silver nail polish and some Body Shop glitter to create this design.  It’s the first time I’ve created a nail design by simply sprinkling some glitter over still wet nail polish and I really like the effect so I can definitely see myself experimenting with lots of different colour combinations this December.

Pastel Polka Dots

After not having bought any new nail varnishes for about a year I’ve gone a bit nail crazy over the past couple of months and added another two colours to my collection today when I picked up shades 317 Blue Moon and 318 Peach Melba by BarryM in Superdrug on my way home from work.  They normally retail at around £2.99 each in Superdrug for 10ml but at the moment they’re on special offer at two for £5.



I think these colours are so lovely and capture the early summer mood that I’m in at the moment so perfectly that I wanted to use them straight away so I painted all my finger nails with Peach Melba (2 thin coats dried quickly to give great opaque coverage), then decided to pop some Blue Moon polka dots on top.  Actually Peach Melba is such an opaque peach that I'm not really sure if it suits me that well on its own, but I think that it looks really nice together with a splash of Blue Moon.

I don’t have any special nail art tools so I just grabbed a wooden skewer from my kitchen, carefully cut the top off, buffed down the ends with a rough nail file, and used the rounded tip to create the polka dots on my nails.

For some reason they make me think of a French umbrella from the ‘60s…maybe because I recently saw the musical “The Umbrellas of Cherbourg” in the West End.  Anyway, quite cute in any case methinks!



Showing off my finished nails with a bit of help from my favourite keyring…

Grey and Black Nails by MeMeMe and BarryM

I used to be a big nail polish fan but these days I'm a bit lazy and don't usually get much further than occassional dabbling with one-coat nail polishes.  However I have been on a bit of a mission lately to find a grey nail polish as it seems to be quite a new colour to the nail varnish market and I think it looks both unexpected and sophisticated.

I did buy a grey shade a couple of weeks ago which was the Accessorize nail polish in Dove which I wrote about here, but then on my next visit to Superdrug I spotted another colour that I thought might be even nearer to my ideal grey which is shade 59 Refined by MeMeMe (£4.50).  It's lighter than Dove, being more of a dry-cement grey, and looks much more grey than silver.  While I was in Superdrug I also picked up the BayyM nail effects in 311 (Black) (£3.99) which I know loads of bloggers have already been raving about for months so I thought I'd give it a try.

 I'm actually quite a big fan of some of MeMeMe's other products already such as their eyeshadows and liquid highlighter but I hadn't tried their nail varnish before.  I think they've recently revamped their packaging and this nail varnish has a so-called maxi-brush that means you can almost paint your entire nail in one stroke - very convenient.  The coverage of this shade was excellent and while one coat wasn't quite enough, two coats dried quickly enough to a lovely gently glossy opaque finish as you can see below.  I think this colour looks great on short nails.

 At £4.50 for 12ml this isn't the cheapest nail varnish you can buy but it's also certainly not the most expensive (it acutally works out cheaper per ml than the Accessorize nail polish) and the coverage and speed of application were impressive.  If any of the other colours in the range ever catch my eye I'd definitely consider buying them.

I then applied the BarryM nail effects over the top of the grey.  A word of warning - the first time I did this I don't think I left my first colour to dry enough and when I applied the BarryM on top it did cause my base colour to shrink slightly and go a bit patchy.  However it was second time lucky for me and I got what I felt was a really nice effect the next time.

I think this is a really clever product for creating impressive looking results in next to no time.  You simply paint your nails whatever colour you like, wait for them to dry completely (I'd recommend giving them at least half an hour) then apply one coat of the BarryM nail effects on top, which then begins to contract and crack to create a two-toned shattered effect.  I think this grey-black colour combo looks a bit like animal print or an eggshell pattern.  I'm going to try this with an orange or yellow next time as I think that would look like leopard print.

I think the BarryM nail effects has proven so popular already that they've launched a range of different colours, so if the black isn't quite your cup of tea you may find another shade that's more to your fancy.  You can find out more information about nail effects on the BarryM website.