Van D'Go Dupe - Maybelline Sweetie Pie.

Hello lovely people!  It's heating up here in Wales now and I'm in a very summer mood so I've been hunting for the perfect demure summer shade for my nails (especially after the crazy smurf leopard nails of last week!).  I've seen Essie's Van D'Go on so many blogs for ages and it looks gorgeous but as I'm a blogger on a budget I thought I'd try the reported dupe (which I found out about here!)

I don't have Van D'Go, so this is just a review of Maybelline's Sweetie Pie which I bought a la Ebay for £3.65 including P&P.

This polish is a pinky-peach creme with a nice creamy consistency.  It was quite a streaky formula and took 3 coats to get properly opaque and non-streaky (which I'm guessing doesn't happen a lot with Essie polishes!)

 

Although this isn't the best of all the photos I took, this is the closest to the real colour of Sweetie Pie.

       It's still a bit more peachy in real life than it is in the photos and I just love it!

I think this is the perfect shade to wear to meet boyfriend's parents for the first time - understated but pretty.  I know I've got this the wrong way around but I'm desperate to buy some peach clothes to match this varnish now, hahaha!  Luckily peach is everywhere this summer so I'm sure I'll find something!

Do you have a colour obsession at the moment or an even better peach varnish you can recommend?  I'd love to hear from you if you do! :)

Leopard print nails ... smurf style!

Ok so I'm sure you've seen this type of leopard print nail art ALL OVER the bloggosphere by now.  I've seen this colour combination everywhere, but it looked so fun I HAD to try it for myself with my new nail stuff!
So here it is!

 If anyone knows of a half decent yet not too expensive camera that they use, please let me know!  I realise my photos aren't the best!  :)

This was pre-cleanup!  As you can see, I made a right mess, hehe!
The base colour is Turquoise Day Glo by Primark (a mere £2!), the pink bits (yes they look more white in the pic!) are Barry M's Strawberry Ice cream and the black is the black rio art pen.

I've worn this mani for a week and it's STILL going strong with hardly any chipping whatsoever which is  surprising given all the varnish I used was low budget.  I finished the mani with a topcoat of Essence top speed gloss to seal it all.

I must admit I think this mani makes me feel a bit like a drag queen, but it has left me grinning every time I see it as I'm not used to seeing patterns on my nails being a nail art noob and all!
Have you discovered any good combos for this sort of mani?  I'd love to hear your ideas! :)

Rio nail art kit

As I had a nail art kit from my boyfriend recently I thought I'd do a little blog post showing it to you.

Complete with the original Rio nail art kit are 8 nail art colours, a teensy tube of gold glitter, some rhinestones and a brush.  Each bottle you can see is a pen and a striping brush.  Here's a better explanation.

Ahem, yes I was a bit worried about sploshing nail varnish everywhere trying to photo the actual things, so I thought I'd just photograph the manual! haha!

The striping brushes are really easy to use, I quickly tried a union jack on one nail to test them out.  Not too bad!

My first attempt at nail art!

It was my birthday recently and as I'm forever gabbing about nail varnish and pouring over nail art photos on the internet my long-suffering boyfriend bought me a nail art kit! 

The base colour is Nails Inc Victoria which I got free from a magazine.  I'm really very impressed with the quality of this varnish actually, smooth even coverage, glossy finish and it lasted for a week before it chipped. 

Apologies for the blurry pic, it was taken on my phone when I was a bit tipsy on birthday pink bubbly wine!
Here's another pic that shows scary zombie hands!  Pale skin + flash = bleuuurgh!

Polish, puttering and ponderings giveaway!

Hello again!  My lord,  my posts are like buses, none for ages then three all at once!

Over at Polish, Puttering and Ponderings there's a fab international giveaway in which you can win:

China Glaze's Pom Pom, Sally Hansen's Hard as Nails and Revlon's Perplex.  Look at the pretty!!

To enter, go to Kelkel's website here

Microwave mug cake.. mmmmmmmm!

 Do you ever have one of those days when you MUST have something really sweet and really bad for you?  No sugar-free sweets or yoghurt will do... it must be sweet, calorific and it must be now!  Well I had one of those days today and there was no junk food in the house.  I fancied cake, we had all the basic ingredients but I just didn't have the energy to make one, it's so much effort and cleaning up etc etc (for me anwyay!)  Then I thought... I wonder if you can make cake in the microwave... I googled it and VOILA!
Behold Microwave mug cake in all its glory!

It took about 3 minutes to make, no scales and nothing but 1 mug, a spoon and a fork to wash up!  It wasn't as delicious as oven baked cake but it DID taste like cake and it DID satisfy my sugar cravings!  I found the recipe here

.... of course it probably would have been more delicious if I hadn't used hot chocolate powder instead of cocoa powder (which we didn't have).   I ate it straight away, piping hot, served with ice cream and had lots left to spare for another day as you can see!!  Om nom nom!

 When I emptied the rest of the cake into a tin my true (microwave) cooking skills were revealed!  Unintentional half drinking chocolate-half plain cake, mmmmm!  I'm going to make someone a wonderful wife!

Hibernation over!

Ahem, so yes, if you're ill and you do a blog, it doesn't always get updated that frequently .... or even that infrequently .. or even for six whole months!  Hehe!  Ah well, I'm going to give it another go just for fun!
In November I had to begin to push myself physically so that I'd be well enough to go to a rehabilitation place in Brecon.  When I say push myself physically I mean sit upright in a chair for more than a few minutes every day, walk for more than 20 seconds or so and wake up before 2pm (oh yes!) and STAY awake all day until 9-10pm.

Now for me, this was a HUGE challenge and it meant I had no energy left to do anything else other than eat and .. exist really! For some bizarre reason even sedentary activities like reading tire the heck out of me, sometimes more so than doing something more physical -bizarre I know, but there you go!  You know, I haven't read a whole book for years and years. Aah I do miss it but I listen to audiobooks to get my literary fix now, so it's not all bad!

I went to the rehab place in January which is for those with chronic pain and fatigue and since then it's been an uphill struggle keeping up with the regimen.  I'm still finding things really tricky, but I feel I have just that little bit more energy now to re-start my blog about the things that make me happy.  So ... bring on the good times!