nails inc. Couture

For those of you who may not be aware, nails inc. do a COUTURE service which lets you personalise your nail polish with a different lid and customised label . It's the presented in it's own box with your choice of 2 stickers et voila!

This service costs £20, is it worth it? Oh probably not. That's not really the point though and as my friend at work was leaving last week and is mad about nails inc.I thought it would make a fitting goodbye gift!

Picture courtesy of nails inc.com

The only thing that doesn't impress me about nails inc. is that they aren't always the quickest for delivery so it didn't arrive in time for my friends last day at work, so I basically felt like a bit of a bad bad friend.

Now, please don't go thinking that I just opened her present to take pictures, I wanted to make sure that it was all OK and the printing on the label wasn't dodgy and thought ' well...it would be a shame not to show this on my blog...'. Hmm, still sounds bad doesn't it?

The obligatory Celebration & Good Luck stickers

 I went for the pink jewelled lid with Holland Park, which by the way is an impossible colour to accurately capture on my camera so below is an edited version which shows the exact shades perfectly!

And this was the reason I opened the box, this sticker wasn't on straight at all, it was all the way to the left almost over the edge which I felt was a little shoddy considering you are paying for this little extra. It wasn't difficult to take it off and straighten it up though so not to worry.

A little Disney joke

My friend was really pleased with it and it looked cute so I was a happy bunny.

What do you guys thinks? Will you be treating someone special or yourself to a couture polish... there are only 86 days until Christmas!

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Silver Anniversary NOTW Nails inc Electric Avenue and Edinburgh Gate

The other week we had amazing weather and it was a family celebration at chez dolliepop. My grandma was visiting from Germany and it was my parents 25th Wedding Anniversary, which meant one thing- lots of silver!!

What to do in order to mark the celebration had been discussed for months on end and because it had practically been winter until (sods law) that week, the garden party idea was off. So once I knew all the friends & neighbours would be having a meal at the local Italian on the Saturday I had to plan my nails & outfit...surely that's what everyone does?

I had wanted to try a less obvious silver and go for Topshop's Zodiac for a metallic look but instead I started with Nails inc Electric Avenue which is a silver micro glitter polish.

One coat of Electric Avenue

I really liked this and I'm not usually a silver sort of girl but in the sunlight it looked amazing, the pictures don't really captures how brightly the shone.

This has great coverage and one coat could almost be enough, dries in a flash too.

Sparkling in the sunlight

A little bit plain? A little bit of an obvious choice?

That is exactly what I thought so I saw this polish...

Nails inc Edinburgh Gate

Silver, Blue, Red & Green pieces of glitter

Now, I don't actually like this polish, every time I look at it I think 'why?' 

I don't like the colours in it together at all but for some reason I looked at it this time and thought 'yes'.

I used this as my second coat over Electric Avenue and it was just perfect, I might even go as far as saying it was love at first sight. It added a different depth to the plain silver before and was just right for a party.

You'll have to try it in person to see just how amazingly they worked together! I went without a top coat as I quite liked the textured look.

♥ all the champagne and flowers, if only every weekend could be so much fun!

Everyone came to our house for pre drinks and the atmosphere at the restaurant was amazing with nearly 30 of us there basically loving life, the waiters were hilarious and our neighbours were even funnier. My friend and I went out after the meal and went to bed fairly early compared to the rest of the 'oldies' who didn't leave ours until 4:30 in the morning. I guess they were showing us how it's done!

My fingers don't normally look like obese Witchetty grubs, I swear
Bag- Accessorize

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NOTD- Nails inc. Porchester Square

A little while ago I bought these 3 Nails inc. polishes from their website and slowly I'm working through them, so here is my brief review of Porchester Square :)

L-R, Curtain Road, Porchester Square, Holland Park

I'm not normally a neutral nails sort of girl, I love pinks and pale natural colours but I'd never really latched on to this trend despite my housemate at uni being totally obsessed with neutral nails. There was something about this on the website that I just couldn't resist, I have a feeling it's because I saw the sparkly cap version and fell in love with it so I bought the standard just to check it out really. Popping to Boots to try it would have been an easier/cheaper option really... 

Picture courtesy of Nails inc website

One coat of the lovely Porchester Square, I am still a bright colours fan at heart but I think I will be headed to the muted side a little more often from now on...

Porchester Sqaure is a lovely mushroom shade, I'd like to think that is where its name has come from, as it sounds like Porcini mushroom but I think that is just me! I wasn't sure that it would suit my fair skin tone that can look quite pink/red with cool toned nail colours but I actually think it looks great. This colour is likely to suit a lot of people and I guess that is the exact reason they call it a 'HERO SHADE' on the cap, because it just is.

The only thing I would say with this polish is that mine is quite thick and not the quickest to dry, in fact I am just wearing the one coat and think the coverage is perfect just left at that. Two could end up a little gloopy and messy I think and make the drying time much longer.

It's taken me a while to get around to this one because I just wasn't sure how I felt about it and now that I have I think I'll be using it all the time, it could be love! 

What do you guys think? Are you big fan of neutrals and have you you tried Porchester Square?

Couldn't get this out of my head all day

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I'm back and I've found the perfect mascara!

So much for writing a really long post last Sunday eh? I don't really have an excuse, I was really tired and my laptop has been playing up AGAIN, shock. To give you an idea of the laptop situation, I have to keep my laptop tilted at a slightly downward, right position or it turns itself off, it won't charge and if the cable isn't plugged in at a certain angle, it turns itself off. This turning off happens A LOT and I always end up losing something important online. The battery is at zero so the moment the cable moves it's game over which makes trying to type with one hand whilst the other keeps the laptop tilted is a real bore when it take 9 attempts :( whing whinge moan moan- sorry, I'll stop!

In my previous post I mentioned that the matte curtain road from Nails inc. chipped really easily so I thought if I was going to ruin the matte effect with a topcoat then I might as well make it a little more interesting. I picked up these two Models Own polishes in Boots with their 2 for £8 deal from the new Hed Kandi range which I just LOVE.

L-R, Beach Party, Ibiza mix

I will give a proper review of Beach Party soon, the photo just doesn't do it any justice- it glows so brightly!

What do you think? I just love Ibiza mix on top of curtain road, the different sizes of round pastel glitter look so nice with it. I think it will compliment blue even better so I did a couple of patch tests below... I think I'll try Peacock next. This is just 1 coat of glitter so 3 would probably get you close to opaque, although 1 coat took forever to remove so I would love to know how many days 3 coats would take to remove!

Apologies for the dodgy card tester but my nail wheels haven't arrived yet and I only have one pair of hands

On to mascara...

I find it really difficult to leave the house without any mascara, probably ever since I received my first Diorshow mascara in a gift set for Christmas...hmm maybe 8 years ago? God I hope not because that makes me feel ancient and I'm only 23.

I have fairly large eyes and would probably consider them my best/only feature. My eyelashes used to be longer, thicker and darker but after years of abuse they are suffering a little and are quite pale so on goes the bucket of mascara on a daily basis. 

Even my mum stares for a while and says 'Aha, that's what's different-

I'm not used to seeing you without any eye make-up' when it isn't on. 

Thanks mum. 

I am a big fan of Chanel mascaras, the don't flake like Dior and they almost always have the effect that the advert says which I've discovered isn't always true with other companies.

Chanel Sublime Mascara

The INCREDIBLE Chanel Sublime mascara

I picked this up in Sephora in Paris in January on a bit of a fluke, I had loved their Cils a Cils in the past and also their Inimitable so I thought this looked promising and would give it a go.

BEST.DECISION.EVER

My plain, scary looking boggler

A swish of the magic wand

One coat

I think I have my photos confused, this is supposed to be 2 coats and I have a feeling it's still one...

Two coats & eyeliner

This is halfway through the tube I reckon, which is my only gripe with every Chanel mascara I have ever used- You will never have as good an effect as with the first week of using it. It is so formula heavy on the wand to start with that they run out very quickly and even after a week or 2 it is noticeable how much less is being used; it's still always a fantastic mascara but nowhere near as good as the first use. I didn't want to blink the first time in case I blew cars off the road!

I am now on my 3rd Sublime, the 2nd was a waterproof version which was good but it seems that something in the formula detracts from it's length, volume & separation capabilities and I would just stick with regular panda mascara with Chanel now.

I also usually only use DEEP BLACK but picked up Deep Brown in a hurry by mistake. It's thw brown I am wearing in the photos and do you know what I thought it would be too subtle but it's great and I can't really tell that it isn't black at all.

I would definitely recommend this to any mascara addicts out there, it's just so good!

Well that's this post over with, I will try and get my arse in gear and post every night again because I've got SO MUCH to talk about on here!

Nunight

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Nails inc. Curtain Street/Road- designer matte finish

Good morning :) It looks like we'll be having great weather this weekend, yay!

I bought this lovely little nail polish from the Nails inc. website for £5 thinking it it looked like a nice shade of pale pink and I'd not seen the matte effect before. On the Website it's called Curtain Road, when it arrived though it was called Curtain Street, so who knows!

Picture courtesy of Nails inc.website

OK, looking at my photo it looks just the same as the website, perhaps I had just imagined it to be the colour I was hoping...

It looks a lot pinker in real life than on the website so I was a little disappointed but actually I really like the shade now and think its the perfect match to a matte polish as it's a very powdery, girly sort of look.

Apologies for the state of my shoddy index finger

More 'satin' finish than true matte 

The polish itself is a bit of a nightmare to apply, it's quite thin and runny and the 1st coat is a wonderful streaky one. The 2nd coat improves things but it's still not quite right, so it takes 3 coats of this bad boy to get it looking opaque and streak free. One thing working in its favour is that it is the fastest drying polish I've probably ever come across, I don't just mean touch dry either. You can press on this after a a minute or so and it leaves no mark, even after 3 coats it is still a quicker dryer which at least makes up for the fact that 4 coats could be needed.

Another thing to mention is that this chips SO easily and hasn't even lasted 24 hours on me. I really like the look but I think I'll just use this now and then as a novelty and definitely not everyday!

Right, I'm off now; my friend and I joined the gym yesterday and we're going to attempt another 50 lengths of the pool and then we're going to watch Beauty and the Beast 3D at the cinema!  I am so excited about this, gutted it's only in 3D because I really don't like wearing those glasses which make no difference at all but it's in my top 3 favourite Disney films ever. I LOVE IT.

I'll be back tomorrow with a very looonnnnggggg post.

I'll finish this post with a quick feel good song for the weekend!

Rudimental- Feel the love, ft. John Newman

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