NOTD - Powder Puff and Showgirl Chic

The weather here in England has been terrible for the past week.  Lots of snow and not much leaving the house.  I did brave it yesterday and am proud to say that I stayed on my feat the whole time. There isn't much snow around anymore, it's all starting to melt so in honour of the chilly weather I have given myself an icy manicure.

I started off with a base coat of Sally Hansen's Nail Quencher (essential for keeping my nails fitting fit).  Then I added Revlon's Powder Puff which is one of their Matte Suede shades, and a nail polish that I was lucky enough to find in the haven of bargains that is Poundland.

This is one of my favourite whites, it has a really lovely blue shimmer running through it which makes it a bit special.  Also because it is matte it dries pretty fast which is lucky seeing as I had to do three coats to get it as opaque as I wanted.  I normally find Revlon polishes to be one-coaters but the they couldn't escape the curse of the white polish.  One day I vow to find the perfect white nail polish (comment if you have any suggestions).

Next up was a recent purchase Sally Hansen's Gem Crush in Showgirl Chic (I think this is a dupe for a China Glaze Polish - Comparison coming soon).  This is a beautiful silver and blue glitter, The silver is very small and the blue comes in small hexagons.  It is the perfect sort of polish for this weather.  I didn't want a full set of glitter fingers, mainly because it is such a pain to remove glitter polish, so I decided to do a glitter gradient instead.  I wanted it to look like icicles so I did one coat pulling the polish down about two thirds of my nail in vague triangles.  Next I put another coat on the top third and finished it off with a coat of Sally Hansen's Maximum Growth Top Coat (one of my favourites).

I am really happy with how it turned out, now whilst the snowmen are melting outside the frost can survive on my nails.

Have you been rocking wintery nails this week?

I wish, I wish, I wish

As promised this is a wishlist of the products that I will want to buy after Project Pan.  I realize it seems counter-intuitive to think about buying whilst on a spending ban but it has made me focus on which products I really want and why I want them.  It also means that hopefully when I have finished Project Pan I won't go on a mad spending spree and end up in the exact same position.  If I do purchase these during my project pan they will, out of embarrassment and shame, turn purple.

Therefore I have made a list of the 10 products that I am currently lusting after.

1) Real Techniques Brushes (from the amazing Samantha Chapman of Pixiwoo fame).  I already have the  Core Collection and use them nearly everyday so I would love to get a few more.  In particular the Travel Essentials.  You can find a list of stockists here.

2) UNII Palettes so that I can organize my, hopefully smaller, makeup collection.  These have been getting really good reviews.  Plus another selling point for me, because I am shallow, is the fact that they are beautifully designed and come in various pastel colours.  Perfect for colour coordinating.  You can see all the beautiful shades here.

3) Benefit 'Hello Flawless' powder foundation in Shell.  This is my favourite foundation of all time.  I am a powder or tinted moisturizer girl at heart and I am sad to say that I am very nearly out of this.  It pains me because I won't be allowed to buy another one due to the fact that I do own other powder foundations (usually either slightly to light or too dark for me - so I may be slightly odd coloured for a while).  You can see it on the Benefit website here .  (Update:  I caved in and bought this -read my attempts at justifying it here)

4) Nyx Blush in Taupe.  I have read on countless blogs that this blush is a wonderful contour colour for paler skin so I am anxious to try it out, especially since it is such a reasonable price.  There a few other of their blushes which catch my eye but Taupe is the one that I will start with, you can see it here.  Let me know which Nyx Blushes are your favourites.

5) Revlon Lip Butter in Tutti Frutti.  I already have several of these in other colours and I think I could write an entire post on my love for them.  I have barely been wearing anything else on my lips in over a month.  They are perfection.  There are millions of blog and youtube reviews of these so I won't add to the numbers but take my word for it - if you haven't tried these you really should.  You can see all the available colours here

6) Max Factor Max Effect Mini Nail Polish in Fantasy Fire.  This nail varnish is beautiful, and rumoured to be a dupe of the impossible to find Clarins 230.  I would only ever use it as a top coat as it is said to be fairly sheer but the effect it gives is gorgeous.  You can see a swatch and wonderful review here and see all the Max Factor nail colours here.

7) Liz Earle Cleanse and Polish.  This has been all over the blogs this year and I would love to try it once I have used up all of my other various skin care items.  The adorable Zoella did a review on her blog of this and a couple of other Liz Earle goodies which also sound incredible.  You can see the, surprisingly reasonably priced, cleaner here.

8) Alpha H Liquid Gold is supposedly a skin miracle worker.  I am quite lucky in that I do have good skin, but I do suffer from redness and this has been reported by some as helping this.  It is quite pricey but my curiosity has gotten the better of me so it made the wish list.  You can see a review here and buy it from here and various other places.

9) Moroccan Oil is, I'm hoping, going to be the thing that saves my hair.  I have recently had a slight dye mishap (I'll explain later) and my hair, which is uncontrollable at the best of times, is telling me exactly how angry it is with me.  This has had fabulous reviews from so many people that I can't help but think it would help at least a little.  I just can't decide whether, when I take the plunge, if I should go for the 25ml or the 100ml.

10) And now for something completely different...JolieBox.  I would love to get myself a subscription to this beauty box.  From what I have seen online it is the one that appeals most to me.  I also think that receiving a few luxury samples each month could help me fight my desire to go out and buy more products.  Plus I really do love getting post, especially when it is beauty products in a cute as a button box type of post.  Plus if you sign up for longer periods of time you save a little bit of money as you can see here.


Wow, that was a long post.  Well done if you made it this far.  As Project Pan proceeds I may swap things off and onto this list so that I have to remain strict even after my spending ban.  What is on your wish list at the moment?