Chanel Blue Satin

Here she is my pretties, cult fave Chanel Blue Satin:




Mmmmm, she's so pretty. And application was a dream, very nearly one coat, although there was more depth of colour from two. The only thing that gave me problems was the lid, the square lid pulls off to reveal a smaller lid more reminiscent of your standard polish bottle lid, but it was a little on the short side making holding it a wee bit fiddly.

It was always a given that I was going to love this colour. I mean it's a blue/black with shimmer. And it really is utterly gorgeous. In anything but the darkest of lights the blue shines through in that lit from within way that's always a winner. It's like someone crushed up sapphires and embedded them in black glass.

So, the verdict: Are the rave reviews of this right? Hell yeah! Application and colour are both stunning. Is it worthy of its cult status? I think so. Would I pay the full price of NZ$40.00 a bottle? Hell no! As much as I love the top end brands, I have a limit of NZ$25.00 for a bottle of polish, and the best application and colour in the world aren't going to convince me that anything more than that is worth the money. What about you my pretties? What's your maximum spend on a bottle?

TradeMe you evil, evil Temptress

Fellow beauty product junkies will sympathise with me when I say that online auction sites are damnably addictive. The thrill of chasing down a bargain or a hard to find cult favourite is unbeatable. So much so that there have been times when I've bought a polish not because I like the colour, but because it was too good a bargain to pass by. Which is exactly the case with two of the polishes below:



Regular readers will know that the two pale polishes on the right are not really my cup of tea, but given that Anna Sui retails for around NZ$13.00 a bottle and Clarins for NZ$30.00, the NZ$2.00 (plus petrol) that I paid for them was pretty gosh-darned good!

I remember reading somewhere that Anna Sui polishes had a fragrance, this one doesn't. Does anybody know whether the fragrance is a recent addition and I've got an older polish, or perhaps I bought a fake (but hey at that price who cares, the bottle's pretty!). Also, a warning: when sampling the fragrance of a nail polish, don't stick your nose right up to the bottle and sniff deeply cos, you know, chemical fumes. Also, does anybody else see the monkey riding the unicorn?

The other polish in the picture is Chanel Blue Satin. Normally my budget for a single polish on TradeMe is NZ$10.00 tops, but let me repeat: Chanel. Blue. Satin. As in cult favourite Chanel Blue Satin. So I was quite happy to pay NZ$20.00 plus postage for it, especially since Chanel polish retails for around NZ$40.00.

Your daily dose of pretty: hooray for Chanel dupes and girly shopping trips

Girly shopping trip today with a dear friend who I hadn't seen for ages. Good company and pretty things, the perfect day really!

And lookity-lookity what I found in Mi Piaci:



Do they look familiar? If you've been following this blog you'll recognise them as an almost exact dupe of the Chanel shoes I fell in love with a few weeks ago. These are the Mi Piaci Parker, and while the black and cream version in the photo differs from the Chanel shoe in having a single colour heel the brown and cream version I tried on in the shop had the same two tone heel as the Chanel shoes. The Mi Piaci shoes retail for NZ$230.00, which seems like a lot to me considering the most I've ever spent on shoes was NZ$200.00 for a pair of Overland boots (on sale), but when you consider that Chanel shoes tend to retail for around US$500.00 it is a considerable saving on the original.

I didn't buy them though. I so very badly wanted to, and I suspect that when the Eccentric English Boyfriend reads this he will think it is a Very Good Thing that my replacement credit card hasn't arrived yet. Check out the Mi Piaci website here.

Your daily dose of pretty

Oh my, I think I'm having palpitations. How much do I love these shoes!

This is the sort of vintage style that I think of as 'Granny Chic' and hot-damn they're cute. The mary jane style, the chunky heel, the two tone detailing - oh Chanel why do you tempt me so? I need a pair of nude heels in my collection (because of course I don't have enough shoes), and if I could afford these ... but I can't so the search continues.