Another haul, and my stash

Here's another haul that arrived today, this time a bulk lot of cosmetics that I bought off TradeMe with all sorts of exciting (and not so exciting) items.


The whole lot came in a cute little silvery clutch bag, a little worn round the edges but I can definitely see me getting some use out of it - that colour will go with most everything. In front of it a bottle of Body Shop Total Energy Exhilarating Body Wash (with guarana, bergamot and luffa) which smells divine, and three rings, two of which I'll wear and the flowery one which ... erm .... not really me.


Maybelline Express Finish Taupe Tulle (which surprisingly I find myself drawn to), Revlon Dark Pleasures Scarlet Letter (love the Dark Pleasures range) and BYS Lolly Lick (most definitely not my colour).

Maybelline Forever Metallic Lites in Snow Perle (one for 14 Year Old Daughter - too frosty pink for me), Maybelline Shiny-licious lip gloss in Strawberry Tart (cute colour, I do find these Maybelline glosses are of the glue your lips together and stick your hair to your face variety though), and a Body Shop Hi-Shine Lip Treatment.

A Benefit Justine Case mini beautifier kit (I seem to remember my sister getting one of these as a gift with purchase when she bought her GHD's). Contains an Eyecon brightening eye cream, a California Kissin' smile brightening lip shine, and Some Kind-A-Gorgeous The Foundation Faker. The kit would have originally come with a Benetint lip and cheek stain in rose, but I bought one of those in Melbourne so no great loss.

A Maybelline XXL microfiber mascara in Very Black, a pink shimmer eyeshadow crayon which all the writing has rubbed off of, a Too Faced Liquid Light highlighting shimmer and a Castledew colorshot double ended eyeliner pencil (one end black, the other glittery white.

Swatches - on a hand which appears in the photo to be quite wrinkly around the wrist. This displeases me!

At the left is Body Shop Hi-Shine Lip Treatment, then from top to bottom Maybelline Forever Metallic Lites Snow Perle, Maybelline Shiny-licious Strawberry Tart, Benefit Some Kind-a-Gorgeous (too yellow for my skin), Benefit California Kissin', Too Faced Liquid Light, unnamed eyeshadow crayon (this one's definitely going to 14 Year Old Daughter - the colour's not quite right for my eyes plus the texture of eyeshadow crayons doesn't tend to work so well on not-quite-40-but-not-too-far-off eyelids), Castledew eyeliner black end and white end.

Lots of fun stuff to play around with in there. I didn't swatch the Benefit Eyecon eye cream because when I put it on my hand it didn't do anything - by which I mean I couldn't see it!

I spent some time this afternoon sorting out my polishes. I have to do this on a regular basis because my collection keeps outgrowing my storage. The Eccentric English Boyfriend would have me believe this is a good reason to stop buying polishes. To which I reply: "lalalalalalalala I can't hear you".

This is the storage trolley I keep all my polishes in - I like the fact that it's on wheels, when I'm doing manis I can wheel it out for people to choose their colour. You will notice at back right is Jessie, looking all stalky, and at left you can make out Fred who was in the middle of scratching his head against the couch. He makes the funniest little grunty noises when he does this.

The top tier, from left to right holos, duochromes and clear-based glitters, blacks, greys, whites golds and creams, reds, oranges and yellows.

The middle tier, from left to right yellow/greens, greens, blue/greens, blues.

The bottom tier, from left to right blurples, purples and pinks, and at the right my stash of untrieds.

And since my polishes have completely taken over the trolley, this lot had to go into containers.

At the back are my Seche Vite refill and my Seche Restore, then top row is manicure tools, a container of nail repair/treatments, hand creams and polish removers and a container of mini bottles of polish (unnamed or unknown brands). Front is my soaking dish (I always think these look like orange juicers!), a container of top and bottom coats and a container of nail art/Konad stuff.

Phew! I've seen lots of different storage solutions for us polish addicts. How do you store your polishes my pretties? Someone asked me the other day if I kept my polishes in the fridge, which made me laugh because although our fridge is huge if I put all my polishes in it there'd be very little room for anything else!

Like (shopaholic) mother, like (shopaholic) daughter

14 Year Old Daughter and I went on a shopping spree the other day with her boyfriend in tow. Poor boy. He did quite well, except for the lingerie department. At that stage he threw his arms over his head and wailed. Seriously. He did get lots of sympathy and blokey pats on the back from other men in the same situation. Never let it be said that men lack empathy.

Anyway, we bought lots of stuff. Lots.

14 Year Old Daughter bought these for herself:


From left a BYS lip gloss, a mwah! eyeliner pencil, mwah! glittery liquid eyeliner and mwah! roll on eyeshadow. She has the most gorgeous grey/blue eyes and these greens and blues look stunning on her.



I stopped in to the M.A.C. store and picked up some Prep & Prime and a bottle of Beyond Jealous nail polish from the Jin Soon collection. There's a few colours in the collection I've been coveting, but M.A.C. polishes aren't cheap and Beyond Jealous was top of my list. I also signed myself up for a M.A.C. technique class on November 18th, which I'm looking forward to enormously. They cost NZ$120, but NZ$100 of that can be redeemed for product on the evening. I gather they teach the smoky eye, which is a look I've never quite been able to master.

Remember that thing I do where I decide I don't like a particular look and promptly find an example of said look that I do like? Ok, let's add a couple of things to my list of looks I don't like shall we?: I'm not really big on the wedge heels that are being seen on shoes this season, and cork heels don't appeal to me at all. Alrighty? Also, look at these gorgeous shoes I bought:



How adorable are they? NZ$35.00 on a Novo clearance table. And yes, they have wedges and cork. But they carry it off, so there!

Farmers Department Store are celebrating their 100th anniversary, so there are plenty of discounts storewide, including 25% off womenswear. I picked up this cute tee, the motorcycle on the front reminds me of my ex-husband's Honda CB-650 Custom. We spent many happy hours riding around Wellington on that bike! I even had the most awesome leather jacket with fringing. I rocked as a bikie chick.



14 Year Old Daughter managed to persuade me to buy her a couple of cute tees and a gorgeous military style jacket.




How gorgeous is she in that jacket?

The beauty department had 10% off:



I was remarkably restrained, there was so much more I wanted to buy! Left to right is the Australis Rush Hour palette in Down to Earth, Chi Chi nail polish in Merman, Orly Nail Rescue Kit (Orly should totally pay commission to Michelle from All Lacquered Up - since she blogged about this product I think every nail polish blogger I follow has bought some!), L'Oreal Resist & Shine Titanium shade 710, and Australis Rush Hour palette in Pinks on the Go.

I've mentioned before that I'm not a big fan of makeup palettes, too often there'll be a couple of colours in the palette that work for me, and the rest sit there unused. However here's a photo of the colours in the Australis palettes:


All colours that I find wearable, and I venture to say that most people would. That's Down to Earth on the left and Pinks on the Go on the right. I gather all the colours are drawn from their current range, I know I already have a couple of those lip gloss colours in the full sizes. For NZ$14.90 each these are an incredibly good deal. Plus they were 10% off, so what's not to love really?

Much to my delight I found a Color Club stand in Life Pharmacy. Color Club is hard to find here in New Zealand, in fact so far I've only seen them in Life Pharmacy and they have a very limited range. However I did buy this gorgeous colour:



That's Blue Light. Pretty.

And one more small haul - before I went to Melbourne I got a discount code for pop beauty, and the parcel arrived a few days after my return. Look at these puppies:



That's Ocean and Turquoise. I also got one of these clever eyeliner pencils in Black Onyx:



The picture's nabbed from the pop site, because my pencil's all the way upstairs, and it's such a long way to get it and bring it downstairs and photograph it and ... *sigh* Anyway it's a very clever pencil, held one way it draws a standard thin line, and turned 90 degrees it draws a thicker line perfect for cats eyes.

And, pop threw in a sample size of their eyelid primer - great service pop!

Today's nails: three pinks and a blue

Getting closer and closer to the end of my untried pile - today I thought I'd give the three pinks a go. All three are very sheer, requiring at least four coats to be close to opaque. If, like me, you prefer your polishes completely opaque then these would be best used as layering polishes.

First, Color Club Candy Girl:




You know how I'm not especially fond of pink or nude polishes? Well this one's pink AND nude and I quite like it. It's pale but interesting, kind of like a goth chick! This is a very soft pearl pink shimmer that I like against my skin tone. Four coats and still very sheer, I'd like to see it layered over white.

Next Color Club Sugar Rush:





Five (yes five) coats, it's a nice enough pretty pale pink shimmer but totally wrong against my skin tone and just not wowing me.

Last of the pinks, Revlon Flash of Fuchsia:




13 Year Old Daughter loves this one. It's a bit too bubblegum pink for me, but it does have interesting flashes of blue and purple in some lights. Another five coater.

And finally, the colour that has stayed on for today, BYS Blue Buzz:




The base of this is a nice blue shimmer, and in the bottle it has lots of glitter which flashes gold or silver depending on the light. The glitter doesn't apply as thickly as it appears in the bottle, and it rather sinks in to the polish so that the effect is somewhat lost. I like this polish though, it's cheerful and applied nicely in two coats with a minimum of brush strokes.

The Eccentric English Boyfriend is watching The Howling while I blog. Isn't it funny watching movies that were considered frightening in their time (in this case the 70's) and finding them positively laughable by today's standards?

A small haul, a broken nail and some swatches

A quick trip to the mall today, and a small haul from the sales bins at Postie Plus:



When I was last there I picked up a bottle of Orly Armor for NZ$8.00, and I have been so impressed with it that I stocked up on another bottle, plus an Orly ridge filler and quick dry top coat. Orly products normally retail for around NZ$20.00 a bottle, so NZ$8.00 is a bargain - I'm presuming it's because they're in the old-style bottles.

Below that is a NYC liquid eyeliner in plum, some Nailene nail glue and BYS polishes in Blue Buzz and Dark Teal. (Oh and a new cushion, which the haul is sitting on.)


At some stage during the shopping trip I broke the thumb nail on my left hand (oh noes!), hence the nail glue purchase. I read a post over at Helen and Sheenie's Nice Things a while ago ago about a nail repair trick that I got a chance to try out today.



Not the neatest repair job, but very effective. That papery stuff on my nail is the paper from a tea bag, believe it or not. When Helen repaired her nail break she painted her nails with a coat of Nail Envy and stuck the paper down over that, I painted the strips of paper with nail glue and stuck them down with the help of an orange stick and some tweezers. Helen's method is less fiddly, and less likely to result in stuff being glued to other stuff that it's not supposed to be glued to.

A quick buff of the edges to smooth them down a bit, and one repaired nail. I am really surprised at how strong it is, it's really not moving. I'll be interested to see how it holds up to my daily nail polish changes.

Once the glue had dried on my fabulous repair it was time for some polish. BYS Dark Teal to be precise:





Dark Teal is a jelly, and you can see from the photos how very, very sheer it is. This was four coats and there is still heaps of visible nail line. In fact, if you look closely you can see the white spots on some of my nails from where I bumped them. I don't know how many coats it would have taken to be opaque, more than I could be bothered doing.

Transparency aside, I love the colour. It makes me think of the deep dark depths of the sea. The Eccentric English Boyfriend says it reminds him of a gemstone, but he can't remember which one. It's funny though, I wasn't blown away by the blue/green of Barry M's Racing Green, yet this blue/green has me all excited. I'm a freak obviously.

Dark Teal did take forever to dry though, even with Seche Vite on top. Is it just me that finds jellies are consistently slower to dry than other polish types? Does anybody else have this problem, and if so do you have any tips or tricks?

Finally, here's a swatch of the NYC Liquid Eyeliner in Plum.



Very thickly pigmented, I do like this colour. It's plum with a brownish cast to it that makes it ideal for most colouring. It has a faint shimmer which doesn't show up in the photo and dries very matt. Very, very matt. It showed up every little wrinkle on my hand, so you wouldn't want to use this on wrinkly eyes! (Also, eewwwwww - yellow nails!)

What do you think of the new look my pretties? The background is from Background Fairy, who has some gorgeous vintage feel designs.