Spot The Vagina

Picture courtesy of Fleur De Force

 Meadham Kirchoff for Nail Rock.

 Cath Kidson eat your heart out, theres a new cutie in town... Sometime in the next week Topshop will be exclusively stocking these quaint yet controversial nail wraps. They retail for the usual £6.95 and I would imagine the wear time will be the same as previous Nail Rock wraps which for myself was around 5 days/until the tip-wear began to irritate me. Unfortunately for some the 8th wrap is not optional... and as much as I would love to wear these to work I don't think even I can handle the awkward moment when a little old lady exclaims how lovely my nails are before requesting a closer look...

Juicy Juicy NOTD

One coat of Malava's Elle Grey finished with two coats of Models Own Juicy Jules and no topcoat required. Perfection. I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Two coats

 One coat

 After weeks of fruitless visits to Boots to scour the Models Own shelves for a bottle of Juicy Jules the glitter gods must have been looking down on me as it was finally in stock! It's like Christmas on your fingertips, has been the subject of many a nail compliment and somehow renders all nail varnishes unchippable. Literally, not even any tip-wear after 5 days, and  at £5 a bottle (if you can find it) it's definitely, 100% worth the purchase.

YSL Rouge pur Couture Glossy Stain... The Holy Grail

St Valentines Day... Tuesday the 14th of February... also known as the day you need to swiftly saunter down to your local YSL counter and casually buy ALL of the Glossy Stains they have in stock. Or perhaps if you, like me, don't possess the virtue of patience then you could always hot foot it to Selfridges whereby Glossy Stains remain exclusive until they are released to the masses on Valentines Day...

 #12 - Coral Fauve

Described by YSL as a "true revelation of the decade" (I love it and everything but, reeeally?) Rouge pur Couture Glossy Stain boasts a winning formula which encompasses both long lasting stain colour and a wet look finish - a match not usually made in heaven. Traditionally long lasting colour and gloss have had a pretty tempestuous relationship, and you either had one or the other, not anymore! According to the creators, Glossy Stains have harnessed "pure water soluble pigments to be fused in a transparent texture to provide non sticky, long lasting and high shine gloss". 

 Above: One coat     Below: Two coats

 Technical jargon doesn't really do it for me, for example nothing winds me up more than a product which claims to "work with your skins natural PH levels to provide the perfect colour for your skin tone" Errr... Ok... But the proof is always in the pudding when it comes to cosmetics and reading the claims on the packet another ten times after a dispointing new mascara application isn't going to make your lashes appear 100% longer in one brush stroke as you were promised. If it works, it works, and these Glossy Stains really do work. They're nicely pigmented, the product is easily layered meaning you can choose the intensity of colour, the fading is even and doesn't require panicked checks in the mirror every ten minutes because it manages not to migrate north, west, east and south to the surrounding areas of your upper lip, cheeks and chin. I basically want one for every day of the week... a Glossy Stain for every whimsical mood, what a world that would be.

 In hindsight if I were to leave you with one word of warning it would be to choose your shade wisely, I would recommend buying in store as I got mine online as a result of seeing the colour on another blog and deciding what was a pale coraly-orange on this particular lady would be perfect for what I was after... it actually turned out to be a deep pink and almost red when worn on me. Even the lady on the counter remarked that the colour looked very red indeed whilst I was perusing the shade range in person at my local Selfridges and went on to ask if it was actually number 12 I had purchased and that I wasn't confusing the colours...I wasn't but anyway to conclude, these are the my new make up love... so go and buy one, or at least go and buy me another one.

Oh, and at £22.50 a pop they are rather expensive...

When I Grow Up I Want To Be Lisa Eldridge.

Nails Inc Couture

 If you are stuck on what Christmas gift to buy a girlfriend, sister, friend, mother, brother... ANYONE who has nails worth painting then you should definitely consider Nails Inc's newest service launch: Couture. Quite frankly its genius. For a mere £20 you can create a bespoke nail varnish, from colour selection, colour description and packaging for your loved one.

 There are around 70 colours to choose from, your options being a creme finish, jelly finish, metallic finish and of course the obligatory Christmas (or if you're me then the every other day) glitters. There is literally something for everyone. The packaging can be customised with different stickers whether they be "Get Well Soon" or "Congratulations!". The options are rather vast so that in theory, I should be receiving one of these couture varnishes after every mini-milestone for the next 5 years...

 Cosmetic present buying can be an absolute minefield if you aren't in the know, but nail varnish is usually one of the more inoffensive option, saying that, unless you're buying say the new sold out Chanel colour or perhaps a hard to find Deborah Lippmann glitter... nail varnish can veer towards the more sedentary side of present options, but Nails Inc Couture changes allllll of that and I. WANT. ONE.

 1) Pick your lid

 2) Pick your colour

 3) Name your polish

4) Choose the packaging... DONE!

The Un-Dupeables

In beauty terms or probably more accurately blogger terms... a dupe is a product, usually a cheaper one, that is pretty much an exact 'copy' of another (premium) product.

 There are varying degrees of dupes as you could imagine... There are some exact dupes out there. There are some reeeally close dupes, so close that if they could just have a tiny bit of tweaking here and there then they could be spot on, you also have the half hearted dupes, the ones where you can kind of see where they were going with it but they really couldn't make it happen... and then of course there are the Un-Dupeables, you know the ones who just cant be beaten, the ones that aren't even worth trying to dupe, and if you do so then shame on you.

 Its kind of like when someone waltzs into work carrying a fake bag. They know, I know, they know I know but we all smile, nod and get on with what needs to be done but at the end of the day... you can't beat the real thing. Or can you?

 There has always been whispers that Chanel is actually the parent company of Bourjois and that you were throwing your £26 away on a blusher that could be bought for £6.75 in your local Lloyds pharmacy, but despite all the similarities those domed baked blushers have I'm still not sure how much truth there is in that one. Bearing in mind these rumours were circulating at a time before you could Google "xx product dupe" and numerous blogs would pop up eagerly waiting to bestow all the dupeing information you need. One blog in particular that specialises in literally any swatch you desire and boasts it's own 'dupe list' is Temptalia, which everyone should have on their blog roll.

 Two particular products have always stayed at the forefront of my opinion on dupes (mainly its me wondering how the hell they have gotten away with it) one is a nail varnish... Enter Chanels 'Paraxodal' and Barry Ms 'Dusky Mauve' and the other is a blusher... Say hello to NARS 'Orgasm' and Sleek 'Rose Gold'. I FINALLY managed to get my hands on a Rose Gold this week, my daily post-work pilgrimage to Superdrug eventually paid off and resulted in the swift purchase of both 'Pomegranate' and 'Rose Gold'. I almost wept with joy when I saw that the usual barren shelves were fully stocked, and I do agree with the musings of many a blogger that it really is an excellent Orgasm copycat... just for a fifth of the price.

 So every now and then, either upon a new discovery or re-discovery of mine, I'll be doing a post on an un-dupeable and at the polar opposite of the scale a perfect dupe post... Only time will tell!

Gareth Pugh for MAC

 This highly anticipated collaboration is already available in the USA but as usual will not be released here until January 2012... The video scares me.