Seche Vital.

I have no idea why I didn't like this topcoat. I think it might've been the nail varnish supremacist in me refusing to accept that this £9 wonder bottle, which strangely enough I can only find in Urban Outfitters of all places, could outperform my beloved Chanel counterpart.

Initially there isn't much difference between the two. Both provide a hard and quick drying armour to your chosen polish, with an unparalleled shine that enables Miss Sporty to put OPI to shame, but where the Chanel needs a minor top up after a day or two the Seche Vite seems to be the Duracell bunny of the topcoat world, it just keeps on going! If I wasn't so fickle and easily bored by colours then this would be my 7 day manicure saviour, but I'm more of an extreme gloss and no chips kinda gal so at half the price of my usual manicure drug of choice I think Seche Vite might have just become a permanent fixture in my every other day nail change routine.

Below pictures show how Seche evens out the bumpy surface of a Deborah Lippmann glitter and provides a gloss like no other, making what was already an expensive nail job look ten times that.

One thick coat of Deborah Lippmann 'Superstar'

One coat 'Superstar' with one coat of Seche Vite

Secret Camouflage

 I took the plunge today and finally bought the Secret Camouflage from Laura Mercier! Secret Camouflage is one of LM's cult products, up there with her primers and Lip Glaces and after countless recommendations from Lisa Eldridge coupled with mounting nominations and wins in various beauty awards, it was the least I could do but to trot to Harvey Nichols and buy some for myself.

 The concealer itself is extremely pigmented and only the tiniest amount of product is needed to conceal blemishes. My first impression was that the consistency was extremely hard to the touch and a little difficult to work with but all it needs is a bit of warming up with your fingers before application. I wasn't sure in the beginning if the hard texture was for me, but in hindsight my usual complaint with concealers is the product has too much slip and blends away to nothing leaving you and your (usually huge) spot right back where you started. So it really is the perfect concealer for, well, concealing! It is not however, suitable for using to fool people into believing you had your 8 hours sleep the night before. For that you will still need to rely on your Touche Eclat,or perhaps just go to bed earlier.

 The idea behind finding the perfect colour match for yourself is that you choose the compact of which the left hand side strip of colour closest matches your skin tone, and in theory the warmer toned product on the right can be used to custom blend your own perfect concealer depending on which area of skin needs concealing and more importantly which time of year you will be concealing it. This is hugely beneficial for me, as products seem to last me a lifetime meaning my concealer or foundation sometimes just isn't the right colour as I purchased in August and by the time November rolls around I'm manically smearing NC30 over my blemishes when really I could be doing with an NC20... 

 Secret Camouflage costs £26 and I got mine from my local Harvey Nichols. From my research I can't find Laura Mercier's UK website which strikes me as odd but nevertheless LM products can be purchased from SpaceNK, Selfridges online etc etc so if you don't have a luxury department store near you then purchasing online is another option... The SA matched me up as an SC-2 which I'm pretty happy with on my NC20 skin tone, but saying that I don't think I would have been able to determine the difference between the shade swatches provided on the SpaceNK/LM USA website. If you did want to buy this and lived out in the sticks then definitely have a look at KarlaSugars, reliable as ever, swatches before you buy!

November Glossy Box

 I love Glossybox, behind payday it's one of the happiest days of the month. Novembers wasn't the box of dreams I was hoping for but there's always next months...

 As predicted, of course I received the bath salts in place of the Hair Elasticizer, which I REALLY wanted to try, and to add insult to injury instead of the hand cream I was gifted with the cooling foot cream. That should work a treat in December... I don't wish to talk about the Nail Rock Wraps (even though I do quite like the leopard print), the perfumes are nowhere near my cup of floral tea and the Monu Skin Perfector smells like that awful woodland fresh dry oil spray my mum used to order by the dozen from Avon.

(Excuse the terrible photographs, it was 1am and I was delirious with disappointment)

 I understand the concept of GlossyBox and that its element of surprise can work out amazingly in your favour or alternatively it could leave you with a box of perfume samples and foot cream, and for £12.95 can you really complain? There were rumours swirling around the twittersphere that some disgruntled GlossyBoxers were demanding a refund due to there being "no full sized products" I can't help but have a little sympathy for the poor soul who runs the GlossyBox social media... GlossyBox have never offered full size products as part of their luxury sample service, generously sized offerings are just one of many perks of the box, it can't all be full sized NARS illuminators and HD Brows now can it.

 I can't see the logic in hurling online abuse at GB's facebook threatening to unsubscribe and stray to another beauty box company, because at the end of the day its literally luck of the draw, people probably spend a relative amount on lottery tickets but don't compose a sarcastic email or wall post waxing lyrical about how disapointed they are because they didnt scoop the £5.3million jackpot...

Although saying that, the Christmas box better be bloody good.

Evilbay Update.

3 days to go on the calendar and its a £355...(?!?!) Save yourself the money guys and just buy the full sizes of the products you actually want and give yourself one of those each morning... Outrageous.

Mulberry Matches.

What better reason to spend £825 on a handbag other than "It matches my nail varnish!"?

This month the nail varnish and bag in question are Topshops 'Poison Ivy' polish and the Mulberry Small Heritage  Bayswater Satchel in Pheasant Green. Never mind co-coordinating hands and toes, if you want to take matchy-matchy to a whole new (and rather expensive) level then this is the bag/nail varnish combo for you...

EvilBay

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Selfridges-Lancome-Beauty-Advent-Calendar-All-Want-Christmas-Sold-Out-/200675663194?pt=UK_HealthBeauty_Other_RL&hash=item2eb9339d5a

 Five days to go and its already at 13 bids and the winning bid is currently £137, thats £67 over the original asking price...SO curious as to how much it will end up going for. I wanted the Lancome Beauty Advent Calendar as much as the next person but of course, despite Selfridges increasing their order after the huge success of last years calendar, this years again sold out in a matter of hours online.

 I was wondering how long it would be before they started to crop up on Ebay and today it has! There must be some desperate boyfriends/husbands hovering over the bid button waiting to make somebodies December 1st a very happy one. I'm going with £230 as the winning bid!

Can You Get Hooked On Lipbalm?

 One particular beauty myth that sticks in my mind was that if you relied too heavily upon lip balms and glosses, then would you become addicted?

 Perhaps not addicted in the sense that you would sell your house and children just to get your hands some Vaseline to see you through the day, but addicted to the point that when a rummage in your handbag doesn't provide you with a little tin of something to quench your thirsty pout, its enough to leave you panic stricken and wondering where on earth you'll get your next fix. (Although having seen the below LE Vaseline released to one lucky winner two years ago I'm thinking I probably would sell something of significant value to have it in my possesion...)

 It seems there was enough truth behind the musings for popular cosmetic science blog The Beauty Brains to name their first published book "Can You Get Hooked On LipBalm?". To cut a long story short... essentially yes. Yes you can become reliant on lip balm. Or at least your lips can anyway. It's kind of like when you start to wear false eyelashes on a daily basis, you soon realise how bloody awful you look without them and they becomes more and more difficult to live without.

 Thankfully The Beauty Brains have a much more scientific answer to these questions, as opposed to my manic ramblings about false eyelashes...

" Yes. Skin is a complicated organ, with multiple layers. The top layer, the stratum corneum, consists mainly of dead, dried-up cells, and as those cells flake off they send a signal to a deeper layer of skin - the basal layer - to produce fresh skin cells. This is the process of cellular turnover.

 When you apply lip balm regularly, you create a barrier that prevents the evaporation of moisture from the inner layers of skin, since the top layer isn't drying as much as it would normally, the basal layer stops getting the signal to produce new cells and slows down production.

 When you stop using lip balm, your lips dry out and your basal layer must start producing new cells again... but since your lips already feel dry, you apply more lip balm

 Once that application of lip balm has worn off and there are no new, plump, moist skin cells to replace the ones drying out, your lips feel dry again and you have to apply more lip balm. And so on, and so on. Use balm too often and you'll train your lips to rely on it."

 So in an attempt to try and reverse my reliance on all things shiny and moisturising I wondered if more of a Quality versus Quantity approach would work in my favour and have forgone my usual Vaseline in favour of Chanel's Hydrating Lip Treatment. At £20 for 3.5g it works out at a rather eye watering £5.71 per gram of product compared to Vaseline's more modest £0.08 per gram... The proof is in the pudding I suppose and I'll be doing a follow up post detailing my finds but already I'm struggling to not apply every five minutes (defeating the object of the experiment i suppose...) but the bullet is fast wearing down and I can already see this is a habit that isn't going to benefit my bank balance... My lips on the other hand seem to be fairing pretty well!