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Category Archives: Nail Care
A Shellac French Manicure
Wow, I’ve been doing a really bad job of keeping this blog updated, lately, haven’t I? I’d like to say that I’ll do better, but honestly, I’m so busy with my other sites at the moment that I can only promise sporadic posts, when I have something to say, so a huge thank you to those of you who are still subscribing!
With that said, here’s a really old photo of the Shellac manicure I got just before Christmas. Now, my nails are an absolute disaster zone: I can rarely be bothered to apply polish, and when I do, I’m too lazy to bother with the whole basecoat/topcoat thing, so it chips quickly and has to be removed. Which honestly doesn’t really bother me much, because I’ll probably be bored with it by that time anyway. Let’s not even talk about my cuticles, which should really be given their own postcode. Or the fact that I can’t stand the feeling of long nails on my keyboard, so I file mine down every couple of days and don’t always do a fantastic job of it.
In other words: I’m not a nail person.
This, however, made Shellac ideal for me. You see, I was really, really sick of having terrible, raggedy nails all the time. With Christmas approaching, and all of the various social engagements it brings, I wanted a more, er, manicured (sorry) look, and I wanted one that would be low-maintenance, and which would last for a long time.
Enter Shellac, which, as most of you probably know, is a 14-day manicure which won’t chip, won’t flake, and which dries instantly, so you can leave the salon and go about your day as if nothing happened. All of which sounded great to me.
Luckily for me, my friend Lindsay is a beauty therapist (see her page here), and Shellac is one of the treatments she offers, so I headed over one night before Christmas to have my nails “seen to”. At last.
The Shellac process is much like a regular manicure, the difference being that, between coats you place your hand under a UV lamp which instantly dries the polish to a hard finish. I decided to go for a classic French manicure, and was amazed by how quickly the different coats dried: when I removed my hand from the UV casing, the polish was already totally dry, which means you can instantly go about your business.
Shellac generally lasts for around 14 days. Lindsay had warned me that the French polish I’d chosen might not last quite as long, but it was still going strong 14 days later, and looking every bit as good as it did when it was first done: not a single chip or flake, no fading of the colour, nothing. I’m fairly hard on my hands, and even although I’d chosen to have my manicure during the holiday period, when I wasn’t doing much in the way of typing, there were still lots of activities which would definitely have wrecked a normal polish, but which didn’t even chip the Shellac. (For the first few days I found myself instinctively “protecting” my nails from things that might damage them, but after that I got used to it!)
At just over 14 days I noticed a very slight chip on one finger, and because my nails grow quite quickly, I also had quite a bit of “regrowth” at the base of the finger, so I decided it was time to remove it. This is a little trickier than having it applied: the polish is designed not to shift easily, but I soaked my nails in some remover and then used an orange stick to peel away the polish, as instructed by Lindsay, and it came off after a few minutes.
Now I just need to decide which colour to go for next…
(P.S. If you’re in central Scotland, Little Luxuries Beauty and Hair is here, and offers lots of other treatments, too!)
Review: Body Collection Natural French Air Brushed Nails
My nails have been looking very much the worse for wear lately, so when I discovered a pack of Body Collection’s pre-glued french nails in my “to be reviewed” drawer a couple of weeks ago – right before a big family event, I might add – I figured anything would be better than the mess that is my natural nails, so I decided to give them a go.
This, of course, was a mistake. I made my discovery of these nails approximately 30 minutes before I had to start getting ready to go out (In the interests of full disclosure, I should add here that I’ve no idea how I came to have these. I may have bought them, but they may also have been sent to me by a PR…), and when you’re as clumsy as I am, you really need to allow more time for such things. However, I jumped right in, and started applying them.
The nails, as I say, are pre-glued, so technically all you should need to do is to take them out of the box and apply them to clean, dry fingernails.
In my case, however, there was one extra step required: I’m not a fan of super-long nails, and, because I’m not used to them, I find it quite hard to function properly unless my nails are trimmed to no longer than the tips of my fingers, so I had to file quite a bit off these, to avoid the “talons” look. They’re fairly easy to trim, and a combination of nail clippers and emery board soon had them at roughly the length I wanted. I didn’t, however, have enough time to do all ten nails, and get the edges looking perfect, so they still look pretty rough in these photos: if I’d spent a little longer and filed the edges more carefully, they’d have looked a whole lot better.
These were really easy to apply: you literally just press them onto your fingers, hold them down for a couple of seconds and you’re done. Unfortunately for me, all of the trimming and filing had taken so long that I didn’t have time to do the other hand, and had to go and immediately take them off again! I can report, however, that they were fairly easy to remove, too. I was a bit worried about this, having tried glue-on nails in the past which took forever to remove, but I just soaked them in hot water, and they came off easily enough: phew!
I wasn’t too upset about having to remove the nails right away though. They’d be convincing enough from a distance (especially if I’d taken a bit more time over the application), but up close I felt the nail tips and half-moons were too white, which made them quite obviously fake. That’s not to say I wouldn’t try them again, mind you: with a bit more time on my hands (no pun intended), I’d probably give it another shot: it’s much quicker than an actual French manicure, after all!
These are just £1.99 per pack. Click here to try them out for yourself.
Dollface Reviews: Revlon Scented Nail Enamel
I haven’t worn nail polish on my fingernails for a long time now, because, honestly, my nails and cuticles are such an absolute disgrace to humanity that I’ve been just trying to pretend they don’t exist instead.
When this quartet of Revlon’s Scented Nail Enamel dropped through the door, though, my curiosity was piqued. As many of you know, I’m a sucker for a good ol’ gimmick, and scented nail polish seems to fall into that category, so tonight I bit the bullet and tried all four of them on, all in the name of research.
I received, from left – right: Beach, Peach Smoothie, Passion Fruit and Mad About Mango. Of these, Passion Fruit is by far my favourite: as I’ve mentioned before, I’m fairly traditional when it comes to nail polish, and when I do wear it, I tend to go for classic reds, pinks, or neutrals, and so the yellow and orange polishes (Beach and Mad About Mango) really aren’t very “me”, although they’re nice colours in their own right.
Passion Fruit was also the easiest of the four to apply: it went on in one coat, with even coverage and no dragging, while the other three all went a bit streaky after the first coat, and needed a top up. The Peach Smoothie colour was the worst for this, and I found it quite difficult to get even coverage with it.
“But what about the SCENT, Dollface!” I hear you cry. This is, of course, one of the main selling points with this product, and as you’ve probably gathered from the names of the polishes, they each have their own individual scent, which can only be sampled once they’ve been allowed to dry.
I’m not very good at identifying scents, so if it was a blind test I probably wouldn’t have said, “Ooh, that smells just just like a Passion Fruit/a Peach Smoothie/the beach!” but the scents are all very lovely, and much stronger than I was expecting. The fruity polishes do have a distinctly “fruity” scent to them, while “beach” isn’t particularly beachy, but is sweet and very pleasant. I like all of them, and while I’m not totally convinced that scented nail polish is anything more than a gimmick (How often do you smell your own fingers, after all?), it’s a rather nice gimmick, and I would probably purchase a bottle of the “Bubble Gum” or “Pretty in Papaya” polishes which are available as part of this collection, and which look like exactly the kind of colours I go for.
These are £4.49 at Boots: click here to buy.
NOTD: Body Collection crystal suede nail polish in Purple Diamond
Purple nail polish is a bit of a departure for me, because as I’ve noted before, I generally tend to stick to fairly “classic” shades: i.e. bright red or nude/clear. It’s a colour I love, though, so this week I’ve been wearing this ‘Purple Diamond’ polish by Body Collection, which is a dark, glittery purple.
The photos I’ve taken of this are actually a little misleading, because the flash kept bouncing off the glitter and making the polish look like a gloss, whereas it actually has a matte finish. This is the first matte nail polish I’ve tried, and it took a bit of getting used to at first: the high glitter content does help, though, and gives it less of a “Tippex” look than a plain matte finish would do.
In terms of the application, I needed two coats for this to look its best: I could have gotten by with one, and quite liked the more muted colour, but some of the nail was showing through at the tips, so I gave it another coat to cover that. The thing that impressed me most with this polish, however, was its longevity: at the end of day two, there was still no sign of chipping at all: like many glitter polishes, it’s much harder to get it off than to put it on!
This is just £2.99 at LoveThyMakeup.com: click here to buy it.
(Please excuse the state of my nails!)
[Disclosure: PR sample]
NOTD: GOSH nail polish in 554 – Gold
I’ve called this post “Nail of the Day”, but “Nail of the Month” would probably be more accurate, because over the past few weeks, anytime I haven’t been wearing the GOSH Frou Frou polish I showed you back in December, I’ve mostly been wearing this sparkly gold one from the same brand. Between the two of them, these polishes have transformed me from someone who only occasionally wore polish on her fingernails into someone who wears it all the damn time – these are just so easy to wear, they last forever, and, rather than emphasising my ragged cuticles and generally horrible fingernails, as brighter colours do, these seem to disguise them just a little: joy!
In fact, the only real problem I have with this polish is that it’s pretty hard to get off. When I do decide to change it, I have to spend quite a bit of time scrubbing at my nails with cotton wool and nail polish remover, because it really doesn’t like coming off. All the more reason just to keep on wearing it, I guess…
This is £4.99 and you can click here to buy it from Superdrug.
Illamsqua Christmas Nail Varnish Duo: Untold & Ruthless
This is going to be my last post before the Christmas break, so I thought I’d show you something suitably “Christmassy” – enter Illamasqua’s Christmas Nail Polish Duo, Untold & Ruthless, which are about as festive as cosmetics get, and can be worn either separately or together. Gorgeous, and equally suitable the rest of the year, too! (Click here to buy them)
I’m now heading off to spend the holiday with my family, so I hope you all have a lovely Christmas if you celebrate it, and I’ll see you next week!
Dollface x
Nail Rock Nail Wraps
I’ve written about nail stickers/wraps before here, and the idea gets more appealing with every new set I stumble across.
These ones are by Nail Rock, and are down to £5.20 at ASOS, which makes it all too tempting for me to just slip a pack into my basket next time I’m buying yet another dress from there. There are three different sets of wraps to choose from – a metallic collection, an animal print collection, and a “fashion prints” one. Both of the sets above come from the “fashion” collection, and while my obsession with polka dots means the red ones would probably be first on my list, I thought the denim zip-effect wraps were pretty interesting too, if you fancy something completely different.
(Click here to buy them)
NOTD: GOSH Nail Polish in 064 Frou-Frou
This post is actually a little redundant, because I was wearing this polish in yesterday’s photos (in fact, this photo was taken yesterday, too, which explains that!), but I like it so much I thought it deserved a post of its own.
This is one of the three GOSH polishes I bought at the weekend. I’d actually already picked out the other two without realising there was a 3-for-2 offer, so I rushed back and quickly picked this one up as my freebie. I wanted to try one of these as soon as I got home, but I didn’t have a whole lot of time to spare, so I went for this one, thinking it would be the most forgiving of the three if I managed to get it on my fingers as well as on my nails, which is a common problem for me.
Well, I was totally right about that, and it reminded me why I like pale, shimmery polishes almost as much as my usual bright red ones: they’re just so much easier to use! This photo was taken after two coats, but previous to that I’d been wearing it with just one coat for a couple of days, and not only did it look almost as shiny, it also hadn’t chipped at all: result!
I really love the colour of this, which is shimmery, but not too OTT, so I can’t wait to try the silver and gold versions, too. If you want to try this one, meanwhile, it’s £5 at Superdrug.
NOTD: Barry M Nail Paint in 273 – Raspberry
Sorry for the lack of posts lately, everyone: I’ve been frantically trying to get ready for my holiday next week, which unfortunately hasn’t left me with much time to try out new products. Today, then, I give you one of my lesser-spotted Nail of the Day posts, featuring Barry M’s Nail Paint in # 273, Raspberry.
I actually bought this on a whim a few months ago, and, rejecting Boots’ offer of a carrier bag, threw it into my handbag, where I promptly forgot all about it until several weeks later. When I finally did remember it, it seemed a little darker than I remembered it, so this week is the first time I’ve actually worn it. Sadly, it’s still a little darker than I remember it, and it’s also darker than it looks in this photo. While it’s actually a lovely shade for winter, however, the colour makes it difficult to apply (or difficult for me to apply, I should say) without streaking: it would really require two coats to get the perfect finish, I think.
Still, it makes a nice change to my usual pillar-box red, while still remaining in the same colour family. It costs £2.99 and you can buy it here.
Revlon Scents of Summer scented nail polish to launch in the UK
I don’t tend to smell my fingers very often. (Now there’s an opening sentence I never thought I’d write…) I don’t know why, I just don’t. So the part of me that doesn’t want to spend money on something that will be of limited use to me is trying to tell me that scented nail polish is simply a gimmick. The part of me that’s a complete sucker for a good gimmick, however, is telling me that, d’uh, of course I’m going to want to try scented nail polish! Why on earth not?
Good question. Revlon’s Scents of Summer collection has been available in the States for a while now, but won’t be released here in the UK until next March, at which point we’ll all be able to have fingernails that look good AND smell good. The collection will include the colours and scents of Cotton Candy, Bubble, Orange Pop, Orange Smoothie, Ocean Breeze, Gum Drop, Peach Smoothie and “Grapy Icy”, whatever that may be. I’ll probably want to try at least one of them. What about you, though?
