Hello my dear followers!
I decided to merge my English&Greek language blogs cause I was tired of updating two blogs with the same content. This blog may be older and have more posts, but it's the other one that gets more hits so from now on you will be able to find both languages here:
Some days you just can't win! No matter how I tried, I just could succeed with today's mani. You can tell how many times I had to re-do everything just by looking at the state of my cuticles- so dry even after the hand cream and cuticle oil I applied.
My plan was to paint familiar little monsters with a twist. The only one that actually made it is the Cyclops cat which was also my favourite. Isn't she scary cute? I might even write a story about her!
For this mani I used
Middle and pinky: Sixteen - 862
Ring: Flormar- JL 13 Pale Eucalypt
Ghost: a mix of white and transparent polish
Index: Custom mix
Cat's eye: Η&Μ - Wanna Pepperoni
Any black used is acrylic paint.
Have fun tonight with all the ghosts and the spirits!
It’s that time again, the
time to be inspired by something I watched! This time it’s the Korean period
drama Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo which is about political intrigues in the
10th Century Goreyo Kingdom sprinkled with romance, action
scenes, a lot of beautiful people[so many princes!], amazing locations and
fantastic costumes. I’m not going to go into too much detail on the plot, but I’ve
attached a promo video that could spark your interest better than writing about
it would.
The costume that inspired
me today is one that the 4th prince, Wang So, wears in two of my favourite
scenes as well as on some of the promo pictures. It’s a hanbok (traditional Korean
costume) made from a black shot with burgundy fabric that has a red motif and
is worn with a sash. Here it is on the actor Lee Joon Gi who is doing an
amazing job of fleshing out this character. Scarlet Heart is worth watching if
for no other reason than for his acting.
One of the few shots where you can see the burgundy fire of the fabric
The costume & a sample of the amazing locations I mentioned
The base colour is
SPAritual Body, the stamp and red lines is A-England Perceval and the tips are
done with Mavala 246 Black Cherry. I was so glas I had Black Cherry available
as it is shot through with the same quality of burgundy colour, one that’s not easy to make out unless you see it
under intense light. The stamp is form Born Pretty's L007 plate.
I
shall leave you with a photo of the princes in modern clothing cause this post
hasn't got enough princes in it!
XxX
Elysse
PS- Drama photos source: SBS, Modern clothing photo source: Cosmopolitan Korea
I saw this “How I did my make up in school”
challenge that’s been making the rounds on youtube and really wanted to do a
similar thing for nails, though I’m going to stretch the time-frame a bit. I
even tried to do it using the same tools and methods I used back in the day
(late 90s-early 00s) and it proved to be so much fun. I can tell it’s going to
be a chattier entry than usual so I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane
with me.
First of all I was a really late bloomer with regards to make up and polish. In
fact I used to hate both and if you knew me then, you wouldn't believe my love
for them now. Though I always had long nails, usually square or squoval as that
was the fashion back then, I never wore any polish and avoided beauty shops
like the plague. Pearly polishes, pinks and corals were just not my thing and
vampy colours were too scary for young me.
That all changed in my last year of high school when iridescent polish became
very popular. Anything iridescent catches my eye and the allure of iridescent
nails was too strong. I went to a beauty store to find iridescent polish and *boom*
that was it. I fell in love with all the new unusual colours that were out back
then and while I started with what we’d now call an iridescent top coat I soon
moved on to the sparkly dark blues, the purples, the blacks and glitters. I
think I ended up having more than 25 polishes at a time when it was unusual to
have more than 5. It was true love and I wish I hadn’t thrown away those
bottles years ago. I’m going to talk about each style individually, though the
order is not chronological. I think Hole's Violet is an appropriate song to listen to whilst reading since I loved it in HS, it's sufficiently angsty and both Courtney Love and Melissa Auf Der Maur are two of the many uber cool, wonderful and complicated artists of that time.
Thumb: The Distressed nail(A-England
Camelot & OPI Kyoto Pearl)
I really didn't like pearly polish, but my godmother had bought me two. I had
to find a way to use them and the distressed nail was born. I wiped off as much
polish as I could and then brushed it over. I haven’t done this in
years and with the wide OPI brush I couldn’t do the half-butterfly shapes
I could with the much thinner brush. Plus, the OPI polish is too smooth, the ones I had had a more obvious pearl in. Yes, I am complaining that a polish is too smooth.
Index Finger: Kitty Cats (an ancient Revlon
& A-England Camelot)
I love cats, so putting kitty paws and cat shapes on my nails was a very
logical step. I used to do a cat on one nail and kitty paw trails on the
others. It was done with toothpicks or old pens, I didn't even know things like dotting
tools existed as there were no tutorials back in the Pleistocene. The base
colour is similar to one of my favourite nail colours ever, Bourjois Bleu/Or, a colour I talked about on my very first post on this blog. This Revlon is a similar colour, but
has none of the iridescence & none of the magic unfortunately.
Middle Finger: Scotch Tape(OPI Moon Over Mumbai & a disappointing Shu Uemura one)
Scotch tape was my favourite thing to use. I did all sorts of shapes with it.
The base colour has the blue iridescence that I liked. The
dark purple has a little bit of glitter in, but the ones I had and loved had
loads more. They were like Essie’s vintage Starry Starry Night in different dark colours and I loved
them so! I also had a glitter polish with star shaped particles and would place
a couple here and there. I have nothing like that now, so I drew a star
instead.
Ring Finger: Using
glitter gel pens(Korres Spring Lilac)
This was a bit after high school, but I could not exclude it. My flatmate from
uni that knew my love for stationary gave me a set of glitter gel pens as a
birthday present and we soon discovered that you could use them to draw on your
nails and the ink kept its shape, it didn't pool in seconds and it didn't
spread when you put a top coat on it. We went squiggle crazy for the rest of
the year. It was our ‘thing’ and it was fun! I couldn’t
find any pens now that I could do that with so I used a cd-marker and nail
polish.
Pinky: Pure Black(A-England Camelot)
I was intimidated by plain black for the longest of times. I would wear sparkly
black, and dark purple, but not black. And then I randomly bought a black
polish, wore it and could not look away. There was nothing to disguise the
absoluteness of this colour. It even looked cool when it chipped. I wore black non-stop for years after that and it coincided with the time I stopped doing nail art up till the time I
discovered nail stamps many years later, but that’s a different story.
I wore this ring all the time during the last year of HS
Remembering and reminiscing about all this was fun, I don't get nostalgic very often. However, I can't believe I haven't used some of these techniques in so many years. I need to incorporate bits of all of them to my current routine!
I've been meaning to repeat my opalescence mani for a while now, this time with a darker base to look more like a black opal. This time I had a second flaky top coat to add a bit of blue. Flaky top coates are by far mt favourite type of shiny top coat. I tried my best to capture its beauty, but it is even better in real life.
Base- Sixteen 864 darkest slate grey
Flaky topcoat 1 - Seventeen 104 the blue-purple flaky
Flaky topcoat 2 -Nubar 2010 the green-gold-red flaky
I also tried it with a matte top coat, but I found it underwhelming. I didn't much like the white cast the top coat left so they went back to shiny after I took the pictures.
We're nearing the end of the summer and the song I'm starting today's post with has that end-of-the-holidays feel for me. I am not a summer person, but this end-of-season melancholy is almost palpable.
It ‘s been quite some time since I did a mani that was more full on and I really feel I went to town with this one: stamping, glitter placement, making straight lines with striping tape. The base on most nails is Essence 31 Electriiic , a beautiful blue crelly polish, stamping and the pinky were done with Models Own - Chrome Rose Gold and the glitter polish I used is 105 from the Innisfree star collection and it has so many different kinds of glitter particles in: medium, tiny,square, hexagonal, rectangular, gold, rose gold and white. Picking particles from it to do the thumb and pinky designs was not easy. The stamping plate I used on my pointer finger is Bundle Monster 201.
Sometimes nails can become really soft, brittle, flaking and a hardening base coat just isn't enough. That’s what happened to my nails after I came back from my holidays. I had not taken care of them enough and swimming for hours every day took a toll on them. I needed a boost in my care regime so I did my research and –as ever- am happy to share the findings.
Disclaimer: At this point I need to mention that if your nails aren't naturally soft and they changed for no apparent reason, I would suggest ringing up your doctor. A change in the condition of your nails can be an indicator of an underlying health problem. It could also be related to dietary changes you might have implemented in your life lately where you are not receiving enough nutrition. I will refrain from discussing this further as I am not qualified, but any change in the state of your nails is not a random event and should be investigated further.
What are nail hardeners?
So what can you do to help your nails become stronger? Despair? Of course not! Why despair when there are nail hardeners to help! Nail hardeners are different from hardening base coats. Hardeners are treatments for the nail, have a stronger effect and are not supposed to be used every time you have a manicure. All of them have a more intense treatment period and a maintenance period. Additionally some are only meant to be used under a base coat while others can be used as a base coat or over your nail polish. Each hardener comes with its own set of instructions as to when and how you are supposed to use them so make sure you read the instructions even if you are a person that hates reading instructions.
The beaches of the Peloponnese are magic!
Possible issues & how to use hardeners
One needs to be careful with nail hardeners though: all of them contain Formaldehyde! Formaldehyde is a highly toxic substance and has been removed from the majority of nail polishes. When you read about 3-free, or however many -free polishes(Korres for example is 7-free) you can bet that one of these ingredients is formaldehyde. [You can read more about it here, here and here].Whilst I do suggest caution and I wouldn't use a nail polish that contains formaldehyde, hardeners are a different thing. Formaldehyde in cosmetics is a big issue, so make an informed judgement on what is good for you.
Nail hardeners should contain less than what is considered a safe amount of formaldehyde (5%) and are only used for limited periods of time. Nevertheless, I put nail hardener only to the top half of my nails, which is where breakage usually happens and never allow it anywhere near my cuticles, or the underside of the nail. If it comes in contact with my skin I wipe it off immediately cause hardeners tend to harden the skin as well.
It goes without saying that it's a product that can also be used by those that don't use nail polish.
My experience
My nails are normally hard, but this summer they suffered cause I put them through nail hell. I went on a holiday and decided to take no make up and no nail care products; I needed a break from everything. All I had with me was sunscreen and a tinted lip balm. I swam up to six hours a day and whilst I enjoyed it, my nails did not.
When I got back they were in a pretty bad shape, worse than I had ever seen them before which is what led me to explore the world of nail hardeners. The one I used is the Mavala Nail Hardener and I used it for less than the recommended amount(once every two weeks instead of 1-2 per week). After 3 uses my nails are back in shape and I am really happy about it. The Impala was given to me by a friend when I mentioned my problems, but I haven’t used it yet. I don’t think I’ll continue using a hardener now that my nails are back in shape, but I am glad I did.
TL;DL
*Read the instructions on how often and for how long you need to use it.
*Use on the top half of the nail (not the side where the cuticle is).
*Don’t let it go to your cuticles or touch your skin. Wipe off immediately if it does.
That’s it for now, I hope it was informative enough. I always struggle not to put too much information in my advice posts and scare readers off with a wall of text and scientific jargon!
Ever since I started using Japanese
cosmetics I got hooked on de-potting them and making my own eye shadow and
blusher palettes. You see all Japanese cosmetics have a tiny pinhole at the
back (sometimes under the ingredients list sticker) that makes de-potting and placing them in palettes super easy. Keeping them all together like that I
get to use all of them more often without forgetting I have any of them. Plus I also get to have a personalised palette that suits my needs and preferences.
my blusher palette (Shu Uemura &RMK)
A while ago I reviewed the Elixir - All in One Face-book palette and as
I didn’t like the packaging, I decided to de-pot it. I
ordered a couple of non-magnetised empty palettes from ebay. I have been using a palette like
this for years for my blushers so I know they are actually pretty sturdy.
This is how the palettes arrived, each in
an individual plastic pack. They come with a few empty pans in a spongy case.
The pans are easy to remove since they are not glued on. These
particular ones are the size of MAC blushers, but they do have them in
eyeshadow size as well. The spongy separator was glued to the palette. I soaked
it really well with some rubbing alcohol, set it aside for a while, and
after a couple of hours it came off with minimal effort. In the picture you can
see the marks left from the alcohol, but they are not permanent. As soon as I
washed it it was fine.
As for the Allin One Face-book palette, it was easy to separate the two cardboard parts, but then the eye
shadow pans had to be removed carefully cause they were glued on. The only one
I cracked a little was my favourite teal, just my luck! I used some more
rubbing alcohol to remove any traces of glue from the back of the pans and then I started placing them in
the palette to see how I would fit them all in.
As you can see, I could fit in all of the eye shadows, the eye brow creams and
powders and then some more. In the end though I decided to put the blues
separately in a different palette since I don’t really like wearing blue and
instead I put some Japanese eye shadows and a few from a Wet and Wild palette I
had gotten, but never really liked enough to review. When I finished the
placement, I took them all out again, put some double sided sticky tape in the
palette, placed them in the order I had chosen and now they are much easier to
store and take with me.
Assembling
an eye shadow palette may seem a bit consuming, but I find it much more
practical for everyday purposes.
