The new Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvet Colours! Don’t pink of it, So Hap’pink and Beau Brun

Ελληνικά/Greek

I absolutely love the Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvet lipsticks. I have 67(I had forgotten one in my bag) of them already and no8 (Grand Cru) has been my Holy Grail red this year. I have been wearing it morning, noon and night for months now and get withdrawal symptoms if I don’t get to wear it for more than a week. I find that all the Rouge Edition Velvet colours, even the ones I imagined would be too yellow-leaning (like 04 Peach Club) are actually neutral or with pink undertones which means I can wear them without looking drained and without worrying that my teeth will look yellow.

These do stay put for a long long time and are very well pigmented. I have found different ways of wearing them from more natural to full saturation, which I didn’t think I would be able to do at first. If you’re unsure about the applicator, I had never used or even liked liquid lipsticks before and found it very easy to learn. Even I am surprised by how precise I can be with the application now. All you need to remember is that it will look and feel a lot better if you apply it on well moisturised lips.

You can imagine how excited I was to see three new colours in the range:

10 - Don’t pink of it: if you were disappointed by how not nude both 09 Happy Nude Year(bright pinky peach) and 07 Nude-ist (dark MLBB kind of colour) were, then this pinkish beige is probably the one for you.

11 –So Hap’pink: a beautiful blue-leaning pink. This line was missing a middle-of the road colour like this that will look flattering and more natural.

12 – Beau Brun: a red-based brown. Very unusual to come up with a colour like this for a spring collection, but I suppose we have Pantone’s colour Marsala to blame for that. Fans of Marsala should definitely try Beau Brun. Those who care to recreate the ‘90s look, 07 and 12 are the most ‘90s colours in the collection.

I should note that the bottle for my favourite colour, 08 Grand Cru was completely dried up and 02 Frambourjoise wasn’t in a great state either. As I have both colours, I might swatch them on a separate post. The colours are: 

01 Personne ne rouge!

02 Frambourjoise

03 Hot Pepper

04 Peach Club 

05 Ole flamingo! 

06 Pink Pong

07 Nude-ist

X- dried up 08 Grand Cru

09 Happy Nude Year

10 Don’t pink of it

11 So Hap’pink

12 Beau Brun

In-store lights

In-store lights

In-store lights

Natural light (in the shade)

Natural light (in the shade)

Natural light (direct sunlight)

Natural light (direct sunlight)

Flowers from Korea

Στα Ελληνικά

A few months ago a dear friend of mine went to Korea. She’s one of those people that wherever she goes pleasant surprises happen and they are the stuff we talk and laugh about for years. I wonder what stories she’ll have to share when she comes back from her travels later this week. Along with her amusing stories she also brought back a ton of presents, some of which you will be seeing eventually. Not the chocolates, though. Those are already gone.

One of those presents was a colourful cosmetics bag. I love unusual combinations of colours, and this is definitely a winner combination. It’s one of those combinations that when you hear about it, it sounds like it wouldn’t work, but then you see it and it’s beautiful, vibrant, it makes your day just looking at it! I aim to become brave enough to combine colours that way. 

Something that beautiful of course had to be translated to a mani and here is my attempt, along with the colours I used to achieve it. I chose the plum tree pattern from the Konad plate m66 as the fabric has a similar embossed floral pattern, though you can’t see it in the pictures. The colours I used were (thumb to pinky):

Essie – 563 Bachelorette Bash

Butter London – Dosh

Orly – Everything’s Rosy

OPI – Kyoto Pearl 

Bourjois – 39 Jaune Trendy

Nails Inc – 050 Tower Bridge (for stamping)

Drk-A, Westside Warrior and Crop Circles

Greek/Ελληνικά

I've had China Glaze - Westside Warrior for the longest of times and hadn't worn it for some reason so I decided it was about time. It's actually a very nice polish, maybe a little too yellow-leaning for me to love it (I have Foubert's place for that), but the texture is nice and it applies smoothly in two coats.

I also decided to go one step beyond and do the 'dreaded' accent nail for which I used  Bourjois 39 Jaune Trendy and Westside Warrior as a stamping polish using a design from my beloved Drk-A palette. WW is actually fantastic for stamping as it is very pigmented. I really liked the end result, it looks like a field with crop circles!

Artificial light

A bit of sunshine: Bourjois 39 Jaune Trendy

Ανάρτηση στα ελληνικά

I am so tired of this November weather. I really needed something sunny and playful and since I can't make a quick escape to somewhere warmer and sunnier, I settled for a sunny colour on my nails with a bit of stamping to make it more interesting.

The base colour is Bourjois 39 Jaune Trendy, a lovely warm mustardy yellow that is rather goopy and I think I should add a few drops of thinner before I use it next time.

Then I put nail guides on to limit the design on the top third of the nail only and stamped it with Konad White stamping polish using Bundle Monster plate BM21. I finished it of with dots of greens and blues. From thumb to pinky they are: OPI - Jade is the New Black, China Glaze - For Audrey, China Glaze - Flyin'High, W7- Stellar, China Glaze - Aqua Baby.

Natural light (overcast)

Natural light (overcast)

'Sad Eyes' Duelist Mani: Black on Black

How do I begin this post without getting distracted by Kang Dong Won and the Duelist's beautiful soundtrack for another hour? By sharing a song with you my dear reader!

'The Duelist' is a fictional period Korean film with stunning visuals, a beautiful, sad love story and two of my favourite Korean actors, Kang Dong Won and Ha Ji Won. If you like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "House of the Flying Daggers", then definitely watch this; the budget may not be as enormous as it was for those two films, but it is truly wonderfully shot, the script is good and the actors great.

When I first started nail stamping last year, one of the patterns I wanted to recreate was from the protagonist's costume. Sad Eyes wore mostly black textured clothes and this idea of black on black simply stuck with me as I am fascinated by black. I tried many times to create something similar back then, but the results were not good enough.

He's so gorgeous!

Beautiful fabrics and a beautiful man. Ah! My heart! 

Enough with the Kang Dong Won spam, back on topic. A few days ago Nathalie (jellynat) had this post up which reminded me of my quest for the black on black mani I wanted to do. Then this scandalously pretty picture of JaeJoong appeared yesterday from the upcoming 'Time Slip Dr.Jin' Korean drama who reminded me of 'Sad Eyes'.

He is a real person, not a CG character.

The final blow was delivered by my friend Orion who reminded me of all the above, so I did it. This time I picked a pattern that would allow for the different textures to be more apparent, as my previous choice (the multiple squares from the konad m63 plate) was too dense and it ended up looking muddled instead of textured. My only complaint this time is that I should have used a thicker black glossy polish to stamp. The one I usually stamp with was ruined when I decided to 'experiment' with it a few weeks ago. The search for the perfect black on black mani continues, though I think that first I'll have to do a red on black like JaeJoong's costume.

basecoat: SpaRitual - Body

Stamping polish: Bourjois - 39 Noir de Chine

stamping plate: Konad m64

PS- Should I have a 'gorgeous Korean men with swords' tag now? haha...

Red Veined Leaves & Cool Jazz

How do you feel about red veined leaves? I love them.

Base colour H&M - Wanna Pepperoni 1 coat only - how great is that!

Stamping Polish Bourjois - 21 Cerise Noir 

Nail Plate A20 (bought from this  seller but more sellers have been listing these plates since)

Stranger Sweetness

I've mentioned my love of OPI - Stranger Tides before. It's a funny colour, like a cute ghoul; the terms sound contradictory, but it suits it. Anyway, I wanted to do something cute with it and here it is! I'm so glad Bourjois - Beige Glamour worked exactly like I wanted it to with this colour! It was great for stamping!

Base colour: OPI - Stranger Tides

Stamping colours: Bourjois  - 27 Beige Glamour

                            Konad white stamping polish

Plates: Konad m79 (dots), m83(heart balloons),   Bundle Monster BM-202 (zig-zag edged heart)

Brown and teal

A pretty brown and teal combination I did a while back. I don't have a lot of brown polishes, I think it's the colour I like the least as a nail polish, but there's nothing a little stamping can't fix!

The base colour is Miss Sporty - 410, a very glossy polish that I had trouble taking a picture of it because it is so glossy. One thing I notice nowadays with these pictures is that I have a steadier hand when applying polish and it was only two months ago that I took this picture. There is still plenty of room for improvement!

 The stamping colour is Bourjois - Cap Vert, a vintage polish but still not as chemical as other polishes from that era. The stamp is Bundle Monster. 

Bourjois: Rose / Or 39

 ελληνικά

One of my most loved polishes is a nail polish from more or less 10 years ago by Bourjois called Bleu/Or. It was a colour that had become my trademark since I used to wear it all the time and people would always comment on it. It was a proper little chameleon that depending on the light conditions and angle it could look anything from taupe, to steel grey, light gold or iris blue. I went through three whole bottles of that magic polish and I was heartbroken when I couldn't find it any more. I don't know why I ever got rid of the last bottle. Ah! The days when I didn't know about nail polish restore.  

Recently I decided to look on  e(vil)bay in case there was any of it there. Unfortunately I didn't find any, but I did find its two sisters, Rose/Or and Violet/Or so I bought those two. I remember them sitting side by side in the display! Alas! Poor Bleu/Or! 

Rose/or is a pink champagne gold and it's the base colour in the picture. The colour doesn't shift much, but it is quite nice and discreet. I was pleasantly surprised to find that these polishes do not have Toluene and Formaldehyde, which you wouldn't expect from polishes that old. It does take a while to dry though, even with a fast drying topcoat. 

I used Bundle Monster plate BM223 for the design. For the ring finger I used Mavala Minsk polish while for the rest of my fingers I used Sephora by OPI Metro Chic. I couldn't believe that MS looked so light when used for stamping!