Illamasqua Prism review compared to China Glaze Rainbow

Prism and China Glaze Rainbow

I finally got my hands on Illamasqua prism several weeks ago now, but the demands of my PGCE (that is getting up at 5.30 and home at 8pm) mean that I get about an hour awake in my own house every day and that's if I'm lucky. That hour is spent showering, eating dinner and packing things for the next day.

Now that i've managed to grab a moment to upload one of the many reviews i've got stacked up in my folder I'm pleased to show you PRISM.

The application is smooth. One coat is shown below with no cleanup. Where possible I like to use one coat, it dries fast and gives a natural polished look. I do this with all polishes. With Prism I can do it without streaks at all.  I did eventually layer three coats to see what it looked like, it was stunning. Unfortunately then I did the washing up and it started to peel off at the corners. Not quite sure why that happened, I think it's my nails rather than the polish.

Prism is very blue toned, whereas China Glaze Rainbow is very very pink. Both colours other than that have a very similar effect to them, but Prism dries quickly and to a glossier finish. Rainbow is a lovely pretty colour but takes an age to dry and I smudged it into my duvet last night so no photo. On a similar note, does anyone else find that some polishes seem to take forever to dry, but the minute you smudge it into something and spoil the finish it sets INSTANTANEOUSLY in the new horrible smudgyness giving you no hope of smoothing it out. >:[

In short, Prism is stunning. The colour is beautiful, drying time is fast, application smooth. The only thing I can fault is the brush because I love the new style wide ones SOSO much. Buy prism. And Rainbow. They're both fabulous. Great wedding colours too.

I mean to layer prism over a white polish to see if I can get a nice snowy effect so look out for that soon!

Stubbystubbystubby nails. They're back to normal length now.

Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells!

Christmas is coming! Hoorah!

If you're anything like me, you'll already know at least 15 things that you want for Christmas, heehee! I've done most of my Christmas shopping already and I feel super organised this year! I figured if I start early it will be less of a financial burden come December. Fingers crossed anyway. I always end up feeling like I haven't bought people enough when I buy the gifts early and probably spend twice as much. Duh!

Browsing my favourite beauty blog lipglossiping.com I came across this little box of goodness. Link to Lipglossiping where I found it.

Yes, your eyes aren't lying to you, that is indeed an advent calender filled with beauty goodies. I was actually expecting it to cost a lot more than £60 so I'm quite pleasantly surprised. Of course, I still can't afford it, but that's life!

If you fancy investing in this treat Selfridges is the place to go.

New do & Soap and Glory love.

Last weekend I finally got a hair cut, after months of agonising over it and wondering what to get, Sammi convinced me to go for a Christina Hendricks - esque (though obviously I don't look anywhere near as GODDESS like as her) style and I was absolutely thrilled with the result.

Fringe ^_^

Whaddaya think? I love it, it is a big difference from my usual, straight and boring style and I haven't had any sort of a fringe for absolutely donkey's years! (... Not that I know how long a donkey's year would be...)

Of course, after having this overhaul of my hair, I decided to treat it to something new and as luck would have it, Soap and Glory had *just* released their new Shampoo and Conditioner, clearly a sign from the beauty gods that I should offer these up as a tribute to my gorgeous new do.

And boy what a tribute! As expected they smell fabulous and compliment each other very nicely, the shampoo lathers up wonderfully and rinses clean, the conditioner requires a bit of working through from the roots to tips (as recommended on the bottle) and it is well worth it to really get to full benefit. This was my hair after blowdrying;

*poseposepose*

See how bouncey ^^ I was very impressed with the volume and shine;

Check out that shine

Please excuse the emo looking pose, but check out all that shine! Wowza! And just for a finishing touch, this is how it looked after being straightened;


Check that out, frsrs, LOOKIT! I am going to give Soap and Glory, Shampoo and Conditioner full marks! If you want to try these out I'd rush to boots RIGHT NOW as they're having a 3 for 2 on all Soap and Glory products and these hair products are going fast. (for the third product I would recommend their hair mask, i will be reviewing it next as I am even more impressed with it)

Til next time!

Ciate Mistress, Silhouette and White Chocolate Scented Polish Remover

Hello all!

Apologies for my lack of posting for a while, being back at work has thrown me off a bit! But I am here again with a brand, spanking new review! Huzzah!

I recently gave in to temptation and bought two gorgeous red shades from Ciate; Mistress and Sihouette. I also treated myself to their white chocolate scented polish remover, in the hopes of repairing and treating mine and Sammi's poor dried out nails to something a bit fancier. And boy, did this remover deliver!

Not only did our nails feel genuinely nourished, clean and smooth after removing our polish but after it dried our hands smelt good enough to eat! At £14 for the 250ml bottle I would say it is a fair price. It has helped my nails no end!

Now, onto the polishes!

Silhouette, a pearly red with gold shimmer

Isn't it gorgeous? Silhouette is a wonderful colour and has fantastic staying power, lasted 3 days with no chipping and minimal tip wear, smashing.

Mistress, I'll admit it, the name swayed me to get this particular red

I haven't worn this beauty as of yet, however one of my friends was taken with the shade and she wore it, it lasted through 4 days, 2 of which were waitressing days! She also said it went on easy, no streaks and only required one coat for an opaque colour.

So all in all Ciate has proved themselves as premium as they claim! However at £9 a pot I will be selecting my purchases rather carefully! Still I highly recommend Ciate, if you want to treat yourself or have enough dollah :)

What I learned today...

If you don't make sure your cuticule cream is properly sunk in before you put varnish on, you end up with a patchy mess :(

After staining my nails with a weekend of intense colours and no base coat (shame on me) I now can't paint them their usual sheer/french look for the week.

To remedy this I dragged out my trusty max factor nail finity in rose petal and covered up the horrible mess i've made of my poor nails. Wanting something a bit more glossy (the nailfinities dry to a lovely satin finish) i've topped it off with Sally Hansen Star opal nail glaze. Which is a glorious long lasting sheer shimmer.

All finishes

Free Ciate Nail Polish with Marie Claire

A Brilliant deal in this month's Marie Claire magazine as these polishes normally retail for £9 each. The magazine is only £3.50. I say "only". If it weren't for the free posh nail polish I wouldn't be too impressed at paying £3.50 for advertisements and one or two articles I could easily find online.

On the subject, Ciate nail polishes ASOS edition are down to £1 on ASOS at the moment so hurrah!

As it stands I've painted one coat of my free polish shade "dangerous affair" and it is streaky as hell. I'm going to do the second coat of course, but I always personally find that two coats makes my nail polish more likley to chip, not less! I can't get Illamasqua prism to last more than 5 hours with two coats, it peels off, but with one coat I took it off after 7 days out of boredom!

........

Ok second coat applied now. The colour is true to the bottle and very shiny. They dry quickly to the touch but with all nail polish i'd leave it at least 20 mins before doing anything that might scrape all your hard work off.

The brush in these is large, which is great, but the polish in this shade was a lot thicker than i'm used to and I made a mess all around the edges of my nail. I think if the brush was more shaped with a curve, like the fantastic (and cheaper) bourjois brush that application would be easier. Because the polish is so thick it does tend to drag unless you have a lot of liquid on the brush, though then you increase the risk of making a big mess!

 I like the colour and the gloss, it's not too warm on my pale skin, which is nice and the darker colour isn't as bad as some for making fingers look stubby. Just inspecting them closely, the application is smooth now, but all of the streaking and dragging in the first coat makes me think that i'm going to be seeing lots of tip wear in lieu of chipping, when ideally of course I'd like it to do neither, like the glorious max factor nail finity polishes.

As you can tell, so far i'm not incredibly keen. I do genuinely like the colour, which I wasn't expecting to, but the polish is just so thick and sticky and hard to work with compared to other polishes I own that I struggle not to be irritated.