Barry M Sunset Daylight Curing Nail Polish

Lots and lots of brands are now jumping on the whole "Gel Nail" thing, claiming their polishes wear like the 2 week manicures you get at the salon. I gave you my thoughts on Essence's version HERE and I'm here today to give you my opinion on Barry M's version.

Barry M Sunset Daylight Curing nail range claims to give the results of a professional salon manicure without the price tag and without the need to use a UV lamp. They also claim that you don't need to use a base coat! The idea is that where a salon manicure requires a lamp to cure the polish, these use daylight and can be removed with normal nail varnish remover. 

I have the colour Peach For The Stars, which is a lovely vibrant coral colour, it applied really nicely and easily and dried quickly too. The polish is really shiny and I do agree that it is longer lasting than normal polish, however it's not as hard wearing as a professional gel manicure and I'm still yet to find one that is. On the plus side, it comes off easily and doesn't leave any staining on the nails afterwards, I was initially worried about this as I didn't use a base coat. 

There are currently seven shades in the range but it is fairly new so I imagine more will come along soon and they retail for £4.99, which for me is a bit pricey and you can only use the sunset colours and the sunset topcoat for it to work which means an initial pay out of £10 (unless you can find a good offer!) however in saying that it is still cheaper than getting one manicure at a salon! 

Get yours HERE from Boots.com or your local store.

Have you found a nail polish that lasts as long as a salon manicure?

Thanks for reading,

Wench x

    

Essence Gel Base and Top Coat

First things first, I'd just like to apologise for my lack of blogging the last few days, I've been on a hen weekend and have been in no fit state to even write my own name! 

However, before I went I decided to do my nails and I'm very impressed with them! 

The right hand photo above was taken AFTER the hen weekend, five days AFTER I painted them. No chips or peeling and still a lovely glossy shine, and what do I have to thank for this? Essence Gel Base and Top Coat which are a bargain price of £2.50 each! They claim that without the use of a lamp they can make your polish last 60% longer and give the extreme shine of a professional gel manicure. I do agree with this statement initially but this is the only time I've used them and would have to investigate further using other colours but the trio I've used here has worked a charm! I definitely had my skepticals on but I've been pleasantly surprised. 

I don't think they'd be as hard wearing as a Shellac (or other branded!) manicure but I think using the base and top coat has made my regular polish longer lasting. I think the true test will be when I'm back at work (I'm on maternity leave currently) and doing more with my hands. I will definitely do an update then!  

In the mean time if your interested you can get these at your local Wilko's store or online HERE

Have you found anything that rivals a proper gel manicure?

Thanks for reading,

Wench x

College Hair Dressers and Spa

Would you let students loose on you?

That sounds very wrong but what I actually mean is that it seems to be a little known fact or an often overlooked one that you can get your hair done or have beauty treatments at your local college (depending on the college of course!) and the best part is it's miles cheaper! 

For my birthday my hubby kindly treated me, so I had my hair cut and coloured, my eye brows tinted and waxed, a manicure, and a facial! (I needed a lot of work!)

Yes, it's done by students and their not fully qualified but they are supervised by tutors who ARE fully qualified, they've probably practised on those creepy doll heads first, and come on, everyone has to start somewhere! I also feel that as their training they take extra care to get it right, particularly when they're practising on people. Be prepared to put some time aside if you do decide to go to a college hairdressers as they do tend to take their time (and I don't know about you, but I'd much prefer them to take their time rather than rush and make a hash of it!) my appointment was at 9:30am and it wasn't finished until 12:45pm although my hair was a big job, after dying it red then brown and stripping etc it was multicoloured and needed correcting but the two ladies assigned to the task did an excellent job, the poor things had to do the top one colour, the bottom another, and lots of mixing colours to get what I wanted and then cutting it. I am so impressed with the result definitely worth the time! 

I also went to the college spa where I had a Dermalogica facial which was lovely, I could have fell asleep! I didn't realise it went past just the face and across the neck and shoulders too, bonus! I had my eyebrows tinted and waxed which is just as well as they were turning into werewolves again! I had a french manicure too, I've attempted to do white tips myself before needless to say I failed and it's always so much better when someone else does it for you! 

All of that little lot (or should I say large lot!) cost £42.50 and that is a real bargain!

Would you let students cut you hair?

Thanks for reading,

Wench x      

Monochrome Nails. No tools required!

It's been a while since I did me some nail art so I thought I'd knuckle down and do some! And guess what? No tools required! 

Without further ado let me show you what I did!

You'll need a bobby pin, some cello tape, and some to blob your nail polish on (I used the shiny cover of a magazine!).

  

First things first, file your nails to your desired shape (I prefer mine oval but whatever shape you like), and make sure you use a base coat. This gives our nails strength and prevents discolouration from nail colours (and trust me, I've skipped this before and ended up sporting yellow tinged nails - not a good look!)

Next, give a thought to what patterns you want. It's much easier and clean looking to put black patterns over our white polish, however I find white polka dots over black polish is fine. We can be as creative as we like so have fun. I painted two nails black and three white in preparation for the patterns I wanted to put on top.

You can do your patterns free hand if you want to but my skills aren't great so you can use cello tape as a template, all you have to do is cut your tape to size, and stick it on your hand and pull it off a couple of times so it's not as sticky, THIS IS IMPORTANT or it will pull your nail polish off. Use your tape as a template like this:

 

The same principal can be used for straight lines and other patterns. Now onto the polka dots and that's where your bobby pin comes in. Stretch your bobby pin apart, blob some nail polish (on whatever your blobbing your polish on), dip one end of your bobby pin in the blob of polish and use it to make your dots. Work quickly, and keep blobbing polish as it will start to dry out and go gloopy. Make sure you only use one end of your bobby pin for one colour, don't want them mixing! 

Finally, once everything has dried apply your top coat to seal everything off and make your designs last longer! All done!

Thanks for reading!

Wench x