Saturday 26 April 2014

Are you the ONE?


As you might have seen in my latest post, my blog's turning quite on the beauty side. Writing about beauty and make-up has always been on my mind, especially since I see this as a form of art rather than a mundane activity destined to hide details of a late night or a bad genetic inheritance (under eyes circles, I'm talking to you!!).

Yesterday I spoke to you about taking care of your nails and tomorrow I'm planning to let you in on the miracles of coconut oil, but today I'll be talking about the latest make-up range brought to you by the Swedish cosmetics company Oriflame: The ONE.

Wandering around beauty blogs, I encountered this amazing new collection that consists of 3 different make-up ranges!

1. Everyday beauty
This part of the collection especially designed for a flawless day to day look. It contains essentials for every woman's make-up bag and, judging by the already known quality of Oriflame products, we can only expect duration and great finish!
Why I'm looking forward to seeing and trying this collection? High quality essentials are always a great thing to have and not worrying all day if your concealer is still in its place is very highly valued by yours truly!


















2. High impact
Moving on from the fresh look Everyday Beauty can create, we're stepping into a more pigmented line, created for people that want to achieve a more deep look. The shades are more intense and can create a much more intriguing look.





















3. Long wear
For anyone wanting heavy-duty resistance, this is your thing! Make-up items conceived to stay there and look nice for an entire day! I could not be more excited by something, especially since I always have issues with my make-up during parties or nights out. Or even long shopping days!









If you want to check out some more information about the collection or tips on how to use it, you can always check Oriflame's Youtube videos. My personal favourite is the one below.
I'm actually looking forward to trying the products and seeing how they look like on myself :)






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Graceful nails


Long time no see! And I'm back with new forces, this time beauty-related! For those of you that don't know, I'm a great fan of gel nails and I've been sporting them for the past year. Sadly enough, as I now live in the UK, gel nails are quite on the expensive side so I've resorted to doing my own gel nails.

Recently, I've decided to take a break from the wraps and let my nails take a breath of fresh air for a change until I get back home and have Nico get my manicure looking as amazing as she always does. But when I finally removed the gel, my nails were amazingly brittle, paper thin and quite exfoliated.

So my first initiative was to raid Boots and find some hardening solutions. The products I found and used in this article are the following:
* Sally Hansen Hard as Wraps 
* Essie Super Duper Hardening Top Coat
* Revlon Nail File (similar here)
* Cutex Nourishing Nail Polish Remover ( though not in the picture)
* Revlon Parfumerie Nail Polish in Pink Pineapple 

As you can see, my nails look awful in the pictures bellow, as a result of incorrect filling on my side. I removed the gel in 2 stages (more or less willing): I removed my tips and all gel residue by filling then I just made a gel overlay that lasted for a week. I didn't really use too much bonding agent for this gel overlay, that the wraps just came off in a week, so I didn't have to file the nails once more.

Now moving on to the steps I took with my brand new paper-thin nails!

1. Tiding it up the nails
Besides making sure there's no remaining gel residue on the nail, you should give them a superficial wipe with some nail polish remover, just to me sure you remove any kind of remaining natural grease. For this, I used the Cutix nail polish remover, as it is nourishing and specially developed for such damaged nails.

2.Filing 
One of the main reasons I wanted to remove my tips and everything was the fact that the shape of my nails was going haywire on me and I really hated the leaning-tower-of-Pisa nails I'd ended up having. However, when the gel fell off, my nails chipped and I had irregular forms. Still, there's really no need for justification in filling your nails prior to taking care of them. The 2 things you should remember? Use a good quality file and only file in 1 direction.

3.Base coat
Paper-thin nails was the reason for getting gel wraps in the first place, together with a never ending cycle of doing my manicure every 2 days because the polish chipped. So getting back to that and trying to fix the health state of my nails was a huge challenge. I spent hours on end on Youtube trying to figure out what treatments to get until I discovered this Sally Hansen base coat. This promises covering the nails in a layer as hard as acrylic, thus protecting them until they grow back to their healthy state.

So far, so good, I've used this 2 times up to writing this article and it's actually done a much better job than expected. I'll review all the items here as soon as I get a better vibe of what they do.

4.Color me pretty
While searching for hardening base coats, I came over a 3 for 2 promotion running in the drugstore, so I took advantage of it an purchased a Revlon perfumed nail polish. I've never really liked how pastels react on my fingers, they never really get that color block look, but I gave this Pink Pineapple scented nail polish a try and I've yet to be disappointed!

5. Seal it in
In the same theme as the rest of the products, the Essie top coat is indeed Super Duper. This one's hardening as well, and it gives the nails a good seal, making the manicure lasting a little bit longer and have a better luster.

All in all, I'm carefully nurturing my nails back to health with both drugstore products and natural ones. I'll post soon about my love for coconut oil and the close relationship it has with my beauty regimen!












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