Models Own Indian Ocean and Lilac Dream

When I was away in Manchester I picked up my first Models Own varnishes, Lilac Dream and the famous Indian Ocean from the Beetlejuice range. I really only wanted Indian Ocean but they were two for £8.00 so I had to get two, obviously! I've seen on loads of blogs that Indian Ocean looks amazing layered over a matt shade so thought I'd give them a whirl together!

Indian Ocean

Lilac Dream

As you can probably see, Indian Ocean is a gorgeous shimmering, pearlescent shade with blue, violet and turquoise hints throughout. It is a sheer but highly pigmented colour which I love. The Lilac Dream shade is a bit more bland, a purple cream shade perfect for the pastel trend this season. I thought layering the shimmer over the purple would pick out the purple shades in the Beetlejuice shade, and I think it turned out very pretty!

This is a nice day-to-day look that is feminine and sweet but not over the top. I'm sorry my camera isn't great and doesn't capture the full complexity of the Indian Ocean colour, but it reminds me of petrol how it changes in the light as you move your hands side to side. I must have looked like a weirdo staring at my nails in different lights but I couldn't help it!

If you don't have any Models Own polishes, I would really recommend them, I have to be honest and say the packaging feels and looks a little on the cheap side, but the product is very well formulated and creamy. I used the lilac shade for my nail marbling post and it worked just as well as the OPI polishes, so for the price difference I was very impressed. You can get Models Own from Boots or ASOS and they retail at £5.00.

9/10 and I will definitely sample more Models Own nail varnishes :)

Nail marbling- my first attempt!

So, recently I stumbled across some videos by Simple Little Pleasures (click here) showing you how to nail marble, and I thought "that looks so simple"! It's such a great creative process where you layer nail varnishes onto the surface of water, swirl it into whatever design you want then dunk your finger into the layer of drying varnish to coat each nail. Sounds easy, right? WRONG. Not if you're me anyway. I can't show you the full finished article as the rest of my fingers still look like I've been painting the walls, but this gives you an idea of the desired effect.

This is not nearly as neat as some as I've seen online, but for a first timer, I think I did ok?! Ok so this is what you need:

An orange stick (manicure stick), a glass or cup you don't mind getting messy, sellotape to protect your fingers around the nail, whichever colours you want to marble. You need to first fill the cup or glass almost to the top with room temperature water. Bottled or filtered water works best to hold the varnish as it has no impurities. Then you carefully drop a single drop of the first colour onto the surface of the water. Now this is the magic bit, the varnish disperses outwards, creating a ring. You next need to put a drop of the next varnish into the centre and let it do the same thing. Keep going, alternating the colours until you have a bullseye effect. Then you take your orange stick and drag it lightly through the nail varnish to either pull through the rings, or just swirl around to create...erm, swirls, which is what I did. Then you position your finger (nail side down) over the pattern you want to capture and literally push your nail into the nail varnish film, dunking it under the water and clearing up the excess with the orange stick.This is the aftermath (this is the second piece of tissue as I covered the first one entirely!).

For the first attempt, I tried using ELF nail varnishes and for some reason they would not spread out like the others did so I would not advise using those! These are the shades I ended up using, and I had a base coat on which was a basic french manicure shade.

You can see just some of my collection in the background, but these are Nails Inc OMP! for Fabulous Magazine, OPI "Houston We Have a Purple", OPI "From A to Z-Urich", 17 "Twighlight Teaser" and Models Own "Lilac Dream". I quite like the idea of not quite matching shades coming together for marbling as it seems to be nicer on the nail. The OPI shades and the Models Own shades seemed to work the best for this nail art as their formulation is nice and creamy but not drying, whereas I found the 17 nail varnish started to dry too quickly, became gloopy and hard to work with. Here's another pic of a fairly neat nail to give you another wee look:

I have to be honest, between taping round your nails to keep the varnish off them, scooping out extra varnish with the stick, and accidentally covering my fingers in varnish, it was a complete faff. But I really quite like the design and feel like I've achieved something!! Have you ever tried to do this, and if so is there something I can do to make it easier? Much love xx

Back to reality!

How rubbish is coming back from holiday?? We were only away four days but it felt like so much longer which was lovely :) I was in Manchester with my boyfriend Richard, we went to see Jerry Seinfeld one night and Paul Merton the next so made it into a little trip. I've only been to Manchester for work before so it was really nice to go for pleasure and we got amazing weather, it was sunny 80% of the time, if a little windy, I even had to go buy flip flops as I had "cleverly" packed light and just taken Uggs for the day time! Much delicious food was consumed and a *ahem* few cocktails also. Mangotini anyone??

Richard is good at researching places before we visit, so we went to Mr Toms Victorian Chophouse for food, The Room and the Alchemist for cocktails and a couple of other nice little places like Jack Spratt's for lunch. We also discovered Barburrito which is the most amazing chilled-out Mexican food, come to Edinburgh Barburrito!! Here's a gratuitous pic of the two of us in the Alchemist with our test-tubey shots. Everything is done like a chemistry experiment and one of my cocktails was wood-smoked with a bunsen burner in front of me!

Obviously, there are loads of shops and shopping centres in Manchester, so I managed to sneak in some purchases, including the much longed-for Indian Ocean by Models Own woohoo! The Harvey Nichols in Manchester was a little disappointing compared to ours in Edinburgh, but the Selfridges is AMAZING! Richard had to leave me alone at the MAC dept, chatting away to the MUA as I tend to get a little engrossed haha. But anyway, we did experience some culture at the war museum, which was amazing but sad and thought provoking (understandably). We both turned into quivering wrecks when we decided to visit the viewing platform as the lift was very shaky and seemed like it was going to drop at any minute! Here is me looking small in a big cartoon room and Richard trying to look manly next to a tank LOL.

Enough culture, onto the haul! I was pretty restrained actually for me, only one Mac purchase which was good (sort of). So we have two candles which smelled yummy, Morange Mac Lipstick, Models Own Lilac Dream and Indian Ocean, pretty good huh? 

Ooh pretty things! I also got a couple of Primark items, but nothing else really jumped out at me, which is typical but good for my bank balance. I wore the Mac lipstick in our night out so see the top pics, but here are a couple of close-ups for a better idea. Now I don't need to tell you how good Mac lipsticks are, how creamy they are and how nice they smell, but I can tell you this is such a gorgeous yet wearable colour!! If you want to get brave and branch out, I seriously recommend this shade.

Well, that's my wee update sorry for being quiet while I've been away and this very pic-heavy post!! Glad to be home safe and sound but can't wait to go away again! Are any of you away on a city break soon? xx