Orly Seagurl and Sweet Peacock

Hello readers! I thought that I would show you some of the goodies I was given at the Maxted Thomas.PR pre gala dinner event I attended as part of the ABBW.

One of the brands who were represented was Orly, who were doing free manicures to promote their Mineral FX collection and Gel FX. So I had my very first manicure not done by myself.

Clumsy Julia managed to whack her finger on the bottom of the table when she sat down for dinner, so please ignore the whoopsie on my middle finger, totally my fault.

This is Rococo A-Go-Go from the Mineral FX collection, a deep purple with a slight duo-chrome effect.

Then I got to bring home a gift pack with two polishes from the current Birds of a Feather collection.

After playing with them a bit, i've decided that the Orly brush is my favourite that i've used so far. It's a little like a China Glaze brush but less floppy.

Seagurl was the first one I tried. The formula was good, and it is definitely unique in my collection, but it looks a little too sophisticated on me in my opinion.

My favourite was Sweet Peacock! It is a lovely electrical blue metallic shades with flecks of silver throughout. This is going to get a lot of wear through summer :)

I wore this one as a full mani for a full week before it started to chip.

*These products were provided to me for consideration*

Illamasqua Propaganda w. Northern Lights

I wasn't too fussed about Propaganda with it being rather uneven and a bit boring (i.e not sparkly enough)  for my taste, but I wanted to get some idea of the wear time for Illamasqua polishes.  Then I remembered this post from a few months ago on the lovely Vita's blog and I had myself a mani!

I think the uneveness of the base makes this more like the night sky too.

This lasted 3 days before I got a few chips, and then the naughty polish picking monster reared its ugly head :P

Bad, bad blogger + IMATS haul swatches

Hello lovely readers! I am very sorry for my lack of posts lately. 

Despite having the time of my life at the ABBW, the event has left me feeling totally overwhelmed! Writing such a small and specialised blog, meeting 80+ gorgeous beauty bloggers and seeing the quality of their work makes me feel rather inadequate. Don't get me wrong, it was an amazing experience mingling with brand representatives and meeting the ladies behind some of the blogs I love to read but I think it was a little too soon for me to attend an event on that type of scale, being such a newbie to the blogosphere.

However, I am determined to get my little corner of the internet back on track so expect to see a lot more posts as I go into my summer break in about 5 weeks or so!

I didn't buy very much at IMATS but here are swatches of the two nail polishes I came home with.
First thing I did when I got into IMATS was race up the back of the hall to the Illamasqua counter. I've never tried any of their products before so I was definitely walking away with something. I was rather underwhelmed by the small selection of products until I saw the price tags. Two $35 nail polishes for $15?! Count me in!!

It took me a while to work out that the bulky square lids of these polishes actually come off revealing a smaller handle underneath. The brushes themselves are a little thinner that the OPI pro-wide which makes it easier not to make a mess of my tiny nails.

Propaganda is a very dark, almost black, blue jelly polish. I had a bit of trouble getting it even, as you can see in my swatch but it looks fantastic under a holographic top coat (see my next post).

Haha please excuse the massive difference in skintone on this one, I really am white as a vampire. I think I may have unwittingly changed the camera settings.

Victory is a cool toned gold shimmer that has a slightly frosty formula. You need to be careful the keep your brush stokes fairly straight or it will show in your finished mani, as you can see on my middle finger.

I can't really comment on the durability of these polishes just yet, only having played with them today, but I will include that info in my next post :)