REVIEW: Ciaté Caviar Manicure

I received this Ciaté Caviar Manicure set as a birthday gift from a friend! I've been out of the whole nail art thing for a few years now. I used to do all sorts of patterns and designs, then I stopped painting at all for a good year, and only recently got back into the habit of painting my nails. Although just plain colour and that's it.

So this is a nice and easy way to make my nails look more interesting than just a plain coat of colour!

You get a bottle of caviar micro pearls, a bottle of black nail polish, and a funnel.

Close up of the caviar pearls

It was my first time using this, and I only did the ring fingers of each hand as I think doing all of them like this would be too over the top.

It's important to keep everything in the packaging, as the plastic lid doubles up as a tray to catch the pearls when you pour them over your nails, and makes it easier to pour back through the funnel into the bottle, to reduce any wastage!

For my first experience trying this out, I did find it difficult to get a nice even spread of pearls. There are some gaps on the nails that are not covered! I need more practice. I'm not used to the feeling of having things stuck onto my nails, the raised texture and all. Also paranoid that the pearls are going to drop/fall off into my food and I'll end up eating it...

In the included booklet, it said that the best way to seal the pearls is to apply a top coat to only the tip of the nail?

You can see the little gaps in the photo. It's an interesting look... I'd never do this to all of my nails though. Reason being is that when they start to fall off, it'll be uneven and start to look a bit mank! One nail on each hand is enough for me.

This product isn't something that I would by for myself. It was nice to receive it as a gift though, as I've got the chance to try it out, something I never thought of anyway.

I'll be a good pairing with my Tsubasa inspired nails I used to rock a few years back! 

REVIEW: Garnier Olia permanant hair colour

It was time for me to do a root touch up as I've been dying my hair for many years now, 8 years to be exact! I've stuck to having some sort of brown shade for about 5 years, with the odd bleaching it ginger and attempting to go back to my natural hair colour here and there inbetween.

I picked up the new Garnier Olia dye pack as I saw it has no ammonia, and it's oil powered! My choice of colour is always a really light frosty/ashy/pearly blonde as this is the best way for people with naturally dark hair to achieve a lighter brown shade of dyed hair... It's notorious for us to end up with ginger tints everytime we dye our hair though. So I always expect it now.

I found the shape of the bottle slighter harder to grip compared to previous designs which is the standard cylinder shape. The applicator tip is also different to what I usually use which comes with a comb applicator, or foams and masks. All that said, it wasn't that bad, still did the job and all.

The smell of the formula is much better than others with a quite potent pang to it! I think that's the ammonia smell?

The way I apply hair dye when it's like this is a squirt a line across the roots and use a plastic tooth comb to distribute it through.

At the end my hair came out like this:

It came out pretty orange! It's not as orange anymore after a couple of washes and me trying out a new shampoo (for blondes)... I think it isn't the right chose of shampoo that I chose.. but i'll talk about that in another post :D

Final verdict is that I think this is one of the better hair dyes I have used! It isn't drying and does what I expect it to, the formula is brilliant too.

I won't say the best because my actual desired hair colour isn't achievable without having to bleach/lighten and tone it. Maybe I'll do it some day!

NEW: Jewellery Display

I've been wanting to get a jewellery display/stand for quite a while but I couldn't find a nice one, or they were too expensive for what it was. Then of course I looked on eBay and I found the perfect one, for a decent price!

The reason for wanting one in the first place is because I'd previously just kept them in boxes that they came in when I purchased them, and they were just stacking on top of each other and making it harder for me find the ones I wanted to wear, which takes up precious time for me getting ready!! So this was a must for me, and it had to be nice and pretty.

I like this design as there's 3 little birds on a tree. This came in either bronze/gold or silver, I opted for silver as the majority of my jewellery is silver at the moment... I might buy the bronze/gold one as well when i get more gold jewellery and my current one gets full.

The price I got this for is £7.30. In stores their ones were selling for around £16, and the design wasn't as nice a this one I found on eBay. I really love this! It even has a tray at the bottom for studs and things you can't hang.

When you receive the package, it will come in two parts. The tray and the branch needs to simply be screwed together and that's it! Simple.