The dark nail colours I wear in the winter get a little repetitive. So once in a while I wear a light colour. Sally Hansen’s 210 Shell We Dance is a great shell colour that has ultra shiny glitter particles in it you can barely notice. I often overlook colours that mimic skin tone but I admit they provide a classically neat look.
This kind of polish needs about 4 coats to look neat and even.
SH’s Shell We Dance 210
I have so many beauty products, from nail colours to skin care, I’ve got it all. I usually try to single out a small pouch where I can put my total makeup routine in because it’s easy to throw it in my purse.
I found an old Red Earth metallic soft bag and went about minimizing to the most critical products I use. Here’s what it contains:
I found a foundation by Revlon that was still sealed in one of my treasure troves of old skin care. It was a photo-ready makeup which means it doesn’t make your face look ghostly blue when photographed.
It’s a liquid foundation but feels like a silky powder when you apply it with your fingers. I always apply foundation with my fingers because it warms it and I can do it quickly.
My eyes I use an old Physician’s Formula gel liner in deep purple and a coppery brown by Nyx. It’s always good to use shadow that has a similar tone to your hair. For the highlight colour I use a light peach mineral shadow by Emani. I don’t use mascara because I don’t really need it.
Lips I have about 200 or so lipsticks and about 100 glosses and I find it so hard to pick one but I managed to pick ‘Moonlight’, an old shade by Red Earth. It’s a glimmery almost bare pink. Out of all the lipsticks I own it’s the best feel on the lips. It doesn’t feel slimy or sticky.
That’s my bag!
In other news I bought another shade in the new Revlon 2015 nail colour line called 715 ‘Privileged’. It’s a medium peach flat colour. It was 5 bucks so I felt I could afford it.
Right now my nails are a shimmery light pink. I used a light pink SH colour with 3 coats of OPI shimmering pink on top. It matches the Moonlight lipstick in my bag.
Last shoutout is to Revlon Matte lipstick. No need for tissues to dap your lips on. What a crazy ritual that is anyway. Revlon has matte shades and the one I use is 004. It’s a medium coral/pink. Very bright and very nice.
I happened to be in London Drugs to pick up my prescriptions and browsed the nail colours, as I usually do without buying them. London Drugs tends to be more expensive than say, Rexall. Most of the nail polish is at least a dollar or so more than Rexall’s.
I happened upon an end display that people wouldn’t usually spot and found a cardboard display.
It was badly lit but I saw the most electric blue nail colour I’ve ever seen. I have a ton of blue polishes but this one was so vibrant I had to buy it. Turns out it was on sale for $4.99 too.
It’s Revlon’s new 2015 colour called ‘Sultry'(495). It’s so pulsating and vibrant that under light it seems to change between an electric blue and a stunning violet. It’s a metallic. I’m in love with it.
There are a couple other metallics in the new line but not as brilliant as Sultry. There’s a teal metallic and a gold metallic.
Highly recommend.
Sally Hansen’s ‘In The Spotlight’
All my bright pastel nail colours are sitting in their plastic box waiting for next season. The deep, dark colours of winter are now in heavy rotation. I love Winter because some of my favourite colours are the rich blood red of Revlon’s ‘Vixen’ and the glitters like Sally Hansen’s ‘In The Spotlight.’
Many people don’t like to wear black polish. They think it’s boring or not colourful. I’ve rediscovered black polish by using it as a base and putting a glitter or gloss over it.
I used an old Rimmel black and topped it with SH’s ‘In The Spotlight.’ I got compliments immediately. In fact, my pharmacist, who sees my nails every day, said this was her favourite so far.
The key to wearing black polish is making sure to use a shiny top coat. Another trick is to take an old colour and mix it with your black to give it some depth. I have an old burgundy I mixed with some black to make an incredibly warm and stunning black.
Colour mixing is a great way to spruce up a black polish and you can buy a cheap black and mix two new bottles of colour using an old deep blue pearl for a wonderful black/blue pearl. The possibilities are endless and the great thing about black is it matches everything so you can wear it longer.
As a former makeup artist I was always on the lookout for a good flat red lip colour. I once had a movie makeup artist come in looking for one immediately. She wanted a flat red, not cool or warm, just a basic flat red.
I was able to get her one with Maybelline’s 2010 line called Red Revival 645.
Red Revival 645
It’s the flattest brightest red I’ve ever sold. It’s neither warm nor cool.
Your eyes can fool you. You can be looking at a cool red and not know it. The key to choosing red lipsticks is to put a bunch of them together and looking at them in natural light.
This lipstick is relatively cheap. At the time they were about 9 dollars CDN.
It’s very moist and full of pigment. Worth it.
As a bargain hound and a disabled woman I can’t usually spend money on high cost nail colours. My cheating involves using Seche Vite’s top coat to cover up the fact that I can wear a $2 nail colour and make it look good. Plus, I’m a stickler when it comes to caring for my hands and feet.
OPI’s new collection is beautiful. Here’s the Youtube video featuring 12 new colours.
Those colours are great but I’m not going to pay 10 dollars a bottle for them so I picked the shades I liked, specifically this one:
I went about finding another brand with the same colour and found Sally Hansen’s ‘Grey Area.’
It’s the same colour but 2/3rds the price.
I put on 2 coats and a top coat of Seche and I’m good to go.
I purchased a deep purple coloured nail polish at my local drugstore for $2. It’s called Sinful Colors. Now that Autumn is closing in I decided to start a bit early and do the nails this very deep, almost black purple. I topped it off with Seche Vite, the best top coat out there in my book. I find you can get away with really cheap colours if you have a great top coat to finish. Seche Vite you can find on Ebay in a large size for about $30 dollars. It comes with a refillable bottle. It’s definitely worth the money seeing as each individual bottle can run $15/apiece.
The deepest purple is this flower represents the colour of my nails.
If you’re looking for an all purpose file this isn’t worth your money. The best purchase is getting several different grades (like sandpaper grades) of files. There are coarse files for removing larger areas of nail all the way down to finer grain to smooth the nail edge. Files aren’t that expensive and if you can get a pack with different grades it’s your best option or buy them singly.
I was a cosmetologist and makeup artist before I became too disabled to work. The one product I’ve consistently carried with me is Bioderma H20. It functions as a makeup remover and a general toner and is the best money ever spent, especially if you can get the large 500ml bottle for somewhere around $34 CDN dollars. There’s a type for oily skin too. You won’t need cleansers and separate toners again. It’s also great for cleaning makeup brushes. Soak a cotton pad and clean your brushes.
Bioderma Normal Skin and Oily Skin Types
Here’s a brief introduction to this blog. I used to be a makeup artist so I decided to start this blog and share my own personal tips about how I care for myself.
As a young woman I never had fingernails. I never bit them or peeled them off. I just never could grow them because I was a pianist. I took a big break from playing (my piano is in storage) and my nails decided to grow and they grew very strong.
I learned from some of my clients who owned nail salons that you should never cut your nails, only file them. So I invested in a bunch of different grade files, rough to semi-smooth and filed them to a square/squoval shape. Not only did my nails get strong but they grow faster when you only file them.
That’s my first tip. Invest in files and never use another nail trimmer again.
Pick the shape of nail you like and go for it:
Nail Shapes
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