I never bothered to do a list of my favourite beauty products for 2011… but if I did, this lovely would have been right up there!
Illamasqua’s Raindrops is a truly beautiful polish, which is absolutely true to its name – a bit of a rarity in the cute but crazy world of nail polish naming! A dusty pale blue jelly base with tiny iridescent flakies suspended within, Raindrops came into being thanks to an Illamasqua competition winner who was inspired by a photograph of raindrops on a windowpane.
Posted in Beauty
Tagged Beauty, cosmetics, dusty blue, flakies, Illamasqua, make-up, nail lacquer, nail polish, nail varnish, Raindrops, review, swatch
Aharrr me hearties! Yes, you’ve guessed it; I’m still slowly making my way through OPI’s Pirates Of The Caribbean Collection and today it’s the turn of OPI Steady As She Rose to join her mates Stranger Tides, Mermaid’s Tears and Planks-A-Lot on-board the good ship Through The Looking Glass!
The Pirates Of The Caribbean set is one of my favourite OPI collections… well, ever, really. I know a lot of people out there weren’t impressed that the colours were so un-Jack Sparrow like, but its range of dusty creamy pastels totally did the business for me – pirate-appropriate or not!
Posted in Beauty
Tagged Beauty, cosmetics, dusty pastels, make-up, nail lacquer, nail polish, nail varnish, O.P.I, OPI, pink, Pirates Of The Caribbean Collection, review, Steady As She Rose, swatch
Since you all seemed to love Chanel’s Coco Blue as much as I did, I have another little treat in store for you from the Les Jeans de Chanel Collection – Chanel Blue Boy!
Blue Boy is the medium blue of the trio and the most jeans-esque of the lot. What makes it just that little bit more special than your average teal (apart from the fact it’s a Chanel, of course!) is that it has a lovely dusty quality to it – and rather than making it look faded or old, it simply makes it even prettier! In fact, it reminded me of fields of gorgeous dusty blue cornflowers.
At this point, I have to thank my BFF Mirander for lending me Blue Boy in the first place. I’m sure you remember my tales of woe surrounding trying to get hold of the Les Jeans de Chanel Collection and by the time I knew this was even in HK stores, it was already sold out! Luckily for me, Mirander had already bought Blue Boy for herself and very generously, let me give Blue Boy a spin – and I’m very glad she did!
Application-wise, it was just as easy as every Chanel nail polish I’ve tried to date, although it’s finish was a little less glossy than Coco Blue. What I love about all the Chanel lacquers I’ve used so far is that they’re really easy to get even and opaque, and whether it’s something about the brush, the polish itself or some special Chanel mojo that overcomes my fingers, I seem to be able to achieve a really beautiful neat and clean finish!
I didn’t love Blue Boy quite as much as I did Coco Blue – though maybe this is a coping mechanism because I know I can’t have the polish for myself! Nevertheless, it really is a lovely wearable and versatile colour and a gorgeous in-between shade of blue for those neither wanting a pastel nor a navy.
Blue Boy really is like the perfect pair of boyfriend jeans – goes with everything and looks great too! Now if only someone would swap me a pair of jeans for a Blue Boy polish of my own..!
Looks good with: jeans!
Drying time: 5 mins
Coats required: 2
Chips: 5 days
Read my review of another Les Jeans de Chanel polish, Coco Blue here (it’s lush!)
Chanel Le Vernis Blue Boy, Fall 2011 Fashion Night Out Les Jeans de Chanel Collection
Posted in Beauty
Tagged Beauty, blue, Blue Boy, Chanel, cosmetics, Les Jeans de Chanel, make-up, nail lacquer, nail polish, nail varnish, review, swatch, Vogue 2011 Fashion Night Out
It’s been far too long without a nail polish review on here for my liking! So what better than some sneaky Chanel action to get back into the swing of things?! May I present to you Chanel’s Coco Blue.
Coco Blue was from the very limited-edition Les Jeans de Chanel Collection, a trio of denim-inspired blue nail polishes released for Vogue’s 2011 Fashion Night Out. After staking out my nearest Chanel cosmetics store for what seemed like weeks on end, I resigned myself to the fact they weren’t going to be released in Hong Kong… until the lovely Carmen told me they had in fact already been released, but only in certain stores! Argh! Of course, by then, they were long sold out… but luckily for me, I had the gorgeous Vicky on the case, who managed to snag me Coco Blue from duty-free on her trip here.
And it really was an extreme case of lucky (very rare where I’m concerned, as you all know by now!), because Coco Blue was the colour I had deemed the fairest of them all! So mega-thanks to Vicky for helping me lay claim to this blissful blue beauty!
Lots of photos have made Coco Blue look like an Easter-egg baby blue, but actually it’s a heavenly shade of super sky blue – and utterly gorgeous with it! It also has a subtle but noticeable pink shimmer running through it, giving it an enchantingly glossy finish whilst still maintaining its creamy dreamy lusciousness. This secret shimmer (and its not a dreaded case of ‘so secret you can’t see it’, as with many Essies!) also prevents it from looking too chalky and harsh, as I have often seen with paler blue nail polishes in the past. It’s the idyllic cloudless summer sky straight from a milkmaid’s dreams.
You may remember me waxing lyrical about Chanel’s Graphite and its magical self-applying formula; well, Coco Blue wasn’t quite as miraculous but it wasn’t far off. Again, my photos show my nails ‘no clean-up required’ so Chanel’s combination of formula and brush shape must be doing something right! The first coat was a little streaky but it evened out beautifully and easily by the second, to leave the divine blue-sky dream you see here!
This really is such a lovely, charming and uplifting colour. It’s a total fairytale blue – the colour of Cinderella’s gown (you shall go to the ball!) but with the pearly shimmer of her glass slippers and the magic touch that only a fairy godmother (Coco herself?!) could bring.
The only major issue? Well, I don’t know about you, but Coco Blue sure don’t look like any pair of jeans I ever owned! It’s waaaaaay too pretty for that!
Looks good with: glass slippers, pumpkin carriages, being home by midnight
Drying time: 5 mins
Coats required: 2
Chips: 5-7 days
Read my review of another Les Jeans de Chanel polish, Blue Boy, here
Chanel Le Vernis Coco Blue, Fall 2011 Fashion Night Out Les Jeans de Chanel Collection
It’s been a while since I posted – but this is the perfect polish to break the rut… Chanel Graphite.
Oh, Le Vernis Graphite… j’adore.
After using Graphite, my first Chanel polish, I was completed consumed by the desire to buy as many of their lacquers as possible, without care for cost or availability or anything else similarly level-headed – THAT is how good it was. However effusive I am in the rest of this review, trust me, it isn’t enough!
Graphite is just amazing. I’ve seen lots of posts that make it look like a charcoal silver, which it most definitely isn’t. Instead, it’s a gorgeous glittering green gold, burnished blackened and utterly brilliant. In some lights, it flashes a shimmering silvery khaki but this dirty dazzling delicious fool’s gold is by far the more dominant colour. It’s simply a joy to behold and I make abslutely no apologies for the abundance of photos that follows as a result!
The other amazing aspect of Graphite is its finish. It’s a cross between a foil and a glitter but is obviously neither and yet more than both put together. It looks amazingly textured but is totally smooth to the touch. It’s Extra Special in a way that words that also name an expensive supermarket ready-meal just cannot do justice to. In my collection, it’s also utterly breathtakingly unique.
I was also blown away by the pure quality of it. I felt I didn’t need to do anything. It just flowed perfectly from the bottle to the brush and onto my fingernails in a neat perfect shape. I always hear the term on polish blogs ‘applied like butter’ and have never really had cause to use it – but this stuff really seemed to melt like magic onto my talons.
For those not familiar with Chanel nail polishes, the chunky square cap lifts off to reveal a small round screw cap that allows better grip for application. The brush itself is slightly short but medium-sized in thickness and I encountered no problems with it whatsoever. However, by this stage, I was in such a state of general giddiness that the brush could have been starfish-shaped for all I’d have known – I just could not stop staring at my nails!
If you look up images of graphite itself, it’s amazing to see how Chanel have managed to transform the mineral’s exact qualities and shading to a polish. It also reminded me of another mineral – pyrite, also known as fool’s gold – and the colour is just this wonderful textured mixture of gold, silver, green, charcoal and black, with shadows and shimmers in all the right places. It’s gorgeous from up-close, it’s gorgeous from far away… I imagine it would almost be gorgeous with your eyes shut too!
It’s so glittery, it pretty much glows in the dark but despite it’s glitz factor, it absolutely never feels obtrusive, ostentatious or OTT. It also reminded me of a shimmering sheath of snakeskin – slinky, glitzy, totally divinely luxe.
Wonderful colour, fabulous quality, a sense of sophistication, a luxurious glamour that’s still tasteful… It’s basically everything I ever hoped and expected from Chanel but had been afraid to believe was true. Well, it all was!
Looks good with: black, sophistication, The Look
Drying time: <5 mins
Coats required: 1-2
Chips: 2-3 days
Shimmering in the shade!
Chanel Le Vernis Graphite, Fall 2011 Illusion D’Ombres Collection, $180, Chanel
Posted in Beauty
Tagged Beauty, best glitter nail polishes, Chanel, cosmetics, favourite nail polish, gold, Graphite, Illusion D’Ombres Collection, le vernis, make-up, nail lacquer, nail polish, nail varnish, review, silver, swatch
Remember my coral craze from a few months back? I covered super-sparkly coral (Zoya Rica), rainbow-holo coral (China Glaze TMI) and stunningly-saturated colour-popping coral (CND Poppyfield, as recently seen at New York Fashion Week – yes, that’s right, I’m a trend-setter, as if you didn’t already know!). Well now it’s time for a hangover post from my coral binge – Essie Your Hut Or Mine.
Your Hut Or Mine is a classic coral. It’s warm, floral and perhaps even a little old-fashioned looking, leaning more towards a dusky rose or honeysuckle than the juicy fruity melon hues of CND’s Poppyfield or Zoya’s Rica. It has Essie’s trademark secret shimmer hidden deep within – often so deep that you don’t really get a chance to peep it! Even so, its occasional glimmers of pink and gold keep it just that winning wink away from being too dull, less like a faded picnic cloth that got left out in the sun too long.
Even though it’s a summery colour, it’s warmth would also play well into autumn; I wore it with OPI Stranger Tides (a cool pale khaki) and I absolutely adored the colour combination, which looked modern, fresh and brought out the best in both shades.
This had a smooth flowing consistency that made it super-easy to apply (like most Essie nail polishes I’ve tried) but I was surprised when air bubbles starting showing up once it had dried. Nothing as hideously bumpy as Orly Frisky but sadly, enough for me to know it was there. Hopefully I just shook the bottle too soon before application, as it’s not a problem I’ve had with Essie before – but it’s still a shame as otherwise, Your Hut Or Mine is a total gold-star performer.
I also stand by my previous comments that Essie’s smaller thinner brushes are far easier to control than the current fat brushes that are in vogue *cough OPI cough*. Those of you with smaller nails or who prefer having less to clean up at the end should enjoy using these skinnies as much as I do!
Bubbling issue aside, Your Hut Or Mine is a hard polish to have a problem with. I’m not entirely sure it suits my skin-tone (seems to bring out the pink in me) and wish the shimmer came out to play a little bit more, but I just love the warm prettiness of the colour. It reminds me of honeysuckle, picnics, barbeques, gingham and summer, which I reckon are all rather lovely associations to stir up.
So it ticks all my classic coral boxes… and judging by the fact it was sold out for quite a while at Cher2, it clearly ticks plenty of others’ – but how about yours? Let me know!
Looks good with: khaki, flowers, barbeques
Drying time: 3-5 mins
Coats required: 2
Chips: +5 days
Essie, Your Hut Or Mine, Summer 2011 Fair Game Resort Collection, $60, Cher2
Posted in Beauty
Tagged Beauty, coral, cosmetics, Essie, Essie Your Hut Or Mine, Fair Game Resort Collection, make-up, nail lacquer, nail polish, nail varnish, review, summer, swatch, Your Hut Or Mine
Here’s a polish to appeal to everyone’s inner magpies – Deborah Lippmann’s Today Was A Fairytale.
Today Was A Fairytale is an absolutely breathtaking silver glitter that leaves all other silver glitters in the dust. Featuring tonnes and tonnes of small silver glitter and larger hexagonal silver glitter suspended in a transparent base, this polish has ‘Virgin Diamond Powder’ amongst its ingredients (how that differs from non-virgin diamond powder, I’m not sure!). I don’t think things could get much sparklier unless this used actual whole diamonds, right?!
One thing’s for sure – Ms Lippmann certainly knows her way around glitter! Across The Universe was nothing short of spectacular and this is every bit as amazing. It’s so beautifully blingy, so sensationally sparkly, that it just looks like you’ve dipped your fingers into a bowl of crystals. It’s just jewel-drippingly gorgeous.
Today Was A Fairytale is also entirely befitting of the name (a Taylor Swift song, since you ask) as it does have an exquisite fairytale charm to it. Even though it’s such a show-stoppingly glamorous polish, it’s still pretty rather than overpowering, ethereal rather than overblown; the perfect polish for princesses, fairies and other magical beings. It’s also not just a silver glitter – from some angles, the silver takes on an enchanted steely blue cast that’s totally bewitching.
What’s great about Today Was A Fairytale is that you get lots of bling for your buck. Unlike many other glitter polishes, the sparkles here are plentiful so you can get opaque coverage pretty easily (and the consistency of the varnish itself is pretty thick), although it could be easily used a layering polish too. The nature of the glitter pieces means that you’re better off with thick coats, so that the glitter sits and swims nicely in the transparent base as opposed to sticking out all over the place.
The difficulties with chunky glitters such as these are always the same however. They’re uneven, rough to the touch and chip and flake off easily without a top coat, which I never use! And they’re absolute hell to remove scrub off – although you will definitely want to keep this stunner on for as long as possible!
Despite this, Today Was A Fairytale did perform better than expected. Many glitter polishes seem to gobble up their base liquid, meaning they look sort of dull and flat without a glossy top coat. But, if you can cope with quick tip-wear and snagging bits of glitter on your tights occasionally, Today Was A Fairytale does look absolutely divine just on its own, which is how it’s shown in all my photos.
Gorgeous enough for ten nail polishes, romantic enough for twenty and dazzling enough for at least fifty, Today Was A Fairytale looks like someone distilled a magic spell into a bottle. Like all the best fairytales, it’s a certain case of love at sight. As for a happy ending? Well, with a polish this beautiful, that was never in doubt!
Blurry for mega-watt sparkliness!
Looks good with: tiaras, magic wands, princess dresses
Drying time: 5-7 mins
Coats required: 2 (thick)
Chips: 2 days
Deborah Lippmann, Today Was a Fairytale, Holiday 2010 Collection, Joyce Beauty
Posted in Beauty
Tagged Beauty, best glitter nail polishes, cosmetics, Deborah Lippmann, diamond powder, glitter, make-up, nail lacquer, nail polish, nail varnish, review, silver, swatch, Today Was A Fairytale
OPI’s Summer 2011 Pirates Of The Caribbean Collection has to be one of my favourites of all-time. A cohesive range of dusty pastels, it may not have exactly screamed summer… or indeed pirates… yet it totally floated my boat – or should that be galleon?! And Stranger Tides was no exception!
Stranger Tides is a greyed-out pistachio, a soft pale ghost of khaki, a murky sorbet sea-foam. It’s a dreamy creamy love of a dusky pastel and there’s something about it that feels really breezy and spring-like, yet it can also feel cool and autumnal too. It’s really versatile, neutral enough to work well with other nudes (and be office-friendly) yet also as a refreshing palette-cleanser to bright pops of colours (I wore it with Essie’s Your Hut Or Mine, a bright honeysuckle, and it looked gorgeous). In short, it’s one of those interesting trans-seasonal transitional shades that are always a winner.
Not that this was a view shared by anyone. Whilst I keep studying my glossy creamy talons and screaming AMAZING every few seconds, my boyfriend thought it looked ‘plain’. Admittedly, this is probably because his brain has been addled by my normally wearing polishes like this or this yet he just didn’t get the appeal.
The formula was a dream. After an initially worrying thin and streaky first coat, the second applied like butter, becoming richly opaque and (in what is possibly my favourite aspect of OPI polishes) self-levelled out beautifully. [In that respect, OPI makes application really easy, although as you all know by now, I still find their brushes to fat for my diddly nails.] Smooth, glossy, creamy, gorgeous – it’s no wonder that it’s the third time I’m using most of those words in this review. The finish was as perfect for a crème as you could ever hope for.
What I love most about Stranger Tides – and trust me, it was hard to decide on just one factor! – is how it’s simultaneously modern yet retro. These kind of grungy dusty shades are still edgy in the polish-world and I adored this pastel take on the trend, yet it’s also a colour that probably exists as a Formica table-top in some 50s diner. Which just makes me love it more.
So Stranger Tides makes it for three for three hits in the Pirates Collection so far. It’s super-elegant, super-fresh and super-glossy… just super really!
Looks good with: other dusty shades, neutrals, bright colours (i.e. everything)
Drying time: 5-7 mins
Coats required: 2
Chips: 3 days
OPI, Stranger Tides, Summer 2011 Pirates Of The Caribbean Collection, $70, Cher2
Posted in Beauty
Tagged Beauty, cosmetics, dusty pastels, khaki, make-up, nail lacquer, nail polish, nail varnish, O.P.I, OPI, Pirates Of The Caribbean Collection, review, Stranger Tides, swatch
I’ve kept photos of this sparkling sensation hidden away for far too long… and now she’s just screaming to get out and show you all her stunning self! Yes, it can only be Deborah Lippman’s Across The Universe.
All the rumours you’ve heard about this polish are true. It IS the most awesome thing I’ve ever set eyes on, without there even being a hint of holo magic in sight!
Across The Universe is a truly AMAZING polish – a dark blue jelly base that has tiny specks of blue glitter, plus bigger hexagonal pieces of green, aqua and blue glitter, floating in it.
The results are truly breathtaking and however many pictures you take of it will never be enough; I was receiving compliments about this polish all week long! It’s supremely strikingly sparkly, yet somehow without being too garish or OTT. Layering up the translucent navy base with all those glimmering sparks suspended in it results in a gorgeous glittering depth – so it really does resemble a beautiful night sky, far off in some cosmic star-strewn galaxy… or a glistening magical paradise deep in the depths of some enchanted ocean.
For a polish with such big pieces of glitter in, I found it extremely easy to work with. The glitter didn’t settle in clumps or at the bottom of the bottle – instead, it spread evenly around the nail and there was a nice random assortment of sparkle applied with each sweep. The jelly base is just the right thickness to allow the glitter to shine through wonderfully yet build into that dazzling depth I spoke of earlier. The drying time was fairly quick and the surface didn’t feel bumpy, rough or uneven – instead, the finish was smooth and glossy, another rarity with heavy glitter lacquers. I achieved a really neat nail with barely any need to clean up afterwards, so I guess the Lippmann brush must be pretty good too! It’s basically polish perfection.
I absolutely love the thought that has gone into Across The Universe. The cool blue, aqua, cyan and green shades of glitter are absolutely gorgeous in their own right yet fit oh-so-perfectly with each other… and entirely complement the whole package, right down to the polish’s entirely fitting name! I also love the swirl of different sizes and colours of sparkle you get with each stroke, which just builds in awesomeness with each coat. It looks great as an accent to black, to jazz up a casual outfit or to just totally up your glitz factor yet it’s dark and somehow subtle enough not to totally take over a look. Ugh, seriously, I wish I could cover everything in life with a coat or two Across The Universe – it would be a much more beautiful place!
What’s more, I didn’t even find it that difficult to clean off either! [I think the smooth jelly base helps a little with removal.] I know varnish aficionados will recoil in horror but with chunky glitters like this, I always wait and chip off as much as possible – the strength of my Nail Tek II base coat means, for me at least, that chipping is a less painful process for my nails than rubbing acetone for ages on dry fingers.
Incidentally, this was my first Deborah Lippmann. It was very expensive and there’s no way I’d pay that sort of money for one of her crème polishes, but Across The Universe is unique enough, beautiful enough and performs brilliantly enough all-round to make it worth the purchase. The chunky bevelled bottle totally adds to the overall deluxe feeling.
You might think I’ve gone a bit over the top for a nail polish (in which case, have you read this blog?! What are you doing still here?!) but Across The Universe really is a show-stopper. It’s almost poetic in its perfection. The best nail polish I own. And that is all there is to it.
Looks good with: awesomeness
Drying time: 3-5 mins
Coats required: 3
Chips: 2-3 days
Deborah Lippmann, Across The Universe, Fall 2010 Collection, Joyce Beauty
Posted in Beauty
Tagged Across The Universe, Beauty, best glitter polishes, blue, cosmetics, Deborah Lippmann, EPIC, glitter, luxury cosmetics, make-up, nail lacquer, nail polish, nail varnish, review, swatch
Thank God for swatches, right? [That’s photos of beauty products tested in real life, for all you non blog-linguists.] They’ve practically revolutionised the way we make-up mavens shop – the equivalent of try before you buy! This is especially useful for nail polish which, unlike make-up you’re allowed to smear on the back of a hand or let an assistant vandalise your face with, shops generally won’t let you try before you buy anyway!
But what’s worse than not being able to find a single swatch of a make-up product online? Finding dozens of inaccurate ones instead.
And thus is the case with Orly Frisky.
Most blog pictures have made this crème look like a super-bright saturated cyan blue colour. Even Orly’s product photo makes it look like a super-bright saturated cyan blue. So I figured the first few pages of results in Google Images couldn’t be wrong, and bought Frisky believing it to be a super-bright saturated cyan blue. It isn’t.
That’s not to say that Frisky isn’t a fantastic colour. It is super-bright and it is saturated – but it’s more of a turquoise, actually. Luckily, turquoise just happens to be one of my favourite colours so I was still delighted with the results.
It leans more blue than Essie’s Turquoise & Caicos (thus far, my ultimate turquoise) but it’s definitely much more aqua than the green-leaning Turned Up Turquoise from China Glaze. It’s by far the brightest turquoise I own – the closest thing to being fluorescent without actually heading into highlighter pen territory.
It’s a vivid vibrant aquamarine that pops straight off the nails. Brilliant, bright and bouncy, it totally lives up to the name of its mother ship – the Happy-Go-Lucky collection.
It’s a really lush creamy colour but sadly, doesn’t dry to a high-gloss finish. The formula was a little tricky to work with – thick, glue-y and with a finish nowhere near as self-levelling as OPI’s – but the coverage was good and the colour was opaque in just one coat (though I did two anyway). I experienced a little bubbling with thicker coats though, which you can see from my photos, and a longer than average drying time. Orly’s brush is large but thin – sort of a cross between OPI’s in size and Essie’s in thickness – which I found spread the polish nicely, and I love brands that have rubber caps like these for better grip.
Overall, Frisky is an awesome aqua that sits equally nicely amongst spring pastels, summer brights or as a pop of colour against an otherwise neutral outfit. It’s a charismatic crowd-pleaser, bursting with oodles of oomph. It’s just not cyan blue, ok?!
Looks good with: summer brights, spring pastels, as a pop of colour
Drying time: 5-7 mins
Coats required: 1-2
Chips: +5 days
Orly Frisky, Summer 2011 Happy Go Lucky Collection, $60, Cher2
Posted in Beauty
Tagged Beauty, cosmetics, Frisky, Happy Go Lucky Collection, make-up, nail lacquer, nail polish, nail varnish, Orly, review, summer brights, swatch, turquoise
I'm Rachel Read, a Hong Kong-based freelance writer and editor, make-up addict and general layabout. I'm powered by bacon, cupcakes, nail polish and the needs of two cute Yorkies.
All products/meals were paid for by me, unless otherwise stated.
Contact me at
rachelmread+ttlg@gmail.com
Photo by Sabrina Sikora Photography
© Rachel Mary Read and Through The Looking Glass, 2010-20.
Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material (including photos) without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited.
Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Rachel Read and Through The Looking Glass with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
Through The Looking Glass by Rachel Read is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Through The Looking Glass 