Look what’s coming from OPI…..!

The Impossible

Stay the Night

Pink Yet Lavender

Those clever people at OPI have done it again with their latest collaboration with Mariah Carey! We’ve said it before, we’re not massive fans of celeb ranges, nor are we huge fans of Mariah herself for that matter, but we are lovers of OPI and we really can’t wait to get our mitts on these gorgeous new polishes for Spring 2013.

There are eight new shades in the range, four “studio” colours and four “stage” colours. The stage colours are part of OPI’s new Liquid Sand range, which is what it says on the bottle – glitter polish with a texture like sand. We said that textured nails would be even bigger this year, and it looks like we weren’t wrong!

These beauties are launching on ASOS.com in the first week of February, so keep your eyes peeled.

(Pssst, ASOS have a great deal on their ASOS Premier package – for £9.95 you can get free next day delivery, free collections on any returns, a monthly ASOS mag and early access to the sales and new arrivals – for a whole year! There’s no minimum order value either – we think this is going to be dangerous for our lunchtime shopping habits!)

Sprung

A Butterfly Moment

Get Your Number

#CheerUpJan Giveaway! £50 ASOS voucher to be won!

January does have a tendency to be a little bit miserable, what with the diets, the sorry looking bank account and the bad weather and the after Christmas return to work! Which is why, we decided that we want to cheer someone up this Jan by sending them a £50 ASOS voucher to spend on beauty or fashion as they wish! 

The competition is open internationally until 25th January, you simple need to complete the entry on Rafflecopter by clicking here:

Win a £50 ASOS Voucher with thebeautyobsession #CheerUpJan

 Remember the more points you earn, the more chances you have to win, so get tweeting! 

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#NailTrends Velvet Nails – Love or Loathe?

We’re a bit late jumping on the velvet nails bandwagon as Ciate released their Velvet Manicure sets a few weeks back now. We love both colours in the range; Blue Suede and Berry Poncho. We’ve gone with the berry shade first, because we thought it would fit well with the Christmas season – we weren’t disappointed!

The kit comes with a full size paint pot in Cabaret, a deep purple shade, a pot of crushed velvet and a little brush. All you do is apply one coat of polish and allow it to dry, then apply the second coat one nail at a time. Whilst the nail is still wet, you just apply the crushed velvet. You are supposed to just shake the pot over the nail, but we found not a lot of product actually dispenses and as you need quite a lot to ensure even coverage it was easier to take the lid off and pour it over. You need to apply quite a lot so that the nail is completely covered with a thick layer of velvet, then use the little brush to remove any excess. If you do this over a tray, you can pour any excess back into the pot to avoid wastage. 

We have to say, we actually adore this look. The matt finish looks luxurious and it really does look and feel like you have pieces of velvet on your nails. So no good if you’re one of those people who cringe when touching velvet, but great if not! On a practical level these are much easier to wear than the Caviar pearls; you can get them wet, they just return to the original finish once they’ve dried.We wouldn’t recommend getting moisturisers or oil on them as it does ruin the effect, so they’re not something we could wear all the time. Another thing to note is that as you’ve actually turned your nails to fabric, they do tend to attract fluff and lint. So if you have a cat like we do, you may find yourself having to remove hairs that seem to be magnetically drawn to them!

We’ll be sporting these over Christmas can’t wait to show them off! You can buy the Velvet Manicure kits for £14 from ASOS.

Christmas Gift Guide – Part 1!

*SPARKLE*

The first part of our Christmas gift guide brings you all things beautiful to help you and your loved ones sparkle this Christmas. Now all you have to do is decide whether to actually give them away or keep them for yourself!

 

Never mind giving your friend a literary work this Christmas, these Nail Rock Books are seriously glam, and are perfect for those friends who love being up-to-date with the latest trends! The Nails, Disco & Glamour sets are available now from www.nailrock.com and are priced at £9.99.

 

 

 

 

We love LaLa Lashes after discovering them at the Professional Beauty Show a couple of years ago. These Diamond Lashes are perfect for the drama queen friend we’ve all got. They’ll help her stand out from the crowd and look stunning. Best of all they’re only £8.15 from www.lalalashes.com.

 

 

 

 

Our friends at BarryM haven’t let us down when it comes to sparkle this Christmas! We love their excellent quality, affordable polishes and these glittery polishes are perfect for this time of year. At the bargain price of £2.99 each you could buy a good friend every shade, or they’d make a perfect stocking filler! Buy them now from www.barrym.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Paris in a Bottle* is our new favourite for handmade jewellery with a quirky twist. The collection is quite minimalist, focusing on the detail and the alliances of shapes, colours and materials. All the pieces are original designs, and are hand-crafted in Leicestershire in very limited quantities so you can be sure your gift is really unique. We love these Collectibles, made from your choice of Liberty fabrics and charm. Priced from £7.99 and available from www.parisinabottle.net

 

 

 

This Ted Baker cosmetics bag at ASOS is our first choice for carrying around your makeup in style, perfect for those friend who like us have handbag and makeup addictions! You can’t go wrong with stylish and practical. Buy it now from www.asos.com for £19.

 

 

 

For those ladies who like to attract attention for all the right reasons, the new MAKE UP STORE® Strazz pots are perfect. Create amazing sparkling looks with these little stick on gems, our favourite is Amethyst. At £10.15 a pot, they’d make great Secret Santa presents. Buy them now from www.makeupstore.se

 

 

 Everything that the lovely people from Ciate turn their hands to (pardon the pun!) we instantly fall in love with, and their Sequined Manicure Kits are no different. Perfect for any glamourous girlfriends who like to make an impression and love all things pretty and sparkling! You can purchase them from Selfridges for £15 each.

 

 

 

Cosmetics a la Carte are fast becoming the go-to brand for those in the know, both for their makeuand skincare ranges. We think their London Socialite set would be ideal for the friend who always has a sore head! If you know one of the girls has got a big New Years Eve night planned, they’ll love you forever for this kit. Containing cleanser to wipe away even the heaviest of makeup, tinted non-oily shimmer bronzing fluid to brighten up your face and secret light concealer to hide the misdemeanors from the night before, we think we better get one for ourselves too! £25 from www.cosmeticsalacarte.com

 

 

 

 

The newly launched Gary Cockerill PRO Lashes are ideal for those who liked to look groomed and gorgeous day and night. His lash kits come with two sets that will take you from daytime to playtime! Ddepending on whether you want a full-on flutter, or a more subtle look, you can use these whatever your mood! Priced at £14.99 from www.garycockerill.com, we’re hoping that these Very Vixen lashes end up in our stocking!

 

 

 

 

We’d love to hear which of our Sparkle Must Have’s are your favourites! Look out for the next two parts of our Christmas Guide; Pamper and Preen! 

Makebelieve… we do!

We weren’t really aware that Makebelieve had a cosmetics line before we received our November She Said Beauty box. We knew they’ve been around for sometime in the self-tanning market and have had good reviews, but now they’ve branched out into the cosmetics market we were keen to see how they lived up to the hype. 

Our She Said Beauty box contained the Makebelieve Enhance, Luminize Skin Highlighter and we’ve been using it everyday for the last week. We liked the packaging, the black and gold box looks stylish, although the actual plastic container is quite plain and unexciting. The highlighter itself is in cream form, which we like as we’re mainly using either liquid or powder highlighter at present and we like to try different textures depending on our look.

The colour is also something we were very pleased with, it has pink/gold undertones which we felt would suit warmer skin tones. Other highlighters are often more silver/blue based and can give a rather unnatural halo effect but Enhance matched really well to our skin tone and gave a very natural looking glow. The cream consistency meant it was easy to apply with fingers and blended well. We found the product to last well and still be shimmering at the end of the day. We use the word shimmering deliberately as that’s exactly what it does, it doesn’t sparkle or glitter thankfully as that is something we detest in highlighters, we don’t want to look like the fairy on top of the Christmas tree!

Apply to the cheek and brow bones for a natural glow, build up the product to get the right level of shimmer for you and blend well with your fingers for the best effect.

We did find it quite difficult to find stockists through the Makebelieve site as they don’t appear to have updated with their own range yet! However a quick search revealed that Boots, asos, John&Ginger and other stockists are available and it’s priced at around £7.

There are other products in the Makebelieve cosmetics range, have you tried them? What did you think? We’d love to hear from you!

Thanks for reading.

tbo

xxx