Wednesday 23 November 2016

Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvet Matte Liquid Lipstick - Jolie de vin (19)


Hello my dear followers!
I decided to merge my English&Greek language blogs cause I was tired of updating two blogs with the same content. This blog may be older and have more posts, but it's the other one that gets more hits so from now on you will be able to find both languages here:

https://elyssian.blogspot.com/

The Jolie de Vin post is here: http://elyssian.blogspot.com/2016/11/bourjois-rouge-edition-velvet-matte.html
Thank you all for following this blog for so long!


Monday 31 October 2016

Halloween with the Cyclops cat


Some days you just can't win! No matter how I tried, I just could succeed with today's mani. You can tell how many times I had to re-do everything just by looking at the state of my cuticles- so dry even after the hand cream and cuticle oil I applied.

My plan was to paint familiar little monsters with a twist. The only one that actually made it is the Cyclops cat which was also my favourite. Isn't she scary cute? I might even write a story about her!

For this mani I used
Middle and pinky: Sixteen - 862
Ring: Flormar- JL 13 Pale Eucalypt
Ghost: a mix of white and transparent polish
Index: Custom mix
Cat's eye:  Η&Μ - Wanna Pepperoni
Any black used is acrylic paint.

Have fun tonight with all the ghosts and the spirits!

Saturday 29 October 2016

O.P.I.'s Jade is the new black, the emperor of jades

A bit of fun with a colour I hadn't used in a while!

base: O.P.I. Jade is the new black
marbling: Dorothy L - 213
stamping: Stargazer 237
λεπτομέρειες: A-England - Holy Grail
plate: Born Pretty - L004




Wednesday 12 October 2016

Essence - Dare it nude! & Pixie dust

Base: Essence - Dare it nude!(neutral nude cream) with Essence -  Pixie dust (duochrome pink to gold shimmer)
Stamped with: Bourjois - 37 Bleu Asphalte
Plate: Born Pretty BP 25
 

 

Monday 10 October 2016

Monday 26 September 2016

Black & Red Scarlet Heart Ryeo Mani

It’s that time again, the time to be inspired by something I watched! This time it’s the Korean period drama Moon Lovers: Scarlet Heart Ryeo which is about political intrigues in the 10th Century Goreyo Kingdom sprinkled with romance, action scenes, a lot of beautiful people[so many princes!], amazing locations and fantastic costumes. I’m not going to go into too much detail on the plot, but I’ve attached a promo video that could spark your interest better than writing about it would. 



The costume that inspired me today is one that the 4th prince, Wang So, wears in two of my favourite scenes as well as on some of the promo pictures. It’s a hanbok (traditional Korean costume) made from a black shot with burgundy fabric that has a red motif and is worn with a sash. Here it is on the actor Lee Joon Gi who is doing an amazing job of fleshing out this character. Scarlet Heart is worth watching if for no other reason than for his acting.
One of the few shots where you can see the burgundy fire of the fabric
 

The costume & a sample of the amazing locations I mentioned
The base colour is SPAritual Body, the stamp and red lines is A-England Perceval and the tips are done with Mavala 246 Black Cherry. I was so glas I had Black Cherry available as it is shot through with the same quality of burgundy colour, one  that’s not easy to make out unless you see it under intense light. The stamp is form Born Pretty's L007 plate.
 
 
I shall leave you with a photo of the princes in modern clothing cause this post hasn't got enough princes in it!
XxX
Elysse
PS- Drama photos source: SBS, Modern clothing photo source: Cosmopolitan Korea
Fetch me my smelling salts!

Thursday 22 September 2016

How I did my nails in high school

I saw this “How I did my make up in school” challenge that’s been making the rounds on youtube and really wanted to do a similar thing for nails, though I’m going to stretch the time-frame a bit. I even tried to do it using the same tools and methods I used back in the day (late 90s-early 00s) and it proved to be so much fun. I can tell it’s going to be a chattier entry than usual so I hope you enjoy this trip down memory lane with me.

First of all I was a really late bloomer with regards to make up and polish. In fact I used to hate both and if you knew me then, you wouldn't believe my love for them now. Though I always had long nails, usually square or squoval as that was the fashion back then, I never wore any polish and avoided beauty shops like the plague. Pearly polishes, pinks and corals were just not my thing and vampy colours were too scary for young me. 

That all changed in my last year of high school when iridescent polish became very popular. Anything iridescent catches my eye and the allure of iridescent nails was too strong. I went to a beauty store to find iridescent polish and *boom* that was it. I fell in love with all the new unusual colours that were out back then and while I started with what we’d now call an iridescent top coat I soon moved on to the sparkly dark blues, the purples, the blacks and glitters. I think I ended up having more than 25 polishes at a time when it was unusual to have more than 5. It was true love and I wish I hadn’t thrown away those bottles years ago. I’m going to talk about each style individually, though the order is not chronological. I think Hole's Violet is an appropriate song to listen to whilst reading since I loved it in HS, it's sufficiently angsty and both Courtney Love and Melissa Auf Der Maur are two of the many uber cool, wonderful and complicated artists of that time.



Thumb: The Distressed nail (A-England Camelot & OPI Kyoto Pearl)
I really didn't like pearly polish, but my godmother had bought me two. I had to find a way to use them and the distressed nail was born. I wiped off as much polish as I could and then brushed it over. I haven’t done this in years and with the wide OPI brush I couldn’t do the half-butterfly shapes I could with the much thinner brush. Plus, the OPI polish is too smooth, the ones I had had a more obvious pearl in. Yes, I am complaining that a polish is too smooth.

Index Finger: Kitty Cats (an ancient Revlon & A-England Camelot)
I love cats, so putting kitty paws and cat shapes on my nails was a very logical step. I used to do a cat on one nail and kitty paw trails on the others. It was done with toothpicks or old pens, I didn't even know things like dotting tools existed as there were no tutorials back in the Pleistocene. The base colour is similar to one of my favourite nail colours ever, Bourjois Bleu/Or, a colour I talked about on my very first post on this blog. This Revlon is a similar colour, but has none of the iridescence & none of the magic unfortunately. 
 


Middle Finger: Scotch Tape (OPI Moon Over Mumbai & a disappointing Shu Uemura one)
Scotch tape was my favourite thing to use. I did all sorts of shapes with it. The base colour has the blue iridescence that I liked. The dark purple has a little bit of glitter in, but the ones I had and loved had loads more. They were like Essie’s vintage Starry Starry Night in different dark colours and I loved them so! I also had a glitter polish with star shaped particles and would place a couple here and there. I have nothing like that now, so I drew a star instead.

Ring Finger: Using glitter gel pens (Korres Spring Lilac)
This was a bit after high school, but I could not exclude it. My flatmate from uni that knew my love for stationary gave me a set of glitter gel pens as a birthday present and we soon discovered that you could use them to draw on your nails and the ink kept its shape, it didn't pool in seconds and it didn't spread when you put a top coat on it. We went squiggle crazy for the rest of the year. It was our ‘thing’ and it was fun! I couldn’t find any pens now that I could do that with so I used a cd-marker and nail polish.

Pinky: Pure Black (A-England Camelot)
I was intimidated by plain black for the longest of times. I would wear sparkly black, and dark purple, but not black. And then I randomly bought a black polish, wore it and could not look away. There was nothing to disguise the absoluteness of this colour. It even looked cool when it chipped. I wore black non-stop for years after that and it coincided with the time I stopped doing nail art up till the time I discovered nail stamps many years later, but that’s a different story.

I wore this ring all the time during the last year of HS
Remembering and reminiscing about all this was fun, I don't get nostalgic very often. However, I can't believe I haven't used some of these techniques in so many years. I need to incorporate bits of all of them to my current routine!
XxX

Elysse

Friday 16 September 2016

Black opal & Flaky polish

I've been meaning to repeat my opalescence mani for a while now, this time with a darker base to look more like a black opal. This time I had a second flaky top coat to add a bit of blue. Flaky top coates are by far mt favourite type of shiny top coat. I tried my best to capture its beauty, but it is even better in real life.


Base- Sixteen 864 darkest slate grey
Flaky topcoat 1 - Seventeen 104 the blue-purple flaky
Flaky topcoat 2 -Nubar 2010 the green-gold-red flaky
 
 
 

I also tried it with a matte top coat, but I found it underwhelming. I didn't much like the white cast the top coat left so they went back to shiny after I took the pictures.
 


Tuesday 30 August 2016

Essence 31 Electriiic & so much glitter

We're nearing the end of the summer and the song I'm starting today's post with has that end-of-the-holidays feel for me. I am not a summer person, but this end-of-season melancholy is almost palpable.

It ‘s been quite some time since I did a mani that was more full on and I really feel I went to town with this one: stamping, glitter placement, making straight lines with striping tape. The base on most nails is Essence 31 Electriiic , a beautiful blue crelly polish, stamping and the pinky were done with Models Own - Chrome Rose Gold and the glitter polish I used is 105 from the Innisfree star collection and it has so many different kinds of glitter particles in: medium, tiny,square, hexagonal, rectangular, gold, rose gold and white. Picking particles from it to do the thumb and pinky designs was not easy. The stamping plate I used on my pointer finger is Bundle Monster 201.
XxX
Elysse

 
 



Friday 26 August 2016

Soft, brittle nails? Nail Hardeners are here to help

The reason my nails became brittle. I regret nothing
Sometimes nails can become really soft, brittle, flaking and a hardening base coat just isn't enough. That’s what happened to my nails after I came back from my holidays. I had not taken care of them enough and swimming for hours every day took a toll on them. I needed a boost in my care regime so I did my research and –as ever- am happy to share the findings. 

Disclaimer: At this point I need to mention that if your nails aren't naturally soft and they changed for no apparent reason, I would suggest ringing up your doctor. A change in the condition of your nails can be an indicator of an underlying health problem. It could also be related to dietary changes you might have implemented in your life lately where you are not receiving enough nutrition. I will refrain from discussing this further as I am not qualified, but any change in the state of your nails is not a random event and should be investigated further.

What are nail hardeners?
So what can you do to help your nails become stronger? Despair? Of course not! Why despair when there are nail hardeners to help! Nail hardeners are different from hardening base coats. Hardeners are treatments for the nail, have a stronger effect and are not supposed to be used every time you have a manicure. All of them have a more intense treatment period and a maintenance period. Additionally some are only meant to be used under a base coat while others can be used as a base coat or over your nail polish. Each hardener comes with its own set of instructions as to when and how you are supposed to use them so make sure you read the instructions even if you are a person that hates reading instructions.
The beaches of the Peloponnese are magic!
Possible issues & how to use hardeners
One needs to be careful with nail hardeners though: all of them contain Formaldehyde! Formaldehyde is a highly toxic substance and has been removed from the majority of nail polishes. When you read about 3-free, or however many -free polishes(Korres for example is 7-free) you can bet that one of these ingredients is formaldehyde. [You can read more about it here, here and here].Whilst I do suggest caution and I wouldn't use a nail polish that contains formaldehyde, hardeners are a different thing. Formaldehyde in cosmetics is a big issue, so make an informed judgement on what is good for you. 

Nail hardeners should contain less than what is considered a safe amount of formaldehyde (5%) and are only used for limited periods of time. Nevertheless, I put nail hardener only to the top half of my nails, which is where breakage usually happens and never allow it anywhere near my cuticles, or the underside of the nail. If it comes in contact with my skin I wipe it off immediately cause hardeners tend to harden the skin as well.

It goes without saying that it's a product that can also be used by those that don't use nail polish. 

My experience
My nails are normally hard, but this summer they suffered cause I put them through nail hell. I went on a holiday and decided to take no make up and no nail care products; I needed a break from everything. All I had with me was sunscreen and a tinted lip balm. I swam up to six hours a day and whilst I enjoyed it, my nails did not. 

When I got back they were in a pretty bad shape, worse than I had ever seen them before which is what led me to explore the world of nail hardeners. The one I used is the Mavala Nail Hardener and I used it for less than the recommended amount(once every two weeks instead of 1-2 per week). After 3 uses my nails are back in shape and I am really happy about it. The Impala was given to me by a friend when I mentioned my problems, but I haven’t used it yet. I don’t think I’ll continue using a hardener now that my nails are back in shape, but I am glad I did. 

TL;DL
*Read the instructions on how often and for how long you need to use it.
*Use on the top half of the nail (not the side where the cuticle is).
*Don’t let it go to your cuticles or touch your skin. Wipe off immediately if it does.

That’s it for now, I hope it was informative enough. I always struggle not to put too much information in my advice posts and scare readers off with a wall of text and scientific jargon! 
XxX
Elysse

Sunday 21 August 2016

Eye shadows Assemble: Putting together my own palettes

And how did I manage it without them taking up too much space? I had them in palette! 
Ever since I started using Japanese cosmetics I got hooked on de-potting them and making my own eye shadow and blusher palettes. You see all Japanese cosmetics have a tiny pinhole at the back (sometimes under the ingredients list sticker) that makes de-potting and placing them in palettes super easy. Keeping them all together like that I get to use all of them more often without forgetting I have any of them. Plus I also get to have a personalised palette that suits my needs and preferences.
my blusher palette (Shu Uemura &RMK)
A while ago I reviewed the Elixir - All in One Face-book palette and as I didn’t like the packaging, I decided to de-pot it. I ordered a couple of non-magnetised empty palettes from ebay. I have been using a palette like this for years for my blushers so I know they are actually pretty sturdy.
This is how the palettes arrived, each in an individual plastic pack. They come with a few empty pans in a spongy case. The pans are easy to remove since they are not glued on. These particular ones are the size of MAC blushers, but they do have them in eyeshadow size as well. The spongy separator was glued to the palette. I soaked it really well with some rubbing alcohol, set it aside for a while, and after a couple of hours it came off with minimal effort. In the picture you can see the marks left from the alcohol, but they are not permanent. As soon as I washed it it was fine.


As for the Allin One Face-book palette, it was easy to separate the two cardboard parts, but then the eye shadow pans had to be removed carefully cause they were glued on. The only one I cracked a little was my favourite teal, just my luck! I used some more rubbing alcohol to remove any traces of glue from the back of the pans and then I started placing them in the palette to see how I would fit them all in. 


As you can see, I could fit in all of the eye shadows, the eye brow creams and powders and then some more. In the end though I decided to put the blues separately in a different palette since I don’t really like wearing blue and instead I put some Japanese eye shadows and a few from a Wet and Wild palette I had gotten, but never really liked enough to review. When I finished the placement, I took them all out again, put some double sided sticky tape in the palette, placed them in the order I had chosen and now they are much easier to store and take with me.

Assembling an eye shadow palette may seem a bit consuming, but I find it much more practical for everyday purposes.

XxX
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