Watercolour Floral Nail Art

Sorry its been a but silent around here recently! I am coming to the end of my last year at uni and so I'm crazy busy finishing off my dissertation (1 month left)! I am back with another nail art look and today is the turn of a watercolour and glitter floral nail art design...

To create a similar look yourself all you will need is a light base colour, a white polish, a glitter polish, some sheer tint nail varnishes and a small nail art brush.

I am not 100% sure what the base colour of my nails is as it wasn't my polish and I forgot to look at the name (I am pretty sure it was an OPI shade though!). I used Models Own 'Coconut Cream' for the white base of the flowers, Illamasqua 'Harsh' to add some glitter and OPI 'Sheer Tints' to create the watercolour effect.

Step 1: Begin by painting the base colour onto each nail and leave this to dry completely.

Step 2: Next take your white polish onto a small nail art brush and map out your flower design (I varied between 1 and 2 flowers on each nail).

Step 3: Taking your glitter polish, add this to the centre of each flower and drag towards the tip.

Step 4: Taking the sheer tints, add them randomly over each flower.

Step 5: Finally once everything is dry, go in with a top coat to seal everything into place!

And there you have your watercolour floral nail art!

What do you think of this nail art look? Have you created any nail art designs recently?

Happy Nail Arting! Sam xx

Drugstore / Highstreet Makeup Haul

So I have been waiting for forever for my local boots to stock up on the new Bold Metals Real Techniques collection and when they finally arrived back I couldn't help but make a few other makeup purchases, along with a bargain buy from Superdrug too! I thought I would put everything in a haul and tell you my initial thoughts, so if you want to find out what I picked up then keep on reading...

So my first purchase was the long awaited Real Techniques Bold Metal 300 'Tapered Blush Brush'. I had heard so many great things about this brush and I really think its worth the £24 price tag. The gold metal wand is stunning, the brush hairs are super soft and synthetic, making them so easy to clean. I also love the way the brush is tapered almost to a point at the top, making it perfect for contouring the cheeks and placing your blusher just where you want it, blending the product out beautifully! I have only used this brush with powder products so far, but I also think it would work great with a cream contour and blush and I can't wait to keep using it to create different looks!!

After my brush splurge, I was wandering around the makeup stands and saw that L'Oreal had a 3for2 offer on all their makeup. I have been wanting to try a few of their foundations for a while now, so I also picked up the Miss Manga Mega Volume Mascara. I am a big fan of the metallic pink packaging and I also love the mascara. I found it was really great and operating and lengthening my lashes. It didn't add a huge amount of volume to the thickness which I was expecting, but I still really liked the finished look.

So, as I mentioned, for a while I have been wanting to try out some L'Oreal foundations in the hope to find a new holy grail drugstore base makeup product. I picked up the L'Oreal True Match shade in C2 'Rose Vanilla' and the Infallible 24hour foundation in the shade 120 'Vanilla'. I aways struggle picking out my perfect shade in drugstores so these foundations are both a little dark for me, however with a bit of tan on and when summer finally comes around these will be perfect.

My favourite of the two has to be the True Match foundation. At first pump the consistency was quite runny, which I didn't think I was going to like. However, it blends beautifully onto the skin using a buffing brush and looked amazing when I built up a few layers to create a flawless base! I was also really impressed with the lasting power, and with a little touch up of powder half way through the day and I was ready to go with no movement or patchiness. I didn't like the Infallible foundation too much as the consistency was quite thick and I found it to go a little patchy on my skin (maybe I was having a bad skin day). I will definitely let you know if my impressions of this foundation change, but true match is definitely worth a purchase if you haven't tried it yet!

Next up is my Superdrug bargain purchase. Im sure most of you have heard about the new affordable range from 'Revolution'. This eye shadow palette was just £8 and for 32 shades and a mixture of matte and shimmer, thats not bad going! I got the 'Flawless' palette of warm golden, brown and red toned shades. I have been so impressed with this palette. The shades are super pigmented and although I did find I had to build up the shades to make sure they didn't move through the day, they blend beautifully and last really well without creasing and smudging. I will definitely be purchasing more of these palettes in the future!

Sorry this is quite a lengthly post! I hope you've enjoyed it. Let me know in the comments what you have been loving from the drugstores recently.

I have also created a makeup look using all these products, so keep your eye out on my blog for that post coming up very soon!

Sam x

Drugstore Makeup Look

You might of seen my last post all about what I picked up from the drugstores. I really wanted to do a makeup look using all the products, so you could get a bit more of an idea about how the products look 'in action'. I was off out for a family meal so I went for a berry smokey eye and quite a strong contour!

Skin:
So for the base I used my new L'Oreal true match foundation which I loved and covered any blemishes and dark circles using the Collection Lasting Perfection Concealer. To contour the cheeks I used Illamasqua's Sculpting Duo (slightly cheated with the drugstore theme here!). To add a subtle colour to the cheeks, I used the Collection Shimmer Shases blush and to highlight I added the Seventeen Shimmer brick. I used my new Real Techniques Bold Metal Tapered Blush brush to add the contour, blush and highlight and it blended all three products beautifully onto the skin!

Eyes:
To create the berry smokey eye look I used my new Revolution palette, taking the shades 'Smudge', 'Raw', 'Universal' and 'Burgundy Nights'. I created a winged liner using my fav Maybelline Gel Liner and finished off the eyes with the L'Oreal Miss Manga Mega Volume mascara.

Lips:
I lined my lips using the Nyx lip liner in Mauve and then topped this with Topshop lipstick in 'Innocent'.

What do you think of this makeup look? What are your favourite drugstore products to use in your makeup routine at the moment?

Thanks for reading!

Sam x