Review: NARS Wonder Lip Gloss

Hello! So I'm normally really not much of a lip gloss-wearer. I went to Uni in Aberystwyth which, being by the coast, was often windy - so lip gloss wasn't really a good idea (unless you like having hair stuck to it!) Nevertheless a few years ago I gave in and bought this Nars lip gloss, pretty much because youtubers like Tanya Burr and Fleur De Force were always raving about them and how non-sticky and comfortable they are to wear!

As it's Nars, it's pretty expensive...I actually paid £15.75 for mine because I got 10% off the old price (£17.50) in 2013, but they now retail for £19. That 10% off was student discount at Asos, so if you're a student and want some Nars in your life, Asos is the site to get it. Also, every now and then Debenhams do 10% off beauty and John Lewis tend to do the same promotions as their competitors - hence you can get 10% Nars with them occasionally. Obviously it doesn't make a huge amount of difference but hey, it adds up!

I tried to a pick a more unique shade too so it's hopefully more special than a gloss I could just get for a fiver or so on the high street, as well as maybe having a nicer formula (not that you can't get great glosses on the high street; I quite like the Barry M ones.) I do love this shade:

As you can see, it's a very pretty reddish-orange, although it definitely shows up less orange on the lips. It also has some subtle pink and gold shimmer which adds to the prettiness. It comes in the typical rubberised and unfortunately dirt-prone Nars packaging which does look good. The formula is nice and smooth, it's comfortable to wear and not too sticky although I wouldn't describe it as completely non-sticky. It also lasts around 3/4 hours before fading. It doesn't seem to smell or taste of anything.

You get a doe-foot applicator which I find works quite well:

Nars actually describe it as sheer but I wouldn't say it was particularly.You can apply just enough to get a sheer look, or you can build it up to a more intense shade, which I love. Here's how it looks:

I don't think this is a shade that pale girls like myself would usually go for but it does work with pale skin! I also think it would look amazing with tanned skin. I almost feel like it works with my natural lip colour to come off a bit more pink than it does in the tube. Here's how it looks from a distance:

If my nose looks a bit red, it's because I managed to catch a cold in June! Wah.

(I'm actually not wearing the No7 Beautiful Skin Foundation which I reviewed recently, but instead I'm wearing the Maybelline Dream Pure BB Cream which I mentioned in that post. For some reason it came out looking really dark but thankfully it didn't make me look orange!)

Final thoughts: This is a gorgeous product, and the only high end lip gloss I own (and rightly so as I don't wear lip glosses a lot.) It is very pricey, but if you have £19 to spend on a lip gloss it's a great option. I think it might look quite nice layered over a lipstick like MAC's Vegas Volt.

Have you tried this lip gloss or any of Nars' other glosses? I've heard that Super Orgasm and Turkish Delight are good. I would definitely purchase another Nars lip gloss, despite the price, when I win the lottery.

If you know of any possible dupes for this product please comment below as it would be great if there was a similar alternative available on the high street!

Thanks for reading,

Sabrina xx

My Top 10 Nail Polishes for Spring/Summer

Hi everyone! I thought I'd share 10 of my favourite nail polishes for Spring and Summer in no particular order. I'm actually sort of 'shopping my stash' with this post as I don't need any more nail polishes and will probably be applying all of these colours in the coming months! I tend to mostly go for bright pinks and oranges as you can see in the picture below, but I also love pastel shades.

From left to right:

1. MAC Morange - this is the only MAC nail polish I own and the most expensive of the bunch at £10. I got this a few years ago when MAC released nail polish and lipglass versions of their most popular lipsticks, including Morange - it is permanent however. As much as I love bright lipsticks, I think this sort of bright orange is probably better off on my nails than my lips! It's been a while since I used this but I don't recall having any problems with the formula.

2. Rimmel Cocktail Colour in Shirley Temple - I am a sucker for glitter polish, despite how annoying it is to get off, and I love this vibrant shade. It doesn't seem to be available on Boots.com at the moment but I have seen it in stores. It's great on it's own or layered over a similar colour, like Barry M's Mango.

3. Maybelline Forever Strong in Tornado Rose - this is a very pretty and girly pink which is right up my street. (Excuse the white label mark - mine somehow got stuck to another nail polish!)

4. L'oreal Colour Riche in Sex on the Peach - firstly, great name! This is a peachy pink and definitely one of my favourites. The only thing with this is I think it's a bit expensive for a drugstore polish in terms of how much product you get for your money - it's £4.99 for just 5ml, so basically a pound per ml, which is the same as MAC as that is £10 for 10ml. I wonder if this will be the first nail polish I use up as I'm already about half way through!

5. Barry M Gelly Hi-Shine Nail Paint in Mango - a bright, shiny and very cheerful orange. It's gorgeous! However I do remember this one chipping quite quickly.

6. 17 Fast Finish Nail Polish in Peacock - this is a stunning turquoise with an almost duochrome effect going on - depending on the lighting, it can look quite blue or green.

7. Barry M Speedy Quick Dry Nail Paint in Stop the Clock - this is my most recent purchase of the bunch and what I've had on my nails for the past week. I love this colour! The other day I had to repaint both my index finger nails after they chipped when I was scooping up some coconut oil, but other that I haven't had any problems with chipping.

I wouldn't say it dried that quickly which is slightly disappointing, and it also can be a bit streaky so it needs at least two coats - but other than that, this is a great polish and very summery.

8. Essie Mint Candy Apple - this a beautiful mint green, a very popular shade from Essie and one of my all-time favourites, even though again the formula can be a bit streaky and runny making it sometimes a bit frustrating to apply - you have to be careful not to let it run on either side of your nail. I can deal with this though as the colour alone makes it worth it!

9. NYC In a New York Minute Quick Dry Nail Polish in Raindrop - This is a lovely 'sky blue' shade which I wore to match my May Ball dress in 2013. I would say this is the most bargainous out of all my picks, as for your £1.79 (or £1.49 on offer) you get a very nice quality polish - although again I wouldn't say it dries particularly quickly.

10. Barry M Nail Paint Boots Limited Edition - Sorry to choose a limited edition shade that I'm pretty sure is no longer available! I've included it anyway because I think this shade is quite dupeable - I had a quick look online and one example I've found is Revlon's Grape Icy, which by what I can see is a bit darker and more purple - see here. Essie's Splash of Grenadine also looks similar, but a bit lighter. But I'm sure there are loads more dupes out there for this!

There you have it, those are my 10 favourite Spring/Summer polishes that I'll be sporting this year. Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed this post!

I'd love to know, what are your favourite Spring/Summer nail polishes?

Sabrina xx

High Street Haul: Boots, New Look and Superdrug!

Hi everyone, hope you all had a great Easter! Today I have a haul post to share, because I went to Boots, New Look and Superdrug, and stuff just happened...

I actually only got a few things from Superdrug so I'll start with those. I got two Barry M nail polishes from Superdrug as the £3.99 ones are currently on offer for 2 for £6 and I wanted to get a more expensive product for free when I took advantage of the 3 for 2 offer in Boots.

As I've said before, I do have too many nail polishes - but in my defence these two are both very unique in my collection, as I don't think I had any yellows at all before I bought this one!

I picked up one of the new Quick Dry polishes in Stop the Clock, which is a really pretty and summery pastel yellow. I'm not sure if this will go that well with my skin tone but I love the colour so it's worth the risk. I'm also looking forward to seeing if it does dry quickly as it promises!

The other colour I got was Almond in the 'Gelly Hi-shine' range which Anna from Vivianna Does Makeup said was an amazing dupe for Nails Inc's Porchester Square in this blog post. I don't normally go for this kind of taupe shade but I thought this would be a great work-appropriate neutral which is something a bit different from the light, natural pinks I usually go for when I think of more formal nail looks. I've tried a few shades from the Gelly range and they've all been great, and I love Barry M polishes in general!

Moving on to Boots, I went in knowing I was going to get the L'oreal Brow Artist Plumper, as Renata from Speaking Beauty wrote that it was a great dupe for Benefit's Gimme Brow, which I've tried at a Benefit counter - it looked great, but it's too overpriced for me at £18.50. L'oreal's offering is £5.99, but I got it free with the 3 for 2 offer and it's the first eyebrow product I've ever bought! They had no tester for the darker shade but I tested the lighter one and knew it would be too light so I got the darker one - I have dark blonde hair so I just hope my eyebrows don't clash too much with my hair colour.

'Dark Brunette' swatched

I quite like it so far! It's a welcome new addition to my everyday makeup as it definitely makes my eyebrows look more polished. I had a look at the even cheaper (£3.99) Rimmel version of the eyebrow mascara type product (Brow This Way) but the brush was shorter and larger so I wasn't sure about it. I like the brush of the L'oreal one, it's quite long yet small and it makes me feel like I know what I'm doing when I do my brows haha.

Before and After

But seriously, this kind of brow product did seem best for me as an eyebrow product beginner because I just don't know how to fill in my brows with products like Benefit's Brow Zings and the mascara-like brush does it all in one go so it's pretty effortless. I also wasn't sure if my eyebrows even need much filling in as they're quite thick already!

I also went in thinking I was probably going to buy the No7 Beautifully Matte Foundation - I had a sample of it and quite liked it, but I also noticed that L'oreal had a new foundation aimed at oily skin - Infallible Matte Foundation, which at the time of posting is on offer for £6.99.
It looked intriguing - it promises to stay on for 24 hours which is a slightly pointless claim considering that no one keeps their foundation on for 24 hours! In the end I went for the No7 Foundation as it has SPF which is great for daytime wear (I can use my Bourjois Healthy Mix Foundation for night time wear to avoid flashback in any flash photography) and looking on Makeupalley on my phone I could see that the No7 foundation had a higher rating/more positive reviews than the L'oreal one. I would still love to try that L'oreal foundation sometime though! I have never tried a foundation from either L'oreal or No7.

Side note: am I the only one who checks the overall rating of a product on Boots.com and Makeupalley whilst browsing in Boots or Superdrug?! I just don't want to take the risk of blindly buying a product without checking any reviews or ratings first, and I might even return a product unused if I did buy it blindly and then find that it has extremely negative reviews!

The final product I got in the 3 for 2 was the Maybelline Lash Sensational Mascara, £7.99, which I've heard great things about on blogs. I've used it a few times now and I like it so far apart from that it's a little clumpy, but I'll let you know how I get on and probably do a full review soon!

I went to New Look just to see if they had any nice work appropriate pieces other than the usual white shirts and black trousers. I bought this dress with a contrast collar. It is a little short (I'm 5'9) so I'd probably wear it with tights. The only size 8 they had in this had foundation marks around the collar so I got 10% off and it's non-returnable. It is £19.99 normally and looking online it's currently on offer for £14.99 which is slightly annoying, but nevermind.

They also had a black version but no size 8s, I tried on the 6 and it was way too tight, so that made the decision for me on which colour to get!

Lastly I didn't intend to buy a bag and I haven't bought a new one in ages, but I fell in love with this one - it is such a classic style but in a gorgeous, unique colour, which I couldn't help but notice is very similar to the nail polish I bought earlier that day, Barry M's Almond.

The rose quilted design is very pretty and it's a good size - not too large or small, and I really like the adjustable strap. It was also very reasonably priced at £12.99!  I'm not sure if it goes that well with my new grey dress, but it doesn't clash either. Overall, everything about this bag is gorgeous, and I think it's suitable for finishing off both formal and casual outfits.

Thanks for reading!
Sabrina xx

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