ELF - Royal Purple

 Call me butter, cause I'm on a roll! Jokes aside, I have actually been busting these posts out today, but I promise you, this is the last one for today *pinky promises*.

I have a little swatch for you today in the form of ELF - Royal Purple. I'm sure all of you know who ELF are by now! If not, they're an online based company (in the UK anyway, I know you can find ELF in stores in the states) which sell everything cosmetics. Their prices are a-mazing, with their essential line priced at £1.50 and £3.50 for their studio and mineral lines. The quality is worth a lot more than it's price tag which is another reason why ELF are so popular, if you're in the UK/EU check them out HERE.

The polish itself is a gorgeous purple with magenta undertones and blue micro shimmer, it does look a lot more pinker in the photo, but I promise you it's purple. I'm definitely going to invest in a SLR camera in the future, maybe put it on my birthday wish list, but that isn't until November, so I better get saving myself! Then I will be able to get better macro shots for you, as my camera at the moment isn't very good for those kind of things! Do you have any recommendations for good cameras? It doesn't even have to be an SLR camera, just one good enough to get macro and close-up shots!

ELF - Innocent

I have another swatch for you today in the shape of ELF -Innocent.
Now I'll be the first to admit when it comes to nude shades, I'm not usually a fan, BUT there's something about this colour that just makes me love it. For one, I think it is the perfect nude shade for my skintone & two, for a light colour, it's opaque in 2/3 coats, unlike the similar colour I own from Ciate, that takes almost 5 coats and with a whopping £7.50 difference, I think I'll stick to my ELF polishes!
Innocent is a light beige polish with pink undertones and is just the most perfect nude for pale people, like myself. Love love love it.

E.L.F: Dark Purple Glitter

Now, to be honest with you, I don't know what to make of this colour. A part of me absolutely loves it, but there's another part of me that doesn't. Dark Purple Glitter is one of the many polishes I purchased in ELF's 40% off sale for 90p, usually £1.50. It's a dark, vampy purple with blue toned glass flecks running throughout, giving it a lighter feel. Now, I was a bit disappointed with how this translated onto my nails, in the bottle it looks very glitter heavy, but on my nails there is hardly anything.
The application is very smooth and is opaque in 2 coats, as it is a glass fleck, the removal process is very quick and easy, which was good as I swatched a lot of polishes before and after taking this photo, many of which I'll have to re-do due to half hearted clean ups.
Kudos to all those polishaholic bloggers out there that swatch whole collections in one day, it gets very tedious very quickly, I can't imagine what it's like with full glitters!
If there's any specific polish you'd like to see swatched from my recent ELF Haul, let me know in the comments!!

Birthday Nail Mail (pic heavy)

You may or may not know, E.L.F or Eyeslipsface, just had a 40% off sale on their website to celebrate reaching 275,000 facebook likes. Seeing as my birthday was coming up, I thought I'd put a little order in. I got a few make-up items, but the majority of my order consisted of nail polish. Usually their polishes are £1.50, which is a bargain in itself, but with the 40% off offer they went to 90p each. For the quality of their polishes, this is amazing. Without even hesitating I ordered the remainder of the polishes I don't already own (with the exception of the 9 that are currently out of stock). Bringing my total ELF polish collection to 40/49, with 2x Black & Clear.

Don't they look pretty? I will eventually get around to swatching them all properly, but for the time being, I have swatched them onto a nail wheel. If you're interested in knowing a specific colour, if you leave a comment with the number of the swatch you like (pictured below), I'll gladly tell you which colour it is.
It's times like these that I wish I had multiple hands, so I could swatch them all for you in one giant lump. But that's not possible, unless you're a spider with 5 fingers on each leg. Unfortunately, I'm terrified of spiders, so there won't be a spider swatching anytime soon!

Here's the mass of boxes & plastic after unwrapping them all. Impressive huh!






Now for the swatches;

Both Wheels

My first swatch wheel. Numbers 1-11 are the polishes I already owned. The rest are the newbies to my collection.
If you'd like to know colours, as I said let me know in the comments with the number! (if you're unable to read the numbers, the wheel goes from 1-18, starting with the black)

And here is the second wheel with numbers ranging from 19-36. There is a blank nail on here, as one of the polishes I recieved (passion pink) is pretty much glued shut. I think it's a job for the plyers! I tried to get the best photo of them I could, I hope it will suffice!



I'm so glad they arrived today, it makes me feel like it was a huge birthday gift from E.L.F although I paid for them all :). I've been thinking of doing a polish collection post, would any one be interested in that? I'd start off by doing each individual brand, as a collective post would be extremely pic heavy. Let me know in the comments! Hope you're all having a good day!

Tuesday Nail Mail

I love packages and the mystery of what they're going to be, but who doesn't right? So, today I was rudely awaken by the mailman hammering on my front door, so half awake I went to answer. When he handed me the 2 packages I instantly woke up and got a little giddy inside. I saw one was from E.L.F but there was also a mystery package.
Racing back up to my room I ripped open the mystery package and to my surprise it was the Nail Art pens I ordered almost a month ago. I've been waiting SOOO long for these to arrive and here they are! I got them from eBay for £6.50 for 24 which I thought wasn't to bad a deal.
The second package was an early birthday gift from my Auntie. She asked me what I wanted, so I told her a couple of polishes I've been lusting over on their website and she bought those for me! Thanks Auntie J <3
The colours I picked were; Blush, White, Matte Finisher Top Coat, Medium Red, Metal Madness (which is actually almost the same colour as my franken, damn), Glitter Glam and Black (yes another one)
I'm going to be doing swatches/reviews for all of these as soon as I can, must get the 31 day challenge out of the way first!

Day 1: Red Nails

First of all, why does the colour look pink? Strange....Anyways, this manicure lasted all of 5 minutes as the rhinestones came off as soon as I'd taken the pictures. So that's a fail straight away, oh well.

For the base colour I used E.L.F's Red Velvet which is a gorgeous red shimmer polish. It does have a little bit of a pink undertone, as you can see. It does, however, remind me of the inside of a red velvet cupcake, and my god do I LOVE those!

So yeah, this is the Red Nails post! To be honest I'm looking forward to getting to the more challenging parts of this, one coloured nails seems to just bore me.

Nail Trends: Autumn 2011 - Mod Mauve & Smoky Brown

Today's Autumn Nail Trends are brought to you by E.L.F's Mod Mauve and Smoky Brown. E.L.F or eyeslipsface are an online company in Europe and the US. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I THINK you can buy ELF in certain stores in the US? Their essentials line are priced at £1.50/$1 and their studio line from £3.50/$3. They offer high quality make-up at really affordable prices. And I love them!.
Mod Mauve is a gorgeous neutral plum shade with a brownish undertone. I've found that it does apply streaky with the first coat, but that evens out with a second. I did also notice that the colour isn't the same as it is in the bottle, which is a tad disappointing, but for £1.50 you can't really complain.

• Application: 5/10
• Pigmentation: 6/10
• Coats: 2/3

Smoky Brown is a deep taupe brown shade with a slightly greyish undertone. When I first got this I thought it was going to be a dupe for Below Deck, from seeing the swatch on the website. It isn't in the slightest. This is another streaky polish, but again a second coat takes care of that.

• Application: 5/10
• Pigmentation: 6/10
• Coats 2/3