Where have I been?

Hi everyone!

You’ve not seen me about in a while because I lost my login details and everytime I tried to change my password that wouldn’t work either. I think WordPress just hated me for a while.  Then I went to Thailand for 2 weeks and I didn’t think about it, until now!

I’m going to get back on the blogging asap, I’ve missed you all!

Whilst in Thailand I bought a whole load of counterfeit makeup and althoughI’m not complaining about it for the price, I thought I might do a discussion blog about it as it seems a lot of these products have made it on to Ebay and people are purchasing them with the faith that they are genuine 😦 I only paid a few ££ for everything, including dupe Urban Decay and Make Up Forever palettes that look pretty good but were only about £4 each…so expect that from me soon.

How are we all??

 

Jerri x

It’s Christening Season! Time to expand the empire….

As I’ve posted before, I run a little side business making crystal and pearl Christening shoes.

For a long time I’ve only sold my wares on Etsy and this week decided to take the plunge and register on some other handmade sites around the world. Daisy of Dovecote is now registered with Folksy and DaWanda and soon on Zibbet. Hopefully, the idea of buying in your own currency will be somewhat more appealing to non US buyers!

I’ve never been brave enough to give up “proper” work for this, I’ve always kept my foot in the door with makeup work also, but recently business has boomed and it seems a new full-time career might be on the cards. I’m so nervous about it, but I can’t continue with what I’m doing (working 30 hours a week then spending another 30 making shoes!).

Any other crafty entrepeneurs out there?

A very quick update on my nails…

I’ve been using the Supernails Nail Eat for 3 weeks now, as per the instructions, and am just about to switch over to the 3 weeks of Nail Drink.

My Nails are greatly inproved! There is still some flaking and peeling (something the Nail Drink promises to fix) but they are ROCK SOLID and I haven’t suffered a break since I’ve been using it.

Here is a photo with no product on whatsoever (they are a little shiny as I’d just used a conditioning polish remover). They need filing and shaping, but I’ve decided not to do that until the full Nail Food course is over and I’m detirmined not to damage them any further.

Just so you remember what they used to look like…

 

I’ll be doing a full review of this stuff when my 6 week course is over. It does have its’ flaws but (I have to say at this stage) I’ve seen much greater results than it’s major market competitor, OPI Nail Envy.

The Nommiest Slimming World Recipe Ever (and it’s super simple to make).

February is always a frugal month for me. Not only am I getting over Christmas and the costs incurred there but it’s my Mum’s birthday, my sister-in-laws birthday, nearly Mothers Day and the month in which I start thinking of putting a deposit down on a holiday.

For all of those reasons, my beauty buying becomes a bit limited and so does my food shopping. It’s always a big struggle on Slimming World trying to find recipes that are tasty but don’t break the bank, as well as being relatively simple to cook as I am a busy, busy bee through the week and never have time when I get home to become a slave in the kitchen.

This is one of those long standing recipes that I always return to because it takes 5 minutes to prepare, is low in syns and tastes delicious. I’ve calculated that the whole batch of this costs me about £3.55 to make (that makes 4 portions!). I’ve used branded ingredients in there too, so you could probably cut a quarter off it by buying own brand or budget items and of course you can switch the main meat (I’ve used sausages) to make it cheaper again, completely syn free or vegetarian!!

 

Sausage & Bean Casserole

• Any meat cubed(I’ve used 8 sausages at 1.5 syns each)
• 1 tin of tomatoes
• 1 tin of kidney beans
• 1 tin sliced carrots
• 1 tin baked beans in tomato sauce
• 1 pork stock cube (or whatever matches your meat)
• 1 leek, sliced
• 2 cloves garlic or garlic granules
• smoked paprika, 2 tbsp
• paprika, 1 tbsn
• cayenne pepper, 1/2 tbsp

Throw in a casserole dish and mix well. Heat in oven at 180’c for an hour.

Voila.

Serve alone, with a selection of veg or crusty bread.

You could also use a completely different selection of herbs and spices to match it to your taste!

 

FOTD: Smokey Purple

I never do FOTD’s, too lazy, but I really liked my makeup today and received a lot of compliments so thought I would share! I suppose you could consider it dramatic, my makeup is rarely anything other than dramatic. T’would make a lovely Valentines day makeup look of you plan to look sultry and simmering (I don’t!).

 

I always have Kate Bush hair on a Monday morning as I tend to wash it Sunday night then fall asleep on it, then rush out to work the next day! (Told you I’m lazy).

Eyes consisted of:

• Inner Eye & Highlight: Urban Decay White Rabbit (from the Alice in Wonderland Book of Shadows)
• All over lid past the crease: Urban Decay Vorpal (Alice palette)
• On Lid: Urban Decay Ransom from the (very old) Deluxe Shadow Box
• In Crease: Urban Decay Jabberwocky (Alice palette)
• Liner: Laura Geller Inkwell Gel Liner in Black (as usual).
• Mascara: Avon Supershock Mascara in Black
• Nyx Brow Pencil in Dark Brown

My face looks an entirely different colour to my neck here, I blame the flash, but that is also testament to the terrible weather us Brits have suffered with recently 😦 I used

• Avon Ideal Flawless foundation in shade “Shell”
• Laura Geller Balance & Brighten Foundation in “Regular”
• Laura Geller Baked Highlighter in “Portofino”
• Laura Geller Baked Blush in “Bora Bora”.

None of which you can actually see but it looked nice in real life.

On my lips is the new Avon Kiss N’ Go lipstick in Purple Roses, although I have now bought the entire collection of these as you can get them for as little as £1.75!! I plan to do a full review of the range soon as I’m really impressed with them for the stupidly low price!

So that’s it!

A big moan about my face.

I have suffered all of my life with bad skin; sore, sensitive, acne prone, dry in parts,greasy in other parts, severely sensitive to a number of products and liable to suffer with eczema. Even now, at the grand old age of 28 my skin is very hit and miss and I’ve never really found a reliable routine for sorting it out. It always seems that just when I get used to a product and start to see an improvement, it takes a turn for the worse.

As a youngster, I tried every treatment for acne and spots and it never cleared. In many cases, I’d end up with these huge red welts underneath my skin and that included when I was using prescribed skin care regimes. When I was 17 I spoke to salesperson in a high end department store in Zurich, Switzerland and it was then that I had the revelation that my skin wasn’t acne prone; it was in fact hyper-sensitive and those bumps and lumps I was suffering from were merely a reaction to my sore skin and not a bacterial issue at all. She reccomended I try the L’Occitane Honey Floral Cleansing Jelly along with the matching moisturiser, but recommended that I needn’t use the moisturiser everyday, in fact it should be used sparingly and only on the dry patches of skin where I needed it.

Within a matter of days my skin looked amazing and it continued to do so for the entire time I used this combination of products. Skin bliss came to an end when (less than a year later) L’Occitane, the bastards, decided to discontinue the product. No prior warning, I couldn’t even stock up on it. There one day, gone the next.

Since then I’ve gone round in circles trying to find a perfect skin routine for my tempestuous skin. This has included:

1. L’Occitane Foaming Rice Cleanser: not a patch on it’s predecessor.
2. Elemis Rose Petal Cleanser & Soothing Apricot Toner: cream consistency left my skin too oily.
3. Elemis Sensitive Cleanising Wash & Soothing Apricot Toner: felt clean but left my skin looking dull.
4. Elemis Tri-Enzyme Cleanser: skin flared up within a matter of days.
5. Liz Earle Cleanse & Polish: hyper-allergic reaction, horrible stuff.
6. Clinique 3 Step (Dry Combination): couldn’t get on with this at all.
7. Avon Solutions Sensitive Cleanser & Moisturiser: Actually quite liked it, discontinued!
8. Elemis Pro-Radiance Cream Cleanser: left my skin too dry!
9. Avon Rejuvenate 30+ Cleanser & Moisturiser with the occasional addition of Anew Clinicalscrub thing: a gift from my sister-in-law, I was never keen on it.
10. Elemis Gel Cleanser: skin felt clean but still suffered from blemishes and left skin quite oily.

Now, looking at this list it appears that I’ve stuck to the same brands. I suppose having limited success with one product encouraged me to then try another from the same range, although sadly that hasn’t panned out. I dread to think what all of the above has cost me, it’s worth adding that some of these (like the Elemis Sensitive Cleansing wash) were OK for a period of time but I just wasn’t experiencing the success I had with the L’Occitane honey product and, given the high prices of some of these, decided to try something else.

I’ve had a reasonable amount of success with the Elemis Gel Cleanser, I hardly need to use a moisturiser with it but after a few days of continued use with nothing else my makeup feels like it is running down my face and then inevitably I’ll suffer with spots because of the excess oil.

So for Christmas my Mum bought me the new kid on the block, Emma Hardie’s Moringa Cleansing Balm. The list of ingredients is not all that disimilar from the Elemis Gel Cleanser but it comes in balm form rather than a gel and I wondered (before purchasing) whether the emulsifiers or whatever it is that makes the solid means it isn’t as oily as the Elemis.

So far, I’ve been using it every day since Xmas and haven’t experienced any contra-indications or excess oil on my skin. I don’t have to use a moisturiser with it but I do find my skin sometimes feel a little dry and after use my face can look a little red.

Still, my skin is not perfect. I’m getting spots on and around my chin, open pores on my cheeks and dry patches down my nose. Even using the Emma Hardie Rosehip Exfoliator seeds along with the balm I don’t seem to be seeing any improvement in my skin. It’s not getting any worse and that is a good thing, but will my skin ever look bright, fresh and glowy? It seems not.

Hmph.

Request: Nail Professionals, I need your help!

For most of January I have been quite preoccupied with my nails and now that we are a week in to February the craze hasn’t subsided. My main aim is to get my nails into a decent condition so that I can paint them at home and still be proud of them!

My concern though, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I have all the products and the good will is there, but why exactly do we have to soften our cuticles? And is constantly removing and reapplying nail polish/strengtheners doing my nails more harm than good?

So if there any nail technician-bloggers out there who read my blog, would you be interested in doing a Q&A interview for Shoeperduper? I’ll get all of my questions answered and hopefully hone my manicure technique and you’ll get some promotion for your blog 😀

 

In other news, I received my Supernails Nail Food set only 2 days after I ordered it! I had ordered a duo of the nail eat and the nail drink but it seems there was a special offer elsewhere on their site that I hadn’t seen in which the same set came with a free Zoom Therapy hand & nail lotion, so they sent me that (which I thought was nice and honest of them!).

 

On a negative note, their website is horrific to navigate and it’s a nightmare just looking at the standard Zoya nail polishes. To add insult to injury I emailed them with a couple of queries as to how best to use the product and the email constantly bounces back to me, same when I email the generic order/sales email address they used to confirm my order. That puts me off a bit.

Anyway, hopefully I’ll have a taker on the Nail Q&A!

A full month of dieting: Done.

As I’ve said before i’m not keen for my blog to become a homage to dieting but, for my own benefit, I’m intending to do a monthly update to spur myself along.

Monthly markers make sense to me so I’m here to boast that I’ve managed a full 31 days of dieting with absolutely NO chocolate or crisps and so few units of alcohol that I can count them on my fingers. At the three week mark I had lost a marvellous 13.5bls but unfortunately Mother Nature came calling last week and regardless of me sticking to plan 100% I put on 1.5lbs at this weeks weigh in. At slimming clubs, your period is (rather patronisingly) referred to as your “Star Week” and it’s normal to stay the same or gain due to hormones flying around everywhere and water retention. If you stick to plan you should see a greater-than-average loss the following week and, as I’ve kept all of the record cards from every slimming club I’ve ever been a member of, I’m expecting to at least hit my 1 stone award at Tuesdays weigh in.

I have to admit it has been a tougher than average week, maybe because I’m experiencing cravings for Galaxy Ripples so badly that I’d swap my husband for one. My weekly menu has still been satisfying and I’ve noticed that my appetite is reducing, particularly during the day when I’ve caught myself missing lunch (something I would never have done before!).

We tried out a new recipe this week that I stumbled upon at Slimming Eats, a blog started by a hardcore Slimming World follower with a wonderful arsenal of exciting, low fat food. The Butternut Squash Stuffed With Spicy Chicken & Rice was lovely, although admittedly required a lot of faff to cook. We tweaked the chicken & rice recipe to our own tastes and added some chorizo (100g of chorizo is about 9 syns) but we seemed to have the most defiant squash known to man which took 2 hours to cook and even then was a bit hard!

The best part about this recipe was the leftovers. Having been left to stew in it’s own goo for a bit, the remnants of butternut squash were just the right consistency and created a thick saucy finish to the rice. Next time I cook this, I’ll simply be adding chunks of squash to the rice recipe rather than bothering to stuff one!

To finish off my month of good behaviour, hubby and I decided to order our first takeaway of 2013! Slimming World allows for some naughty gastronomy so I managed a lovely meal of beef in oyster sauce, boiled rice and a single spring roll which only cost me 12 syns.

It was full of stir-fry veg and I left the majority of the rice (see, smaller appetite) so I’m sure it was also 1/3 superfree 😀

Here is to another week of good behaviour and hopefully a full stone lost come Tuesday night!

Does anyone else remember this stuff? Supernails Nail Food.

Back in the day when I worked for QVC (10 years ago!) this was their number one selling nail product and, yes, they did stock OPI, ProStrong and Nails Inc at the same time.

Legend has it that Supernails (or Zoya, or whoever the hell makes this stuff) got a bit too big for their boots and decided to sign a contract with Ideal World (QVC UK’s biggest competitor at the time) whilst still obliged to their contract with QVC. Although this stuff was available on the high street, QVC were disgusted with the lack of respect from the nail brand and so immediately terminated the contract. Nail Food went from being the best selling nail product in the UK to becoming a virtually unheard of brand overnight.

It’s a real shame because it was a superb product. It’s a two part nail solution product; Nail Eat strengthened and hardened whilst Nail Drink hydrated, defending against brittleness and peeling in the process. Depending on what course of action your nails needed you could favour one over the other, or like me just switch between the two evenly. It used to soak in rather than leave a gloss so could be applied over or under all of your existing nail polishes and in general was just one of those marvellous products that 10 years ago I wouldn’t be without.

It seems that Nail Food is still widely available in the States but I’ve only found one UK seller and that is Nail Care Club. I’ve bought some for old times sake, as I’m not getting on with Nail Envy (I never have if I am honest). It’s considerably more expensive than back in the good old days, I do believe it used to cost £12 +p&p for the two items, or you could purchase them individually or multi packs of either, whereas I’ve just paid £23 for the two bottles. Supernails also had an extensive range of polishes (Zoya) and a hand care and cuticle range called Qtica.

The sad part is that there is a completely unrelated item by Oriflame called Nail Food, which insinuates that the brand isn’t what it once was! I suppose there is a lesson there; don’t fuck with QVC.

Mild East Gel Polish Review Day 6: Reapplication, Glitter and Removal!

So we’ve come to the end of what must be the most detailed review I’ve ever done of a single product and I hope it’s given you all a better insight into this item!

By Day 5 my thumb nails were chipped to hell so I made the decision to remove them and (in the name of science!) reapply them as my other nails were all getting on pretty well. I took the opportunity to practice glitter “rock star” nails, which was a pretty easy process.

• apply base coat, cure for 2 minutes
• apply first coat of colour, cure for 2 minutes
• apply second coat of colour and press glitter of choice into the tacky colour coat. Tap off excess, cure for 2 minutes.
• Apply one coat of gel top coat, cure for 2 minutes.
• Apply second coat of top coat, cure for final 2 minutes.

I was really impressed with how these turned out and I love how smooth they feel: Glitter nails usually annoy me as they are rough to touch but these are really smooth and don’t catch on anything. Plus once they are on I don’t find chunks of glitter in my hair/on my face/all over my dog etc.

Apart from the resounding success of quick and easy Rock Star nails, my other fingers gave up the ghost on friday night/Saturday day time and I was left with major chips in a few nails. It seems that once a small chip appears then you are buggered. They just keep getting bigger and bigger!

But as you can see some of my other nails where still perfect:

I had re-applied the gel top coat to these on Thursday and it seems that that simple step kept them in place for a while longer. Also, when a minor chip did appear it was easy to limit damage by adding a thicker layer of topcoat over the chipped area.

So 6 days down the line I was a little fed up with the colour and think I had proved a reasonable point that with careful application and following the full (tedious) application process you could get a decent life span out of this product. Just to remind you all, I removed and pushed back my cuticles before applying these and also made sure my nails were completely clean and dry, plus I buffed them a little to give a rough surface on which to start with my base coat. I honestly think that made a big difference.

Anyway…I soaked these off with pure acetone and didn’t really expect any problems getting them off. So many people have complained how easy these just peeled away. Wrong. I soaked them for a good 20 minutes and after that, although they had lifted around the edges and cuticles I still had to chip away at them with an orange stick. The middle bits seemed completely insusceptible to acetone and in the end I had no choice (or patience) other than to prize them off. Unfortunately, my nails were destroyed when they were finally removed.

Let’s not forget that my nails weren’t in a brilliant state anyway and I presume that the damage that occurred after my last set of acrylics is still partly responsible for the enduring damage shown above (as there are no issues with the lower half of the nail, which has grown through since the last set of acrylics were on). Still I was pretty disappointed and have decided not to reapply this gel polish (to my fingers at least) until this flaky, brittle areas has grown out.

I’m still going to give these a go on my toe nails though, as promised. I imagine that they’d last quite a long time as the toe nails don’t tend to suffer from general wear and tear the same way fingernails do. For now, my nails are being treated to a full course of OPI Nail Envy and I will be painting them only with polish until they are in tip top condition!

Overall I’d definitely reccomend this stuff. It’s not the answer to all of your nail woes but I think if you are looking for a perfect manicure to last a few days (long weekend, wedding) then this is a fantastic and inexpensive home solution to Shellac!

As a recap, I bought my kit from ButterflyBeauty168 on Ebay and I purchased the starter kit (6 colours, base and top coat, general nail care crap) for £11.57. My next plan is to buy the colour only sets, in which you get 6 colours for £7.55!

My other reviews can be found here, here and here. Enjoy!