Hi again!
I've had this cream for a while, I've been holding off writing a review on it because I wanted to give it a decent chance to work. I bought it from QVC, where it had rave reviews, HERE's the link , I paid £26.00 plus P&P.
The packaging is pretty, if you have a nice dressing table, it would certainly 'grace' it:
While the nice shiny lid does look nice, I've found it slippy and difficult to open if I have any product on my hands, like face cream or hair oil.
It comes with a leaflet, here's what it has to say:
"This beauty treatment was especially developed for the care of the tender skin on the neck & decollete area. Reveal a smoother appearance throughout your skin. Gently massage into cleansed skin in the morning and evenings.
7 minerals, 7 plants. An active agent complex made from 7 precious plant extracts and 7 important minerals & Coenzyme Q10 which moisturises your skin and protects it against the signs of premature aging.
The 7 plant extracts for revitalising the skin are Ginseng & Guarana, Hops, Cocoa & Cocoa seeds, Lotus blossom, Maca and Roseroot.
The 7 minerals to supply the skin with important trace elements are Iron, Cobalt, Copper, Manganese, Selenium and Zinc.
The Phytomineral care products are suitable for every skin type"
All sounds great right? So what's it like then? Here's what it looks like out of the tub:
Hopefully you can tell a bit about the texture from this shot. It's a bit like a fluffy cocoa butter, it does have a really nice texture. However the fragrance is a bit strong for me, it's a bit like a chemically floral, and it does linger for at least an hour. If you put it on at bedtime, you're still going to be smelling it until you fall asleep.
It is VERY moisturising. I've found that if I put it on in the morning, by lunchtime my thirsty skin still feels moisturised, but it was too heavy for my face, and it made me break out. Of course it's not designed to be used on the face, but what can I say, I like experimenting.
Apart from the strong smell, my other slight disappointment with this cream is that it did nothing to improve the look of my neck area. Now I look at the description more closely, there's actually nothing to say that it will, but call me old fashioned, I just expect a neck cream to have some kind of tightening properties to it.
My neck area is starting to look a bit slack now, and I have perma-creases on my front, so I was hoping to have a reduction in the appearance of these, but nothing, no difference at all. Granted I haven't been using it religiously morning and night, have pretty much only been using it when I remember, but I have had it, and been using it, for about six months, so if it was going to make any difference, I think it would have done by now.
So all in all, to sum up, it's not bad, and if dry skin is your only issue on your neck, and you don't mind a strong fragrance, you'll probably love this. Certainly judging by the reviews on QVC lots of women do love it. However, my neck area needs something with some lifting and firming, and while I'll probably use all this cream up, I'm still browsing for the next 'wonder' neck product.
Do you have a favourite neck treatment? Or are you lucky enough not to need one yet? If so, lucky you, enjoy it while you can!
Until next time....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi All!
It's Saturday and I'm off work, so happy! Even better, the suns out, and that can only mean one thing, SWATCHES!!
This is a post I've been meaning to do for a while, then I saw that someone navigated to my site while looking for a comparison, and I felt all bad because I hadn't done it yet, and it spurred me into action. So whoever you are, anonymous, thank you for the boot up the bum that I needed.
Looking at the two in the bottle, it's obvious why people can't decide between them:
In this, and every, picture, My Boyfriend Scales Walls is on the left, and Alpine Snow is on the right.
So lets get into it on my nails:
As you can see, Alpine Snow on the right, is ever-so-slightly brighter. This picture is a pretty good representation of how it looks in real life, indoors but in the light from the window.
Formula wise, you can see that I had a little bubbling issue with My Boyfriend Scales Walls, I didn't have that last time I used it, perhaps I shook it a little too vigorously. These pictures are all three coats, and I didn't need to do any clean up.
Lets have another pic. This one's in the sunlight:
I think this one shows the shine nicely. You can see on my index finger that My Boyfriend Scales walls shows more shine than Alpine Snow.
One last pic of it on my nails, this one in the shade:
Getting back to the formula, they are slightly different. I prefer the formula of My Boyfriend Scales Walls, because it's less self deleting than Alpine Snow, and it seems to self level better. Also, I'm pretty sure I had to add some thinner to my Alpine Snow when I first got it to make it more cooperative.
Brushwise, theres not much in it. If I HAD to chose between them, My Boyfriend Scales Walls brush is a tiny bit better, you can see the difference between the formulas quite well in this next pic, look at the difference in how each polish clings to the brush:
The coating on the brush is denser on Alpine Snow (right), and that gives you a pretty good idea about the application.
They both needed the three coats for perfect coverage, dry time was identical and medium/fast.
I would actually say that this is the one time where I'm happy to own both, even though they're so similar, as they both have their place in my collection. Alpine snow where I need a bright white, especially for nail art and dotting, and My Boyfriend Scales Walls for all over nice shiny and level nails.
But, if you can't afford both, and so I absolutely have to pick, I would say to choose My Boyfriend Scales Walls, as it's a bit more versatile. I bought both of mine from Amazon and paid about £7.50 each.
So there you go, comparison done, I hope you liked it!
Until next time....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi everyone, sorry for making you wait until after the weekend for my regular post...
My blogging routine is all over the place, I had to work pretty much ALL DAY on Saturday, and then dash to the shops, by the time I got home it was late, and there's just no light left in the evenings now to take my pretty photos with, bah. Sunday gets written off with visiting relatives each week, I took some polish to see if I could do some swatches, but I wasn't able to.
So, I've ordered a cheapie lighting photo set up thing from Amazon, hopefully that will mean I can do swatches in the evening and still get half decent colour accurate pictures, that way I'm not just stuck with blogging at weekends, I'll review it anyway when it comes, so you can see if it's worth getting or not.
But... it's not the weekend now, I hear you say? Well, I've tried to be a bit cunning. I painted my nails last night, took the photos in my car on my lunch break, and now I'm doing the post in the evening, so it's taken 24 hours to get to the point where I can actually write my post, and I have no idea yet if my photos will be any good. If not I'll just have to do my best with the kitchen lighting.. sigh...
Anyway, let's get on with the swatches and review!
I bought this polish in store from Superdrug and paid £6.49 but I've looked and they don't have it on their website. However I've seen it much cheaper than that when I just looked on Amazon, LINK here - isn't it always they way?
OK then, I've just looked at the photos I took today and they're awful, sigh.... off I go to try and take some half decent ones in indoor lighting, wish me luck!
Here's the first one:
The colour is warmer than it's showing here, think a taupe-y grey rather than just a flat grey. As you can see I added some nail gems, I absolutely love the look of them against this polish, they remind me of drops of honey. They're actually faceted, but I used so much top coat to try and keep them on that they've become cabouchons lol! The topcoat I used was Sally Hansen Insta-dry, which is another polish I'm not so keen on, but it needs to be used up, which is why I used it. I actually got alot of bubbling in my topcoat, which is why all my day time photos looked so awful but actually in real life they're not so noticeable. You can see them around the gems in this next pic though:
However, with using so much topcoat, it's been 24 hours, I've washed my hair, peeled the potatoes, been typing all day, and I still have all my gems, and no chipping on my nails, so it has its benefits.
On to the review. I love the colour, but I hate the formula! It managed to be runny, patchy, floody and bumpy, worse on the first coat, and with another coat and a bit of clean up it was a half decent finish, but not as good as I would have liked. The fact that I even bothered with a clean up and didn't just take it off is a testament to how much I like this colour, the photos really don't do it justice, so frustrating! Dry time was medium to fast.
So here's a picture of the brush sitting on top of my glamorous (lol) pine tea caddy, it was a little bit too soft for my liking, and added to the application issues:
And finally, for completeness, here's a picture of the gems I bought. I bought them from Amazon UK HERE is the link,
I didn't have any problems with the speed of shipping etc, and they were less than a fiver, bargain! :
So, to sum up, if the formulation were better on this polish, I would wear it all the time! Such a shame, but I will still struggle on with it, because when I'm wearing it, and I look at my nails, it makes me smile.
And after all, that's rather the point, isn't it?
Until next time....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi everyone!
Yes I know it's strange me posting on a Thursday, this is just a little extra post as I've done my nails tonight, so I thought I'd share them with you.
I hope you noticed my new header! I'm super-pleased with it, I haven't got all the fancy schmancy photoshop etc, so I was lucky that I'd taken a nice pic of a butterfly on a road while I was out on a walk, and I could add some text with my greeting card software. Work with what you've got, right?
Anyway, tomorrow is 'Wear It Pink' day at work, you donate £2 and you get to wear pink, pretty much everyone at work does it, even the fellas! Some people go in fancy dress, but I'm just wearing a pink jumper and some red bootcut corduroys, so fetching lol! If you want to find out more about this incredibly worthy cause, you can at http://www.wearitpink.co.uk/
But of course I had to do something with my nails - I've kept it relatively simple (for me) and gone with a Bundle Monster stamp BM321 from their 2012 collection. It was the obvious choice really.
This is what I came up with:
I started off with an experimental base coat of Andrea Fulerton Peel Off Varnish in red, which you can't see, because I covered it with the lovely opaque one-coat pinkiness of OPI Mod About You. If you've been looking for an opaque pale pink, look no further! This is actually a little bit washed out to how it actually looks, but as it's pitch black outside, this was the closest I could get for you.
Here's a pic of the BM plate - they're so tricky to photograph without getting a reflection of yourself in it! I nearly managed it:
To stamp with I used Konad's Princess Polish Psych Pink - I love that name! It's super bright in the bottle, but a bit more 'normal' bright pink once stamped:
Ok, get ready for your close up, fingers:
As you can see, I also blinged it up a little bit with NYC's glitter top coat Gramercy Glitz which is pastel glitter in a peachy clear base. A top coat of Seche Vite and I was done. Here's the bottle shot:
To be honest, I wasn't 100% satisfied with these, the stamping isn't very crisp, there's a little bit of peely bit at the top of my ring finger, and I'd just thinned my Seche, so it blurred the stamping a little bit more.... I nearly took it off and re-did it, but then I realised...
This isn't about me or my nails.... its about raising money for this worthy charity, and if my not quite perfect nails remind of that, well then they're doing what they're supposed to, aren't they?
Until next time.....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Happy Saturday everyone!
Last Saturday of freedom for a while boooo! And my car didn't get mended haha! Oh well, the ongoing saga will have to remain ongoing.
Today's nail art didn't end up anything like I was intending it to, and when I'd finished it, I wasn't sure if I really liked it or not, but I still ended up taking a bazillion photos of it anyway.
My original intention was to paint my nails in an autumny colour, then use some striping tape halway down my nails in a pale colour, then mask off again, add some vertical stripes, then pull the striping tape off, so it all looked clean and nice. Didn't end up at all like that.
My first attempt to peel off my striping tape took off my base polish (yes I swore), so I decided to freehand the line. Then when I came to stripe over it, they came out more bold than I intended, and weren't neat at the top. So I delineated with a gold glitter striper, and this is what I ended up with:
This is in shaded light, so here we go on our usual tour round the house for my other pics.
This is in the shade in the front garden (I love that licheny wall as a backdrop for nail pics):
This is down at the bottom of the garden where I finally found some sun (the neighbours are probably saying, theres that loony out again taking pictures of her hands, come and look!) especially as I tripped up the step coming back in:
This is me leaning out the front bedroom window (thats the porch roof in the background):
You can really see in this picture why it reminds me of black forest gateaux, the black cherry of the base coat, and the chocolate stripes, makes me hungry just thinking about it!
And last but not least I took a pic under the kitchen lights:
The bit I like most about this is that it's made me realise that this gold glitter striper (that I haven't used before) reminds me very much of tinsel, and I think I'll be able to use this exact same technique, only using different colours, for a really effective Christmas nail art look, exciting!
Here's the polishes I used:
Color Club Gold glitter striper (came in a set from TK Maxx)
Precision Nail Art Striping Brush in brown (bought from Amazon UK)
NYC polish in Canal Street (Bought online at Superdrug and reviewed HERE )
Color Club Perfect Mol-Ten bought at TK Maxx and reviewed HERE )
And there we have it, thats todays nails!
I hope you enjoyed looking at them, and until next time.....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hi there everyone,
Back to normal with a proper weekend, YAY! Also my car is booked into the garage on Tuesday to hopefully get mended, so it's all looking up!
Today I'm reviewing a nail polish that I wouldn't usually pick up. I'm not really one for dark polishes, and I only have owned one NYC polish up to now, and that one I wasn't really keen on, but this one caught my eye as I was on my internet 'looking for browns' spree. As it happens, when it came, it turned out to only be brown in certain lights, but that doesn't matter because I love it!
Feast your eyes on this beauty:
Gorgeous, right? I took so many pictures of this, but as it's so overcast now when I get home from work, it's hard to get a good shot. Here's one I took in the garden:
The bottle colour in this shot is very representative of the 'actual' real life colour, kind of a rich burgundy wine colour with lots of copper shimmer going though it. These pictures are two coats, with no topcoat.
The formula is an absolute dream, first coat no VNL, and you could probably get away with one careful coat, but I did two, and it pretty much covered the ridges on my nails and gave a great finish. It seemed quite thin, but managed to be opaque, a win-win.
Dry time, about two minutes for the first coat, five minutes for two coats to get touch dry, and fifteen to 20 minutes to get completely hard, thats pretty good going. I would say, yes, fast drying.
Here's a close up of the beauteousness of the polish in the bottle under the craft light:
No photoshop here, I just put it on a jiffy bag and took the pic, and this is what I got, lovely! I love my camera, I do
Speaking of which, showing you this perfect autum nail colour, it reminds me, I went for a walk last weekend and I took some nice pictures, I thought I'd share some with you
I thought this one came out nicely, the way the light is catching the leaves:
And this one, which made me a bit hungry on my walk!
And I don't know what this plant is, but it's pretty:
Anyway, I digress big time, back to the polish! Here's the brush shot. The brush was a flat style brush, not too wide and was quite firm. It worked well with the formulation of the polish, no blobbing:
So anyway, as you might be able to tell, I really like this polish. And do you want to know the most amazing, jaw dropping, supercalafragislisticexpialadocious thing about it?
YOU CAN GET IT RIGHT NOW ON THE SUPERDRUG WEBSITE FOR £1.79 WITH FREE SHIPPING !!!!
Hurry though, you've got (I think) until the 24th October to take advantage of the free shipping, after that they charge £3.00, but even then it's not so bad. Or of course you could always do it the old fashioned way and actually go to the shop using your body...
If I'd paid £10 for this I would be perfectly happy with it, and not feel hard done by, but to get it at this price is an absolute steal - BUY BUY BUY!!!
Until next time, when I might have calmed down a bit.....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
Hello again!
I was up early this morning, so had time to do some nail art. This is one I've seen quite a bit round the net, although not for a while, so I can't really give credit for it to anyone, although I'm pretty sure Indigo Nova has a YouTube tutorial for it (I think she has a new name now though).
It actually wasn't what I intended to do when I painted my nails initially, it just kind of happened, but it wasn't a bad thing because I'm really pleased with how they turned out:
Here's what I did - NOT a tutorial:
1) Painted my nails with Kalahari Kiss
2) Used a green striping polish to make random branches - this was very easy to do
3) Used a dotting tool and Barry M Peach Melba to dot the flowers on, easy but time consuming
4) Used the smaller end of the dotting tool and Rimmel Coraliscious for the flower centres
5) Waited 5 mins, then top coat of Seche Vite
All done!
I took alot of pictures of this, but will only subject you to one more, speaking of which, I joined Instagram, went out on a walk today and took some great pics, so will see if I can add them, I don't know yet if there are picture size rules or whatever, but will suss it out! Heres the other pic:
I think I'm going to risk it and wear it for work tomorrow, I might get away with it because it's quite light coloured, only one way to find out!
Until next time.....
MASPOOASE x x x
~Wendy~
.jpg "OPI Alpine Snow vs My Boyfriend Scales Walls")
.jpg "OPI Alpine Snow vs My Boyfriend Scales Walls")
.jpg "OPI Alpine Snow vs My Boyfriend Scales Walls")
