My Fall Essentials

Rather than doing a September favourites post I decided to do a fall favourites/essentials type post because Fall is quite possibly my favourite season, but I kinda say that about every season except Spring to be honest.

Except for my obvious essentials like big cosy sweaters, mug fulls of hot chocolate/coffee and new boots, three very important things to me during Fall are of course candles, dark lipsticks and even darker nails.

My darkest lipstick (Is it a lipstick? I'm never sure.) is my Apocalips in Eclipse which I adore and wear sooo often in the autumn/winter months. The Bourjois Colour Boost is a rather new addition to my collection but one that I am again loving! Its a strong, long lasting, glossy formula needing minimal touch ups.

Apocalips in left and Colour boost on the right

And two of my favourite autumn candles (the Sugar and Spice one from Tesco's is actually my favourite candle ever, even beating my yankee candles.) help make my bedroom smell like Autumn even if it isnt. The left one is from Tesco and smells delicious and the right one is a Glade Vanilla one which smells just like vanilla fudge and I loveeeeeee it.

And finally the two nail colours I have been swapping between over the last 3 weeks are Barry M Matte nail paint in Crush and a grey BeautyUK one that doesn't seem to have a name. Being the rebellious child that I am I have taken to painting my nails in my free periods at school :0 which inevitably means I end up with at least three dreadfully smudged. 

So there we go, a round up of a few of my autumn favourites, tell me yours so I can have a look...

Sally Hansen Sugar Coat Nail Polish

A quick post today,I found this is poundland for just a pound (obviously) after seeing it come up on  Hot UK Deals a couple of times. I had been wanting to try the Barry M textured polishes for quite a while, specifically the colour Ridley Road, the minty blue green but they were £3.99 and I wasn't really sure If I'd like it so I didn't take the plunge. But when I saw these in poundland I knew I had to try. They had the pale yellow that I brought, white and black but since I don't have any yellow polishes I thought I'd give this a go.

The only problem I have found with this is it does chip quite easily. Granted I was washing up but this was literally 24 hours after I'd put it on. I'm still not entirely whether I like it though anyway so I'm glad I only spent a pound on it. I like the colour of it and I think the texture is interesting but I'm not quite sure they go together. Perhaps I should have opted for the white?

And to any of you who noticed that I used a Divergent advert as the background, top marks to you,I was actually on my way to see the movie when I brought this!

Nail Polish Stand & Lipstick Holder

Both are these gems were received for my birthday after I asked my parents for them, since my makeup collection is rather overflowing at the moment, but I have to say these really do seem to have solved the problem.

This has been really useful to keep my lipsticks together and ensure that I can see what all the colours are without having to root around in my drawer. I have also taken to keeping my everyday things like concealer, eyeliner and mascara in the front row so that I can grab them easily in the morning.

I recently had a big clear out of all my nail varnishes so I had about 14 left I think. Then lucky for me I received another 7 for my birthday too as you may know if you read my birthday post! Therefore the top tier is currently looking rather empty and I may have to be investing in some more I think!

I got the lipstick holder from here and this is where I got the nail varnish stand from. The price of both of these was absolutely amazing but particularly the lipstick stand yet both are excellent quality.

As a side note, how do we feel about white nail varnish? I can't decide if I like it, please tell me in the comments!

Ombre Nails DIY

I just love painting my nails, its like having little works of art on your finger nails :) unfortunately though I am not allowed to have them painted for school :( so during the summer I made the most of my chance to paint them. In all 6 weeks they were only unpainted for 1 day! Anyway this was one of the little experiments I did on my nails. I also did rose print and avengers nails so I'll probably post them later too .

I was quite happy with how these turned out to be honest and it was a lot simpler than I thought it would be too.

Ideally you need four shades of the same colour but you could probably make do with three. I used Essie Crewed Interest as the base, then Essie camera, then Revlon sweet tart (it was a special edition in a gift set and it is an absolutely gorgeous colour!) And then I used Essie she's pampered for the last colour.

All you have to do is paint one base coat of your lightest colour, let it dry then use a sponge to sponge on the next lightest colour 3/4 of the way up. Then you let that dry and sponge the next colour half way up and then finally sponge on the final colour just on the tips.

I only have the one photo of them because the lighting was quite bad but hopefully you'll be able to see the effect.

Barry M Gelly Nails Review

Okay, go easy on me, this is my first ever beauty product review. 
In one word this nail varnish is amazing! After seeing a couple of YouTube videos saying how amazing they were, I just had to try them. All the nail varnish in superdrug was on 3 for 2 so I brought 2 gelly nail varnishes- Blueberry and Greenberry and a clear because I dropped mine in the kitchen and it smashed and went all over the floor-my dad was not happy! 

They cost £3.99 each and offer quite a wide range of colours which were hard to choose from. I also noticed that they are on 2 for £6 in superdrug yesterday. They offer incredible shine too but the most amazing thing is that they last for ages without chipping. I wore a base coat of Barry M 'Top coat, Base coat and Nail Hardener',  two coats of blueberry and another Barry M clear and it lasted 8 days with very minimal chipping as you can see in the photos below.

Just after painting-

8 days later-

Overall I would recommend these nail varnishes to absolutely anyone!