Dior - Diablotine

Dior - Diablotine (Summer 2013)

Hello spring, you're here at last. Please stay a while so that your sunlight can grace my finger tips and make it worth my while to wear sparkling colours like this one...

Diablotine - artificial light

 This is Diablotine by Dior, this season's impulse purchase by yours truly. It's been a long time since I splashed out on lacquer (really, Mr P, it has!). But this little beauty caught my eye (damn you, Cafe Makeup newsletter) and I had to grab it.

It's a very unusual shade of red, not that dupable. A soft red with an orange undetone (more visible in the artificial light of my bathroom) and tiny micro-specks of fuschia sparkle. There is also a slight milky quality to the colour which stops it from being the sheerer jelly I thought it would be. This is totally opaque in one coat, but I've given it two coats for more depth of shimmer and longevity of course.

I've reinstated my regular Fuji camera now which takes better close up shots my ipod touch. I'll aim to do most of my photography with this one now that I've found it's charger! The artificial light photos show the subtle sparkle more clearly, while the natural light ones are perhaps truer to the real colour.

Diablotine - natural light

This is not the glossiest of polishes and definitely needs a topcoat. In fact, even after the top coat it dulled down again after a while. You can tell from the photos that it's not gleaming like some other polishes. Still, it's gorgeous and so perfect for spring. Plus the brush and formula are exceptional, so easy to paint with.

I chose this colour to wear this weekend in Paris.... where I may just pick up the matching lip-gloss.

Sephora beckons. I can hardly contain myself.

What do you think of Diablotine? Yay or nay?

Estee Lauder 'Smashed'

Estee Lauder Smashed

I like to mix it up a bit don't you know.

Just when everyone else is sporting pastels and brights I thought I'd dig up a post I'd prepared back in November last year and put the vamp into springtime.

This is Estee Lauder 'Smashed', an incredible multidimensional juicy dark violet which begs to be set into something platinum and paraded around the lobby of the Ritz.

The formula is gorgeous, like most Estee Lauder polishes, and goes on like a dream. The bottle is a thing of beauty and one day I will have a special display unit for EL polishes alone, such is their splendor.

I'm sure you could wear this now if you wanted. It's dark, but it still manages to retain the gorgeous deep bright hue of midnight violets. Pair with something yellow I think....

Estee Lauder Smashed

I promise that the spring shades will be on their way, I have a particularly luscious Dior to share with you and some mouth-watering drugstore goodies too.

A lesson learned.... and shared

Just when I thought I was getting back into the swing of things blog-wise, my life decided that suddenly there was no place for blogging in the self-induced craziness that has been the past two months.

Not only had I lost my blogging mojo, but pretty much my entire beauty mojo. Can you believe that at one point I spent two weeks without a scrap of make-up on my face? Two weeks.  That hasn't happened since I was about 16. Dark times. We won't talk about the sweatpants.

My nails remained pretty much unpainted since November. Things really had gotten that bad.

Slowly slowly I'm injecting colour back into my life and hopefully back on this blog. I painted my nails a few days ago with L'Oreal 'So chic pink' (actually a coral) and now I'm wearing Mavala Rococco Red. Photos would be helpful (and obviously more eye-catching than my waffling text) but the point is not the colour, both of which are hardly ground-breaking shades, it's the sense of purpose that coloured nails gives me. They are uplifting and make me feel much more pulled together. I'm more ready to face the world. I didn't think that I'd ever want to wear polish again at one point and wondered what I'd ever do with my stash of over 100 bottles, some of which I'm ashamed to say I'd never even used. Despite my almost evangelical devotion to lacquer on this blog, I myself had decided that I no longer had time, need, interest nor desire for such things.

But I was so wrong.

It is important. In the grand scheme of things we always think that the bigger the gesture, the more impact and importance we have. But combined, it's also the little mundane things that contribute to making a difference, both to ourselves and to others. Living life means not forgetting these trifles, these inconsequential habits which for a brief time serve no purpose but to divert us and make us a little happier. I forgot them all and I was very, very unhappy. I was certainly not a better person for relinquishing my make-up, my nail polish and my nice clothes.

This is a beauty blog and it holds no weight or importance other than as diversion (hopefully a useful one sometimes) and entertainment, but it reminds me to remain grounded in a way that I had previously taken for granted. It's good for me to write, it fuels my creativity in every way and I've missed it terribly. I write to feel better and to be better, even if it is just about mascara....

So... I just wanted to put that out there in the blogosphere before I continue at some point posting photos of my nails and showing you what I've bought (which is why you're here in the first place, right?)

I feel bad that this is not a picture post, so here is a photo of a cat in rollers to make you smile.... it's the little things, right?