Category Archives: beauty news

The lovely @NailArtistMartha has worked her manicure wizardry again; this week I set her the task of doing something pretty with Models Own’s Sticky Fingers polish in Pastel Petals Green. Not the easiest one to pull off – it’s kind of an odd shade and the stickers are a little fiddly – but I love what Martha came up with. Subtle and very vintage-looking. I love the single accent nail on each hand – I’d probably have gone completely nuts with all of the stickers and had a few on each finger! Here’s a close-up on the flower transfer:

It’s lifted a little at the edges (Martha said that it can be quite hard to keep them stuck down, you have to make sure that the polish is touch-dry and then put them on) but it’s very effective. It looks just like the patterns you find on the china cups and plates in bric-a-brac shops! And it’s a hell of a lot easier to stick a sticker on than hand paint a flower, I would imagine..

I think it’s really quite a clever little kit. Without the flower embellishments, I’d hate the pastel green, but together the two elements work very well. I might even be tempted to have a go at this look myself – you know how I love a bit of a distraction when I have loads of work to do! I’ve actually started doing my nails when I’m at the computer (ie, fourteen hours a day) because I can paint them as I wait for things to upload, and then I can still type as the polish is drying. It’s quite a good system.

There are loads of other shade and sticker combos in the Sticky Fingers Collection. My favourite is probably the dark taupe-y-looking shade (Sweet Candy) which comes with little candy and gingerbread man stickers. It’s kind of sad that I’m still into gingerbread men at the ripe old age of thirty-three but there you go. Mental age of five.

You can find the whole Sticky Fingers range at ASOS here – each set is £6. Follow Martha on Instagram for more nail pics – Martha works from a salon in Bath called Wisteria Lane. You can see their website here. The nails in the picture are shown after two coats of Models Own Pastel Petals Green and transfers applied using tweezers.

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This serum has such an average formulation that the price just seems to be in bad taste. This contains mostly water, slip agents, emollient, thickener, vitamin E, plant extracts, fragrance, and film-forming agent. The small amount of grape extract means that this product likely has minimal antioxidant ability—and what about skin-identical substances, cell-communicating ingredients, or an anti-irritant or two? All of those are hallmarks of state-of-the-art serums, which this product certainly is not.

Note: This serum is dispensed via a dropper applicator. Although not the ideal method to dispense a serum that contains light- and air-sensitive ingredients, sometimes this type of packaging is necessary due to formulary requirements. When that’s the case, the goal is to keep the bottle opening as small as possible, the bottle should be opaque or specially coated to protect the contents from light, and you should use the serum up within three months of opening.

The new Beautypedia Team proudly and unequivocally maintains the commitment to help you find the best products possible for your skin. We do this by relentlessly pursuing and relying on published scientific research so you will have unbiased information on what works and what doesn’t-and the sneaky ways you could be making your skin worse, not better!

Thing Of The Week – and yes, I know I’m late to the party – is this very nifty little product from Bourjois, the Magic Nail Polish Remover for Hands and Feet. Their “one second” remover for fingernails is already one of my all-time favourite beauty inventions – you just stick your finger into the pot, and the remover-soaked sponge dissolves your polish in mere seconds. (One second is somewhat optimistic, unless you are able to move your hands at superhuman speeds.) The new version is even more clever than the original:

Take off the lid and you have a neat, stubby sponge – again, pre-soaked in remover – that is perfect for swiping over toenails to remove remnants of old polish, or to give a nice clean base for new polish. Before I actually tried this little toenail-polish-removing sponge, the sceptic inside did whisper, for crying out loud! Can you not just soak a bit of cotton wool? Is that too much effort for you these days?

But I must say that I am a total convert. The remover works so fast that just a quick rub of the sponge does the trick and, if you’ve already done your fingernails (which for me is about 90% of the time – toenails are always an afterthought!) there’s no risk of getting remover on your new manicure and messing it all up. It’s just a brilliant, brilliant idea. And of course you still have the original function – poke your finger into the pot and the sponge will clean your fingernails of polish in less time than it takes to decide which colour you’re going to apply next. No scraps of cotton wool to get rid of, no risk of spillage, just stick the lid back on when you’ve finished and it’s all tidily packed away. Also (and this is a terrible thing to say, especially when you’re making an effort to try and do more exercise), you don’t need to bend down quite so far to touch your toes. The sponge-on-a-lid saves you about an inch and a half’s worth of stretching. Which is a lot when you’re tired/rushing/drunk/in a moving vehicle.

Definitely one to add to your home manicure/pedicure collection – in fact, I’d say that it’s probably the most useful and most-used thing in mine. ASOS have it on sale at the moment – £4.50 – you can add it to your shopping bag here. (ALSO, there’s a 70% sale on. If you didn’t see my post with the small-headed sunglasses, have a read here. They are well worth picking up!)

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