Just to go alongside the “What’s In My Makeup Bag” post that went up earlier on this week; a snoop inside my handbag. My sister said when I took these photos – and I quote her directly – “this is the sh*ttest What’s In My Bag ever! Where’s all the makeup stuff?” But I don’t like to contrive my bag contents, and I suspect that is what happens quite a lot of the time – a carefully edited selection of beauty products and so on, that look pretty on the page and cover all of the bases. I just tend to tip my own bag upside down and see what’s going on – granted, I do often remove old pieces of tissue and cereal bar wrappers and so on, but for the most part it’s a true representation of that day’s contents.

So sorry if this really is the “sh*ttest” reveal ever – I’m getting my sister back by posting up the picture of her photobombing my still-life. Again, entirely unplanned – this should win some kind of photobombing award, I feel. Her head and arms have been perfectly framed!

And so, to the contents of my handbag. Which is the beautiful Jenna bag from LK Bennett – it also comes in white and hot pink, which would be lovely for spring! You can find it online here.

Firstly, let’s tackle all of the bumph: a five pound note, crumpled, some little hairbands in pastel colours (bottom left), my Nectar trolley token and a “Nakd” cereal bar. I eat loads of those cereal bars (well, about four a week, but that’s four more than I’d have eaten prior to being pregnant!) and I can imagine that non-pregnant they would taste quite foul – can anyone vouch for them? Like them? Hate them?

The scary dolly thing is my Marni Rose purse spray – some of your comments on this did make me laugh when I posted about it! I just love the scent, though, regardless of whether the packaging is cute or hideous – it’s a really interesting, non-girly kind of rose. Other beauty items: my Colab dry shampoo, which goes with me everywhere, and a Clinique Superbalm. There’s lots going on with Colab at the moment, all very exciting, but annoyingly you won’t see anything happen for a while because product developments take AGES. Lots of brainstorming and nit-picking (not literally) and lots of me being completely pedantic and a control freak. But if the things that come from all of this work are as brilliant as the Sheer & Invisible dry shampoo I will be a very happy lady – watch this space!

Clinique Superbalm – keep meaning to post on this. It’s just excellent, and quite a nice “dupe”for the Sisley in terms of effect and a little bit similar in texture. It just really does the job on chapped lips, I especially like it layered over their All About Lips cream, overnight. You can find it here.

What else, what else? Filofax, or Agenda as they say at Louis Vuitton: I bought this for myself about ten years ago, before luxury good prices were so utterly ridiculous. I’m pretty sure I paid just over a hundred pounds, and now they are about four hundred. What the heck? The refills alone cost £52 now! But it’s a ritual, buying them every January and I must say that the diary itself has lasted amazingly well – it looks brand new. Underneath the Agenda you can see my new camera, the Canon Powershot G7 X, which is brilliant – I always need a smaller camera to supplement the big, chunky, heavy Canon DSLR that I use when I’m at home. I can highly recommend the Powershot – the functions are amazing and it has a flip-up screen, too, if you’re into “vlogging” and need to see yourself… I bought mine from Amazon here.

The final piece of the handbag puzzle: a bit of light reading. (Ha!) Mindful Birthing by Nancy Bardacke. I won’t go too much into the whole birthing thing here (you can read my pregnancy diary entries and rambles over on my little blog The Uphill, which isn’t quite ready to see yet but I trust you’ll all be kind!) but so many people – friends, family, readers, Twitter followers – have said about Mindful Birthing and how it helped them and so I’m doing loads of reading. It’s basically about breathing and trying to stay calm and in control during birth and yes I know that loads of people will say that  “everything will go out of the window at the time” and “you have no idea what it’s like”, but I do think that we are bombarded with incredibly negative representations of birth, especially on television and in the media. And in my own immediate family and friends group, the birth stories have been overwhelmingly positive, so that’s how I’m setting my mind. There will be more discussion on this topic over on The Uphill very soon!

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This nail look by @NailArtistMartha was inspired by the gorgeous new Chanel campaign that stars Cara Delevingne. I desperately want to do some kind of “get the look” makeup video based on the new campaign image (I would love to know what Cara has woven into her hair!) so no doubt we’ll be returning to this manicure for that, too. I really like the single accent nail with the block of contrasting colour! Very chic.

Martha reversed the colours in the campaign look, using a beautiful pale gold for the base colour and a glossy, classic red for the ring finger accents. I’m not usually into metallic nails but I think that this gold shade from OPI, Glitzerland, is just gorgeous. Just enough shimmer and a non-brash, almost-creamy kind of golden tone.

Martha said that the consistency of the polish was lovely and it applied very well. Two coats gave a truly glitzy finish – “it definitely does what it says on the tin”. After two coats of Glitzerland, Martha took her red polish (Mavala’s London) and created the accent nails. “This is more simple than it looks”, Martha said, but she still hasn’t seen the true extent of my nail-painting ineptitude, so that statement isn’t entirely true! Martha’s tips for painting on the statement curve? “1) Try to paint the line all in one go. Hesitating can make your hand shake! 2) Don’t overload the brush with polish as you can end up flooding the nail.”

I had a little go at this and found that if you make the curved line slightly higher up the nail than you want it to eventually be, you can always take it down lower and cover a messy line if you go wrong! That’s the coward’s way out – those with some conviction can just go on in and paint that confident, bold curve… (Disclaimer: I’d had rather a lovely glass of (quite strong) Chianti before I attempted my nail. Those who are serious about getting the perfect accent nail may want to avoid the Dutch Courage and be 100% compos mentis.)

Martha went one step further with her Cara-inspired manicure and added an extra accent in Mavala’s Black Oyster polish. I love this look! There’s something very retro about it – it reminds me of old YSL Opium adverts and also of peacock feathers. I’ve loved every step of this manicure, actually; the pale champagne-gold, the red accent and then the black tip. This would make an excellent holiday manicure, don’t you think? Those amazing shades against tanned skin? I may have to pay Martha a visit and get her to mani me up before I go to Greece…

You can find OPI’s Glitzerland online at Amazon here or at Beautybay.com where it has been reduced from £11.95 to £7.17. Both options have free delivery. Please do follow Martha on Instagram – and any crazy nail requests, please leave a comment below! Thanks once again to Martha and also to the lovely Roseanna for quite literally “lending a hand”. (Or two.)

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