Les Jeans de Chanel: Swatches, Review and Comparisons

This is a collection that I have been looking forward to for ages! Les Jeans de Chanel is trio of varnishes in varying shades of blue to reflect different washes of denim. Check them out:-

Thumb and Index finger:- Coco Blue

Middle and Pinky finger:- Blue Boy

Ring finger:- Blue Rebel



I absolutely loved the manicure I did with the Jeans trio- hence the amount of pictures! I think that all three shades work really well together. My absolute favorite varnish out of the three is Coco Blue- check out the subtle silvery shimmer in the bottle and on my nail. The application on these varnishes was good. The formula was not too thick or too runny, and the brush was standard- long and thin bristles. I will say try not to rush with these varnishes, otherwise you will end up with air bubbles. I also used a good basecoat under these varnishes- they WILL stain your nails otherwise! I also used my topcoat to give these the glossy shine you see in the pictures- they tend to dull quite quickly otherwise.

When I removed this manicure, I had the intention to redo my whole hand in just Coco Blue. It was just as I was reaching for it when I realised that I had some other veeery similar varnishes in my collection. Check this out:-

Index finger:- No7 Minty Fresh

Middle finger:- Revlon Blue Lagoon

Ring finger:- Chanel Coco Blue

Pinky finger:- Maybelline Ceramic Blue

As you can see, the closest shade to the Chanel Coco Blue is the No7 Minty Fresh varnish. However, Minty Fresh is a block colour whith no shimmer or glitter particles. Revlon's Blue Lagoon has very fine silver glitter in it, not too unlike the shimmer in Coco Blue, but Blue Lagoon's shade is a lot lighter than Coco Blue. Maybelline's Ceramic Blue is an absolutely beautiful shade (with perfect application, I might add), but it learns toward being a very soft lavender shade. It has a very subtle blue shimmer to it that is obvious in the bottle, but very difficult to see on the nail. So, even there are no exact dupes for Coco Blue, there are cheaper alternatives that are just as pretty.

I took this next picture under the artificial light in my kitchen because you can see the shimmer in the nail varnishes better:-

So what do you think? Will you be buying any of the Jeans de Chanel collection? Or having seen the comparisons of Coco Blue next to cheaper alternatives will you be choosing them instead? I'd love to read your thoughts!



Beauty Products I'm Loving This Week

Hey everybody! Hope you're all well. Today is a rather mixed post, because I am going to show you the beauty products that are either a) rocking my world creatively or b) products that I simply cannot live without!

So without further ado, here's the first:-

Illamasqua Fundamental Palette

Without flash

With flash

Shades from l-r clockwise Powder Shadow in Hype, Liquid Metal in Surge, Powder Shadow in Inception and Cream Pigment in Bedaub.

I absolutely adore this palette and have already created a number of looks with it, which I will be posting over the next couple of days. I love how wonderfully bold the colours are in this palette, yet they are surprisingly versatile and I will show you how to use these colours to create a beautiful daytime look. Stay tuned!

Rimmel Wake Me Up Foundation and Concealer

If you haven't already tried this foundation, you NEED to. Just to give a bit of context on my skin, it is combination/dry, with an oily t-zone, prone to breakouts (especially hormonal breakouts), but I do get a bit of dryness around the jawline, and on my forehead. With this in mind, I normally opt for foundations specifically created for oily skin types, but there was something that particularly attracted me to this foundation... probably the orange packaging! I won't go into too much detail here, as I would like to do a more detailed post, but I will say this much. Wake Me Up is an incredible foundation. It gives my skin a healthy, radiant boost, and makes it look plump and fresh. It also kinda covers over my dry patches and doesn't make them glaringly obvious like Double Wear or Dream Matte Mousse can do. The concealer is also pretty good, as it can be used to cover both dark circles and blemishes.

No7 Beautiful Skin Melting Gel Cleanser

No7 has recently revamped their skincare range by renaming and repackaging their products and in this instance, created a brand new product. The packaging recommends this gel cleanser for normal/dry skin, and just lately I have been experiencing quite a lot of dry patches around my jaw and my cheeks have been quite dehydrated. I knew I didn't want to change to a heavier moisturiser, so a richer cleanser like this seemed to be a good solution to boost moisture in my skin without making it too greasy. This cleanser starts as a gel, which then melts away to an oil, which turns rather milky when washed away. It smells DIVINE. It cleans my skin relatively effectively without drying it out. In short, I love it. I look forward to washing my face with this. 'Nuff said.

Garnier Intensive 7 Days Hand Cream for Dry/Extra Dry Hands

I picked this hand cream up when it was on offer in Superdrug. I suffer with dry skin on my hands, my cuticles can be particularly haggard at times (too much contact with nail varnish remover!), and my nails sometimes peel because they are dehydrated. That's why I picked the dry/extra dry formula (there were about two other hand creams in the range). Oh, that and I love the scent of shea butter. As you can see in the pic above, this is a rich hand cream, but it spreads really well over the skin and it quickly absorbed, which is great because I really hate sticky, thich hand creams that take, like, forever to sink in! I recommend this hand cream- great price, great formula and lovely fresh scent.

Revlon Liquid Quick Dry

Since becoming a beauty blogger, who mainly blogs about nail art and nail varnishes, I tend to be waiting around a lot for polish to dry! When I saw this in Boots, I pretty much added it to my basket without hesitation. And it rocks. It dries freshly painted nails to be touch dry within a couple of minutes, and within the hour, they are pretty much nudge proof depending on the drying ability of the colour itself. It gives the nails a glossy finish, and it smells nice. Bonus.

L'Oreal Elvive Nutri Gloss Crystal Sparkling Shampoo

Without flash

With flash

I don't even really need to tell you why I decided to try this, it speaks for itself. A sparkling shampoo. It just kinda bounced off the shelf and into my basket! (I'm such a sucker for packaging!) On a semi-serious note, I normally use the Nutri Gloss light, with the pink bottle and green band, as I have mid length hair that gets greasy quickly, but I really wanted to try this new addition to the Elvive range. To be honest, I can't really tell the difference between the two shampoos, but this certainly looks prettier in my bathroom, and for that shallow reason only, I am gonna keep on buying this!

So there are my current beauty essentials. Are any of these products in your make up bag or on your bathroom shelf? If not, please leave a comment to tell me what your current beauty essentials are!

My Nail of the Day #2 Revlon Facets of Fuchsia

Hello everyone, hope you're all well! I'm doing great, apart from finding being back at work incredibly tough after almost eight months off on maternity leave!

Today I present the beautiful polish Facets of Fuchsia by Revlon. This was a limited edition release last winter, and as such, has now been discontinued and removed from the Revlon stands to accomodate all the new, shiny candy coloured nail varnishes that shout 'spring' so well *drools*

I found Facets of Fuchsia discounted in my local Boots, and it was the last bottle there, so I snapped it up, despite only going in for baby milk... (I'm easily distracted!)

So here are my shots of this varnish:-

What do you think? Do you like it? I must admit, when I first tried it at a cosmetics roadshow last May, I wasn't very impressed with the quick coat I put on. This polish is one that defiantely gets better with the more coats you put on. The first coat is an ugly grey colour, but this builds up to the beautiful charcoal colour you see. Obviously, with several coats, the glitter builds up too, which can never be a bad thing ;)

The good thing with most Revlon nail varnishes is that they have great wearabiltiy, lasting for a couple of days before the smallest amount of tipwear appears. The bad thing with glitter nail varnishes is that they can be a real pain to remove, and this is no exception. You can't get rid of this varnish too quickly!

As I mentioned above, Revlon have released a slew of new nail varnishes, which almost made me faint when I saw the stand. Candy colours, two new glitters, and the 'Fizz' collection. I have some excellent blog posts coming up featuring these beauties, so keep tuned!

And now a quick question for all my readers- what's your favourite glitter nail varnish and why?