Velvet Voyeur

Since the beginning of September I have been mostly wearing darker colours on my nails. I bought Essie's Velvet Voyeur (How amazing is that name?) a few months ago when it was very hot and I was longing for cool Autumn days. When I saw this shade I initially thought it was too similar to my bottle of OPI We'll Always Have Paris which I wore to death last Winter but I figured since I wore that shade so much I would probably love this one too. 

Velvet Voyeur is one of those almost black shades but with a plum/purple hint to it that makes it less severe than an all out black. Like most Essie polishes it goes on smoothly and wears very well on my nails.

I was searching for a good base coat and top coat and I decided on the CND Stickey Base Coat after it was used on my nails when I had a manicure a few months ago. I found it made the manicure last very well.

I had wanted to try Seche Vite for a long time after reading so many great reviews of it. I couldn't quite understand why it was raved about so much, that is until I actually tried it for myself. It makes painting my nails so much easier. I don't know anyone who doesn't hate waiting around for their nails to dry and this just eliminates that problem completely, it's replaced Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri for me.

I love these two products together, they give me the most beautiful glossy nails and a few people have asked me if my nails were Shellac or a professional manicure, I'd say that's a pretty good reason to repurchase both of them.

You can find both the CND Base Coat and Seche Vite on Cult Beauty for about £8.95/£9.95 respectively.  I got Velvet Voyeur on sale from HQ Hair for €9.45.

What are you wearing on your nails right now?

Emma x

WaterWipes- Review and Giveaway

For today's post I've partnered with WaterWipes Sensitive Facial Wipes to bring you an exciting giveaway where you could win a three month supply of the wipes. First off let's talk about the wipes and what makes them different from every other brand of face wipes. 

I have a confession to make- I don't hate face wipes. Most skincare experts will tell you to stay away from them and that they are bad for your skin and I do agree with that if all you are using is a face wipe. I like them to remove my make up as I always like to take all my make up off and then use a cleanser. I used to use face wipes all the time as it was the easiest way of taking off my face make up however for the past couple of years I converted to a make up remover and cotton wool. 

What got me excited about WaterWipes is that they are made by an Irish company, Irish Breeze and I always like to try out Irish made products and support Irish companies when I can. Secondly their main attraction is that they claim to be 'The World's Purest Wet Wipe'. Looking at the ingredients list on the back, I can see that it's completely true, there are only three ingredients in WaterWipes: 99.9% Purified Water which is done through a mechanical process rather than chemically; Grapefruit Seed Extract, which is a natural biocide that keeps the wipes fresh and Dead Sea Minerals, that are a natural moisturiser. The fact that they are fragrance free and contain only natural ingredients make them perfect for anyone with sensitive skin or skin conditions. 

As they are a water based product, I find them best at removing water-based make up. If you use waterproof mascara or long lasting foundations or concealers you may need to put some make up remover onto the wipes and use them as a substitute for cotton wool which is what I've been doing when I'm wearing something like Estée Lauder Double Wear Light foundation and I find it's a great way of keeping my skin from feeling too dry. They are also textured as you can see below which I find helps to remove make up and is slightly exfoliating. 

WaterWipes are available at the very reasonable price of €3.49 in Boots, Tesco, Dunnes Stores and plenty of other retailers and pharmacies. You can find your nearest stockists on their website. 

If you're interested in trying out WaterWipes, the lovely people at Irish Breeze are offering 12 packs (a three month supply) for me to give away to one lucky person. Unfortunately this giveaway is only open to residents of the Republic of Ireland. 

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Emma x

It's Still That Same Old Movie That's Haunting Me

This is what I wore on a day off recently when we went to meet friends for lunch and a movie (we saw About Time, I cried like a baby). 

Outfit Details:

Jacket- Penneys/Primark

Top- Monsoon

Skirt- ASOS

Belt- Pieces via ASOS

Sunglasses- eBay

Boots- Marks and Spencers

Bag- Zara

Ring and Scarf- Accessorize

Lips- Revlon Adorned

Nails- No7 Jammy

Autumn came on quite suddenly, one minute it was sweltering, the next I was digging out my heavy scarves and gloves. Autumn is my favourite season, I love that it's chilly enough to wear light layers but not freezing. I also love the Autumn colours in nature as well as fashion and make up. For now I'm wearing a transitional wardrobe keeping some bits from my Summer wardrobe like this bag and scarf. I bought the scarf at the start of the summer and wore it non-stop over the past few months. You may already know scarves are my style weakness. I got these boots as a birthday present last month, they are very similar to the ones I got last year and are so comfortable, they're great for wearing when I'm on my feet in work. I wanted this Michael Kors Buckle ring for ages and then I saw this one in work and figured I'd get that instead as it was much less expensive and a bit too much of a trend to spend so much money on. 

For make up I'm still going with just mascara on my eyes, full brows and bright lips. It's so quick to do in the mornings and makes me look put together for work without spending too much time on the application. I do love the whole matching nails and lips thing and I couldn't resist pairing my new Revlon lip gloss with one of my favourite No7 nail polishes. I am excited to start wearing darker colours coming into October and I already have some ideas for make up looks I want to try out. 

What's your favourite thing about Autumn?

Hope you all are having a lovely week so far!

Emma x


*Roxy Music- Same Old Scene

Evening Opulence

As I've mentioned numerous times before, Revlon is my favourite drug store/pharmacy make up brand. I always get excited to see their new releases and this years Autumn collection was no different. The Evening Opulence Collection by Gucci Westman is described as "full- fledged glamour and colour... with over the top brights and rich jewel tones".

The collection consists of three new ColorBurst lip glosses in the shades Bejewelled, Adorned and Embellished, two ColorBurst lip butters in Provocative and Invite Only, four Nail Enamels in the shades Rich, Elusive, Divine and Seductive, a PhotoReady eye palette and a double ended PhotoReady Kajal eye liner. 

After looking at all the products I ended up buying the Rich Nail Enamel and the Embellished and Adorned ColorBurst lip glosses.  

Rich is a gunmetal/pewter shade with micro gold glitter. As with all of the other Revlon polishes I have, this applies beautifully and lasts very well. I can't fault this formula, it's such a pleasure to use. I love the shade too, it's a great Autumn/Winter shade that's so eye-catching on the nails. 

When I first saw Adorned and Embellished I was completely taken back by how beautiful they looked in the packaging. One thing I will say about both of these lip glosses is that they are significantly less glittery when applied than they look in their packaging which I find makes them more wearable for daytime. Embellished is a wine/burgundy shade that's perfect for getting that berry lips look for daytime. Whereas Adorned has a bit more of an impact. It is a very bright pink with a lot more colour pay off than Embellished. In  the campaign photographs Olivia Wilde and Emma Stone wear these glosses with jewel toned eye make which I actually really like for a dramatic evening look. I'm looking forward to wearing this particular shade as it looks so stunning on. 

The formula of the ColorBurst glosses is one of the best I've tried, they look amazing on and are comfortable to wear. The also have a very subtle inoffensive scent which I can't imagine would bother too many people. I already have Bordeaux, Peony and Pink Ice and I wear them all the time. I'm quite picky about lip glosses and these are some of my all time favourites. 

This collection is still available in Boots, but if you see something you like, get it while you can as most stands I've seen have been almost empty. The Nail Enamel is €9.15 and the lip glosses are €11.20 each.

What do you think? Do you like wearing dramatic make up?

Emma x

PS. I just wanted to let you know that I have been shortlisted in the Best Beauty/Fashion blog category for the Blog Awards Ireland 2013. I just wanted to say a huge thank to anyone who voted for me as it was a complete surprise! Thank you to everyone for your continued support of my blog, you don't know what it means to me. You can see a list of the nominees here, check them all out! 

Loftus Hall

I read about the legend of Loftus Hall years ago in a book that we had at home about Ireland. I was probably too young to be reading something like that at the time but it always stuck with me and I have wanted to visit it ever since. As recently as a year and a half ago I started reading up about it again and found out that it had been in a state of disrepair for years and was on the market. I had seen some photos that people had taken of the exterior all boarded up and this further fuelled my desire to see it in person and to see what was hidden away inside. 

I had forgotten all about it until I was reading a leaflet about tourist attractions in Wexford when we arrived at our hotel and I saw Loftus Hall was one of them. It had been bought and opened for tours last October and I was determined for us to visit it while we were down there. Luckily it's just down the road from Hook Lighthouse so we visited it on our way home on the same day. 

Our tour guide told us all lots of stories about the house that would make your skin crawl, especially while standing in those old dark rooms. The most well known story and the one I read about years ago, is that of the Tottenham family (Charles, his wife and his daughter Anne) who were staying in the house back in the 1700s. The story goes that one night a ship arrived at Hook Head and a man who was on the ship called to Loftus Hall and was invited to stay. After being there for a few days he struck up a rapport with Anne Tottenham and one evening the family sat down to play a game of cards. The man dealt a hand, but Anne was missing a card. She bent down to get it from beneath the table and noticed the man had a cloven hoof in place of a foot. She let out a scream which alerted the man to what she had seen and with that he disappeared through the ceiling in a cloud of smoke. Not long after the incident Anne was confined to her room after a breakdown and apparently she spent the rest of her short life staring out the window at the sea waiting for the stranger to return.

There's obviously a lot of speculation about the events that occurred and there are some theories that the young woman had some form of mental illness and the family were embarrassed and tried to explain it away with this story about the stranger.

I personally do believe in spirits, although I'm not completely convinced of this story. However some of the other ones we heard on the tour would really make you believe that something haunts the house. Either that or just a lot of very strange coincidences. Even if you didn't believe in all that, I challenge anyone to go through that house and not feel a tiny bit creeped out.

After the tour we walked down to the small beach beside the house. It happened to be a gorgeous afternoon and it made me feel a lot better after being freaked out by the house. If you get the chance, it's definitely worth seeing the inside of the house, the detail in the decor is unbelievable. The wooden staircase alone is worth seeing, it is one of only three made, the other two being in the Vatican city and on the Titanic.

If you want to see the interior, there are some really great photographs on flickr that someone took in 2008 where you can see the kind of state the place was in before it was finally sold. I loved looking through these photos as we only got to see certain rooms of the house because it's in such bad condition and is unsafe for visitors.

Would you be interested in visiting Ireland's most haunted house?

Emma x