Five Favourites: OCTOBER! And a catch-up...

Hi Everyone,

This is the first post I've sat down to write in a while, the last ones have been scheduled and I've just been popping in every now and again to adapt them and check for comments etc. So thanks for bearing with me! I know I've been absent for a while, since I got back from Holland, but I've been really busy and stressed out! 

Basically my last few weeks have been like this: Son has a tummy bug for a week, boyfriend gets home from being away for a month, we have a week of stress before our son's birthday and party, we pack and travel to Holland, I think I have seasickness but really I've caught the bug from my son so I'm ill for three days and can't eat, I get better and we enjoy our holiday, boyfriend gets ill the day before we travel home, we get home and have a stressful week buying things and trying to plan our house move (next time boyfriend gets home)... And then this morning we got up at 5am, drove the hour and a half to Heathrow only to realise my boyfriend's flight is tomorrow, so we have to do the whole thing again then!!!

So I've tried my hardest but blogging has been about #2182984 on my priorities list! I have my friend staying from tomorrow until Friday so I should still be able to blog then, and then I'll be back to normal! For November anyway... God knows how I'm going to handle December. We're moving everything about 200 miles away and we only have a couple of weeks to do it in, and it's Christmas!!!

Anyway, that's my update! So onto my Five Favourites for the month!

1. My son's first birthday and party!

Caleb's first birthday cake!

This month my son turned one! It makes me feel so old to say I have a one year old, and I think he's growing up too fast, but nonetheless it's amazing to see a little person you created grow up from a newborn into a real human!

I made his cake and I'm still so proud of it! The only think I didn't make was the cubes with Caleb's name on and the number 1, I bought those from eBay. Everyone was really impressed with it and wants me to make cakes for their kids! It took a lot of planning (about a month and a half of research and practice bakes) but I really enjoyed the process!

2. My holiday.

Martinikerk, Groningen - photo from Google

Vomiting aside, I had a really lovely time! My Dad has lived over in Groningen for 8 years now and I wish I could go over and see him more often. We went on the ferry this time and took our car and it was so nice, we had everything we needed and it was a lot less stressful even though it took longer. Having our own space was amazing in comparison to sitting in an airport and then on a plane with a hyperactive child!

3. My boyfriend was home

Photo from Google

Even though we've had a stressful time while he's been home, it's been lovely to have him here. We had a few nice family days out, and he's been helping me with my driving (like forcing me to drive on the motorway!)

4. I got a car!

My actual car!

This month (the day after my son's birthday in fact) my boyfriend bought me a car! Originally I wasn't going to get one because I was going to drive our family car (a BMW X5) but I wanted something little to call my own so I got a Renault Clio. It's a 2007 (but 56 plate) silver one and I love it. I did hit another car within the first 24 hours and scratched the paint off my rear bumper, but I bought a paint pen and it doesn't look TOO bad! I've been promised that if I don't hit anything else for 6 months, I can get the bumper re-sprayed, so we'll see how that goes!

5. We're moving!

Photo from Google

This month we made the arrangements for our move. We're moving from Hampshire up to Norfolk, which is where we're both from. The house we're buying is really nice, with a big garden, room to extend and a lot of potential. Yesterday we went and bought nearly the whole of the IKEA kids section for our son's nursery. I've had a jungle room planned out for him since before he was born but we've been renting so we couldn't decorate. Doing his room will be so exciting!

OK, so those are the highlights of my month, it's been quite an eventful one! I don't think much will be going on in November so we'll see what my Five Favourites look like then. 

Hope you've enjoyed this post, leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

Nails Inc Park Walk

Hi Everybody,

I hope you all had a lovely weekend! We took my son and my six year old brother to a petting zoo on Saturday and then I spent yesterday chilling out in front of the TV and eating! It's nice to have a chill out day every so often! Before we know it, we'll be home again so we really need to enjoy our little bit of time away...

I can't believe I'm leaving tomorrow night! I've had such a lovely time over here so I'm sad to be going already. It's a shame we could only stay for a week but we haven't got much time before my boyfriend goes away for work again! 

Tonight I have a Nails Inc Polish for you. I swatched this months ago but never posted it, so I thought now would be as good a time as any!

Park Walk is a cerise creme with a high gloss finish. I love buying bright pink nail polish, I always buy them and then say I should wear them more often, and I really should! I love this colour and looking back at these swatches now I'm thinking maybe I should put it on now! 

The formula on this was perfection! It was nearly a one coater for me, but I used two coats. The photos below are without topcoat:

Natural light

Flash - this is a very red toned pink

I hate having to take flash photos! Now the weather is getting worse I'm probably going to have to do it a lot! Unfortunately my house is a shoebox (as I mentioned the other day) so I really don't have any room for a light box! I can't wait until I do, it'll be nice to take photos that aren't affected by the English weather! 

I bought this polish in a set of 7 in TKMaxx for £24.99. If you like Nails Inc, TKMaxx is the place to go, they have a ton of different sets and they're a lot cheaper that the retail price!

Pretty and Polished Sand Art

Hi Guys,

Quick post from me tonight, I'm so tired! I've been busy going out and about and I'm really enjoying myself. My boyfriend seems to like it here, so I think we'll be coming over here more often. I've flown over here just me and my son before, but it has taken my boyfriend and I ages to come over. I think it's the case of now we've done it once, we'll do it again and again.

I've got something a bit special to show you today, this is one of the polishes that I've wanted for ages! Pretty and Polished was one of many indie brands that didn't ship to the UK (this has recently changed and now they offer international shipping) so I bought this polish from Llarowe when they launched this brand.

Sand art is made up of green, yellow, blue and purple matte glitter in a clear base. I chose to layer this over a dark purple polish from MUA. I'm not sure this was the right layering choice... I have other layering combinations in mind for this, one of which is Models Own Aciied, so I'll have to try that and then post the results. 

The formula of this polish was really good, it went on really smoothly. I find with some indies that there isn't enough base for all the glitter but this isn't the case with Sand Art! 

The photos below show one coat over dark purple.

Natural light

Sunlight

I love Sand Art, I'm just a bit disappointed with the base colour that I picked! Even so, I still think it looks pretty!

I bought this polish from Llarowe for around $11, but I can't find it on their site so I can't put a link! You can buy it direct from Pretty and Polished here where it retails for $8.50 and, as I mentioned before, they offer international shipping!

Barry M Retro Collection Electric Dreams

Hi Guys,

I'm a couple of days into my holiday now and I'm loving having a break! Even though my routine doesn't change when I'm away, I still go to bed and get up at the same time every day, it's just nice to have a change of scenery. I love Holland so much and I really want to make sure I spend more time here, I don't get to come over here as much as I'd like these days, so I want that to change!

Tonight I have one of the Barry M Retro Collection polishes to show you. Honestly I only own this because they had a deal where I would get it for free if I bought two other polishes! I thought I'd get it because I don't actually own another blue exactly like this!

Electric Dreams is a blue polish with a gorgeous blue shimmer. In the shop the shimmer didn't look like much, but when I got it on my nails I couldn't believe how pretty it was!

My only complaint with this is the formula. It was okay, but it was cheap. It was that kind of formula where you could use four coats and you'd still see some visible nail line. Not in a squishy, jelly type way, just in a cheap, bad coverage nail polish!

Here are two coats without topcoat: 

Natural light

Sunlight - Very Bright, this isn't a camera flash!

This is pretty isn't it? Formula issues aside, this is a beautiful nail polish. It's something I can imagine using as a base for some stamping nail art.

If you would like to buy this nail polish, it retails at £1.99 at Superdrug and on the Barry M Website.

Revlon Sparkling Over Black

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick post from me tonight! I arrived safely in Holland, the ferry journey was slightly hectic... My son doesn't like sleeping in the same room as us but we all got an okay sleep. Travelling at night isn't my kind of thing. I like to wake up in the morning, travel during the day and then get into bed at the end of it, but having our son means it's easier for us to travel when it's dark and he can sleep.

I'm just glad I'm at my Dad's now, and Caleb has his own room so we'll all sleep well tonight!!!

Tonight I have the second part of my Revlon Sparkling post. I said in my previous post on Friday that I would be showing it at some point so here it is!

The photos below show one coat over Cult Nails Nevermore:

Natural light

Sunlight

Isn't this just so pretty? This is the kind of classic but girl combo that I never get tired of. It's classy but still has enough glitter to keep me interested! 

As I stated before, this polish retails for £6.49 but I got it in a 2 for £7.50 deal. Cult Nails Nevermore retails for $10 on their website.

See you on Thursday!

NOTW: Models Own Tape Mani

Hi Guys,

I made it out alive after the party! It went really well, I was so pleased with how everything went. My son really seemed to enjoy it and he was spoiled rotten bless him!

Today we've just been packing the last bits, our ferry leaves at half past ten this evening to Holland. We've got a little cabin so we can sleep until we get there at half past six tomorrow morning. I can't wait to see my Dad, and I can't wait to show my boyfriend around Groningen. My Dad has lived over there since 2004 and until I was about 18 I used to spend a month there each summer and go over there for all of my holidays, so I know the place really well, it's almost like a second home to me!

Today I have a Nails Of The Week post. Most of my swatches are done in quick succession, but if I do a nice manicure, I like to keep it on for as long as possible. I did these nails on Tuesday and I love them! Everything is from Models Own and I bought the polishes in the half price sale they had a week and a half or so ago.

I used Aciiied on my thumb, index finger, and pinkie and Tangerine Queen on my middle and ring fingers. Aciiied is a chartreuse creme and is the definition of ugly/pretty! In fact, chartreuse is my least favourite colour in the world. When I was a child, there was a Crayola crayon called Spring Green that I hated so much that I never used... And on a separate note, I'm only realising now as an adult that crayons smell terrible... But back to the crayon, here it is:

Photo from Google

Anyway, onto my mani! I painted my fingers as I said above, then I used some striping tape (£2.19 for 12 rolls) to mark out zig zags on my nails. I then used Models Own In the Navy to go over my whole nail. One coat was enough, and then I carefully peeled off the tape to reveal neon lines. It's worth mentioning that I painted on Aciiied and Tangerine Queen yesterday so the polish was totally dry. If you're doing this in one go, use quick dry topcoat and leave it around 20 minutes before doing the tape part!

Here's what it looked like:

Doesn't it look cool? I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

All polishes retail for £5 on the Models Own site but I got them for £2.50 each during the sale.

Revlon Sparkling

Hi Everyone,

IT'S FRIDAY! And it's my son's birthday party tomorrow! I can't believe all the hard work and stress will culminate in a two hour get-together! I have my fingers crossed that by tomorrow at 12pm everything has come together: the cake will still look perfect, the cupcake tower will be flawless, the sausage rolls and pizzas will be cooked to perfection, the room will be decorated and my son will be having fun!

Tonight I have a Revlon polish to show you and it is called Sparkling. I bought this at the same time as I bought Radiant, in a 2 for £7.50 deal and I love it. It has pink hex glitter of different sizes in a clear base. 

The formula of this polish was fantastic, no complaints at all, the distribution of the glitter was really good and it dried pretty smoothly considering it contained such chunky glitter. 

The photos below show one coat over Barry M Bright Pink:

Natural light

Sunlight

Isn't this so pretty? At first I wasn't sure about this layering combo, but the more I look at it, the more I like it. I really want to try this over a burgundy polish, that's my next mission. I have swatches of this over black which I'll be posting next week, it's worth waiting for, so pretty!

This polish retails for £6.49, but I bought it in a 2 for £7.50 deal.

Have a great weekend and hopefully I'll be back after the weekend with good news from the party!

NYC Colors Park Ave

Hi Guys,

So yesterday was my son's birthday! I can't believe my little boy is one year old! It makes me feel about a hundred years old. 

We had a lovely day, I took him to playgroup and he saw some of his friends, and he loved his presents. We bought him a black and white Smart Trike Recliner which I love, I can't wait to take him everywhere in it. And we got him a 100 First Words Book, and some jingle bells. We decided not to buy him too much because other people bought him things, and our house is like a shoe box, we outgrew it the second Caleb was born, so next year will be the year he gets really spoiled, there will be boxes everywhere! 

Anyway, now all I have to worry about is his party. I say "all I have to worry about," the party has always been more stressful. When I get to my Dad's on Tuesday morning (we're getting the Monday night ferry) I'll probably collapse with exhaustion, I'm running on adrenaline!

Anyway, today I have a perfect autumn colour for you all. I picked this up in Superdrug a while ago. It's not the sort of colour I go for at all, but for some reason it stood out for me. It's called Park Ave and it's a taupe creme. 

The photos below show two coats with no topcoat. These NYC Colors polishes are super glossy!

Natural light

Sunlight

Normally when it comes to autumn I want dark greens, navy and burgundy, but I'm glad I have this now to mix things up a bit, it's a perfect neutral shade! It also looks to me like it could be a dupe for Barry M Cappuccino. I don't own that, like I said, I don't usually go for colours like this, but looking at swatches I can see they look pretty similar.

The one thing I don't like about this polish is the name. I find these names annoying. It's like Nails Inc, they just seem to have a list of names of landmarks (with NYC Colors it's streets) and anything goes with anything! I love New York, but to me, this doesn't remind me of Park Avenue. And don't even get me started with Lexington Yellow... I stayed in a hotel on Lexington Ave and yellow wasn't the right colour to represent it!

I bought this from Superdrug where it retails for £1.79

The Next Two Weeks and a Bit of Seduction

Hi Guys, 

I'm sorry I didn't post yesterday! My boyfriend came home today and so I had a lot to do before he got here... This means ten million loads of washing so there is enough space in the laundry basket for his pile of clothes that he never fails to bring home after a trip offshore. Anyway, I failed miserably in my task. My washing machine wasn't working last week so everything built up, and three loads later I still hadn't made a dent in the pile! 

Anyway, I decided to edit a bunch of photos and write posts that I can schedule to cover this week and some of next week. I figured sacrificing my post last night was for the greater good. I'm going to be so busy this week!

Here's what I have to do:

• Wrap presents for my son (his first birthday is tomorrow)
• Make sure he has an amazing day
• Take him to playgroup in the morning to see his friends on his birthday
• Bake a ten inch Victoria Sponge sandwich, making sure it isn't dry
• Colour white fondant icing: light blue, dark blue, red, yellow, green and black
• Ice the ten inch cake with a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse scene
• Ice a six inch dummy red with yellow stars
• Somehow cover a makeshift polystyrene dome in black fondant and make some black fondant ears
• Make sandwiches, cupcakes, sausage rolls (cook, not make)
• Source a pasting table from somewhere
• Host a party on Saturday
• Pack on Sunday/Monday
• Take a ferry over to Holland to visit my Dad for 8 days

So as you can see, blogging really doesn't have a place in this schedule! And needless to say, I'll be so proud of my cake no matter how it turns out that I'll be taking photos to post!

Anyway, tonight will be pretty brief on the polish front, this was really to let you know what will be going on over the next week and a half! 

This polish is one of my favourites. I raved about this collection, bought the whole thing and posted it all, but I didn't post this polish for some reason! It's Cult Nails Seduction and it's from the Divas and Drama Collection. I wore it a while ago (short nails) and so I snapped a few pics, but it was raining, so I could only get a photo in the natural light, not sunlight!

Seduction is a multicoloured flakie. My favourite thing about it is the blue, I just love blue flakies! Here is two coats of Seduction over one coat of Nevermore:

Natural light

You can buy Seduction here and Nevermore is also available from Cult Nails and both retail for $10. This is limited edition so get it before it's gone. I have a backup of this that I may use for a giveaway one day, maybe a big one, like if I ever get to 250 far in the future! I have a feeling that by that time you won't be able to get hold of it and I won't want to give it away!

See you soon!

PS: This is a scheduled post! Did you realise? I'm going to try and keep them as natural as possible because there's nothing I hate more than reading scheduled posts where it's obvious they were written in advance. What I'll do is, I'll pre-write them and then add on a bit more before the schedule time to make them a bit more personal.

VO5 Hot Oil Treatment Review

Hi Guys!

I'm so sorry I didn't post last night! Since Wednesday evening I've been living a nightmare... I noticed a dripping sound coming from underneath my kitchen sink, so I thought I should try and tighten up a connection under there, big mistake! Water started coming out like a hose! I turned the water off and then realised there was an isolator thing just before the leak, so the stopped coming out. The only bad thing is that my dishwasher and washing machine are now out of action! The last thing I need while looking after a baby is no way go wash clothes, and I don't have time to eat, let alone wash up! Last night I'd had enough of life so I didn't feel like posting!

Anyway, I have something slightly different to share with you today!

I managed to find my camera (here's a tip, always double and triple check places, you never know what you might find) and on it were my review pictures for a hair product I mentioned in my Five Favourites: September post. This is a product that really worked for me, so I thought I should post about it!

VO5 Hot Oil

First things first, I should mention that I'm obsessed with my hair. Not in a vain way, but I've spent a lot of years being unhappy with the length of my hair and its growth rate... Looking back at pictures I've had a terrible amount of growth over last five years! Apparently the average rate of hair growth is 1cm/month, so if you're supposed to get a trim every 6 weeks, progress is pretty impossible. My hair has probably made 18cm progress in the last 5 years with haircuts. Yes, that's 60 months....... 

Lets see some (embarrassing) photos to prove it shall we?! These range from summer 2007 (I was 17) to winter 2011 (I was 21). I'm 22 now, so the before and after photos show my hair as it is now.

The pink incident resulted in damage and a drastic need for a cut and colour!
I feel like my hair hasn't grown since November 2010!

So that's enough back story, onto the review! Click "Read More" to read the review, this post is super long and pic heavy, so I thought I would put in a jump break!

Models Own Mirrorball Collection

Hi Everyone!

You may or may not have noticed I have re-vamped my blog. I think this reflects my style better. The fact that I only had a right hand sidebar used to annoy me (I have a thing about symmetry) and now I've added a labels search bar, and a widget to show which posts are most popular each week. 

Let me know what you think about my new layout, and if you think there is anything I should change or add, by leaving me a comment. Or you can drop me an email at trulypolishedblog@gmail.com.

Anyway, as promised, here are my swatches of the Models Own Mirrorball Collection! This is my first time posting a whole collection at ones, and editing these photos took me AGES, that's why this post is so late, but it needed to be done. I won't go into huge details about each colour, they were all very alike formula wise. Great formula, I didn't need to dab anything on. The polishes dried really quickly, and relatively smoothly considering they have such huge pieces of glitters in them!

What I love about this collection is the shard type glitters. Each polish has a shard shape and they're colourful holographic glitter shards! They are so gorgeous!

I decided to make this post exclusively Models Own, so the layering colour is also Models Own in every picture. I layered two layers of glitter over the base colour in each photo. All photos are without topcoat.

Before I start the swatches, here is a collection of macro shots from the bottles!

Aren't they so beautiful? I love bottle macro shots, they really show off the glitter combination and give you an idea of possible layering undies!

Click "Read More" to see swatches of each individual polish.

Revlon Radiant

Hi Guys,

I posted on Twitter earlier (@truly_polished) saying I was hopefully going to have the Models Own Mirrorball collection up tonight, but as you can probably guess by the title of this post, that didn't happen! I have about 200 photos of the collection to look at and I was running super late this evening! I can only blame this on two of my favourite bloggers: Jen from The Polishaholic and Cristina from Let Them Have Polish... 

They both posted the This is Halloween Collection by Dollish Polish today. I love the collection but I kept missing the restocks. Their swatches were so pretty that I decided to buy five of the shades... And if you've ever ordered from Dollish Polish, you'll know that's not easy to do. I spent about 20 minutes refreshing the Spectral Pup page and trying to add it to my basket, then when that was in, I quickly picked another three I wanted that weren't in such high demand then set about trying to get Vampires Coven. Ten minutes of refreshing the page later, I checked out with my full order!

Then I had to make my dinner, a very time consuming vegetable risotto! So the last thing I wanted to do was look at and edit 2912982430934 Models Own photos... So onto Revlon!

Revlon Radiant is made up of small turquoise hex glitter, with larger green and silver hex glitter, in a clear base. I saw it and I had to get it, I'm loving how mainstream brands are putting out so many chunky glitters!

I used two coats of Radiant over Cult Nails Nevermore for the photos below:

Sunlight

Natural light

After I swatched this over black I wanted to see it over a blue, so I chose Barry M Retro Blue... I'm really not crazy about this combo, I should have picked a more green toned blue. This blue is too warm in my eyes. It's pretty but doesn't go with the glitter very well. However, I do like the fact that the blue polish looks like it takes on a shimmer under the glitter.

This is two coats of Radiant.

I really like this nail polish. Revlon isn't a brand I usually buy from, mainly because they don't really have anything that I find interesting, but also because their polish is overpriced in my opinion. I have probably ten polishes from them and most of them are from Poundland! I've bought two in Boots, one online and got one in a swap... 

This retails for £6.49 but I bought it as part of a 2 for £7.50 deal, that's a price I can deal with! I can't remember if I bought it from Boots or Superdrug, I think it might have been Superdrug, they usually have the "2 for......" deals.