In honour of the #bbloggers discussion last night...

Recently, more and more brands (British ones, especially) have been beginning to interact with the consumer and blogging world via. social networking - Facebook, Twitter and the like.This is good - it makes customers feel more connected with the brand, gives a platform on which enquiries and complaints can be answered (unless you're Sleek) and I'm just plain more likely to buy from a brand that I know more about.

Unfortunately, this seems to have opened the door for sheer ignorance like this:

And this:

Nothing else I can say to this.

I don't even know why you'd advertise the fact you were reselling a company's products ON THEIR OWN PAGE. WTF. That...words cannot comprehend...

The finest in ghetto ass behaviour



et finalement



Ignore my piss poor photo editing and focus on the matter at hand :P

Honestly. Really? You want to publically beg? You don't see anything wrong with that?

At least, if you're going to be too cheap to buy from a line where everything is a pound, do your research first. A company that sells only in the UK and Ireland, and I mean only in the UK and Ireland, for example, is not going to be interested in sponsoring a US vlogger. That doesn't make any sense. If a customer from the US can't physically order, then why would you market to that consumer base via YouTubers? If a brand already has a program directed at makeup artists, why would you not try and enter through that channel instead of making yourself look unprofessional by begging on Facebook. Someone, please explain to me because I can't even comprehend this, on a thousand different levels.

Why should I care? Because it doesn't just reflect badly on the blogger, it makes all of us look bad. It feeds into the stereotype that beauty bloggers are grasping, cheapasses who are stealing money from print media and are unprofessional. Yes, the stereotype is highly undeserved, but it doesn't help when people behave like this and vindicate journalists and magazine editors who think this way about bloggers. If you've got to do it, at least take it to email? 

As soon as a brand becomes reasonably 'talked about', you get a million and one harpies harrasing their Facebook and Twitter looking for free swag, or to obtain free swag by posting swatches or a review of the cheapest product in the line and then spamming the PR rep with it as if to say "Oooh, look at me. Aren't I such a good customer? SUBSIDISE MY FUTURE SHOPPING TRIPS."

Don't even get me started on the fools that can't type correctly.

Shame that a ranty post was required to bring me out of hiatus, but eh. I enjoy releasing pent up exam frustration through the medium of text. I have like five rants lined up so be prepared for anger.

It's not a good 'un.

 So this is the brush set, all rolled up and that. Looking pretty innocuous.
 Fifteen brushes in total. My mum bought this like last year to give to me for Christmas this year, as it was reduced at the time from like £10 to £7, or something like that. I'm not totally accurate on the prices as this was a gift. You can buy brush sets on eBay for like a fiver, some of which I've been interested in. I'm sure they'll do better than this set, let me tell you.

Still, it's not all negative. The fan brush was a lot thicker than expected, which means it is good for applying pigmented blushes with a light hand, or for brushing away fallout.

That was it.

Seriously.

These ferrules came away from the handle the moment I removed the brushes from the packet. I am not lying.
There is a slight backstory to my first opening of this set. I was soaking my feet in a bucket (lmao, awkward) and decided to inspect the brushes while I waited. In typical fashion, I managed to drop the entire set into the bucket...yes, really. So I rescued them from their impromptu dunking, which only lasted about a second. I dried them off and left them in the air for a day or so.

When I came back to fully road test them, removing them one by one from the roll, I discovered that the four brushes above...were as they were. I was furious, and promptly double checked the rest of the brushes by giving them a small tug of the sort that might be expected when washing it or something.
 Within the brushes there is plenty of fail, too. You see the green in that brush? What on earth is green doing in that brush? That's just weird.
On closer inspection, it looks like dried grass. It was relatively easy to remove by pulling it.
In my hand, it does indeed look like dried grass of some description. Wtf. What is dried grass doing in a make up brush?

To be honest, I'm not impressed with these polishes at all. It's been a long time since I've had to give a polish a bad review but I think these deserve it.
These are about £2.79 from Boots, I think. (I don't know exactly as these were a birthday present, and the Superdrug website is plain stupid - for some reason, these aren't listed even though I know they stock them -.-). So up there with Barry M, price wise. The slightly higher end of the cheap spectrum, anyway.
 The handle feels cheap and weak. It's also too small for my hands, which is hard to do as I have quite small hands anyway. The formula bubbled really easily and I had to take the whole thing off and begin application again.
I usually don't mention the brush in my reviews, but this one was a very square shape and really weak and flimsy. It felt like there weren't enough bristles in the brush and it seemed to be a tad too short.
I do like the colour, though. It's a bright orange toned red that probably has a million lipstick dupes you could wear it with, so if you like coordinating your lipstick with your nail polish by all means, go ahead.

I'm just not impressed. I hear good things about Collection 2000's glitter eyeliners, for example, all over the place and many of their products seem to be well loved so this is just a bit of a disappointment really.

- No, I haven't forgotten about the giveaway lol, and also I still need to do one of those "November" posts. It's all coming lol :P

 So anyway. I bought this ages ago from Poundland, where as I'm sure you've all guessed, everything costs one or less of your finest British pounds.
 I wasn't actually sure what to expect when I got these - I was a false nail virgin up until I put these on. So inside the packet, you have about two or three different thicknesses and curve...nesses for your nails. I appreciated this as newborn children have wider nail beds than I so I could find nails that fit. So far, so good. At first, I only put a little bit of glue. I soon realised my folly.
 The next day, mother dearest wanted us to go shopping (this was during the Half Term break) and so I was like, "Fine, whatever, only if you buy me pizza." As I was putting the shopping bags in the boot of the car (because we are THAT eco-friendly, we take our own shopping bags and look all self-righteous and that) disaster struck. The middle fingernail flew off and landed unceremoniously on the floor. Boo. Then I realised that I needed more glue. So I reglued it on using a lot more glue. Same for all of the fingers actually. So if you're planning on purchasing these, don't hold back glue wise or don't use the glue supplied.
 Check out the length on these!
They made my fingers look really nice and glamourous, but I hadn't realised just how much of a pain having incredibly long, potentially breakable fingernails is. Take typing. The keys on my laptop are dumb anyway, let alone with those nails. How was I meant to touch-type with those beasts? I had to resort to the "two fingers" method.

Great for scratching though. :D
The glue supplied ^ It actually smelt and felt a lot like superglue, which I have been intimately acquainted with on many an occasion, which left me slightly worried, but it did come off. Eventually.

Yes. The removal.
I took these off about two days after I put them on because the fact I couldn't type properly really bugged me and also I had tried to paint them, removed the polish with non-acetone remover (I double and triple checked that it was indeed acetone-free) and yet it removed the white part of the nail and left the false nails a lot softer and weaker than they had been previously, which I wasn't pleased about seeing as it said on the packet that you could use acetone-free remover on them. So I soaked them in acetone remover and it took ages for them to come off (had to use the orange stick in the packet to prise them off my fingers) and loads of glue was left over which then had to be scraped off. All in all, it's kind of a "well what do you expect for a pound?" type deal. *shrugs*

So I opened my inbox the other day to find an email from someone that I didn't recognise, which I'm going to paraphrase (and change, because I don't want to name names)

"You've recently commented on yerfacesinnit* blog and we'd just like to notify you of (happy event)"

Ah, I thought. That's nice. Don't know how you managed to get my email, but whatevs. I read on:

"If you'd like to send donations or gifts here's the address."

O_o

Lol wasn't expecting that one.

I don't know, am I being overly cynical on this occasion? First off I assume my email was obtained from a comment as opposed to someone taking the time to find my blog and then look at my email address, which is at the top of this page. I don't know how to do that but even so, I won't do it to you guys, don't worry.
Secondly, I just find something slightly off about soliciting gifts off people I don't really know off the internet. I find it a bit cheeky, really, but maybe that's me. Anyway. What do you guys think?

I knew you didn't think it was possible...but it is. I'd be ashamed if the colour wasn't so great.

My sister recieved a set of four, small, generic nail polishes from Boots for a birthday party when she was, I dunno, eight or something. She was tidying up her room and decided to give them to me as she never used them and I love doing my nails.

You see the little rings on the top? Those are so cute :P
Anyway, I didn't hold much hope for them until I tried the the second to last shimmery glittery one with the purple ring over Nails Inc Sloane Mews to go to school. Not only was it totally school friendly, but it looked great. And today, I tried out the hot pink one at the beginning, and WOW.


Yum.
I assure you that these pictures do not do this baby justice. It is GORGEOUS. It's such a hot pink that it's almost neon, and it's majorly shiny without a topcoat. I want to eat it. It's great.
I noticed a few bubbles after I put the topcoat on, though, which was disapointing. And the formula is quite runny, you do have to work to stop it flooding your cuticles. Still, this was only two coats and it had reached bottle colour. I think I can overlook the rest of the annoyances just for the colour :P I don't know how you'd buy this though. I'm under the impression it's aimed at seven year olds wanting to play dressup or something. Sigh. Boots No7 is good though, I doubt you'd find this colour there. So, a breakdown of the set:

First, this is the only opaque one and the one featured in the pictures. It has a hint of bluey shimmer to it and is just generally gorgeous. Like I said, there's some bubbling but the colour...yum. So much better in real life, I promise. These are all 5 ml so three of them are equal to one bottle of OPI but as I see it, I'll get through it faster and then can franken with the empty bottles, haha :P Plus, the cute rings on top can be painted the colour of the franken so I'll have matching rings like I've seen so many other bloggers do! Yey!

This is also really good. It's silver glitter suspended in a "pink" mixture, but when worn as a standalone polish (as they recommend, which I've only done once for school) it was practically clear. I wore this over a very unopaque white (Sloane Mews, which I reviewed in the link) and it was slightly noticeable, but not much. The glitter was good, though. It's very fine and gives it that mysterious shine.


Bleuch. Disapointment. This confetti thing was horrendous. I couldn't even get any! Only one or two pieces would end up on my brush and the confetti looked like an accident on my nails. What a shame, because it looked nice in the bottle.
I don't know if you can tell by the picture, but this has long strands of silver glitter in it, though they are quite sparse. I haven't tried this yet but I assume it'll work like the blackcurranty coloured one above, which would be a disapointment. Still, I have hope.

I think the hot pink colour is so great I can't bear to draw over it! Sorry to keep going on about the colour but seriously, in real life it is gorgeous. Also, I'd just like to say thank you to everyone that has commented recently! (Susie, WizardsOfBling, Crystaliciousss) It makes me really happy :P

EDIT: You guys know I'm on the Easter holidays at the moment? I forgot to mention :P In the UK we get about two weeks off for Easter, so that's why I'm having very brightly coloured nails at the moment. When we go back to school, I'll have to go back to sheers and subtle nail art (grr) until the weekend. I'm thinking of swatching stuff on my toes instead to show it to you guys, though I feel kind of weird flashing my feet online...what do you guys think?

Lena
xxx