Hit or Miss series : Elf Cosmetics.

Hello!

(Greek version here)

I decided to start a new series of posts, showing off the hits and misses of each company.

Much or less, everyone have heard of ELF. (Eyes, lips, face). Personally, I have introduced it to all of my friends as well.

I own quite a lot of them, so I decided to start with it. (Nyx, Korres, Seventeen,Sleek, Jordana, are some to come…)

Most of the products are good-great-amazing, but there were also a  couple of fails, so ….

Let’s go..

Brushes:

Brushes in general is HIT! I don’t own many of them, but those I own are great. Value for money, and even more.

– Kabuki brush (must be from the mineral line , I don’t remember) : I have tried a couple of more kabukis, this one is the best. not very hard, not very soft, its a HIT!

Studio line:

– Powder Brush: one of ELF’s best seller. Its amazing. I use it for my mineral booster, and sometimes Blush. Defenately a HIT!

– Stipple Brush: I haven’t used another stipple brush to be honest, but I tried and looks good for me. Probably HIT!

–Angled Eyeliner Brush : I don’t know about others, but it doesn’t help me to apply eyeliner. I though would make it easier, not harder. MISS!

–Eyeshadow C brush :  Does what it says.  A regular , good , brush. HIT!

– Contour brush : Like it a lot. Easy to work with. HIT!

normal line:

–Smudge brush:  A bit softer than it should, but good enough anyway. Borderline HIT!

–Smudge eye brush (the one with the sponge) : I love it! Compared to other I own, defenately wins. stable, not big enough to make the sponge go, smooth enough to do what it has to do. HIT!

NAILS:

Elf nail polishes : Its amazing how good the quality is . And the staying power. It will sound crazy, but those colors stay longer

to MY nails (depends on the nail, always) than the OPI (but less than China Glaze).

The one with the gold shimmer, in reality is Fabulous. Defenately a HIT!

LIPS:

Regular lipsticks: I own a couple of them . Voodoo and Posh are my favorite. Good pigmentation, medium staying power, lovely colors.

For about 2 euros each, definately a HIT!

Matte lipstick :  Fruity taste, really Matte result, hydrating. HIT!

Luscious and Hypershine lipgloss: Good staying power, nice colors, sticky. Close to be a HIT!

Lip stains: Stays for a long time, natural result, lovely colors. HIT!

Studio Lip stains: Dries lips, not much of a stain. MISS!

 

FACE AND CHEEKS:

Studio Blushes: A bit light (great for me), medium pigmenation, smooth and nice colors to choose. HIT!

Mineral Booster: I love it , no matter what is really made to do.  Use it as a face powder, with or without foundation, make my skin matt and soft. Definately a HIT!

Bronzer (and highlighter): I use the bronzer from blush and bronzer compact duo instead, but this one is good, too. The highlighter is always in my bag . HIT!

EYE AREA:

Mineral eye primer: Not really different  from regular line. And more expensive. Accidentally a HIT!

Eye primer: Elf’s best seller? I like it, I have dry lids, so I don’t face oilyness problems . HIT!

Eye – liner pen: I own black, ash and brown. Ash is a MISS! Luckily, I gave it a second chance and bought black and brown. HIT!

Lengthening and defining mascara: One of the biggest fails. Does nothing to my eyelashes. I have it 3 months and dried already. A big old MISS!

Under eye concealer (and highlighter) : Medium coverage. Its supposed to be bigger, considering is for under eyes.highlighter is nice. Borderline MISS!

ALL OVER STICKS:

One is the colored one, one is a concealer, and on is a highlighter. Concealer is too dark for me , highlighter  and the colored one is nice 🙂

They smell great. HIT!, I’d say.

EYEBROWS:

Eyebrow kit: I love it. Dearly. I m almost finishing the dark one. I bought a medium one, also. Maybe the best ELF thingie. A must-have HIT!

Eyebrow lifter and filler: Its not as precise or great as the kit, but does the job. The concealer/ivory pencil on the one, is a must for under brow. HIT!

 

EYESHADOWS:

day to night beauty on the go pallete (discontinued?) :  I have only the one here. Some of their shadows are good, some not. Medium pigmenation, some chalky. I might use the blush for making my own cream blush. MISS! 

Flawless eyeshadow pallete: Good pigmentation, awyfull brush. HIT!

Compact – customised pallete (2 blushes – 2 eyeshadows): I love the eyeshadows, and the compact case. Good pigmentation, good amount of product. HIT! Blushes are nice as well, but the size doesn’t help to ”get” with your blush brush. MISS!

Duo eyeshadow: I have rarely used them. Didn’t like the color but its a nice product. Probably a MISS!

Cream eyeshadow: Dislike them. Very oily, and hard to get from there. MISS!

RANDOMS:

Concealer kit: Good pigmentation, ”must” concealer colors, a bit  hard to apply. Could be better. Hardly a HIT !

Blush and bronzer: A must have duo from all. Lovely colors – both. Definately a HIT!

Complexion perfection: I use them all together, to even my face discolorations. HIT!

Eyelash curler: Since I can’t get the SHU UEMURA lash curler in my hands, I won’t change this one. Great and super cheap. Must-have HIT!

Cream eyeliner: Good staying power, bright color. HIT!

Therapeutic conditionic balm: Delicious, really softens the lips but it melts too easy. Overall a HIT!

No photo available: 

(either because I don’t know where they are, or because I know where they are – garbage)

Cream eyeshadow :  I have ”dawn”  one and I love it. Doesn’t oil the eyes, longetivity (killed the word?). HIT!

Eye widener pencil: White is in fact pearl white, and you have to press it strongly. MISS!

Natural radiance blusher: Although a lovely blush, the packaging (the old one, with a slider cover) was awful. MISS for the packaging! I made it a cream blush with vazeline. The new packaging looks cool, though.

Tinted moisturizer and studio tinted moisturizer: Both can’t much my skin tone. Uneven apply to skin. MISS!

clarrifying pressed powder: Maybe my least favorite product ever. Chalky, bad colors, hard to even pick from there. MISS!

Brightening eye colors palette: Nothing compared to the flawless mini palletes. Small, and a bit chalky. MISS!

Eye transformer: usuless. MISS!

What’s your experience with Elf cosmetics? Do you have some favorites and some fails?

Do you liked my HIT and MISS list? Should I continue?

♥

Lots of love

V.

NOTD – Lace / French manicure nails

It’s just a tiny post, just for update.

I had limited time lately, because I am looking for a job. Sorry for my absence. I will post more soon, I have enough things that I want to post about 🙂

 

 

 

 

NOTD -Cloud nails from “Nailside”

Hello Girls!

Weather is getting warmer, right? Time to have some more bright nails, to match the season!

♥

As I wrote in my previous post, I bought an essence polish.. So I though I’d use it , but also I wanted to do something different.

I follow a great and talented blogger , and her blog is nailside.blogspot.com  , and here is her tutorial how to make this cloud nail pattern nails!

So, credits to her:)

Here is what I used:

Essence’s top coat, essence Rassberry swirl, an Olivia (1€ brand) blue color and OPI’s Alpine snow. My base was essence’s new color.

(Sorry for my cuticles. I have an allergy cause due to acrylics.. now are in a ”good” shape, they used to be hard as rock, and yellow)

 

 

Hope you liked it !

 

Have an amazing weekend 🙂

Love

V.

 

Zebra nail tutorial!

Hello beauties!!! I know I still don’t post very often.

But here I come with another nail tutorial! 🙂

♥

♥

 

What you need is:

A white nail polish (with fine brush, or seperate brush)

a red nail polish (same with white)

a black nail polish

and a base coat (and top coat of course)

I chose a Keratin base coat, to enrich my nails a bit.

So, apply the base, and the french manicure them with Black

So, from the top edged corner of the tip, draw a line, almost till the 70-80% of the total nail lenght

You can either do the same from the other side (drag the line till the 70-80%)

Or you can draw a smaller line (thicker maybe) and even play joining the first and the third one

I double-layered them later, cause my white is not that good.

One last step is just to draw a red line on the bottom of the french mani

And voila

This zebra stuff work better in long nails.

My thumb nail broke, and it looks awful with the zebra..

Easy, isn’t it ?

You can adjust the thickness of the white line, and do it as slim/fat as you want

In an older time I made it as I show you there,

I had longer nails (acrylic, lol) , and finer brush

 

Will you try it ?

Hope you liked it !

 

See you soon!

V.

Nail art tutorial no # 1 – Kind-of-flower

Hello there! 🙂

I promised to do some nail art tutorials, so here I am ..!!! Since my nails are kinda short yet, I ll start with those that are more suitable for that lenght…

The one I ll do is the kind-of-flower one, I had in my nail art post

Its not that good (the result), because the white color was a bit dry, and I didn’t have a nail thickener, but, at least you can get the idea of how this is done 🙂

♥

So, what we are going to need is :

-Base coat

-White nail polish

– A nail art polish or a brush for nail art

– a Bright color of your choice

– A dot pencil, (toothpick will do as well)

This is what I used:

Step one :

Form nicely your nails and apply base coat

Step two :

French manicure all nails except the the one in the ring finger (of course, if you want to to the nail art in other finger, its okay)

Step three:

Paint it in the half, your nail, with the color you choose. If its not exactly in the half, doesn’t matter 🙂

 

Step four :

With the nail art brush/polish, draw an arc / half circle in the side of your nail.

Then, draw a circly line from the end of the arc, to the middle, where the pink and bare nail meets.

Do the same on the other side, too

Fill in the ”leaf” that’s on the bare nail, with the pink/bright color

Draw two lines of dots, starting from the middle to the other side of the nail… This time I choose to both use the white color

While the other time, I made one white , one pink

Step five:

Cover with a top coat, and its ready 🙂

 

Hope it helped!!!!

 

Lots of Love

♥

V.

Random nail art!

Hello all!

I just returned back to Athens, so I will start the swatches/posts asap.

Since I haven’t post something the last days, I will just post some nail art I did in the past, that happened to capture with my mobile.

Sorry for the crappy quality, its that my mobiles have only 2mPx camera quality …

 

 

And some Toe Nail art

 

Do you like any?

See you soon

Love,

V.

Magnetic Nail Polish : Imagnet by Tommy G

Hello there!
Long time no post, and long time no nail post so it’s about time…
Before swatching it, a small welcome/thank you note to my new – Greek followers
♥

” Καλως ήρθατε στο blog μου ! Χαίρομαι πολύ που βρήκα πολλές Ελληνίδες  bloggers, που μοιράζονται την ίδια τρέλα με μένα…Να’ναι καλά το Greek Beauty Bloggers :)..

Προς το παρόν γράφω μόνο στα αγγλικά, έαν κάποια θέλει να γράφω και ελληνικά, θα το τολμήσω…

Σας ευχαριστώ πολύ και πάλι…”

♥

And now I introduce you .. the magnetic nail polish…

Imagnet art, by Tommy G.

….A little info about Tommy G.…

Again, Tommy G is a Greek brand producted within EU. It’s part of a bigger company that produces some more cosmetics . You can find their English website here.

I like their nail polishes a lot, and I love  the Keratin base coat, which made my nails hard as rock 🙂  (their sub-brand layla has also very nice nail polishes that last a lot to my nails)

Now, the Imagnet …

(Right-Click + View image  to see them full-size)

I have purchase the nail polish in 2 colors (so far). Silver/grey and burgundy/pink. How the nail is going to look is that the cap , and its pretty accurate, I must say…

 

The secret lies not only in the ingridients of the nail polish (I guess), but also at the magnet in the top of the cap. The shape you are going to have is depended on how you ll hold the cap…

Enough with the theory now… Let’s see it in action….

For start, I applied ”Nail envy” from OPI as a base coat to my ugly looking nails…

 

I put one layer (you can add more if you want) of the magnetic nail laquer and immidiately (before it starts drying), I put the magnet as shown in the picture. The direction that the ”line” of the magnet has, determines the pattern…

As you can see, before having the magnet THAT close to the nail, is simply a nail polish. A metallic nail polish (of course you can wear it just like that, but I find it pointless to use this polish for the wrong reasons..anyway…)

Here are the  angles I tried to some of my nails…

You can do more ”complicated” nail art, by painting your nail in steps, like I did.. (Clumsily, I must admit)

I decided to make to make the simple sided pattern, so here is the final look :

I think they look very nice (the final look, not my awfully looking hands with the tones of cuticles there). Its a very unique result, with no effort, that costs around 7€.

What do you think?

See you soon.

Lots of Love

V.