Soap & Glory Girl-O-Whirl Review

I have only just recently began to broaden my makeup horizons. I still remember the first time I bought my first mascara over $10; it was the summer of 2012 and my boyfriend had taken me to Mykonos, Greece as a present and on our way back I stopped by the beauty Duty Free area and just stood there and stared at Lancôme's Hypnôse Doll Eyes mascara. Approximately 3 minutes after my purchase, I curled my lashes and BAM! Fell in love.

Before that I was familiar only with higher end eye shadows, I had a tiny collection of MAC, a palette by Too Faced and a couple of Estée Lauder products, and a lot of expensive ass skin care products from all over the world (I'm a fan/junkie of Korean skin care products) .

Now that I've been living in the UK for over 3 years I have gotten into makeup a lot more. There is far much more to pick from, high street brands are known for being just as good as the high end cosmetics.

I've come to notice Soap & Glory gaining popularity in America lately, I've seen it ridiculously over-priced at Sephora.com but I don't blame Sephora of course, it's like trying to get San Francisco's Benefit products over here (I had a mini heart attack when I saw their boi-ing concealer at nearly £18 which is $30). My first Soap & Glory makeup purchase was the One Heck of a Blot face powder and I have been hooked ever since.

Over Christmas time Boots had several beauty and spa gift ideas that I was tempted on getting for myself... selfish you say? Not at all teehee! I merely was thinking about reviewing all of them to help my readers/followers decide what to purchase and what to avoid. Good save!

Anyway! I went to Boots today for a quick browse and stumbled upon the leftovers at 70% off! I went straight for Soap & Glory's "Girl-O-Whirl" set because I wanted to try a little more than just their face powder which I already loved. I had already gotten curious about their Sexy Mother Pucker glosses and their brow shaper/highlighter.

So here it is:

 


And what it contains:

Here is the package description of what it contains.

The mascara comes in black, the brush isn't anything extraordinary but it's good for and everyday use mascara. I don't think it's water proof (doesn't state otherwise anywhere on the packaging.

This one has to be my fav. The Sexy Mother Pucker Gloss Stick in Nudist, which is a beautiful sheer pink gloss. Smells of sweets and goes on like butter. It feels great on the lips, they feel moisturized and girly :) 

The eye shadows aren't really worth talking about. Top left very light beige color is actually very well pigmented
and serves well as a base color to prime your lid. The rest of the colors were very sheer
and didn't build up very well aside from the matte grey at the bottom right.
And as you can see the eye shadow brush was an embarrassment, almost as terrible as my grammar. 

The Solar Powder multi-shade bronzer was actually quite lovely,
a little on the shimmery side for my liking but I would still use it.

And this is the Glow All Out Luminizing Face Powder which to me looked more like an adorable peachy blusher. It too is a tad shimmery and sadly for me (acne scarring and all that shit) I can't really use shimmery things on my face without looking like a bruised peach when using too much shimmer.


Also it comes with 6 panned lipsticks which are identical to the previous year's lipstick gift set Boots offered.
I'll upload a picture tomorrow with both side to side.

Sounds great right? WRONG!!! There is one unforgivable flaw with this gift set.

THE PACKAGING! It's driving me insane. It comes in a large over-sized zip bag which would be great if the mount where they glued all the eye shadows and lipsticks on wasn't made of the flimsiest plastic on earth. I was terrified to take out the mascara and gloss in fear of breaking all the eye shadows and face powders!

I honestly think this gift set would have been worth those £40 YES 40 pounds if the packaging would've had a bit more invested into it. Like Tarte's or Benefit's cardboard packaging, it's earth friendly and "hellava" lot more sturdy!

I know, I seem far too upset for something so petty BUT in my defense; our house hasn't had heating for 6 days now and cheap ass plastic isn't worth 40 quid! 

I'm out, I need to get a hold of this damn plumber and kill him. It's Winter! In England! Dafuq! 

Golddigger Manicure

Boring Monday afternoon, the BF playing some Assassin's Creed IV and I just had pasta for dinner. I don't want to move but I look at my tattered hands (more like my chipped away mani) and gather the strength to go up to the 3rd floor bathroom... where I have all my nail polishes. I hate myself for putting them soooo far away.

What shall I do? Glitter? Matte grey? Something neutral? Or should I just leave them natural for a while? ....hah! Yeah, sure.

Oh hey, I haven't actually ever tried anything with white nail polish aside from that Ruffian Manicure I did on my mom for Christmas. Let's see what crazy idea I can come um with...

A couple of coats of white later

So the white looked very purtty on it's own but a little too "blah" for someone who's trying to build up a reputation in the nail industry. So I went upstairs... again! This time I grabbed one of those eye-shadow applicators my mom got me for this sort of thing (she know I use brushes not applicators for my actual makeup). I decided to try a gold ombre with Revlon's Gold Coin which is a lovely gold color and currently one of my favorites. I began to dab away.

The results; better than I expected. Lets add a top coat, but why any top coat? I went for Bourjois Vampire Vanity with gold specks in it! 

I actually think it looked more chic without the specks but I was not willing to go upstairs again to get a different top coat LOL! It's Monday! Cut me a break :P 

My Nail Polish Collection

As most of my friend know, I do love my nail polishes, my mother gifted me about 15 on Christmas which I LOVED! My humble collection used to be a lot larger before I moved to the UK, sadly I had to down size when I moved.

I also have to admit that if I don't feel a colour looks good on me because of my skin tone I almost immediately give it away, or if I feel a polish is getting too old I toss it in the bin.

So here they are, my 'lil gems :)

Starting up top then left to right: Vintage Rose, Gold Coin, Minted, Mischievous, Midnight Affair, Quick Dry, Steel-her Heart, Matte Top Coat, Snow Bunny, Copper Penny.

All in this photo are Revlon nail polishes.

All by Sally Hansen, starting left to right: Hard to Get, Firm Fig, Heart of Stone, Unbreakable Heart, Mighty Mango, Die-Hard Fan, Tough Chick, Green With Envy, Deep Purple, Blue Me Away, Lacey Lilac, Sun Kissed, Cherry Red, Jaded, Water Color, Ink Splatter (Crackle), Coral Collide (Crackle), Fractured Foil (Crackle), & Fuzzy Fantasy (Fuzzy Coat).

Mix and Match my randoms: Bourjois Vampire Vanity, Gosh's Frosted Purple, Rimmel's Ruby Crush, Claire's Little Peacock, Claire's Teal, Rimmel's Ultra Shine Top Coat, Butter London's Bluey, Butter London's The Black Knight, Color Club Neon Green (that's not the actual name, apparently I peeled off the name label LOL), Essie's Power Clutch, Tangerine Crush by L'Oreal, New Money by L'Oreal, & Diamond Carat Top Coat by L'Oreal (my favorite top coat!).

These I had to Google because the bottle only had the number on it: Covergirl's 315 Timeless Rubies, 125 Peaches & Cream, 110 Snow Storm, Barry M's Diamond Glitter & Duchess, and the white, silver, & black nail art kit by Kiss.

Starting with pink: Something Sweet by China Glaze, Liquid Leather by China Glaze, Laugh My Art Off by Finger Paints, Art Nouv-Yellow by Finger Paints, OPI's Polka.com (I freaking love this one!), OPI's I Saw... U Saw... We Saw... Warsaw, OPI's Eurso Euro, & Cinderella by SinfulColors.

Hope you enjoyed as much as I did :P

On a side-note; I also have Gel polishes, many gel polishes. As you mau know, these don't come in see through bottles and some names are just numbers. So I didn't even bother in listing them here.

Although I can promise you another post with all the gel polishes with swatches! 

The Ruffian Manicure

I have recently taken a liking for this particular manicure, it looks very chic, sophisticated, and so incredibly versatile. It can be done with an incredible array of colours and can be personalized to suit you and your style; whether it be girly chic or sassy vamp the look you're going for.

The first time I heard the proper name of this manicure was thanks to YouTube Manicure Guru MissJenFABULOUS (her YouTube channel) and have been hooked ever since.

I began to search online where I could get the Ruffian stencils and the only places I could find them were in the US, and there are 2 things I can't purchase on that side of the world: Perfumes & Nail Polish, sadly companies (B&BW, Birchbox, Sephora, etc) cannot ship these 2 products to my APO address and shipping them to my European address would eat away at my income like I eat away at cookies. So what can a girl do? Improvise.

This is when I searched YouTube on how to do it and MissJen was amazing at explaining step by step how to do this on video. So I shall try my best to do so with pictures and a simple explanation.

Step 1
Start off with a clean buffed nail, soak your fingers in warm soapy water to loosen your cuticle and easily push it back, alternatively Sally Hansen's Cuticle Remover works in a jiffy. Girls in the UK can buy it here at Boots, in the States you can go to your local Walmart, most of them have this product. After your nails are nice and dry apply your favorite Top Coat.

Step 2
Choose your colours and design. I'm going with gold and black, only doing my ring finger in black because I'm going over it with Bourjois Vampire Vanity which has lovely gold flakes in it, sadly it was a buy 3 get the polish free edition, I haven't found anywhere other than France to buy it online. And I just went on a tangent, sorry! Ok, the black I'm using is by China Glaze, the gold is Revlon's Gold Coin, start to paint your nail a little higher than normal (closer to the cuticle than you normally would). Don't forget to let dry between coats.

Step 3
You're ready for the fun part. Now that your base colour is completely dry you can go is with your second colour. Place a drop of your 2nd colour a little bit lower then where you want the Ruffian to start and with the brush gently push it up to the point where you are wanting it to begin, without lifting the brush slowly move the brush as if you were painting a circle and than pull downwards on one side and then repeat on the other side, all you have to do after that is fill in the space and use your favorite top coat to top it off.




Be warned, you need a steady hand and patience (I know it's easier said than done but practice makes perfect as cliche as that sounds). It's easier to do on someone else than on yourself, I practiced on my mom before Christmas and she loved it.

The Products I Used