Manicure Monday: Sweet Princess

Hello Princesses!

Today I have a super sweet princess-like manicure to show you! ^.^ I recently broke two of my long nails so had to cut down to nubbins :C Interestingly enough, one year ago I would have considered these to be long nails! I haven't had nails this short for a long time, but it's quite nice to try some manicures designed for short nails since a lot of you princesses cannot have hard to maintain long talons like me due to work or life commitments! (Seriously though, long nails are hard to maintain and not break! -.-")

To create this manicure I started off with a couple of base coats of OPI's Second Honeymoon. I created the blue gradient on the tips of my nails by dabbing Color Club's Factory Girl onto the dried base colour using a triangular sponge. I then used white pearls and blue rhinestones from Fullmoon, and steel balls from Born Pretty Store to create a half moon design on my ring finger. 

What's your favorite way to spice up a plain manicure?

Blogging 101: Social Media Icons

Hello Princesses!

Today I'm going to be showing you how I got these cute little social media buttons that are down the bottom of each of my blog posts! You might notice that my sidebar social media icons look different at the moment, but I used the same method to create these as I did to create the circular ones so don't worry!

Truth be told (and I'm always truthful) I had a lot of trouble learning how to  create these icons, for the simple reason that I couldn't figure out what they were called! *facepalm* Once I found out what they were called I found a whole bunch of tutorials to teach me how to code them properly. There are so many tutorials out there to teach you how to create your own Social Media Icons, but this is how I did mine.

The first thing you need to do is find your perfect social media icons. These might be pink, blue, transparent or floral, whatever you think suits your blog! You can create your own, or use someone else's. My social media icons came from the lovely Carrie Loves who has an amazing set of blogger tips and I highly highly recommend you check out her posts! Otherwise you can google search "free social media icons" or "cute free social media icons" to find your perfect set of icons! 

Please make sure that the icons are free and that you're not indirectly stealing them. If it's within your means, make a donation to the creator! They will have spent hours/money on creating these icons so it's always nice to give back or give credit!

The hardest part of the social media icon installation is actually getting the pictures. The next part is super easy, all you need to do is create a click-through picture code using the simple codes I showed you in last weeks Blogging 101 post. You can also follow this tutorial to create a super cool hover effect.

<a href="Linktodestination">

<img src="Yourimagehostlink"width="300px"/></a>

This is really easy to get confused by, but really simple once you know what's happening! The first line is where the clickable picture is taking you to (affiliate links, shop links etc) so all you need to do is pop the hyperlink in the red text section. The next line is the image line, so you need to host your image on your image hosting site, copy the hyperlink, and paste it into the blue text section. Make sure there are no spaces where there shouldn't be spaces, and change the green numbers to change the size.

<a href="Link to destination">

<img src="Your image host link"width="40px"/></a>

That's the quickest way to create your social media icons! To install them on your sidebar, you need to create a HTML/Java gadget and insert the clickable image code. You will create a separate code for each image with the correlating URL's and insert them all into the same gadget. You can change the size of the icons to fit three or four on one line.

To create the icons in a main text blog, you will need to take the same code and insert it into your HTML tab IN your blog post, and that's all! I hope this post was helpful for you princesses starting out with your blogs! Be sure to let me know in the comments below if you're having any troubles and I'll try my best to help you out! ^.^

Next week I'll be showing you how to create your own personalized text and signature at the end of each post!

First Impression: NARS Radient Creamy Concealer

Hello Princesses!

Today I'm going to be talking about the NARS Radiant Creamy Concealer in the shade Chantilly! I picked up a baby tester pot from Mecca Cosmetica in Auckland because one of my favorite pale guru's, Arna Alayne, raves about it as one of her favorite pale products. Even though Arna is cool toned and I'm warm toned, the product still works for both of us which is fantastic!

What Is It?

"Coveted by artists for its luxurious texture and luminous finish, the Radiant Creamy Concealer evens skin with lightweight medium to high buildable coverage. Enriched with hydrating, multi-action skincare benefits and light diffusing technology, it creates a softer, smoother complexion while instantly obscuring imperfections and diminishing fine lines and signs of fatigue. Long wearing and crease-proof for the perfect cover" (1)

(This is YSL CC cream in purple with NARS Siberia against my pale white neck. Tragic.)

I trialled this concealer in two different ways, the first being a spot concealer. I had three baby cystic pimples to cover, and one light layer of the NARS concealer worked really well. Of course the bumps will never disappear into the skin with the use of concealer, but this concealer did better than any other I have owned! It was smooth, easy to blend and not cakey at all which I love!

The second test was to use the concealer for my under eye and eyelid area. It did fairly well at brightening up my eye area and neutralizing redness. It's a nice option for the times when I want a brightening, but not a heavily concealed look.

Here I have the concealer on the left eye only. It looks a lot brighter than the right side, but the lines on the left seem more apparent. Yes, one of my eyebrows is misshapen, the hair doesn't grow there due to scars and I haven't filled them in yet.

Would I Purchase This Product?

Probably! It is a little pricey at $46NZD, but it really is a lovely product that works well with all of my foundation and BB Creams. I thought it worked really well as a spot cover, as well as around the eye area, and it's brightening for my pale skin (which is a rare thing!). I would totally recommend this concealer for any other pale beauties, and if you can try it before buying it that's even better! ^. ~

What is your all-time favorite concealer?

Review: Etude House Sweet Recipe Baby Choux Base

Hello Princesses!

Today I'm going to be talking about the super cute Etude House Sweet Recipe Baby Choux base in Mint Choux and Berry Choux! I picked up 10 samples of each of these colour almost a year ago now, because I loved my green Missha primer so much and wanted to try some different brands. Roseroseshop only had testers for Mint and Berry, but not Peach Choux which is disappointing as I would've loved to try the whole set!

This light and fluffy makeup base creates baby choux skin with it's moist inside and soft smoothness on the outside.

#1 Mint Choux : For redness problem 

#2 Berry Choux : For that pale face that needs more color (cool tone)

#3 Peach Choux : For face that have yellowish tone (warm tone)

1 - Mint Choux 

For redness problem

Green tones balance the redness in skin, and the Mint Choux base is no exception! These bases are all designed to whiten your skin to some degree, but I don't think this particularly whitens the appearance of my skin, but rather just covers the redness, thus making my skin appear whiter/balanced.

 2 - Berry Choux
For that pale face that needs more color (cool tone)

The Berry Choux is of course designed for cool toned skin (which I don't have) and would probably work very well for fair cool toned girls! I found that using the pink base made my face look even redder than usual because of the high pigmentation of the product, which is no good for me when my skin looks yellow. Even using a very yellow foundation over the pink base didn't help very much, so purely for that fact the pink base did not work for me.

The Baby Choux Bases are moderately thick in texture and quite pigmented. They feel super soft on the skin, and makes the skin look quite matte, however they don't change the finish of any product that you put on top of it. The Mint Choux smells like very sweet sunscreen, and the Berry Choux smells like sweet strawberries!

I found the baby choux bases easy to apply and quite moisturizing, but they did end up looking a little flakey around any irregularities on my skin. They lasted well, but they didn't help my makeup stay any longer or control the oil any more than usual. If you're wondering about the difference in colour and consistency between the Etude House Baby Choux base in Berry and the Etude House Magic Cushion in Pink, click this link to see a comparison of swatches!

What I love

Super cute packaging (tube and jar)

Range of correcting colors

Smells amazing

Easy to use

Very pigmented
Soft Matte Finish

What I don't love

Deep colors (not brightening enough for me)

Not great for dry or uneven textured skin

Final thoughts

I quite liked the Mint Choux Base, but I still prefer my Missha green base since it's a brighter mint. I really want to try the Peach Choux (since it is for yellow skin) and I may purchase a full size tube since there are no testers for Peach, and I quite liked the formula of the Mint and Berry Choux! I'm pretty jealous that I can't purchase the cute little jar packaging though, since it looks like it's discontinued though. :C Oh well!

Have you Princesses tried the Baby Choux Base before? Are there any other bases or primers that you love?

Manicure Monday: The Shortest Square Manicure

Hello Princesses!

Today I have the shortest square manicure. Not because they're the shortest length nails I've ever had, but by far the shortest length of time I've had a nail shape. It turns out there's a reason why I prefer almond or oval shaped nails!

For this manicure I used NARS No Limits from the Guy Bourdin holiday collection which is a really interesting semi matte jelly polish, topped off with a couple of layers of OPI's Pirouette My Whistle, which denies me hexagonal glitters with every dip of the brush. -.-

Literally one minute after I photographed this manicure I picked up my polish boxes and chipped the side off my nail. -.- Square shaped nails are just NOT for me obviously! I ended up filing off the side and having one wonky nail for a couple of days because I liked the manicure so much.

Do you Princesses have a preferred nail shape? Is it because like me, you chip all other shapes? Let me know in the comments down below! :3