I'll Eat You Whole.

So a few months ago, some of you may remember that Ciaté released images of their 'caviar' manicure. It looked awesome, but was a little steep for my purse at the time and I was reluctant to try it.I was in Superdrug and what should I spot but MUA's own version (ish). I thought back to Ciaté and I had to have it, for £3.99, I figured it was a steal. It turns out, for reasons I'll go into in a bit, that there's a reason for this.



MUA call this product 'Nail Constellations', to go with star signs, naturally I chose Leo, and I quite liked it because the colours are similar to those of Models Own's Disco Mix, which I'm a massive fan of. The colour in the pot is kind of where the similarity ends as this is basically just beads you plonk onto tacky almost-dry nails.
It did come with basic instructions attached to the lid but like a pleb, I threw it away, although it turns out it was pretty straight forward.

1. Paint on your base color, in hindsight, I probably should have chose more blue/purple colours to go with the beads but I was too excited to try this out so just picked up the first two I saw.
2. Wait until your nails are almost dry and then over a piece of paper squirt (although there's probably a better word for it as it's not wet) the beads onto the nail
3. That should basically be it, the paper's so it's easy peasy to put back in the bottle, which it kind of is, but it's like glitter and I'm still finding it days later. Just apply a top coat and you're away, kind of.


The above is the end result, you can probably see the difference between the colour in the bottle and on my nails, basically my top coat removed a lot of the colour, which I don't see as a plus against the product itself because I use a decent enough topcoat, at least it works well with standard polish.

I know there are special polishes for 3D nail art and it probably would have worked better had I used one of them but the whole manicure just made me feel a little weird and looked kind of gross. Not nearly as pretty as the stylised Ciaté caviar images.

I'm finding it a little hard to say nice thing about it because I feel like the quality was a little shoddy and although I didn't expect amazing results, I wanted a little better. I don't think I'll be whipping this out any time soon to be honest, it was quite time consuming, as well as the fact that overall it hardly lasted and probably, definitely fell off into the risotto I made that evening. It also stresses me out to find tiny little balls everywhere, wouldn't really recommend this as I don't particularly see it as versatile either - I love my nail art to stand out but there are easier, less choke hazardous methods that are much better.

Have any of you tried out this yet? I kind of hope that it's a case of me doing it wrong and giving it a hard time so then I might be more inclined to give it another go, I'd love to hear any tips you might have.

Ooo Wah Oh.

I first heard about MUA's Love Heart collection back in the beginning of February, I thought they seemed like a cute idea but never spotted any to pick up. Yesterday, while in Crawley I managed to find about three out of the five available colours in Superdrug. They were similar to colours I already had, which is why I went for U & I, a pastel yellow, which I thought would be good now that Spring is starting to show it's face.

However, and I'm not sure if reviewing things on a blog means you always have to be nice, but I was pretty disappointed. I mean for a £2 price tag, it's not as though it broke the bank, but having used a few MUA polishes, I was expecting it to be alright. Sadly not, the application was pretty watery, and unlike any other polish I've used, it was incredibly streaky and even now, after five coats, I'm still not happy.

I think it has actually been saved a bit by the bargain purchase of BeautyUK's Matte Top Coat, which I am happy with.

BeautyUK Matte Top Coat, £1.99, Superdrug
For the price and size, I think this is pretty great, and it goes on really well, with no gloops.
Although 'U & I' does come in undeniably cute packaging, and actually does dry really quickly between coats, it just doesn't have the right finish and I'm left feeling a bit let down. I'm not sure if it's colour, but I have seen a range of mixed reviews for most of the collection. I do believe that you get what you pay for with beauty products, and I know £2 means I shouldn't expect it to be amazing, but MUA do generally live up to a high standard - I love their bright individual eye shadow palettes - and with this being a collaboration, maybe I was just expecting it to be much more.




Have you tried any of the other colours in the MUA Love Heart's range? What did you think?

Kind of just fell into this review a bit, but I'm genuinely a little bit annoyed.

While I'm here, I found this photo that I took on my Blackberry of the newly revamped upstairs to Snooper's Paradise, which I mentioned in my last post, isn't it beautiful? Sorry the phone-photo doesn't do it justice, but I was a bit nervous about full-on papping it.

There's only three days left on my eBay listings if you're interested, you might be able to get a bargain.