Friday 8 August 2014

Fake Tan Disasters!



During the summer months sales of fake tan must absolutely sky rocket because literally everyone is wearing it. It's always nice to have a gorgeous tan in the summer and so deserve a little help when you struggle to tan naturally, but sometimes this can go hideously wrong! I have tried to compile a list of some of the dodgy tan mistakes I have seen so far this summer.

1. Patches/ streaks in your tan
I know this is a very common one that we have all been guilty of at one point or another, but I have seen some extreme cases recently! One of them was a girl who was wearing a strapless dress and had obviously tried to apply her tan herself and failed... There was a big white patch in the center of her back where she had reached from every side as best she could but couldn't quite reach the middle. Lesson to learn - if you're not a contortionist, get someone to help you!

2. A shade that just doesn't suit you
Again, another pretty obvious one. If you are naturally very pale, going for the darkest shade of tan is just not going to suit you. It's a sad fact but it's true, this is the reason why I never go higher than a medium because it just wouldn't look right. My best friend is exceptionally pale (we call her the porcelain queen) and has always used the lightest shade of tan. One day I suggested using my tan just to see how it would look on her, it looked odd... Naturally sunkissed is the look you're aiming for remember.

3. Oompah Loompah tan 
I thought I may as well get all the obvious ones done and out the way first. I don't understand how still now, with sooo many choices for fake tan out there, people still end up looking orange. I don't think it is to do with the quantity of tan put on but the tan used because I have piled the St Tropez on before and it didn't look orange. Therefore, if you have found yourself resembling a carrot recently, let me know what tan you used so that I can avoid it in future!

4. Applying tan on a very hot day...
This is one that in hindsight seems pretty obvious but actually I wouldn't have thought of to be a bad idea before. The other day as I walked through town I saw a girl who had obviously slapped on the fake tan that morning and then been sat down somewhere in the very hot weather. You know what it's like when it's stupidly hot and you are sat in a chair, the backs of your knees get sweaty... Her tan would have looked lush if it wasn't for the fact that there were white diamond shapes on the back of her knees where her tan was obviously very fresh and the heat had made her sweat and the tan had 'washed off' from behind her knees - NIGHTMARE! I learnt the importance of doing your tan the night before right there! Poor girl.

5. Using a separate fake tan for your face
Now I do do this myself, I like to think the face tanner is gentler on the skin than the body one and so I like to use that instead (although there is probably no difference between the two). Which is fine if you match the shades up properly, horrific if you don't! I have been guilty of this in the past and the pictures weren't attractive...where I went wrong is that one was an instant tan and the other was one that developed (the body one). So I looked ok when it was all applied and I went to bed, the next morning my body looked a very obviously different shade to my face and where I had rubbed it in roughly around my neck, it looked a bit odd. A bit of heavy duty foundation though and it was just about passable, oops!

6. When the tan goes through your mitt and stains your hand
This has happened to me too many times! I'll use one mitt for ages and then one time I'll go to use it and the tan will leak through and dye my hand without me even noticing. I then take the mitt off when I've finished to find dark patches of tan all over my hands. It's a difficult look to pull off. I have been told to wear a latex glove under the mitt though to stop this happening in the future.

7. Getting fake tan all over your carpet, furniture, bed sheets...!
Ok, so this isn't a disaster in the way of everyone is going to see it, but it is a personal disaster in my opinion. No matter how careful I try to be I somehow end up getting some amount of fake tan on my carpet when applying it. It may just be me being a bit kack-handed but is probably why I have been told I am only allowed to apply tan whilst stood in the bath... The bed sheets one is kind of obvious,the solution is to buy black sheets then you can't see the evidence, yay no whinging from your mum! But furniture though...don't apply tan and then sit on the sofa, my friend has left a perfect print of her body on the sofa. Oh dear!

So they are the worst fake tan disasters that I know of. Feel free to comment if you have any more! Have you done/ witnessed any of these yourself?

Thursday 7 August 2014

*Binky London Nail Polish*

*PR Sample*

I received these 2 nail polishes from the new Binky London collection last week and was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked them. Binky, in case you weren't aware, is the Binky Felstead of 'Made in Chelsea' fame and although  I love her on the program, I was worried that these polishes would be a bit...gimmicky. You know how you see some celebrities go and try their hand at their own make-up line etc and it's just a bit wrong? That was my concern, but actually they are kind of lovely.




The shades that I was sent is a blue - which has a metallic sheen to it - and a  pink- which has a slightly more gel like finish to it - and they look gorgeous in the bottle and strangely go really well together, not sure if that was intentional but the colours really do compliment each other, perfect for future nail art ideas, always good for me! Sadly I couldn't find any shade names, which I thought was a bit odd?

The brush is of a good quality. It is thicker and flat and shaped at the tip, which is perfect for painting the entire nail. It was slightly streaky in the metallic finish so you had to be a bit more careful with that one, but the pink was incredibly simple to apply and looked great. The above picture is also after just one coat, you can imagine how great and bold these look after a standard two coats.

Durability wise, I applied the pink shade to my toes about 5 days ago and there has been no chipping from what I can see, and I have been wearing sandals all week! It looks so bright and girly and just perfect for the summer. I really do think these are pretty damn good. For a celebrity product, I like it an awful lot.

Ok so the bottle I think tries to copy Rimmel a little bit too much, with the Union Jack and little crown detail, but it is quite appealing. Nothing too over the top but enough that it doesn't look a bit bog standard and boring.

Overall I have liked these a lot more than I thought I would. They tick all the right boxes for me at least. There are 31 polishes in the Binky London collection with many different shades and finishes - including gel effect, denim effect and metallics - to choose from and so really is worth having a look at.  Order these, and other shades, here.