So, I recently survived my 30th birthday (which wasn’t nearly as traumatic as I expected it to be) and I started thinking about all the beauty advice I’ve been given/read about/learnt first hand over the past three decades. With that in mind I decided to put together a piece outlining the 30 best tidbits in celebration of 30 years of beauty love! This is a long post, so maybe go make yourself a cup of tea and get settled in.
I have had a long-standing love affair with red nail polish –I am rarely seen without a slick of crimson on my nails. As a child I remember watching my godmother, Annie (the most glamorous woman in the world), lying by the pool in heels and a one-piece, doing her nails. And they were always red – this is wear it all started. For me, real nails are just so incredibly chic – they are the quintessential finishing touch. They have the power to transform any woman into a veritable glamourpuss. Here are my top 5 favourite reds of all…
After reading Charlotte’s guest post on the key to a chip free mani, I decided that it was high time for me to investigate this nail dehydrator business. I picked up a bottle of OPI Chip Skip Nail Lacquer in the hopes that it would help prolong the life of my manicure. Here’s the rundown: How does Chip Skip work? It works by dehydrating the surface of your nail by absorbing any surface moisture/oil. By eliminating that layer of moisture or oil, it allows the polish to really adhere to your nail and stops it from chipping as easily. How…
Our friend Charlotte is not only a top financial PR strategist, fluent in Russian and Spanish, and generally awesome, but she is professionally trained manicurist to boot. Here are her tips for achieving a chip-free mani: “Until I learnt from the professionals, I never managed to maintain a chip-free set of painted nails for more than two days. Now, I paint my nails on a Sunday night, and they still look pretty much perfect by Friday (however my short attention span usually dictates a change in colour by at least Wednesday!). There are a number of forces at play which keep…
We all know the feeling: sitting patiently, waiting for our nail polish to dry. And then, just when you think you’re ready to go, you touch something and it smudges. RAGE. But fear not, help is at hand…I give you Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat. What is it? A fast-drying top coat specially formulated to penetrate through nail polish to the base coat, forming a single solid coating over the nail for a more durable finish. What does it promise? To cut drying time dramatically, and to leave nails resistant to chipping and peeling. Does it deliver? YES. I have been…
Sorry this is so late guys! We shot it at the end of February but then had problems getting it up on YouTube. Here are our February Favourites nonetheless. Camilla’s Favourites: Eucerin Hyaluronic Filler My skin has been so parched lately – I felt like no matter how much water I drank or how much moisturiser I put on, my skin was still dry and flaky. I had been dabbling with the idea of hyaluronic acid for a while, so this product couldn’t have been recommended to me at a better time. In short, I love it – for the…
The sad truth about living in this beautiful but ever-so-slightly third world paradise, is that there are plenty of beauty brands that aren’t available here. Luckily, with the massive boom in ecommerce, and in particular the popularity of beauty sites, there are now plenty of great online stores that ship internationally and for FREE! One such website is BeautyBay.com, who stock a massive range of haircare, skincare, make-up and nail products from amazing international brands. Some of the highlights include Too Faced, bareMinerals, Deborah Lippmann, Mario Badescu, Neom , This Works and Urban Decay. Worldwide delivery is free, or you…
Went and bought this nifty-sounding base coat on the recommendation of Michaela, one of our lovely readers, but was sadly disappointed with the results. I was hoping that it would make glitter polish much easier to remove by allowing you to simply peel away the polish in one piece but it didn’t seem to work that way for me. I had to pick at my nails so that the polish came off in flakey bits, tearing my thumbnail in the process. I was really hoping it would be like the Tinkerbell Brush On Peel Off stuff I had as a…
Mooi Hair & Beauty Salon is a beautiful, vintage-style pamper parlour in Tamboerskloof, Cape Town, run by the lovely sisters Karen and Andret. Karen and her team are responsible for the beauty treatments while Andret runs a crew of talented hair stylists and personally keeps my locks in tip top condition with a regular cut and colour. I have been visiting Mooi for a few years now, ever since I saw the salon mentioned on Kim Gray’s blog. I’ve had a number of treatments there but most often I go for my monthly eyelash and eyebrow tinting. I have had…
Last night we were kindly invited to spend the evening at Shimansky‘s showroom in the V&A Waterfront, to get pampered while sipping champagne and draping ourselves in enormous diamonds. It was a tough gig, I have to admit. First up we were given a tour of the Cape Town Diamond Museum, which is adjacent to the showroom, and saw some mouthwatering replicas of the world’s largest diamonds, including The Hope Diamond (which I have seen in real life at the Smithsonian Museum and it would blow your mind), The Taylor Burton, The Star of Africa and the 3,106 carat rough…