Catrice Ombre Top Coat Review

Hello beauties! Hope you are all having a great start to 2015 :) Me, I'm not having the best of luck but I think 2015 will be a year of learning and growing up for me (why can't it be a year of bacon and Hello Kitty?!)

I was very excited to try out Catrice's Ombre Top Coat as I love all gimmicky nail art things. In my experience, most are complete failures but I continue my quest for easy effective nail art and it lead me straight to this.

The idea of the Ombre Top Coat is that you build up the top coat on your different nails, giving the ombre look without having to buy 5 different nail polishes. So nail one has 0 coats, nail two has 1 coat, nail three has 2 coats and so forth.

I used my favourite chip-resistant Sinful Colours silk/satin effect polish in lilac as a base. I thought that perhaps the purple might be too dark as the bottle says to use a light colour, but when I held it up to the lid, it matched one of the little swatches perfectly. I did two coats of purple and then started on the top coat.

The colour of the top coat is reddish brown, and I did one coat on all my nails as I felt that if I left the first nail bare, it might not look right without having the reddish hue. The top coat is supposed to be quick drying, but I found it took a bit longer than expected to dry completely before I could do the next coat.

I followed up by doing 2 coats on the second nail, 3 coats on the third nail, 4 coats on the fourth nail and finally 5 coats on the fifth nail. I must admit that I did have some trouble in keeping count as to what nail to start with!

This is the result:

I found the coverage to be a bit streaky, and to be honest I really did not see too much of an ombre effect. The nail with 5 coats is darker than the one with only one, but it doesn't look too effective. I am quite disappointed in this as I have seen some great reviews, yet my results are rubbish in comparison.

Have you tried this top coat and been more successful? Maybe I'm doing something wrong!

Friday Food Time

I am a huge fan of spending my weekends on the couch with a good movie, and nothing goes better with that than movie snacks!

After pinning hundreds of delicious-looking snacks on Pinterest, I decided to try a couple of ideas and see how they turn out. They were all sooooo good that I paused just long enough to wipe my chocolate coated hands before rushing to share them with you!

First I made popcorn with melted chocolate and Astros. After air-popping the popcorn, I set it aside in a big bowl. I then melted the chocolate using the "double boiler" method. Basically if you don't have a double-boiler, you boil water in a pot, then put a bowl over the pot, making sure that the bottom of the bowl does not touch the boiling water, chuck the chocolate in the bowl and stir until it melts! Make sure that the chocolate is cut up into small pieces so that it melts quickly. After the chocolate was melted, I poured it over the popcorn, tossed in the Astros and sprinkles, and mixed it all together. The result - an absolutely delicious, calorie-loaded alternative to boring old microwave popcorn!

Next we have something called Cowboy Bark. For those fellow South Africans who are scratching their heads and thinking "What the hell is that?" - cowboy bark is basically (from my understanding of it) a sheet of melted chocolate with bits pressed down into it that you break into smaller pieces. I chose dark chocolate as a base, and then a pretzel and biscuit mix and Oreos. I am obsessed with salty and sweet combos at the moment! I melted the chocolate as above, then spread it all over a baking tray lined with a silicone mat. While it was still gooey, I evenly sprinkled on the Oreo pieces and pretzel mix making sure it was all covered. The second batch I made I also added crushed salted chips and that was divine! I put it in the fridge to set, then took it out and broke it into smaller pieces. Be prepared to make a couple of batches of this stuff because it is highly addictive!

I saved the best for last - candied BACON! This was ridiculously easy to make - all you need is streaky bacon and brown sugar. Coat both sides of the bacon in sugar and stick under the grill in your oven, turning the bacon over to cook evenly. This was so delicious that I could have made about 5 kilos of it!

Is your mouth watering yet?! Forget about your New Years resolutions to eat healthy and indulge yourself this weekend! Trust me, your taste buds will thank you!

Video Tutorial - Work Makeup Look

Hello beauties and happy 2015!

I haven't blogged in ages - mainly because I haven't had a device to properly blog on (and a little because I have been desperately trying to do absolutely nothing over my holiday!) Now that I have my spiffy new laptop and a study area in our guest room, I am ready to get this blogging year started!

I thought a nice back to work makeup tutorial would be good to put up for you to get everyone in the mood to spend another year making some bacon. I even decided to do a video so you can see how awkward I am in that arena ;)

Video will follow below, but first a little detail on what products I used and why. I am most certainly not a morning person - waking up angers me and I will spend every last second  playing on my phone in bed until I simply cannot put off getting my day started if I want a chance of getting to work on time. This productive little routine of mine means that I don't have much time for makeup, unless I sacrifice breakfast time, but a hungry Karley is an even more grumpy Karley, and I cannot subject the world to that! So I am forced to do my makeup in about 5 minutes, which is a bit of a challenge. Luckily I have a quick and easy look that enables you to rock up to work looking professional and put together without much time or effort. These are the products I use to get the look:

1. Palladio Herbal Dual Wet and Dry Powder Foundation

I recently discovered Palladio's Herbal Dual Wet and Dry Powder Foundation and love how you can get a flawless finish without having to use a cream foundation and then a finishing powder, so this is my go-to product to save time. I don't feel the need to use concealer along with this, and if I want a fuller coverage then I just use the sponge damp.

2. Catrice Absolute Nude Eyeshadow Palette

This is my favourite eyeshadow palette as I am a big fan of nude tones, and it is versatile as I can use a darker brown to fill in my eyebrows, and the lighter colours for my lids.

3. Essence Lashes Go Wild Volume Mascara

This is my favourite essence mascara to date but I believe that it is on it's way to being discontinued :( I have stocked up on a couple of tubes and hope I can find an equivalent before they finish! This mascara glides on my lashes easily and doesn't clump.

4. Accessorize Lipstick

I saw Clicks was having a sale on Accessorize products and this colour just jumped out at me! It is do bright and bold, and the perfect accompaniment to nude eyes.

And here is your tutorial - woop woop!

What do you guys think? What are your favourite looks for work?

Colgate Optic White Challenge follow up

OK so I completely forgot to put up the results of my Colgate Optic White Challenge! I was away in Cape Town at the time, and took the comparison photo but didn't get a chance to do the post (woops!)

You can read my first post here - as I mentioned I was not expecting a Hollywood white smile, but I was hoping to see some sort of difference.

I brushed my teeth twice a day for a week for 2 minutes, and I am happy to say that I did notice that my teeth became whiter.

Looking at it on the computer screen, it does look much more impressive than real life I must admit! I think the lighting in the "after" photo is a bit brighter, even though I did try keep it the same for comparison's sake. In any case, there was a noticeable difference to me.

I was hoping that as I continued using the toothpaste that I would see more of a difference, but after using it for almost a month now, my teeth are not becoming whiter. I have seen that Colgate has a new optic white toothpaste that promises instant results - I might try that out and see if that makes any difference.

Let me know what home whitening products you have tried and if they were successful or not - I love finding new, cheaper alternatives to having to hit up the dentist :)

Back to Work Look One

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful festive season :)

I can be quite indecisive when it comes to choosing an outfit for work, so for those of you out there who are like me, I thought I would pull together a couple of work looks for inspiration. All items are available exclusively from Mr Price.

This is look 1 - a classic black and white combo with some wearable heels. Pair with a sock bun and my Work Makeup Look (coming soon - watch this space!) to finish it off.

Smart, isn't it? Let me know what sort of looks you would like me to create and I will post for you. Also don't forget to subscribe and follow me on social media (links on the left!) to get updates. Have a great day xxx