Out and About

A few weeks ago, having a Hen's night to attend, I thought it would be a great excuse to visit my local BT for an eye brow wax AND Shellac mani. The brow wax was first, always good to get that one over and done with, lol. Then came the mani. Being my first Shellac-ing, I was very excited to see how these soak-off gels would be like. Regular polish has no lasting power on me, I would say this has a lot to do with the fact that I'm not very gentle on my nails. At a cost of $40, I was quite impressed with the results. Applied just like gels, nice and thick, super shiny, and best of all, not damaging to the nails. It was hard to decide what colour to go for, but I eventually chose a dark purple.

Seeing that I like to change my nail colour often, the only con I can think of, is that after almost 2 weeks of the same colour, I had gotten bored with the purple, as nice as it is. In hindsight, I would have gone for a lighter colour, and applied various polishes over top, whenever I felt like a change. A little searching on the internet, and I discovered that it's fine to apply regular polish over Shellac, as removing with an acetone-free remover does not effect the Shellac underneath. I have to admit that I did experience a slight chipping on 2 nails a little under 2 weeks of having the Shellac mani. I seriously had not been kind to my nails, amongst general house cleaning, I'd also moved furniture. This chipped my actual nails (only 2) but the polish was in tact, however, after filing my chipped nails, a couple of days later the Shellac began to lift slightly, then chipped. I'm assuming that the filing "broke" the sealed edges, causing damage to the Shellac gel. 

Removal was simple. I had the option of spending $10 to have the Shellac removed, but instead, I opted to do it myself. All I was required to do was place an acetone remover soaked cotton pad onto my nails, then cover in foil. I heated the foil briefly with a hairdryer, then left the foil on for approximately 20 minutes. Most of the polish came off with the cotton pad, the rest came off easily using a cuticle stick. I really think having a Shellac mani is most definitely worth it. My nails were not only left undamaged, but were actually stronger, and I was surprised at how much they'd grown in a couple of weeks.


My BT is located in a chemist, which can be a "problem". As I had my mani, I had way too much time to look around, and be tempted by too many goodies. As well as my beauty treatments, I ended up purchasing tanning lotion and tinted spf moisturiser. 

The Summer Tan lotion was bought on recommendation at $30, whilst the Suntanned Sweeties tinted moisturiser at $19.95 was a necessity..besides, I couldn't go past that super cute box.


The tinted moisturiser only came in one shade, which looked quite dark in the pump bottle. 

It is quite a dark shade, but only really tints the skin, rather than giving any coverage. There is some shimmer to the moisturiser, however once applied, it's not noticeable. I like that this is a pump bottle, easy to dispense, not to mention, hygienic. The only thing I am not thrilled about, is that it is only an spf 15, I normally don't use anything less than 30. The cute packaging is to blame for my lack of inspection, lol.

It's a typical moisturiser tint consistency, I find that they are slightly thicker than regular moisturisers. It blends quite easily, and a little goes a long way.

As you can see, although there's very little coverage, it does give a lovely bronze glow, without turning me into a disco-ball. 


The tanning lotion, simply named Summer Tan, is a very dark brown lotion. It is so dark, I was almost too scared to apply it. Of course, as I massaged it in for an even application, the extremely dark brown became a lovely tan colour. It took some time to ensure the application was even with no streaks, but with my previous bad attempts at fake tans, this was by far the easiest one I have come by so far. The colour once dry, is pretty much the colour achieved, even after showering the next day. I was happy that I had the look of a gorgeous tan, not an orange mess. If I had to list something that I didn't like, it would be the smell typical of fake tans, it was still noticable after showering, but it's worth it for nice tanned looking skin :)