Role models

As any regular readers might have noticed, I've slowly been becoming more than a little bit obsessed with nail art and nail varnish. I wear nail varnish every day (I hate seeing naked nails!) and I paint my nails at least a couple of times a week, because I get bored really easily and always want to change things up. It's even gotten to the point where, not content with just painting my own, I keep demanding that my sisters let me paint their nails too. My collection of nail varnishes is increasing at a frighteningly rapid rate, and if you ever happen to go into the Liverpool One branch of Superdrug, there is a fair chance that you'll see me, pale and twitchy, lurking around the Barry M section, asking people to spare some change so that I can get just one more hit nail varnish. Ok, maybe that last bit is a slight exaggeration, but I think you get the point - I LOVE NAIL VARNISH!.

It probably comes as no surprise then, that when cheap and cheerful cosmetics brand, Models Own, recently had a 50% off everything sale online (to celebrate getting 10,000 'Likes' on their Facebook page - wowza!) , I got quite seriously excited. I was already a fan of this brand as it has a MASSIVE range of nail colours available, as well as other cosmetics such as lipsticks and eyeshadows and it's really reasonably priced (I think most products are priced around £5/£6) . Having previously tried a couple of their products (they recently started stocking it at my local Boots) I knew I had to get all over this sale like a Premiere League footballer on a cheap WAG wannabe (oooh! Topical!). Here's what I bought...

Nail Polishes: Red Alert, Coral Reef, Pink Blush, Purple Grey, Black Magic

Pearl Pink Powder Eyeshadow

Brushes: Angled, Blending, Shading

As my nail varnish collection is already full of unusual colours, I decided to go for some 'standard', traditional colours instead. Red Alert is a proper fire engine red, because everyone needs a red nail varnish don't they? Black Magic is a rich, shiny black, for when I'm feeling a bit vampy ;) Pink Blush is super pink and girly and Coral Reef is a vivid coral, leaning more towards a kind of reddish orange (you can see some better images of Coral Reef on my new nail art page). I also bought Purple Black which is an absolutely brilliant dupe for Chanel's new Paradoxal - check out The Swatchaholic's comparison of the two - they're very similar and the Models Own version is about a quarter of the price! Not satisfied with just buying nail varnish, I had a little snoop around the rest of the site and also got the Pearl Pink powder eyeshadow; a gorgeous shimmery powder that works really well as a highlighter on the brow bone, and the three eyeshadow brushes, all of which are really good quality (I especially like the blending brush for blending shadow into the socket). And the cost for all that? £18! Not bad eh?

Apparently, because the traffic during the sale was really high, a lot of people couldn't actually get onto the Models Own site at all, which must have been really frustrating (I remember the same thing happening during the farce that was the Outnet 'Everything for a £1' Sale - NIGHTMARE). I didn't have any problems when I made my order, but I think I waited until the second day of the sale and probably did it quite late at night to avoid traffic. The only issue I had was that I didn't recieve my makeup brushes until a week after my other stuff, despite the fact that they were all ordered at the same time. I wouldn't really have minded this, except Models Own didn't give me a heads up to say that the brushes would be arriving late, and didn't even respond when I emailed them asking where they were; the brushes just arrived, with no note or anything, a week later. Not the best customer service in the world, but I imagine that week was particularly hectic as everyone seemed to go a bit mental for the sale! And it's only quite a small thing, the overall transaction was very easy and the first batch of stuff did arrive really quickly.

All in all, I'm a big fan of Models Own, and I'm really glad I took advantage of the sale. I've just revisited the site and had another look through all the nail colours and I've already got my eye on a few more... this won't end well... I fear I might have to start attending Nail Painters Anonymous...