The Sky's the Limit

So I'm boredity bored in work. I painted my nails this morning using my new Barry M "Blueberry I/C" 024 (£2.95 each or 2 for £5 in Superdrug). To my surprise, two coats gave a great cover and I love the colour - note my tan seems to be disappearing at a shocking rate!
Not content with this, my ultra work related boredom and new found love for nail art led me to give some clouds a go with my Barry M "Matt White". Using the brush I dotted on some clouds and after the first cloud coat dried I touched up some parts with an extra few dabs of white which gives a bit of a 3D effect. I finished with a clear top coat.

Simple but effective eh? I might even add a yellow dot later for the sun and a couple of black squiggle birds.

Will I ever grow up?!

LoubouLush x

An old NOTD - Models Own Lemon Meringue

I finally found my local Boots' stash of Models Own before I left for my holibobs. Their nail polish display really was a thing of beauty - simple but full of fun, fresh colours in their minimalist little bottles. What's not to like? Having bought MO polish before from ASOS and River Island I'm not particularly new to the brand but having such a selection of their colours right in front of me was a revelation.

Much deliberating later, I bought 2 polishes and with 2 free 6-way nail buffers and £10 poorer I went happily on my way!

I will no doubt do a NOTD on the first polish I applied when on I was holidays - I forgot to take photos and was going to make more reference to it here but it deserves it's own post.

For now - let's talk Lemon Meringue. In the bottle the polish looks like a lovely solid but soft milky lemon. I had high hopes! And I wasn't disappointed!
I painted my toenails in a couple of coats but used three on my fingernails - not unheard of for building up a shade like this in my experience. Overall my painted fingernails lasted for about a week - I'm still wearing it on my toes!) and were more or less chip/stain free which was quite a feat for such a solid, pale colour (my white Barry M that I sported at the start of my holiday proved much less forgiving). The shade itself is perfect for the summer! The only minor downside was consistency of the polish. Maybe it's just me but with pastel shades I find the polish tends to be quite streaky especially on the final coat - so I don't know if I can single this MO one out. A generous helping of polish and a clear to coat seems to help.


Overall, this is a great colour of summer. A lovely pastel which I think complimented my tan nicely (not sure my hand is quite as tanned as the photo suggests!). I think it will be equally as cute on my usually pale mitts too.

What do you think? Anyone else struggle to get the finish of pale pastels right? What's your favourite MO polish?

LoubouLush x

Holida-aay!!

So after much deliberation, Mr Louboulush and I booked our holiday, packed our bags and fecked off to Thailand. We spent one night in Bangkok before heading to Koh Samui for 11 nights (I think), back to Bangkok for one night, London for a night before flying back to NI. Over 2 weeks, 6 flights and 3 hotels later I’m back, slightly tanned, more than a little broke but in one piece.

We spent most of the holiday relaxing by the pool, wandering along the beach, eating lots of fabulous food and sipping on wonderful cocktails. We both had Birthdays while we were away which is nice (we tend to be away over them). The beaches we went to were pretty amazing. Koh Samui is a wonderful island and all the local people were lovely and the hotel staff couldn’t have been nicer.

The food in almost everywhere in Thailand was gorgeous (the airport hotel food and hotel in general actually in London – not so much!). It was relatively cheap as well so we ate and drank A Lot.


I was well behaved and bought NO new shoes. Yes, much to our surprise I didn’t buy so much as a slipper. Shopping in Koh Samui was fairly stressful as we were near Chaweng beach which was fairly hectic and full of hawkers and knock offs – mainly sunglasses and sportswear. Also I spotted some fake Louboutins for sale. Yak.

Shopping in Bangkok was a bit more my style. Siam Discovery and Paragon were pretty cool with designer boutiques but everything seemed SO expensive. By my rough currency converting labels like Jimmy Choo seemed significantly more expensive than they would be here. Similarly, although the make up counters were pretty tempting, again they seemed expensive.

In MBK I was shocked by how many of the branded items of sale seemed fake – MAC, benefit, Nike etc so again I steered clear. The one thing that did catch my eye however was some of the cosmetic things I haven’t seen so much of at home. Nail art and jewllery seems to be huge at the moment. I noticed a couple of girls with hugely embellished nails and picked up a few striper polishes for about £1 each. I was tempted to buy some of the oversized jewels and things but I can’t help but think they would be a bit heavy on natural nails and more suited to false nails. Also of course there is the very glaring worry that I couldn’t pull the look off anyway! I’m not sure if rural NI is ready for it... just yet.

...Google Image - similar to styles I saw

In any case I received some lovely compliments on my white nails when I arrived in Bangkok so that was good enough for me!

So, anyone else been to Thailand or planning to go anywhere lovely?

LoubouLush x

NOTD Mellow Yellow

I've been a bit of a bad blogger lately, sorry! I'm due to go on holidays later in the week too so excuse my absence. Hopefully I'll have a flood of new posts when I get back though :)

NOTD is Barry M's 134 Yellow which has been on since Friday. It is a bit of a shade changer, in low light it looks mustard, in bright light it's a fun, bright, summer yellow (more what the photo shows which is what I wanted from this really). I was a little disappointed that it need 3 coats of colour and a 4th probably wouldn't have went amiss to build the colour even more. also the consistency went a bit gloopy by the time I reached the 3rd coat. The polish dried pretty quickly and smoothly. Overall, it isn't a bad buy for £2.95 but not one I will replace when the bottle is finished.

What do you think? Have you tried it? Am I be being too harsh?!

LoubouLush x