2010 - Page 38 of 46 - Violet LeBeaux

Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen and Corrector Pen Review

by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 7, 2010 | Beauty, Nails, Review

Thought all my Gum Leaf Mafia Australian/NZ nail polish girls would be interested in this: Sally Hansen Nail Art Pens! ^_^

Over here in Aus the range of Sally Hansen has up until now been rather scarce. Even though they’re stocked by a billion major chains the range usually only consist of a few nail treatments and maybe 2 of the light pink polishes. Imagine my surprise when I walked into Priceline to a whole new display of them *_*
There was a whole shelf of the Insta-dri’s in some pretty weird colours. They didn’t have the fluros which lovely Brooke sent me from the US but if these ones are anything like them I would definitely grab some if I had the money.

More interestingly they had some really pretty looking HD colours…

There was also a deal where if you bought anything from the lip/nail collection you could get one of the treatment pens for free… So I bought a light pink nail art pen for $13 and got a Corrector pen (which cost $16) for free…

While it looked like a good deal at the time here’s my review…

So nail art pen first. The best way I can describe this is it’s like a paint pen. It comes with a clear tip to begin with…

To get the colour out you have to press up and down on some paper a few times.

Colour of the tip:

I put a falsie on and did a base coat of and Opi white so I could see how opaque it was. Because the tip is super pointy and thin I thought I would be able to get a nice detailed stroke.

Not so much.

It’s more like trying to paint using the wrong end of a paint brush. When colouring with a normal felt pen you press the pen to the surface and it leaves a trail of pigment, when colouring with this it basically puts out a watery blob that you can sort of move around with the tip.

It did nice even dots very easily and the colour was very opaque straight out of the pen.

Unfortunately because it puts out such a huge amount of polish the drying time is a bit much. If you smudge it you end up with this:

Verdict: I don’t think it’s great for doing detailed work but for basics like dots and little designs it would be good. The drying time might be a turn off if you’re working on your natural nails. I think it’s not so great for the price though.

Ok now on to the corrector pen. The idea of it is just say you’d done a fantastic nail art design and then go to finish with a French tip and make a huuuuge mistake *o* rather than starting again you can just wipe away the mistake by drawing on it with the corrector pen. It comes with 3 different tips depending on the size of the mistake.

*Edit* A couple of you lovely readers have pointed out that the corrector pen is actually used for removing polish from the skin and cuticles if you make a mistake rather than polish mistakes on the nail. Firstly the pen was actually recommended to me by the clerk at Priceline with the nail art pen saying that it was great to use and clean up mistakes in nail art, so firstly fail on the clerk for not knowing what she was talking about and fail on me for not reading the package properly. I did actually test it out on the skin too but apparently when I was posting half asleep this morning I forgot to include that part of review, double fail on me!

Anyway on the skin/cuticles I found it to be a little bit pointless as it took quite a bit of effort to remove any polish rather than just mushing it into my skin and turning it purple. For a highly pigmented polish you would have to stop and clean the tip several times if you needed to clean more than one finger which I found frustrating and time consuming. I think for the price (assuming I hadn’t gotten it on sale) I would rather just use an orange stick with a little cotton and polish remover >_< */Edit*

Oh noes I made a huge mistake with dark purple nail polish what ever am I to do?!

Following the instructions I wiped over the mistake. The pen didn’t specify if the polish should be wet or dry when I used it. When removing wet polish it just kind of moved it around. To be honest you might as well use an orange stick covered in a tissue because it really just smudged everything. You can see the results below:

I let the remaining polish dry and then tried the pen again. All it seemed to do was scrape off polish layers and mush them around together. Results:

Verdict: I wouldn’t buy it. I tested it in several different situations and with different polishes etc and all it didn’t do anything different. I don’t think it would be useful for removing small mistakes without destroying the rest of the design. It’s a pity though because it’s such a good idea 🙁

Next post is going to be a circle lens review 😀

Have any of you had good results with a Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen?

Hime Gyaru Pigtail Hairstyle Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 5, 2010 | Beauty, Hair, Hair-Tutorials, Tutorial

Hello! Finally what you’ve all been requesting, a cute hair tutorial on this style:

Seeing as I couldn’t think of a name for it, this hairstyle shall now be known as the Hime-Style-Gigantic-Curly-Piggy-Tails ^_^

Things you need for this particular cute hair tutorial 😉

Hair spray
Brush
Bobby pins
Curl enhancer spray/curling water etc
Hot rollers and clips
2 hair ties
Whatever you need to do a hime style pouf

So how long does your hair need to be for this style? I think that as long as you can manage the hime pouf yours should be long enough, really even with shoulder length hair you could do it, it would just look more like two fluffy balls ^_^
My hair has gotten quite long over the last year so I’m happy! Haha by the time I can afford extensions I won’t need them anymore *_*

To start with, you should do a standard hime style pouf. If you need a tutorial on that take a look over here!I’ve been thinking of doing an updated tutorial on hime style hair which is more detailed but I have so many other posts waiting to be posted that it will have to wait a while.

First step is to brush out the hair that is left down.

Separate your hair into two even sections on either side of your head. I just do it loosely so I can make sure everything is even.

After you are satisfied with the sections put them in higher pony tails just above and behind your ears. It should sit just below where the pouf starts like this:

Taadaa! Add a bow and this by itself is a cute hair style!

Plug in your hot rollers and allow them to heat up. Mine are Vidal Sasson and they’re super nice.

Starting from the back, take the section of hair which is the tail of your hime pouf and apply your curl spray. I am using one by Tresemme which I find works quite well.

Give it a quick brush through and roll it up with a small roller ^_^

Clip it into place being very careful not to put the weight on the pouf as you might destroy the hard work you already did!

Now take the next section from the front and repeat the process.

If you have a lot of different sized rollers like mine you should use the smaller ones at the front and bigger at the back.

This is what you should end up with when you’ve used up all of the hair…

Repeat on the other side!

Done!

Now hairspray the hell out of both sides.

Wait for the rollers to cool completely. It takes around 20 minutes, I used the opportunity to catch up with you all on Twitter 😉

When they’re completely cool start undoing the rollers.

You should start from the bottom and work upwards.

Again if you added a few bows this would be a cute style in itself ^_^

Again spray the hell out of all the curls! No such thing as too much spray!

Ok now the fun part! Pick a curl randomly and use your brush to tease it. To get the correct effect you should hold a small section of the curl and use the brush to slide the rest of the curl upwards.

This technique allows you to keep most of the length but the curls are really obvious and fluffy.

See the difference between normal curls on the left and teased curls on the right?

Repeat on both sides to all the curls and add more hairspray. Again you could just wear it like this with a few more bows XD This is like a tutorial with 5 different styles depending on how much time you’ve got hahaha!

So that looks pretty cute but what we really want is to make the pig tails higher, hide the hair bands and give it even more volume. So have your bobby pins at the ready!

Grab your pony tail and pull it upwards.

Hold it to the side of your head straight up.

Using the bobby pins you should pin the hair roughly 3cm above the hair tie. You will need a couple of pins to hold it all. You should be pinning it just higher than the start of your pouf. Make sure to do it securely because this is what’s going to be holding up all your hair!

When you drop down the hair again it should look like this:

The hair has much more volume and looks more fluid because it looks like it’s part of the pouf ^_^

This is what the back looks like, you can easily cover the pins with a big bow. Also you should probably do a better job of parting your hair in a straight line than I did ;P

And the side:

Finished!

Hopefully you all found this helpful, once you get the hang of it, it’s a really easy style to do.

Let me know if you want another cute hair tutorial like this!

Want to download this tutorial in one handy portable file?

Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a list of all of my downloadable tutorials? OMG so convenient! I know right?

Just sign up to The VLB monthly newsletter/magazine/awesome thing below and have the list delivered right to your inbox in the welcome message!

Updates to the site ^_^

by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 4, 2010 | Notices

Hello everyone!

So by now you’ve probably noticed the little changes I’ve bee making to the website. My aim is to make it easier to read and nicer for you guys!

These are the changes that I’ve made so far:

Widened the middle column so there is more room for the post and bigger pictures

Changed the fonts to a more readable colour and size

Changed the middle column background colour to make it more readable

Changed the header’s colours to make the site brighter and more readable

Widened the side bars slightly so I can add some more bits and pieces

Added a new page called “Snapshots” which is a gallery of my favorite photos in the categories Outfits, Nail Art, Deco and Crafts. This way if you just want some quick inspiration you don’t need to look through a bunch of posts ^_^

Added a new page called “Violet Vision” to keep a compiled list of all of my videos in one place. I still need to add a couple of videos to that section this week.

Did a lot of work on the back end of things to make the site run quicker and more efficiently. It’s never going to be the quickest site on the web due to all the pictures but with the work I’m putting in it should load in a reasonable amount of time.

Added a mobile version of the website. Now if you are logging on to the site with an iPhone/Blackberry/Other smart phone you won’t have to wait forever for the site to load, you should see a cut down version with minimum formatting. All of the pictures inside the posts should be in tact just smaller and more optimized for your phone ^_^ If you don’t like it you can turn it off at the bottom of the screen and view normally.
One cool thing you can do if you have an iPhone is actually make a bookmark which appears as an App on your home screen 😀 When you’re on the site just tap the “+” icon on the bottom and click “Add to Home Screen”. It will add a cute little button with my logo to your other apps and next time you want to visit instead of going through Safari, just click the app!

Moved the Search page at the top to within the FAQ page as no one ever used it. I will also be adding a smaller search section to the side bar so it can be seen from every page later this week.

I think that about covers most of the issues we talked about in the poll the other day, if you have any other comments of suggestions just let me know in the comments.

On a complete side note, I’ve just gotten a LookBook.nu account so if you’ve got an account come and friend me 😀

So what do you guys think? Also tomorrow post is going to finally be the tutorial on the hairstyle from the above outfit… I know you’ve all been waiting for that!!

Outfit of the day Post- Visitors!

by VioletLeBeaux | Apr 2, 2010 | Hime Gyaru, Outfit Of The Day

This is an outfit from earlier in the week when James’ childhood friend came to visit us! I baked macarons that day which were an unfortunate failure. I was too overambitious and I doubled the ingredients and ended up with… one gigantic tray shaped macaron. Epic fail.

Outfit run down:

Floral dress- made by me
Jacket- Angelic Pretty
Shoes- Wittner, modified by me
Bow- by the awesome Susie!
Jewelery- random places, described below

I made these earrings with some little cake charms I bought in Melbourne 😀

I love the details on this jacket, it’s the perfect thickness to take out on nights when there is a bit of a chill but not too cold!

James bought me this ring. I told him if he ever wanted me to marry him, he would have to find something at least twice as big for my engagement ring mwahahaha! XD

I completely love this hair bow. I want one in every colour!

This little crown is my favorite detail on the AP jacket but I always find that because it’s so heavy it can swing around and damage things >_<

These shoes were my back ups for the Nuffnang awards ^_^ I bought them for $40 but I thought they were much too plain so I added the bow, flower, pearls, pleated ribbon and the diamantes around the buckles! I’ve had a request for a how to on a hime-style shoes tutorial out of normal shoes and I definitely want to do it but at the moment I can’t find any good shoes to start off with >_<

Bonus picture: OooOOOooOOOoo I’m a spooky ghoooooost!

Thanks for looking at my silly outfit!

Tray Table Socks Tutorial

by VioletLeBeaux | Mar 31, 2010 | Craft, Storage/Utility-Tutorials, Tutorial

Ages ago I showed you very quickly how I decorated my tray table. I love this thing to death because it means that I can work out in the lounge room without having a gigantic burning laptop scalding my legs! Because it’s adjustable I can make it flat and do crafts and nail art on it too 😀

The problem with it is that on tiles every time you move it scrapes and make horrible noise. This is what the bottom of the feet look like, the tiles have actually worn through the paint! So my solution is to make it some socks to keep it’s feet warm 😀

You need:

Felt
Needle and possibly pins
Similar coloured yarn
Scissors
Lace for decoration

First detach the legs so it’s easier to work with. Lay your felt underneath it so you can measure how long you need it. You are aiming to have a long tube which will fit around the legs all the way up to the first hole in the side. My felt wasn’t long enough to do that so I had to use two pieces to make it long enough.

The cut out pieces, one for each leg.

To join the two pieces together I used a shoelace style stitch. This is to make sure it lays as flat as possible, you don’t want a wobbly table!

All sewn together into one piece:

After you’ve sewn them together, just make sure it’s still the correct length…

Now sew the other one 😀

Now thread your needle with the yarn. Wrap the felt around the end of the leg and stitch (or pin) it in place to hold it.

Using a blanket stitch start sewing the felt into a tube around the leg.

It should look something like this:

Keep going all the way up!

When you reach the top where the hole is poke the needle through it then wrap the thread around a few times. This will secure the sock at the top of the leg so it doesn’t wiggle down while you’re using it.

Now at end you started at use the yarn to close up the hole.

Looks like this:

So this is what it looks like with the socks fully on..

Now it’s time to decorate 😀 I sewed a ring of lace around the top of the sock.

Finished! Heehee they remind me of cute little Lolita style socks 😀

Much safer for the tile and a lot less of that irritating scraping noise!