Spring Skincare Regimen 1: Cleansers and Serums

I’m guessing this is the case for most beauty junkies, but I tend to think of my skincare routine as simple, but when I actually have to tell someone what’s involved, it turns out to be much more complex than I anticipated! Summer has recently hit Sydney (Sydney doesn’t really have in-between seasons – it was a high of 18 …

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Messy Mansion MM21, MM22 and MM13 review

Have you heard of Messy Mansion? It’s an Australia-based nail art and stamping plate store that’s particularly well known for their own in-house designed plates, some of which I have to show you today. Julia, the owner, gave these to me to review at the National (well, East Coast) Aussie Nails Meetup last week, and all the girls got grabby …

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Do aromatherapy and essential oils actually work?

As a scientist whose PhD involved natural product synthesis and pharmacology (that’s where you get chemicals out of nature (plants, bacteria, marine sponges etc.) in the hopes that they’ll become, or lead to the development, of a useful drug one day), I find alternative medicine very interesting. While a LOT of it is hokum, designed to trap innocent people into …

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OPI Holiday Collection review and swatches

Today I’ve got some of the Mariah Carey Holiday OPI collection to show you – I Snow You Love Me, All Sparkly and Gold, and Emotions, a black liquid sand. It’s a very glittery, shiny collection, as you’d expect! I Snow You Love Me is a unique glitter polish. It’s hard for big brands to compete with indies for unique …

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Mckfresh – The Sunnydale Collection swatches and review

Australian indie polish brand Mckfresh Nail Attire is releasing a new collection this Thursday, the Sunnydale collection. Yes, it’s Buffy themed! There are 7 polishes in the collection, named after the main characters, and I have to say, I’m in love with the whole collection! They’re all deep, rich, complex colours with interesting particles, and frankly, they’re downright sexy. Are …

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What’s wrong with my face? (according to Dermalogica)

I’ve always assumed that my skin is combination oily/normal, with large pores and blackheads occasional breakouts (stress and hormonal) and some hyperpigmentation (freckles). But I’ve never gone to get it checked out until recently, when I decided to take advantage of Dermalogica’s free Face Mapping analysis. Dermalogica focuses on skin health, and the Face Mapping involves is 5 minutes of …

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Damn You Stained Nails! Pt 2: How to remove stains

After Part 1, where I stained my nails (For Science!) to work out how best to prevent staining, the obvious next step was to figure out stain removal! I worked out in Part 1 that the teal colour is CI 77288, which is chromium(III) oxide. Here are my nails again – argh! I had to live with this for two …

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Damn You Stained Nails! Pt 1: How to prevent staining

I’ve always heard that teal polishes stain nails really bad, but I never really appreciated it until I wore the gorgeous Orly Teal Unreal and ended up with weird patchy stains on my nails, which you may have seen me post on Instagram: Naturally this weird observation made me want to investigate further! First up, here’s the breakdown of what …

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