Laqa & Co Nail Pens

Haven’t done one of these posts for a while...

A few months ago the wonderful, amazing, extremely patient Soraya from Powder Rooms sent me one of these Laqa and Co polish pens to trial, and I have finally got around to posting about it.  I was extremely excited to receive one of these pens as they seem like such a good idea and make the prospect of applying nail polish on the go seem more manageable. 

First attempt, 1 coat

I picked the colour Blurple as I am sure you all know that if there’s one thing I cannot resist, it’s a bright purple nail polish.  The pens are almost like a felt tip but with more of a ‘brush’ nib instead of a thick one.  The colour is shown at the end of the ‘pen’ and you click this to push the colour out of the tube into the brush, which is how you apply it onto your nails.  I found this a bit tricky, as the colour would always come out towards the neck of the tube and not push further into the brush, so I would have to scrape the colour onto my nail and then use the brush to spread it out.

Entire hand, 1 coat

The colour is amazing, but the brush makes it quite tricky to apply and not very even.  It’s very ‘liney’ as you can see from the above picture, and although it dries quickly, it almost dries to a matte effect?  This is fine, but was just something that I wasn’t expecting.  It takes a good 4 coats for this polish to be distributed evenly over the entire nail with no streaks and although I liked the finished result, this could be achieved much more easily with a normal nail polish with a decent brush.

Entire hand, 4 coats (finished)

I have used a picture of my nails before the tidy up as I want you to see how easy it was to apply without getting it all over your tips – obviously I tried not to do this, but the more polish you use the more ‘gloopy’ the brush gets making it harder to spread out over the nail – you do kind of end up with just a brush lump covered in polish that you have to keep wiping onto your nail...

Pen 'nib'

All in all I am not too excited about this product after use.  It has it’s good points, being that it’s extremely travel friendly in size and if you have a bit of time to spend taking care and doing your nails slowly and waiting for each layer to dry etc, it would be fine.  There bad points are that I was excited that this would be a product I could use ‘on the go’  when really this isn’t the case at all, and the texture of the polish is very thick and sticky, making it quite hard to paint it on evenly and without streaks.

Lovely idea, amazing packaging, beautiful colours but I just find the good old bottle & brush way slightly easier. 

Have you ever tried Laqa & Co pens?  If so i’d love to hear your thoughts and see if it’s just me that can’t get on with them that well...

I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack

Did you miss me?  Yes?  No?  Oh. 

I have taken a bit of a hiatus from the blogging world recently for a number of reasons.  I hate it when bloggers are all like “sorry for not posting” blah blah because 1) I am sure no one even noticed that i’d fucked off for a bit and 2) I can blog whenever I want SO GET OFF MY BACK OK *stare face*.  Anyway, the most important thing is that I am back now so quit your whingeing.  MORSH IS HERE.

Christmas is done and to me it just feels like a blur of mental nights, too much food and FAR too much alcohol.  It was bitter sweet for me, happy because it’s Christmas and I could literally do whatver I wanted every day without WORK getting in the way (by do whatever I want I just mean wake up, have a bath and start drinking – do I have an alcohol problem?  Hopefully)  but sad because 2 of my best friends went travelling on the 30^th.  They bit the bullet and went and now while I am at work typing this and trying to stuff a turkey sandwich in my mouth (yep, still not over Turkey yet) they are out to dinner at a Thai beach front gaff with an Irishman called Dylan.  Jealous!  Anyway, I am not entirely sure what January and the rest of the year are going to hold for me, but if I run out of material I will be sure to update you on Charlie and Jo’s travels, might as well live my life through them if my own is boring.

I don’t have any new years resolutions, I honestly think they are the biggest waste of time ever.  I am not going to not drink as much this year, I am not going to be more responsible, be more careful with my money or stop getting involved with the wrong men, so I am not even going to bother saying it.  Whatever will be will be, and me banging on to everyone about all the amazing things I think I am going to do but totally sack off by the 15^th Jan is just pointless.    

Lots of lovely things happened at the end of the last year while I was away.  I was bridesmaid along with 9 of my other friends (yes 9!) for my beautiful friend Julie who got married to the love of her life.  The highlight of that day was losing my absolute shit to the Dirty Dancing Megamix on the dancefloor.  One of my oldest friends had beautiful baby boy, who we have all instantly fell in love with and can’t stop fussing over.  The girls went travelling.  Throughout all of these activies undertaken by my friends, I just sat back, drank some wine and observed.  This year maybe it will be me actually partaking in an activity more interesting than having a punch up on the train?!  Who knows.

Anyway, MUSIC:  I might be late to the party with some of these, I might not, but I don’t care.  This is the music I am loving at the moment as I discovered some amazing songs over the Christmas period and re-discovered some old favourites.  

Check these links out honkeys:

P.S my sister got me tickets to see one of the loves of my life in April – Derren Brown!  What a legend eh?  I might try and convince Derren to make us both disappear to a carribean island. 

Happy New Year to you and yours xx

*SPOILER ALERT* 2.8 Hours Later in full

Before I even begin this post, I have detailed exactly what happened to us when we played 2.8 Hours Later, from start to finish and everything in between.  If you are yet to play in London and don't want the surprise to be ruined for yourself, then DO NOT READ THIS POST.  I am not responsible for ruining it for you if you haven't taken my advice!

I am sure if you follow me on Twitter you will know that lately I have gone a bit mental over the whole Halloween/scary stuff/zombie apocalypse thing, what with Derren Brown getting his mind fuck on and the fact I did 2.8 HOURS LATER AT THE WEEKEND.  Monday morning was slightly more intolerabe than usual, for the sheer fact that after running from zombies for 2 hours on Saturday night I now need to be carried up stairs and cannot cross my legs without yelping in pain and going a bit light headed.  Perhaps I should head to the gym more.

Anyway, if you DON’T know what 2.8 Hours Later is then crawl out from underneath your tiny wet rock and sit down here – i’m about to tell you a story.

2.8 Hours Later is the brain child of a company called Slingshot, who have obviously been so inspired by the brilliant zombie films 28 Days Later and 28 Weeks Later that they decided to create their own zombie apocalypse re-enactment.  It’s basically a big zombie chase game beginning at a random start location where you are handed a map and a grid reference.  You then have to get from checkpoint to checkpoint picking up grid references at each one to get you to the next zone.  Trying to read a map while outwitting zombies that are trying to ‘infect’ you along the way  is HARD – if you make it, you wind up at the zombie disco where you either celebrate as a survivor having not been ‘bitten’ by a zombie, or covered in fake blood and transformed into one of the brain dead flesh eaters themselves.  All sounds ace doesn’t it?  Here’s a rundown of the night... 

All smiles before we set off....

Our start location was a car park next to Blackwall station.  We signed disclaimers, were briefed on what to do, reminded of the health and safety issues and handed our maps.  Amidst lots of nervous giggling we were sent on our way and ran straight into a woman who gave us the first grid location for the next checkpoint and pointed us down to a subway...  Once inside we were confronted with 3 zombies and instantly the adrenaline kicked in - we all legged it through and luckily enough made it out alive...

Next up we went to one of the scariest locations throughout the entire game, an empty shipping yard with the big shipping containers piled up roughly 3 / 4 stories high.  We had to walk through the yard to a container at the end and it was SO DARK.  Inside there was an actor who scared us by acting mental and generally just being badass and I personally was terrified that zombies were going to run into this tiny container and EAT US ALIVE.  Luckily for us he just gave us the reference, sniffed my friends hair and told us to leave - we all ran out screaming like massive girls, but he didn't set any zombies on us and we were SAFE.

We walked for about 5 mins before we came across the next location, which was a multi storey car park.  A group had gone in just before us so we had to wait for a few minutes which totally didn’t help my nerves as we could hear the zombie moans and screams from the players while we were waiting – squeaky bum time.  We then walked up the stairs to level 9 (knackered) where we met a man who told us we had to go down to level 7 to get him some sweets as his blood sugar level was low.  I tried the whole “ok let’s take the stairs” trick but was DENIED.  The zombies were on the level below and were eyeing us up as we were talking, so we knew this was going to be carnage.  There were 4 zombies in green scrubs (normal) and then 1 special super zombie in purple scrubs who was literally the FASTEST ZOMBIE ON THE PLANET.    We took a deep breath, crossed our fingers and all ploughed down the ramp and for a second I thought I might actually be quite good at this.  I was ducking and diving and outwitting the walking dead – I was practically Jill from Resident Evil.  This was short-lived though, because literally 3 seconds later I followed Rik down what we thought was a ramp, only for it to be a dead end.  I turned around and a zombie grabbed me and dargged me into the corner, marking my hand and getting zombie blood all over my nice Primark t shirt.  I managed to get away and sprinted faster than Usain Bolt up the ramp to safety.  I totally forgot about the sweets but luckily another member of my team managed to grab them, so we handed them to the bloke and made a swift exit out the opposite set of stairs, flying down them 5 at a time in case the zombies burst through the door and chased us down the stairwell.  We made it out onto the street intact, but this set me up on a massive freak out session that this was going to be the scariest thing I had ever done and I would actually have a heart attack before the night was through...

Car Park zombies - eeek!

The zombie that caught me!

We continued walking and came across a short flight of stairs down into a subway, which housed a woman tramp (dressed like one, not just my opinion) who told us that we had to climb the stairs at the other end and find her a ‘glowing leaf’.  We were all a bit apprehensive so sent Jamie, the only member of our team who hadn’t been bitten in the car park up first (logic?).  We found the leaf and were clear of any zombies, so proceeded back to the woman to give it to her.  She then gave us our next grid reference and we were on our way.

Cue the scariest point of the night, the most shit-inducing checkpoint of them all... We saw the warden, noticed the park behind him and we were all instantly on edge.  I noticed there was a concrete path running around the park and my heart rate increased by about 10,000 beats per second when I looked onto the (pitch black) grass and could make out the silhouettes of zombies waiting to eat our brains.  As we edged reluctantly away from the marshall, a girl and a boy near us asked if they could join our group as their group had just run and left them and they didn’t fancy tackling the entire park on their own.  We agreed and as we huddled together to discuss tactics, the boy suddenly lifted his sleeve up revealing a big zombie bit mark and started twitching, groaning and changing into a zombie – I honestly came close to having a prolapse.  I ran full pelt like a headless chicken in the wrong direction, straight into a marshall who was manically shouting at me to run INTO THE PITCH BLACK DARK PARK.  I edged my way around the grass sticking to the path (where I seemed to be safe), half jogging half crying until I caught up with the others who were standing around a woman behind a gate who would give us our next grid reference.  We all stopped for a second to take a breather, before she started screaming that we in fact WEREN’T safe on the path and we had to head for a white tent in the middle of the grass which the zombies couldn’t enter.  I turned, in slow motion (unintentionally) just in time to see 3 zombies hurtling towards us faster than Felix Baumgartner on a skydive.  We ran for the white tent and once inside I am not ashamed to say that I actually started full on freaking out, wondering if i’d be able to let off a flare and charter a helicopter to swoop in and save me from the walking dead.  NO such luck.  In the end we all ran and I (somehow) managed to get out of the park without being caught, but definitely taking at least 2 months off my life in the process...

Next we recovered slightly and ran headlong into a guy who was distraught that he’d spilt his tic tacs all over the floor.  Apparently his friend up ahead was convinced the answer to infection lied in tic tac form, so we had to collect these and take them to him.  The tics tacs were scattered over the road, and as we made our way we encountered zombies jumping out of bushes and hiding behind bus stops (but we weren’t chased, thank the LORD – I would have run head first into a bus for sure).    Finally, the end was in sight.  Just 1 more checkpoint and then we were free.  The last one consisted of a game of zombie bulldog, running to retrieve ‘the cure’ through a hoard of zombies and bringing it back safe and sound.  The guy who wanted the tic tacs rewarded us with playing the harmonica while we ran through the zombies – once the harmonica stopped playing, the zombies came to life, trying to stop us from getting the cure back.  Everyone that ran got the cure (I sat this one out as I didn’t want the cure, I wanted the zombie make up – not because I was scared or anything). 

Please excuse the poor picture, this was zombie bulldog!

We then made our way into the safe zone where we were scanned for infection and dealt with accordingly.  One of our team, Jamie, managed to get through the entire thing without being caught.  Andrea was also clear of infection thanks to using the cure.  The rest of us were infected and had our zombie make up done, before heading towards the bar for a much needed cigarette and cider.  The zombie disco ensued, they had a Wii set up where you could play House of the Dead, an eclectic playlist comprising of the best scary songs (think the Psycho theme tune, ghostbusters theme tune, thriller etc) and lots of alcohol on tap.  My sister and I also participated in a “Best Zombie Competition” which involved screaming the words “brains” like a zombie, and being paired up with a survivor and trying to bite them.  I was the only zombie to successfully bite my survivor, but I didn’t hear the instruction for the screaming part, so just shouted down the microphone instead of screaming “brains”.  Oops.



Post infection



Zombie DJ!



All in all it was a brilliant night.  I have a fear of people chasing me anyway, even people I know so it was always going to be terrifying for me.  The rest of my team are slightly braver so didn’t find it as distressing but agreed it was well put together and they had a great time doing it.  It was a shame that in between zones there were no zombies jumping out or chasing you down the street etc, but we understood that the Isle of Dogs is a busy place and this would have been an epic breech of healthy and safety.  The best part was the park because it was bloody dark and utterly terrifying – so dark that you couldn’t make out who was zombie and who was survivor, who was your team and who wasn’t - I came close to a mental breakdown in the tent.  I wanted to film some of it but every time I pulled my iPhone out of my pocket I shit myself too much to actually stand still long enough to take a picture, so ended up just spazzing around the checkpoints half sobbing and clutching my phone for dear life.

All in all a brilliant night and next year we want to come back and actually be the zombies – it looked like brilliant fun and is perfect for me as there will be nothing for me to poo my pants over! 

Big thanks to Slingshot, all the volunteers, zombies, health and safety wardens and actors on the night – you were all brilliant!

Survivors vs Zombies

Movember: Anything other than bad

Today marks the start of Movember, and those of you that know me will know how pleased I am about this.

I have had a moustache obsession for quite some time.  I have moustaches hats, rings, necklaces, a clock, a jumper, a t shirt – my friends sometimes even label it a Morshtache, because I love them so.  I love them on ANYTHING, but especially men.  Men with moustaches and beards, yes please.  You can imagine my delight when Movember then came along and suddenly the world became a brighter place.  Men were actively trying to grow moustaches, and not just for fun – for a worthy cause.  Fair enough by the end of the month the office looked like a criminal’s version of Guess Who, but people got sponsored and raised money for charity.  It doesn’t harm anyone, quite the opposite.

So you can imagine my surprise when I came across THIS douche worthy article from the Happiest Person in the World, Brendan O’Neill (who writes for the Telegraph).  After I had got over the initial shock of realising this controversial piece of drivel wasn’t taking pride of place on the Daily Mail homepage, I just tried to work out what Brendan’s aim was with this article.  I still haven’t worked it out 2 hours later.

There are a few lines Brendan has written that have just confused the actual fuck out of me.  Here are some of my favourites:

“God I hate Movember.  Not only because growing a ‘tache for cancer encourages men to make a big, hairy, public display of their caring, charitable side”

OH GOD FORBID BRENDAN, GOD FORBID MEN SHOULD PUT DOWN THEIR CLUBS AND STOP BEATING THEIR CHESTS LONG ENOUGH TO DO SOMETHING WORTH WHILE.  I have never heard of a men’s charitable, caring side being used as something negative.  How is it in any way shape or form negative?

“Movember has ruined the moustache.  In the past, men grew moustaches to demonstrate their masculinity, but now we are growing them to show we are “in touch” with our bodies and feelings and that we are “health aware”

I don’t get this at all.  First things first, last time I checked woman didn’t grow full on handlebar moustaches.  It’s not possible.  SO, growing a moustache is still showing your masculinity, as it’s something a male can do and a woman, physically and socially, cannot.  Next, I can’t see why it’s a problem to show that men are in touch with their bodies, feelings and being health aware.  Movember isn’t asking you to cellotape your nuts to your gooch and wear a pink tutu whilst crying over the Strictly Come Dancing eviction show.  It’s just trying to create awareness for men’s cancers, and hopefully raise a bit of cash towards it.  IT’S NOT A BIG DEAL.

“apparently blokes have a problematic “it’ll be alright” attitude which leads to a “reluctance” to openly discuss “health issues”

It’s not really what Brendan said at this point, it’s the way he said it.  All the quotation marks show that he is saying this in a sarcastic way, like he doesn’t believe this is the case at all, like it’s just something some vegetarian tree hugging woman came up with as a way to discredit men.  I would say 90% of males I have come across definitely have this attitude towards health problems, and do think things will be ok and just go away on their own.  Most men I know refuse to even take a bloody paracetamol when they have a headache, as it’s not manly to require assistance from medicines or doctors when feeling unwell.  So now, you are saying that Movember is taking away men’s masculinity, but also saying it’s a stereotype that men are too masculine to ask for help when ill.  Make your mind up please.

I am going to stop with the list here as I have just come across probably the most damaging sentence of the entire article, and one that I can’t believe he put in after everything he had written above it.  He actually wrote...

“What this uber-patronising campaign overlooks is that if young men really do have an “it’ll be alright” attitude, that’s because it probably will be alright”.

Wow.  Let’s hope Brendan never comes across anyone with any symptoms of anything more deadly than a cold, because his “it’ll be alright” attitude might just enable them to meet their end a lot quicker than nature intended.  You can’t go through life thinking “oh I have a massive lump in my balls, but you know what, it’ll be alright” or “oh this feels weird and I don’t know what it is, but I think it’ll be alright”.  Sorry, Movember isn’t patronising, it isn’t saying “OH HI LOOK AT YOU, YOU ARE SO CUTE COME AND GROW A LITTLE FURRY MOUSTACHE AND LET’S ALL TALK ABOUT IT AND THEN CARESS EACH OTHER’S NUT SACKS BECAUSE WE ARE ALL HAPPY WITH BEING FEMININE”.  Movember is saying let’s all have fun, let’s all do something easy and let’s all be more aware about men’s health.   There are women specific charities and fundraisers (the entire breast cancer awareness campaign is mostly aimed at women, even though this is something men can suffer from), but this is the only men centred charity.  I cannot fathom how this is a bad thing.

My final parting advice is to ignore Brendan.  If you want to participate in Movember, then do it.  If you don’t want to participate, then don’t.  It’s not the crime of the century if you aren’t interested, but don’t belittle other people that are actively raising money and awareness about men’s health.  I’d be interested to know if Brendan ever found himself in the midst of a situation where he does find a weird lump, or feel a bit like something’s not right, if he’ll just ignore it to save his masculinity. 

Remember Brendan, you might think this is all a load of stupid rubbish, but there’s no masculinity in death.

To learn more about Movember, check out their website here:  http://uk.movember.com/about/

If you are actively supporting Movember and would like to donate some money, a few of my lovely Twitter followers are participating.  Sponsor them here: http://uk.movember.com/team/556349

Blogger Block

Bonjour friends!

God, I haven’t blogged for 10 days!  I have had such bad bloggers block, I don’t even know what to write about anymore :( I have decided to tell you what i’ve been up to in the last week just to get myself back into the swing of writing and hoping this will kick start some other super awesome blog posts that I hopefully have lurking away...

Last Thursday I got invited to an awesome event at my favourite boutique in Essex, I Am So Fly... I had been looking forward to this as they always have such dribble worthy clothes.  I arrived with my friends Charlie and Jo and we were greeted with a glass of champagne and a miniature cupcake from Loughton Cupcakes (absolutely AMAZING, I must have sneakily had about 8 of them, oops!)  We browsed the shop and checked out the clothes they were showcasing.  They had a few lovely girls from Space NK doing makeovers with Lauren Mercier products which I had never used before so Charlie and I both had our make up done. I went for a evening smokey eye while Charlie’s was more understated for a fashionable day time look. 

Cosy DKNY sleepwear // Studding AMAZINGNESS // Jo's hat // FOOD

Charlie getting her makeover // me having my eyes done // PRODUCTS // final verdict?

The store looked amazing, and you could see the amount of effort the girls at So Fly had put in to make the event a success.  If you ever need clothes for a special occasion or just want to treat yourself to a beautiful dress, get yourself down to this shop - I honestly could not recommend it highly enough!  Check out their website HERE to see all the beautiful clothes and accessories you can get you hands on.  Thanks to Emma and the girls for looking after us! 

I had a big one last weekend as it was my friend Julie’s hen party!!!  She’s getting married on 30^th November and she is having all 11 of us as Bridesmaids (yes, she must be totally crazy!).  We went to Alton Towers for the weekend and it was really great.  We met up at Kayley’s house at 11.30am on Saturday morning (feeling slightly jaded from Rejam on Friday night but the excitement soon took over).  We had breakfast and then in true classy Essex girl style, all piled into a minibus to get to ALTON TOWERS!  We arrived about 3pm, chucked our gowns on and headed straight to the spa for a nice pamper.  A few of the girls had ‘mini treatments’ which were mini 15 minute massages for £10 each, and then we had full use of the pool, Jacuzzi, sauna, steam, foot spa, relaxation room and chill out area.  It was lovely and relaxing and just what we needed after a 4 hour journey!   We then headed back to the room to get ready for dinner, which was a lovely buffet based in the Splash Landings hotel next door. 



Cockcakes // me and the hen // dressing the hen up (oblig) // Bano and I enjoying the cock straws on the minibus



Inapproprite spa footwear // being classy ladies at the meal // ALL OF US! // Late night corridor bants



After the meal we went back to the bar for drinks and banter.  By 1am the hen and a few of the girls wanted to go to bed but the idiots of the group (me included) decided to stay up and try to crash a conference going on in one part of the hotel.  We recruited a random man dressed as the Childcatcher (but we decided to call him Clopin), but decided after a while it would be more fun to try and run away from him (for absolutely no reason at all might I add).  This resulted in a full scale sprint from one side of the hotel to another, fully running in heels down emergency exits and back to our normal hotel.  We then went and got changed into more comfortable clothes and decided to wreak havoc and run around the gardens outside.  We managed to find a weird corridor in the hotel that looked like a hospital corridor (or the sort of thing you would see at the end of your life) and dared each other to go down it, but none of us had the balls to apart from our friend Chloe.



Spooky Alton Towers Hotel // the horrific hospital corridor



Easily looking like the living dead // appropriate scare fest weather? // OBLIVION // my hen party goodybag



We then finally got to sleep at 3am and then woke up bright an early for breakfast the next morning.  We were going into the park that day and were dressing Julie up as a Corpse Bride, so the rest of us donned some face paint and tried to make ourselves look like the undead.  We had an awesome day in the park and I took some brave pills and managed to get myself on some rides.  RITA nearly broke my actual neck, it is horrifically fast!  A few of the girls went into the Tower of Terror and said it was the most horrific thing they had ever been in so i’m glad I swerved that one!

Having a relatively chilled one this weekend, looking forward to watching Derren Brown Apocalypse tonight (it looks amazing and I LOVE Derren!).  I got paid yesterday so have been trying my hardest to refrain from buying lots of beauty bits that I don’t need.  I did buy a new heated brush from Tresemme though, as now I have a fringe it’s so much easier to style using one of them... I’ll defo put a review up of it shortly!  Oh yeah, I NOW HAVE A FRINGE!  I did it, I was agonising over it for so long in the end my hairdresser just cut it anyway!  What do you guys think?

I have a guest post going up on the lovely Charlotte’s blog at 12.30, so click the link HERE to check that out too.  I have followed Charlotte's blog for a while and love it, she does such awesome product reviews so it's a real privilege to have a guest blog on her account - thanks again Charlotte!   

Oh one last thing, the scarefest weekend and the fact it is Halloween on Wednesday totally inspired me to create my own Halloween nails!  What do you think?  They look like they took me ages to do and were really time consuming but they totally weren't, the longest thing was waiting for the nail polish to dry!  If anyone wants to know how I did them or would like a tutorial for any of the nails let me know and i'll post one :)

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and hopefully i’ll be out of my blogging rut and back to my best shortly! x