It’s funny how up to a year ago, I disliked having my nails painted. I did. I’m exceedingly clumsy, and Murphy’s Law springs into action every time I have my nails painted, whether it’s by a nail technician or myself. Fifteen minutes within leaving the salon, and what do you know, my first chip! I’m pedantic about having chip-free nails, so once I see that chip, I won’t be able to rest until I either fix it up, or remove nail polish from all of my nails altogether.

Now, well, I think it’s pretty evident on the blog that I highly enjoy painting my nails now. In fact, I look forward to Friday evenings when I can sit back, relax and paint my nails for the weekend. So, what changed?

I’ve come to learn that the products you use to take care of your nails and create manicures are oh-so-important. I didn’t used to think it was necessary to have a good base coat and top coat. Gah, anything would do, right? It says right there on the bottle, BASE COAT. TOP COAT. Isn’t that good enough? Not really, and after trying bottles and bottles of base coats and top coats, I’ve finally discovered the ones that make my manicures work.

It’s imperative that the nails are properly buffed, cuticles tidied (erm, okay I admit, I’m quite lazy with this one) and nails filed before slapping the paint on. Here’s what I use for my nail-painting pleasure:

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My mornings mostly begin like this. Wake up, check Twitter, use the loo, put the kettle on, and check emails. As I have my breakfast of Milo and a peanut butter sandwich, I go through my emails and mark the ones I need to respond to, the ones I just have to read and archive, and the ones to delete.

I get quite a lot of emails from PRs on a daily basis, but before you go “gee, show off why don’t you“, most of them are from American PRs whom I don’t work with at all. Somehow my email address gets circulated amongst the PR vine and database, and I get press releases that are irrelevant to my location.

Amongst those emails, I can guarantee you that 7 out of 10 of them are never addressed to me. I understand that in the wide ocean of bloggers out there, the PRs have to cast their nets of press releases and information to the sea, and hopefully catch some who will blog about the brands they represent. Still, it’s only common courtesy to properly address the person, and I’d very much prefer emails addressed to me. These are the emails that I respond to. The ones that begin with Dear Ms almost always end up in the bin.

I suppose I’m quite immune to it now and don’t get offended anymore if they call me Tina, Christina, Kate, Henry (oh yeah, that has happened)…anything but my name. I get an average of 300 such emails per week and if I were to be annoyed at each one that comes in without proper salutation, well, I’d be a shriveled-up ol’ prune by now.

Here are some of the ones I get often:

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About a month ago, I received an email from a reader, Alana, to review the IntensifEye wet/dry eyeshadows from Australis. I’ve only ever tried one eyeshadow from Australis, so I thought, heck, why not? I aim to please 😛

There were 4 different colour combinations for the eyeshadow trios. I bought the one in Out of the Blue, since the teal really stood out for me.

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