The talons of fantasy - Nfu-Oh

Enfu-Oh is a Korean nail artist on a mission. Her mission is to make the most remarkable, unusual, exceptional and downright weird nail art the world has ever seen. Or at least that's what you might conclude after a visit to her site.



Claws filed to pinprick points, exquisitely hand-painted and appliquéd in the most baroque detail. Forget opening a can with these nails - you could stop traffic just by lifting a finger.

There's small but growing buzz around the web about Enfu's brand, Nfu-Oh, in particular the multi-faceting sparkling polish she makes. It's not directly available to us in the UK, though if you were near her Seoul-based salon it would certainly be worth a visit. The polish can be ordered from overseas at the moment, and sometimes filters through onto UK eBay.



Nfu-Oh's work is global and spans the whole discipline of nail art, but it's those kaleidoscopic polishes in their cute corset-shaped bottles that I've got my eye on. Some shades are a translucent base colour with fine leaf foil and glitter, some are holographic metallics that mesmerise in bright light.

I'm planning to track a couple of shades down through eBay. You'll hear more if I do. In the meantime, why not visit the blog of Nfu-Oh's main distributor in Asia for a bit of inspiration?

Huh

I just learned that Johnson and Johnson, who make my much-loved Aveeno body lotion (which I mentioned here in my Oatmeal Post), still test on animals.

Their US site issues a statement that they treat their animals as humanely as possible and test only to comply with FDA regulations for the testing of new ingredients. However I feel that there are plenty of non-new ingredients they could be using in their beauty products. That don't need to be tested on animals.

I present to you a more expensive but also more ethical oaty alternative - Neal's Yard Remedies Calendula and Oat lotion. I think this is the one I'll be using in future.

Fill your Boots! 17's rebrand freebies

You may have seen my previous post about the Boots 17 rebrand. The high street favourite has been vamping up its look of late.

It's also been having one of its wonderful spend-£5-get-a-gift promotions. These are run every few months, with generous gifts usually including at least one full size product. Not only are the promotions amazing value, the freebies often come in fantastic limited edition packaging. In the past they have tied in with designer collaborations like the Eley Kishimoto and Antoni and Allison collections.

The latest is something of a rush job in comparison to past gifts - it's a wildlife-print box filled with pink tissue and containing 3 items from the 17 range - nail polish, lip gloss and loose power eyeshadow.

But!

Each gift contains different, random shades of the three products, meaning that you can do this deal as many times as you like and still get new and different gifts each time.

Doesn't take a genius to work out that this might have something to do with getting the stock from before the rebrand out of the way - all the items in the gift are in the old packaging.

Still, can't look a gift horse in the mouth when you're looking at a buy 2 get 3 free deal!

If you're in store (you might be having a nose at the fanfared new Protect and Perfect Intense serum, for example), you could do worse than pick one of these deals up.

My latest adventures in Superdrug

Field-notes from my latest prowl around the pink-bannered aisles.

• Revlon are looking to revive the matte colour trend with a range of matte eyeshadows, lipsticks and blush. However, I'm reminded that Urban Decay's matte shadow range is now doing the rounds on eBay for pennies, and MAC's Matte2 collection didn't really make waves either. It's hard to work this look on eyes without perfect priming and a total lack of wrinkles. My money would be on the lipsticks, which come in several very wearable-looking shades. The four that I tested are still clinging happily to the back of my hand. The items cost between £5 and £10 each.


• Barry M release new shades of nail polish including acid yellow, block orange and a gorgeous pastel mint green. The latter is the one on my shopping list - I haven't found a good one since my dear old Agnes B "Mint Milk" dried up into a goopy ooze years ago. Nail paints are £2.95 each, and there are frequent multi-buy deals here and at Boots.


• Bourjois finally get with the programme and bring us Coup de Theatre in a single-wand version. I.e. a fibre-enriched lengthening mascara that doesn't take the sort of chicanery guaranteed to make you late for work if you attempt it in the mornings. The tube looks pretty good - an elegantly tapered vial with eye-catching stripes, and at £9-ish is at least £1 cheaper (RRP) than the original double-ended version. The brush has been upgraded to a rubber flexi-type one as used in Maxfactor's Masterpiece. It's not online at the moment, but it's right there on the shelf I promise. I'll be buying and bringing you a review of this once I finish my much-loved Liner Effect mascara, also by Bourjois.

Mmm, oatmeal!

A great product for dry skin should be moisturising, but not too oily. It should soften the skin but not smother it.

I've had real trouble finding a product that delivered the right level of skin-nurturing without turning my bod into an uncomfortable oil-slick.

*drumroll*... Until now!

The value of oatmeal was first revealed to me when I started using Lush's Ceridwen's Cauldron bath melt. it's a solid chunk of oatmeal and shea butter (among a cornucopia of other fragrant Lush-typical naturals) that slowly melts in the bath, releasing beautiful scent and turning the water into a softening milky soup of dematological joy. It comes wrapped in a muslin cloth that by the end of your bath has become, well, a bag of porage.

You rub this over your skin for mild exfoliation and extra moisture - the oats themselves release a smooth, proteiny substance that sits on the skin and reinforces the moisturising effect of the bathe.

Noticing how much nicer my skin felt after one of these, I began to use Aveeno body lotion - a very reasonably priced high street line with colloidal oatmeal as the active ingredient. It's the non-sticky, effective body lotion I'd been looking for, and so much the better for costing less than £5 per tube!

It's early days, but I'm already feeling much more confident in revealing my erstwhile flaky bits come summer thanks to the two products above. Less confident about the weather, but hey, can't have everything, right?

A note on the bigger picture

A question niggles. Do I fly in the faces of my feminist foremothers by writing about girly facepaint?

Makeup is a girly pursuit. Maybe the girliest there is. It's about pretty colours and packaging, and it's about let's pretend and make-believe. Sparkle and shimmer. It's about having your own special box of magic tricks that transform you into someone else.

Someone with bigger eyes and more flawless skin and brighter softer lips - i.e. someone who fits very properly into the shackled and neutered sexist horror-show that culminates in crap like "Mow The Lawn" (which incidentally has now caused Wilkinson Sword products to be banned from my bathroom).

Wait though, no. I come from enlightened liberal stock, don't it? My radar is well-tuned to the plight of the downtrodden and the throb of the bleeding heart. I've read my "Female Eunuch" and "Our Bodies Ourselves". I know that shaving my legs (plucking my eyebrows, concealing my pustules and indeed wearing a bra rather than burning it) is a matter of choice. I have a relationship with a man whose appreciation doesn't fluctuate if they (the legs) are shaved or not and I know that's the way it should be.

Does that mean I can't appreciate the lure of a beautifully packaged palette of eyeshadows, and the escapist glamour of a new colour collection? Is this some Girl Power hypocrisy, a vacuous denial of everything that went before?

I know it's make-believe. I know it's just a game, dressing up, making pretty fantasy out of the kind of reality that hasn't eaten or slept as well as she should have and is looking a little jowly there after too many takeaways maybe.

I know it's not ME. I know it's not who I am. I know it comes off with cotton wool and cold cream. It's a hobby, not a measure of self-worth. If it's a mask, it's a temporary masquerade - and the real face behind it is no secret, and has nothing to hide.

Just so you know who you're talking to here.

Illamasqua brings dark seduction to the UK scene

A new brand with a new style has blown in on the winds of economic change. Brushing aside the vintage cute, the clinical minimalist and the edgy urban styles that currently populate the department store counters, Illamasqua draws on something much more timeless and dramatic - themes of sex, death, theatre, myth and fantasy. It's not quite Goth, it's not quite burlesque and it's not quite special effects.

What it is without doubt is a beautiful range of high-quality cosmetics from a new UK brand bursting with character and innovation.

With the four doctrines of Bite (lips), Scratch (nails), Pierce (eyes) and Lure (face), Illamasqua creates a world of colour and texture to help you express "your alter ego".

Illamasqua is currently being rolled out at counters across the UK, including Selfridges in Oxford Street and Manchester, and BTs in Dublin.

You can call your nearest counter to book an hour long makeup lesson or "Transformation" makeover at the hands of an Illamasqua artist. The cost is redeemable against products from the range. If you're tempted to take a walk on the wild side and discover your inner desires, Illamasqua might be a good place to start exploring.