Crawford Art Gallery, Cork City

Having been promised a mini heatwave this weekend, I was practically delirious with joy at the prospect of a Saturday off work. The little summer dress I would wear, the toenails painted a wonderful glittery fuschia colour to go with flip flops, bikini picked out for the trip to the overcrowded beaches within a bus journey of the city, new boyfriend cajoled into not taking overtime for the day, it was going to be perfect!

The I woke up and looked out the window, dull, grey and worst of all drizzly. Rain I can deal with, that's what umbrella's are for. But drizzle... Just wet enough that you get soaked but at the same time, look completely ridiculous walking around with an umbrella, wonderful. Thankfully it did dry up, and for a brief moment on the walk into town the sun even threatened to shine. It got stage fright though and disappeared again quick smart! But that pretty much ruled out the beach, so plans had to be redrawn, ideas had to be reformulated and quickly. It was my turn to arrange the date and as this is still the new fun stage, I wanted a nice activity that didn't cost either of us too much. Walking past the Crawford Gallery, I spied a sign advertising gallery tours and hatched my plan!





I love the Crawford anyway, having studied Art in school and choosing Art History for one of my first year Arts subjects I've visited the place a good bit. I wasn't sure if He'd be as into it, but after an arm twisting coffee treat, turns out he was well up for it and in we went to be greeted by the lovely Julie who proceeded to make the following hour fly by. There were only four of us on the tour which was both a pity (as I think more people should avail of it) and a treat as it meant we had our own personal guide pretty much.

image from limerickblogs.com



I've been very unlucky in that every time I've visited the Crawford the Harry Clarke stained glass has been off display (this has to be done regularly to protect the glass from cracking under the heat of display lights) but today... It was there! Having the guide meant we could ask plenty questions and she was very knowledgeable. We both thoroughly enjoyed the tour and I would certainly recommend you spend an hour of your visit here with the guide. Currently they are at 1.15 and 3.15 on Saturdays, but the people here are lovely and would only be too happy to answer any queries about weekdays. Best of all... It's free!!

That was a long lunch...

Confession... I'm a terrible blogger! It's been far too long but my life has settled down somewhat so I aim to try post here again, at least once or twice a week. I'll be trying to feature some budget beauty bits, cheap eats, bit of DIY or customisation tips and maybe the odd recipe.

One of the more difficult things I will be trying to do is see if I can find nice things to do for little or no cash here in Cork, believe me this is harder than it sounds! So if I manage to find them, I will feature them! This is a great little city, I truly love living here, but believe me, it can sometimes be hard to fill a free Saturday without spending big bucks! SO my first post back will be appearing tomorrow evening when I tell you all about my lovely Saturday afternoon spent wandering one of Cork's better attractions, The Crawford Gallery. Stay tuned!!

Franken Umero 2

We all have polishes that are hanging around in the make up bag (or bags in my case) that we aren't entirely sure why we bought them in the first place. In this case I'm talking about 17's Real Romantic. I'm pretty sure I bought this to go with a particular outfit, but for the life of me, I cannot remember what... That's because this colour goes with nothing in my wardrode! I cannot think what outfit would have required a pinky-peach, metallic colour with a coppery gold shimmer in it! This is by no means an awful colour but I feel that it could definately contribute to something altogether more spectacular! Here is a before shot.


I quite like the shimmer in this and think that if this were darkened uo we'd have a very interesting polish. SO! I'm going to attempt frankenpolish number two. To the 17 bottle I'm going to add some black. I got the black nail polish in Penneys to toughen up a very girlie outfit and it lasted all of five minutes before chipping, and that was with a coat of Seche... My poor housemate who borrowed it the same night almost had chips appearing as she was painting! So after I had mixed in a generous amount of the black, here is what I got...


This turned out better than expected, this was a colour unlike anything in my stash and is something I know I will get alot more use out of than its parent polishes! And in fact, this reminded me slightly of a very on trend polish indeed! Chanel Paradoxal, or to be more precise, its dupe Models Own Purple Grey, that kind of mauvey, greyed out purple with slight shimmer, I think this is fairly similar. Im glad to report too that adding the chip prone black to the normally fantastic wearing 17 polish did not affect its longevity, Huzzah!

Pink No. 3

A bit of a blogging break there to celebrate the Cork Guinness Jazz Festival. More about that later... But before that happened, I had painted my nails this shade of pink to continue my theme for the month of October.

This is 17's Fairy Cake, a pastel cream that they released this summer and that I instantly fell in love with! Application on this isn't great, this is three coats and there was some serious dragging on the first two coats. The third was a nbit better, but I still felt that I had to be super careful not to ruin the first two. There is some patchiness as you can see... And don't even get me started on the weird lump thing that is on my ring finger! But I like this colour, its very pretty and it wears well.

The Girls got Round

Originally meant to be a Pot Luck Dinner party, my Get the Girls Round event turned into a pink themed tea party. Work commitments (new Christmas temp contract in Irelands favourite budget fashion store!) meant that plans had to be altered... Bye bye homemade spaghetti carbonara and hello pink iced donuts! And did you know that Tesco sell tubes of Smarties that are entirely pink! Colour me delighted...

Everyone was instructed to bring something pink and something grape! As you can see by the picture, some of the bottles of grape didn't last very long...


This was a great night, it was really nice to just sit around with the girls chatting and reminiscing. we raised a good bit of money and with donations being promised from a few more people we hope to raise a bit more. There is still time to host your party or get together and raise some money for a fantastic cause! Check out the Facebook page for more details on organising yours...

Granny Polish alert!

So we move on to pink polish number 3 and this is one of the ones I got in my haul the other day, 17's Pinking Sheer. I had earmarked this as an 'interview polish'. One that I might lash on for a job interview when I didn't have time for the classic French Manicure. In the bottle it looked shimmery and there appeared to be a couple of different things going on, a bit of blue and pink shimmer in the mix.

But on the nails... Oh dear. I knew after one coat I was going to hate this! But I applied the second and hoped that a miracle would appear and transform this... Nope! This was a sheer, frosty pinky, white. The name of the polish is very very apt to be fair, its pink and its sheer. It is completely not me! It reminded me of old lady polish... Its slightly more pink than it appears here.


You can see the colour better in the fuzzy picture and the brushstrokey, frosty finish (and the lovely sunny day in Cork!) in the second clearer picture.
Application was good on this, no major problems... For a polish I did not like this lasted for ages! I was too tired from work to muster the energy to take this off, and it was 3 days and not a chip in sight, that was not having used any topcoat (I know, slap on the wrist!). So at least it has that going for it, even if the colour is horrific!

Pink No. 2

So pink number 2 for Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Its Barry M, Pink Flamingo and in truth this is not a really pink pink, there is most definately a touch of coral in here but its lovely and the name means it totally fits in with the theme for the month!


Application isn't fantastic on this, three coats are definately needed and this is quite streaky on application. However, after the third coat you are left with this... This first picture is at night, indoors with aflash and shows the high shine, the picture to the right is closer to the colour.

This is very pretty, a lovely colour and very very shiny and it lasted very well. A bit too well! I get bored with polish very quickly... So I road tested my new Matte topcoat! This totally transformed this polish. It really enhanced the pink tones and created a lovely soft finish to my nails. I really liked it.

If you intended on wearing your nails matte for a couple of days I imagine you'd have to reapply this. I could definately see the affect lessening after the first day and while my nails were in no way shiny, they were not AS matte... Minor complaint though!