Happy New Year!

Just wanted to say Happy new year to all my followers. I hope you have a great night, whatever you do and a great 2011.

I'll leave you with a pic of my NYE nails.

Lots of love and champagne,
Miss dolly gal
xxx

Christmas party dress

I had to show you my bargainlicious Christmas party dress.

I initially saw this on the Instyle website and it screamed Christmas to me. When I saw it was from the Primark Limited edition collection, I was surprised and also gutted. My little Primark would never get it in. I had a little search on Ebay and found it, brand new with tags, in my size. I eventually won it for £17 inc P&P! The dress was originally £25, which is very cheap and I can’t believe I got it even cheaper. It’s mostly velvet but has the prettiest chiffon panels and lots of layers to the skirt.

Have you found any holiday party bargains this year?

The most thoughtful present

G let me open a present early this year and I had to share it because it was so thoughtful.
All wrapped up like a Christmas cracker (honestly, I wish I'd taken a photo) were 7 lovely Yankee candles.



A nice present in itself but he'd put a lot of effort into choosing the smells. He went through each smell and told me when I could burn them based on Christmas events.
So I have Christmas eve for today. Welcome Christmas for tomorrow morning. Christmas cookie for tomorrow afternoon. Black cherry and cinnamon for boxing day. Clean cotton for new year's day and midsummer night for new year's day evening. He explained why he thought each smell went with each event.
So I have Christmas eve, already to light in my Santa holder (as seen behind).
Do you ever do anything like this for people? Has anyone ever done it for you?

Christmas party looks-part 2

I had a work do last weekend and I went all out on the matching aspect-nails-dress-eyes. It’s Christmas so I felt I could indulge my love for co-ordination!

On Sunday I showed you my nails, here’s the dress and make up.

H&M about 3 years ago.

Dazzle dusts and pigments are my party look friends.

On my eyes- C2000 eye dusts in Magical and Angel. The blue from the Sleek sparkle palette, C2000 loose glitter wand in Gossip and 2True silver glitter eye liner.

I do love going a bit mad with glitter at Christmas. Do you like to match your outfits or is clashing best?

Christmas at Casa de Dolly

Hurrah, it’s Christmas time! I’m SUCH a festive person and I got to decorate my own place for the very first time this year. I thought I’d go over board but I’ve actually been very restrained.  I’ve had to be a bit careful with the amount I’ve spent but I’m really pleased with the look of the place.

Starting with my front door

I love a traditional wreath but I thought this was a little different. Cheap and cheerful, about £8 from Wilkinson’s.

My bathroom

A tiny pink tree from Poundland!

My living room

In the window

Cute Noel from Wilkinson’s for a few quid.

My table is tiny so I can’t have a proper centre piece. I made my candles festive instead.

Glass tealight holders- Ikea, Owl tealight holder- Accesorize, White Mistletoe candle- Sainsbury’s, Gold reindeer tealight holder- Sainsbury’s.

I couldn’t escape the tradition of putting my cards on the door

and decorating Pugsley

and finally- THE TREE!  Since our ceilings are so high we got a 7ft tree.

It still looks tiny! I went for a gold and white theme as my living room is black, white and yellow.  I love special decorations and these are the first in my collection.

From the Christmas shop in NYC.

and from my mum

I really love special tree decorations and look forward to building my collection.

So that’s it! My cheap and cheerful Christmas.

Holiday nails

This was a notd from a few weeks ago. First time using China Glaze Phat Santa. I wasn't blown away but it's a nice enough red. I added some sparkle with a nail art paint on the tips.

Holiday nails- Icy cold

I’ve been planning this mani for a few weeks, to match a dress I’d planned to wear for a Christmas party (post tomorrow) and really adore the way it came out.

This is No7 Sunshine as a base and Barry M blue glitter on top.  I use Leanne’s excellent method of sponging a gradient with an old eye shadow sponge and layered up the glitter at the tip.

Very easy peasy but looks super effective

Brrrr. Perfect match for this cold weather!

Festive green

I made a lil more effort for work today- I wanted to make sure my new hair went well with eyeshadow’d eyes so I created a quick, festive day time look.

I used UDPP as a base, and the shadows were from 2 Sleek palettes- Storm and Sparkle. I used Gold ribbon to brighten my inner corner, swept an antique gold colour from Storm over the lid, and blended Mistletoe into the crease. My brow was highlighted with the lightest gold from Storm. Quick smudge of UD 24/7 liner in Zero on the corner of my upper lid and in my lash line and it was good to go!

Short hair..again

I’ve been growing my hair since the beginning of the year but I’ve grown to hate it, so tonight I went to the hair dressers and had it all chopped off again.

I went for a style similar to Frankie from The Saturdays and I really like it (sorry for the bad quality photo, but I wanted a mirror pic to show you what it actually looks like)

Long one side, really short on the other

 

It’s so easy to do. I’m really looking forward to trying new looks with it too.  What do you think?

All outta ideas

I need some help from you guys.

I’ve sat down to write my posts for the week and I’ve come to a dead end. I simply cannot think of anything to write about or photograph. I've also noticed some of my posts going completely uncommented or with very few comments, so I'm worried you guys are getting bored with my posts.

Here’s where you come in. What would you like me to post about?

Do you enjoy my hauls? Outfit posts? Eye make up ideas? Nails of the day? Product reviews?

Please leave me a comment and let me know.

I get way more pleasure knowing that my readers are reading my blog and enjoying my posts.

Christmas party looks- part 1

I have quite a few parties to go to this Christmas which has given me a good excuse to be creative and come up with lots of different party looks.

This look was done out of Sunday boredom and I wanted to come up with something a little different to the normal golds and silvers.  Plus, I hadn’t even swatched my new Sleek Sparkle palette so I was dying for a play.

I’ve seen a lot of beautiful purple party dresses so I thought I’d do a purple/pink look to match them.

I used the new Sparkle palette by Sleek

and picked out the silver, the pink and the 2 dark purples.

I also added some sliver glitter liner to the top lash line, and black to my waterline.

I really like the Sparkle palette, but there’s a real lack of lid colours.  This was the only look I could do, using just the palette. I’m definitely going to use the others as crease colours though.

Look out for more Christmas party looks throughout December

I am Dragon, hear me roar

Part of my birthday present from work was Chanel Dragon polish, which I was obviously delighted with.

It’s my new favourite red, ever. Instead of making my hands look grubby, it brings out a pretty pink tone to my skin. It’s so classy and opaque in one coat. It does chip though. Even with top coat, my right hand chipped within hours of wear. Which lessens the lady factor some what.

Friday featured product-holiday nails

Hurrah! It’s Friday again and time for another Friday Featured Product.

This week I’ve been loving Party Hearty by China Glaze

The most special, Christmassy, glittery nail polish ever.

I checked out quite a few swatch pictures of this over different colours and decided white was my favourite.

Here’s my current nails using Model’s Own Snow White (how appropriate!) with a layer of Party Hearty over the top.

Khaki leopard

My lovely friend bought me this cardigan for my birthday and I LOVE IT.

Throw me anything leopard print and I’m yours anyway, but I particularly like the khaki background colour, which makes it a little different to a normal leopard print.

I’ve been wearing it over a baggy black tshirt and my khaki jeggings. A little matchy matchy perhaps but I like it.

My khaki leopard cardigan was £14.99 from H&M

Dolly’s Christmas message

It’s the 1st of December, my brain will allow me to start getting really festive so I thought I’d do my annual Christmas post.

This year I will be spending Christmas with my boyfriend and our families and it’s the first Christmas in my own home so I’m extra excited.

This month on Miss Dolly Gal, I’ve got more holiday nail looks, holiday party make up and outfit ideas and for the first time- Casa de Dolly decor (including a Christmas tree in my bathroom!)