Beauty: My Peely Base Mani Lasted 7 Days

Hello! Or, I should say: holo. I promise the Seattle posts are still coming, one has been in my drafts for 5 days. I’ve just hit a bit of a writer’s block and there’s too much to write about so I’m overwhelmed. Plus the sheer level of busy that I’ve been lately is… insane.

Anyway, it’s been almost exactly 2mo since I received my first ever Holo Taco order. I have since, um, ordered so much more that I’m already Holo Royalty lol. That said, a solid 75 points came from bonus ways to earn. I realised a couple of days ago that I could have just signed up for SMS messages and become Royalty before a bunch of recent Holo Royalty surveys were sent out so I totally missed out on those.

But with the new launch releasing this week, I’m glad I’m now Royalty and able to receive advanced teasers woo! And yes I’ll be buying more polish this weekend, lol. I guess let me know if you want me to actually review everything else I got from Holo Taco too. So far, I’ve been purchasing polish from them exclusively.

In my first Holo Taco review, I mentioned that I used Peely Base and it lasted a total of 5 hours.

After I followed the tips and tricks from Cristine’s video about how to make your Peely Base/mani last longer, I was able to make my Peely mani last 3 days… then 4-5 days… and most recently, a full week or more, if we count the day I did my nails as day 1.

Above shows days 3 and 7. I was already getting bored of this mani and was planning to get rid of it soon anyway, so it deciding to yeet itself came at the perfect time. Oh dang look at that nail growth… and this boomer finally learned to start watermarking lol.

Allow me to share how I did this with more progress pics below. And the weird ridges in my nails will be explained as well. If you only care about the tips & tricks, click here.

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Beauty: Bliss Kiss Hydrating Oil Review

Hello hello. I promised Seattle posts and have I delivered? Ehhh… not yet. But they’ll come eventually. I’ve been in a bit of a rut, largely in part because of how uncomfortable I’ve felt in my surroundings lately, as well as with some of my failing electronics.

Long story short: I purchased some new organising items (some of which my hubby helped to put up around the house), moved furniture around in my office and purchased a new USB-C hub for my MacBook Pro. I am thrilled with how the updates we’ve made to the house and my new hub is working exactly as intended. I can’t wait to get some of the stuff done that I’ve had planned for a while.

Let’s start with the review of a new nail oil I acquired: the Bliss Kiss Simply Pure Hydrating Oil with Vitamin E and Jojoba. (I started writing this post before my Dark Rainbow review but it’s taken longer to get out because I needed a solid few days to review it properly.)

Why

Oh boy what a nail journey! I know I mentioned that I tried Simply Nailogical’s nail oil idea and it totally worked initially, but I noticed that, after using nail polish for a while, my nails were starting to get very dry, brittle and flakey again.

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Beauty: Holo Taco Dark Rainbow Review

Mmmmhmmmm… I promised a Holo Taco Dark Rainbow review and here it is. I managed to purchase the Dark Rainbow Collection with the box on launch day and had been looking forward to receiving it since I made the purchase.

The colours looked stunning on the website and via Simply’s launch stream. As a self-professed non-fan of holo, this collection was enough of my vibe for me to justify it being my first foray into the Holo Taco linear holo formula that I’d heard so many good things about.

Don’t come for me, but after having had it for about a week and the initial novelty has worn off, I must say… I don’t love it as much as I thought I would. Don’t get me wrong, I still like them a lot! But at present I feel like these are probably my least favourite polishes out of all the Holo Taco polishes I currently own, and allow me to explain why.

Positives

Let me start with the positives: the packaging was great – my box arrived in perfect condition.

The colours themselves are very pretty.

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Review: The Daily Paper Dotted Notebook

It has officially been an entire year since I purchased and started using this notebook as a bullet journal. I am still using it and enjoying it immensely, so it’s about time for a review, I think. The product I purchased was The Daily Paper’s A5 dotted notebook with numbered pages because, honestly, way too lazy to number all the pages by hand.

At the time of purchase, it was only $9.54 + tax, which, for what you’re getting, I feel is an absolute steal. As a bullet journaling novice, I wasn’t about to spend $40 on a dotted notebook, and this one turned out to be perfect for me. I’m slightly devastated that it no longer seems to be in stock and their website is currently down for updates because I can’t recommend this notebook enough.

I apologise in advance for the inconsistent lighting in these photos. I’m bad at photo editing, especially in Mac Preview. That said, I did try to get the colour of the notebook to as true-to-life as I could.

There are 183 total numbered pages, along with multiple other helpful pages that a BuJo may need. If you are an avid bullet journalist and enjoy creating your own spreads for everything then it probably won’t be the right fit for you. I’m a very basic beginner who had very little idea what I was doing, so the default spreads helped a lot.

The 120 gsm paper has been great for me, it’s decently thick and bleeding through pages is hardly a problem unless I’m really going for it with my highlighters. I switched to Mildliner Brushes a few months ago and they’ve been brilliant on this paper with minimal bleeding.

The vegan leather cover is delightful. It’s soft and durable, and while I have made sure to take good care of my notebook in the first place, there are barely any signs of wear on the cover, and it still feels as smooth and soft as the day I got it.

I’m also impressed with the elastic band and pen enclosure. It’s a thick elastic band that has not lost any of its elasticity over the past year (though to be fair, I am not a heavy BuJo user). The pen enclosure is large so I’ve been able to squish a couple of pens in there at a time, but you’ll definitely only want to hold pens with clips to keep them in place. A singular pencil will undoubtedly fall out.

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Review: XP-PEN Deco Pro S

It’s been a long time since I had a tablet, and I really felt like I needed one again because using the Apple Trackpad 2 was starting to hurt my fingers. After a bit of research I decided to go with the XP-PEN Deco Pro Small. It comes in a small or medium size, but as you can see from the above photo, it is really not that small! In fact, it’s larger in width than my new M1 MacBook Pro. I’ve only had it for a couple of days, so this review is just my initial thoughts.

It comes well-packaged, everything is individually sealed so I was very confident my product was brand new. Upon opening the box, you’ll find the tablet and a pen holder that contains both the pen itself and 8 replaceable pen nibs. The lid of the pen holder can be used as a pen stand. As well as the tablet being sealed, there is another layer of protective film over the surface.

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