Eternal Collection ~ Athena necklace

I was recently contacted by the lovely people at Eternal Collection, an exclusive costume jewellery company based locally in Pitlochry, to see if I would like to choose a piece from their collection.  The company were already on my radar having seen some of their items being worn by some of my favourite bloggers, Jane at My Midlife Fashion, Nikki at Midlife Chic & Lizzy at What Lizzy Loves so I was very excited to have been asked!

Eternal Collection has been established since 2007 & is owned & run by a husband & wife team, Paul & Pauline Buttress.  I love that the majority of their collection is handmade, and that pieces not handmade by themselves are carefully sourced from around the world. 

I spent a couple of happy hours browsing their website & to be honest, it was really difficult to choose just one item because there were several pieces that caught my eye!  However, turquoise & silver is my favourite jewellery combination so I finally decided on the Athena disc necklace.

A couple of days later my parcel arrived, beautifully & securely packaged along with a hand written note from Heather..  (I wish more companies would take as much care with their packaging - it really does matter!)

I absolutely love this necklace, it's totally 'me'!!  Although the size & style of this would suggest that it's quite weighty, it's surprisingly lightweight making it very comfortable to wear.  I had wanted to save it until my holiday (after all, what's more Moroccan than silver & turquoise?!) but I couldn't resist wearing it the other day & it received many compliments at the school gates!

This is such a versatile necklace, I have so many ideas what to wear it with, I can't wait to show you! The Athena disc necklace is currently on offer for only £25.00.

What do you think?  Have you shopped with Eternal Collection before?  I think this one will be my next purchase!

NOTD Essie ~ Turquoise & Caicos

Last week I hunted out my old Tiffany bracelet that I had for my 30th birthday & I decided I wanted to paint my nails to match the packaging!  After asking the Twittersphere for some suggestions of colours, by far the most popular choices for good colour matches were China Glaze For Audrey or Essie Turquoise & Caicos.

 

So the next morning I hot-footed it into town & went to the beauty wholesaler where I usually buy my China Glaze products but they didn't have For Audrey & according the sales person, were unlikely to get any, booo!!

 

Next, was onto Superdrug as they had a 3for2 offer on & Boots didn't.....well, every little helps right?!  I bought the Essie polish along with Bourjois Healthy Mix Serum foundation which I've read many good things about & L'Oréal Lumi Magique Pure Light Primer.  I'll do reviews on those soon but for now, the polish.....

 

 

 

 

The colour is divine & a pretty good match for the Tiffany packaging.  As always, I applied my China Glaze Strong Adhesion base coat to begin with & then the first coat of polish.  I have to say, I was quite shocked at how thin in consistency this seemed as I usually find Essie polishes to be really opaque & cover exceptionally well with just one coat.  However, this was not the case here.

 

Even with 2 coats of colour, the coverage was still a little streaky for my liking & I think it could've done with a third coat to be perfect but I didn't have time!  I think next time I'll try it with an opaque white base colour on first & see if that helps with the coverage.

 

I finished with my trusty Seche Vite top coat & although I had about 6 days with no chipping or flaking before I removed the colour to change it, there was some serious wear on the tips going on.  Again, this just wasn't like any other Essie polish I've tried before so I was quite baffled.  But like I've already said, the colour is beautiful & I had lots of compliments on it, I'll just try an alternative  application next time & see if that makes any difference!

 

I also bought a bargain (£4.99) ring from H&M that matched the polish perfectly, another great summer favourite!!

 

 

 

 

What are your favourite summer colours?