The end of an era

I haven't been blogging recently, but there is a good reason why.  Yes, we have moved into our new house and my nail polishes have found a nice home in a large set of drawers.  Still a few small things to do, but we are in.

Because we weren't busy enough, hubby and I decided it was time to add to our family, and we are now awaiting the arrival of our third child.  I'm currently 21 weeks into my pregnancy, and have been suffering from all-day queasiness for most of this.  This pregnancy has been harder on me than my last two, as and such I have not been feeling well enough to do my nails and blog :-(  Things seem to be getting better now as my belly gets bigger. 

With the new bub arriving in a few months, I get the feeling that I will have even less time for nails and blogging soon, so for this reason I have decided to suspend my blogging activities for the foreseeable future.  I may come back to it later on down the track, but not just at the moment.

I thank you for all your support in the past, and I hope that you will continue on with your own wonderful adventures, be they nail polish related or otherwise.

Where in the world...

Hi Guys,

Sorry my posts have been a little thin on the ground lately.  Hubby and I just got the keys to our brand new house recently (YAY!), so we have been busily packing and moving boxes, and getting ready for the removalists to come in and move the furniture on the weekend.

Then I'll have to go back to the old house and get that squeaky clean for the buyers when settlement goes through in a couple of weeks.

Rest assured I haven't forgotten about you or my nail polish and I hope to be set up in the new house and back to blogging shortly.  Thanking you in anticipation for your patience :-)

Kaz

China Glaze Lubu Heels

Nail polish, shoes and handbags.  These are a few of my favourite things.  Imagine my joy when I can kind of combine two of them by wearing China Glaze Lubu Heels.

The premise of this polish is that is is supposed to pay homage to Christian Louboutin shoes.  When paired with red polish on the underside if your nails, it looks like the signature red underside of a pair of Louboutin heels.

Souce: http://us.christianlouboutin.com

Here is two coats of China Glaze Lubu Heels.  This polish is a sexy combination of red glitter in a blackened jelly base.  It applied well and dried quickly.  I then applied a coat of Cutex Red Alert on the underside of my nails to look like the red sole of a Louboutin shoe.

For this mani I used:

One coat of Nailtek II base coat

Two coats of China Glaze Lubu Heels

One coat of Cutex Red Alert (on underside of nails)

One coat of Seche Vite top coat

The use of nail polish on the underside of the nails was a bit of a novelty, and not something that I normally do.  It was fun to do and really added to the effect of the nails.  Alas I forgot to use base coat first, so the red polish did leave a pink tinge under my nails after I took the mani off.  I must remember to use a base coat if I try it again on the the future.

 

Australia Day

Source: Wikipedia

Happy Australia Day!  

It's that time of year again when we Aussies celebrate living in the lucky country and all things Australian.

Sure it is hot in summer, and after a week of 40 degree days I get kind of cranky.  And I really, really don't like the taste of Vegemite or beer.  But apart from that I am a very proud Australian and wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

Today I used the Australian flag as inspiration for my Australia Day nails.  The Aussie flag has a blue background, with a red and white Union Jack in the top left corner, and a large white Commonwealth star underneath it.  A smaller collection of white stars on the right of the flag represent the Southern Cross constellation.

My base colour was two coats of Ulta 3 Blue Marlin.  This is a great royal blue creme polish that applied well and dried quickly.

Then I made a franken polish from red, white and blue glitters.  In this little bottle there is red hex and micro glitter, white hex, micro and bar glitter, and blue hex, micro and star glitter.  The colours are perfect for the Aussie flag and a little star pops up here and there to represent the Southern Cross.

For this mani I used:

One coat of Nailtek II base coat

Two coats of Ulta 3 Blue Marlin

One coat of franken red, white & blue glitter

One coat of Seche Vite top coat

I hope you all have a great weekend and enjoy yourselves!

Essence Breaking Dawn Part 2 Collection

While a bunch of teenage girls were screaming with excitement over the last instalment of the Twilight movies being released with Breaking Dawn Part 2, I was actually more excited about the movie tie-in with Essence and four new nail polishes being released.

I did try to purchase them locally from my Target store, but they were all sold out and I had to resort to eBay instead.  Oh well, I have them in my collection now and here they are:

L - R: A Piece Of Forever, Jacob's Protection, Alice Had A Vision...Again and Edward's Love

 

The formula for all four polishes was nicely thick, and I didn't have any problems with running or pooling polish.  The brushes were all flat and wide, which was great when covering the main part of the nail, but a little tricky when trying to get near the edges and cuticles.

 

Each swatch is for two coats of polish, no top coat.

 

First cab off the rank is A Piece Of Forever.  This is a metallic gold polish, which had a slightly orange tinge to it when I wore it.  Two coats provided great coverage, although the brushstrokes were quite visible.

 

Next in line is Jacob's Protection.  This polish has a black base colour with blue and green micro glitter throughout.

 

Then along comes Alice Had A Vision...Again.  This has a dark purple jelly base flecked with purple and green micro glitter.

After applying Alice, I was sure that it looked familiar to me.  Then it dawned on me - Zoya Julieanne!  So I compared the two polishes side by side and on my nails.

Alice and Julieanne are extremely similar, but not exact dupes.  Alice has the some green micro glitter in it that Julieanne does not, and Julieanne has a bit of a gold sheen to it that Alice does not have.  Even though they are not dupes, they are so close that if you already have one of these in your stash, you probably don't need the other.

 

The final polish is Edward's Love.  This is a black based polish with silver micro glitter.

 

I thought this polish looked remarkably similar to China Glaze Haunting, so I did a comparison. 

 

There seems to be more silver glitter in Edward than in Haunting, although the silver is Edward is a different tone to the silver in Haunting so no dupe here either.  But again, if you have one, you probably don't need the other.

 

So there we have it - the Essence Breaking Dawn collection.  It is a pretty good collection, and the polishes performed well.  They were all opaque with two coats and once I got used to the wider brush it didn't cause too many issues.  My fave is probably Alice Had A Vision...Again, as I love the combo of the purple with a hint of green in it.

 





Orly Androgynie

Another day, another new polish to try.  This time it is Orly Androgynie.

This one has been on and off my wish list, and I was never sure if I wanted to buy it or not.  It looks nice in the bottle, but I've read mixed reports about it's application on nails.  Anyway, I decided to add it to my cart during my shopping spree and here it is.

So here in the bottle it looks totally smashing - dark jelly base filled with multicoloured glitter.

Given the jelly nature of Androgynie, I didn't want to have to apply 4 million coats to cover my nail lines, so I applied one coat of black as a base, then two coats of Androgynie over the top.  I also made sure that I kept the bottle upside down for about 10 minutes before application, as I wanted the glitter to be evenly dispersed throughout the polish.

For this mani I used:

One coat of Nailtek II base coat

One coat LA Colors Black Velvet

Two coats of Orly Androgynie

One coat of Seche Vite top coat

The end result is a vampy manicure with a hint of coloured glitter peeking through the blackened jelly base.  Unfortunately the glitter does tend to get lost in there and it is not as striking on the nail as it appears on the bottle.  Androgynie is pretty, but it doesn't have the "Wow" factor that I had hoped for.  Oh well, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

OPI Mini set - Bondettes

I may have gone a bit crazy in the lead up to Christmas and purchased a mega load of nail polishes.  There are so many new polishes to try out, but today I am starting the Bondettes mini set from OPI. 

This set contains four polishes from the Skyfall collection.

L - R: GoldenEye, The Spy Who Loved Me, The World Is Not Enough and Live and Let Die

Three coats of GoldenEye

GoldenEye is a beautiful polish, filled with a burnt gold coloured flaky shimmer.  There is a touch of orange about it, giving a bit more depth than a traditional gold polish. It applied well and has a nice smooth finish.  Three coats were needed for opacity.

Two coats of The Spy Who Loved Me

 

The Spy Who Loved Me is a mega bright red polish with a golden shimmer.  In the photos it leans a little towards orange, but on me it is more of a pink hued red.  Again the finish was nice and smooth.  Only two coats were needed for this one.

Three coats of The World Is Not Enough

 

The World Is Not Enough is a dusty rose coloured brown polish with lots of silver and gold shimmer.  The colour is very unusual and quite pretty.  A little more sheer than the others, this one needed three coats to cover my nail line.  It has a lovely foil-like finish.

Two coats of Live and Let Die

Live And Let Die is an inky green polish with a gorgeous gold shimmer.  The formula of this one is more of a traditional creme based polish than the others.  The green is so dark that it's almost black, and the hint of gold throughout is just divine. This was the most opaque of all the polishes and two coats was more than sufficient.

Overall this is a great little collection.  Given the number of polishes in my collection, it is rare that I ever use a full sized bottle of polish, so these little sets are great to for a few uses.
 

I ordered the Bondettes mini set from Nailtec.  They have a nice selection of polishes, including some of the newer releases.  Shipping costs to Australia were comparable to other sellers like TransDesign and 8ty8beauty.