My Life In February ♡

Hey guys! Thanks so much for all the sweet birthday messages on my last post! :) And also on Twitter/Instagram! :) I was even getting messages the day after my birthday haha (woohoo elongated birthday ;))! Really, thank you :) ♥

Today I have my February Favourites post for you! :) I decided to call these posts "My Life In <insert month here>" haha. I did my first favourites post last month if you want to check that out to find out exactly what I'll be showing you in my favourites posts.

February is a favourite in itself! February is probably my second fave month after December! Obviously February is my birthday month, and I love Valentine's Day too. :)

So, onto my favourites starting with the more nail related stuff. :)

Nail Polish

Hmm... For nail polish this month I'd have to say that my favourite was definitely...
Color Club Blue Heaven. Nothing like this crazy holo goodness. ♥

Closely followed by OPI's Absolutely Alice which I wore for my birthday manicure! It's just AMAZING. ♥_♥ So beautiful.

I was also really loving reds and more 'classic' polish colours in February! I wore red nails a few times but I only posted one of them which you'll see in just a second. ;)

Nail Art

I didn't do a whole lot of nail art in Feb but two stood out to me.
I absolutely loved my Stripy Cupcake Nails and it seems as though a lot of you did too! :) Thanks for all the positive feedback on these as well as the tutorial!

Another mani I really enjoyed was this one. OPI Red Lights Ahead...Where? + stamping with QA18. I love this red, to begin with, but I also love the combo of red and white together and even though my stamping isn't great, I thought it was cute. :)

I also wanted to let you know that my lovely auntie bought me the BundleMonster 2012 stamping plates for my birthday! So you can expect to see more stamping from me from now on. :D I'm so excited to try them out! :)

Nail Care
This month I have been loving using regular old Olive Oil on my cuticles! It might sound a bit weird, but it's soooo moisturising and I love lathering a whole ton of it onto my cuticles before I go to bed. I wake up with really moisturised cuticles. Plus it's WAY cheaper than regular cuticle oils (which sometimes can contain chemicals or other junk you just don't need), and you can find it in like, every grocery shop! :) I definitely recommend it! I just pour some into an empty cuticle oil bottle (or you could just use an empty polish bottle) and use it that way. :)
I've also been wearing cotton gloves to bed, but it has been so hot lately that I keep waking up in the middle of the night and pulling the gloves off! lol! The gloves are great because I lather a whole heap of hand cream onto my hands and then use my olive oil or Lush Lemony Flutter, slap on the gloves and they really help the products to sink in and moisturise my hands and cuticles, rather than getting all over my bed sheets lol! I just picked up a pack at the grocery shop (you can grab them while you're there getting your olive oil! ;)).

TV Show & Movie
At the end of January / beginning of February I started watching Sabrina The Teenage Witch from season 1! I've seen it before on TV but never seen the episodes in order. I also loved the animated series when I was younger. I love Salem lmao! So I have been LOVING Sabrina! ♥ I've gone through like 3ish seasons in a couple of weeks!
I've also been loving Modern Family! Such a funny show! Ahhh I just love it. <3 On a side note - I really want some of the Nicole by OPI Modern Family polishes!

Blog / Blogger

This month I was obsessed with the following blogs...
Nails By Kayla Shevonne
I've been following Kayla Shevonne for a while now but lately I've been especially enjoying her posts lately! :) Her swatches are impeccable and so is her nail art! She's also a nail tech and her nail care series is AWESOME. :) So I really suggest you follow her if you aren't already!
ChitChat Nails
Another blog that I've been following for a while now but recently fell in love with! Marta has amazing nails, and her photos also look incredible. She does really creative and unique 'skitlette' manicures which I love :) I also think it's really cool when she features pretty jewellery in her photos! ^_^ You muuuust follow her! :D

iPhone Apps
This month I rediscovered a game I like! It's called "IMDB Trivia" and it's FREE. :D I mostly only have free apps, FYI. IMDB Trivia is a movie and TV show trivia game! I looove it. And I recently started playing again! It's really fun and I love movies and TV!
I've also been more into photo editing on my phone lately. I love "Overgram" (free), and "Camera+" ($0.99AU). Overgram can add cool text to your photos and Camera+ is like the regular camera app and Instagram in one, but BETTER. It has so many great features that the normal camera app is lacking including a timer, and some really nice effects! :)

I've also been loving my iPhone in general! I just upgraded a few days ago, from the iPhone 4, to the iPhone 5! ♥ I love so many things about it! It has a much better camera compared to the one on the iPhone 4, it's faster, lighter, the screen is bigger... It's just great! It's white too which I love. I had a black iPhone 4 and I always felt like my cases looked ugly on it. LOL.

I also love my super cute mint green case! I may or may not have bought this weeks before I even knew if I would be upgrading. :P I bought it on eBay HERE if you're interested. Just FYI - it's not very protective of course, it's VERY thin but it is sooo cute (and really cheap!).

What were some of your fave things this month?! Polishes, TV shows, movies, iPhone apps, any of that stuff! :D Or makeup?! I am interested in makeup as well as nail polish but I probably won't be featuring any makeup in my favourites posts because I don't really try out new products very often, but I'd love to hear what some of your recent favourite products are :D

Hope you have a fantastic day! ♥

My Birthday Manicure ♥ OPI - Absolutely Alice

Hey guys! :D Guess what! Today is my 20th birthday! ^_^ Thank you to those who have sent me messages and stuff like that! ♥ Love you guys!

Being my birthday, I wanted to wear something special and sparkly on my nails! :) I think this polish is totally perfect for that! I can't think of a better occasion to pull this beauty out of my untried basket.

This will be a bit more pic heavy than my posts usually are - because this polish is just beeeeeautiful! :D

OPI Absolutely Alice

 

If you follow polish collections, HTFs (hard to find) etc, then you'll definitely know this polish! I'm so lucky to even own this polish, let alone get it for the price I did ;) No I won't tell you how much lol!

Absolutely Alice is from the Alice In Wonderland collection from 2010, which is very hard to find now and sells for insane amounts on eBay.

It's a clear base with blue and gold glitters. I believe this collection came out when OPI started stepping out of the box and releasing beauties like this one!

Absolutely Alice is SUPER dense for a glitter and I only needed 2 coats! It also dries to quite a smooth finish for a glitter like this. It was fine with 1 coat of Seche Vite top coat, but I added another just to be sure. :)

If you want something similar to this but way cheaper (in Australia), BYS has a colour called "Through The Looking Glass", and it's pretty similar to Absolutely Alice, though it's a lot less dense. You could just layer it over a base colour, though. :) You can probably find it at Gloss stores.

Close up ♥

LOOK AT THOSE GLITTAHS!

Thank you again to all the lovely ladies who wished me a happy birthday! ♥ I love you guys!
Thanks for reading :)

Aussie Nails Monday 25/2 - Favourite Brand

Hey guys :D I hope you had a great, relaxed, fun weekend!

Today is Monday again which means ... Aussie Nails Monday ... and that my birthday is tomorrow! :D

Today the theme is Favourite Brand. Nice and broad :D

I haven't been feeling like doing nail art lately so I hope you don't mind! I'll be showing you swatches of some polishes from a few of my favourite brands :) (All swatches are without top coat just FYI)

I haven't included any indie brands in this because I think I've shown you every polish I own from my favourite indie brands. Haha. But just putting it out there - I LOVE INDIES TOO ♥

Sorry about the slightly awkward hand pose in these photos... I was having "one of those days" where I just hated my photos and the 'pose' hahah!

OPI DS Original

OPI would probably be my #1 favourite brand. I love the formula on every OPI I've tried and I love the brush too. I think OPI polishes were what got me obsessed!

DS Original is probably the most HTF (hard to find) and most popular of the Designer Series collection by OPI. It's discontinued now and sells for ridiculous amounts on eBay! I'm so lucky to have got it for the price I did! x)

DS Original is a beeeautiful light purple holographic. It has a more scattered than linear holo effect, but it still isn't completely scattered. It looks more linear in the bottle, though. It's a bit sheer so my swatch shows 3 coats but it probably could use a 4th... I've seen others layer this over medium toned purples to get an opaque look without using up the whole bottle ;)

China Glaze Riveting

China Glaze is definitely up there in my favourite brands. I have slightly less CGs than OPIs but the CG number is slowly climbing! I'm starting to like them more because I find them to be much cheaper than OPI and easier to find for me. China Glaze also has more unique colours in my opinion. They also have a fabulous formula on every one of their polishes I've tried :)

Riveting is from the Hunger Games collection from 2012. It's a bright, hot orange with a golden and orange glass fleck shimmer. I think this may be the only orange that I actually think I like :D

The formula on this is fab as usual ^_^ And my swatch shows 2 coats of Riveting.

Essence Grey-t To Be Here

Essence is my favourite "drugstore"/cheaper brand. If you've been a reader of my blog for a while then you probably already know this. :) I have a LOT of Essence polishes and I will continue to buy them :D They have a GREAT colour selection for such a cheap brand and their limited edition stuff never disappoints :) I also enjoy their makeup but that's not what I'm here to talk about hehe ;) When the new packaging of the Essence core line polishes came out, I went CRAZY for them and was so excited to grab some... And then I only wore one or two and the rest have been sitting in my untried basket. Woops ;)

Grey-t To Be Here is a grey, as the name would suggest. It has a beautiful pink/orange shimmer in it too! Reeeally pretty! The swatch shows 2 coats :)

Check out the Aussie Nails Monday tab to check out some of the other lovely Aussie Nails girls :D

Have a great week guys :) ♥

Essie - Borrowed & Blue

Hey guys! Long time no talk! ;) Haha. I hope you've had a great weekend! :D
Sorry I didn't have any posts up for a few days! I didn't really wear much polish last week. I've been feeling uninspired :( and just trying to get my nails & cuticles in better condition since they've been feeling less than healthy lately (they may not look so bad in photos but editing and lots of cuticle oil covers that up usually ;))
While I wasn't posting, I was changing my blog layout. You may notice I change my layout pretty often... I really need to find something I like and stick to it because people won't recognise my blog! lol. Sorry about that. I get bored easily. But anyway, hope you enjoy the new layout! :) I really like this one.

The polish I'm showing you today is one that I've wanted for THE LONGEST TIME. Probably since I first started getting into nails. I don't know why it took me so long to buy it! But I finally did and it came in the mail to me a few days ago!

This is Essie's Borrowed And Blue. It's a super light baby blue creme. I love blue nails and I've always wanted a super super super pale blue, almost white colour but just never bought one!

I was a little disappointed, however. :( I started putting it on and noticed that it was incredibly thick and goopy. And after about 5 minutes, it had bubbled like crazy. Most polishes with a thick consistency like this one bubble on me but it may also have been a combination of the hot weather (icky :( ) and the thickness of the polish.
So after doing my first coat I removed everything, added some thinner to the polish and started again. Then it was muuuch easier to work with. It still bubbled a teeny bit but I couldn't tell unless I looked up super close.
Unfortunately this did chip on me within a few hours and polishes very rarely chip on me - mainly because I don't wear them long enough for them to chip!

This is such a pretty colour! ♥ It's so nice for summer and looks nice with a tan... though I'm not that tanned lol!

Hope you enjoy the rest of your weekend and have a great week guys!

Spoiled - Ants In My Pants

Hi guys! :) Today I'm gonna show you my mani I wore on the weekend.
This is Spoiled (by Wet n Wild) Ants In My Pants over OPI Lincoln Park After Dark.
I actually did my nails with just Lincoln Park After Dark first, but after having it on for 10 minutes it felt boring LOL. Ants In My Pants caught my eye so I put it on top. :)

Ants In My Pants is red glitter in two sizes in a black jelly base. The base looks pretty sheer but you can build it up on its own if you want to. This polish is similar to Deborah Lippmann's Ruby Red Slippers but waaaay cheaper, haha.

I'm sure everybody knows OPI Lincoln Park After Dark, right?! It's a super dark purple that is like 1 shade off of being black, lol! You can't even tell it's purple unless you're in bright light! I never felt the need to own this polish (because it's basically black!) but I bought it a couple months ago because it came in a duo pack, so I thought why not. Haha. I don't love it but meh. It's a classic colour.

I feel so weird wearing a dark combo when it's so hot outside right now! I usually stay WAY away from dark colours in summer. But in winter I'll wear anything..? I'm so weird. LOL.

Aussie Nails Monday 18/2 - Rainbow - (China Glaze DV8)

Hey guys! It's Aussie Nails Monday again!

Today is sooo hot. It's like 40 degrees (Celsius) and I don't feel like doing any nail art, so I decided to show you a swatch of a holographic polish (which gives a rainbow effect) that I had in my untrieds basket.

This is China Glaze DV8 from the HTF (hard to find), discontinued OMG collection! :) I got it almost 2 months ago and haven't tried it yet?!?! I know I'm crazy.

DV8 is a really beautiful teal holographic.

Photos show 2 coats of DV8 with no topcoat.

Topcoat dulls the holo effect in the OMG collection so I would not recommend using a top coat with them.

DV8 in the shade

I love the China Glaze OMG collection! They dry so fast and the formula is fab. Unfortunately, my camera's not great at picking up the holographic quality. :(

I pretty much burnt my feet when I went outside to take these photos. :/ lol! So you better enjoy them! ;)

I also made a quick swatch video of this polish in action. :D

Hope you have a lovely week. ♥

Stripy Cupcake Nail Tutorial (Video)

Hi guys! Just a quick post to let you know that I have finally uploaded the tutorial for my Cupcake Nails I did for Aussie Nails Monday last week! :)
Please excuse the bad quality voiceover! :/ lol.
Hope you enjoy! :)

Mrs P's Nail Potions - I ♥ NY Collection Swatches & Review... Finally ;)

Guyssss! Guess what I FINALLY have to show you today! The I ♥ NY collection by Mrs P's Nail Potions! This collection is based off of Sex And The City. I've never watched that show so I can't say anything about whether the colours fit the characters or the show. Sorry haha. I'm sure some of you have watched it, though.

Unfortunately the post takes a long time from Canada to Aus but it's ok because these were well worth the wait! :D Don't quote me on this (seriously, don't lol) but I heard that the postal system in Canada has changed very recently and now things won't take so long to ship from there? (Correct me if I'm wrong... I just heard it lol).

I posted a preview of this collection a few months ago, HERE. If you'd like an in depth description of each polish and where the inspiration comes from for each polish, you should check out that post. :)

All Lawyered Up

All Lawyered Up is a pink-ish red jelly base with medium red and orange hex glitters.
This was great to apply, I had no issues at all. I did have to move the glitters around a little to get them where I wanted but that's nothing unusual for glitters. :) Swatch shows 2 coats with top coat.

Can't Colour Enough 

Can't Colour Enough is a pink shimmery base with loads of glitter in different colours, shapes and sizes!
 This is so fun! :) It would be perfect for a birthday party or something! I didn't want to take this off when I swatched it! Haha. I added a little thinner to this one because it was a teeeeny bit too thick for me but nothing terrible. :) Swatch shows 3 coats with top coat.

Searching For Mr Right 

Searching For Mr Right is a white base with pink hearts, small pink holographic glitter as well as iridescent glitter.
This is so insanely cute but unfortunately it was a bit of a pain to apply. :( It was very thick, much too thick for me, so I thinned it but even then it was hard to work with. :( I'm sad because I was SO excited for this one! I think this polish would be best to wear over an opaque (or sheer) white polish so you don't have to do multiple coats. This also would've been so perfect for Valentine's Day! Dang! haha. Swatch shows 2 coats with top coat.

The Big Apple

The Big Apple is a black jelly base with small silver glitter, red hex glitter and white diamonds.
This looks so awesome! I love it! The diamond glitters required a bit of fishing to get out of the bottle but it wasn't impossible. The black base would be pretty sheer on its own I'd imagine, so I layered it over an opaque black. Swatch shows 1 coat over an opaque black with top coat.

The Naked Dress

The Naked Dress is a nude jelly base with small and medium gold hex glitters.
I'm not totally sure how I feel about this one on me. I don't think this nude works great with my skin tone but I still really like it! It's probably one of the most work appropriate indies that I've seen! It's subtle but still sparkly and pretty! Swatch shows 3 coats with top coat.
PS. Sorry about the close up shot for this one. I forgot to take a proper close up and I didn't want to leave it with no close up at all. :(

My favourites would probably have to be The Big Apple and Can't Color Enough! :) I just wish the formula on Searching For Mr Right was a bit nicer, then that would definitely be up there in my faves too!

Mrs P's Nail Potions are available on Etsy! You can also check out the Facebook page for updates :)