Stamped Gradient Using OPI Euro Centrale Colours + QA28

Hey guys! Today I have a mani to show you that I did using my new OPI Euro Centrale mini set. :D
I skipped Aussie Nails Monday this week because I had a super busy weekend and then I just couldn't be bothered doing the theme this week LOL.

For the base colour I used You're Such a Budapest, which is a light periwinkle-ish purple. It's super pretty! :) It has a little teeny bit of a shimmer in it but it's not very noticeable at all! I did 3 coats of YSAB.

Then I used Can't Find My Czechbook with YSAB to create the gradient. I have a gradient tutorial video HERE if you are interested. :) This is a light sky blue colour.

Over the gradient on my ring finger I used Gloss n Sparkle "Cotinga" :) I've been looking for the perfect polish to use this with for AGES and I think it works over both these colours! :D Unfortunately I don't think Gloss n Sparkle sells this one anymore. :( I did get it probably about 6 months ago, though.

I then stamped over the gradient using plate QA28 from Born Pretty Store with Sinful Colors Snow Me White. :) How cute are the moustaches! :D I think the Born Pretty plates work great for the price! They're only around $3 each!

UMM LOOK AT THOSE GLITTERSSSSS!
Kinda fell in love with this photo ^_^

Bonus bottle shot of Gloss n Sparkle "Cotinga"

What do you think?! :D I love the moustache stamp, it's so funny and cute haha!

Nicole by OPI - Kim-pletely In Love and Gloss n Sparkle - Sour Candy Sandwich - Mission Untrieds #16

This is the first time I've been able to wear Nicole by OPI Kim-pletely In Love.

I've tried to wear it like 4 times and now am missing at least a quarter of the bottle! Every time I've tried to put it on, it looks terrible and I remove it! But it's such a pretty colour but the amount of coats it takes to wear it alone makes it look kinda thick or goopy on the nails unless you do THIIIIIN coats.

But I had a great idea! I used Kim-pletely In Love in a sandwich! I can't call it a jelly sandwich because it's not a jelly polish, just sheer. And it has a BEAUTIFUL duochrome shimmer in it!

I did 3 thin coats of Kim-pletely In Love. I then did one coat of Gloss n Sparkle's Sour Candy and topped it off with another coat of Kimpletely In Love!

And it looked sooo cute!

Kim-pletely In Love isn't a great colour for my skin tone, it kinda gave me lobster hands but I just love how cute it is.

12 Favourites Of 2012

Hi guys! :) Merry Christmas Eve Eve! ;) LOL. Today I have my 12 favourite polishes/manicures of 2012 to show you, instead of the "Santa's Swimsuit" mani for the Aussie Christmas Challenge. I know, I failed at my own challenge. LOL. I tried a few designs and it just failed miserably so sorry about that! This post is 100x better anyway. ;)
I wasn't going to do this because I didn't think I really had many favourites but I was tagged on Instagram to do the #myfavemanis2012 tag and I did have a fair few favourites so I decided to share them with you here too. :)

2012 was the year of nail polish for me. :P I've been into nails for probably almost 2 years now but I used to be more into artificial nails. I started "collecting" polish in February and I now have about 250 polishes is my guess. (Although my guesses are usually WAAAAAAY off so it's probably more like 300 :P)
Beware: You'll see a whole lot of different nail lengths/shapes in this post!
Oh, and these are in no particular order! :)

1. China Glaze "Ruby Pumps"
I've had this polish for about 4-ish months and wore it for the first time at the start of December! I don't really see myself wearing it other than around Christmas and maybe in winter, but it sure is a gorgeous one. I absolutely fell in love with it. "Ruby Pumps" is probably in the top 3 best selling China Glaze polishes. <3

2. MaxFactor "Fantasy Fire"
The elusive "Fantasy Fire" was released in Australia this year! I went crazy for it. When I found out about it, I literally ran to the shops in freezing cold weather just to get it. LOL. It's dupey of Clarins "230" which is why it's so popular. The picture says it all. (Worn over Revlon "Royal")

3. Gloss n Sparkle "Mirage"

"Mirage" by Gloss n Sparkle is just gorgeous. I'm a sucker for pastels and this one has glitter in it so of course I fell head over heels for it. ;) Beautiful beautiful beautiful.

4. OPI "Warm and Fozzie"

This polish was probably one of my first blog posts! :) If you read that post, you'll know I had some issues with it. Mainly because I paid full price for it (OPI's ridiculously expensive here) and then dropped the bag on a tile floor and it smashed. Luckily I was able to save some of it! I have one mini bottle full of it now, plus half another mini bottle and then I managed to pick up an extra mini of it from a blog sale! :D "Warm and Fozzie" is just gorgeous. A bit duochrome-y, a bit glass-fleck-y, ahh I love it.

5. Christmassy Half Moon Manicure

This mani was from the start of December and I loved it so much! I got a lot of compliments when I wore it! :) The polishes I used were Ulta3 "Antique Copper" and "Black Plum", with Milani's "Gold" placed glitter around the half moon.

6. Navy Holo
OPI "Russian Navy" with Gloss n Sparkle's Spectraflair topcoat over it! Please excuse the slightly messy cuticles. This mani was from about June or July-ish, and I hadn't mastered cleanup yet lol. :) I totally loved this mani.

7. Chevron Manicure
Look at these claws! Haha. I remember absolutely loving this mani. I love the colour combo! The blue is China Glaze "For Audrey" which is also a favourite in itself! A great colour and everyone needs it (or one like it)! I can't believe I haven't done this chevron pattern mani since this one because I really loved it and so did a lot of people I showed!

8. OPI "Man With The Golden Gun"

I don't think I could do a favourites post without including this. OPI's "Man With The Golden Gun" is an 18k gold flake topcoat and I'm sure you've all heard about it, or perhaps the other gold flake topcoats going around. I've worn it once so far, over OPI "DS Mystery".

9. OPI "Just Spotted The Lizard"
I'm typically not a huge duochrome fan. I think most people know that about me. But this was one that I totally fell in love with! It's a dupe for Chanel's "Peridot" and it's amazing. I think this is also my boyfriend's favourite polish of mine haha.

10. Nails Inc "Sweets Way"

This was on my wishlist for ages before I finally bought it. I'm a sucker for glitter in a milky base and this one stole my heart! :) <3 It's adorable.

11. Emily De Molly "Blue Moon"
This is a custom polish that Hayley of Emily De Molly made and sold to some Aussie girls. I don't think she makes this anymore though, sorry. :( I absolutely adore this, it is so sparkly! Pictured over China Glaze "Dorothy Who".

12. Essie "Shine Of The Times"

"Shine Of The Times" took me almost a year to get! Haha! It's a beautiful orange to green shifting flakie that looks most amazing over black. <3

So those are some of my favourites! :D It was hard to narrow it down haha. Let me know what some of your favourites of 2012 were. I'd love to know!

Gloss n Sparkle Swatches and Review (Part 2)

Hey guys! I have the rest of my Gloss n Sparkle polishes to show you. :) If you didn't see Part 1 you can CLICK HERE.

First I'll show you Cookie Dough*, which is a nude brown with a coppery-brown shimmer, and also medium brown and large brown hex glitters. Really nice! This would be a great work appropriate glitter! :)
2 coats with Sally Hansen Insta Dri topcoat.

Berry Delicious* is a bubblegum pink base with medium hex glitters in red, purple and blue. I think this one of the first Gloss n Sparkles I ever wanted!

2 coats, no topcoat.

Queen of Hearts* is a clear base with looooads of red, black and white glitter. I could see small white, red and black, red hearts, white and black hex, red, white and black shredded glitter, and little white, red and black glitter. PHEW! This one turned out to be my favourite! Can you believe it?! I'm usually a huge fan of girly, pastel glitters but I was in love with this one!

3 coats of Sportsgirl Skeleton and 1 of Queen of Hearts*. Favourite. <3

Overall, My obvious favourite of these three is Queen Of Hearts*, but I love them all! I'm so impressed with all of the Gloss n Sparkle polishes I've tried! No fishing for glitter, great formula, easy to apply, super creative colours, what more could you want?! :)

You can visit Gloss n Sparkle on Etsy, Facebook, or the website! The polishes are $9AU + shipping from the Etsy store. Angela is only shipping in Australia at the moment, BUT international ladies can now buy these through Shoppe-Eclectic! WOOHOO!

*Products marked with an asterisk were provided to me for review but this does not influence my opinion in any way. My reviews are 100% my honest opinion. For more information please see my Disclosure Policy.

Gloss n Sparkle Swatches and Review (Part 1)

Hey guys!
Today I have some totally gorgeous polishes from Gloss n Sparkle to show you! I'm sure you know that I'm in love with indies right now, and just glitter polish in general so I am just obsessed with these. And I've already said it, but I really love the new shape bottles that Angela is using! I love square bottles like this because they're really easy to store!
I got these a bit over a week ago, but I wanted to wear the polishes as full manicures instead of just swatching. :) I'll be posting this in two parts because I have a fair few to wear. ;)
I must apologise that the photos aren't consistent with lighting etc, because I took them all on different days obviously.

First we have Goblins Grave* (this is a new version, which now has charcoal holo glitter and more glitter overall! YAY GLITTAH!), a totally gorgeous dark green jelly base, with medium hex glitters that are lime green, turquoise and charcoal. I immediately put this polish on after receiving these in the mail, it's so eye-catching! Goblins Grave* wasn't hard to work with whatsoever, and it has great glitter payoff! I used one coat of Seche Vite as my top coat, and the mani was totally smooth. :) I'm not usually attracted to green polishes but I absolutely loved this one. I'm wearing 3 coats here, but I probably could've just left it at two and still been happy with it. :)

Next is Pyjamarama*, which I'm not sure if Angela is selling at the moment. I will update this when I find out. She may have just ran out of stock. :) It's a pastel purple base with larger blue and purple, and smaller pink and purple glitters. I loved this so much. The perfect shade of purple for me and I loved the glitters. 2 coats with topcoat.

Lastly for today's post, is Unicorn Spawn*, which Angela made for her fans of Unicorn Droppings (one of her most popular polishes!) that wanted something a bit more subtle. She used pastel glitters instead of the bright colours in Unicorn Droppings. It is a white jelly base with holographic shimmer, and muted, pastel glitters that are blue, green and pink!
This is 2 coats, no topcoat.

Overall, I absolutely LOVE Gloss n Sparkle polishes. They are definitely one of the absolute best indies I have tried so far! The formula is ALWAYS awesome, a breeze to apply, and Angela's ideas are always absolutely amazing and unique! :) I 100% recommend them, everyone needs to own at least one. ;)

You can visit Gloss n Sparkle on Etsy, Facebook, or the website! The polishes are $9AU + shipping from the Etsy store. Angela is only shipping in Australia at the moment, BUT international ladies can now buy these through Shoppe-Eclectic! WOOHOO!

I'll have my review of the other 3 polishes up tomorrow! Look forward to those (I know I am ;))!

Elissa xx

*Products marked with an asterisk were provided to me for review but this does not influence my opinion in any way. My reviews are 100% my honest opinion. For more information please see my Disclosure Policy.

Gloss n Sparkle - Mirage

Hey ladies. :)

Today I have another mani to show you that I wore a week ago! This is another Gloss n Sparkle polish that I ordered a couple weeks ago! And I'm in love.

Mirage is a baby blue base with a really gorgeous iridescent shimmer (it looks pink most of the time though), silver small glitters and large silver iridescent glitters!

I'm wearing 3 coats with one coat of Essence Gel Look top coat and one coat of Seche Vite. I could've done with 2 coats but I did a third to get more glitter on my nail! :) And it didn't really need the two top coats, it dried smooth.

Shade

I only had one problem with this polish, sadly. :( The large glitters had sunk to the bottom of my bottle. :( I'm not sure if it's just me that this happened to because in every other swatch I've seen, there's lots of large glitters on the nail so that sucks.
I absolutely love Gloss n Sparkle polishes and Angela is awesome and sweet so I actually feel bad having to say something negative about this polish. But I'm really not sure if it's only my bottle or only one batch that this happened to.
I tried putting the polish upside down for a while, stirring it and shaking it but the glitters still didn't want to come back up to the top which was sad. :( I was able to get a few of the large glitters onto my nail after stirring the polish but I think I only got two on my left hand and three on my right.
BUT! I will not give up and I will definitely try it again! Plus, it's gorgeous even without the large glitters on the nail. :) I am a total sucker for baby blues as well. ;)

UPDATE! Angela has contacted me and told me that it was a bad batch, and that anyone who bought a bottle of Mirage between the 12th-25th of October, that has the same problem as mine did (sinking glitter), to contact her and she'll either send you a replacement, give you a refund for Mirage, or give you store credit for another polish. She really wants to fix the problem so if your bottle has the sinking glitter, make sure to let Ange know! (She may have already messaged you, so check your Etsy account)

You can purchase Gloss n Sparkle polishes on Etsy for $9(AUD). Currently there's only Australian shipping available but Angela is working on sorting out international shipping!

Elissa

This is Halloween: 26/10 Witches

Hello ladies! TGIF! ;)

I kinda took the easy way out for today's This is Halloween challenge... >:)

This is Witches Britches, a limited edition for Halloween polish by Gloss n Sparkle! :) Now obviously, I chose it for today because of the name!

Witches Britches is a purple base with large and medium orange, large, medium and small green, and large, medium and small black hex glitters! I think some of the smaller glitters are squares too. :)
I have two cameras and they BOTH suck at photographing colours like this! :( It always makes them look too blue. I edited it to look more acurate as much as I could but it's not 100% accurate.

I've been SO into Halloween polishes like this lately so I just HAD to buy this when I ordered from Gloss n Sparkle! But even though I've been really into Halloween indies, I actually only bought two. I'd have loved more but since I'll only ever wear Halloween colours in October, I didn't think it was worth buying every Halloween polish I set my eyes on. ;)

Only three more days left of the This is Halloween Challenge! :( I won't know what to do with myself when it's over! I'll have to get my act together with some things to post next month! I've acquired a lot of polish lately so I'm sure I won't have a shortage of stuff to swatch for you. ;)

Elissa

Face of Australia Boys 'n' Berries and Gloss n Sparkle Sour Candy

Hello hello! Happy Saturday ladies! :D
I have to apologise for my nails before I start. As I said in a previous post, I broke the corner off my middle nail on the weekend. I patched it with the teabag method but it couldn't hold on any longer and it broke off. 
After I removed this mani I filed all of my nails down and the broken corner is much less noticeable but I have SUPER nubs so I think the next post you see will probably be featuring some nubbins. :(

So, today I have a NOTD to show you! I picked up some polishes from the Face of Australia Pastels collection which I am very excited about! I am a huge sucker for pastels! I also received my order from Gloss n Sparkle on last weekend so I am super excited to show you my first Gloss n Sparkle polish!

I used Face of Australia Boys 'n' Berries from the new Pastels collection as my base colour. At first I thought it was a periwinkle colour but I think it's just a very blue based purple, not quite periwinkle. I wanted to swatch Boys 'n' Berries on its own but I had some boo-boos and just decided to go ahead and put the glitter on top. I'll probably swatch my picks from the collection soon. :)

Gloss n Sparkle Sour Candy is really pretty! It has small white matte square, small blue shiny hex, and small and large pink shiny hex glitters in a clear base. I wasn't sure what to layer it over at first but I am so glad I chose to layer it over Boys 'n' Berries! It looks so cute! This glitter wasn't hard to apply at all! I did have to wiggle the brush a little to move the large glitters around because they seemed to bunch up a bit, but that's not a big deal for me. I absolutely LOVE both of these polishes! :D

I topped this mani with two coats of Seche Vite which completely smoothed it out. I usually only do one coat but for some reason today the slightly gritty feeling was getting to me a bit.

I would definitely recommend BOTH of these polishes! And they make a really nice combo together!

You can purchase Sour Candy here for AU$9 and see the rest of Gloss n Sparkle's colours on Etsy here. :) She just released some new colours this week! 
Gloss n Sparkle only ships within Australia at the moment but she's working on having international shipping.
The Face of Australia Pastels collection is sold in Priceline, Big W and Kmart stores Australia wide for AU$4.95. If you can't find them, I'd suggest calling customer service for any of the above shops or your local store to see if they have it yet!

NOTD: Russian Rainbow

I finally got my hands on a Spectraflair top coat about a month ago! I had been wanting one for a while & the lovely Angela on Instagram started selling them in her Etsy shop! :) I quickly snatched one up from her! Check out her Etsy, she also makes AWESOME franken polishes! Spectraflair is a holographic pigment that is recently very popular for adding to nail polish to make it linear holographic! Angela also has some AWESOME frankens she's made for sale! Go right now and check them out, I absolutely love them!

This mani wasn't my first time using the top coat but it was my favourite combination!
I wore the top coat over OPI Russian Navy (which is becoming a favourite of mine - I need to get a full size because I only own a mini!), a great navy polish with a magenta and blue shimmer through it.

Indoor lighting

Indoor lighting

Please excuse my cuticles in these photos. I'm aware that I have polish on my cuticles and these photos were taken before I learned how to properly clean up my cuticles.

-Elissa