Aussie Christmas 17/12 - Beach

Hey hey! Today's challenge prompt is Beach! :D I like the beach but I don't love it. I really dislike sand, haha. It gets into EVERYTHING! And also, the beach is usually pretty windy which can be annoying. But I do hope to go to the beach sometime soon because it's now the summer school holidays here so all my siblings are home for the next 6 or so weeks!
So anyway, my beach mani is inspired by all things beach related. :)

On my pointer I used a base of Face Of Australia Once In A Blue Moon topped with China Glaze Snow Globe and then used a dotting tool with Essie Van D Go to paint two little starfish! :) I actually used a tutorial for this, by MissJenFabulous on YouTube.

On my middle finger I was inspired by my sister's new rainbow striped beach towel! I used Ulta3 Lily White for my base, and then freehanded my stripes with a striping brush using Butter London Pillar Box Red, Ulta3 Tangerine Tango*, Frangipani, Sea Breeze Swirl*, Face Of Australia Once In A Blue Moon and Ulta3 Flirty Bikini*. (I will have full swatches of the 3 Ulta3s* soon!).

My ring finger is inspired by the water and sand, which is probably obvious. ;) There's also a little heart in the sand, aww. :P I used Essence Sleepy*, as my base and freehanded the sand with Essence Iced Latte using the regular polish brush. The little heart was done with BYS Fairytale Florals. I used Ulta3 Lily White for the line where the sea hits the sand.

And lastly, my pinky nail is a beach ball! This looked harder than it actually was to do! I used a striping brush with Ulta3 Blue Marlin, Frangipani, and Butter London Pillar Box Red and the base colour was my trusty Ulta3 Lily White.

Phew, that's a lot of polish for one mani haha!
Hope you enjoyed! :)

Face of Australia Pretty Pastels Collection Swatches - My Picks

Hey guys!
I have swatches of the new Face of Australia Pretty Pastels collection to show you! This is a little late, I'd planned on doing this as soon as I had all of the colours I wanted but other things got in the way. That's okay though. I have them for you today! :)
I actually picked up the whole collection even though in the beginning I'd planned on only getting 5 of them! :P Most of you probably know that I am mad about pastels! So really it's no surprise that I bought them all.

Here's what Face of Australia says about their Pretty Pastels collection...
"- Advanced formula, dries in 60 seconds
- Long wearing, chip resistant
- Gloss finish
- Toluene free, Formaldehyde free, Dibutyl Phthalate free"
Source

After Dinner Mint is a bright mint green. It's much brighter and maybe a bit bluer than any other mint green I own. 3 thin coats.

Boys 'n' Berries is a great periwinkle purple sort of colour. Great pigmentation. 2 coats.

Castle On A Cloud is a pale, muted purple with a grey undertone. It has a very fine silver shimmer that doesn't really show on the nails much. Very opaque! 2 coats.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy is a lemon yellow, as the name would suggest. ;) This is 3 coats. It looks a bit uneven; topcoat would smooth that right out.

Have Your Cupcake and Eat it Too is a blue toned bubblegum sort of pink. Great pigmentation, 2 coats.

I'll Take You to the Candy Shop is a light pink with a frosty/pearl finish. I'm sadly not a fan of this one, just because of the finish. It looks pretty streaky on the nails too. 3 coats.

Once in a Blue Moon is a baby blue. My bottle is pretty thick and not that nice to work with. I need to add some thinner. This is 3 coats. It's strange that it's thick, but still needs 3 coats, lol.

Last but not least is Would You Like Some Orange Sherbet, which is a peachy orange. An orange I don't mind on my skintone! This needed 3 coats and was a teeny bit patchy still. Probably could've avoided patches if I was more careful, however.

I would have to disagree about them drying in 60 seconds, sadly. It wasn't like they took hours to dry or anything like that, but I really don't think there's many polishes that actually do dry in 60 seconds, though many of them claim to...
I can't comment on them being long wearing, since I only swatched these shades and I don't wear my polish longer than a day or two.

Overall, I really love these polishes and even though I'm a huge fan of pastels and own a lot now, they're pretty much all unique to my collection! :) The only one I'm not a fan of is obviously I'll Take You To The Candy Shop, because I don't like the finish.

I've only found this collection in Priceline and Big W so far (Big W had a fully stocked stand but I went back to Priceline a week after they'd had the stand fully stocked and there was only a couple polishes left), apparently it will be stocked in Kmart, and some girls have found it there, but the Kmarts near me don't have it yet.
They retail for $4.95 but sometimes you can find Face of Australia on sale. :)
You can also buy Face of Australia at FashionAddict but they do not ship nail polish overseas unfortunately.

Elissa xx

The polishes shown were purchased by me. This post is not sponsored by Face of Australia in any way.

Models Own - Indian Ocean

Hey guys!
When Models Own had a 50% off sale I was able to grab a few of their polishes thanks to the lovely Sharon! This is one of them. :)

Bottle shot

Models Own - Indian Ocean is a very sheer baby blue with a gorgeous pink duochrome! This was the first Models Own polish I ever wanted! It was actually the only one I wanted until I looked up swatches when the sale was on to see if they had anything else nice, hehe.
I'm not a huge fan of duochromes (though they are growing on me lately!), but I'm a huge fan of pastels so it makes sense why I wanted this so bad. ;)
I layered one coat of Indian Ocean over two coats of Face Of Australia - Once In A Blue Moon. I'm not sure if I got a dodgy bottle or what, but my Once In A Blue Moon had a pretty bad formula, to be honest... It was incredibly thick but streaky at the same time. I did this mani at night, and in the morning when I woke up, I had loads of bubbles in my mani. Which doesn't happen to me often and I'm certain it was because of the FOA polish. But, nothing some thinner won't (hopefully) fix!

Sorry for the awkward angle and lobster hands, hehe x)

I had a hard time photographing Indian Ocean, but I hear that duochromes are pretty hard to photograph anyway, so I'll direct you to some other blogs which have better swatches than mine so you can see the beauty of this polish! ;)
Check these swatches out! - LabMuffin - ThePolishAholic - Scrangie

I'd love to try this over black sometime, I've seen some really pretty swatches over black!

I'll hopefully be showing you my other new Models Own polishes soon! :)

Do you own any Models Own polishes? If so, which are your faves? Or if you don't, what about duochromes? Do you have a fave duochrome? :)

Lush Lacquer - Birthday Cake (Happy Birthday Sis & Bro!)

Hello lovelies! TGIF!
First off I want to say HAPPY BIRTHDAAAAAAAY to my little brother & sister (they're twins obviously haha) who turn 13 today! :) I thought I'd do a birthday theme mani to celebrate!

This is one coat of Lush Lacquer Birthday Cake over one coat of Face of Australia Castle on a Cloud from the new Pastels collection, which is a very muted lilac that has a strong grey undertone but is still a pastel. It also has a really pretty shimmer. Birthday Cake mostly covered up Castle on a Cloud but that was my plan. I didn't want to do two coats of Birthday Cake because as you'll read below, it was preeeetty thick.

I bought Birthday Cake from Carli's blog sale! :) I've been wanting this for the LONGEST time so I'm really happy to finally own it. It is sooo cute.
I'm sad to say, though, that it was a nightmare to apply! I'm not sure if that's because having bought it from a blog sale, it's been used once and became thick (which isn't Carli's fault if that's the case haha) or that it's PACKED with glitter and that it's a mini, but it was veeeeery thick and pasty, almost as if I was actually applying cake to my nails. LOL! But I managed to get it on my nails which is the main thing. ;) I suspect it just needs some thinner and I'm out of it right now but I have a bottle on its way to me so when I get that, I'll be adding some to my bottle. :) The cuteness of this polish definitely makes up for the fact that it was hard to apply. It wasn't particularly gritty when I'd finished the mani but it was extremely thick after applying 2 topcoats (one coat Essence Gel Look and one coat Seche Vite). I hate when my manis are really thick but this was so cute that I dealt with it.

I rare shot of my nails without a bottle. :O Mini bottles are hard to hold in photos.

Happy birthday again to my brother & sister! I can't believe you're 13! My little sister is like my little best friend! :) Here's a couple old photos of me and the twins. Hehe, hope they don't kill me for this. ;)

Photos of me & my siblings taken around the end of 2008.

Happy birthday twinnies, and have a great weekend everyone! We have a fun weekend of parties to look forward to! :D

24/10 Go Pink Wednesday

Woohoo, it's Wednesday again! I love Go Pink Wednesday!

If you haven't seen any of my other GPW posts, me and some other bloggers are doing a series in October for Breast Cancer Awareness. The series was started by Andrea from Finger Painting Fingers and if you'd like to join us you can read about it here.

I just realised that I've worn an indie polish every week for Go Pink Wednesday. Woops! ;) I'm just obsessed with indies right now! :D

Let me start off by saying that I have been obsessed with black and white glitter polishes ever since I first heard of indie polishes (I also just figured out this week why they're called indies. *facepalm*, I'm an idiot)! Every time I saw someone wear a black and white glitter, I swooned. I don't know what it is, I just freaking love the look of black and white glitter! But I didn't own any indies until a month or two ago. And now I am obsessed with indies!

This week I received two polishes I ordered from Emily de Molly! Hayley is the owner of EDM and I've been following her on Instagram since even before she started creating polishes! She does really nice swatches too! :)
I knew that since I was ordering from Emily de Molly, I HAD to buy her black and white glitter. There was no if's, but's or maybe's about it. I had to have it. ;)

This is A Black and White Love Affair by Emily de Molly. It's a clear base with large and small black and white hex glitters, with some bar glitters and square glitters too. Some people hate bar glitter but I don't mind it if it's mixed in with other shapes. :) I used a dabbing sort of method to apply this polish since the base is a bit thin but that didn't bother me. :) I can see myself going through this entire bottle quickly!

I layered ABAWLA over Face of Australia Have Your Cupcake and Eat it Too from the new Pretty Pastels collection. :) A pastel blue toned pink that I actually only bought two days ago! Have Your Cupcake and Eat it Too was opaque in two coats and was a really nice consistency  Not too thick and not too thin. Just right. :)

I am IN LOVE with this mani. Absolutely in love. I'm wearing it as I type this and I can't stop staring at my hands! <3

If you'd like more information about Breast Cancer and how you can help, go to: The National Breast Cancer Foundation Australia website.

Elissa

This is Halloween: 22/10 Gradient

Hey guys! :)

I have not had a good day and I am sooo tired so this post will probably be kept short.

For the Gradient theme of the This is Halloween challenge, I knew from the start I'd want to do a 'candy corn' inspired gradient! :) I think the colours on candy corn look so fun and bright and festive. But I do not like candy corn. :| My sister bought a packet of them from Jelly Belly last year and I was NOT expecting them to taste the way they did. I thought they'd be like gummy lollies or something but they weren't! In Australia I've only ever seen candy corn in the shops once and then the time when my sister brought them home.

Disclaimer! I didn't realise until I was about to take photos of this mani that I realised I'd put the colours in the wrong order. :( BOOOO. If you're not familiar with candy corn, I should've put the orange and yellow the other way around. I have not done very many successful manis for this challenge have I. :( Oh well, my boyfriend said it still reminded me of it.
Please also excuse the oily cuticles. I really need to make sure the pictures are fine before I remove my mani...

I used a base of Sally Hansen Whirlwind White, and then did a gradient with a makeup sponge and Face of Australia Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, and Essie Fear or Desire. :)

On the plus side, my nubbins don't look too bad here! Yay! :)

Thanks for looking! Have a great week!

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!