Femme Fatale - Abyssal Reflections

Hey guys! I have another Femme Fatale polish to show you today! :)

This is Abyssal Reflections. And again it's so beautiful that I can't even describe it soooo I've taken the description from the Femme Fatale site again.

"Abyssal Reflections is a glitter polish created to resemble the dark depths of the ocean. It’s a deep sea green jelly packed full of turquoise, teal and green with flashes of holo; and is best worn over a darker base colour." [Source]

Today is actually St Patrick's Day and I didn't even mean to be wearing green(ish) nails! They're more teal than green to me but still green okay. ;)

I layered 2 coats of Abyssal Reflections over China Glaze Watermelon Rind which is a teal-ish green with a glass fleck finish.

Also, $5 from every purchase of Abyssal Reflections (or Sparkling Sands or Veil Of The Siren) will be donated to Sophie's friend who needs surgery.

Hope you've had a fab weekend! ♥

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Jasmine - Disney Princess Nail Art Challenge - Day 1

Hey guys! I'm really excited about today's post! Bec from LacquerDreams created a Disney Princess Nail Art Challenge and when I saw it, I was like HECK YEAH. I'm a big Disney fan :D Most of my friends definitely know this about me! My mum even gave me a Tinkerbell card for my 20th birthday this year. ;)

(Jasmine PSD Source)
Let me just say - I hate the Urban Outfitters bottles. They are SO awkward for photos...
So today's theme is Jasmine, from Aladdin! I have to admit I don't remember being a big fan of Aladdin when I was little. I actually don't remember watching it more than once...

As soon as I saw that today's theme was Jasmine, I remembered I had seen this mani by Yvonne / Lafemmelulu on Instagram, a few months ago and it TOTALLY reminds me of Jasmine! So I decided to do something similar to this :)

For this nail art I used Urban Outfitters Sea Dust and China Glaze Passion, with a coat of Essence Sweet As Candy as my base. I started off using striping tape to try and get cleaner lines but gave up because I couldn't be bothered waiting for the layers to dry, honestly. :P

I hope you're looking forward to the rest of this challenge - I sure am! :D It also makes me want to re-watch all of these Disney movies! I might need to for inspiration for some of them! Hehe.

Also - don't forget to follow me on BlogLovin' if you haven't already! Check out yesterday's post on Google Reader getting the boot and other ways you can follow me. :)
Hope you're having a fantastic weekend! ♥

Please check out the other awesome ladies participating in this challenge ♥

LabMuffin

It's All About The Polish

ErinZi's Nails
WalkInMyEyeshadow
Nailed Obsession
Every Little Polish
For The Love Of Lacquer
Nailovelogy
MaedayNails
LacquerDreams

Strawbrie

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China Glaze - Tart-y For The Party + BM315

Hey guys! Today I have a polish from the China Glaze Spring 2013 Avant Garden collection to show you, and my first stamped mani using my new BundleMonster plates! :)

China Glaze Tart-y For The Party (+ stamping with BM-315)

Tart-y For The Party is a really pretty purple creme. It's not quite pastel but I wouldn't call it a mid tone purple either... And I can't quite decide if it's more cool toned or warm toned. :/ You can be the judge of that LOL. I thought it was quite unique to my collection when I bought this, but I actually do own a few similar shades haha. I'm just a sucker for purples (which is weird because I don't wear them that often and can feel like they look bad on me).  This is actually quite similar to OPI Do You Lilac It. I haven't swatched them side by side but in the bottle they do look similar. Tart-y For The Party is definitely brighter, however. So not dupes IMO, but similar :)

I then stamped using my brand new BundleMonster plates! :D I'm still pretty new to stamping so bear with me! I've been practicing a lot since I got them and I'm having a lot of fun with it.
I used BM-315 with Sinful Colors White On White.

Close up - you can see the stamping isn't perfect close up but from a distance it looks fine! :)

OH, I want to ask you guys about my photos. I don't know whether I prefer my photos taken in my light box (the ones in this post), or the photos taken outside (in my previous post). Let me know which ones you like better because I want to be more consistent with my photos since I switch it up pretty often haha. I think I prefer the light box photos - they look a bit more professional IMO but yeah let me know please! :)
And I know I have been changing up my watermark a lot LOL. I think I'm really happy with this one though. I might make it a bit more opaque though... You can't see it much lol! I'm kinda tired of the around-the-cuticle watermark. :P

Have you picked up any colours from the Avant Garden collection? Or will you be? I'm still not sure if I want to grab any more... I can't decide lol. I might pick up Mimosa's Before Mani's and Keep Calm Paint On. Still undecided, though. :P

Thanks for reading! I hope you have an awesome weekend :D I have a pretty full on weekend so I may not have a post up until the end of the weekend... We'll see. :) ♥

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 :) ♥

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. ♥

Maybelline - Iced Queen + Leopard Print - Mission Untrieds #17

Today's mani was inspired by Brackett0701 on Instagram! :) I LOVE her ideas! She picks awesome combos! I was inspired by this mani she did, and after I got China Glaze Glistening Snow in the mail I knew I had to try it!

On my thumb, pointer and middle finger I am wearing Maybelline Color Show Iced Queen (310) and on my accent nails I'm wearing China Glaze Glistening Snow with Iced Queen leopard print over it! :)

I am loving Glistening Snow, it's gorgeous and basically covers in two coats but I added another thin one to be sure, hehe. I see myself using it in lots of manis to come. ;)

China Glaze - Flip Flop Fantasy

Today I have a manicure to show you that I wore probably a month or so ago now, but never got around to showing you here!

This was inspired by Lisa_Beth on Instagram! She did something like this maybe 4 or 5 months ago! Haha. It's really bright and summery. :)
I used 3 coats of China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy, a coral-y pink neon, on all fingers but my ring finger, where I used 2 coats of Sally Hansen's Celeb City, a silver foil, and topped that with 2 coats of Ulta3 Twinkle Toes! This was really fun to wear but unfortunately it chipped extremely quickly, like within 12 hours! I don't usually wear my nail polish more than 1 or 2 days and it never chips!

Being an old manicure, I only had one photo of it worthy of posting haha. All of the others were either bad quality, or not colour accurate whatsoever!

Hope you're having a great day!

China Glaze - It's A Trap-eze!

Hey guys! Another Christmas present to show you today, hehe. :)

This is China Glaze It's A Trap-eze! from the Cirque De Soleil collection! This is the only one I have from the collection so far but I do have another one on its way to me. :D
It's A Trap-eze! is a milky white base (it sort of looks slightly purple sometimes though) with lots of multicoloured glitters in it. I'm obessed with milky glitter polishes! This one reminds me of icing and sprinkles! :D

Sunlight

The formula on this was slightly hard to work with because it is PACKED with glitter!! It's hard not to get too many glitters on the brush! If you're not used to using chunky glitter polish, you may find this quite hard to apply.
I didn't love this one as much as I thought I would, sadly. :( I think if there was slightly less glitter in it, I would've liked it more.

With Flash

Close up

I did two coats of It's A Trap-eze followed by two coats of Seche Vite topcoat and it was still a little bumpy after that. I've heard others say they only needed one coat of topcoat so I don't know what I did wrong lol.

Aussie Christmas - 25/12 Your Choice!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY! :D I hope you have an amazing and safe Christmas and spend it with the people you love!!

I ended up skipping the challenge on the 23rd 'Santa's Swimsuit' because I tried a few designs and they just turned out horrible so I gave up. :( lol. Sorry! I skipped my own challenge LOL.

Today's post is a scheduled one because I obviously don't have time to blog on Christmas Day! lol. I have seen so so so many cute Christmas manis this year so my head has had so many ideas swimming around and not enough time to create them all!

I decided to recreate this design by Michelle at Cosmetic Cupcake! It's one of the cutest Christmas manis I've seen!

On my pointer I used 2 coats of Sinful Colors Sugar Sugar which is a perfect Christmas red, and topped that with 1 coat of Ulta3 Luck Of The Irish* and 1 coat of Disco Fever*.

My middle finger is 2 coats of Butter London Pillar Box Red and 1 coat of Femme Fatale Cosmetics Shimmering Snowcap which reminds me of snow! :)

On my ring finger the base is 2 coats of Butter London Pillar Box Red, Ulta3 Lily White for the white fur on Santa's suit, Ulta3 Black Satin for his belt, and Essence A Piece Of Forever* for the belt buckle. :)

My pinky is 2 coats of Butter London Pillar Box Red, 1 coat of China Glaze Ruby Pumps and 1 coat of Ulta3 Disco Fever*. This combo is so perfect for Christmas time!

I also found a really awesome Australian Christmas Tag going around so I thought I'd put that at the end of today's post! :D I'm not sure who created this, sorry!

The Australian Christmas TAG!

1. What is your favourite thing about Christmas?
I love being with my family and THE FOOD. Omg we always have the most amazing food. Mmmm. <3 I also absolutely LOVE Christmas lights. <3 They're amazing.

2. Seafood or traditional Christmas?
Traditional definitely. :)

3. Christmas Carols, love or loathe them?
I like the newer, modern ones but the old stuff is boring to me LOL.

4. If you like them what is your favourite?
Idk if this even counts as 'carols'.. but I like the Christmas songs 'Last Christmas' especially by Taylor Swift and the Glee version too. I like all of the Glee Christmas songs actually.

5. Do you wish it snowed here at Christmas or do you like it hot?
I'd love to experience a winter Christmas once in my life but I do love my hot Aussie Christmases! :)

6. What nail polish do you plan on wearing on Christmas day?
Well when this goes up I'll be already wearing something but right now as I'm typing this, I have no idea!

7. Do you put the tree up on December 1st?
Well usually we put it up early in December, but we only just put ours up last weekend actually LOL.

8. What is your favourite Christmas memory?
My brother and I used to make a "plan" on Christmas Eve for what we'd do on Christmas morning. Because we'd usually wake up at like 6am and get in trouble from our parents because we were too noisy LOL.
And one Christmas morning before we went to my auntie's house for lunch, my brother said something to my sister and she threw her cereal bowl at him. HAHAH. I'll always remember that. I don't even know why I find it so funny!

9. Do you have any Christmas traditions?
Hmm.. Not so much anymore. :( I used to go with my dad and siblings at night on Christmas Eve to see Christmas lights but for the last 4 or so years, I've been at church. But I now go to see Christmas lights with my boyfriend around Christmas time. :) We went like 4 times this year lol!

10. What is on your wish list this year?
My number one gift on my list is a new camera for blogging! The one I've been using for the last few months belongs to my mum and we usually want to use it at the same time lol. So I'd really like one of my own!

Merry Christmas/Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to you all! :) Thank you all for following my blog and all your nice comments, it means soo much to me. :)

*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.

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!