31DC2012: Day 1 - Red and 2 - Orange

Hey girls! Here is day one and two of the 31DC2012 (31 Day Challenge 2012)! I hoped to have this post up earlier but my internet wasn't working so please forgive that!

Day one of the challenge was RED. I'm not a huge red wearer on my nails because red creams just feel too classic for me, and sparkly reds feel too Christmas-y! :P And reds can look very hooker-ish on long nails. But I did buy a red recently that I've been itching to try!

Artificial Light

This is Ulta3 - English Rose. A super sparkly red jelly-ish polish. It has a LOAD of red micro glitter in it and maybe some gold too. I put it on in my bedroom which is pretty dimly lit. I have a chandelier sort of light with 5 bulbs and all but 2 need to be replaced. Anywho, I turned on the lamp next to my bed to take a photo and i was literally like "WHOAAA SO SPARKLY"! :P 

I'm wearing two coats here, with no base or top coat since I didn't plan on wearing it for more than 20 minutes. I think I could've done with another coat though if I was wearing for a proper mani because I could sort of see visible nail line.
Please excuse my one crappy photo, I took it on my iPhone because I was too lazy to grab my camera.
I first saw this polish on Dana @ Polished Claws Up, she has a beautiful swatch of it so I suggest you go and find her's! :)

Click "Read more" to see the polish I chose for day two!

A Franken By Lissa: "Elizabeth Purr"

Hello there! I have another franken to show you today! You can see my first franken here. :)

Sunlight

This was actually my first franken, but I never swatched it until yesterday! I decided to name it "Elizabeth Purr", some of you might recognise the name right away but a lot of you probably won't, so just keep on reading to find out what the name means! :)
This was inspired by some indies I've seen. I can't remember the names of any of them now though. :/
It started off as a super white base (Ulta3 Lily White) with a ton of multicolour glitter (including Revlon - Sparkling, Radiant, OPI - Rainbow Connection, Divine Swine, BYS - Million Dollar Baby and some random iridescent glitter). But when I swatched it I wasn't a fan because the base was way too pigmented and covered a lot of the glitter. It also looked really chalky and too "stark" white. I'm not a fan of stark white nails on myself. Plus, the glitters aren't that chunky so when I saw my nails from further away, they just looked like white nails.
So I decided to mess around with the polish a bit. I dumped out a bit of the polish to make room for more and added probably a quarter of a bottle of clear polish (Sally Hansen's Mega Shine... Probably shouldn't have used that because it's quite fast drying and that's not always a good thing!), and maybe a fifth of the bottle of BYS - Marry a Millionaire for some more large glitters! I also added maybe 4 drops of China Glaze - Dance Baby and about 6 drops of Sally Hansen - Commander in Chic to make the polish more of an off white.

Artificial Light

I wish the polish came out on the nail as chunky as it looks in the bottle! All the glitters seem to have just stuck on the sides of the bottle. :(

So the polish turned much more "jelly like" after adding the clear polish which is much better for glitter polishes anyway because otherwise you can't see the glitter through the base! I wish I had some chunkier glitters to add into this! I think it'd look a lot better if the glitter was chunkier.

Artificial Light

Artificial Light

I'm happy with how this polish turned out! I like that it's subtle and from far away you can't tell there's glitter but up close you see it. :)
It still looks white on my nails but not like I just painted white-out on them! (Lol! I used to do that in primary school!) It looks like more of a SUPER light, almost-white-lilac-taupey colour.

Sunlight

So, I was trying to think of a name for this polish. Some people on Instagram said that they thought it looks like a jawbreaker! I agree, but I didn't want to name it 'Jawbreaker' because there's an indie polish by Pretty & Polished with that name.

I've never actually eaten a Jawbreaker before, but I always think of the movie 'Jawbreaker' when someone mentions it! I watched Jawbreaker with a friend when I was probably around 14.. I don't even know how my friend convinced me to watch it LOL. I get freaked out EASILY by movies if they have anything to do with death/murder. And if you've seen the movie, you'll know the whole movie revolves around a murder. I barely remember the movie to be honest. I probably wouldn't recommend you watch this movie if you're underage (the movie's rated M15 in Australia, and I believe R in America) because there's a fair bit of swearing & mature themes. ANYWAY long story short, I decided to name this polish 'Elizabeth Purr'. If you haven't seen Jawbreaker you'll probably have no idea what that means, so if you really want to know, go read the IMDB page, or watch the movie. It's over 10 years old so you might be able to watch it online.

I have two more frankens I've never showed you so I might show those to you sometime soon! :) I don't like them as much as the ones I've showed you so far but some people might like them?

I'm not loving my nails at the moment. I feel like the length is kinda awkward. I was thinking of trimming them but I think I might see if I can grow them some more. :) I've just had a few corners chip lately and it makes some of my nails look funny. I usually like to photograph my right hand but those nails are looking a little weird right now so I've been photographing my left hand which I feel like is what most people do because the polish looks neater on their non-dominant hand but not me LOL.

Hope you enjoyed my first franken that has a name! :) I quite like it!

Elissa

MaxFactor Fantasy Fire: A Bottle of Amazing-ness

Hi girls! I have something very exciting to share with you today! :D
Again I have to apologise for not posting for a week. :( I don't wanna throw around excuses but I've only done one or two successful manis this week. So sorry. <3

Artificial Light

Probably nearly two weeks ago, I heard that MaxFactor Fantasy Fire had been spotted in Terri White Chemists here in Australia. And I could've squealed with joy when I read that! I checked my local Terri White a couple of days after but didn't find it. The next day on Instagram, Angela posted that she found Fantasy Fire in Target! I literally jumped out of my chair and basically ran (ok more like power walked) through rain and FREEZING cold weather to go and buy this beautiful bottle of amazingness. I'm not kidding. Within 5 minutes of reading it, I was out the door and halfway to Target! So happy I live a 5 minute walk away from Target! ;)
I saw the MaxFactor display before I even walked into Target and was crossing my fingers that it would be there!
AND IT WAS. I swear I almost started jumping up and down in the store. I probably would've if I had a friend with me. LOL. On my own I would've looked like a lunatic. The display was full and there were even extra bottles of FF on the shelves next to the display! I wish I'd brought more money with me but I only brought enough for one bottle! (They're $5.95AU for a very tiny bottle. - I don't see the exact amount printed on the bottle but I'm guessing about 5ML). Would NOT pay that much for any of the other standard colours in their collection).
From Target I had to go and pick my siblings up from school and walked totally the wrong way because I was so excited! LOL!
So of course I went straight home after that and put this baby on my nails!

For those of you who don't know (but I'm pretty sure 99% of people reading this will!), MaxFactor - Fantasy Fire is a dupe of Clarins - 230, probably one off the most coveted nail polishes ever. I don't know a lot about it but I do know that people have paid CRAZY amounts for that polish on eBay!!

Fantasy Fire is a GORGEOUS, super sheer purple based duochrome shimmer. You mostly see red and green flecks on the nail. It's so hard to describe. In the bottle it's a bit prettier than on the nails but oh my gosh. It's AMAZING. If you can, you need to see this in person. And then clear out the display. ;)
I believe it'd look slightly different layered over certain colours but it looks best layered over purple or blues.
Almost all the swatches/manicures I've seen have been layered over Revlon - Royal so I did this too! Revlon's Royal is a jelly royal (hence the name) blue and Fantasy Fire just looks AMAZING over it!

Artificial Light

Click "Read more" to see more gorgeous photos and info. :)

NOTD: Sally Hansen Nail Prism - Pink Rose Diamond!

Hey girls! I'd like to start off by saying I am so sorry for being MIA again for the past week or so. :( All my manis lately have sucked and I've only been wearing them for like, 12 hours or less before I remove it, or I've just been wearing no polish so I haven't had any NOTDs to post! :( I feel terrible especially since I've seemed to gain a lot of followers and readers in the past week so helloooo to all of you lovely ladies. :)

Today I received a package in the mail that I was SUUUUPER excited for! :D Of course it was a polish and of course I had to put it on right away. ;) It was a Sally Hansen Nail Prism polish!! The Nail Prisms are all holographic or duochrome polishes, you can see more of them here on NailXchange's blog. :)

Sunlight

I bought mine on eBay at a great price so if you want one, definitely head over there because some of them are pretty reasonably priced! Some of the more rare ones obviously cost more (some of them a LOT) however. I think this is one of the most common Nail Prisms and the easiest to get your hands on, but I don't care because it is BEAUTIFUL, and my first proper linear holographic polish! And it did not disappoint. :) I was so happy that the sun was out for most of the day because I think we have rain for the rest of the week! :(

Click 'read more' to see more swatches and more info about this beautiful holographic polish! :)

NOTD: A Franken By Lissa!

Hi guys! I'm sorry I've been lacking some polish posts in the past few days! :( But this has to be one of the most exciting posts for me that I've ever done so far! :) Hope you'll like it too.

Lately I've been loving making franken polishes, which is basically where you mix a bunch of polishes and sometimes glitters to make your own unique polish, or to try to recreate a lemming of a polish you may not be able to get your hands on. ;) I've made a few before but this one is definitely my favourite!

Deborah Lippmamn's Glitter in the Air (or Revlon's Whimsical - a dupe for Glitter in the Air) has been at the top of my wish list for quite a while now! I don't think I'll ever get my hands on the Lippmann but I'd still like to try and get the Revlon dupe!
So, I had an empty mini polish bottle and just randomly decided to make something similar to Glitter in the Air! :D

Click 'read more' to see more pictures and a list of which polishes I used in my franken! :)


I wish I'd taken pictures during the process so I could show you exactly what I did and which polishes I uses to create this franken but I didn't. I can't tell you exactly how much of each polish I added, but here's a list of the polishes I used to make my franken:

• A small amount of Glossyblossom - Bubblegum Baby Blue (Glossyblossom is a brand I've found at Morning Glory stores) to make the base blue
• Revlon - Radiant
• Revlon - Sparkling
• A small amount of BYS - Million Dollar Baby
• And some of a Satin - French White polish (sheer white jelly-ish consistency) to make the base more jelly like and lighter.

I also added in some iridescent blue and pink hex glitters that I got on eBay.

L-R: Glossyblossom - Bubblegum Baby Blue, Revlon - Radiant, Revlon - Sparkling, BYS - Million Dollar Baby, Satin - French White.

As you can see, I've used the Revlon polishes for a few frankens now! I need to stop using them for frankens because I only bought them a couple months ago and Revlon polishes really aren't that cheap here, even though they're a 'drugstore' brand.

Sadly today's weather was HORRIBLE. Raining for most of the day and the sun didn't make an appearance so I was unable to get any photos in the sunlight.

The bottle I used is TINY so I don't think I'd get many uses out of it, so I'm still on the hunt for Whimsical.

The polish I made obviously isn't an exact dupe of Glitter in the Air but it's enough to satisfy my lemming for now! Or until I go through this little mini bottle. ;)
My franken (kinda annoying calling it that over and over. Maybe I should've given it a name...) isn't as sheer as Glitter in the Air but it's not completely opaque either so I'm going to layer it over other baby blues when I choose to wear it. :)

Of course, right after making this franken I HAD to put it right onto my nails! :)
Here I used one coat of China Glaze's Kinetic Candy and one coat of my franken over it!

Macro

All I can say is that I am in love. I'm so happy my franken turned out the way I wanted! I'd definitely recommend frankening! It's so much fun and you can try to make some polishes that you may be lemming! :)

Hope you enjoyed this post and happy frankening!

I'd also like to say sorry for the obnoxious watermarks on my photos. I think it looks really ugly, but there's been SO many bloggers and nail girls having their photos stolen and reposted without credit lately and I want to prevent that from happening to me!

-Elissa

NOTD: China Glaze - Lubu Heels

Last night I sorted out my polishes and set aside my "untrieds" (well, most of them). I've put them in little baskets apart from the rest of my collection. I had more untrieds than I thought. :/ I counted exactly 40 so I'm definitely going to try and use some of those soon instead of using polishes I've already tried. I've seen some more I'm interested in picking up soon so I don't want my untrieds to become even bigger!

I decided to wear China Glaze - Lubu Heels from my untrieds today! I bought this one when I bought OPI - Just Spotted the Lizard. I'd had Lubu Heels on my wish list for a while so I just picked it up. (Can you believe I don't even have Ruby Pumps in my collection either!? That was the first CG I ever wanted!)

Lubu Heels is a sheer black base with tiny red glitters. I had to do two coats and another very thin coat with this polish but since it's sheer it didn't make my nails all thick which I appreciate. The only thing I didn't like about the formula was that it's extremely runny and I flooded a couple of my cuticles which wasn't fun. Removing black polish from the cuticles isn't the easiest thing in the world!
Regardless, I love this colour! When you're not in direct sunlight it looks just black but in the sunlight, the red glitters pops and is really sparkly!
Lubu Heels is really vampy and I feel like it's almost even sexy! I've never known a polish to be 'sexy' before. Haha! I don't wear darks too often but in the past couple months, while it's been winter, I haven't been wearing that many dark colours on my nails. I have quite a lot of darks in my collection so I was really feeling a dark polish for today. :)

Artificial light

Daylight

Daylight

In my daylight pictures you can barely see the red glitter which was disappointing. Stupid me for trying to take my photos one hour before the sun is gone!

Thanks for reading! Hope you're having a great weekend (or week, depending on when you read this ;))!
-Elissa

NOTD: OPI - Just Spotted the Lizard!

Hey there! :)
I have an exciting polish to show you today! It's exciting for me anyway! I've been wanting this baby ever since I saw the press releases for it!

Shade

I'm a big fan of superhero movies, I'm not really sure why because I don't like a lot of other action sort of movies. I'm a huge fan of Batman but I also really enjoyed the Spiderman movies! When I heard that OPI was releasing a collection for The Amazing Spiderman movie, I was so excited! I also saw the movie a couple weeks ago and LOVED it. Much more than the Toby McGuire ones, sorry. :P Andrew Garfield is a better Spiderman IMO. I don't know a lot about the Spiderman comic or anything though & people seem to have a problem with it not being the same as the comics or something. But I thought it was great! :)

Anyway, onto the part you're actually here for, the polish! This was the only one from the Amazing Spiderman collection that really interested me. The rest are mostly frosty shades and I'm not a fan of those.
I'm surprised at myself that I wanted this one because it's a duochrome and I'm usually not a fan of those either! Usually I hate duochromes unless they're colours very close to each other (red/orange duochromes, purple/blue duochromes), and bright. I hate dark duochromes. I'm very picky. :)
This is "Just Spotted the Lizard", a gold-green duochrome! In the bottle I also see some blue but not as much on the nail.
I really love it! I didn't know whether I would, but I really wanted to own it even if I didn't like it. Haha!

This post is a bit picture heavy, so click 'Read more' for more photos & my thoughts about this polish! :)

Shade

Direct sunlight

Shade

Shade

This polish is also a dupe for Chanel "Peridot" and Jessica's "Iridescent Eye". China Glaze's "Rare & Radiant" from the new New Bohemian collection looks like it'll also be a dupe but I haven't seen a comparison so I can't be 100% sure of that. For me, the OPI is the easiest to get my hands on right now. The China Glaze would be cheaper here but I don't think I'd be able to find it, since it's rare that I stumble upon China Glaze. x) Any of the other dupes I'd have to buy on eBay or online somewhere else.

This polish is also boyfriend approved. ;) I bought some new polishes yesterday and when I asked my boyfriend which one I should put on first, he picked this one. When he saw it on my nails, he thought it looked really cool! :) Yay! My boyfriend doesn't really approve of my polish addiction very often. :) Actually I'm pretty sure he's really annoyed by it but oh well! :) Polish is literally the only thing I ever buy. I often neglect buying really essential things so I can buy polish. :/

Anyway, so sorry for this extremely wordy post. :) Hope you enjoyed! I'm loving this polish! I've now been wearing it for 18 hours and don't want to remove it! That's pretty rare! Usually after 12 hours I'm already planning what colour to use next and itching to remove my current polish. x)

This mani kind of also doubles as an Olympics mani, since the Aussie colours are green and gold. ;)


Do you like duochromes? Or are you extremely picky about them like I am? x) Oh and have you seen the new Spiderman movie?! If so, what did you think? :)

-Elissa

NOTD: Essence - Choose Me!

Hi girlies! :)
Hope you had a great weekend! I had a pretty nice one! Sorry I've been slacking on posting this past two weeks! I have a ton of things to post, I've been a bit busy though and my computer and Photoshop have also been giving me problems. So I've had posts all ready to go, but it's just the photos that have been giving me trouble!

The polish I'm showing you today is Essence's Choose Me! And how could I NOT choose it?! ;) It's beautiful! I don't know how I feel about it on my skin tone but it's too pretty for me to care!

Essence's Choose Me is a dupe for about a million other polishes. Okay, only two that I know of. OPI's Catch Me In Your Net and Zoya's Charla. And it's a fraction of the price. You could buy like 10 bottles of this polish and it would be equivalent to only one bottle of OPI! Plus, I believe the OPI one was limited edition and is harder to find. Choose Me is a permanent colour in the Essence Colour and Go line so it's fairly easy to find! :)

This polish totally reminds me of a mermaid or something. It's sort of a blue jelly base with green and gold shimmers (or perhaps it's glass fleck? I'm not too good at determining the difference between shimmer and glass fleck... Help me out if you know)! It almost seems duochrome-y!

I'd recommend using a good base coat with this one. The first time I wore it, it stained on me a bit, but the second time it didn't! Weird, but yeah! Maybe double up on the base coat just to be safe. :) Anyway, it's so pretty I wouldn't have minded if it stained!

Sorry that my watermarks are inconsistent in the above photos. I'm still trying to figure out how I want the watermark to look!

Do you own this polish, or one of the many dupes? :)

-Elissa

Essence Nude Glam Polishes

I'm so sorry it's been about a week since I posted! I have some posts planned though so (hopefully) look forward to me posting frequently! :)

Essence recently released a line of nude polishes to suit different skin tones! Well in Australia they recently released it, anyway. Probably a long time ago in other countries!
I love Essence polishes and want to own every polish from them! I love buying nude polishes but I don't wear them all that often. I bought Essence Nude Glam - Cafe Ole, a light taupe-beige sort of nude, a while back but just put it in my drawer and never wore it. I bought the nude polish in Iced Latte a couple of weeks ago, which is a light pink-beige sort of nude. I'm not the best at describing colours like this, sorry. x)

I thought I'd swatch the two nudes side by side to show you. They're pretty different in my opinion. On my ring and pinky is Cafe Ole, and my middle and pointer is Iced Latte. Both very nice nude shades.

A full manicure with Iced Latte.

I prefer Iced Latte on my skin tone but Cafe Ole doesn't look bad. :)

Essence polishes are great! The quality is awesome and they have a great colour range! They are sold in Target stores in Australia for $2.55. They're also popping up in Priceline stores at the moment, check the Essence Facebook page for a list of the stores around Aus that will be stocking Essence!

NOTD: Purple Leopard Print Manicure!

I decided to skip days 8 (your favourite nails) and 9 (geometric) of the Winter Challenge and do leopard print nails! I'd seen an AWESOME leopard print tutorial by Sarah at Chalkboard Nails and decided to recreate it! :)

It's super easy and Sarah even included a video tutorial! All you need is three colours of polish, a dotting tool and a fast dry top coat! Well the top coat isn't completely necessary I guess but it makes life easier. ;)

The three colours I chose to use were Revlon Top Speed - Lily for the base, OPI - Do You Lilac It for the dots, and Essence - Break Through for the darker part of the spots. :) So my overall look is purple.

I'm slowly getting more and more into nail art! I just feel like sometimes it can look a little tacky. I guess it just depends on the design. I prefer more subtle nail art so this is quite crazy for me to have on my nails but I think it's cute and in my opinion, looks like it was really hard to do but it's actually super easy and doesn't take as long as it might look like it does!

Click 'Read more' for more photos & other info! :)

Winter Challenge Day 6 (and 7!)

So I had planned on doing manicures for day 4 (black) and 5 (grey) but didn't have time over the weekend for doing my nails. :( I had plans for both days too which sucks. But hey, I can still do those manis some other time. :) So look out for those sometime soon, possibly!

Day 6's theme is "pink". I'm not sure how pink fits into winter but hey, pink is pretty all the time so I'm not complaining! :)
I chose to use a pink polish from my (embarrassingly large) stash of untried polishes. This one I won in an Instagram giveaway from Aveyou; I won the Essie Bikini So Teeny - Summer 2012 collection mini set from them! :) I was so excited to win a polish set from them, I've never won any giveaways before. Though it was extremely easy to enter. All I had to do was be in the first 200 or so to screenshot something. I was really excited to receive these polishes in the mail last week; I'd expected it to take a lot longer to arrive than it did! But sadly, Ayeyou isn't doing international giveaways anymore. I guess they'd had many more international winners than they anticipated. So all their giveaways are US only now, but that's great for you if you live there so follow them on Instagram to see when they have their next giveaway! They give away polish sets pretty frequently.
ANYWAY! Sorry for my blabbering about that!

Click 'read more' for more pictures and info! :)
and you can see the (super simple and easy) nail art I did after wearing this for a day!

NOTD: Second Try of Fly

Indoors

I tried OPI Fly a couple of months ago, late at night, painting my nails in bed. I usually do my nails late at night but when I do them in bed, it doesn't turn out so well... I ended up smudging the polish a ton, getting it all over my cuticles and it just was not fun. The colour also looked really strange and not like other swatches I'd seen! (Turns out this was just because I was in a poorly lit room, thankfully. I was scared I got a dodgy bottle or something.) I ended up getting a bunch of sheet marks and even more smudges in it when I woke up as well, so I just removed it first thing in the morning. It did stain my fingers a little with removal too. I also broke a nail that morning.

Swatches & more info after the jump!

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

NOTD: Warm & Fozzie Disaster

So if you follow me on Instagram you will know all about the disaster that happened last night while I was shopping with my little sister! We were shopping for a dress for her to wear tonight and I had a little money so I decided I'd buy an OPI polish.

In Price Attack they had a little rack of OPIs for $14.95 (as well as all the new collections but they're a little more expensive) including some of the Muppets Collection and I've been dying to buy Warm & Fozzie for a while so I thought I'd bite the bullet and finally buy it! :)

We were walking around looking at clothes & I was getting impatient because my sister takes a long time in the shops. x) She was all whingy as well because she couldn't find anything. We went into a store and just as we were about to walk out, I dropped my little plastic bag with my beautiful Warm & Fozzie inside... I picked it up and realised that the inside of the bag was looking very brown. THE BOTTLE BROKE. :'( I could've cried! I probably would have if it happened at home! I basically ran back to the store and asked if there was anything they could do, even though I knew they wouldn't be able to.. :( I was right. The owner seemed really sympathetic though. He was like "oh no! :(" haha. But yeah I was very pissed off and I ranted on Instagram right away. :P I saw a friend of mine like 20 minutes later who also likes OPI and she sympathized with me. LOL. But I was bugging my sister so much to hurry so I could get home and try to salvage the polish into an empty OPI Nail Envy bottle. :( I was already in a bad mood but that just topped off my night...

I did end up salvaging a full OPI mini bottle (3.75ml) and about half of another. So like a third of the full size polish. Kinda annoying since I spent $15 on it. But anyway I'm sort of over it now.

ANYWAYYY, after all that. I knew I had to put Warm & Fozzie on my nails as soon as I got home. I was slightly disappointed because other swatches I'd seen, looked much more beautiful! But after taking pictures and seeing it outside, I'm happy. :) I don't even know how to describe this polish so I'm not going to try. ;) Go to Scrangie's blog post about the Muppets Collection HERE where you can see better swatches and a good description.

More info & swatches after the jump! :)

NOTD: My Favourite Polish of All Time

A few weeks ago I discovered my favourite polish of all time. I found myself wanting to wear it all the time and I love how it looks on my nails! But I only had it in a mini size so while I was in Sydney I picked up the full size version!

 Essie - Lady Like is a muted mauve-taupe sort of colour that can also look nude in some lighting. This polish is from Essie's Fall 2011 collection I believe. But this collection is still the one on the stands here in Australia. It's been on the stands since maybe February; that's when I first noticed it. We have a very limited selection of Essies. I'm hoping they restock soon though and give us the Winter 2011 collection, even though we're a third through Winter now. I can't even remember what the Winter collection was, off the top of my head (though I'm usually good at remembering things, so this is weird...). Lady Like is very simple and classy and I just love it so much! It makes your nails and hands look polished without drawing attention to them. It was the first Essie polish I ever wore and I was very impressed with the formula, since I had heard that Essie formula was very sheer and hard to work with but this polish isn't that at all! Great polish to work with and was opaque in two coats. :) I think this one would be very job interview appropriate. Or just work appropriate in general, if you work somewhere more conservative. I'm loving netural polishes lately. I own a lot of them but in reality I don't actually wear them all that often. xD

PS. I'd like to apologise for the fact that my cuticles are looking a little dry in my photos. I believe I took these photos literally right after I washed my hands, or showered or something and hadn't applied any cuticle oil or hand cream yet. Which is weird for me because I am ALWAYS doing that. ;)

More info & swatches after the jump! :)

NOTD: Coral Fever

I've been really into mixing polishes lately! Mixing white into bright colours to make them more pastel, mixing colours into clear polish to make a "jelly" polish. It's so fun to me.
Here is the result of a polish I mixed!
I started with Essence - C'est La Vie. I wasn't a fan of that polish. I'm not sure why I bought it actually. I guess I thought it was more coral but it was actually very orange. So I thought I'd add some hot pink to it to make it more coral! I tipped out about a quarter of the Essence polish and I added some of Rimmel - Hot Shot to the polish; I don't remember how much exactly. And I then added a bit of a white polish to tone down the brightness of it. And I absolutely LOVED the result!

Daylight

More info & swatches after the jump! :)

NOTD: Midnight Manicure

I found it funny that I'm typing this at exactly 12:00am (midnight), and the polish I am wearing right now is called 'Midnight'!

I am wearing one of the polishes I picked up in Sydney over the weekend, in a chemist. About a week ago & a half ago I discovered that the Revlon ColorStay polishes had been release in Australia! I don't know how long they've been out in the US but since I only recently started to see them popping up on blogs & YouTube so I thought we wouldn't get them for another 4-6 months but I unexpectedly saw them in Chemist Warehouse and flipped out!

I have worn one other ColorStay but didn't take any pictures on my camera (only my phone-bad quality) so I'll have to swatch it again soon.
I really like the formula of these polishes, they're quite thick and the ones I've tried so far are opaque in one coat (though I always do two). I am not the fondest of the brush, however. The brush is wide and a bit stumpy. I tend to get polish all over my cuticles with these polishes which is really annoying because usually I need to do minimal cleanup! But I still really like this line anyway.

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So the one I am wearing 'Midnight'. It's a dark teal colour (though my photos don't show that so well...). I have been wearing a LOT of blues on my nails lately. I used to think blue/green was a very unusual colour for nail polish but now it's probably one of my favourites!

I then topped the polish with CND 'Crimson Sparkle', a shimmer/micro glitter top coat that flashes red (as the name suggests!) and gold! It's really gorgeous and when I googled swatches I saw it only used over dark colours so I thought this would work! At first I wasn't a fan of my combo but it's growing on me! :) I think this topcoat will also look great over pastels for a more subtle look.

More info & swatches after the jump! :)

NOTD: My Sydney Manicure

If you read one of my previous posts you'll remember that I went to Sydney for 3 nights almost a week ago. It was an amazing time but before I went, I was very concerned about my nails. :P I knew I wouldn't be able to paint them or pay too much attention to them so I wasn't sure if I should paint them and just hope that they don't chip too much or break, or if I should leave them bare (which I usually don't like to do because I always manage to break a nail when I don't wear polish - eg. Today). So I was thinking about it & I saw Sally Hansen Salon Effects real nail polish strips in a Chemist Warehouse catalogue for $9 (they retail for about $13.95 here I believe) and I've been wanting to try them so I went and purchased them in the "Skinny Jeans" pattern. It's a pretty subtle pattern compared to some of the other ones they have.

I watched a few YouTube videos about these and how to apply them so I was pretty confident that I wouldn't mess it up when I put them on. But they were different than I expected. I wasn't sure if I should use a base coat before applying them but since I wanted them to last as long as possible, I thought I would use a base coat. Mistake number one. I believe you aren't supposed to use a base coat with these, from what I heard from other girls.
I didn't have a good time applying these. They were a mess! I had a hard time getting them close enough to my cuticle without actually touching the cuticle, and a couple of the strips dried out because I took so long to apply them! And for some reason, when one of the strips dried out, I was unable to find another in my packet the same size which was really annoying and left one of my nails with a strip that was too small for my nail and looked funny. Also, the strips didn't want to stick to my nail at the cuticle properly and went kind of bumpy. But I think this had to do with me using a base coat.

More info & photos after the jump! :)

NOTD: Delicate Ballerina Manicure

I feel so silly. About a month ago I promised myself I'd start posting NOTD posts on my blog but it never happened. So right now I'm bored and figured it was the perfect time to do my first post. :)

I bought the OPI NYC Ballet Collection minis a few months ago but never felt in the mood to wear them, even after seeing the beautiful swatches on Instagram and blogs. But finally a couple of days ago before going out to see some old friends, I was trying to choose a colour for my nails and decided to break out these pretty jellies!

I'm wearing 3 coats of "Don't Touch My Tutu", a pretty white jelly with one coat of "Pirouette My Whistle" over it, which is a glitter top coat made up of silver micro glitter and larger white/matte glitter! I also have used a coat of Sally Hansen's Mega Shine top coat over this mani.

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I did dent this mani before it dried, as I didn't wait long at all between coats of Don't Touch My Tutu. I would definitely wait longer between coats next time so that the mani dries faster and I don't mess it up again.

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I'm hoping to pick up a full size of both of these polishes. Having to use three coats of the jelly for it to be the opacity of my liking really sucks because I'll go through my mini bottles very quickly! This collection would be absolutely perfect for a bridal manicure or something of that sort! :) The OPI NYC Ballet Collection is full of some GORGEOUS, delicate, soft colours that I will definitely be wearing more often.

Thankyou so much for reading :) Please leave a comment & tell me what you think about these polishes!
Also feel free to follow me on Instagram (@elissafayy) or Twitter for updates from me or just to chat :)

PS: Please bear with me on my watermarks.. Haven't really decided on a good one for my photos yet! :) Let me know what you think of it.