My Valentine's Day Nails ♡

Hi guys! Not really sure what happened to this post before... lol I published it a couple of hours ago and then just went on my blog and it wasn't there? Weird.
I hope you had a really nice Valentine's Day yesterday! My boyfriend and I don't do anything super fancy for V Day but we had a good night. :)

This is what I wore on my nails for Valentine's Day!

On all my nails except my ring, the base is Revlon Colorstay Rich Raspberry, stamped with plate QA28 from BornPrettyStore in white, and on my ring is Ulta3 Lily White stamped with the same plate and Rich Raspberry.

I can't believe how well this turned out! Usually I have to redo each nail a few times before the stamping looks good but I didn't have to redo ANY of my nails! :D

OPI - Red Lights Ahead...Where? + stamping with QA18 - Mission Untrieds #15

I wasn't planning on sharing my weekend manicure on here because it was just a plain red (and I only have a mini bottle of this polish I didn't feel like photographing it LOL), but then I added some stamping for Saturday night so I decided I'd show it! :D

Let me tell you to start off - I'm still new to stamping. I should practice more lol. I had to redo each nail twice I think but it wasn't too bad compared to other times haha.

My base colour is OPI Red Lights Ahead...Where? and I did the stamping using Ulta3 Lily White and stamping plate QA18 which I bought from Born Pretty Store.

I've worn Red Lights Ahead...Where? before but it was aaaaaages ago, almost a year ago actually, when I first got into polish! :) It was one of my first OPIs!

Everyone says that Ulta3 Lily White is great for stamping but it doesn't seem to work for me. :( Maybe I don't stamp hard enough or something? But when I transfer the polish from the stamp to my nail, half of it is still on the stamp (which is why it looks so faint on my nail lol). o.O

Do you have any tips for me, or recommendations for good stamping polishes?! :) I'm getting more into nail art lately and I really want to get more into stamping because it's so cute and there are some ADORABLE plates out there! Plus I'd imagine it's much easier when you get the hang of it and then you'd be able to do it super quickly! :)

Btw - how cute would this design be for Valentine's Day?! Even the other way around too, red stamping on a white base. That would be sooo cute! Maybe I'll try it next time! ^_^

Aussie Nails Monday 4/1 - Bright

Today's Aussie Nails Monday theme is Bright! Well I was late doing my ANM and I honestly didn't feel like doing any nail art so I chose to just show you some swatches of some bright polishes by Ulta3 that were in my untried basket. :)

These polishes all came from the Ulta3 Candy Cane that came out around Christmas time.

Ulta3 Coral Reef

Coral Reef is obviously, a coral colour. The formula was slightly jelly-ish but dried really flat :/

2 coats + topcoat. 

Ulta3 Pink Hibiscus

Pink Hibiscus is a regular hot pink that leans more blue-toned. This was nice and nearly opaque in one coat!

2 coats + topcoat.

Ulta3 Flirty Bikini

Flirty Bikini is a super pretty purple with a subtle gold shimmer. It was very opaque like Pink Hibiscus.

2 coats + topcoat.

Sorry this post probably wasn't very exciting for you. :( I'll have something more exciting soon I promise. :D

*Product(s) in this post 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.

Aussie Nails Monday 28/1 - Black And White

Hey guys! First of all I wanted to say... THANK YOU SO MUCH TO MY 200 FOLLOWERS!!! I just hit 200 yesterday and I am so excited! :D :D :D Thanks so much for following me and all your lovely comments on my posts, as well as following and talking to me on Instagram/Twitter etc. :) <3 I am hoping to put together an awesome giveaway to thank you in a month or so, so make sure you stick around for that! :D

Today's Aussie Nails Monday is Black and White! I decided to do another 'skittle' manicure!

On my pointer I used OPI's Number One Nemesis. It's a really cool colour! Grey-ish, silver-ish, green-ish.
On my middle finger I used Ulta3 Black Satin with some rhinestones.
On my ring finger, I used Ulta3 Lily White as my base and Ulta3 Black Satin for some polka dots.
And lastly, on my pinky I used OPI Metallic 4 Life which is a black jelly base with loads of silver glitter in it! I loooove this polish so much.

Have an awesomely awesome week everyone! :)

Aussie Nails Monday 21/1 - Skittles

Hey hey! :) I just wanted to start by saying thank you soo much for 100 likes on my Facebook page! So awesome! Thank you! :) I also got to 4000 followers on Instagram this week!! :D
AND, I'm almost at 200 blog followers! Which is soo exciting! I never ever thought in a million years that anybody would want to read my blog! :) I am thinking about doing a giveaway in a couple of months to celebrate and thank you, so keep your eyes peeled. ;)

Today for Aussie Nails Monday, the theme is Skittles! I think some of the ladies in the ANM group will take "Skittles" literally and do a mani inspired by the lollies. :P A "skittle manicure" is usually when you do a different colour on each nail. Or the same colour on each nail, but a different nail art design on each nail. I don't think there's really any "rules" when it comes to skittle manicures ... I hope. Hehe.
I did more of a mix and match manicure than skittles but I hope it still counts. I just don't feel right wearing a completely different colour on each nail haha. So I did something using 3 colours. I wanted it to all tie in together.

On my pointer and middle nails I'm wearing OPI Stay The Night from the Mariah Carey collection. This is one of the new Liquid Sand polishes! I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the Liquid Sands but I think they are so cool!
Stay The Night is a black base with black and pink-ish red glitter. And as the name "Liquid Sand" would suggest, it dries to a sand-ish looking finish. But it's not overly rough or scratchy like I thought it might be. The texture does make me shiver a bit to touch though lol!

On my pinky and thumb I am wearing a berry-ish pink colour by Rubi Shoes (by Cotton On) called It's Getting Hot In Here and I added a little black rhinestone at the cuticle. :) This is the closest colour in my collection to the glitters in Stay The Night, so it doesn't exactly match.

On my ring finger, I did some stamping! I used my favourite white, Ulta3 Lily White as my base and then I used the lips design on stamping plate QA28 that I bought from Born Pretty Store and a random black polish.

And here is a close up of what Stay The Night looks like! I think it looks so awesome! The red glitters still sparkle a lot even though the overall look is matte.

This is something so out of my comfort zone but I love it so much! I want to try more mix and match nails!

Check out the other awesome Aussie Nails Monday ladies! :)

Nail Gun XS - Marie’s Manicure Madhouse - Shatter Me Claire - A Polished Prance - Shades of Phoenix - The Epitome of Superficiality - Lacquer Dreams - NananaisNails - Enamoured With Enamel - Adelle1985 - Kelly's Kolors - Polished Peripherals - Every Little Polish - Mel My Issta - Walk In My Eyeshadow - JennLojko - Erinzi’s Nails - Lovessweetas - Jas’ Blingtastic Nails - Mckfresh - Maedaynails - Lili_Bete - The Reluctant Femme - Jibber Jabber - Messy Mansion - Nailovelogy - Ronda - It's All About The Polish - Pretty Polish Please

Aussie Nails Monday 7/1 - Animal

Happy Monday! :) I hope you had a great weekend! It's sooo hot here today. :( Sorry this post is going up a bit late. I was lazy last night and couldn't be bothered to edit my photos and then schedule the post, which is what I usually do. :P But here it is!

Today for Aussie Nails Monday, we did Animal print! :) Animal print scares me a bit haha. I don't know if I really like the look of it on my nails... Which makes it kinda silly that I put it as one of the themes if I don't like it but oh well! :P

I have to say, my all time favourite animal print nails have been done by Brie! Her nails always look amazing and she does awesome leopard prints! :D
So my animal print manicure is inspired by her! :) You can see her amazing version here.

On my pointer and pinky I used OPI's Pink Friday.
On my middle finger I did a base of Ulta3 Lily White and then did polka dots in Essence Black is Back. My go-to black is usually Ulta3's Black Satin, but my bottle's getting a bit stringy so I didn't use it for this.
On my ring finger I used a silver holographic glitter in a clear base from a brand that I think is called Lorins Professional. I believe it's from Israel? I think it's called 734A. Haha. I did the leopard print using OPI Pink Friday, Ulta3 Lily White and Essence Black Is Back.

This definitely isn't my best leopard print unfortunately. Oh well! :P

Mission Untrieds #1: Savvy - Azure Martini With Polka Dots!

Hi guys! :) I hope you're having a nice weekend so far!
I've decided to start showing you all of my untried polishes! I'll be posting at least once a week (I didn't want to set a strict schedule because I probably wouldn't be able to stick to it :P) showing you a polish (or more than one!) from my "untrieds basket" that I keep on my desk with all of my nail polishes that I haven't tried yet. The basket is literally overflowing and can't really fit any more polishes in it so, here is my "mission" to use all of my untrieds! :)

Mission Untrieds #1: Savvy by DB - Azure Martini

After Christmas I went to Priceline and this polish from Savvy by DB caught my eye! I always look in the little Savvy by DB polish bins in Priceline almost every time I go but I never grab any! I don't know why, they're a bargain - only $2.99 each! This polish was calling my name so I grabbed it.

This is Savvy by DB's Azure Martini which is a pastel but bright blue at the same time.
I added some white polka dots with Ulta3 Lily White using a small-ish dotting tool. :)

 I absolutely love this! I have a feeling I'll be doing a lot of polka dot nails soon haha! :)

Hope you'll enjoy seeing me use my untried nail polishes!

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!

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!

Aussie Christmas Challenge 19/12 - Candy Cane

Hey guys! To start off, yes, I know this theme isn't very "Aussie", but I think almost every country that celebrates Christmas would have candy canes and I had to put at least a few "traditional" Christmas themes in the challenge! ;) Oh. And I changed my nail shape again. Ha! I didn't do a very good job as I'm now seeing in my photos though...

The mani I'm showing you today for the Aussie Christmas Challenge was not what I had originally planned on doing. :( I had planned a really cool-looking water marble and of course, being a water marble, it didn't go to plan at all. I spent 3-4 hours on it before I gave up and decided to do something else!
The mani I decided to do in the end, was inspired by THIS MANI by Chloe's Nails, which I have been seeing all over Pinterest and the rest of the internet! I think her stripes look absolutely flawless and perfecto!

I started off with two coats of Ulta3 Lily White and then taped off my nail using regular tape for the stripes, and painted over the nail with China Glaze Ruby Pumps, which is now one of my all time favourite polishes! After pulling off the tape I had a few mistakes but they were easily fixed up with a white striper. :)
As you can see though, I did have a little smudgey problem on my index finger because of my topcoat. :( I tend to stroke with the brush too many times.

Less than a week until Christmas! Woohoo! Have you done all your Christmas shopping? I don't really wanna go anywhere near the shops until the new year now. It's too hectic at this time of the year!