Butter London Yummy Mummy

I was strolling through the airport looking for a magazine to read on my flight home on Monday when I spotted the latest issue of Madison magazine. With a free Butter London polish attached. SQUEE! Of course, I snapped it up. They had two colours to choose from, one a beige and the other a bright coral. I chose Yummy Mummy, a gorgeous beige:

 

No wonder people rave about Butter London, honestly. Their formula is amazing. This was two coats and I had complete coverage. It wears so well. I am rough on my nails and I have not one chip after two days. Love, love, love!

I’m actually tempted to go buy another Madison magazine to get the other polish … is that really bad of me!?!?

Have you snapped up your free Butter London polish yet!?

Em

Chi Chi Disco Diva

Apologies, apologies… I have neglected my blog the past couple of days because I was in Adelaide doing my hot stone massage and cupping courses! They were AMAZING. The man who taught us was a wealth of knowledge and I picked up so many hints and tricks that I never ever considered! I have been knocked out the past couple of days with a super-cold. The hot stones brought it out of me but I’m healing a lot quicker than normal, which I completely think is due to the stones. I’m a total convert and I can’t wait to start practicing it!

 

Anyway, onto the polish! Talk about bling bling. This Chi Chi polish, Disco Diva, is amazing!

Check out the craziness happening on my nails:

Woo! This was two coats. Crappy formula, very thick and gluggy, but nothing a bit of thinner won’t fix! It took three coats of SV to smooth it out because it was a little gritty.

 

As most glitter polishes do, this wore well. I applied it Thursday evening and ended up taking it off on Sunday night because I had a few very, very large chips and I picked the rest off until there as hardly anything left. Ha!

 

Em

China Glaze DV8

This polish is dangerous. Why, you ask? Because I couldn’t stop staring at it while I was wearing it. I stared at it as I drove to and from work. I stared at it as I walked around work (sometimes crossing roads). I stared at it every time I was outside.

You guessed it, it’s a holo!
But not just any holo. This is China Glaze DV8:

 

Ahhhhhhhhh.

Perfect. Such a totally and utterly perfect teal linear holo.

The formula, not so perfect. Two goopy coats which were streaky and hard to manage. But I got there in the end because I knew it would be worth it. And it so was.

 

Here’s another gratuitous holo shot:

You are delicious, DV8. Marry me?

 

I found this beauty in Adelaide a few months back when I was dusty hunting. I wandered into a little Asian nail salon on the off chance they’d have some cool polishes. I scored four China Glazes from the OMG! collection and one from the Kaleidescope collection. Now that was a good day’s shopping!

 

It’s inspired me to break out the Spectraflair and start creating some more Spectrafrankens!

 

Are you taking advantage of the beautiful weather to wear some holos?

Em

 

P.S. Sorry for the not-as-frequent posting over the past few days. I’ve been super busy at work and am currently in Adelaide doing three days of intensive massage courses! Regular programming will resume soon!

The Face Shop PP401 with Konad

I’m not sure why I was in the mood for a holo this past weekend. It was hot, but so overcast outside so I don’t know why I thought it was such a good idea!

I think I just wanted to try out one of The Face Shop’s holos! I bought two when I was in Adelaide last.

 

This is the pink one:

This is two coats of the gorgeous scattered holo. It’s such a pretty pink even in the shade. It’s funny, I spent about 15 minutes outside trying to get photos in the sun but the sun just wasn’t cooperating. I went inside and brought the washing outside to hang on the clothesline and the sun made a surprise appearance!! I’m glad there was no one else home as I dropped the basket, bolted inside the house to get my camera and polish and snapped away.

Anyway, I got some decent photos, in the end!

 

Here’s some more, because you know I don’t just show you one photo of a pretty holo!

 

It’s not as strong a holo effect as some of the others I have, but still pretty.  It also lasts and lasts because I’ve been wearing it a couple of days and there’s not one chip and no tip wear. Winner!

 

Here it is with some Konad:

I’ve never used this Konad design before because I always thought it looked boring. I was so wrong. It’s gorgeous! It reminds me of fishnet stockings. And because it’s delicate, there’s still plenty of room for the holo to peek through! I’ll definitely be using it again!

 

Have you tried any good holos lately?
Em

Model’s Own Beetlejuice–Pinky Brown

Ah, finally. I received the Model’s Own Beetlejuice collection in the mail last week and I had to try one straight away. Or, like, the world would end. Seriously. Haha

 

This is Pinky Brown:

Drool! Excuse my crappy photos … I am terrible at capturing duochromes. I’m not sure why they call this Pinky Brown, because it clearly has a lot of gold in it! And it is also a crap name. I mean, honestly, if you’re going to name a collection something as awesome as Beetlejuice, at least put some effort into the polish names! Don’t think your work is done when you choose the collection name.

Here are some more photos:

So sparkly! I love that these are glittery duochromes. It adds so much depth!

 

More pretty gold!

 

Dodgy photo but it was the best that I had to show you the colour shifting! So beautiful.

 

I can’t wait to try the others in the collection. I’m thinking I’ll have to try the Aqua Violet next. Two of my favourite colours at once? Yes please!

Have you succumbed to the Beetlejuice collection yet? I was literally out at dinner and had my phone out watching the countdown and I jumped on to buy straight away. How sad is that?! I think that’s when I realised I have a nail polish problem

 

Em

piCture pOlish Bliss with Violet Femme

Urgh. Fail, fail, fail. I’ve had a few fail manis lately and I hate it!!! This is another one!

It all started off well, with piCture pOlish Bliss:

 

This was two coats. Gorgeous formula, gorgeous colour. This was such a light lilac that it was almost white!

 

So, I bought some craft scissors off eBay, planning on using them to cut pretty designs in tape to do tape manis. I got them and realise that they would not cut through any kind of tape!

So I decided to cut paper and just wrap it around my finger. Here was the outcome:

Ewwwwwww.. The dark purple is piCture pOlish Violet Femme. This was meant to be the wavy craft scissors design. *Sigh*.

It turned out to be a lot harder than I expected to keep the paper tight around my nail without moving it and smudging the polish. It just did not work!

And then I had the bright idea (AFTER I did the mani) to use paper labels. Hahaha. So guess what I’ll be doing next time!! Oh well, better late than never

 

Have you done any fail manis lately?
Em

OPI Significant Other Color

I generally don’t like colours like this. I don’t know why, I just don’t. But this colour is a real beauty. I’m so glad my friend Kate picked it up for me while she was in the US.

This is OPI Significant Other Color:

This is three coats. It’s fairly sheer! But it’s pretty, huh? It’s such a dainty, soft pink with a golden shimmer you can see all the time. A lot of the time I pick up a polish that shows a beautiful shimmer in the bottle and once I get it onto my nails, the shimmer disappears. This shimmer is always present, in any light. I love that what you see is what you get with this polish.

 

 

Some call this a duochrome. What do you think? I think it’s a shimmer but I’d like to hear your thoughts!

Em

Beauty World Blossom Nail Cocktail

I’m not sure whether this mani is a fail or a win. A bit of both, I think.

My brother has recently moved to London and on the way through he spent a week in Japan. He picked me up this really cool little set called Blossom Nail Cocktail:

Plus a cute little yellow glitter polish.

The Blossom Nail Cocktail has instructions on the back:

In Japanese, of course. But the photos give you the general idea of what to do!

 

I decided to give this a go last weekend, and was pretty pleased with the results:

 

It was cute! I did two coats of each polish at each step. That was a mistake. I should have only done one, because do you see how thick the polish is on my middle finger!? It’s actually bulging out to the side!!! After I saw this photo I did press it down and fix it, but next time I definitely will only be doing one coat of each!!

 

Would you believe this is the closest I’ve had to naked nails since May? My staining has finally grown out (I will never use Kleancolor metallics again!!!) so I’m kind of liking sheer polishes at the moment.

This is a really good, simple gradient glitter mani. I wish I could get my hands on the other colours …

 

Em

BYS Hunter Green & OPI Not Like the Movies

I’ve got a double whammy for you guys today! I wanted to try one of my new OPIs and I chose Not Like the Movies from the Katy Perry collection. I’ve heard there are two versions of this: one that is duochrome and one that is not. I’m happy to report that I definitely got the duochrome one

 

First, I painted on two coats of BYS Hunter Green. This is a super dark green and it’s almost black.

The formula was great and I loved how glossy this was even without a top coat.

 

Then I did two coats of Not Like the Movies:

Gorgeous, huh? Let’s see some more of that gorgeous green and purple duochrome:

 

 

 

So, so pretty! I truly love this polish. I know I’m a bit late on the bandwagon with it but I’m so glad Kate got this in the US for me. I’m getting more and more addicted to duochromes and multichromes!

 

Do you love a good duochrome?

Em

BYS Fool’s Paradise with Double Dotties

I fiiiinnally filed my nails down to squovals. I’ve had them round for so long and I was getting really bored. I wasn’t sure about how good squoval looked on me until I saw the photos, but I actually love them!

 

Here’s BYS Fool’s Paradise:

Such a lovely, bright teal. I was most impressed with the formula because it just went on beautifully in two coats and it wore amazingly well.

 

I decided to liven it up a bit with some dotties:

I’m not sure if you can see but these are double dotties. I did the large dots with BYS French White and then slightly smaller dots inside the white dots with essie Borrowed & Blue. I should have picked more contrasting colours but it was more noticeable in real life! My osteopath said these nails reminded her of Easter! I must keep that in mind for next year!

 

This polish reminds me a lot of piCture pOlish Marine. What do you think?

Hmmm, on second thought, it doesn’t. It’s totally different. Marine is much brighter and bluer than Fool’s Paradise. How funny that you think they’re the same in your head until you see them side by side!

 

Happy weekend!!
Em

Zoya Sara

My first Zoya – wheeee! I have been lusting after Zoyas for soooo long! Thank you, thank you, thank you Kate for bringing them back for me!!!!

 

This is Zoya Sara:

Beautiful colour, two coats. Very nearly one coat! But where is that gorgeous gold shimmer which shows in the bottle!? It’s just not there on the nail Ah well, it is still absolutely stunning. I’m not really sure whether to call this a foil or a glitter or something else?

Surprisingly, about an hour after I applied it, I already had two chips I touched them up and they were fine for the next couple of days, though!

 

Here’s a photo of the simple stamping I did on my thumbs:

Konad fruit So cute! I stamped using the Konad Mint Green Special Polish and Pastel Pink Special Polish. I thought it was simple and cute.

Do you love your Zoyas?

Em

The Face Shop BK901

I had such high hopes for this polish. In the bottle it looked amazing – a black base with green and purple colour shifting glitter. It looked so, so pretty. But alas, it was not to be.

Here is The Face Shop BK901:

Don’t get me wrong, it’s nice, but it was only in certain lights that I could see a little green glitter. But I could never see the purple glitter, and certainly not both at once.

This was two coats and the formula was fine, I just wanted the pretty glitter *whines*.

 

I added some dotties to jazz it up a bit:

Meh. Just one of those manis I’m not very excited about. I dotted using Rokk96 Silver Screen.  It definitely livened the mani up but not enough.

 

I envisioned this polish to be a lot more like Ozotic Elytra but the black base was just too dark.

Ah well, better luck next time!

Em

Goodies from the US

My good friend Kate just got back from a trip to the US and bought me soooo many nail goodies. THANK YOU, Kate! I am forever in your debt.

Here’s what she found me:

Zoya

Amber and Sara.


Lisa, Angella and Rihana.

OPI

Shatters – Red, Black and Turquoise.


Spark de Triomphe, Lucern-tainly Look Marvelous and Brights Power.


Significant Other Color, Go on Green! and Not Like the Movies.


 Last Friday Night and Teenage Dream.

essie

Barbados Blue, Lifesaver, Footloose and Cameo.

Duri

Divas Only, Devil Wears Duri and Oscar Party.
Have you guys heard of this brand? I hadn’t ever heard of them but when I Googled them I found that they’ve release a lot of collections and colours. And they have lots of duochromes Divas Only looks amazing.

I’ve already tried a couple and I am in luuuuurve

Em

Chemistry 618 and 601

Oh how I love these Chemistry holos. They are rebottled Ozotics for much cheaper and the lovely Shatter Me Claire kindly got them for me a while back.

 

Here is Chemistry 618, a pale green scattered holo:

Three coats. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous. It simply glows. Very easy formula and lasted me a couple of days which included lugging boxes and other things around at a work event. I loved looking at these in the sun.

 

I added some fun dotties in Chemistry 601, a pretty pink:

These two look so good together, and the fact that they’re both scattered holos is fabulous because it’s just lovely, dancing rainbows everywhere!

 

These nails just made me happy every time I stepped outside. Even inside they were stunning colours. They have this hidden depth to them!

 

Do you like doing holo stamping/dotties on top of a holo colour?

Em

Custom Polish–Bloody Mary

I made my first polish using the untinted lacquer base (suspension base) and tints that Cathy recommended on her wonderful blog. I’ve adopted Cathy’s name for these – custom polishes. Because they are totally my own creation with no existing polishes mixed in.

So here it is, my first attempt:

 

This is Bloody Mary. It’s a deep magenta (leaning closer to red) jelly packed with red glitter and red hexes. This is two coats.

I LOVE IT!
It is soooo squishy! I did use two coats of Joss Wet Kisses top coat to give it a glass-like finish, but it came out so glossy.

Here’s another angle:

Look at those pretty hexes

 

And another:

Yummy  

 

I did need more hexes because I found it hard to get them out. I only did a 1/2 full bottle to test it out so there were a lot of hexes stuck to the sides.

 

Nevertheless, I still love it. By my lord, was it a biatch to remove!!!! No wonder it wore so well and didn’t chip at all, because it was murder to get off!!

 

What do you think?

Em