essie–Smooth Sailing

I finally got my essie order from Ozsale – yay! I was really lucky because none of my bottles were broken or leaking. I’ve heard some really bad stories lately about people’s packages from Ozsale being trashed. They actually packed mine pretty well with bubble wrap and a bubble lined post bag. I got lucky!!!

 

This is Smooth Sailing, a polish I have been lemming since it came out:

Ahhhhh, gorgeous. Two coats of perfection. Look at this stunning shimmer! It’s such a beautiful blue with a hint of purple. This was actually pretty hard to photograph.

 

How did you go with your Ozsale order?

Em

Glossy Blossom–Melon Green with stamping

This is the first time I’ve tried a Glossy Blossom polish. I bought this in Adelaide about four months ago from Morning Glory (or was it Orange Story?), an Asian stationary/knick knack store.

 

This is Melon Green:

It’s … very yellow! The formula was a pain in the butt but the end product looked good and it wore really well. I had this on for five days and it was pretty trashed, but it didn’t start to look that way til day four.

This is three coats. I also have their pale yellow but I’m thinking it won’t look much different to this. This is only very slightly tinged green.

To jazz it up a bit, I decided to do some nail stamping with some really cheap plates I got off eBay:

I started with just the row of green flowers through the middle and then decided to fill the rest of the space with other colours. I was pretty happy with the end result! I thought it looked pretty seventies – awesome for a seventies themed party!

 

What do you think?
Em

China Glaze–Something Sweet with accent nail

I saw this design somewhere recently but for the life of me, I can’t think where. Wherever it was, I loved it and decided to try it.

 

Here is China Glaze Something Sweet:

Two coats. Good formula. I used NYC Color Night to freehand a stripe down the middle of each ring finger nail and used the Konad top coat to stick on some square shaped rhinestones which I rotated to look like diamonds.

I was pretty happy with it until I went to bed and woke up the next day and I’d managed to imbed the rhinestones deep into the polish so they looked awful Boo!

Apart from that, I was pretty pleased with the design and I’ll give it another go when I won’t be going to bed soon after I do my mani.

 

Have you done any different nail art lately?
Em

OPI DS Classic

These OPI DS’ are gooorgeous. There’s just something about them which really does scream quality. I love normal OPI polishes too but these just seem worth the extra money.

 

Here is OPI DS Classic:

Pretty holo goodness! This is such a lovely, classy colour. I got so many “WOW, look at your nail polish!” comments when I wore it outside.

 

This is two coats, fantastic formula and awesome durability. You don’t see many scattered holos in this colour … in fact, I don’t think I’ve seen any others.

 

I’ve still got quite a few DS’ to get through. The hardest part is which to chose next!?

Em

China Glaze–Custom Kicks with stamping

Hey everyone!

Sorry I’ve been AWOL again … I’ve been pretty busy with work, massaging and dealing with this little munchkin:

This is Max, my new kitten. She is a beautiful Ragdoll kitty with a little Burmese in her too. She’s very cuddly and sweet but also a lot of work. I’m already totally in love with her!

 

Anywhoo, onto the nails! I apologise in advance for this photo because I accidentally wiped the good photos off my camera and I didn’t realise until I was just about to take my polish off … so you get a mani with tip wear and chips!! This was three days old so I really can’t complain!

China Glaze Custom Kicks. Man, is this colour hard to photograph, but it’s a gorgeous bright aqua with a shimmer through it. This is two coats. This polish stains cuticles like a mofo, by the way!

 

I stamped over the top of it using Konad Special Polish in pastel purple and used a Red Angel plate. I really liked the look

 

Custom Kicks is definitely a “me” colour. Colours like this just scream out at me.

 

What’s your go-to colour?

Em

China Glaze–Sky High-Top

Oh hell yes. This colour is definitely a new favourite.

 

I give you, China Glaze Sky High-Top:

Two coats of deliciousness. I am so glad I bought this!! It is beautiful! It has a very subtle micro shimmer through it which doesn’t like to show up in photos, but it’s there!

 

I really wanted to stamp over it but I didn’t want to cover up the gorgeous colour, so I decided to use this stamp:

Pretty, right? This is one of my favourite Konad images. It reminds me of patterned china plates!

 

This is definitely a new favourite! What do you think?
Em

China Glaze–Starboard with Konad

This is the second mani I did while I had yucky ruond nails. I think there’s only one more after this, phew!

 

As you may have been able to tell, I’ve been on a real blue and green kick lately. I didn’t realise until I started catching up on my blog posts but I seriously need some colour variety I’m promising myself that my next mani will not be blue or green!

 

This is China Glaze Starboard, a pretty medium green creme:

Two coats, great formula. But I needed to do something to jazz it up a bit:

 

Wow, these look like total Aussie nails! I didn’t even realise until I looked at the photos how Aussie these were.

I quite like this Konad image. I think it would look awesome stamped with silver. It reminds me of barbed wire!

 

Have you done any accidental themed manis lately?
Em

Color Club–Cold Metal

I’m slowly getting through these Color Club Foiled polishes. To be honest, I haven’t been in the mood for foils lately so they’ve just been sitting in my untrieds drawer.

But I decided to give this one a go because, after all, I do love blue polishes!

 

This is Cold Metal:

Two coats, although I only needed one. Awesome formula, but wow, the wear on this was shocking. A few hours after I did this mani I had huge chips on most of my nails. I really don’t know what went wrong but I wasn’t happy To make matters worse, I put it on the night before we moved house so I didn’t get time to take it off for a couple of days. I hate wearing chipped polish and I felt like everyone was looking at it thinking “ewww!”

 

I’ve heard that others had better luck with this polish than I did. Do you have it? How did you go?

Em

China Glaze–Secret Peri-wink-le

My poor, poor nails. While moving house a week and a half ago I had a lot of breakages. So I admitted defeat and filed my nails into round shape instead of my usual squovals. Urgh. I really hate this shape on me. This is the shape I used to have when I was first blogging and I look back and cringe!!!

I only did a couple of manis while my nails were this shape before I cracked the shits and filed them squoval again but super, super short. You always lose more length with squovals, I find!

This is one of the manis I did with round nails:

China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le. This is more blue in real life, it’s a real blurple. Two coats. Excuse the messy application … I was far too lazy to do my nails properly so this was done while sitting in the recliner the night after we moved into our new house.

 

Look at my poor little finger!!! There was just nothing left of it! Thankfully it’s grown pretty fast in the past week and a half.

 

Have your nails been misbehaving lately?

Em

Essence–Chasing Waves & Splash Refresh striping

The lovely Sarah from Shatter Me Claire did some more polish shopping for me recently. She was kind enough to pick up the essence Sun Club collection for me.

 

I decided to do some freehand nail art and try out two of the colours at once:

This is Chasing Waves (darker green) and Splash Refresh (lighter green). I painted two coats of Splash Refresh as my base and then freehanded the stripes on top with Chasing Waves.

These colours looked awesome together and the formulas were great. I was relatively pleased with how the stripes turned out. I don’t do any freehand so it was a good start!

 

I am so glad you  can get essence easily in Australia now, and it’s well priced!! Winner

Em

China Glaze–Ahoy!

Ahoy there, maties!

Haha oh so lame, I’m posting Ahoy! by China Glaze. Get it? Haha. Wow, I’m tired.

 

I’ve been such a bad blogger lately… I’ve got heaps of photos edited and ready to go on my computer but have had no time to actually sit and write blog posts! Well, time to get back into the swing of things!!

 

My nails are a wreck lately because of moving house twice in a month and from expanding my massage business. Why from expanding my massage business, you ask? Well, although I use oil (mostly coconut oil which is amazing for your skin, nails, hair, just about anything!), I wash my hands twice for each client. Once before, once after. So if I’m doing four clients in a row, that means washing my hands eight times in about a five hour period. I use the anti-bacterial hand soap so it’s very drying on my cuticles. Urgh. Time to slather my hands in coconut oil and wear cotton gloves to bed, I think.

 

Anyway, enough of my incoherent babbling. Today I have for you a polish I lusted after for a long time and finally bought when it was cheap on Ozsale. This is China Glaze Ahoy!:

 

Eh. Don’t get me wrong, this is a gorgeous polish but from the photos I’d seen of it, I expected more. It’s a beautiful colour but it was just lacking something for me.

Anyway, this was two coats. Great formula, excellent wear. No issues there!

 

I jazzed it up a little with some stamping:

Again, meh. Maybe I was just hard to impress that day  

 

What do you think?

Em

RIP Toenails ...

Hey everyone!

I spent the weekend moving house.. My partner B and I bought a house here in the desert and have been staying with friends for a month before being able to move into our very own place.

I LOVE our new house so, so much. More room for polishes ;)

While moving, I had a little accident ...
Accident #1: I was moving my bedside table into place and didn't lift it high enough so it caught on my big toenail of my right foot and ripped it halfway up the nail bed. OW. Freaking OW. I now have a lovely "v" shape missing from my toenail. RIP right big toenail.
Accident #2 (about 10 minutes after Accident #1): I was sitting on the floor in the hallway putting towels and sheets away in the linen cupboard. I needed to get something so got up and on my way past managed to collect the bottom of the door with my LEFT big toenail and ripped that even worse than the right.
Even more ow and even more blood. RIP left big toenail. :(
Do you know my first thoughts when these accidents happened?
"Oh nooo, I won't be able to wear polish on my big toes for months!"
and:
"Thank god that wasn't my fingernails".
Bahahhahahhaha.

I will be back soon when I get the photos on my camera onto my computer.

Have you had any nail-related incidents lately?
Em