Ulta3 spam

Hiya

 

Onto the second part of my spam from The Heat Group, the Ulta3s! Aussie nail fanatics are very familiar with these $2 bargains. Ulta3 is awesome quality polish for a fraction of the price of most others. Ulta3 has been awesome at keeping up with the latest trends and have come out with some really cool polishes lately.

 

Here is a shade from their recent pastels collection, Corsican rose:

Gorgeous, right? This is a dusty mint green. Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that I LOVE cremes and I LOVE pastels. Honestly, you can’t go wrong with a good creme and pastels are perfect for the warmer weather. It also helps that it flatters my skin tone like nothing else and makes my nails look twice as long as they are

This was two easy coats of a great formula. Pastels can be notoriously difficult to apply but this was an exception. I do have a lot of shades like this but in my opinion, you can’t have enough of them

 

This is one of Ulta3’s oldest and most common shades, Lollypop Lilac:

It’s a glitzy foil which is more of a dusty purple than a lilac. Talk about bling bling! This was two coats but it would easily be a one coater.

 

I did some weird nail art with it:

I used Essence Sweet Or Nude? for the base colour, which I liked a hell of a lot more than I thought I would. It’s a shimmery pale pink which is a touch frosty but not too much. Two coats. Then I dotted some random Lollypop Lilac dots on it. I’d say it’s a bit of a fail but oh well, I gave it a go

 

Have you got either of these bargain pretties?
Em

piCture pOlish Blogfest 2013

Welcome to piCture pOlish Blogfest 2013!
Each year piCture pOlish select some lucky bloggers to blog about their products. Everyone posts on the same day, at the same time.
This year I was lucky enough to be selected for Blogfest and the theme was nail art.
Uh oh. Nail art. Hrmm.. My version of nail art is to do some nail stamping. I knew I’d have to put my thinking cap on for this one.
Luckily there are some nail art ideas out there for us not-so-talented nail artists. I’ve put together a tutorial on some simple nail art that anyone can do – a “Nail Art for Dummies”, if you will.

Away we go!
First, select the piCture pOlish shades that you plan to use:

Lucky me was given Antique, Mardi Gras and Atomic.

There’s a little bit of prep work involved so make sure you do these few steps the night before you plan to do your mani.
Grab a sheet of household baking paper and paint a few coats of polish onto it. Allow it to dry overnight.

I wasn’t sure how much I was going to end up using so I painted quite large strips. You don’t have to wait too long in between coats for the polish to dry, just make sure you wait at least six or so hours after the final coat.

Carefully use tweezers to peel off your polish strips.


Grab a craft punch from somewhere like Lincraft or Spotlight. They are pretty inexpensive (mine was $7). Use it to punch the shape out of the polish.

Be careful as the polish can get quite brittle! You may need to lightly pull the polish away from the punch.
You can also use scissors to cut out thin strips or pinking shears to cut zig zagged strips.

You’ll end up with a lot of pretty shapes and, in my case, some sparkly strips.


Now we’re ready to paint the nails!

I used Atomic as my base colour with an accent nail of Antique. Atomic is such a pretty but subtle colour.
Antique is almost a one coater but I did two coats to be on the safe side. Atomic seemed quite sheer at first but it built up nicely with three coats.

Grab your third polish. In my case, it’s Mardi Gras, a multi coloured glitter topper.

I chose to go simple with this one. I simply painted two coats of Mardi Gras over Antique. It’s a subtle but glamorous look!

Use either a toothpick, a metal manicure tool or a dotting tool to pick up one of your shapes.

Dip whatever tool you’re using into a slow-drying top coat first so you can stick it to the nail properly.

Carefully lay it on the nail in the position you want.

Try not to move it around too much because you may smudge the base colour!
You can use cuticle nippers to cut off any overhanging bits.
I then did the same with the polish strips to form a diagonal line pattern.

Add a coat of top coat and you will end up with this:

There you have it, a pretty yet simple to do nail art manicure.

Now sit back, relax, and throw your arms out in glee!


Em

BYS Orchid Ice

It’s been a while since I’ve bought a BYS polish. I picked up this beauty and a few others from the same collection a few months ago from Gloss Cosmetics.

 

This is Orchid Ice, two coats. What a gorgeous, glowy magenta foil. Simply stunning!

 

I bought another purple and a blue from this same collection and I can’t wait to try them.

 

Em

Face of Australia–Calypso Gold with stamping

A little while back I won a blog giveaway over at the lovely Kristy’s blog. I love Kristy’s blog and entered the giveaway mainly because I was already reading it so regularly and thought I may as well. I didn’t expect to win, though
I won the whole Face of Australia Barbados collection! This is the first polish I tried from the collection, Calypso Gold.

 

Stunning white gold foil with just a hint of yellow gold. Two easy coats and fantastic formula. I love, love, love this colour!

But I decided it was missing something … stamping, of course

 

I used one of the new Bundle Monster plates and was so pleased with the results:

I just loved this mani It was so classy and beautiful. I used the Konad Special Polish in Warm Black, which is a black with a gold shimmer through it.

 

What do you think?

Em

OPI-Swimsuit…Nailed It!

Oh how I love this polish. But I also loathe it so much I had to get rid of it.

 

This is OPI Swimsuit…Nailed It! From the Miss Universe collection:

Stunning? Right? This is two coats of the possibly one of the most stunning polishes I’ve seen.

What’s the problem then, you ask? It stains like a MOFO, Honestly, I had it on for less than six hours because I made the mistake of layering blue flakies on top and it just didn’t work. I took it off and promptly got a bad case of the Smurfies. Blue fingers, blue cuticles, blue nails. RARRRR! It took some vigorous buffing and a long time in the shower scrubbing the rest off my skin and picking rogue blue bits off my skin to get my hands clean.

 

Such a shame. I Googled this polish and it’s a common problem. Why, OPI, Why!?!

Did you get a bad case of the Smurf Hands when you used this polish?

Em

essence–Pink Heat & Golden Sands

I really like manis where you get to try two polishes in one! I’ve been meaning to try this combo for a while because I had a feeling it would look awesome, and luckily I was right!

This is essence Pink Heat and Golden Sands:

 

Pretty! I did two coats of the Pink Heat (which I could not get to photograph properly! It is a touch more pink in real life. Funny because it looks VERY pink in the bottle!). I then freehanded some “corners” with Golden Sands, a gorgeous golden bronze foil.

This was cute It felt really summery to me which helped me momentarily forget how freezing cold it’s been here in the mornings. I’m talkin’ 0.6 degrees Celcius here this morning! Yuck! Still, I do like it better than the blistering 45 degree days we get during Summer here! Ah, the desert, you get the best of both worlds: freezing cold and boiling hot!

 

Have you been doing dark, Wintery manis to go with the season or splashing out with some colour?
Em

Zoya - Ivanka

Happy Birthday to me And what better way to celebrate than to show you all my new favourite polish.

 

Behold, Zoya Ivanka!

Gahhhh. It’s just so beautiful! Ivanka is a gorgeous, glowy, sparkly green foil. It is stunning, it is amazing, it is my new favourite.

This was two coats. I wish I could say it wore well but wow, this chipped and peeled most of one finger off in less than two hours from when I painted it. I touched it up twice in the space of two days. Really disappointing, but so worth it.

Ivanka is from the Sparkle collection and I got her in a blog sale a little while back. I also got Mimi, a gorgeous purple from the same collection. There are still a couple I want to get, including Charla. I would have to say this is possibly the only polish I’ve ever owned that I’ve considered getting a back up of.

 

What do you think?
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

SpaRitual–Greenhouse

Ahhh it feels good to be back blogging again. I’ve missed it! Moving was hell and I’m now seriously sunburnt from it. Ouch

Anyway, here is a gorgeous polish I wore before the move:

This is SpaRitual Greenhouse from their Earth Day duo pack of polishes. This is such a gorgeous polish. It’s a unique shade of green and it’s a foil! Love it!
This is two coats. Brilliant application, hardly any clean up to do because of that.

 

I felt like this colour really flattered my skin tone. I was a bit worried it would give me lobster hands but it did the exact opposite. Love!

 

Were you lucky enough to score these polishes while they were available? I know quite a few people who wanted it but missed out
Em

Color Club–Lumin-icecent

It took me a while to get around to trying another of these Color Club Foiled polishes. I’ve been so wrapped up in creating my own polishes lately that I’ve barely worn any of the polishes I bought! I’ve only got, oh, 150 untrieds to get through

 

Anyway, this is Color Club Lumin-icecent from the Foiled Collection.

Just ONE coat!! Amazing, huh? This is a stunning ice blue. I love it! I do not love how much glitter it spreads over my fingers, though!!!

It wore fabulously with no chips over two days.

 

Which Foiled should I try next?!

 

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

Color Club–Antiquated

My first polish from the Color Club Foiled collection!

Ehhh… I like it but I don’t love it. I deliberately picked the colour I liked the look of least to try first. I’m really looking forward to trying the dark blue and pinks..
Anyway, this was two coats and it went on absolutely beautifully. Bugger all clean up because it was just a dream. It wore amazingly too, no chips or tip wear!

I think I need to try the others in the Foiled collection because I think this is the most generic of the lot!

Have you tried it yet? What do you think?

Em