Whimsical Ideas by Pam Peanut Butter and Jelly with Australis Milky Way

I was lucky enough to acquire one of the Whimsical Ideas by Pam polishes and had to try it literally the moment it arrived.

I whacked on my PVA base coat for easy removal and away I went!

 

Two coats of Peanut Butter and Jelly. This is such a gorgeous squishy red-purple jelly with gold hexes and micro glitter. Two coats and it was perfect. I didn’t have to go fishing for glitter!

I decided to do an accent nail of Australis Milky Way. Australis have been trying some different things lately and this polish is really cute! Two coats and it was good to go.

 

I just love the packaging of the Whimsies. The little bow on the bottle lid is adorable!! It’s little special touches like that which make the polish, in my opinion.

 

Do you have any Whimsies?
Em

Pretty Serious spam

Oh boy do I have a treat for you all today. Since I haven’t been blogging as regularly I have a huuuge backlog of posts to get through. So I thought what better way to do that then combine a few posts into one and do some spammy posts. First up is Pretty Serious Cosmetics.

Now, if you haven’t heard of Pretty Serious already I’ll just assume you’ve been hiding under a rock. Kaz is the brainchild of Pretty Serious and runs the blog Pretty Random, which is top notch. A year or so ago she unveiled her cosmetics company and since then the nail polish community has wept for their wallets. You see, Pretty Serious polishes are just too good to resist.

On with the show!

 

BSOD:

BSOD stands for Blue Screen of Death, which I’m sure you’ve all seen from time to time. It is never a good sign and basically means your computer is kaput.

BSOD in polish form is stunning. It is a deep blue jelly with gorgeous microglitter. Honestly, I could not fault this polish both in looks, wear time and application. This was two easy coats which stayed on for a good few days of running around Adelaide.

 

Galaxy Invader:

Kaz released Galaxy Invader as part of a trio of multichromes. This is a beautiful blue multichrome with a foil finish. This was three coats, just to make sure any pesky bald spots were covered. You can see the gorgeous aqua best in this photo.

But wait for it …

Oh hi, blue and purple!

 

There you are! The shift from purple to blue is most noticeable outside and it is absolutely stunning. What a truly gorgeous polish.

 

Emma Louise:

 

Emma Louise holds a special place in my heart because I am an Emma Louise! The Emma Louise this polish was designed by is one of Kaz’s good friends. The polish was made for her 30th birthday and only 300 of them will ever be made. There are only a few left so go, go, go! Buy, buy, buy!

Emma Louise is so unique, with a deep violet base, golden green glass flecks, purple microglitter and purple and green hexes. Whew, what a mouthful! And what a pretty, pretty polish. I applied two coats and it was just perfect.

Here’s a close up of all that glorious glitter:

 

Poltergeist Puddle

There is just so much going on in this polish that I couldn’t capture on camera. Poltergeist Puddle, from Kaz’s Halloween collection, is a lovely deep purple with a blue tinge to it. It also manages to flash pink in some lights and is truly a unique polish. I haven’t seen another like it and I’ll be hanging onto this baby.

Formula was no problems at all and this was two coats.

 

So there you have it, Pretty Serious galore! Get on it!

Em

Butter London–Pillarbox Red with Cult Nails-Coveted

Merry Christmas, everyone!

So, the Christmas mani I did yesterday didn’t quite work out but I have another one for you. This is the mani I did for the Christmas Pageant in my little town:

Two coats of Butter London Pillarbox Red and two coats of Cult Nails Coveted. So, so gorgeous. Pillarbox Red is honestly the most perfect red I’ve ever seen and Coveted is such a lovely, deep green jelly with glass ‘shards’ in it.

 

I decided to make it a little more Christmassy:

I sponged white on the tips and stamped some Konad designs on. Cute little snowmen on my fingers and “Merry Christmas” on my thumbs. Everyone at the pageant loved this!

 

Hope you’ve had a happy and safe Christmas!

Em xx

OPI–Don’t Touch My Tutu with Bundle Monster stamping

When I want a pretty, delicate looking mani which will ‘cleanse’ my nails of all the crazy colours I’ve been painting them lately, I reach for one of my trusty OPI NYC Ballet Collection polishes.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. I love these polishes. I love them to the point where I can see myself running out of some of the colours. This is almost unheard of in my world! Perhaps I should get backups?

 

Anywhoo, this is the white from the collection, Don’t Touch My Tutu:

So, so pretty. Three coats. This was probably the worst formula out of the ones I’ve used but it still wasn’t bad. It was a tiny bit troublesome in that I had a couple of bald spots when I went over the same area but that was a minor inconvenience which I sorted out pretty quickly. If this is the worst formula, I’m in love!

I freakin’ love this polish. It is so pure and pretty and is such a nice, clean slate to work with. Am I mental for being so in love with a collection of polishes?!

 

Anyway, as pretty as it was on its own, I really wanted to try some more of my Fab UR Nails metallic stamping polishes.

This time I tried the metallic blue:

Freakin’ AWESOME!!! This time I didn’t have any trouble with the design drying quicker than normal on the stamper. The Metallic Blue worked perfectly and I absolutely love the colour.

This is a Bundle Monster design which I’ve been wanting to use for a while. I got so many comments on these nails!

The only thing about these Fab Ur Nails stamping polishes … they stink like Kleancolors! So they’re definitely not 3-free. But for someone like me, that doesn’t matter!

 

Have you been rockin’ the NYC Ballet Collection polishes like me?

Em

Love Thy Polish–Unnamed

Good afternoon all,

I’m writing this from my sick bed. Yes, I’ve been hit with the dreaded Winter lurgy that’s been going around my small town. Unfortunately once one person you know has it, most of the town catches it. I know a lot of people who are resting up in bed right now!!

Anyway, on to the polish. This is another Love Thy Polish I created a few weeks back when I was formulating new colours. I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out!

 

I haven’t named it yet because nothing has jumped out at me … any ideas?

 

Two coats. Formula was great and it was very smooth for the amount of glitter I packed into it. It’s got a peacock-y greeny blue jelly base with red and light blue glitter. Very pretty and hard to capture

 

What do you think?
Em

Revlon–Scandalous

Please forgive me for the crap photo below. This photo really does NOT do Revlon Scandalous justice. Honestly, please believe me!!!


I forgot to take a photo until a couple of days after I did this mani, hence the chip and tip wear.
This is two coats of Revlon Scandalous, formerly Facets of Fuschia. Such a beautiful polish! My friend got this for me for my birthday and I loooove it

What do you think?
Em

OPI–You Callin’ Me a Lyre? with Konad

Today I have another polish from my beloved OPI NYC Ballet Collection

This is You Callin’ Me a Lyre?

This is the darker pink of the collection. There are two pinks! This is so, so pretty and dainty, I love it!

Three coats, which seems to be the norm with this collection. But the formula was beautiful and once again, you can build up the opacity to your liking and it doesn’t streak or get bald spots.

 

I tried out my new Fab Ur Nails Metallic Pink stamping polish with one of my Konad Plates:

So pretty and vintage This Fab Ur Nails stamping polish is pretty dang good! It’s not quite as easy to use as the Konad Special Polish but you just have to adjust your technique a little. I scraped a little softer and stamped a little quicker because I found the polish dried quicker than the Konad polish. Gorgeous colour, though! I got the whole set of polishes which includes Gold, Metallic Turquoise, Silver and a couple of others!

 

Have you tried any of the Fab Ur Nails stuff?
Em

OPI–My Pointe Exactly with Pirouette My Whistle

I was  so looking forward to the OPI NYC Ballet Collection. As soon as I saw Scrangie’s swatches I knew I had to have ALL of them! I’ve been searching for the perfect french polishes for so long and I had a feeling these were it! I was actually a little scared that the collection wouldn’t live up to my expectations.

Well, I needn’t have worried. This collection is AMAZING!!!!

 

This is My Pointe Exactly:

A gorgeous light grey milk jelly. Can you say perfect?! I am so in love.

This was three coats. The awesome thing about the polishes in this collection is that you can build them up to the opacity you want. One coat adds a pretty shine and polished look to your nails, two coats adds more colour and three gives you the beautiful squishy jelly look above.

 

Of course, I had to try out Pirouette My Whistle, the lone glitter of the bunch:

Ahhhhhhhh! I love you, Pirouette My Whistle! So beautiful! Silver microglitter with tiny little silver hexes. I actually thought they were circles at first but upon closer inspection they are very subtle hexes.

 

Stay tuned for more of this collection because I can’t seem to stop wearing them

Em

Sportsgirl–Show Off

What better way to welcome the cooler weather then to wear a gorgeous, squishy dark teal jelly. I’ve really been into the darker colours lately and I completely blame the weather! I love cold weather though, so I’m loving it. The nights and early mornings here are sooo cold, so at the moment I’m rugged up with a blanket on the couch. Bliss!

 

This is Sportsgirl Show Off:

Such a beautiful colour. This is two coats and it had an awesome formula. As most dark teals, it stained a little around my cuticles but nothing too drastic. I do love teals, they’re my favourite!

 

This is my first Sportsgirl polish and I’m pretty impressed so far. My sister gave it to me for Christmas and I’ve only just gotten around to wearing it (that says something about the state of my untrieds drawers …)

 

Are you enjoying the cooler weather?

Em

Love Thy Polishes

Time to toot my own horn a bit. Toot toot!

 

I want to show you some of my custom polishes in my new Love Thy Polish brand.

I went to the Market Day here last Saturday to sell polishes and painted my nails skittle-style using my polishes to show people. A lot of people really appreciated being able to see the polishes on real nails! I did have them on a nail wheel but we all know it’s just not the same!

Anyway, without further ado…

Royalty, Struttin’ Like a Peacock, Toxic Slime, Smurfin’ it Up.

 

Fairy Lights, Girly Girl, Kiss Kiss, Crazy for Coral.

 

Thoughts, suggestions, comments please?

Em

Custom Polish–Struttin’ Like a Peacock

Here is one of the custom polishes from my new nail polish range, Love Thy Polish.

 

This is Struttin’ Like a Peacock:

Three coats, I think this was. It’s a peacock green coloured jelly with green flitter and green hexes. Yummy

 

What do you think?

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

BYS Dark Teal with Lulu Blue

Awww yeah, much better! BYS Dark Teal with two coats (three on some nails depending on glitter distribution!) of BYS Lulu Blue. Purdy

Em

BYS Dark Teal

This is the polish I was most excited about trying from my latest BYS haul. A dark teal jelly.

Here we go …

Meh.

I like it, but I don’t love it. This is three coats and it’s not as dark as the bottle colour. Maybe I needed another coat or two because I did have a couple of little bald spots. I love jellies, but this one just wasn’t anything that special. Application was easy and not streaky at all. It was fairly thin, as most jellies are, but not too runny and hard to manage. I think it would look awesome with some glitter over the top .. might give that a crack!

 

Em

BYS haul

Can I get a woopwoop? My BYS haul just arrived from Fashion Addict and I could not be happier!!! I placed my order last week and quickly got an email back from the Director of Fashion Addict, Dave, saying that three of the colours I’d ordered were deleted lines. I selected four different colours and asked him to send me an updated total, but he was awesome enough to say not to worry about it, that I didn’t have to pay any more My polishes were shipped on Friday and they’re already here!!!!! It’s only Tuesday, plus yesterday was a public holiday. Now that is fast postage, especially out here in the sticks. Even better, postage was free because I spent over $40!!! I’ve just heard that they are now shipping internationally, which is fabulous.

BYS are my favourite Aussie nail polish brand. Unfortunately I’m pretty limited where I live for nail polish choices, especially BYS. A gift store here sells a few BYS colours but a lot of them are old and starting to get thick and gluggy. Last time I bought a few polishes from there, they were way too thick. Oh well, I’ll thin them out with Seche Restore when I get around to buying it!

Anyway, I digress. Onto the goods. But first, look how carefully and considerately these babies were posted to me?!

 

 

Wrapped in bubble wrap, then some kind of soft material, THEN held together with plastic and padded with paper in a sturdy box. I was so relieved! I’ve heard and seen way too many horror stories about broken nail polishes in the post, spilling all over everything.

Eleven lovely polishes all standing in a row …

 

Indian Nights, Plum Crazy (glitter) and Raspberry Sorbet. Raspberry Sorbet is a gorgeous dark red with a shimmer through it. Beautiful!

 

Dark Teal, Fern (glitter), Hocus Pocus (glitter) and Ocean Breeze. Dark Teal looks like a jelly – squeeee!!!! And Hocus Pocus looks completely and utterly amazing. I wish I could have capture all the loveliness but to be honest, I suck at taking photos and this camera is just not that great. I may have to pinch my partner’s to see if it’s any better.

 

White Pearl, French White, Pink Manicure, Baby Pink. Some fairly tame colours which I desperately needed (I’m currently job hunting and need some “safe” interview colours).

 

The only dilemma now is which polish to try first!? Any ideas? I need to do my toes too, which I’m thinking I might do Plum Crazy … is it okay to post toe pics on here!? I know some people are funny about feet, but I don’t mind them. I’m a massage therapist so I’m often asked to massage feet, and I don’t have a problem with it. As long as they’re clean and taken care of, I see nothing wrong with feet.

You’ll hear from me soon!
Em

First frankens

Welcome to my first frankenpolish post! First, if you’re not sure what the hell a frankenpolish, check out Dr Frankenpolish’s post on Frankenpolish 101. It will tell you everything you need to know about frankening.

On Saturday I made my very first franken, a baby pink glitter.

I mixed 2/3 of a bottle of a Colour Co pearly white shimmer with 1/4 of a bottle of a The Face Shop’s bright pink and added fine white glitter. Next time I will have photos of the nail polishes I used which went into the mix instead of just the end result. But this time I got a little overeager and forgot!!

Here’s my end result:

Sorry for the crap photo. I’m learning how to take good photos of nails!! I promise I will get better!

This franken turned out pretty good. I liked the colour, but I definitely overdid it on the glitter so it was too lumpy. God it was thick, but it actually made it really easy to apply.  I put on two coats of Orly Sec n’ Dry in the hope that it would smooth it out a bit. It did, but not enough! I’ll add some clear polish to the mix and that should thin it out a bit. I didn’t name this one because, well, it’s crap, so let’s just call it No.1.

 

My second franken went very well! I’ve completely fallen in love with jelly polishes but find them really hard to find in South Australia, let alone the desert where I currently live in a mining town 600km from the capital city of Adelaide.  So I decided to do the next best thing and create my own.

I call this one Squashed Grape.

Pardon the messy cuticles.

I love it, love it, love it!!! It’s a gorgeous purple, almost magenta (the colours are slightly pinker in this photo because of the light) which looks so squishy and cute. My first jelly!!! It was a fairly thin consistency so I had to make sure not to overload the brush when I was applying. It’s worn pretty well, only one chip on my thumb and one bald spot on the other thumb (maybe I just have weird thumbs!)

For this one I used half a bottle of Mode XOXO purple creme polish and half a bottle of some Maybelline clear top coat I had lying around. It was so, SO easy and I see many more jellies in my future.

 

Hopefully tomorrow I’ll get my order of BYS polishes which I ordered off Fashion Addict. I’ve ordered 12 of them so stay tuned for some reviews on this great Aussie brand.

Em