Sea Siren Cosmetics–Tranquility and Pamper Me Pink

Woohoo, I have some more Sea Siren polishes to show you I’ve had so much fun trying these out this weekend. This time I have Tranquility, a pastel purple creme, and Pamper Me Pink, a pastel pink creme.

 

These babies are to die for:

Seriously. UNF! Perfect smooth, glossy coverage in two coats. These were nearly one coaters!! I am so, so impressed. The formula was impeccable and clean up was minimal because it was just so easy to apply!

This is my favourite way to try out a couple of polishes: the thumb, pointer and middle fingers one colour and ring and pinkie fingers another! Pink and purple go well together and these two were no exception. Sorry if it seems like I’m gushing over these polishes but I just love them. Pastels can be streaky, slow drying and a general pain in the ass, but these pastels are the complete opposite.

 

I jazzed them up a little with some nail stamping:

I used my Pueen plates and a silver stamping polish. I just love this netted roses look

You can get Sea Siren Cosmetics on their website. Don’t forget to like them on Facebook too!

 

What do you think?
Em

Epic Nail foils

This post has been a long time coming and for that, I apologise. After working for myself for the past year and a half I leapt back into part time work as well as working for myself and then complicated things further by starting ANOTHER job! And then it was Christmas and New Year, I got more hours at one of my jobs because someone quit and yadiyadiyada. The result is my life being eat, work, sleep and repeat.

 

Anywho, enough of my whingeing. I truly am happy with how things are at the moment

 

I got some nail foils to review from Epic Nails. Now, I’ve never used nail foils before. Silly me assumed that they were like full nail stickers in that you applied the glue, pressed the foil on and then trimmed it and top coated it. WRONG!

It’s a little more complicated than that. I painted my nails with the glue provided by Epic Nail and waited for it to dry and become tacky. I tried a few different lengths of time and found that 3-4 minutes was plenty. I had pre-cut strips of the foil to lay on my nail and applied them and then used a cuticle stick to rub the foil onto my nail. The foil actually separates from a plastic layer on the back of it and sticks to your nail!

I’m not going to lie, it wasn’t a piece of cake. I chose to layer mine over an existing polish (Love Thy Polish A Beautiful Mistake) so it was a little more forgiving if I missed spots.

So you place the piece of foil (design side down) on your nail and rub, rub, rub. Make sure you get the corners and sides!

I ended up with this:

Pretty cute, right? I did miss some spots but using a base colour meant they didn’t stick out like a sore thumb.

These were SO sparkly and eye catching. I couldn’t stop looking at them! The design is so cute!

 

I’ve heard that the tacky layer that you get after applying gel polish and before you wipe it off with alcohol is perfect to stick foils to. Unfortunately I couldn’t test this out because I don’t have a decent gel polish kit I bought one last year and it was pretty cheap and crappy and ended up damaging my natural nails because it was so difficult to remove!! Anywho, after speaking to a few friends they assure me that using gel polish is the way to go when applying foils, so give it a go!

 

If you want to buy some Epic Nail foils that are truly epic, you can get them from Epic Nail. They also have a Facebook page. They have kits available if you’re just starting or you can buy the foils separately. They have heaps of cool designs and also stock loads of other products.

I will have a discount code for Nails in the Desert readers soon so stay tuned and you can get a pretty epic discount on Epic Nail stuff

Hope you’ve enjoyed this post
Em

China Glaze Hanging in the Balance and Whirled Away

I really, really loved this mani.

For my Secret Santa present from the lovely Peita from Peita’s Polish I received three of the polishes from the China Glaze Cirque du Soleil collection.

 

This is Hanging in the Balance, a beautiful bright blue creme. Stunning, isn’t it? It stains like a biatch, so beware! I layered Whirled Away, the black and white glitter, on top.

I really love the colour combination but the glitters were just too big for me. I’m not a big fan. If the glitters were smaller then it would be a winner!

I also stamped a koi fish design from plate A48. Beautiful fishy!

 

What do you think?
Em

Manis for Race Day

Every year in the little mining town I live in we have an Outback Cup. Half the town gets doled up to the nines and the other half wear jeans and a t-shirt and we all head out to the race course to watch some horsies run and win races. It’s basically an excuse to get drunk and dress up. I don’t really drink and I hate getting dressed up so I wasn’t even going to go to the races. A friend and client of mine convinced me to do some volunteer working serving all the drunk people their alcohol. It was good fun for most of the day until about half an hour before the bar shut when people started getting rowdy and messy and just plain gross. It really made me glad I don’t drink!

 

Anyway, I’ll cut to the chase and get to the point of this post! I ended up doing three lots of nails for the races for friends of mine. I had a really busy evening the day before the races and the morning of the races prettying up three friends nails.

 

First up was Miss Michelle’s nails. Michelle wanted something natural and understated so we started off using essie’s Au Natural and we were just doing stamping over it. Then she spotted essie Footloose and fell in love so we ended up with this:

Pretty, right? A coat of essie Foot Loose (my favourite one-coater pink) with Konad in white. It turned out so, so pretty! She loved it! She ended up borrowing my bottle of Foot Loose and when she returned it she asked me to find her a bottle to buy.

 

Next up was Miss Laura.

Laura picked a base colour of Towel Boy Toy by China Glaze, a gorgeous blue neon. Silly me didn’t actually realise it was a neon so I needed three coats. If I’d started with a base of white it probably would have turned out a bit brighter. But that’s okay, it was still super bright!

She wasn’t sure if she wanted any stamping and left that entirely up to me. I decided to do some dotting. Simple, effective and eye catching!

Here’s the end result:

Pretty right? So this was three coats of China Glaze Towel Boy Toy and dots with Ulta3 Frangipani and Gelato.

She loved it!

 

Finally, we have Miss Narelle.

Narelle has been interested in trying gel polish for a while, so I tried out my BlueSky shellac polish on her. I used a pretty purple shimmer which as far as I can see, doesn’t have a name.

This is what we ended up with:

This was a coat of the BlueSky base coat, cured for two minutes, then a coat of the purple, cured for two minutes, another coat of the purple, cured for two minutes, then the BlueSky top coat, cured for two minutes. Then I wiped off the tacky layer with a cleaner and stamped a pretty Konad flower design in silver on the ring fingers and sealed that with a coat of Seche Vite.

Narelle wore these nails for about two weeks with no issues! She even said that she’d broken a nail underneath the polish but the polish had held it all together and protected it for her! Winner!

I think this is a great idea for people who don’t want to change their polish all the time but love having pretty nails. What I loved about it was that you could change the stamping designs easily

For polish addicts like myself, this probably isn’t the answer!

 

Em

Unknown Light Blue with Konad

I recently bought a bunch of polishes off a friend here in town and there are quite a few I don’t actually know the brand of.

 

This polish is one of the pretties I scored:

This polish was very, very sheer. This took three coats to build up to a gorgeous squishy blue jelly. This is the colour I thought was missing from the OPI NYC Ballet Collection. It fits right in!

 

I thought it deserved some pretty, delicate stamping:

I used a Konad plate with their special stamping polish. So, so pretty

Unfortunately the wear time on this wasn’t great but I didn’t mind too much because it was gorgeous while it lasted!

 

What do you think?
Em

China Glaze-Flyin’ High with Konad

It’s one of my favourite colours again I swear, I will NEVER get sick of blue/teal polishes. Never ever ever. I have so many that are similar but slightly different and I love them ALL!!!! China Glaze does some AMAZING blues and here is one of them:

Two coats of Flyin’ High. Gorgeous, gorgeous colour and amazing formula. I honestly could not fault this polish. It was to die for Just looking at the photos makes me want to wear it again and again!

 

I wanted a simple image to stamp over this colour so I didn’t cover it up too much. I decided on a pretty Konad image:

So cute Reminds me of a patchwork quilt!

Do you like?
Em

Bloom-Zooey

Ah, the last of my Bloom haul from a couple of months ago.

This is Bloom Zooey:

A very densely packed silver glitter. This was two coats, so I was pleased I didn’t have to do a million coats to get coverage. It was relatively smooth after I threw a coat of Seche Vite on top.

Not a bad little number! It’s not very ‘me’ but I can appreciate it all the same. I think this would be AWESOME with a really simple dress and heels for a night out on the town. A bit of bling on the nails!

What do you think?

Em

OPI–Care to Danse?

I’m almost through all my OPI NYC Ballet Collection polishes. Ah, what a good collection. This is the pale purple of the collection, even though both in photos and on the nail it looks pink!?

 

This is Care to Danse? Three coats. The formula wasn’t as great as the others I’ve tried but still not too bad and evened out with three coats. I did some Konad stamping over the top in silver which was so pretty and girly, I loved it

 

You can’t go wrong with these polishes, do you agree?
Em

OPI–Congeniality Is My Middle Name & Crown Me Already!

Why did I wait so long to get the OPI Miss Universe collection!? What a stunning collection of polishes! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, OPI are awesome at their smaller, 4-6 polish, collections. I think their 12 polish collections are a bit overkill and a bit greedy. I generally only ever want a few polishes out of the larger collections but I tend to want most of the smaller collections.

 

Anyway, enough babble and onto the pretty polishes!

Congeniality Is My Middle Name (two coats) and Crown Me Already! (two coats). This photo doesn’t do Congeniality Is My Middle Name justice. It’s a pretty, deep magenta with a lovely shimmer. Formula was not too bad but it stained the hell out of my cuticles which made for a long clean up time.

Crown Me Already! is beautiful! It’s a super chunky silver glitter with fine and large glitter and large hexes. Again, the photo doesn’t do it justice. I don’t usually like chunky glitters but this one is a real exception.

 

Do you have this collection?
Em

Custom Polish–Silver Surfer

I’ve been taking a break from my custom polish line, Love Thy Polish. There has been so much drama in the polish world about ‘indie’ polish makers and it’s made me take a step back and realise the polishes I like to make (and most of the time don’t make) are generally not what the blogging community want. On the other hand, they’re not what the general public want either. They’re somewhere in the middle. They’re what I want. And I’m fine with that! I get more enjoyment out of making half a bottle of polish for myself, trying it then and there, taking photos of it and blogging it. So that’s what I’m doing at the moment.  Who knows, maybe I’ll go back to selling them and I’ll still make them by special request, but we’ll see!

 

Anywhoo, enough babble and onto the holo goodness!

This is my silver holo, Silver Surfer. Nothing fancy, just a shitetonne of Spectraflair dumped in suspension base. I realised I didn’t have a silver linear holo and was craving holo goodness! I love making holos because they always turn out beautiful

 

What do you think?
Em

Ulta3–Strawberry Sundae

I really felt like wearing a creme polish so I picked Ulta3’s Strawberry Sundae.

I wish I didn’t!

 

Meh. It’s pink. It’s not special. The formula was poo. I have nothing good to say!

 

Here’s another not-good thing I have to say: Manicare Glam Nails Nail Art Pens are a total waste of money. I bought three while I was in Adelaide and I really wish I hadn’t. I couldn’t get the black one to work at all. The silver one took literally an hour of me shaking it and pressing the tip in and shaking it some more before the polish flowed.

So when I finally got the silver pen working, I did this:

Cool stripes, right? I look a bit like a present!

The bad part? See that thick, uneven stripe in the middle of my pinkie? That’s where the pen ran out.

Oh yes, I barely got to finish ONE HAND and my $10 nail art pen RAN OUT OF POLISH.

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!!! What a waste of my hard earned cash. Honestly, what is the point of these pens?! I had such high hopes for them and they DO do a good job once they start working, but this is one expensive mani!!!

 

Have you tried the Manicare nail art pens yet?

Em

Miki–Ocean Spray

This is a bit of a meh mani. In my head it turned out a lot better than this. I think the problem is that I don’t actually like the base colour that much. Don’t get me wrong, it’s pretty, but it’s nothing special.

 

This is an unnamed Miki polish which I have dubbed “Ocean Spray”:

Two coats. See what I mean? Meh! Nothing special. I tried to perk it up a bit with some silver dotties using Sally Hansen’s Celeb City, but it didn’t work!

 

Had any fail manis lately?

Em

The Face Shop BL602

When I was in Adelaide a couple of weekends ago I did a mani for Mum. She’s been wanting one for so long but it’s so hard to find time to sit down and do nails when I’m in Adelaide. It’s always so rush, rush, rush. But I was going to a wedding around the corner from my parent’s house so I went to their place a little early and did her nails.

She was very pleased with the end result!

 

(Sorry for the crappy photo … it wasn’t very good lighting!)

The base is The Face Shop’s BL602, a gorgeous purple with a blue flash, or is it blue with a purple flash? It’s more of a duochrome, really. It’s totally and utterly gorgeous and I can’t wait to try it on my own nails.

Mum loves Konad too so I let her pick a design. She chose the classic zebra print from M57 stamped on with Konad Princess Special Polish in silver. We both loved how it turned out

She was so worried the colour and stamping would be too “young” for her, but I told her that that’s the great thing about Konad: you’re never too old! These colours really suited her!

 

Have you done manis for anyone else lately?

Em

Chemistry 609

Who doesn’t love a good holo? *Sigh* They are just so pretty.

 

I tried my first holo from my Chemistry haul that Shatter Me Claire got me.

 

This is 609, a beautiful silver scattered holo:

Three coats and a coat of SV. It applied pretty well, with a little bit of drag. It was bling-tastic, I tell you!! Absolutely loved it.

 

For some different (hehehe) I decided try try out my new Bundle Monster plates and Konad over the top:

 

BM-210 stamped with Konad Princess Special Polish in Blue Pearl. This is such an awesome electric blue colour. Love!

I think this is preeetty So psychadelic. I think I’d wear something like this if I was going to a 70s party or something!

 

So, I’ve decided to start watermarking my photos.. What does everyone think? I want to get the watermark through the whole area so it can’t be easily cropped out, but I don’t want it to cover the pic too much. Thoughts?

I’m in Adelaide again this weekend. Let’s see what nail goodies I come back with this time?

 

Em

China Glaze First Mate with Konad

I’m a little bit in love with this polish.
It is the perfect blue. Not too dark, not too bright.
China Glaze’s First Mate, from the Anchors Away collection:


Two coats of gorgeousness.
This colour is such a stunner. Formula was good too, although it was pretty runny so you have to be careful!

I also tried out a new (to me) Konad design:

Funky, huh?  I love it!

Do you have any of the China Glaze Anchors Away collection?

Em

N.Y.C. Color–Red Slippers with Konad

This lovely little number is one of the N.Y.C. Color’s that I bin dived for at our local Woolworths. They never have nail polish bins so I practically wet myself when I saw them.

No, not really. But I was so excited.

My friend from work, Kate, and an old uni friend, Heidi, came over last week one evening to catch up, dip yummy strawberries into chocolate fondue, and have their nails done.

Unfortunately I took a really crappy photo of Heidi’s nails, and I hadn’t snapped a million shots of them like I do with my own. But this is Kate’s mani that she picked for her job interview the next day:

 

Red Slippers, two coats.

This is N.Y.C. Color’s version of Ruby Pumps, I think. It looks very similar in the bottle, just with less red glitter and more gold glitter, but the prettiness isn’t strong enough to show through the Konad-ing. I love this Konad design! You may remember it from a recent post, and I was happy to do it again because it’s so funky.

Kate loved her nails, and I hope they gave her a little confidence boost for her scary interview!

Do you like doing your friend’s nails or just your own? I love doing other people’s nails but I’m not nearly as good at it as I am with my own!
Em

Kleancolor Metallic Aqua with stamping

Oh my lord, this is the most beautiful metallic ever.

I give you, Kleancolor Metallic Aqua (two coats):

 

Pretty, huh?? Although it is much more of a blue than aqua. This was okay to apply. I had a bit of drag when going over already painted bits so that was a bit annoying. I was also doing it while on the phone so I made a mess of my right hand and of course, this polish stained like a biatch. So that was fun!!! Blue skin, anyone? My own fault for not paying attention though

I also stamped some silver clouds on my nails. This is a really bad photo (unfortunately I had no daylight so had to work with a very crappy lamp) so you can’t see it properly. I used the silver Konad Princess Special Polish and a new stamping plate I got from APM Express. It has 221 designs on it, including a lot of full nail designs which I love. They are exact duplicates of Konad designs! Love

I wanted to take a photo to show you the plate but of course, shiny surfaces don’t play nice with my camera!!!

Stupid shinies

Em

BYS Plum Crazy with Konad stamping

This was my partner’s request, and I think he chose the colours well!

 

This is two coats of BYS Plum Crazy. It’s a very, very dark purple, almost black. Absolutely stunning.

 

I’m trying to capture the slight shimmer through it but it is so hard.  You’ll just have to take my word for it!

 

This colour makes me feel really feminine without being girly. It feels like such a mature colour without being boring. Am I making any sense?!

Then, of course, I tried out my new Konad kit. Honestly, did you not see that coming?!

 

Wooooop!

My partner requested that I use silver Konad Princess Special Polish and I chose the designs. I did the simple flower design on my fingers and on my thumb I combined 3 different designs from the same plate. There’s a butterfly, two vines and what I think is a dandelion. It turned out so, so pretty.

My right hand, not so much.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve gotten way better at Konad-ing, but my right hand still feels whacked out when I do it!

The Konad Top Coat rocks too, by the way, no smudging whatsoever! I was thinking I’d have to wait forever for it to dry but it’s not too bad!

 

What do you think of this design?
Em

LA Colors Aqua Crystals with Cherimoya 2012 Cracked in Apocalypse and Typhoon

These Cherimoya 2012 Crackles are cool.

I layered it over my LA Colors Aqua Crystals mani because I didn’t want to take the Aqua Crystals off

These are oil based polishes, so they smell a little funky. But they start cracking literally the second you stop painting and dry super fast.

 

Cherimoya Apocalypse (no top coat).

 

They also dry matte, which I really like, because you can choose if you want to leave them matte or apply a top coat to get the shine.

 

Cherimoya Typhoon is awesome matte. It’s such a pretty blue. Don’t mind my funky coloured fingers. I took this under a very yellow lamp and had to tweak the colours in Photoshop to get the blue right. In the process, my hands look really weird.

 

This is Typhoon with a coat of SV. Looks so different, right? I can’t decide which I like more!

Again, excuse the freaky hands.

 

I really like these crackles. I love how quick they are and they apply really easily and neatly. They also don’t flake if you apply them over a top coat, like the BYS Cracked’s do, so it’s such a good way to liven up a tired mani.

 

Can’t wait to try Judgement Day (purple) and Eternity (blue). Why didn’t I get the dark green?!?!?!

 

Em