Sea Siren Cosmetics–Midnight Moves & Leucosia

Hi all!

I’ve said it many times over the past couple of weeks and I’ll say it again now: I AM SICK OF THE HEAT!!!! We have had two days under 40 degrees (Celcius) in the past 28 days. NOT COOL. That’s what I get for living in the desert, I guess. We are supposed to have over 70mm of rain tomorrow. Bring it on, I say! There are some serious bushfires happening in my state at the moment so we need all the rain we can get.

 

Anyway, I made a Sea Siren Cosmetics order the other day after making my good friend Tracey drool over some of their shades. We ordered together to save on shipping and the gorgeous Deb, owner of Sea Siren, included a few of her classic creme shades.

She included a white and black, which was perfect timing because I’ve been trying to find a decent white to buy lately!

 

These were amazing! Great formulas. The white did take three coats to be completely opaque but it wasn’t streaky, draggy or thick at all like most whites I’ve tried. It also doesn’t have that “just painted my nails with white out” look about it. The black was friggin’ awesome!!! It is almost a one coater. You could probably get away with one thick coat but I did two thin ones. The awesome formula meant I had barely any clean up and it was super easy to clean up and not stainy.

 

Of course, there was one thing that popped into my head when I first saw the white and black polishes …

DICE!

 

It’s amazing how the simplest of manis can be so eye catching and gorgeous. I got so many compliments on this mani and it was so, so simple! I kind of wished I had six fingers so I could do this properly  

 

I’m so impressed with these cremes and I still have two classic cremes and two brights to try – wooo!!

To try Sea Siren Cosmetics, go to their website and check out their Facebook page. 

 

Em

Sea Siren Cosmetics–Sea Mist

Hullo hullo!

I have my last Sea Siren polish to show you today. This is Sea Mist, a lovely pastel blue creme.

 

Isn’t it luuurvely?  This was two coats but I could nearly get away with one. The formula was butter smooth! I’m really enjoying these pastel cremes from Sea Siren. They are just so perfect for Summer! Pastels suit my skin tone and i got loads of compliments on this simple mani.

 

Have you enjoyed the Sea Siren posts? Remember, you can grab them on their website and find out other info and see more pic on their Facebook page.

 

Em

Sea Siren Cosmetics–Motion of the Ocean with Beachy Peachy dots

Halloooo!

Guess what I have today? That’s right, another beauty from Sea Siren Cosmetics!! Are you enjoying these posts? I sure am!

 

This is a beautiful mint green creme, Motion of the Ocean:

Oh, you are beautiful *strokes polish*. I love, love, LOVE this shade. I have always had a thing for a good mint creme and Motion of the Ocean doesn’t disappoint. Formula, as I’ve come to expect from Sea Siren, is perfect. It is almost opaque in one coat and you could probably get away with one coat if you painted a little thicker than normal. This is just a breathtaking colour and so summery and classy. It flatters my skin tone too – winner!

 

I used Sea Siren’s Beachy Peachy to do a dotticure:

Excuse this dodgy photo. I’m not sure why it turned out so orange … When I tried to tweak the colours it threw the mint way out and made it into a blue so I chose to have orange fingers

I can’t really comment on Beachy Peachy yet because all I’ve done is dot with it, but I’ll be doing a full mani with it soon It’s certainly opaque enough to dot with and I didn’t have to use too much polish to get good, clean dots.

 

How do you like dotticures?

Em

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

Sea Siren Cosmetics–Yellow Submarine

Why hello there!

How are you all? Can you believe it? Another blog post from me. Aren’t you lucky? Turns out having full weekends off for the first time in a few years is agreeing with me! Plenty of things to do to keep myself busy, that’s for sure.

 

Sea Siren Cosmetics is a new Aussie indie who put the call out on their Facebook page for swatchers not long ago. It took me a while, but I jumped at the chance to review some pretties. When Deborah, the owner and creator of Sea Siren, asked me what kind of polishes I’d like to review, can you guess what I said? CREMES! GIVE ME CREMEEEEEEEES! When you ask most nail fanatics what their favourite polish finish is, they usually say holo, glitter, duochrome … it’s not often that you get someone who says creme. But ladies, that’s me! I love cremes. I love them so much that I never have any new ones to try because I always try them as soon as I buy them So I was chuffed when my Sea Siren parcel arrived.

 

Let’s take a moment to talk about Sea Siren’s branding and packaging. Anyone who knows me knows that these things are very important to me. Having a bit of a background in graphic design and pursuing this field more recently, good packaging leaps out at me. Similarly, poor packaging really turns me off. It can be a make or break for some.

Firstly, Sea Siren wrapped the polishes and other goodies so beautifully in blue tissue paper with her own branded labels on them. She included flyers with information about her products.

Take a look:

Sorry for the dodgy phone pic, but I was at work and there was no way I was waiting until I got home where my camera was to rip into these bad boys. But just look how pretty it all is! It was a shame to destroy such lovingly wrapped parcels.

 

Inside …

AHHH MY GOD! SO CUTE! These boxes are stunning! The bottom ones are the big ‘bubbles’, as Deb calls them. They are a huge 15mL. The top are the Wanderlust minis and they are an ADORABLE 5mLs. I posted them together so you could see the size difference. The itty bitty boxes are so adorable!

Deb sent me Tranquility (a pastel purple), Motion of the Ocean (pastel mint), Pamper Me Pink (pastel pink, duh) in the full size. The minis are Yellow Submarine (pastel yellow), Beachy Peachy (pastel peach) and Sea Mist (pastel blue). All delicious cremes

 

She also sent me something completely and utterly amazing.

MONT BLEU CRYSTAL FILES!!!!!!!!! I squealed when I saw these, I really did. It’s lucky I was by myself at work because I can imagine how silly I looked. She sent a hard cased one (the blue) which is GENIUS. I can keep it in my bag and not worry about it snapping and a gorgeous travel sized blue file with sparkly Swarovski crystals on it. Oh so beautiful. I had heard such good things about these files. I had only used cheap glass files in the past and was not impressed, but I’d heard these were different.

 

I was NOT disappointed. I used them for the first time this morning and holy moley they work a treat! They are so smooth and SHARP! They take off a decent amount of length but they are not harsh on the nail at all. Usually I HATE the feeling of my nails after I’ve filed them but I didn’t after using Sea Siren’s file I am completely in love. So completely in love. I think I need more of these products. Deb also stocks a cute little travel kit which has a travel sized Swarovski crystal file, a pair of nail scissors and some Swarovski encrusted tweezers all in a little case. LOVE!!

 

I’m going to stop babbling now and show you the first of the Sea Siren polishes I used. This is Yellow Submarine:

A beautiful, glossy pastel yellow creme which is actually quite bright! This was two easy coats. Usually yellows are a pain in the rear to apply but this one was fine! It actually flattered my skin tone really well and looked so fresh.

 

You can buy Sea Siren Cosmetics from the website and make sure you ‘like’ the Facebook page too!

 

Em

Epic Nail Coupon Code

Hi all

 

I’m just updating with the discount code that Epic Nail have kindly given to me to share with you all!

 

If you go to www.epicnail.com.au and purchase anything, use coupon code “BLOGDESERT” for FREE SHIPPING!!! What an awesome way to try out heaps of their range!

 

This coupon will be valid until 28th  February.

 

Happy shopping!

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