Manicure: Classic Spots

Hi! Thought I'd just get this out of the way and apologise for my lack of posts. Mum and I decided to switch internet providers and it took two weeks for everything to be done.

So here's my apology in form of a new manicure. It's a simple dot one with just black and white. I actually did another one before, to celebrate NAIDOC week here in Australia, but I didn't take any photos because I don't think you'd like to see stained nails @.@

I used Beauty Style Black Cherry and Designer Brand French White, along with a medium dotting tool. I need a better white. Both my white polishes are streaky and horrible to work with.

On the other hand, I'm working tomorrow, which means no nail polish (I work in a bakery, selling bread). And the stained part of my nails are still visible, at the tip. Hopefully no one sees or comments!

<3 Wednesday

Flower Spots Manicure

Here's a spotty flower manicure to liven up the day!

I've used Designer Brand French White, Ulta3 Pacific Fever, Beauty Style Petit (silver), and Cutex 2in1 Base Coat. I am loving this manicure, and loving my new dotting tools! Five dotting tools (six different dot sizes) for $1.85, bargain!

I'm now off to take this off and do a Jungle/Forest mani as my first answer to the Purple Crumpet Fairy Challenge on Facebook.

<3 Wednesday

Flower Petal Manicure

 Hey there! Sorry about my inactivity this week, had to study for exams, so no time for nails...I have something for you though! A simple design of flower petals and a butterfly wing as the accent!

As you can see, I used ORLY Aspen as the base. I am adoring it right now, and is currently my favourite! The white you can see is Designer Brand French White, and the pink on the butterfly wing is Ulta3 Poppy.

I ordered some dotting tools and nail polish sticks (?) on ebay, so soon I'll have even more manicures for you guys! I bought Ulta3 Mermaid Green and Jelly Bean on Saturday, and ten other polishes (for $10, so $14 total for 12 polishes. Yay!) so look forward to swatches in the near future!

<3 Wednesday

Pink Triangles

I gave myself a new mani! Yay! Not the best one I could've done, and two fingers bled when I put on the topcoat, but I already had to redo my pinky twice, so I was in no mood to redo it, especially considering my white is horribly streaky and hard to put on, but looks really nice when its dry.

  

 

I never thought white would look good on my nails, but apparently it does. 

 From left to right:

 Designer Brand: French White
 Ulta3: Crystallina
 Ulta3: Black Plum
 ORLY: Rose Radiance









 mode cosmetics: Soho
 Beauty Style: Raisin Red
 Ulta3: Poppy
 Cutex 2in1 Base Coat

I'd like to take a moment to say hello to my followers, even if there's only four of you! Thanks for following me <3 There's only four because one of them is me...I wanted to see if I could follow my own blog xD

To leave off, here's another few pictures of this mani :D

 <3 Wednesday

Haul (sorta)

Went past one of the local pharmacies today (there's several here in my suburb), and they were having a 3 for $5 sale, including polishes. So I grabbed me some polishes!

They're from a brand called mode cosmetics, and as you can see, they've been sitting around for so long that the metallics are sinking. From left to right, they're called Soho, Jaded and Lilac Dawn. Interesting to note that the last two were made in UAE. For those who don't know, UAE stands for United Arab Emirates. I've never had anything made there before, so I'm really happy for some reason! The first is made in China :) The photo was taken in the kitchen pantry, since the sun is playing hide and seek with Sydney today.

Here's a thumb-a-cure with my new mode mode polishes. The colour is accurate, with the exception of the blue, which is slightly more green than what's shown. It looks more like the polish in the bottle I'm holding. My camera doesn't really like picking up on the green ): Light pink is Lilac Dawn and hot pink is Soho.

Jaded and Lilac Dawn were much more sheer than I expected. What you see there is actually three coats of each, but I'm not disappointed. They do look nice on white.

Do you guys like my new watermark? 

On a random note, you know how on TV you see seagulls swooping down to grab the food right out of the person's mouth? That happened to me today. I was eating my sandwich when a flock of seagulls attacked and almost stole my sandwich! I had to throw it away, and I started chasing the seagulls with my umbrella. So immature of me, but hey, they were the ones to steal my sandwich. Thieves. My opinion of seagulls (which were not high to begin with) have dropped to an all time low. Evil seagulls and their beady little eyes...

<3 Wednesday

P.S. Here's two giveaways. Enter to win awesome prizes :)




 

Heartened Nails

It's rainy today ): I was going to take pictures of my new mani in the sun, but sine I don't have a light box, it's all rainy day gloomy pictures today...

I used two blacks for this; the Australis and Beauty Style Black Cherry. On my accent nail I used the Beauty Style, which is this lovely deep black (not really sure how to describe it, but I love it more than other blacks), and for my other fingers I used the Australis, which (I think) I mentioned as a black with a slight silver shimmer. The white is Designer Brand French White, which is not featured in the picture below. The red heart is a mix of Ulta3 Black Plum and Beauty Style Raisin Red over white. Mixed it on a palette and painted it on, and didn't realise the white wasn't totally dry :P

The thumb was just the Australis, so nothing interesting there. All the pictures with the thumb turned out blurred.

From left to right: Cutex 2in1 Base Coat, Australis (62238- product number) Beauty Style Black Cherry, Beauty Style Raisin Red and Ulta3 Black Plum.

I got some new polish remover; Sally Hansen Polish Remover Strengthening, I think is the official title. It has 80% w/w acetone, and strangely enough, my skin likes it better than my old polish remover without acetone. Strange. While I was buying this, I discovered that my local Chemist Warehouse has a lot of Sally Hansen stuff, including the Gem Crush collection and another limited edition one that I can't recall the name of, but I do remember they were all pastel colours...

Are L.A. Colours good?

Off to study for Maths and Textiles exams now!

<3 Wednesday

Fish Art

I got a chipped nail D: Well, one already chipped, but the other chipped today. Both were the Ulta3 Pacific Fever, which is making me think it's either this particular bottle (as I've never had problems with my other Ulta3 bottles), my top coat or I've been treating my nails absolutely horribly (which I haven't).

I'm taking the chance to do some nail art with brushes now, but wielding them with my left hand, so the art came out dodgy, but not too dodgy. A bit thick, but I do like it :)

The sun didn't want to come out and play D:

 In case you can't tell (which you probably can't), I did do some "string manicure", inspired by A Nail Polish Addict's Jubilee Mani. Can't really see much of it anymore, which is a pity, because it looked really nice, albeit a bit messy because it was left hand. I didn't do my left hand because I didn't want my skin peeling off like it did on my right. Really should get better nail polish remover...

From L-R: Cutex 2in1 Base Coat, Orly Aspen, Borghese Rapido Menta, Borghese Rapido Marino, Ulta3 Pacific Fever, Ulta3 Poppy, Ulta3 Confetti and Beauty Style Petite (silver). My apologies about the stuff in the background. It's all my mess, and my mum despairs that I will ever clean it up.

<3 Wednesday

Ulta3 Pacific Fever and water marbling

Taken under artificial light as the light outside has gone out due to early sunset...colour's pretty accurate though. The supplies in the background are just my attempts at making my own polish.

This is my attempt at water marbling with Ulta3 Pacific Fever, which is a really nice teal colour with a subtle gold shimmer which doesn't really come out on the nail. Or I just put too little coats on, one of the two. I still love it though, currently my favourite polish along with the OPI Turquoise Crackle.

(if you're wondering about the little bit of black near my cuticle, that was the Australis- I didn't take it off because my skin absolutely hates me right now for using the polish remover)

Anyway, the marbling gave me a giant headache. The white you see (Designer Brand French White, hate it, takes forever to dry, even with a quick dry top coat for some reason) is actually layered over with a very thin layer of Ulta3 Crystallina, which can only really be seen in sunlight if you squint. The Crystallina spread just fine (and looked really pretty while doing so), but the Pacific Fever refused to. So I did mess with it a bit, which is why only the index finger looked nice. I ran out of patience at the end @.@

Oh, and here's a tip; instead of using tape to prevent polish from sticking to where you don't want it to, use Vaseline instead, or the equivalent. For those who don't like, Vaseline is white petroleum jelly, good for dry skin and lips :)

On the other hand (pun intended), we still have the crackle and the Cutex, which is doing nicely in its third day of wear. No tip wear or anything!

(same photo as before)

I don't think I ever mentioned that I tried different directions with the crackle polish! Thumb is vertical (if you hold your hand straight up), index is diagonally to the right, middle diagonally to the left, ring is a mix of the two, and pinky is vertical (bottom half) and horizontal (top half). Personally I like the diagonals the best.

Stupid little girls screaming their heads off outside.

<3 Wednesday

OPI Turquoise Shatter and Cutex 2in1 Base Coat

Here's the OPI Turquoise Shatter which I got as part of yesterday's haul.

In direct sunlight over the unknown Australis

In the shade

It's so sparkly and shiny and I can't stop staring at it! My first shatter polish, and I love it! Strange thing did happen though, when I went to put on my top coat. It changed colour, going slightly darker than what it looks like in the bottle. Not that I mind, of course :)

You can't really see it in that photo, but I did get little bald spots on my nails in the black areas, which aren't really obvious. Unfortunately, it's already starting to show slight tip wear. So I went and bought Cutex 2in1 Base Coat. I just searched it up on the internet, and it has mixed reviews. We'll see what happens when I try it!

<3 Wednesday

EDIT;

So I opened it, and I didn't realise that the brush is icky and the bristles stick out at odd angles. Ah well, I'll just cut the stray bristles and hope for the best. On the other hand, however, it dries super fast and is really shiny :D

Australis - (no name)

I actually have no idea what this one's called. I looked up the Australis website but they didn't have this colour, nor does the bottle have a name where there should be a name.

Anyway, here it is. Put it on and took a few photos.

Sorry about the dodgy application and my peeling index finger; I don't think it likes my polish remover

It's a lovely sheer black polish with a fine white shimmer. As I currently have madly stained nails from not using base coats, this is three coats to make it opaque. No brush marks, and is really easy to apply.

Apologies for the dodgy camera work- it's an old camera which blurs when flash isn't used, and can't focus on anything too close to the lens. Anyway, tell me which of the others in my newest haul you want to see!

...Is it weird that I'm posting like I have lots of followers when in reality I only have one?

<3 Wednesday

EDIT;

Decided to do a mini tape mani with this as the base. Here it is!

From left to right, the polishes I used are ORLY Rose Radiance, ORLY Aspen, and Beauty Style Petites (silver metallic)

Hope you like my very first tape mani!