I’m such a Lucky One..

Hi pretty-lovers!

I’m excited! Why? Because I finally got nail polish from a brand I’ve followed on social media for a very long time but have never bought from before! I love ticking these things off my list.. Hehehe. 

ILNP (or I Love Nail Polish) is a huge indie brand that specialise in very sparkly creations. And I don’t mean senseless glitter bombs a-la Lynderella style – they’re beautiful holo polishes and ultra holo finishes with a few chromes, metallics and shimmers in there too. 

I picked up this epic green glitter polish called Lucky One in a recent group buy and I gotta say, it was actually an impulse choice! ILNP does free international shipping with orders over $200 and we were really close to the threshold so.. I did the right thing and quickly picked this polish.

I’m sure glad I did! Heck, it’s sooo freaking pretty! This is just two coats, no base colour laid underneath. One coat was almost enough but I did two just to be sure. Can’t wait to try out the other polishes I nabbed from ILNP. 

What’s your favourite indie polish brand? 

Love and glitter 

Kalliana 

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The Koopa King

Hello lovelies 
Today I have an old indie polish to share with you. Now, I say old because it’s hardly a new release or anything. In fact, it’s in the old style bottles! I acquired this recently along with some of the other Super Mario Collection polishes by Dollish Polish. 

This one is called The Koopa King and  is a clear base, with a yellow gold microglitter, yellow gold bigger hex glitter, red hex, green hex, black bars and larger silver holo diamonds. 
I love Dollish Polish, it was one of the first indie brands I got into as a baby nail polish addict. Unfortunately time (and funds, let’s be real) is no longer on my side and with an increased work load and social life, I don’t have as much time as I used to have to keep up with the fantastic nail blogs out there and the new collections (and brands!) coming out.
I’m not a huge gamer but I am partial to go a at Super Mario from time to time. I got The Koopa King polish along with about twelve others and whilst unwrapping them all, I was exclaiming, oohing and ahhing over each and every one. This particular one caught someone’s eye and lo and behold it’s on my nails now.
After a quick google search, I found that most people have swatched this over either a black or a yellow. Yellow doesn’t suit me (well I just haven’t found the right one) and I didn’t want to do just plain old black so I went with two coats of OPI Incognito on Sausalito with a coat of The Koopa King layered over it. I think the result is stunning!  
   
 

Tell me polish addicts – which indie collections have I missed out on? What are your favourite brands?

Love and glitter

Kalliana  

StarKin Opulence

Hiiiiiiii! 

Still a happy NZ Indie Polish month to you all! Yay! 

Today I have a really, very pretty nail polish to share with you by StarKin. I scored this a couple of years ago in a blog sale and I actually hadn’t properly swatched it until now because I’m so silly and have been letting this glitter gem hide away in a drawer. I am so sorry! I feel bad for this polish because it’s soo gorgeous and had just been forgotten about. 

Opulence is a pinky red jelly polish filled with delicious lashings of gold and silver holographic glitters. It also has the occasional larger glitter or star in there too. The result is something that just glimmers and shimmers in the light like no other. It’s so pretty, I couldn’t stop staring at my nails! 

Star Kin is handmade in New Zealand by one of my fellow PANZ-ies Ami. Star Kin has their own store on Etsy but at the moment they’re selling through the Peacock Pie store, which you can find here 

   

   

Nail Juice: Daylily

Hey! 
I have a NZ indie polish to share with you as part of NZ indie polish month. Created by PANZ (Polish Addicyts New Zealand) last May, this year we are back and celebrating our back yard indies more than ever. So many talented polish makers in our little group. 

This pretty indie was made by Steph over at Nail Juice and is called Daylily. It’s a pretty crelly dark red with glitter. Everyone loves glitter, right?! This is two coats worn over OPI Animalistic which was the perfect base for this.

Now I got this polish from a blog sale last year but Nail Juice has so many awesome polishes in their online store here so you should definitely check them out!

   

ELF mini haul – Spotlight on 6 shadow palette

Hey kids! 

A little while ago I grabbed a few ELF (Eyes Lips Face) things off iHerb because I had to get my sister an Eco Tools kabuki brush for her birthday – yeah I HAD to get it off iHerb.. Ahem.. A few things may have snuck into my cart for myself.. Whoops! It’s okay because ELF is so affordable anyway. The chips that made their way into my order.. That’s another story. Seriously, maple bacon kettle chips. YES.

I picked up two lipsticks, an eyeliner set, face powder, liquid highlighter and an eyeshadow palette. I wasn’t in a huge rush to get my order so I just picked standard shipping which came to about $11 USD. From memory, tracked express shipping was going to be almost double that (which isn’t too bad considering how cheap the products are). They guesstimated that it would take up to 15 working days for my order to arrive, so I was pleasantly surprised when it just over a week later. Yay for speedy shipping! 



So I’ll just start off by reviewing the shadow palette in this post and leave the other things for later because I haven’t fully swatched everything yet. I got the six shadow palette in Natural, funnily enough it comes with pretty neutral colours and are all in a shimmer finish. The lighter colours are a more dispersed shimmer i.e. they almost look like glitter but that could just be compared to my dark skin tone. They’re not chalky and are quite buttery when I swatched with my finger which makes them easy to blend – almost too easy. I was hoping that the lightest shade could be a brow bone highlight but it’s too glittery so it’s going to have be confined to an inner corner shadow for now until I can figure out another use for it. 





Which ELF products are your favourite? 

Love and glitter!

Kalliana

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes!

Hey lovelies!

New year, new blog! Happy 2015 to you all. I hope you all had a great festive season.

Now that thing are simmering down again, it’s time for my blog plan for 2015 to come into place.

You may have noticed a name change from 9 to 5 Nails to 9 to 5 Pretties on here, Facebook and Instagram. I’m really going to miss the old name, mostly because I’m so used to it and I’ve had it for over two years but on to bigger and better things!

I’ve been struggling to post regularly for a while now and I must say, it is down to content. It’s not that I don’t have new polish or untrieds to post, I have so many! But I don’t want to post swatches all the time. I don’t have heaps of time for nail art and my addictions have broadened to other beauty products (lipstick being a big one..)

So, without further ado, I give you 9 to 5 Pretties.

Thanks for following!
Love and glitter
Kalliana

Christmas Nail Art

Hey kids!

Well, it’s been a long time since I blogged! Life has been incredibly busy, which happens to the best of us. In the last few months I had to say farewell to my best friend who moved over to the UK and it’s also been a bit of an emotional time too.

Anyhow, I just have some Christmas nail art to share, I won’t write much because I don’t have much else to say or much energy at the moment. I just wanted to post this and share before the big day is here!

Halloween Mash Up!

Hello my lovelies

Happy Halloween! It’s not really a holiday is it (since we don’t get the day off..) but nonetheless here is a Halloween inspired manicure! It’s a bit of a mash up of heaps of designs that I’ve seen around, I used a YouTube tutorial by my girl Jessie at Nailed It NZ for the eyeballs. So easy!

As with all nail art, just take your time and let the layers dry. Be sure to seal it all in with a fast drying and high gloss top coat, it makes a big difference to dry time and the finished look!

Which of these is your favourite?

Simple Cobalt Chevron Nails

Hello my lovelies!

I have a pretty simple, very easy but rather stunning (well, in my opinion anyway) manicure to share with you today.

I’ve been considering getting the new-ish gel type polishes from revlon (ya know the ones that claim to stay on for ages and ages and you gotta get that special top coat?) and they had this really beautiful blue.. Gosh I am terrible at remembering names of polishes and collection off the bat! Well I was looking through my stash and realised that I have a blue very similar already in Endless Blue by Sinful Colors. So scratch that, semi lemming gone and I slapped this on my nails!

Never satisfied with just a single creme finish colour I used a Picture Polish lacquer in Metallic Mush to create a simple chevron tip. I think this design always makes your mani look clean and nails look a little bit longer. What do you think?

Watermelon Ombré

Hello!

Y’all must have done something really good to get another nail art post so quickly! Maybe the nice weather is making me more motivated to make pretty nail art designs or something? Who knows! In any case, I tried out a design I saw on the Hello Maphie YouTube channel for a ombré watermelon design.

I didn’t think it came out as cute as it was in the video but then or woke up the next day and looked at it again and it looked awesome to me.. But then when I was walking to work I decided against them again. My mind is flip flopping over my execution of this design. I misplaced my black striper and I had to use a paint brush for the seeds so I think that’s one of the main things I’m unhappy with about this manicure..

All in all though, it’s an easy design (maybe make the pink a little larger than the green though.. Not a huge fan of the half and half look).

What do you think? Better than other methods to create watermelon nails or not?