Swatch: OPI Alcatraz Rocks

Hello

So, at the moment around a few different pharmacies in New Zealand they’re having a promo for opi polishes, buy 1 get 1 free. This coincided with the release of the new San Fran collection. I managed to find incognito in sausalito but I went on a mission to find Alcatraz Rocks. I went to SEVEN different stores and all of them either sold out or hadn’t even gotten it in yet. Finally, last week (when I was meant to be on a buying ban I might add..) I went into the pharmacy nearest to me just for a squiz.. And they had it!

Because it was such an effort to find, I was really worried that this polish was going to disappoint me because I had given it so much build up in my mind. The only thing that disappoints me about this polish is that it doesn’t photograph to reflect the amazingness that it actually is. It really does not do it justice. I used two coats of this baby over a base coat and of course no top coat needed. Next must have from this collection.. Wharf, wharf wharf. I must say that OPI are really kicking butt every time they release new liquid sand polishes, they’ve come a long way from the Mariah Carey collection.

Which polishes from the San Fran collection are you loving?

Swatch: OPI Tiffany Case Liquid Sand

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Currently there is a really good sale at most pharmacies in New Zealand for buy 1 get 1 free on OPI nail polish. Of course I went to hit that sale up! I was reeeeeeally hoping to pick up one of the new liquid sand colours from the San Francisco collection but they were out of stock. Boo!

I did however pick up Tiffany Case from the Bond Girls collection. It really looks like heaven in the bottle and is even better on the nail. I seriously could not stop staring at my nails once it was on! I heard a whisper that there might be some staining issues. I found this was really easy to remove (compared to some glitter nightmares) and left very minimal staining. Definitely one I will wear often!

Swatch: Pretty & Polished

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Just a wee swatch post of some indies I purchased from Pretty & Polished for you today. I got a red jelly glitter called Diner Daze and a blue and silver glitter called Bubbles.

I decided to swatch Diner Daze over a base colour rather than test out how opaque it is. I used two coats of Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby and then two coats of Diner Daze on top.

For Bubbles, it took me a really long time to choose a base colour. In the end I chose Blagger by Butter London but I don’t think it goes very well with Bubbles unfortunately. This is two coats of each.

I definitely would love to purchase more polishes from Pretty & Polished! I think the way forward with indie brands is to save up enough lemmings and then buy a fair few at a time rather than just 1 or 2 at a time.

Unicorns Farted In My Polish

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I woke up super early this morning even though I went to sleep really quite late (so all in all probably only got 5 hours of sleep) so I thought I would update ye olde blog!

I’ve recently gotten into indie (independent) polishes and I haven’t really looked back since. My collection of indies is growing – and at an alarmingly fast rate, must I add! My poor, poor wallet. Sigh.

I ordered around four or five polishes from Dollish Polish all but one are minis and the first thing I have to say is that I really love the bottles! Especially the minis! They don’t feel as miniature in my hand as other minis *cough OPI cough* do plus square bottles are just something you don’t come by all the time. The shipping was pretty standard/fair in price (around $19.05 USD for 8 bottles – I went splits with some others on the order) but did take longer than other indies that I’ve bought, it took around two and a half weeks BUT it is well worth the wait. The packaging was so cute there is some care and attention to detail taken with dispatching these babies. I wish I took photos but I didn’t! The polishes were wrapped in bubble wrap then placed inside a plastic bag with a Dollish polish logo sticker and then put inside a very pretty hot pink organza bag. So cute! It looked a lot better than I’ve described it.

Anyhow, on to the polish! I’ve only swatched one so far and it has the best name everrrrrrrrr: A Unicorn Farted In My Polish. How wicked is that?! I love the name. The polish itself I also love. It’s just a big mix of all the glitter you could really want. It’s so colourful and every nail ends up looking unique and different. I only used two coats of AUFIMP over a base colour (Cupid by Revlon) one quick thin-ish coat then a dabby coat to get those big bits of glitter on. I didn’t really have any trouble with getting the larger glitter or shapes glitter to go on my nails. Also, very nicely surprising to note that taking it off wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be.

Well enjoy some pictures of unicorns farting all over my nails! Hehe!

You can check out the Dollish Polish website/store here.

BTW:
I used my own hard earned money to buy this farting unicorn and all the other polishes I got from Dollish Polish. These are my own opinions.

Swatch: China Glaze Whirled Away

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I don’t have many China Glaze polishes in my stash but this one I picked up recently in a big group online order from head2toe beauty. Man that site us cheap! I also got my very first bottle of Seche Vite and I must say.. That stuff stinks!! It smells like turps! But.. It does have great drying and gloss power so I will battle through.

Anyway, the polish I used is called Whirled Away and is from the Cirque Du Soleil collection. I’m a sucker for glitter and I had yet to have anything with the thin bar shaped glitter. I was really drawn to how monochrome this is and I decided to layer it over a pink by Revlon called Cupid. Which, I would describe as a cupcake pink – does that even make sense?

I like how this looks over Cupid. It probably even looks better than I had hoped for! I’m stuck on what other colours might look good – I was thinking OPI You’re Such A Budapest might be a good match? I had a bit if a battle with the large white glitter but that was to be expected. I ended up pulling them out and placing them on one by one.

I’m a bit back logged on posts so I might even post again later tonight!

Pink and Gold Chevron Tips

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Happy Sunday to you all! I hope you all had wonderfully relaxing weekends. The weather held out quite nicely here so I’m happy with that. Other than that it has been a very ho-hum week, not a lot going on around here I’m afraid. Eh, more time to spend with my polish.

Just a simple but very pretty nail look to share with you today. I saw this manicure on a blog called Of Faces And Fingers and immediately wanted to try and replicate it.

I am really loving neutral nail colours at the moment and I always love pink. I decided to use OPI My Vampire Is Buff as the base colour and decided to use gold instead of white to contrast against the pink chevron style tip. I used Cupcake Queen and Ladylike Luxe by Ciate for the tips and I’m really liking the result! Finished off with a wee rhinestone on each nail and voila! Beautiful! Sorry my photos are a bit blurry – just one of those times when technology doesn’t want to cooperate.

Spotty Dotty Gradient Manicure

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I have been doing my nails an awful (well.. Wonderful) lot lately. I’m talking pretty much everyday. I think it’s because of the weather! Last winter was not as cold as this year and I wasn’t into nail art as much as I am now. I’m all for being indoors, warm and happy and cooped up with my polishes! Does that make me sound sad? Sigh. I lead a simple life. Haha!

I got my very first Essie nail polish a couple of weeks ago from one of those huge cosmetics sales that come to town every now and then. They have been having more and more variety of brands of polishes on sale recently which makes for a happy me. I was actually on my way to the counter when I saw this lone Essie bottle and I just grabbed it without looking up swatches online first and I am very glad! I got the colour Neo Whimsical which is a very pale light lilac creme. It is seriously so pretty! Oh how I fell in love.

I decided to add some colour on top in the way of a gradient type dotted manicure. I used SC show me the way, Butter London Primrose Hill Picnic, OPI purple with a purpose and Butter London blagger.

My original intention was to add rhinestones but once I had the dots on I decided against it. I did try it out with a glossy top coat and a matte top coat (matte is the first photo). I think I prefer the matte better – what do you think?

Well, ta-ta darlings! Until next time.

365 Days of Color Swatches

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Warning: this post is pic heavy!

Woo! I’m actually very excited because these are my very first indie polishes! Yay! I recently had a sparked interest with indie polishes and I saw that 365 Days of Color were offering 25% off to celebrate their Facebook likes. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to grab some. I always just assumed that indies wouldn’t be able to ship to New Zealand but I was wrong (as a result I am now expecting many pieces of nail mail). You can check out the Storenvy shop here and the Facebook page here.

I got three minis for $3.38 each (that’s in US dollars) and the shipping was a measly $4.50. I was impressed with the amount of time it took to arrive too, took 10 days (total, not working days).

Okay, let’s get on to the exciting stuff! Showing off some nail polish.. I got Flirting with the Lifeguard, Big Purple Umbrella and Frolicking.

First off, Flirting with the lifeguard. In the bottle it’s a nice bright pink with tiny cobalt blue glitter and bigger (but still small) hex glitter. I layered it over two costs of a white polish and BOY does it pop some neon! I didn’t expect the pink to be as neon as it came up! Loving it!

Big Purple Umbrella is, well, a purple with lots of micro white glitter and some oblong/rectangle glitter in there too. I like square and rectangle glitter – it just looks so unconventional and awesome! I didn’t have a base colour that really matched the colour in the bottle so I tried it over Orly Hype (the darker purple) and L.A. Girl Rock N Roll (the brighter purple/pink/magenta) and I like it over both. I layered two coats of BPU.

Lucky last! Frolicking. What a fun and pretty name! Doesn’t it just sound nice? This one is my favourite out of the three that I got. It’s a very pretty pale minty shimmer (gold shimmer) with pink square and circular glitter. I layered it over Sinful Colors Be Happy and it was pretty much spot on. Yay! This one just makes me happy. Well they all do actually!

Yes: I purchased these with my own hard earned moolah.

Neutral Tribal/ Aztec Print Nails

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I have tried out this type of design in the past but with more than one colour. I wanted to use Samoan Sand by OPI which I picked up from a sale recently for a good price. I’ve started getting into my neutral colours recently so this makes a good addition to my collection.

I used three coats of Samoan Sand for opacity and then used a black striper to freehand the designs. I really just made it up as I went along and there are some designs that I prefer over others. I think this type of manicure looks better with all the nails done differently rather than all of them the same – that way you get to experiment more. All in all I’m quite happy with how this turned out!

I hope you all had great weekends! The weather was truly horrid on Saturday so I stayed in and watched several episodes of one of my favourite TV shows: Frasier.

P.S: I use my iPhone to blog and take photos and I use an app to put the watermark on my photos. I just started using one called Piclab and the watermark for that automatically goes on the photo so that’s why it shows in the corner if you were wondering.

OPI Minnie Style Swatch

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I’m always a bit behind when it comes to new collections and stuff but as soon as I saw the new OPI Couture De Minnie collection I knew I had to have this polish. Minnie Style is a very OPI style glitter with large hex glitters in an almost red pink, hot pink and white. I noticed that my bottle had a few square white glitter bits too but when I was swatching I didn’t really get any of them and when I did I decided to pick them out because it wasn’t cohesive enough across all my nails. A bit of a pain but nothing too major.

I swatched Minnie Style over OPI Mod About You and the result is pretty great. I’ve seen a lot of photos of this polish swatched over a similar pink from the collection called Chic From Ears To Tail so I wanted to use a similar colour. As with most chunky glitter polishes this was a B to take off! I have The Living Daylights which is the same style glitter which I absolutely adore but because it is such a pain to take off I hardly ever wear it.

Well, stay pretty my dears! The weather here has taken a turn for the worst – we are talking full out storms and in some parts of the country, tornados! If you’re from NZ stay warm and safe.

Also, please like my Facebook page, if you haven’t already! Ta!