Powder Perfect Storm Rainbow

Happy New Year! I'm seeing the new year in with Power Perfect's Storm Rainbow. Gorgeous grey micro holo glitter bomb. Two easy coats and top coat. No need for more words.

Look see photos now! :) 

An Indie Extravaganza 2 from Powder Perfect swatches - part 1

Today I've got swatches of Secrets of Her Majesty and Flying Trapeze from An Indie Extravaganza II, by Pretty Pots Polish and Peita's Polish respectively.

This was the first time I've tried either of the brands and I was very impressed with the quality. The jelly Flying Trapeze was one of the best I have used, I didn't have my usual thick, lumpy problems and the small glitters came out readily.

Very excitingly, Jacinta from Powder Perfect has regrammed both my collection and the Flying Trapeze swatch pics on Instagram! It's a nice feeling when the pros thinks my nail photos are good! Let's have a look.

First up is Secrets of Her Majesty by Pretty Pots. I had issues adjusting the photos, so decided to leave it as is - a little dark, but most natural looking. Two coats.

This is a purple holo, which truth be told, I am building a rather big collection of. This reminds me of Birth of a Star by Celestial Cosmetics, but I will have to put them on side-by-side to properly compare. The formula was great though!

The second one I have here is Flying Trapeze by Peita's Polish. A beautiful fuchsia jelly formula, one of those fruity shades that I am rather obsessed with lately. The glitters are aqua, blue, purple, pink, with some smaller possibly orange and gold and some shimmer. The glitters are reminiscence of the glitters in OPI's polka.com. This was about 3 coats, no undies and smoothed out with 2 layers of top coat — Essence gel look top coat and then HK girl on top of that.

These are limited edition, so if you're interested, better get on it at the Powder Perfect store!

Cute Snowy Christmas nails

I only managed one other Christmas mani, this cute snowy manicure. I used Celestial Cosmetics Sapphires of Tarth, from the Game of Thrones collection as base. Then used Illamasqua Blizzard for the falling snow effect and Formula X White Matter for the fallen snow. The silver glitter is also Celestial, the LE December 2014. Decal from Born Pretty store that I got last year (if you have a photographic memory you'll have recognised that I used the same decal last Christmas). Topped with Essence gel look top coat. 

I think the mix of finishes made it very effective. My nail art has been more miss than hit lately, so it was nice to get one to turn out nice and cute. Although I am not sure what caused the bubbles on the index finger. Anyway... it wasn't obvious and I just drew your attention to it for no real reason!

The nailguytv said these were "very cool". That made me very proud! Lol. He was on Nail'd It! I want to watch that so badly. 

Phillip Island Wildlife Park Outing

My cousin and his wife are visiting and we did a day trip to Phillip Island yesterday. With five people in a little Yaris we set off, along with apparently thousands of others.... we were at an actual standstill on the freeway for a significant amount of time. 

I forgot to pack my SLR, so I had to make do with my phone, but it does mean I can upload my shots in a timely fashion.

We unfortunately didn't pre-purchase tickets to the penguin parade and it sold out. We ended driving back to Melbourne and going to St Kilda Pier where we saw little fairy penguins up close. It was super crowded, so I will have to go back another time when I can just sit back and relax while watching them come ashore.

However, we did get to go to the Phillip Island Wildlife Park and had ball. The weather was perfect, not warm but not so hot to be unbearable.

I was also too lazy to process or watermark, so sorry for some of the framing and colour and please don't steal or repost without crediting me.  :(

BABY! I mean, JOEY!

To make life a bit easier and to not make this post impossibly long on the homepage, I have added a jump with more photos after. There are many cute wallabies/roos pics (I can't tell the difference, I know, failed Aussie right there).

Celestial Cosmetics Deck the Halls

This is Deck the Halls with some glitter placement for a little holographic tree. I fished the glitter out of Kester Black Nebula. The tree is wonky, I clearly need more practice lining things up on my nails! It's tricky, especially since I am working on it upside down! It's my first Christmas mani this year, I might be inspired again, but hard to say at this stage. I have so many pretties that are so sparkly and complex, I don't feel the need to add more.

In sunlight

From this year's Christmas collection, Deck the Halls is a mulberry-ish purple with fine glitter dust, microdots and small aqua blue and purple dots and some holo circles and some pink diamond-shaped glitters. The jelly formula was relatively easy to work with and I only needed two coats for the coverage you see here. It's top coat hungry though, two coats of hk girl top coat wasn't enough to smooth it out. Should have used my Essence gel look top coat to feed it first!

The Kester Black Nebula appears to have good glitter payload. I got more than enough glitter for the tree with one dip. Also, I've been using a clear, soak off gel manicure as base to try protect my corners. It's going ok so far. Hopefully I don't add any more cracks to the tips.

In shade

Lucy Liu Melbourne for my birthday dinner

I just wanted to share some snaps from my nice birthday dinner and my fun houndstooth nails using the Sally Hansen nail stripes. I picked them up for $5 at a sale a while back. I'm not well practiced,  so it's not the best application, but still really enjoy looking at them! I love houndstooth, but since I can't draw that finely and my stamping skills are non-existent, this is the only way to do it. I'd have picked up more boxes if there was more than one still in the bin!

Mmm... food

The food is, clockwise from top, a schezwan duck, lamb shoulder, ginger creme brulee, soft shell crab pancakes, Collin San (a ginger and lime based cocktail) and eggplant and pork tempura. Not pictured were the duck dumplings... totally forgot to snap that photo! Haha. Failed asian. 

I look rather well and happy there. Doesn't look like I am sick at all. But in actual fact, I became horrendously sick on Friday and instead of going out for my drinks, I had to cancel that at the last minute and laid curled up in bed all day, with rather frequent dashes to the bathroom. That drink is the one and only drink I managed for my birthday, and I was soon tucked back up in bed.

And a proper swatch photo of the nails

Glam Polish Euphoria

Short post, not much to say. I also ate too much of those Korean sweet potato noodles and now I am feeling very uncomfortable. Anyhoo. 

I have here one very pretty glam polish, like all glams are. It even has some white gold flakes. Talk about lux! I just love blue nail polish and my collection of blues is getting ridiculous.

Dance Legend Wazowski

I now understand the hype about the Dance Legend nail polishes and it's ALL TRUE. This is truly beautiful. I wish I was able to buy more, but this was the only one left in the sonailicious boutique.

The polish is green based and shifts from aqua blue, bright green to a golden olive and I just can't stop staring at my nails. Loved it so much, I wore it for almost a week!

Natural light 

This is just two coats which dried quickly. I wanted this to last, so I topped it with Celestial Cosmetics Solar Ray quick dry top coat. Did not affect the colour at all.

Indoor artificial light

Look at that colour shift!

Pre-stereo caffeine and carb fuelling

Gratuitous food photo

Picture Polish Fool's Gold by the Nailasaurus

I have been coveting this one for months, ever since it first came out. When my sister rang while I was half asleep saying she was putting a Picture Polish order in, this was the only polish name that came to me.

Create with the Nailasaurus, this is one sexy shade of blue with hints of gold. That is courtesy to the micro gold glitters and gold shimmer. So elegant, so eye catching. 

This here is three thin coats topped with my old favourite, hk girl top coat.

And Omg, omg! I tagged the Nailasaurus and she liked my photo on Instagram! Lol, fangirl moment!

Musings about the jury

Being involved in a long trial (going into the 7th week next week) means that everyone falls into a bit of a rhythm. You see the same faces every day and become friendly with them. All except the jury. While their faces too become familiar and the rhythm becomes a part of the day too, I can't interact with them. In fact, that has caused me to, on more than one occasion, stop walking in order to not approach a juror. Yet in a strange way I feel connection with them also. I know what order they'll file into their seats, I recognise their styles and I know who is their phone monitor (the guy who is charged with collecting their mobiles and looking over the box). I even get a hint of their personalities by their responses and demeanor.

Found in the Supreme Court courtyard

But anyways, the trial is on the home stretch, both sides have presented their closing submissions. At this stage, the judge is to give the jury detailed instructions about the relevant law and how to use evidence and so forth, but she's losing her voice, so we have the next two days off and an extended weekend. All in all, we've lost five days, so the initial 4-6 weeks estimate was actually quite accurate.

One of the SCV buildings from the courtyard

And of course, I need to have one that features my nails. 

Celestial Cosmetics - LE September 2014 

Glam Polish Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo

I gave my Notice of Intention to be Admitted to be a lawyer this week! The trial I am involved in is now in the media. Despite the nature of the crime, it is a great experience and the staff of the court in particular are great! I feel like I'm part of some greater every time I step into the building. I want to work there one day!

Anyway, onto nails! I had my eye on this one since I first saw swatches and it just had to be the first Glam Polish I tried from my first ever Glam nail mail!

Excuse the colour... kept forgetting to re-do in daylight.

Here are so quick snaps of it over Ulta3 Lilac Bloom. Match made in heaven I think!

Can't wait to try them all. It's like pokémon for nail polish addicts.

Powder Perfect Peeling Wallpaper swatch

This is Powder Perfect's Peeling Wallpaper. I'm not even sure if it's still available. I picked it up in Serenity Nails blog sale... Well, I guess it was technically a fb sale. The combination of wanting to get through new polishes (check out the hashtag #untriednov, I'll be trying to use that as often as I can over there on Instagram) and needing to avoid too much glitter means lots of cremes to show.

But, enough procrastination. I better just hit post and get back to my last little bit of homework FOREVER foreseeable future. Enjoy the photos, sorry about the quality.

Illamasqua Fire Rose

I know I am slack. Just so much happening, this gets left by the wayside. I've over committed myself a little and have assignments to do and lots of work (not all of it paid). I am currently doing some "pro bono" work, that is, I'm doing some work experience with a defence team in a long criminal trial. So it's all happening, but it means that I am court everyday and actually need to tone down my nails.

But it's the weekend now and the first thing I did was paint some sparkly nails. I am wearing right now Illamasqua Fire Rose. A girly pink textured polish. It's currently on sale for half price ($12) along with the others from this collection and some other polishes too.

Lyz Cosmetics Punkin Chunkin Swatch and Review

I've had the Lyz Cosmetics Halloween collection polishes sitting around for a short while now.  I figured I better get these on my nails and shared before the end of the month so you can actually see, and, maybe, buy them.

My sister and I both particularly love neon oranges and have a few already. This one is different... It has glitter! As it is a neon, it did dry matte. What you see here is three coats. IRL you can also see a bit of a sheen to it. Not usually my thing, but works in this case.

As you can see, it's a little messy... The brush was a bit fat and I couldn't get close to my cuticles without making the mess that I didn't completely clean up that you can see there.

Celestial Cosmetics Inception

My mani for the last two days has been the now sold out LE Inception by Celestial Cosmetics. It's a gorgeous neon blue holo. This is the second time in as many months that I've worn this polish, and on its own to boot! I actually intended to do some nail art on it, but couldn't bear to after seeing how gorgeously blue and sparkling it was.

Funny story to go with this post. I got a reminder last Friday for a hospital appointment for yesterday. I was having a good rant about how stupid it was to give me a reminder about an appointment when they haven't sent me a letter about the sms reminder.

When I got to the hospital I saw my mum was there. I thought, "hm, that is a coincidence" and went to tell reception I had arrived. The woman tells me I'm already down. I was a bit confused, as I had just arrived, made my mum come over and demanded her letter, and it turns out that mum had gone there with my letter thinking it was her appointment and he receptionist didn't think to wonder why she is 30 years older than the patient she was expecting! Not only that, she went and changed my GP details on the system! Who does that? Not sure who I am more annoyed with, the hospital or my mother!

Anyway, another photo. The sun finally came out and I quickly tried to take a photo of its full holo goodness! Not sure what happened instead, but it looks interesting!

Maybelline Color Show Street Artist Alley Attitude and White Splatter

I know my posts have been few and far between, but my polish buying hasn't slowed down all that much. I'm going to try to catch up a little here. My collection of pretties is growing and I want to share. So I'll start with the funky Maybelline Street Artist collection, if which I have picked up Alley Attitude and White Splatter. 

In other news, one of the piggies must have kicked Red Bear in the face, because she's got a wound in her eye. We had to do a late be ending run to the vet to get it checked out. We iniitally thought it was an eye infection... Somehow, I think this is better. My poor sister was close to tears when she found her with the bloodshot eye. She's slowly mending, but has to be kept apart from the others for a week. The poor sweetie looks so lonely all by herself, so we've giving her more cuddle time and even an outing in her carrier! Not sure if she actually enjoys that per se, but at least she's not bored? 

White Splatter on top of Celestial Cosmetic Winter Sunset (group custom)

Alley Attitude on top of a random yellow

Matted, because I can and it worked great.