Celestial Cosmetics Men of Mayhem swatches

I started a temp room reception job. While everyone is really nice and the job is not st all demanding, I am keen to move onto a more intellectually engaging job. 

But for now, I'll use the ample spare time I have at work to quickly share some more nails I've done since moving here and a couple of snaps from my daily life.

Love this polish. Great formula and colour. I just think it's so sexy. Edgy and fun at the same time. I think it's been discontinued, but only recently, so some may be floating around in stockists.

Here we have my fluffy flatmate, Bicardi and the view behind my desk. It overlooks Hyde Park and everyone who visits, including me on  my first visit, says "wow". There are not many views like this in London, so I'm quite lucky. 

My guest post on Serenity Nails

I am super excited today because I have a guest post up today! Here's a sneak peek, but head on over to my post onChristine's blog, Serenity's Nails to check out the Celestial Cosmetics polishes used in this simple nail art mani. 

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. 

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

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!

Celestial's Stars group custom - Winter Sunset

If you are not a member of Celestial Cosmetics' fan group, then you're missing out on things like this gorgeous polish. It looks pink to me, but it's officially red with blue shimmer. If you're interested, you should join the group here.

I also used the September LE for the nail art. Hurry if you want either of these, they will be gone forever at the end of this month! They have also started stocking their own nail vinyls - I used the medium chevrons for this manicure.

The glitter is Maybelline Street Artist - White Splatter.

I was having a pretty good run with not buying too many things, but the last two weeks have seen me order a bunch of Celestial Polish, splurged on Kester Black, hauled some Ulta3 spring colours and my first FOA polish. And just earlier tonight... I went and ordered the whole Halloween collection from Lyz Cosmetics. It will be a new indie brand to me and I am already looking forward to it! 

Celestial Cosmetic Nail Art - Random shapes

One of my more time consuming art work, done with all Celestial Cosmetics products. Literally, everything came from there. They are:

• Stuck on Blu! basecoat
• Ayra Stark as the base colour
• Birth of a Sar, Nebula and Harley Dyna as the fill-in colours
• HK Girl top coat

I don't need to write anymore, you may just enjoy the photos now.

Celestial Cosmetics Photo Spam + Last Day of the Sale

 Today's the your last chance to go to Celestial Cosmetics grab Birth of A Star and use BIRTHDAY to get 25% for orders over $30. If I knew I'd get a free purple holo, I'd not have picked something else a little more different. Of course, Nebula is different, much warmer, and more magenta that the photo on the website would suggest... I like the cool lavender tone of Birth of A Star, might even prefer it over the Nebula whichI actually picked to pay money for!

Also picked up a dense brown glitter jelly, Brown Dwarf, mainly because it's such an unusual colour. My sister wants me to pick up the purple, Celestial Sphere. 

Harley Dyna has been on sale for a while. It is very pretty. Not normally into black, but this one is somehow still so, so colourful.

All lined up

Birth Of A Star

Nebula

Nebula, again

Brown Dwarf

Harley Dyna

Celestial Cosmetics - First foray into duochromes

I don't know how other people take those amazing colour shift photos. Perhaps it's my lack of light box. I also had trouble catching the natural night. If it's overcast and I get home late from the gym, I don't have much to work with. Really need to invest it light and/or macro lens. 

Anyways, I decided to get some of those duochromes, even though they're not really my usual style. They look so pretty in photos! 

I really wanted Mother of Dragons, and one in a dark colour. I considered Kingslayer, but decided to go with sapphire of Tarth. It's all about strong female characters for me and these two are representing and taking it to the men and kicking butt! 

First up, Sapphire of Tarth. To be honest, it's a bit darker than what I would be normally drawn to, and whilst it looks great it photos, it was a bit much for the middle of an Australian summer.

And the sexy Mother of Dragons. This was pretty gorgeous.

Next time, I think I might try to do a gradient with the two — what do you think?

31 Day Challenge 2013 – 17 Glitter (Doubles as Celestial Cosmetics Liquid Lawn Swatch)

The glitter day was the perfectly timed for me to use my lemming (as they say in the nail art world) polish, Liquid Lawn. I don't think I have been this careful with a manicure for a very long time. It's as gorgeous as it looks. I am not sure how others did it in a few coats, I needed about four.... I played with just the polish and a dark green polish as undies. The one without the base colour was perhaps a tad lighter, but not that noticeable. A generous layer or two of HK Girl to smooth out. Love it, dark without being vampy, this totally lived up to my expectations!

So sad was such an overcast day

With built-in flash

Trying to get closer to the window for light

31 Day Challenge 2013 – 16 Tribal Print

Tribal is not my thing, but decided to freehand something on my Arya Stark. The prints were loosely inspired by pictures in my Andean art book, which my friend Bronwen gifted me for no reasons whatsoever. I say loosely because they are nothing like the patterns in the book.

I absolute love Arya Stark, though it was fairly sheer. I run pretty warm as a person, so it was pink pretty much all the time, except when I ventured out to try jogging... Winter hasn't quite left Melbourne!

My First Indie Polishes! Celestial Cosmetics Haul!

I am very excited to have received my first order from an Indie nail polish brand! I have been lemming, as they say, for Liquid Lawn for months. When Celestial Cosmetics released a line inspired by Game of Thrones, I was totally ready to try something different. As a bonus, she sells Glisten & Glow HK Girl fast dry top coat! My sister can't seem to keep nail polish on her nails, so I got it with the base coat as a combo! I um'd and uh'd for ages, and wanted to get a thermal and a duochrome, but my student budget is strained enough as it is, so I went with the Arya Stark purple/pink thermal.

You may have noticed that there's a little blue bottle that I didn't mention: I got a sample of Cosmic Ray!

I can't wait to try them on, who cares that I only just did my names for day 15 of the challenge?? Keep your eyes peeled!