China Glaze: Budding Romance – swatches and layering

China Glaze Budding Romance, one of my favourite types of pretty ugly green polishes 😀

It’s a jelly though, which I wasn’t expecting, and gives it a squishy look and super shine, which I do love!

Two coats here, they were quite thick though, and I think three thin ones would be better. It’s a flattering colour on my olive-ish skin tone.

And then I layered it with L.A. Girl Glitter Addict, Purge. Quite an appropriate name with this combination, I feel! (sorry. cough.)

Though, please note, I added the lighter green holographic hexes to this polish, without alteration Purge has mini and midi emerald green hex glitters. Very pretty. I just like it better with the holo glitters too 😀

On my accent nail I added another thin coat of Budding Romance, and topped it all off with Misa BREAKneck top coat.

Unfortunately I had to catch some chickens and it was still squishy looking AND squishy acting 15 minutes after top coat, and it all smunched up and fell off. Ah well. Was pretty while it lasted! 😀

Have a nice day

Ami 🙂

Day 30: A Tutorial

Day 30 of the 31 Day Nail Polish Challenge: A tutorial.

Now, it wasn’t until I had already taken the photos that I thought this could be INSPIRED by a tutorial – but too late. I made a tutorial for you instead. This tutorial is How To Go Crazy With Glitter Polish! 😀

First up: Base coat. Use PVA glue – it removes all the fear from glitter polish – as you can safely and easily peel if off. Effortless!

You can see it goes clear as it dries – which takes the guessing out of the occasion. It’s ready to paint on when it’s all clear 🙂

Then apply your first coat. I used Color Club Ruby Slippers. Pretty, huh? It does dry matte-ish, but with a top coat it’s Sparkle City!

Then, add another glitter! Match! Contrast! Whatever! I contrasted with Kleancolor Starry Purple – and really liked it.

Dot on more uber glittery polish: First, put a few dabs of polish on some non-absorbent paper – I used Color Club Gingerbread.

Dabbing polish onto paper to use for dotting…

Then dip your dotting tool (or end of an unwound paperclip!) into it, and dot onto your nails.

Admire effect.

Add another glitter! Go on, why not? If you hate it, peel it off! This is all about the crazy … I used L.A Girl Glitter Addict in Animate.

There you go! Of course you can keep going, or stop just a bit before step 1. Its a free world! Basically, sometimes I feel it all gets a bit ‘serious’ in the world of nails. I’m not all that serious a person when it comes to colour and paint on my nails. Go hard, have fun!

Have a great day

Ami

Todays Exciting Stuff Haul and Nail Mail!!

Today, I went to town. And went to town buying stuff for me! I should feel embarrassed about it, but I don’t. And I’m not going to force it 😀

I bought  a Natio foundation (no pictures, may review later!) and a mini sized Orly In A Snap topcoat from Farmers – the Natio was on sale for $19. Yay! I find it so hard to get a good colour match with foundation, but this looked pretty good, and animal friendly too!

L to R: Retro Green (that’s not green!), Neon Fuschia, Concrete Gray. Neon Sapphire. One of these colours is NOT LIKE THE OTHERS!

Then I bought these Kleancolor nail polishes and another Kleancolor lipstick from the $123 Store – well, actually, it’s the exact same lipstick, I’ll put photos up of that later, too. What happened to the first? My eldest son ate it. All. Man, I can hardly get him to eat his dinner, but he’ll eat ALL of my lipstick. *facepalm*

Aqua Minerals Mud Soap

I also bought a face soap from a very earnest saleperson – the brand used to be called Seacret – one of those Dead Sea Mineral ones. I actually really liked the brand (but not the ‘ocean’ scent) – she desperately wanted me to buy a $60 face scrub but I don’t have that kind of money. So I went for the soap instead. I do need something deep cleansing, and this mud soap with pretty good ingredients may do it – esp when paired with my beloved LUSH Angels on Bare Skin scrub.

Then, when I got home, there was my Beauty Joint nail haul in the mail! *happy clappy hands*. Not pictured is the Seche Restore, because I put it down and forgot it when I took these photos – just imagine a clear nail polish bottle if you will. And done. I’m VERY excited about that, though – resurrecting some old favourites! (Esp the OPI Burlesque glitters I have that wow.. I could walk on those.)

Kleancolor Metallic Set:

Metallic Orange, Green, Aqua, Sapphire, Fuschia, Black. Does anyone else get the feeling that Kleancolor only knows a few names for colors, and just changes the finish? 😀

I DIDN’T buy the Kleancolor Metallic Red I saw in the $123 Store, because I thought it’d be in this set. It’s not. It’s pretty. It will be mine, just not today. I am glad I’ve got a Metallic Aqua too – that one’s for my mother 🙂

Glitter Addict Animate, Kleancolors Chunky Holo Scarlet, Gold Bright, Jazz Olive. I wanted a gold gold! Anyone know a great Kleancolor true gold polish?

Then some other Kleancolours, and L.A Glitter Addict – oooh look at the red sparkle!

Kleancolor Jazz Olive

This is Jazz Olive, I picked it for my sister as a present – I can’t wait to see it on, it’s almost a green with gold at some angles, close to duochrome-y in the bottle. I wonder if it translates on the nail? Close up for you, Sister V!

Then my China Glazes… yay! Can’t wait to try all these on!

Ride the Waves (on Beauty Joint its called Wide the Waves hehe), Rare & Radiant, Swanky Silk, Unpredictable.

Have a great day, everyone- I know I am! 😀

Ami

NYX Ink Heart – Swatches, and Glitter Topping

This is NYX Girls Ink Heart, a gorgeous navy/royal blue jelly polish:

NYX Ink Heart

I loved the colour of this polish: it was a royal blue in the sunlight.. behold!

I don’t know what that lump is, or where it came from. There was only one, though, so I think it’s a one-off, rather than a problem polish!

And a soft navy in the shade…

But had that gorgeous shine everywhere. These swatches are three coats, a top coat of Orly Sec n Dry, and a base coat because it’s blue :D. It didn’t need the top coat for shine – just to dry a bit faster. Dry time was average, and the formula was great, super easy to apply , it did run a tiny bit but not too bad, and it self-leveled really nicely. It did stain a bit on removal, I was glad I put a base coat on. While there was some blue on my skin after taking it off, a quick hand wash removed that, so don’t panic if it happens to you! 😀

Whole hand photo…

Because I really wanted to see some copper with this blue, I added a top coat of L.A Girl Glitter Addict in Flamboyant to my little and middle fingernails.

I really liked this combination! Flamboyant is a very pretty glitter, but I tend to prefer Nostalic (because of the holographic glitter in Nostalgic). This was a great way to play with the glitter, it set off the blue of the non-accented nails and enhanced the coppery orange glitter.

You can get L.A Girl Glitter Accent range from Beauty Joint too, I want ALL their glitters! Actually, I have a cart loaded with polishes that I madly want right NAOW… but will have to wait until the money fairy visits. Fingers crossed she does…

piCture pOlish pshiiit layered :)

Here’s one more photo I took of piCture pOlish pshiiit, after I layered one coat of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict in Nostalgic over it. This was pretty, too! Although, I think I do prefer pshiiit on it’s own. But look, I found the perfect match for this polish!

It’s a pretty flower hair tie, and the blues and greens (and glitter, with the Nostalgic) suit each other nicely.

Here’s a non- secret: I’d broken my index finger nail right down, and patched it with nail glue and a patch cut out from a teabag so I could have even length nails while swatching the piCture pOlish lacquers. It worked fine, and held for almost a week. There’s lots of tutorials online, so if you need to hold a broken nail together for awhile, it’s worth checking it out! 🙂

Kleancolor Frappachino goes WILD

I did a whole bunch of photos of this pretty, subtle but shimmery copper brown Kleancolor. And my darling eldest son deleted them. So, I put it back in the ‘to photo’ pile – until today. And here is Frappachino – a colour I will forever associate with my blogger friend Del from Domestic Minxes (check out their blog! They’re good, those minxy girls).

This was three coats, no top coat. It is sheer, but has great formula and builds fine. Possibly some VNL at three coats, but hey. This is me, right? Top coats are going to happen, right? Oh yeah.

Next up was one coat of Julep Melissa (thanks again, Megan!). I love this polish for it’s ability to transform any other polish – in this case it stayed a subtle colour, but had that green pop.

Julep Melissa over Kleancolor Frappachino

Then one coat of OPI Turquoise Shatter, and top coat (Orly Sec’n’Dry) – because, remember Ami’s Rule One of Shatter/Crackle: Use Top Coat.

And that was it for a little bit – I did some dishes, and it wasn’t dry, and the polish got all munched. I smooshed it all back into place and decided to add MORE to cover the wrinkles. (Wrinkles are LOVELY on people. I think it needs to be said until we all believe it and stop throwing our money at suited smarmy marketing people).

Smoooshed nail polish!

I wanted to add visual interest and colour shift, while disguising the wrinkles, and not covering the shatter and underlying polishes. I did take photos of each step, but the lighting was so bad I can’t use them.

But the layers were:

• L.A. Girl Glitter Addict in Nostalgic – one coat
• And then a coat of Kleancolor Chunky Holo Purple – which added that gorgeous purple colour shifting sparkles to the whole nail. It pretty much set it on fire. Impressed I was.
• And then last, but not least, was a layer of Australis Speck-tacular flakie polish – why? Because I could. Also, adding the flakies will mean that this mani should look good in every light. And it does, yay!

Topped off with another coat of Orly Sec’n’Dry. I’m really happy with this! Its pretty thick, yeah, but then it’s 9 layers of polish. So fair enough. Its not that garish –  and although I do have a soft spot for garish,  I like that even with 9 coats of polish it’s not.

 And a whole-hand shot…

Afternote: I had lots of compliments on this polish ,which was strange as I dont expect people to notice. I think it was the textured / crackle look, people still seem fascinated with that. Me, I still dont really like it, so that was my biggest challenge here – find a way I can wear it!

Thanks to anyone who made it through this post, and have a great day 🙂

Revlon Jaded Night – Swatches

This is Revlon Jaded Night – the first Revlon polish I have bought since.. ooh I think it was called Tidal Wave, and it was nice. About 10 years ago, too. It was a very sheer blue/green duochrome… and didn’t dry. And was really really sheer. I’ve been put off Revlon by that, but now I think I’m ok with them again.

I love this colour – this is two coats, and it dried really quickly. Nice and glossy, no top coat in these pictures. Lovely creme – easy removal and clean up (although you can see I didn’t try too hard as I wanted to get the photos taken very quickly). It dries slightly more forest green than the bottle colour. I also love the fact that Revlon doesn’t test on animals. Thanks, Revlon!

This was so nice to put on – just the perfect consistancy, didn’t run at all.

It was also more flattering on me than I thought it would be, and am looking forward to wearing this again!

Then I popped a glitter top coat on it, because I thought it needed it.

I was wrong though, I think it looks better on it’s own. This is one coat of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict in Nostalgic – love this glitter, the turquoise and the holographic mini glitter looks brilliant. But.. still prefer Jaded Night on it’s own, or maybe will just try a glitter tip next time.

Hope everyone had a great weekend – I did, midwinter Xmas with my family, yay! Also very busy, hence the quiet over the last few days. I’m back now though, and I’ll bet 20 cents  you didn’t notice I was gone. 😉

Ami 🙂

Depend Nail Polish 009 – Swatch

My friendly fellow NZ blogger and HUGE nail polish addict Delindel from Domestic Minxes recently told me about her Depend purchase of this very nail polish (009). She hearted it, apparently. Well, that was good enough for me: along I trotted and picked up 009 (the resentful and about to turn nasty agent brother/friend of James Bond, I guess.)

*Actually, wasn’t the baddie played by Sean Bean 009?? I only remember that movie because Sean Bean = hot *

Back to the polish, and here it is!

I’d describe it as a deep peach with fine silver shimmer.  This was the exact polish I was looking for when I was 14. I saw a lady wearing this colour (wouldn’t have been this brand way back then!) and I longed for nails like that. Subtle, yet glam. I nagged my parents, and eventually they let me buy the closest I could find… which was orange. I’ve been scared of orange since, though I  am taking steps to get over that. I would have been wrapt to find this colour at 14.

But… add 20 years to that age, 20 years of hard-ish work and sun exposure.. and this polish is no longer my friend. It gives me instanto old lady hands.

I do like the colour, I just don’t like it on me. Sorry, Del! However, I am glad I got it, as now I have that colour in my stash and can cross it off the list. These pics are three coats, no top coat. It was very sheer, still some VNL at three coats, nice and shiny, and had a great – though thinnish – formula. No running or streaking.

I did decide to go top coat crazy,and see what that would do.

Pinky is L.A.Girl Glitter Addict in Flamboyant, ring fingernail is Cover Band Sticks and Stones (suprised? Didn’t think so!)

Middle finger is Color Club Wish Upon a Rock Star, and index fingernail is Darling Diva Polish Dreamy.

Out of all of these, I liked Dreamy the best. It made it even more subtle; softened up the peach colour, and added a nice holographic effect. So, for a super safe ‘play-it-by-the-80’s-book’ with an almost invisible twist, I’d pick that one. 🙂

CR / Color Cosmetic 115 Nail Polish

I had a quick look through my stash and realised that I have 12 nail polishes from the $2 shop. They’re all this same brand, I think it’s CR.. but I’m not sure. They don’t have names, just numbers, but they are surprisingly good value for the $2 shop! I thought I’d get swatches of them all, just because. I only wish they were not animal tested! I can’t find out if they are or aren’t, so have to assume they are, so won’t be getting any more 😦

Here’s the first, 115. This is a pretty green-based teal – shimmery bordering on foil. In the sunlight I’d call it a foil.

Shade...