Lush Lacquer Seas the Moment – Swatches

Another gorgeous Lush Lacquer gifted to me on my birthday by my Sister V… squee! This is Seas the Moment – blue, green and white matte and satin glitters in a clear base.

But first – the ‘undies’ – my base colour. This is actually a polish my mother made, a gorgeous toddler blue with holographic shimmer. Toddler blue? Yeah, not really as pale and soft as baby blue, just a touch more grown up. 😉 Two layers of this – it was a bit runnier than I expected, and so flooded me nails. And left shimmer behind when I tried to clean it up quickly. Sorry about the mess, I obviously wasn’t feeling all that conscientious!

Now, this is Seas the Moment.

Pretty, huh! One thin, easy, lovely coat of Seas the Moment. Inside, under light 🙂

Macro…

And then, of course, I matted it with Essie Matte About You.

Macro of THAT 😀

And because I was dying to try out the 3 way Nail Art Pens again, I added a quick and nasty flower on my ring finger with the pink and black pens, and there is a little black rhinestone in the center of the flower. I like those black blingies, because they are really quite satin, not all that glittery at all! Something different…

Have a lovely day!

Ami 🙂

Lush Lacquer Cruisin 4 a Bruisin & Boe Beauty Purple Knights Swatches

Birthday polishes! Birthday polishes from two sisters, independently chosen which work brilliantly together 😀

This is Boe Beauty (a new to me brand) in Purple Knights – a gorgeous blue based purple with blue and red shimmer- this was a present from Sister C – yippee!

sunlight

These types of polish colours are some of my all time favourites! The formula on this was a bit runny, but quite workable, this is two coats here.

Then I added on thin coat of Cruisin 4 a Bruisin – blue, black and mid purple matte in a clear base, part of Lush Lacquers Halloween range, I believe, and a birthday present from Sister V. Thanks, Sister V! I LOVE IT! 😀

This is my second Lush Lacquer polish, and so far I love them all – they are packed full of glitter, and apply almost as easily as a creme. Seriously. Just brush it on like normal, and done!

*sighs in happiness*

Then I matted it with Essie Matte About You:

And wore this for two days, showing everyone I could 😀

Thank you, Sisters V and C, for providing me with a perfect-for-me manicure! LOVE YOU!

Have a great day

Ami 🙂

Revlon Emerald City – plus dots :)

I saw Jessie’s swatches of Emerald City, and then when I saw the polish for sale at the local (Palmerston North) Postie Plus, I had to buy it. I normally avoid Revlon, as they have started animal testing after being anti – cruelty for a long time, but want the China market. I won’t go into how angry and sad that makes me. And yet – I caved with a few Revlon polishes recently. I’m nowhere even close to perfect, and that just proves it! *guilt*

Ok, here it is!

Revlon Emerald City, two coats. In the bottle it’s a lovely deep green with shimmer, and on the nail it dries completely matte. So, yeah, I love it. Here I added dots of top coat, to give it the effect you see here. Easy nail art! As easy as it gets, really.

This is inside, no good lighting. The colour is pretty true to life!

I did enjoy this, however it chipped really fast (as mattes are prone too) so it’s more of a special occasion polish, or I guess I could put top coat over the tips for a funky french / anti-chip and tip wear look. 🙂

Have a nice day

Ami

Daring Digits Almandine & Amy’s Nail Howl At The Moon

The final of my polishes from Daring Digits polish; this is Almandine. Unlike the others, which have been glitter topcoats, this is a shimmer, and a pretty unique (to me, anyway!) colour too.

blurry, but it was the only photo I got that showed the subtle shimmer 🙂

What colour is this? I’m not quite sure. Dusty purple brown, with super fine multi-coloured shimmer. This almost looked like a duochrome, but if it is (and it’s not meant to be) it’s pretty subtle.

Daring Digits Almandine

This was two coats, they went on smoothly and dried moderately quickly.

photos are all in the shade – no sun to be found!

And over that I put one coat of Amy’s Nail Boutique Howl At The Moon.

Amy’s Nail Boutique Howl At The Moon – mini

Howl At The Moon is a gorgeous autumn glitter top coat, with small red, yellow and black hexes and what looks like super fine red and black glitters. All the glitter is matte, and the combination works really well together, and is packed in the bottle!

One coat over Almandine

Two coats over Almandine

Whole hand photo – I wore this mani to the first ever Art in the Woolshed exhibition locally, and had a few comments on how it looked like I had splatter painted this myself. No, no, this is easier! 😀

And with proper top coats – Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food, topped with a quick dry top coat for shine. It looks bumpy in these photos, but it wasn’t.

Macro..

Have a colourful, easy day!

Ami

Layering fun with Dollish Polish, Ozotic and More…

I have been trying to get a blog post out for days now. And I couldn’t! BUT I have now upgraded my browser to Firefox, and it’s working! WHOOP! Here is the long worked on post – a real mish mash it is, too! 😀

First up, the base colour coat. Because the star polish here was Dollish Polish Toad-ally Awesome, I chose a deep charcoal black to really make those glitters pop. This is Color Club After Hours – two coats, no top coat

Then one coat of Toad-ally Awesome, which is actually totally awesome. Look at the patriotic colours! For about half the world. Anyone else think its funny? Where are the silver and gold flags? The pink and magenta ones? Khaki green? Why so much blue/red/white?

Anywho, this is lovely – all matte glitters except for a sprinkle of blue sparkle glitter in a clear base. Easy to apply, almost no glitter placement required.

Then, Essie Matte About You. I do like matting glitter. Yus.

This looked very nice matte, everything stood out against the background really nicely.

And because it was lying around, I grabbed the Ozotic 509 and free-handed a diagonal stripe, so half had the holographic top coat, and the other half was still matte. Quite liked this effect, too.

Though… maybe not freehand next time. And I may build up the Ozotic a bit more, it’s a gorgeous super holo polish that needs more time to shine 😀

Have a great day

Ami

Daily Lacquer Makoto: Swatches, Layering and Review

I finally get around to the write-up on this cute polish! This is a pretty new Independant Polish brand, Daily Lacquer. Maggie (the creator) is super lovely to deal with, shipping was fast and packaging was a) great and b) really pretty (you can see it in this post here).This is Makoto, a green, pink, and holographic silver glitter top coat – based on the Sailor Moon series. Now, eek, I know nothing about Sailor Moon, but I do know what polishes I like, and I like this one!

Makoto – Daily Lacquer

For a start, I layered it over China Glaze Gaga For Green. (2 coats, no top coat – nice polish but thin and floody, hence the green cuticles, sorry!).

China Glaze Gaga For Green – sunshine.

  Then one coat of Makoto. This is an almost perfect top coat! There are so many glitters that it’s super easy to get enough on your nail, but not so many that they clump. I did have to move a few around a touch to a better position, but nothing strenous at all. No curling, no tricky bits.This glitter is chunky, so I finished it with a coat of NPB Glitter Food – hence the satin look in these photos. I quite like this effect!

Shade:

Sun:

And with a coat of Kleancolor Fast Dry – shade, so as not to blind anyone 😀

Oh, what’s that I hear? You *might* like this polish a little, but it could be too sweet for you? Fair enough – I wouldn’t agree, because I like glitter polishes which are versatile. But, for you, my not-so-sweet people, I give you this:

Two coats of Makoto over Kleancolor Black, matted with Essie Matte About You.

How’s that? I loved this. I like it over the green, I suspect I’ll like it over blue, white,  purple and possibly gold, but I did love it over the black.

I did two coats of Makoto to really get that contrast between the matte black and the colourful glitters going, but of course you could do more, or less, depending on the effect you want.

MACRO!

Dry time on this polish was about average – quicker with the matte, of course. Matting it left it a bit bumpy;  you could easily overcome this by adding a thicker top coat first, then matte it down. Up to you. I’m lazy, so I didn’t.

Have a great day
Ami

Daring Digits: Mango Square – Swatches and Layering

Daring Digits Mango Square, over Kleancolor Black. One coat of Kleancolor Black, two of Mango Square, no top coat.

Simple, pretty, and effective! I love the matte teeny white squares, and the larger yellow ones. The yellow is almost translucent, very pretty. Zero application issues, it’s a bit more sparse than it looks, so the two coats were needed.

 

Then, because I have my replacement Essie Matte About You, I used it.

Really loved this effect! It dried quickly (thanks, Essie!) and was pretty smooth to the touch.

And,of course, the whole-hand photo!

Have a great day

Ami

Dinosaur Nest Mani: Featuring China Glaze Make a Spectacle :)

Make a Spectacle is a GORGEOUS iridescent glitter, that on the nail shows orange and several different greens. WOW. I knew (from seeing swatches, and talking to Shipra from Taneja’s Bride) that Cast A Spell is a perfect base for Make A Spectacle, but I wanted to try Kalahari Kiss as well. Accent nail time!

 

Two coats of each, no top coat. You all know from the previous post here how much I love Cast A Spell. I wasn’t prepared for how much I love Kalahari Kiss. It’s so close to my skin tone, but it – just – works. And then I dotted with Cast A Spell. The idea was to cluster them thicker at the bottom, and more sparse at the top, that’s just what I felt like doing.

And then I thought it looked weird. Cool, but weird.

Then one ONE! coat of Make a Spectacle over all of them. This was so easy to apply. Just perfect.

 

And it looked very… dinosaur over the green, and my accent nails looked like an egg 😀 LOVE!

Then, because I liked the reptile theme and reptiles aren’t often shiny, I matte’d it with good ol’ Essie Matte About You.  Even more dinosaurian!

Even my husband liked this one, and agreed it looks like dinosaurs and an egg :D. Even though the odds are good that dinosaurs actually had feathers. This one didn’t, ok! *Sshhhh!*

 

And a whole-hand photo in poor lighting…

Have a great day
Ami

Indie Layering Fun with Daring Digits, Miki, and Amy’s Nail Boutique

I started with a base layer of Miki No 25, a rich buttery yellow which was moderately streaky.

Shown here is three coats to get it even, and it’s super pretty. Ding was my fault, streaks weren’t so much 😀 No base or top coat.

This polish is very glossy and moderately quick drying.

Then I  added one coat of Daring Digits True Love: gold glitter and red matte hearts in a clear base.

This was really packed with glitter – in a really good way. The formula was perfect, not too thick, nor too thin. This was just wiped on like a standard polish, with minimal placement fiddling required. Good heart payoff too, no fishing AT ALL required! Yus!

Then I added one coat of a cool polish called Kitchen Sink, by Amy’s Nail Boutique. Appropriately named, because, as Amy says in the write-up; it’s got every kind of glitter in it except.. the kitchen sink :D.

Normally I run a mile from these types of glitter, but the massive selling point for me is THIS IS IN A MATTE BASE.

Yep, you put this shiny glitter over something, and it mattes everything, leaving the glitter shiny.

WOAH. That’s AWESOME.

Easy to apply, its very thick but not unworkable: I don’t know if normal thinner would work on this, so haven’t experimented.  Dry time is pretty quick, not as quick as a Essie Matte About You, but quicker than Kleancolor Madly Matte.

I really enjoyed playing with these cute polishes, and getting a differently, but not outlandish – and very wearable polish.

Have a great day!

Ami 🙂

All That Glitters: Whole Hearted Remix – Swatches

This is All That Glitters gorgeous black and white polish top coat: Whole Hearted Remix, from her etsy shop, here. I bought this and Book Smart Beauty the other week, they’re gorgeous.

Hole Hearted Remix over Kleancolor Metallic Red

This polish consists of matte black hearts and matte small and extra small matte white hexes in a clear base. This is a remix, the colours are reversed: in the original Hole Hearted the hearts are white, and the small hexes are black. Both are super cute, and both really appealed, this one just called out a bit louder. Both are still in her Etsy shop too!

I layered this over Kleancolor Metallic Red, to get those power colours going. One coat Metallic Red, and two coats of Whole Hearted Remix, plus Kleancolor Fast Dry topcoat. Whole Hearted Remix has plenty of glitters, no fishing required! I’d love just a sprinkle more though, as it ended up quite thick and didn’t dry before I had to go, so I had to take it off *sad panda*

I’ll be putting this on again, for sure, at a later stage! It was BEAUTIFUL. I also really think that, like my beloved Sticks ‘n’ Stones, this can be worn over almost anything. Looooovee!

Have an awesome day

Ami 🙂