first world blogger issues … and Nail Polish Spam!

Morning! Let me share a (non) sob story with whoever has the wish to read further. I have a lot of untried nail polishes. A LOT. Because, well, I buy a fair amount, in spurts, and then I hate to put them on, take photos, and take them straight off again. It feels wasteful to me, and unfair to the polishes who really deserve better 😀 What to do? I think I *may* have a solution!

This post will show a bunch of polishes, which I have swatched only. As in, put on, photographed, taken off. NEXT! BUT….at the end of this I chose my favourites (and with 10 nails I can choose up to 10 hehehe NO RULES!) and put them back on as a proper manicure, and wear that for a while.  Let me know if it works for you, and I’ll let you know if it works for me! 😀

(honestly, I have about 150 polishes that I haven’t even tried. Steps need to be taken.)

SpaRitual Elixir –  3 coats, no top coat, shade photos.

Sheer but pretty, sort of bridal-esque polish with pretty glass flecks. I love this brand, even though I have the worlds most boring colours from them, I just love the bottles and the image of it all.

Banana Republic Black Wisteria – 3 coats, no top coat, shade

Sun… Black Wisteria is a very jellyish polish, and with my application skills this equals streaky. Lovely and glossy though!

Fantasy Makers (by Wet & Wild, snigger at the name) Nail in the Coffin. 3 coats, no top coat.

Very cool bottle, and I love the dark and shimmery brown polishes! Nice one!

Nfu Oh 074 – two coats over black, three coats alone, no top coat

These shimmers are too sheer for me to wear on their own, but I like them over black, the yellow goes olive. Very nice.

Rimmel Grey Matters – 3 coats no top coat

Solid grey creme. Yep. Can always use these, can’t wax too eloquent about them.

Boe Beauty Champagne – 3 coats, no top coat

Pretty shimmer, $2 in The Warehouse, why you so streaky?!

Sabrina Sato Dreams – 3 coats, no top coat

slightly frosty colour duochrome polish, dusty blue/ gold.

Kolt Golden Chip – 2 coats no top coat

Adore this polish. Just, wow. Applies so smoothly, and it’s such a perfect gold shade 🙂

Covergirl midnight magic – 3 coats, no top coat

deep blackened blue with blue shimmer that doesn’t hide too much.

Wet and Wild (snigger) Teal of Fortune – 3 coats no top coat

very pretty polish! Stains, though. Word of warning. Double basecoat and don’t let it touch your cuticles (don’t feed it after midnight, either!).  A bit sheer, as you can probably see for yourself. In real life the shimmer is blinding and it’s not so obviously sheer.

Kleancolor Chunky Holo Black – 1 coat layered over Nail in the Coffin, no top coat

Been meaning to try this one for a year. I actually have two, one I’ll franken though. Nice large iridescent flakes, green/gold/orange/blue.

And my favourites were Kolt Golden Chip and Wet &  Wild Teal of Fortune

so I just did some accent nails and reversed the colour in the little rhinestones.

I didn’t get any photos, but my youngest son was also a fan of the Kolt and got me to do his nails, which was fun, it’s been awhile since they’ve let me do that! 😀

Some of these I’ve been given, some I’ve bought. I won’t, personally, by Covergirl or Wet & Wild brands, but I’ll use them if I’ve been given them, and love them too 😀 My personal opinion is that point of purchase is where we can make a difference between buying animal tested (or from a brand who does) and from one who doesn’t. After that, fair game 😀

Have an awesome day!

Ami 🙂

PANZ Week 5: Glitter Gradient

Week 5! And thanks to Queens Birthday here in New Zealand, plus this cold I have making me super scatty, this completely snuck up on me. I had some trepidation with glitter gradient, I’ve done several (mostly to cover up tipwear), but I’ve never been happy with them. So I went looking for internet inspiration, found some, and came up with this:

The inspiration was from this website here, and she has a black and silver theme – and much longer nails! And I loved them, they’re gorgeous. I did want to swap the black for a blue though, which I did.

The nude is Nfu Oh 08, two coats. Then I did a raggedy (I can’t draw straight lines, ok?!) french type tip with OPI Russian Navy – one coat, and then two dabbed coats of  Le Chat Hologram Diamond glitter.

I must say, this is my favourite glitter gradient so far, ever! It looks quite classy to my eye, without being in anyway boring, and glittery without being over done. Plus I love soft neutral pinks and they last on my fingers about 2 seconds before I get bored and change it, so this gives me a cool way to wear those colours 😀

I did cheat and only do this on the four fingernails I take photos of, so now I’m going to do the rest of my nails to match. Yep. Happiness is 🙂

Have a wonderful day

Ami

Nfu Oh Flakie 60 – Swatches

Just a quick post showing Nfu Oh 60 on it’s own – this is three coats, Misa BREAKneck top coat. I layered it earlier, and found that it was probably deep enough to use on it’s own, and it really is 🙂

It’s a brown tone, rather than black, but the flakies all show up and shift really pretty, and it was moderately quick drying and easy to remove.

Sorry for the poor photos, I had no natural light to work with and my camera hates the kitchen lighting (which is, so far, my best alternative) and makes things look HORRIBLE. This isn’t a horrible polish though 🙂

Bottle shot to show all those colour changing flakes! Love flakes..

The only photo I really got with some of the shift on my nails..

Have a great day

Ami

Handmade and Franken Polishes – random assortment

More! Yes! We love making these, and I love sharing them, and having a record of what we made.

This is a beautiful red jelly with glitter polish that my gorgeous mother made just for MEEEE!

My nail isn’t in the best shape, but the polish itself is gorgeous. Glossy, smooth, pretty quick drying. This is using one of the red tinters from Beautyworld, in Australia

It is still sheer, this is three coats, but I could layer it if I wanted. I do love how streak free it is!

And here’s another crelly glitter polish I made – I think it’s pretty cute. My ring finger only has one coat of polish – I could say it was to show you how it builds, which is PARTIALLY true – but it only happened because I hit my hand on something and took my polish off, so thought I’d take the opportunity. Clumsiness – my middle name 😀

Three coats, China Glaze Fast Forward top coat. This does need a bit of thinning, but I really like the soft pastel effect 🙂

This looked all soft and squishy… and sadly, it was! There is a ding on my index nail too… whoops.

Then I layered two coats over Kleancolor White, and it looked a lot more stark white, but was easier to work with, and the pastel glitters stood out really nicely.

I love the shine!

I sort of feel bad about this next one. This is a cool polish from Mmmmm Nails, called The Boy Who Broke My Heart. And I love the concept, the large glitters in a clear base with small silver and iridescent glitters, but.. there wasn’t ENOUGH big glitter in it!

So I added more. More matte black circle, holographic butterflies, black hearts, and medium sized green circle glitters. I do think this needs some more mid sized glitters though, it seems a little unbalanced, glitter size-wise, to me.  This is one coat of The Boy Who Broke My Heart – upsized – over Nfu Oh 67.

And last but not least, here is another upsized polish: Jordana Lilac Hearts, plus MOAR glitters.

The gorgeous Danielle gifted me this for Xmas, and when I bought some glitters I just KNEW they’d work well with the lilac hearts and cute little iridescent glitters of Lilac Hearts.

Here I’ve layered one coat over China Glaze Gaga for Green – and it reminds me of a garden. Absolute love. I think this would look lovely over quite a few different base coats, too! Thanks for getting this polish for me, Danielle! I hope you don’t mind that I put more in it, but I love it sooo much like this 😀

I do really like the base of the Jordana polishes for suspending big glitter, they just don’t seem to sink at all!

Have a wonderful day

Ami 🙂

Nfu Oh 67 – Swatches

Another super quick swatch post – this time Nfu Oh 67.

I thought, oh yes, silver foil, nice but I have had several of those… but, nothing quite as pretty as this one. I think the foil particles are smaller, maybe? So overall this was so lovely, bright and shimmery it was insane. LOVE.

shade

Two coats from memory, it does show ridges / nail bed issues, so a good base coat is recommended, but not in use here hehehe. Dry time was moderate – on the quicker side of average, and removal was easy although, like all foils, little sparkly silver balls will be all over your hands for quite some time. 😉

sun

I think a good silver polish is almost a staple, and so far this is my all time favourite. I did buy A-England Excalibur and am keen to see how that looks on, but they look so different in the bottle that I am certain I have space for both 😉

Have a shimmery day

Ami 🙂

Orly Razzle and Nfu Oh 60 – swatches and layering

More polishes from the amazing haul from my facebook polish group of Full On Enablers 😀 (love you girls! You rock!) – here is Orly Razzle.

I… liked this polish more than it liked me. Its a lovely deep raspberry fuchsia colour, with heaps of pink and silver shimmer through it. Two coats here, I could have used a third according to the unforgiving Mr Macro, but in real life it looked fine with two.

Check out that amazing shimmer…Even in the shade the silver showed up to add visual interest – smooth, too. A large shimmer, not a glitter.

My skin tone doesn’t love fuchsia pinks – and so I thought I’d layer Nfu Oh 60 over it. In the bottle it’s a multi-hued flakie in a black jelly base, and I am used to black jelly bases being very sheer. “great” thinks Ami to herself “it will deepen the pink and add flakies! Win!”

um. This is a nice dense jelly. I’m pretty sure this would be opaque in 3 coats on its own. And yes, you could say it deepened the pink… all the way into auburn. This is one coat of Nfu Oh 60. ONE. Pretty though! I did like this, even though I’m not that good at making an even layer, apparently! Ah well…

These photos show a slightly different look on my pinky nail – it has a coat of Kolt Lunatic, but the duochrome doesn’t show up, it must need to be layered over black.

Sunlight…

Lots of shine from this combo! I had finished it off with one coat of Misa BREAKneck, which was getting kinda gluggy.

Showing the green shift of the flakes…

There you go! I can’t wait to try Nfu Oh on it’s own, and I think Razzle will make a great base colour for a LOT of glitter toppers I have.

Have a great day!

Ami 🙂

piCture pOlish Splash: review and many, many swatches and combinations :)

Jules and the gorgeous ladies at piCture pOlish asked if I would like to review a few more polishes of theirs, and you KNOW I’m not going to say no. Boy do I love their polishes. I have bought so many of them since I was lucky enough to get Orbit and Pshiiit to review for Blog Fest 2012… and now I’m addicted. 😀 And now that my nubs have grown out a little, here is the first!

This is Splash, a aqua blue glitter in a clear base – small hexes and teeny specks.

This photo is one thin layer of Splash over two coats of NYX Ink Heart – a pairing to me which seems a classic choice, blue on blue.

sunshine

AND these bottles all have a  QR code on the side, so people with fancy phones can scan in the code and get more information 🙂

sunshine

Then for a different look, I layered on thin coat of Splash over two coats of Nfu Oh 131 – this was nicely contrasting!

inside

And it had this amazing sparkle and shine…

sunshine

So amazing, in fact, that here is another photo of it. No top coat here, Splash sits very flush to the nail.

sunshine, happiness!

And because my goal here is to show off the versatility of this polish (something I really look for in a polish; how many ways it can be used!) I’ve layered it here over a classic pinkish/sheerish nude. In this case, three coats of Opoola 36 (a CR Cosmetics polish, from the $2 shop!). I used one thickish coat of Splash to get this effect.

inside, shade…

And in the sun…

And then with one more coat of Opoola, to sandwich the glitter.

shade…

This had a lovely soft watercolour effect, although I’d use a slightly thinner and quicker drying polish next time, the Opoola didn’t want to dry, and I dinged my nails. Ah well, the idea is there!

sunshine!

And for something even more toned down, this is two coats of OPI Steady as she Rose, with a glitter tip gradient of Splash.

a whale! yes! It, too, Splashes. Shade…

Mmm, probably a bit subtle for me, personally, and it could use a nice top coat to smooth out that gradient tip waterline there.

sunshine, whale!

And now, to go from subtle to UBER sparkly, this is one coat of Splash over two coats of piCture pOlish Orbit. With accent nail bling.

plus a lovely geode. Purdy

Why? Because I think mermaids wearing Splash would like water toned glitter. Thanks to Ariel The Little Mermaid (movie version) I now think they are all sort of magpies… 😀 I think this should have had top coat, but then my camera would have freaked out at the shine and glitter. I love how Splash adds that little extra pop of contrast and sparkle to Orbit!

sunshine, glittery rocks and polish

And here is one thick layer of Splash over two coats of Up Colours Azul Arco Iris.

I do love how the glitter shines inside, and still lets the subtle holo peep through in the sunlight 🙂

sunshine and rainbows!

And, finally, my favourite combination!

This is Splash over two coats of OPI Russian Navy, and one coat of Ninja Polish Alexandrite.

taking time to smell the roses? Yes, but mostly to admire the nail polish…

Those two polishes (Russian Navy and Alexandrite) look spectacular together, Alexandrite really pops over the blue and colour shifts blue/purple/green all over the place: but when you add Splash over the top…. WOW.

Gilding the beetle, I’d call that. Taking something beautiful, and making it MORE beautiful – it complements the blue base and shift, and contrasts with the other colour changes. This was one thick coat of Splash, topped off with Misa BREAKneck.

Important notes: the base texture of Splash is almost too good – its so smooth and flowing it’s almost slippery. It’s super easy to place the glitters, but they can tend to slip towards the tip of your fingernails if you over work the polish – sometimes I did wiggle the brush a bit to replace the glitters, but there was no real ‘dabbing’ or mucking around. Dry time was average, and the glitters lie very flat, no gritty glitter here!

bottle, posed on the BBQ. SUMMER! 😀

You can buy this polish from piCture pOlish’s website, or if you are based here in New Zealand, check out Gracie Lou: all sorts of goodies here, including piCture pOlish, Ozotic, and more. Amazingly fast and well packaged shipping from both of those shops, in my experience.

Thanks for reading, have a great day!

Ami 🙂

*Disclosure: the piCture pOlish shown here, Splash, was provided to me for review. All other polishes, bad cleanups, poor photography, overly wordy descriptions, opinions and random hand poses are entirely my own.*

Another Week Of Holiday Nubs: heaps of photos!

Week two! My nails are NOT GROWING FAST ENOUGH. Grrr. First World Problems. I have been sent some amazing polishes to review, and I can’t do justice to them with my little broken claws, but in the meantime I am having fun glitzing them up.

This is Darling Diva Polish Cherry Jubilee – three coats, and Misa BREAKneck top coat.

Really super pretty!

Then I mungled two fingernails and repainted those with a really nasty jelly sandwich: I used Nfu Oh 008 as the base (2 coats), then one coat of L.A. Girl Glitter Animate and a green franken, then another coat of Nfu Oh 008: all was going well until the green franken, because it had a green base colour in it and it KILLED this. Green glitter would have been nice. This looks mouldy.

Moving along rapidly, I then layered Cherry Jubilee over Kleancolor White, 2 coats, and 2 coats of Cherry Jubilee.

I prefer this one on it’s own, the white of Cherry Jubilee is perfect and translucent and soft without being see-through

Next mani: This is another franken of mine – which needs thinner and Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food, I think. It was very lumpy, and I fluctuated between hating this, and quite liking the lizard skin look.

The base polish was China Glaze Solar Flare – those gold hexes, in a clear base. I added lilac shimmer, and red and green fine glitter. It really needs a mid-size (between the tiny and the gold) glitter, but I don’t have one.

Next! This is China Glaze Ring in the Red – as Christmassy  a polish as can be easily found. This was really quite hard to apply! Patchiness and balding happened – I recommend leaving quite a bit of time between coats. It was also a bit pinker based than I expected, but I love the glittery-ness. This is three coats. Quite a smooth finish for  a super glitter!

Then, too much of a good thing being never enough, I added one coat of L.A. Glitter Addict  Animate. Mmmm that’s what I wanted. Yes.

You bored yet? Hope not, there’s more! This is three coats of China Glaze Ring in the Red, and Darling Diva Polish Mitochondral Eve. BLINGY! Christmas salad.

I alternated between really adoring the colourfulness, and thinking it was a bit garish… but meh, it’s the silly season. I like being silly.

Then, as a change of pace from the garish I tried this combo, and really liked it! It was rich and festive, without being too over the top. This is two coats of China Glaze Riveter Rouge – a nice rich auburn red with copper and silver mini glitters, with one thin coat of OPI Serving Up Sparkle over the top, finished with Misa BREAKneck (my new favourite top coat)

And last was a series… first up, Nfu Oh 124 – a lovely dark shimmery green which was more sheer than I anticipated. Three coats, no top coat. A bit hard to get the layers even, hence the different tones of green!

Then a coat of Nfu Oh 039, a super cute green-blue shift flaky

And finally, for extra festive fun, a thin coat of Darling Diva Polish Holiday Lights, topped with Misa BREAKneck.

 

Up close and sparkly…

That’s a lot of polish changes in one week. I had loads of fun, and almost all of these had a PVA glue base coat, so I could just peel it off, and start another one. Which I did frequently, as you can tell 😀

Have a great day

Ami