Cult Nails - Flushed

I know, I know.  I am a very naughty blogger.  It's been almost two weeks since my last post and I have no excuses.  I just haven't felt motivated to blog lately.  Work has been busy and by the time I paint my nails, the urge to blog and show it off has waned and I tell myself that I will do it later.  Later never comes.

Until today!

I assure you I HAVE been doing my nails, and I still upload my manicures on my IG account frequently.

One of the benefits of not updating your blog in a while is a huge backlog of manicures to post, so I plan to write all my overdue posts and schedule them for throughout the week.

Today's nails are simply gorgeous.

Cult Nails Flushed is a 'blurple' with an intense purple/pink shimmer that truly does glow through the polish.  I would almost liken it to a more opaque version of MF Fantasy Fire - though of course the colour shifting shimmer shows different colours than FF.  It still gave me the same yummy feeling.  And as always, I found myself staring at my nails for long periods of time at different angles to capture the shimmer.

This polish applied quite nicely, though it was a bit sheer and required four coats to get the opacity in the photos above.  I decided to jazz it up a bit by adding a pretty pink rhinestone to each nail.  I thought the pink in the rhinestone went quite nicely with pink in the shimmer of the polish.

x

China Glaze - DV8

I love me a good holo and while the China Glaze OMG collection are not the best holos available, they sure are pretty!

Today I have DV8 to show you.

It is described as a sea green/blue.  A teal.  Gorgeous.

This is two coats topped with SV.  I find that the holo effect is not dulled by the addition of top coat, so that's awesome, as top coat usually means prolonged wear.  Though this manicure chipped quite quickly, a down-point to holos.

In other news, I have finally joined the helmer owners group and feel like a REAL nail polish enthusiast now that I own one.

I wish I'd ordered two, as unfortunately the helmer has been discontinued in Adelaide and Perth.  Bummer!

x

Aussie Nails Monday - Green

Today's theme for Aussie Nails Monday is GREEN.

Funnily enough I have been fairly fond of green nails lately and my last few manicures have been green.  It's blue week all over again!

I decided on doing something really simple today.  So I present to you my first half moon manicure.

Again, they are far from perfect, but I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.

I started with a base of Orly Fresh then once they were dry (I painted the Orly Fresh the day before... just to be sure) and then used hole reinforcers to tape off the half moon. I then painted on CG Exotic Encounters and topped that with Cult Nails Hypnotise Me.  I love the glittery goodness of Hypnotise Me.

I struggled a bit with the polish drying and starting to pull when I removed the hole reinforcer, maybe if I just did the China Glaze, it wouldn't have been a problem, but oh well, I handled it, lol.

I topped everything off with two coats of SV.  I did two coats because I wanted it smooth and didn't want to feel the ridge where the CG and Cult Nails was painted on.

Next week's theme is BLING BLING.  Soooooo many possibilities!

Please check out the other awesome nails from the rest of the ANM crew:

Ten Little Nubs -

Nail Gun XS -

Marie’s Manicure Madhouse -

Shatter Me Claire -

A Polished Prance -

Shades of Phoenix -

The Epitome of Superficiality -

Lacquer Dreams -

NananaisNails -

Enamoured With Enamel -

Adelle1985 -

Kelly's Kolors -

Polished Peripherals -

Every Little Polish -

Mel My Issta -

Walk In My Eyeshadow -

JennLojko -

Erinzi’s Nails -

Lovessweetas -

Jas’ Blingtastic Nails -

Mckfresh -

Maedaynails -

Lili_Bete -

The Reluctant Femme -

Lacquer and Leather -

Messy Mansion -

Nailovelogy -

adnoronda -

It's All About The

Polish -

Pretty Polish Please -

polished_off -

jennersx -

thepolishedclaw -

Julzperrinails -

Caylah -

Tash -

Nails In Oz -

Nailed By Jasmine -

lilyandjinks -

Eternal Dreamer -

Oh My Gosh Polish -

staceymeldrum -

radjecca -

shannen_arrowsmith -

Lily Loves Louise -

Tracy -

Kate

Cirque - Hellebore

A quick one today.

This polish left me absolutely floored.  It was gorgeous.

Hellebore is a mix of light green, pink and fuchsia glitter.  It was fully opaque in three coats.

This glitter was THIRSTY!  I ended up using FOUR - yep, FOUR - coats of SV to make it glassy smooth. In hindsight I should have used a coat of Essence Gel Look Top Coat before the SV, but I didn't...

Cirque sure do make a gorgeous polish!

x

Contrary Polish - The Way I Am

Today I am showing you a polish that I had high hopes for.  It was number one on my list of Contrary Polish must haves.

I don't know if it is just my skin tone, but I was left kind of disappointed.

The Way I Am is from the Love Lyrics collection and is described as a pale avocado green with fuschia shimmer/microglitter.

The swatches I saw of this left me drooling.  I wanted it.

But as I mentioned above, I felt it looked a bit blah on me.

I applied three coats for full opacity.  It applied beautifully.  I topped it off with a layer of Posche.  I think I may have solved my top coat shrinkage problems.  I stopped using SV and Posche due to tip shrinkage. But now I have master wrapping my tips, I find it's not a problem anymore.  Sweet!

Don't get me wrong, it is a lovely colour, just maybe not for me.  It is still super pretty to look at in the bottle though!

Contrary Polish is easily available to us Aussie girls through Femme Fatale Cosmetics for $10.90 a bottle.

Accidental Christmas Nails

After the semi-fail of yesterday's floral nails, I decided to delve into my untrieds basket and with the intent to practice my dotting I decided on red and gold.

Yep.  That's right.  Red AND gold.  Together.

I seriously don't know what I was thinking.  First I thought of red and black, then quickly scrapped that due to the potential ladybug references.  Then I was thinking red and white, but then decided the white wouldn't go too well with the shade of red I had chosen.  I saw my still untried bottle of Essence As Gold As It Gets and with the intent of incorporating it somehow into my manicure, I then landed on the decision of gold.  My bottle of OPI Goldeneye was also still in my untrieds basket.  Sweet.  Three untrieds in one manicure!

Here is the result.  I also ended up layering CG Golden Enchantment over the Essence to make it more sparkly.

My dotting could use some work, but I'm still pretty impressed by how easy it is.  I think next time I will try smaller dots.

The red I used was OPI Danke Shiny Red, a gorgeous shimmery red from the 2012 Germany Collection.  OPI cops a lot of flack for the endless number of reds it spits out each year, but they sure do know how to make a good red polish.  I am yet to be disappointed by an OPI red.

So there you have it.  My accidental Christmas nails...

x

Aussie Nails Monday - Floral

Today's ANM theme is Floral.  As I mentioned last week, I already had something in mind, but unfortunately it did not pan out exactly how I had envisioned.

Oh well.  Here they are:

I started with a base of OPI Can't Find My Czechbook.  By now you have probably guessed that I really like this blue.  I have worn it quite a few times in the past couple of weeks.

I then applied a thick layer of top coat and using my tweezers applied two dried flowers that I bought from Born Pretty Store.  I then applied another couple of layers of top coat to try to get it smooth.  On my other fingers - because I find it very difficult to keep them plain, lol - I applied one coat of Loony Lacquer Pearl Morpho.

After I had finished this manicure I ummed and ahhed for a while trying to decide if I like it.  I decided that I did.  For a first attempt with dried flowers, I thought I'd done pretty good.  Unfortunately, two hours later the top coat under my quick dry top coat was still not quite dry and I started to accidentally dint my nails.

I would have kept this manicure on if I knew I would have time tomorrow to remove it and do new nails.  Unfortunately, every Monday for the rest of term will be epic for me, with me not getting home from work until after 8pm.  And I can safely assume that I will not be in the mood to do my nails!

So off it went.  I wish I could say my next manicure was super awesome, but unfortunately my colour choice leans towards a Christmassy theme...  I'll show you guys what I mean tomorrow!

Next week's theme is Green.  I'm not too sure what I'll do with that...  I have heaps of green polishes, but I'm not sure exactly what I'll do...

Please take a look at the awesome floral nails of my fellow ANM members.  The ones I have already seen are pretty freakin' amazing.

Ten Little Nubs -

Nail Gun XS -

Marie’s Manicure Madhouse -

Shatter Me Claire -

A Polished Prance -

Shades of Phoenix -

The Epitome of Superficiality -

Lacquer Dreams -

NananaisNails -

Enamoured With Enamel -

Adelle1985 -

Kelly's Kolors -

Polished Peripherals -

Every Little Polish -

Mel My Issta -

Walk In My Eyeshadow -

JennLojko -

Erinzi’s Nails -

Lovessweetas -

Jas’ Blingtastic Nails -

Mckfresh -

Maedaynails -

Lili_Bete -

The Reluctant Femme -

Lacquer and Leather -

Messy Mansion -

Nailovelogy -

adnoronda -

It's All About The Polish -

Pretty Polish Please -

polished_off -

jennersx -

thepolishedclaw -

Julzperrinails -

Caylah -

Tash -

Nails In Oz -

Nailed By Jasmine -

lilyandjinks -

Eternal Dreamer -

Oh My Gosh Polish -

staceymeldrum -

radjecca -

shannen_arrowsmith -

Lily Loves Louise -

Tracy -

Kate