Pretty Pastels

As I mentioned last week, I did not have any pastel polishes in my stash.  Well, the gorgeous Natalia from cats-n-nails fixed that for me and sent me up six of the gorgeous pastels from the Face of Australia Pastel collection from last year.  As usual, Darwin had seemingly sold out of the FOA Pastels and I highly doubted they would restock them...  So thanks Natalia!

They were absolutely gorgeous and I could not decide which one to wear, so I chose one for each finger!

I still find it quite difficult to have a different colour one each nail, so I decided to add some sparkle to each nail to tie the together.

The colours I used are:
Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy
After Dinner Mint
Once in a Blue Moon
Castle on a Cloud
Would You Like Some Lemon Sherbert?

The gorgeous sparkles on top are from the super talented Aussie Indie brand Love Thy Polish and is called Fairly Lights.

Application of the pastels was quite good, though I had some trouble with bubbling (most likely due to my super lazy application skills, not the quality of the polish), but once I added the sparkles on top, the bubbling was not noticeable at all.  Fairy Lights applied like a dream.

I thoroughly enjoyed this simple manicure and I received quite a few compliments.

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Aussie Nails Monday - Candy (Lollies)

For this week's ANM manicure I again stretched myself and decided to try some nail art I haven't tried before.  I watched a few video tutorials and read some picture tutorials and then armed myself with my chosen colours and my never used nail art brushes and dotting tools and off I went!

So for my manicure inspired by Candy/Lollies, I bring you my very first attempt at Cupcake Nails (with the sprinkles on top the 'candy').

Yes, I admit they are far from perfect, but I am still pretty stoked with how they turned out.

This was my first time using a striping brush and dotting tools and I am already taking note of how I can do it better next time.

The colours I used were:

OPI Eurso Euro
OPI Can't Find My Czechbook
OPI Polka.com
Sally Hansen White On
Essie Smooth Sailing.

I tell you what, I am LOVING those gorgeous blues from the OPI Euro Centrale Collection!  I bought some polishes from the collection for our Easter swap and ended up getting some (six) for myself.  I am so glad I did.

Well, I had better brush up on my dotting skills as next week's theme is Polka Dots!

Check out the other awesomely talented ladies participating in ANM:

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

Smitten Polish - Confection

A nice short post today.

Today I am showing you another interesting indie polish.  Smitten Polish Confection.

Confection has a variety of different shaped glitter in blue, pink, yellow, green and purple in a milky white base.

It is quite similar to Gloss 'n Sparkle Unicorn Droppings except it is missing the shimmer in the base and it is not as opaque.

There were pros and cons to the base being quite thin.  The glitters stood out a bit more than in Unicorn Droppings, but unfortunately, after three coats, I could still see my nail line (I have super white nails).  I think next time I will layer this over white.

I loved how this looked.  Due to me not owning any pastel polishes (I know, terrible!  I am rectifying this, as a gorgeous fellow polish lover is mailing me some pastel pretties), so my Easter nail opportunities were limited.  I thought these looked like hundreds and thousands on white icing.  Yum.

I received this polish in a grab bag, but thankfully us Aussie gals have access to some Smitten goodness via Femme Fatale Cosmetics for $11 a bottle.  Yay!

x

Swatching, Swatching, Swatching

Over the long weekend, I didn't leave the house much.  But that was perfectly okay with me.  After waiting over five weeks for them to be delivered, my swatch sticks had finally arrived and I couldn't wait to start swatching my stash.

I started by labelling all of my swatch sticks.  Five weeks ago, I had ordered 250 swatch sticks.  Unfortunately, it was not enough - I am about 20 short for my current stash and about 50 short for my incoming nail mail...  Ooops!

Thankfully, my awesome sister owns a label maker, so the labelling part was easy.  For those who are looking at using a label maker for their swatch sticks, I highly recommend you get 9mm wide labels.  I was working with 12mm wide labels at first and they were a bit too big so I had to trim them.  When I ran out of labels I bought the 9mm ones and they were PERFECT.

At first I was also stressing that my labels were white, not clear.  Well, white is the best.  It looks neat, is easy to read and I can write on the back how many coats were used without it showing through.  Gee, I stress about the silliest things!

I started by swatching my untrieds.  This way I can see what I have and decide better if I want to use it or not.  I only got through swatching my untrieds over the long weekend and plan on swatching the rest of my stash over the week long school holidays.

I am temporarily storing my swatch sticks in coffee cups.  I have bought some glasses that I will be storing them in.  I thought long and hard about how I would store/display them.  I didn't want to hang them off a ring or store them in a drawer.  I want them to be a part of my nail desk.  Part of the 'decoration'.  So I will be storing them in little glasses by colour.

After reading how other polish enthusiasts paint their swatch sticks, I decided to paint the underside of the swatch.  This way you can see how it would look with top coat without wasting heaps of top coat (the shine of the clear swatch).  I was a bit disappointed with some of them as the swatch seemed to not be as 'shiny' once painted.  Oh well.  First world problems. For some of the glitters in a milky/creamy base I ended up painting the top of the swatch as well as the underside.

I have ordered 250 more swatch sticks.  Hopefully they will last me the rest of the year!  I was reluctant to order from the same place I ordered from last time due to the long wait.  But I was worried if I ordered from else where that they swatch sticks wouldn't be the same.  So I ordered 150 from the same mob and 100 from a local mob from SA, just to see if their swatch sticks are the same.

x

Light It Up Blue - Autism Awareness Month

Today is Autism Awareness Day.  For the whole month of April, a bunch of bloggers and instagramers will be painting their nails blue to raise awareness.  Some will do a whole month of blue manicures, others will do once a week.  I am aiming to 'light it up blue' once a week.

For my first blue manicure for this wonderful cause, I have gone for something just that little bit extra special.

After much coveting, I decided to go out and purchase OPI The Man with the Golden Gun.  A decadent 18k gold leaf top coat.  It is obviously quite pricey and retails for $40.  I managed to purchase it for $18 due to an accumulation of frequent shopper points at Price Attack.  Score!

I have layered TMWTGG over Butter London Blagger, a bright blue creme.  Gorgeous.

I am loving this combo and am pretty bummed that I'm off work sick and can't show it off to the world!

Blagger applied beautifully and only required two coats for full opacity.

TMWTGG was a bit more tricky to apply.  The gold leaf flakes were quite sparse, so I ended applying two coats.

I topped everything off with a coat of HK Girl.

x

Aussie Nails Monday - Inspired By Clothing

I know, I know.  I've been very slack.  I do know it is Tuesday, but I did not get a chance yesterday to post this.

I'm not too happy with this manicure and removed it the very next day.

I decided to follow this tutorial by the gorgeous Strawbrie to get 'tie dye' nails.

As usual, it did not turn out the way I had hoped, but I guess I earned points for trying!

Here are my Inspired By Clothing nails:

I think next time I will wait for the white base coat to be dry before applying the blobs of colour on top.  I will also try to use more polish in the blobs and will try to drag more gently.

Next week's theme is Candy, and I have been scouring google images and pinterest for inspiration.  I'm pretty sure I know what I'm doing, I just hope it turns out better than this weeks!

Check out the other awesome ladies participating in ANM - there's some crazy awesome talent out there!

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 -

 

Oh My Gosh Polish -

staceymeldrum -

radjecca -

shannen_arrowsmith -

Lily Loves Louise -

Tracy -

Kate

piCture pOlish - Orbit

piCture pOlish sure know how to make a good polish and I am yet to be disappointed by any of their polishes.

I chose this gorgeous sparkly blue polish to wear to my family dinner out for my birthday.  I chose it because I love blue, I love glitter and it matched my simple outfit of jeans, lacy black top and sparkly flats.

Orbit has fine silver micro glitter in a dark navy jelly base.  It is really much more stunning in real life and I really need to work on my photography skills.

The picture above is two easy coats with two layers of top coat.

piCture pOlish is available through their website for $10 a bottle - a fantastic price for such a quality product.

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