The Neverending Pile Challenge: Most Expensive

I like to think I am quite thrifty when it comes nail polish buying but every so often I feel like splurging if there is something amazing that I can't get any dupes for cheaper. When I started blogging, I'd see swatches of holographic polishes and I'd just look at the my screen trying to keep my mouth closed. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any holos at the local Target so I had to go hunting for the only brand I knew had good holos and I knew where to get from. Yes, it took a plane, bus and tram round trip to get the $19.95 Layla Hologram Effect polish (I had other plans for this trip but I was utterly excited to go shopping for polish). Yes, I was unaware if the price when I gave it to the checkout lady and didn't want to seem like a cheapskate and put it back on the shelf before walking out. As awkward as that experience was for me, today I can be glad that Coral Glam is part of my stash. 

This wasn't an untried as such. I had put it on on a couple of fingers  before to marvel at the beauty of the holo but had never worn it as a full mani. And man! I forgot how pretty this was. It's subtle enough on the shade but once it comes out to the sun that flame is strong. 

By the way, I used a base coat for this ad three coats of  Coral Glam to reach opacity and cover up all the drag marks that I manage to get during application.

I'm not good at leaving nail polish alone so I added my first ever DIY nail decal with a three of unused polishes. I used Konad Special Nail Polish in Black for the outline and coloured in the flower from MoYou's Suki 04 plate with Revlon Parfumerie's African Tea Rose, Sunlit Grass and Apricot Nectar. I thought the green polish was an unused polished but turned out I had used Essence's The Green & the Grunge before. Once I applied and cleaned up around the decal, I topped the whole mani with one coat of HK Girl Top Coat.

I know the decal isn't the best but I'm happy with the way this turned out. And you know, one can always look at the holo instead of the decal. :)

I really like this polish and I am glad it has come out of the untried  stash considering all the effort that was required to get this little bottle.

Till next time, 

Laura

Revlon Parfumerie in China Flower

I have a very soft spot for red polishes. They are classic, easy to wear on their own and there will always be one that suits your skin tone perfectly. When it came to buying the whole collection of Revlon Parfumerie polishes because I obviously had no restraint, I knew China Flower would be one of my favourite ones of the lot by just looking at the colour. It was even better when I opened up the bottle and started painting my nails with it.

China Flower is a leaning-to-coral red crelly, it is opaque and even in ONE coat with a super buttery and quick drying formula. Can I say anything else better about it? The scent is beautiful. I have seen a few mixed reviews on the smell but I'm one of the people that absolutely adores it. The subtle smell is this combination of musk, spice and pepper with none of the sweetness most of the other polishes in the range have. With a name like China Flower one would expect something different but I am pleasantly surprised.

I figured doing plain swatches of this red would be extremely boring for you guys, so I decided to try some cut out nails. I have always love the look of them but my striping skills have only recently improved and I felt the lack of such skills was a big hindrance to me recreating the manicure type properly.

I started with one coat of Essence's Give Me Nude, a super sheer polish that is basically the equivalent of foundation for your nails, and then sticky taped off the sections I wanted to leave nude and got myself painting. I only used one coat China Flower to get the coverage that I did. Once all the polish was dried, I brought out my trustworthy Topshop Nail Art Pen and started lining the perimeter of the nude parts of the nails. I finished it all off with one coat of HK Girl top coat.

I know most cut out manicures have a lot more colours and windows and whatever, but I like the simplicity  of these. They were really fun to wear and sniff when dry even though my lines weren't perfect at a macro scale. It was one of those manicures that looked great from afar and I was the only getting close enough to them and I wasn't worried. Win, win for me. :)

China Flower is a welcome addition to the stash even if I already own something similar without the smell. I would recommend this if you're looking to get on the scented polish wagon as the colour is on the safe side and the smell is subtle enough that you would have to put your hands near your nose to smell it. And you know, you wanna look like an odd lady doing that.

Till next time, 

Laura

Revlon Parfumerie in Surf Spray, Stamping and Colour Matching

I'm gonna include three bits of information in this post so I'll try to keep it as concise as possible. 

First and foremost, I'm gonna show you another one on the Revlon Parfumerie polishes I have recently acquired. Surf Spray is a slightly-leaning-towards-aqua blue shimmer with light blue and purple almost flakie-like, tiny glitter. It is a rich colour on the bottle but it doesn't fully translate to the nails; not that's a bad thing, it looks different than expected but it's still pretty nonetheless. 

Surf Spray is very sheer and it can take 3-4 coats to reach full opacity; I may have cheated a little and put some undies on to make sure this dried quickly and I didn't use too much of the polish.  Can you tell I used two different polishes for the base?

There's not a lot of difference but if we must, I used Max Factor Mini Nail Polish in Candy Blue on my middle finger (left in the below photo) and Essence's Let's Get Lost on my ring finger (right). I could see a very slight darker duochrome effect with Candy Blue but that might have to do with the fact that CB was the darker base.

After all that, I used one coat of each base colour and one coat of Surf Spray on each nail. There was no change on the depth of the polish whether it had the 4 coats or the undies on. The formula is pretty good and stays where one puts it with the brush. It can get a bit streaky but careful application can solve the problem, if that's something that bothers you.

Oooh! I forgot about the scent. Surf Spray could be interpreted in a lot of ways but these guys seemed to go along the way of washing powder and marine scented hand wash. It's one of the scents that has grown on me and it's not overpowering, so leaving it on makes me feel like I have clean hands when they may not actually be. :/

Now for the stamping, I used an old Sally Hansen in Antique Bronze that I bought for stamping about a year ago because of the colour but it turned out too sheer; now that time has passed, it has gotten a tad thicker and it starting to stamp well on certain colours. The design came from MoYou's Suki Collection - 04 plate and I'm not sure if you've noticed but my pinky and ring fingers mirror the pattern on my middle and index fingers. Super revolutionary, right? I topped it all off with one coat of OPI Mate Top Coat. 

Now for the last part of the post I'm gonna keep it super positive. I am rubbish at picking colour combinations. I usually have to consult a trustworthy colour wheel to see what may look good together and pray that it actually turns out OK. That was until today. Looking for colour wheels on Google, I went past the first couple of results and discovered this interactive colour wheel by Adobe. I would have never thought of the combination above by myself so I was super happy that I could choose a colour close enough to the base and discover that a brown would be a good combination. Considering the base was a shimmer, I figured a simmer would be good. Voila! A good combination.

I've been playing around with it all afternoon and picking polishes from the rack to see future combination and I'm pumped to get some those out. Thank you whomever come out with it!!! I'm hoping by putting this here it might help someone else, maybe...

That's it from me, I wanted to keep it short and I'm still babbling on.

Till next time, 

Laura

Revlon Parfumerie in Espresso

I'm kinda bummed. I did this awesome mani for the GOT challenge last night and it was so sparkly I knew I had to wait until this morning to take photos in the sun. I'm not great with alarms and mornings so my plan of photographing nails went out the window. I went on with my day and by the time I was ready to snap some pics, I had some major tip wear on all my fingers. No crying over spilled milk, right? I'll recreate it again later when I feel super uninspired.

After that little episode today, I decided to keep showing you guys the Revlon Parfumerie polishes I bought recently. I chose Espresso out of the 23 I now own from that line, a black creme with green undertones that is opaque in two coats, the formula and drying time are fairly average. From the name, one could gather that this would smell like coffee and being a lover of the brewed beverage scent I was super excited to try it out. When the polish dried and the scent popped through, I could only smell rubber-burnt sugariness. Not at all what I was expecting... or pleasant, to the point of being nauseating. 

I also had some issues with bubbling but that could be contributed to me not waiting for my base coat to dry or the second thicker coat I applied on some fingers.

The one good thing I can say about this polish is that it dries fairly shiny. I am showing it with a coat of Seche Vite out of habit but it's OK without it. I think the top coat had better smell than the polish and luckily it toned it down a bit.

I know swatches of a black polish wouldn't make for a very interesting post so I added some of Ulta3 in A Lister on the tips for the glitter gradient and combined some of Essence's Let's Get Lost and Essie's Blue Rhapsody on the stamping plate. I used MoYou's plate 4 from the Sailor Collection and I think the design didn't quite come as crisp because I tried to mix the polish on the plate and not beforehand. Lesson learnt.

I never say 'don't go buy that polish' because everyone has different tastes but this not worth the money for a black creme that we all know can be bought for way cheaper than $15.95 they retail for. Unless you are into smelling burnt rubber... then maybe, but that's probably not healthy. 

I really don't know what I am going to do with it, if anyone wants to try it let me know. I'll be happy to send it anywhere in the world.

Till next time, 

Laura

Revlon Parfumerie Scented Nail Enamel in Wintermint

I'm on what seem to be a blogging roll and I'm gonna milk it as much as I can. I think not having to get up at 5:30 am on Mondays to go to work has left me with a little more energy than I expected. Woohoo! So here I go with some nails.

A while ago, I saw a swatch of Revlon Parfumerie's Autumn Spice on what I could swear it was Makeup Withdrawal but turns out it was actually in Scrangie. Anyway, her description made me really want the polish but I knew it'd take sometime for the scented collection to come to Australian shores, if at all. One day I was walking through Target and I spotted the beautiful display of Revlon Parfumerie Scented Nail Enamels, it was completely full and each polish cost $15.95. Ouch! I grabbed Autumn Spice and paid for it before I'd think about getting anything else. I tried it on and fell in love with it immediately and wore it for a week straight, thinking that I would get some more polishes when they were on half price at the Chemist Warehouse, pharmacy that every so often has half price sales on their makeup. I didn't wait that long as I saw them at Priceline for 2 for $20 last week and walked out with 8 new bottles. Not sorry at all. I've decided to give each polish it's own post because they are pretty amazing, except for one, and because you know, I can. 

I'm starting with Wintermint, a lovely light aqua shimmer with small green glitter and larger hex royal blue glitter; it was opaque in two coats, drying time was normal and the formula was good but I still needed little clean up as I had some polish run away to my cuticles. I topped it off with one coat of HK Girl top coat as it dried slightly gritty.

Scented polishes seem gimmicky, right? And it's worse when the smell is too sweet/headache-inducing and you have to take the polish off, even if it's uber pretty. Luckily, this collection has truly amazing smells that are subtle and really complement the colour. As you may have guessed by the name, this one smells like plain ol' subtle mint. Think of the moment when you take spearmint gum of the packet and are about to put it in your mouth, that's exactly how it smells. For someone that luuuurves mint anything, I was super happy to put this on my nails. I thought the smell wouldn't be as strong with topcoat on but I'm happy to say the smell pops through and it smells as strong as when first applied. 

I tend to Google polishes after I swatch them just to see what other people think about them and this time, I came across a few posts saying Wintermint is a dupe for Deborah Lippman's Mermaid's Tale. I actually thought it was a dupe for Picture Polish's Serenity, which of course, I was way off. Either way, it's a really pretty polish and it looks kinda dreamy.

The downside? I look like a weird polish lady when I'm constantly putting my hands next to my nose so I can get a whiff of the mint smell. Is that weird? I'm pretty sure it is but I'm not too worried. I love this polish!!!

Till next time, 

Laura