GOT Polish Challenge: Orange

I'm back on the challenge after a two week hiatus, I'm not super excited about these nail but I knew I had to get myself back on the GOT wagon. 

I actually didn't think I had Golden Oldie orange so I had to have a double look through the rack, which led me to realise I had this beautiful colour Tangelo by Ulta3. I'd also been wanting to do these nails by Pshiiit for a while so today was as good of a day as any to try it out, or so I thought.

I started the base with one coat of Sally Hansen in White On and one of Seche Vite, let that dry and taped off the triangles on the free edge of my nails. I used one coat of Tangelo and ripped off the triangles asap before adding some lines along the inside of the triangle with Sally Hansen's Lustre Shine in Lava. Once all these layers were dry, I used my  black Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen to create the edges and patterns. Topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite.

After I finished this manicure, I realised my Golden Oldie orange was actually Carrot Top and not Tangelo. They sit next to each other on the rack and Tangelo was the closest to me. Would I call that lazy? Maybe. Then I had to check when I had gotten Lava, turns out I got it about 10 months ago so it doesn't really fall in the category of the GOT. BTW, neither of the two oranges showed to be colour accurate in the photos.

To add to the nail fail of today, I noticed there were some cracks on the black paint. I can't quite remember if that has happened before but I'm sure I will remember now.

So that's my go at orange tribal nails. I know I haven't them any justice so I'm tagging this post as an official Nail Fail. :) Let's hope I can come up with something good for the rest of the challenge.

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

YouTube Inspired...

Hello, hello! I'm sporting a couple of broken nails and it might be a while before they recover to a bloggable length so I'm bringing out some manis from the vault. 

We all love nail art, right? That's the reason why we are here on this wonderful thing called the internet right now. Not to be left behind, big cosmetics companies have jumped on the bandwagon and created YouTube channels to promote their products. I enjoy watching beauty/nail vloggers on the video-sharing website but all the Google algorithms have caught up on this preference of mine so I'm constantly bombarded with the aforementioned companies' ads and videos. I usually skip them as they lack the genuineness and creativity of the vloggers and they seem over-stylised which really puts me off; there's a reason why I'm on YouTube and not on your site!

For some reason or another, I ended up watching one and liked the colours they had shown together. Being the rebel I am (teehehe), I didn't go buy their products but instead used some older polishes from different brands to recreate the very simple tape mani they had presented.

I started with one coat of Maybelline Mini Colorama in Peach Cocktail, let it dry then taped off half my ring finger nail and applied one coat of Max Factor Mini in Purple Haze. I added a coat of Seche Vite to all my fingers and let it dry before applying stripe of Sally Hansen's Big Money over the very rugged edge I created on my ring finger. 

Tadah! Super awesome and original. 

The highlight of this mani was actually reusing Peach Cocktail. When I bought it a few years ago, I had no idea what a good formula was but I remember it being runny and having to use a 2-3 coats to get it completely opaque. This time it applied in one beautiful, buttery coat and the flakies/shimmer still showed up within the depth of the polish. Man... this polish has turned out so good, I didn't even have to clean up. I can just hope all my bad formula polishes do the same in a few years.

Is that shimmer on my thumb? At least you know, I don't retouch my pics...

If anything came out of watching that nail-polish-company YouTube video was the rediscovery of some cool polishes. And also having some vault manis for rainy days. I'm still gonna avoid them as much as I can though.

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

Witty Titles Are Hard To Come Up With But I Like My Layered Stamped Mani

At the lack of a good title, I'm just gonna jump right into today's mani. I started with yesterday's base, Rimmel Pro Get  A Nail Tan, and stamped the triangle pattern from BM-423 with Topshop's Gilted. I knew I wanted to layer stamps but choosing a colour and a stamp took me a while, I ended up choosing a half nail, leafy stamp from BM-309 and my oldest polish Maybelline in Succulent. I topped it all of with one coat of Seche Vite.

I'm pretty happy with the result and, at closer inspection, I'm loving how Gilted shows through Succulent, even though the latter is fairly opaque.

Excuse the smudges near the cuticles...

My mum looked at my nails and she mentioned this reminded her of henna tattoos. Looking at it now, it reminds me of the packaging of a particular Australian apple cider. That's how you know where you mind is. :)

Till next time, 

Laura

Rimmel Salon Pro Get A Nail Tan 708

Over the last two months I have bought and received a lot of new polish bottles. It was Christmas, Boxing Day prices were irresistible and general awesome sales popped all over the place, all which helped my collection grow by about 50-ish bottles. I'm not sure whether I should cringe at my lack of self-control or rejoice at all the beautiful, non-duped little containers of colour. I would say I buy polish to enjoy and play around with and not necessarily to show on the blog. With this in mind, it's not surprising that it's been a while since I've done a post about a straight up swatch but today I had to show one of the best purchases of the last eight-ish weeks. 

I present to you, Rimmel Salon Pro in Get A Nail Tan 708. As the name mentions, this is a light tan creme leaning ever so slightly to pink. The formula was nothing to rave about but it dries quickly and mostly stays where you put it with the bottle's flat brush. It's opaque in two coats and it's shiny enough by itself; there's no balding, dragging or other annoying polish issues. This is a good polish in my eyes. 

Why am I saying this is so great? Well... I've mentioned many times in this blog nudes, the beige/pink/light ones, and I don't really mix. It's only recently I had a light-bulb moment where I realised that the natural pigmentation around my cuticles didn't allow me to achieve that stylish mannequin hands look that I had seen floating around on the blogsphere and so much desired. This polish doesn't give me that look but it's a little more in sync with my skin colour that makes my nails look clean and, er, polished. Yeah, I'm in love.

I had previously bought another polish from the same Rimmel line but it was streaky, it took forever  to dry and it had bad formula all round. I bought this colour because I knew it would be unique in my collection and it was half price so if I got a bad formula again, it wouldn't be the end of the world. 

Is the light hitting the polish differently in the next photo? No? Never mind. The revelation that there is nude colour for my hands is a big deal for me!

I have Nubar in Toasted Marshmallow, a polish I would use whenever I wanted a sober, subtle manicure, and I thought it would be similar to Get A Nail Tan. By looking at the bottles, I could tell they were on different sides of the spectrum but I still wanted to show a comparison just for the record. As you can see, TM is a mustard tan and GANT looks a little bit more pink.

I found my nude. And I can be happy about that.

Until next time, 

Laura

GOT Polish Challenge: Green

Hello, hello. I'm a bit short on words at the moment so I'm just going to show you the mani I created over the course of about 72 hours for the green prompt of the Golden Oldie Thursday Challenge. 

I started with two coats of base coat and then layered two coats of Seed Heritage in Emerald, a beauuuuuutiful emerald green with the tiniest turquoise shimmer that I bought in September 2012. Once this base was dry, I added one thin coat of OPI's Just Spotted The Lizard, also bought late 2012, and saran wrapped it while it was still wet. I finished it off by adding one coat of Seche Vite.  

I've loved Emerald ever since first got it. The colour is a wonderfully creamy, lit-from-within, hard-wearing polish with a buttery formula that dries to a semi-satin finish, however, it stains as bad as terrible quality teal polish and it takes forever to dry. I have only just found a good base coat that won't allow this type of colours to stain my nails so I was quite happy to bring it out for this challenge. I enjoyed putting this colour on this time and even though I knew that it would take some hours to dry, I didn't add any quick drying top coat. I went to bed with almost dry nails and woke up with hair marks on my then dry polish. :( I left the colour on for a day thinking that I would have to repaint my nails and went on with my day.

Well I didn't have to because after running around I remembered I had another older green, just Spotted The Lizard. We all know the hype around this polish... I got caught in that hype with no regrets. 

After creating the saran wrap mani, I added some black and green lines but I wasn't that keen on the final result so I left it simple this time. Sometimes, less is truly more.

Till next time, 

Laura

GOT Polish Challenge: Dots

It's almost time for the next prompt of the Golden Oldie Thursday Challenge but I figure since I had this mani done and photographed since Wednesday, I might as well post it. 

So here it is my GOT dots manicure. I brought out a heap of old polishes that I've been wanting to use together again and I'm fairly happy with the result. 

White base: Sally Hansen in White On

The following five are all Face Of Australia polishes from their Pastels collection, which came out in Nov 2012 and were all under $2 cheap :)

Light Blue:   Once in Once In A Blue Moon 

Purple:        Boys'N'Berries

Pink:           I'll Take You To The Candy Shop

Orange:       Would You Like Some Orange Sherbet?

Yellow:       Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy

Once I was done the dotticure and added a coat of Seche Vite, I felt my nails looked unfinished so I added one coat of OPI and I Juggle... Men, one of my first OPI's, and one coat of Rimmel Pro Matte Finish top coat. I bought both sometime in Sep/Oct 2012 but the one that I have used the most has been the Rimmel top coat. I have used it in a good amount of posts in this blog and it's the one that started my love for any polish that's satin/matte. So if I was to pick the top Golden Oldie polish of this post, this top coat would be it. I know, it's not a colour but it's a good polish.

I had some trouble photographing the pastel colours as they looked extra pale against the white so I had to colour tweak the photos a little bit. I tried to keep it colour accurate but get it to have a little more contrast and I managed to get my hands to look red (or should I say super tanned?) in the process. It's about the polish, right? Not my hands.

Till next time, 

Laura