Happy New Year!!

 Hey guys!
I decided to do a fun festive New Year's Eve/New Year's Mani, and since I'll be going to watch the fireworks, I went with glitter! I also wanted to incorporate Shatter because I feel like 2011 has been the year of the shatter/crackle nail polishes! And finally I HAD to have OPI Teenage Dream on my nails since it is definitely my favourite nail polish of the year!

So this is what I came up with:

I started off with a bottom coat of glittery colours, and to make it super sparkly I also added a layer of glitter pieces. The glitter pretty much covered the nail colours completely so I won't bother mentioning the nail polishes I used. On my thumb I used OPI Teenage Dream.

 Then I used pieces of tape to cut out numbers so that I could use it as a stencil for the shatter. It actually ended up being a really tricky process, I had to take out my dissection kit and use a scalpel to cut the letters out! (couldn't find a razor thingy at home).
Finally I added a coat of black shatter. I was quite surprised that the shatter sort of moved away from the tape so you can kind of see the numbers without removing the tape.

 So that the numbers stand out a bit more, I outlined them with Sally Hansen XtremeWear in Black Out. Then I peeled the tape off, added a Top Coat and cleaned up...and voila!

Hope you guys have a wonderful new year!

Merry Christmas!!

Hey guys!
Merry Christmas!
Just a quick post before Christmas officially ends haha.
So I played around with some Christmas-y colours: red, white, green and gold (for that extra sparkle) and I came up with this:

I alternated with OPI Alpine snow with OPI Red Shatter and Sally Hansen XtremeWear in Emerald City with OPI White shatter on my fingers and I put Orly Luxe on my thumb.

To make it extra sparkly (what's Christmas without sparkles right?) I topped it off with Maybelline Express Finish in Pot of Gold and some extra gold glitter on my thumb!

Oh and here's what I did with my sister's nails!
I made the candy cane stripes with OPI Alpine Snow and Maybelline Wet shine Diamonds in Cherry Carats. Then I added red and silver glitter on top and sealed it with a top coat.

I really like how this turned out! I'd probably wear this on non-Christmas days too!
and it kinda reminds me of one of Katy Perry's dresses haha.

Hope you've all had a lovely Christmas!!

Xmas mani...Presents!!

Hi guys!
Christmas is almost here!
..which means I have an excuse to have holiday themed manis! yay!

I got these Bundle Monster plates a while ago and I haven't had a chance to use them..until now!

One of my favourite activities at Christmas is wrapping the presents! I kinda go overboard with the ribbons and everything haha. So I thought it'd be fun to stamp a whole bunch of presents on my nails haha ( it also gave me a chance to test which nail polishes were stamp-able)

I used OPI Alpine Snow as the base colour, Konad special polish in green for the tree

  and for the presents I used:
Essence "Into the Dark" (Vampire Love collection), OPI "Planks a Lot", OPI "Mermaid's Tears", Konad Special polish in purple and red, Orly "Luxe", Essence "Choose Me! (Colour & Go), Rimmel "Tangerine Queen, and OPI DS "Magic". 
Then I topped it off with a coat of Essie "Shine of the Times" which you can't see very well in the pictures.

I picked the colours at random and I like how they worked out! It's so colourful!

What's your favourite thing to do at Christmas?

Burberry...a high fashion mani

So a little while back, I wore this mani for an interview, I thought a nice clean simple nude colour will look sophisticated and professional and be appropriate for this kind of occasion. 

"Topless and Barefoot" Essie

But after the interview I was itching to make it more...interesting! On the same week I had received some striping tapes I ordered online, so...inspired by the signature plaid print of Burberry... I made this...

Personally I really love Burberry's trench coats (and I hope to own one soon!). And I like how they keep things classy by not plastering their designer print on every item they make/design.

I decided to just use the design as an accent nail to keep it understated, like Burberry does =)

And then after a few days I spiced it up with a flakie gradient

"Pink Twinkle" Covergirl and "Topless and Barefoot" Essie

Oh and did I mention that I met George Craig ( the guy that modeled for Burberry with Emma Watson) on Vogue's Fashion Night Out this year? That was pretty awesome =)

What's your favourite designer brand?

Polka Dot Madness!

Ok, so did this mani at like...3am one night after some "studying" and I couldn't sleep haha!
Polka dots are always fun to do and kinda infectious don't you think?

I used BYS colour change in "blue" but it's more of a teal colour, it changes from this teal almost sky blue colour to a light teal. This is one of the more subtle colour changing nail polishes.

Cold

Hot

Cold: Thumb, Middle, Pinky; Hot: Index, Ring 

Please excuse the wet hands, I had to dip them into a cup of cold/hot water to get more striking changes.

"Cotton Candy" Revlon Scented, "Blue" BYS Colour Change

 The other colour I used is one of the Revlon scented nail polishes.  This one's "Cotton Candy" and it really does smell like genuine cotton candy! I must say,  Revlon's scented range is pretty awesome! I accidentally put Top Coat on one of the nails, yet the scent was not lost! And even after a few days of wear, and anatomy labs (where my hands usually smell of formaldehyde even when wearing gloves) there was still a subtle cotton candy scent...which I think is pretty impressive!

And....one last picture!

Oranges are good for you!

I was eating oranges today and I suddenly remembered a mani I did a while ago...

I really like oranges, especially naval oranges, they're the best! So what better way to express my love for oranges than to put them on my nails!

I used Rimmel I <3 Lasting Finish nail polishes for this mani. Although I'm not a fan of them for quality in terms of durability (their "lasting finish" is such a lie), they have good solid colours that are opaque enough to use for nail art =)
So I used: "Tangerine Queen", "Sunshine", "Green Grass" and "London Clouds"

Australis recently had a nail art competition for their Shadey Friday competitions, so i entered this mani in.. and I was one of the winners! Yay! 

I won a bottle of their limited edition nail colour called "Today's News". I haven't worn it yet but it looks pretty awesome in the bottle =)

What's your favourite fruit?

You make me feel like I'm living a Teenage Dream!

This is my absolute favourite nail polish.."Teenage Dream" by OPI.

Why? Because...
1. It's pink!
2. It super sparkly!
3. It's associated with Katy Perry!
And finally, the most important of all...this bottle, along with the rest of the OPI Katy Perry collection was given to me by super awesome besties/co-bloggers and this was the bottle that started my nail polish obsession!!

If that doesn't convince you that Teenage Dream is the best nail polish ever, then i'll just have to let the pictures do the talking!

This is my go-to polish when I need a pick me up!
Not only does it have fine pink glitter, it also has large hex holo pieces which makes it super sparkly in the sun!
It's just soo sparkly that you can't help but smile!

It's quite sheer, it takes about 3-4 coats to build it up to full opacity, but as you can see 1 coat  looks great over a dark colour like black.

"Teenage Dream" OPI over white, black, clear; 1,2,3 coats

I love it so much that I'm already halfway through the bottle and I only got it 7.5 months ago!

 What is your absolute favourite nail polish?

BYS Cracked!

So I was a bit skeptical when I discovered that BYS released a range of crackle nail polish, partly because of my bias towards OPI, but mainly because it's BYS. But since i was really impressed with their colour changing nail polish i decided to give this one a go.

BYS named their crackle range BYS CRACKED. I only bought one, "Hot Pink" ( my reason for buying it being that I didn't have a pink crackle nail polish).

When I first tried to use it, i assumed it was like any other shatter/crackle polish and applied it on after my base colour dried...BIG MISTAKE! When it started to "crack", pieces  just "popped" off the nail and none of the polish stayed on the nail.

Then I actually read the instructions and it said that you apply the nail polish when your base coat is still wet/almost dry.

And here are the results!

BYS Cracked "Hot Pink"

So as you can see the effect is very different to OPI and China Glaze, they actually crack! Unlike Shatter, it takes quite a bit of time to start cracking (but it's quite fun to watch) and if you apply it too thick it might not crack. But like the others, the thinner the coat the smaller the cracks.

BYS Cracked "Hot Pink" over black and white

The only thing I had a problem with was the opacity, since it's a crackle topcoat, you can't really put more than one coat, so the base colour sort of shines through especially when it's a dark colour. But other than that, BYS has been consistently impressing me!

I loved it soo much that i even "cracked" my key!

Oh and just for fun, this is what happened when i used an iPhone to take a pic of these....it couldn't handle the hot-ness!! How i wish it was this bright in real life!! haha

taken with iPhone

I'll definitely be buying some more of these!

Happy Halloween!!

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while, exams are coming up so it's been pretty hectic... =/
Anyway, Halloween isn't very big in Australia (no one went trick or treat-ing on my street =(... )
but it's a great excuse to go all out on nail art right? =)

So this was the first design i did...

My camera didn't want to cooperate so i apologize if it's a bit blurry.

I did some cobweb designs and a (happy looking) ghost on my ring finger. 

I used OPI Ink as the base colour, then OPI DS Coronation for the designs, and for that extra sparkle, I added Rimmel I<3 Lasting Finish in Disco Ball (who doesn't love sparkly cobwebs??).

For the other design, I was inspired by a design by this youtuber, meliny.
Aren't these Jack-O-Lanterns super cute??

Left Hand

Right Hand

I used:

Revlon "No Shrinking Violet" for the base colour, 

Rimmel I <3 Lasting Finish "Tangerine Queen" and Australis "Citrus" for the pumpkins, 

OPI "Mermaid's Tears" and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Emerald City" for the stalk + vines,

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Black Out" and Rimmel i <3 Lasting Finish "London Clouds" for the eyes and mouth

Sun

And....I also did my sister's nails...

 I used the same base colours, but i used Sally Hansen Diamond Strength "Platinum" for the ghosts and cobwebs.

I also bought BYS Glow in the Dark topcoat, which works really well, but i can't seem to capture it on my camera =(

I had a lot of fun doing these designs... hope u guys have a fun Halloween!

Fuschia Power!

Hey guys! Sorry i haven't been posting lately! I have all these new nail polishes that I want to blog about but i just haven't had the time =(.

Sun

 This is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Fuschia Power.
Pink always cheers me up, there's something about that bright warm pink-ness that makes me so happy! =)

Shade

 And...as you'd expect, i quickly got bored of wearing just one colour so i did this nail design.

Indoors

I actually got inspired by this youtuber meliny who does amazing nail art designs. So this is "drag marbling", there's no water involved!
What you do is paint a nice thick, wet layer for your base colour, and quickly paint a few stripes while it's wet. Then grab a toothpick (or something similar) and carefully drag it across the stripes and...tada! you get this!
I used Rimmel London Clouds for the white.
It took me two go's to get it the way i wanted to..but it's pretty cool right?

Sun

 In other random news, Last night was Vogue's Fashion Night Out! It was quite fun! there weren't that many events ( i was expecting a lot haha) but i managed to get some freebies (like fairy floss and mocktails haha) and i saw some celebrities so all was not lost! I think it's just starting here in Australia, so hopefully it'll get bigger and better in the years to come, and hopefully they'll add in some nail-related events!