Obligatory Christmassy Stuff

Well Ho Ho Ho to y'all! I did some Christmas nail art in the few moments I had to myself in the raucous Christmas season! Yeah okay so I'm posting on Boxing Day, but I know a lot of you are still celebrating the Big Day, so I wanted to share. Hope you're ready for a whole lotta green, red and gold!

More after the jump......

ABC Challenge: R

Happy December!! Today's post features China Glaze Ruby Pumps and Running In Circles. Enjoy!

We Interrupt This Programme...

... to bring you the most intensely pic-heavy post you ever did see. I was completely committed to continuing with the Alphabet Challenge, but then those scheming little devils at OPI went and released a bright shiny new Christmas collection!! Wahh!! 

I picked up six of the 18 available polishes - three of the 'core' shades and three of the Liquid Sands. Click on through, but get your scrolling finger ready - there's a LOT to look at!

ABC Challenge: G and H

Heya lovelies. Sorry for being a bit MIA the last few days. A good family friend passed away and I haven't really been in the polishing / blogging mood. Because of this, today's post is super pic-heavy but really quite boring - I haven't done any nail art with the featured polishes, and I'm being extra lazy and cramming two letters into one post. Two letters, five polishes. Today we've got Sinful Colors Gorgeous, Essie Good As Gold, Maybelline Gold's Night Out, China Glaze Highlight Of My Summer and Born Pretty Store Holo #1. Phew! Click on through to the scrolling extravaganza. 

Golden Glitz

Hiya lovelies!! Happy Friday! ^_^ It's after 9pm, and I have a BIG day tomorrow (going to a friend's wedding, and I'm doing her nails in the morning - eek!!) so I'm a bit too tired and lazy to do proper writings of wonderfully witty snippets of goodness. Instead, you can just enjoy the pics of my latest Christmas mani!

All nails are two coats of OPI Glitzerland, and the accent nails are dotted with OPI Big Apple Red and China Glaze Holly-Day. Everything's topped off with a coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast.

Sorry for the nasty dry cuticles - I've been neglecting them lately =(

That's all, folks! Quick and painless, huh? =P Hope you all have exciting weekends ahead! Thanks for stopping by ^_^

Matte For Me

My darlings, I'm so sorry I've been away for sooooooo long! Two weeks feels like an eternity and I'm feeling so guilty about it, I hope you'll forgive me! Obviously while I was away I couldn't paint my nails, so there was a week with no polish (aarrrgh!!!), and the manual work resulted in me ripping several nails and having to trim them all back to uber stubby little nubbins! On top of all that, it's just been a rubbish time for me personally so inspiration wasn't exactly flying rampant around my head. All of this combined means I hadn't actually painted my nails at all for about two weeks! Blasphemy on a nail blog I know, but hopefully now that everything's settling down a bit more I'll get my life under control and the blog will follow ;-).


Now, on a wee shopping spree (and I do mean wee, 3 tops and 1 nail polish... only 1!!!!) I stumbled upon a Matte Top Coat in the newly erected Rimmel stand in our local Farmers (department store). I saw it, loved it, talked myself out of it, came back to it about 3 times then finally bought it! Sooo glad I gave in and splurged on that $13 for this baby - I've been itching for a matte top coat for ages but they're not common here at all. So naturally, I have a matte mani for you today!

I started with two coats of BYS Black Satin on my index, middle and pinkie fingers, and painted my accent nails in OPI Glitzerland. The gold shimmer takes a bit more to become opaque so this is three generous coats. Stamped over top is Black Satin with my brand spankin' new Bundle Monster Plates, which you have no idea how excited I was to get! They arrived within a few days of placing my order, and I had a major blonde moment while placing my order (clicked the wrong set... duh...) and the wonderful customer service people sorted it all out for me with no fuss at all - massively impressed!! Buy from them, they're lovely! (Can't remember which plate... I might edit in plate number later...)

I added a coat of Seche Vite to all my nails, mostly to have them dry fast but also because the brush for the matte top coat is white and I didn't want to stain it black on the first use!

I just had to go MATTE - so I added a top coat of Rimmel Lycra Pro Matte Finish to my black nails... Yum yum yum yum!!! Then I dotted Glitzerland over the black to tie it all together. I only used one dotting tool, but by not re-dipping in the polish I got the different sized dots. I had to go over the dots twice as that stunning gold shimmer is just so darn sheer!

Well, whaddaya think? Is this mani awesome enough to excuse my absence? I promise to try and keep up, it's just life's a bit of a poo sometimes and painting my nails was the last thing on my mind for a while there. 


Matte polish: yay or nay? Feedback, lovely people, I do love hearing from you! Enjoy your week!

You're Blushing!

Happy Saturday, lovely people! Hope your weekend is off to a lovely relaxing start :). Today I have a mani using one of my Mommy's most recent purchases: ORLY You're Blushing. I was interested to see how different this was from OPI Steady As She Rose because in the bottle they look quite similar.

                           

I don't really do swatches and I'm not likely to do many in the future because I'm in New Zealand, and we tend to get all the colours a lot later than all you American / Canadian bloggers, so you beat me to it! You incredible ladies do it better anyway ;-).

For this mani I did two coats of ORLY You're Blushing on my thumb, index, middle and pinky fingers, and two coats of OPI Alpine Snow on my ring fingers. I dotted some daisies on my ring fingers in You're Blushing with accents in OPI Glitzerland.

On my thumb I dotted some daisies in OPI Alpine Snow. I think these are super cute!

I did this mani last night and took the photos this afternoon, and you can already see some tip chips :(. I use Seche Vite over all my manis and it tends to make the polish shrink which doesn't do much to prevent tip chipping. According to my most wonderful Mum, one coat of this over the OPI Ridge Filler is chip-proof and long wearing. I'll have to take her word for that because my two thicker coats were very satisfying to peel off!

 And a close up of the dotty daisies. This polish is very different from Steady As She Rose out of the bottle. The formula on You're Blushing is a lot more saturated and reaches full opacity faster, while smoothing itself out to a perfect creme finish on the first coat. SASR can be a bit streaky on the first coat, only smoothing out on the second. The colours are hugely different as well, with SASR having a much stronger light grey tone. If any of you know OPI Tickle My France-y (the most perfect polish in existence), You're Blushing is very much a purple-tinted version of that. 


Thoughts? Comments? Any tips on keeping my polish from shrinking under Seche Vite? As always, thanks for stopping by =).


- Ally xx