piCture pOlish Paradise

(In case you haven't already seen via Facebook or Instagram or Twitter, I submitted my thesis last week, hurray! :D Now I get to play the waiting-for-examiners game...also the looking-for-a-job game. Oo-er.)

Today I have swatches of one of piCture pOlish's latest blogger collaboration shades, Paradise by Liquid Jelly. In the bottle it's a gorgeous shimmery mix of purple and teal with orange tinged holo glitter in a blue jelly base.

On my nails I find it a little too shiny - as you might know, I'm not too keen on blingy metallic glitters or foils, and this is squarely in both categories. But I know I'm in the minority!

These swatches are one thick coat over W7 Envy, a teal shimmer. Coverage is excellent, and the base colour barely shows through at all, although being jelly based, you'll need more coats to deal with visible nail line.

 

I love seeing blogger collaboration shades - they're always something a little different! What do you think of them?

Pahlish: Big Red Lobster Man

I don't wear orange too often, but I like it as a color. Orange glitters are rare, too, which is why I felt compelled to purchase this one from Pahlish when I saw it. I layered over Essie: Vermillionaire.

I really like the combination of glitters over the orange. It's copper, orange and hot orange hex glitters with random yellow square glitter and iridescent square glitters. I wore this when it was cooler out, but it definitely brought a summer vibe to my nails!

One can find Pahlish at her Facebook here, her Etsy here and also on Llarowe :)

Bourjois Tangerine Fatal

Bourjois Tangerine Fatal

It's not quite a tangerine color. More like a peach. And it occupies that space between jelly and creme, where the glossiness makes it looks squishier than usual. Four coats. 

Pahlish: Lonesome Ocean

I was in the mood for a dark polish, but not black, but not totally dark. In comes Pahlish: Lonesome Ocean.

A dark navy jelly with orange, hot pink, and aqua glitters in varying shapes and sizes. Don't you love this combination?

I layered it over Borghese: Mezzanotte Blue, a dark navy jelly but you can wear it on its own to opacity. The glitter came out evenly and gorgeously :)

One can find Pahlish at her Facebook here, her Etsy here and also on Llarowe :)

Ciate Power Dressing

Ciate Power Dressing

This color was a bit of a surprise. I applied it inside one evening very low-light conditions and thought it was going to be this lovely dark eggplant-y purple. Then I go outside the next day and realize that it's a rather blue blue. I also realized that four coats wasn't enough to make it opaque. I don't know how many times I have to make this judgment error before I learn to turn on the light when I apply nail polish. Probably before some important job interview when I've accidentally applied a neon yellow thinking it's some mauve color. :P

St. Patrick's Day! Pahlish: Stroke of Luck + gold flakes

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

I haven't posted in a bit -- this past week was my Spring Break and I went to Los Angeles for a few days and I just lazed around after returning (other than taking the GMAT yesterday, yikes). I've been doing NOTDs (which I've been posting on Instagram) but I'll catch up posting here, too :)

Now, I've been lemming gold flake polishes forever (starting with the Rococo original) but couldn't justify the price. Mainstream brands such as Zoya, OPI and Sephora by OPI were nice enough to release their versions of the gold flake polish. I got one from each brand, and they're all pretty different (in size of gold flakes) so I feel it's semi justified. That and I didn't pay full price for any of them (usually 50% off).

I was wondering what to use for a St. Patrick's mani when I thought, green of course! and the bottle of OPI: Man with the Golden Gun that was sitting on my desk caught my eye and the idea was born. Of course, I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one with this mani idea and I've seen a few NOTDs already with the same theme but great minds think alike, yes?

I layered all three polishes over Pahlish: Stroke of Luck (which I felt was appropriate also).

In the shade picture, you can see the square glitters in the Pahlish. It also has tiny gold glitter, which is hidden by my use of gold flake topcoats.

The smallest flakes are from Sephora by OPI, and the larger/medium sized ones are from Zoya and OPI.

I don't like shard shaped glitter but I like how the gold looks. Hope everyone has an excellent day!

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Pastel hearts and glitter rain!

This was my sweet Valentine's Day mani which I posted on my own blog, but before I took it off I added a glitter gradient with Hello Darling 24K, because I could.

I've developed a repulsion to the whole "buy things to prove your love"/"if your man really loved you he'd spring to get flowers" aspect of Valentine's Day, and I thought the boyfriend and I were happy not doing anything together for it (especially since we celebrated our anniversary the week before), but at the last minute he decided he felt neglected, so we ended up with the added guilt of trying to make rushed plans and failing. I guess that's what I get for dating an attention whore! I did make and demolish some kickass cauliflower soup though, so if nothing else, Valentine's Day really rekindled my love of the Brassica family.

Bourjois Jaune Trendy

Bourjois Jaune Trendy

Sunshine yellow creme. Bought in a drugstore in Montreal, probably one of the last nail polishes I've bought since last July. Four coats, not out of line for a yellow.

Banging my head against the wall about my dissertation proposal. If I can get this done before this summer, I can be done with the PhD by next summer...

Pretty Serious - Gargoyle Ganache

I love multichrome polishes! Pretty Serious Gargoyle Ganache is a multichrome with a difference - the multichrome partieles flash purple, gold and green in a grey base.

If you haven't got any Pretty Serious polishes, you should rectify this ASAP! Kaz knows what she's doing, and her polishes are gorgeous with excellent formulas. I've shown off BSOD and VT100 from the nerderiffic Hello World collection here before - BSOD remains my favourite, even if it seems to come with a curse!

Unnamed Icing Green Glitter over Dior Amazonia

It bothers me when nail polishes don't have names...

Unnamed Icing green glitter over Dior Amazonia 

One of in a set of mini Icing glitters. Green and silver hex and square glitter in a lot of emerald green shimmer. Can't quite tell how many coats it would've taken to become opaque but this was three coats of the Icing on top of a dark green creme.

Dior Amazonia

You know what really sucks? Pneumonia. Pneumonia sucks. And pneumonia is pretty much what took up my entire February. I still haven't gotten my voice back entirely but at least I don't sound like an evil consumptive frog anymore! Now, if the cough calm down, I'd sound like the happiest, healthiest, least evil frog ever. So in celebration of being a happy frog...

Dior Amazonia

Slightly swampy army green creme. A little thin for a darker Dior in my experience (three coats) but can't really complain about that.  Dried quickly as usual. Wore well for days. 

Shopping My Stash - Blue Creme Layering

It's been a while coming, but I finally got organised and painted my collection onto swatch sticks! This made my February No-Buy a bit easier as I fell in love with my cremes again. Here's a gorgeous blue creme I rediscovered - Face of Australia Ocean Villa. It usually has a matte finish, but I layered Nubar Black Polka Dot on top. But then I got stuck with the accent nail.

First I tried Candeo Smores (kindly gifted by Jen of The Nail Polish Project at the Sydney Aussie Nails meetup) over ulta3 Earl Grey, but that didn't look quite right:

Then I tried China Glaze Some Like It Haute over China Glaze Stone Cold. Much better!

Shopping my own stash has been the best strategy for my No Buy so far - with over 400 bottles in my collection, there are a lot of underappreciated polishes in there!