Girly Bits Jini Goes Indie!

I'm not usually a huge fan of multicoloured glitterbombs, but I couldn't resist trying out the matte cheerfulness of Girly Bits Jini Goes Indie! I tried to tone it down a bit by using Hello Darling Sage Advice (dark olive) and Essie Da Bush (light olive) for the base.

Verdict? I like it! I wouldn't say I *love* it - the irregular glitters didn't like lying down flat on my nails, and a lot of top coat was required to flatten it out. But it's gone in my "use again soon" drawer.

Shades of Phoenix We're All Mad Here

Here's a polish I knew I had to buy the moment I saw it - Shades of Phoenix's We're All Mad Here, inspired by the colours of the Cheshire Cat from the Disney version of Alice in Wonderland.

I've always loved Lewis Carroll - Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are such timeless books. I've been re-reading them since I was about 7. They never get old.

This polish is not quite opaque enough for me to wear on its own - I've layered 2 coats of this over ulta3 Flirty Bikini. I really like the contrast between the orange/yellow hexes, and the subtlety of the furry little purple bars!

Gold leaf nail art over Mckfresh Angel

Mckfresh Nail Attire is one of my favourite Aussie indie brands, made by a pretty damn cool chick. The Sunnydale collection was one of my favourites last year, and Angel in particular was one of most unique. It's a blackened purple base, with tiny silver specks and big blue iridescent bars, which are super thin and don't have any of the won't-lay-flat, looks-like-hair crappiness of many bar glitters. You can check out the swatch of Angel alone in my original post on the Buffy collection, but today I wanted to show you an experiment with gold leaf from Born Pretty.

I don't actually own a gold leaf topper yet, so I tried to make do with some shredded gold foil from Born Pretty. I used larger pieces in a mani for Artsy Wednesday a while ago, and it turns out that using smaller pieces is both better AND worse. Better, because you can pulverise the crap out of the foil. Worse, because it's super fiddly to apply. I used a cotton bud, much like the way I do glitter gradients, but since the foil is dry, I painted a slow-drying top coat over the original manicure first, to give it something to stick to.

Overall? I like the effect, but it seems like it would be so much faster just to cave and get a gold leaf top coat! I'm also considering dropping some of the foil into polish and seeing how stable it is - I've seen some nasty concoctions made from not-real-gold foil corroding in organic solvents though. We'll see!

Tony Moly Shooting Star

Here's one I love but haven't posted - Tony Moly Shooting Star. It's one of their Revlon Whimsical-looking line - a purple creme base with rainbow glitters. I used this combo in one of my first jelly sandwich manicures, so it was nice to finally pick it up in one-pot form from the Tony Moly stall in Sydney's Market City.

I love the pastel prettiness, and the cheerful multicoloured glitter! I think I'd prefer a slightly bluer purple though.

I've been really impressed with all the Korean polishes I have so far, which makes me think I should really buy more - they're affordable, and have lovely formulas!