Lab Muffin's Top 13 Polishes of 2013 Part 1: Mainstream and Boutique Brands

2013 was a big year of swatching for me, and it was the year where I think Australian indie polishes really blossomed. It was very difficult to pick just 13 polishes that I loved, but I certainly tried! I limited myself to one polish per brand only, and to polishes that I discovered in 2013 (though they weren't necessarily released last year). Here we go, with the mainstream and boutique (i.e. small company but not hand-mixed) picks...

First, I obviously have to mention my collaboration shade, piCture pOlish Ultra Violence. The literary amongst you will know that the name is inspired by Anthony Burgess's book A Clockwork Orange. I love the holo iridescent glitter against the rich purple! I've included a bottle of Ultra Violence in my 2nd blogiversary giveaway here.

I blogged about the stunningly pretty Pretty Serious BSOD here earlier. What happened next was that while wearing it, my laptop did actually have a heart-stopping BSOD moment, in the middle of thesis-writing! Luckily I didn't lose anything, but Kaz was too sweet, and in her usual above-and-beyond customer service style, she sent me a few polishes to dull the pain.

OPI Keeping Suzi At Bay is a gorgeous blue creme that is both interesting and elegant. It may be my favourite creme shade ever. I think dark blue is actually quite work safe, but definitely not boring.

ulta3 Triple Threat was a big surprise for me. This is a complex holo glitter jelly that's indie-worthy, but comes at the ridiculously budget-friendly price of $2.

Orly Digital Glitter is one of my top 5 Orly polishes, ever. I usually think of Orly as a brand which does salon-friendly classic polishes well, but whenever they come out with something a bit different it's usually ridiculously cool (Fowl Play! Space Cadet!). I love the unlikely brown/purple/red combination - it's a bit steampunk in my opinion, and makes me think of Neal Stephenson novels. To top it off, the purple shimmer is duochrome.

I will be back soon with some of my indie picks of 2013 - hold onto your wallets!

Pretty Serious Naughty Night Shift Nurse

You may have heard that Aussie indie brand Pretty Serious recently released a limited edition polish, Naughty Night Shift Nurse, that sold out in 10 minutes. Luckily, my friend and fellow blogger Rose (Every Little Polish) ninjaed me one, and I arrived just in time for my birthday! I used it as the base for my birthday nail art (click to see the DIY nail decal tutorial I made).

Here it is in its full glory, over multichrome-boosting black:

It's a stunning purple-to-red multichrome with red-green multichrome flakies thrown in (I believe they're the same ones as those in Essie Shine of the Times, Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, Nubar 2010 et al.).

Naughty Night Shift Nurse was originally a custom created for Aussie nail blogger Kristy (The Polish Haven) who, you guessed it, is a nurse. She was generous enough to share her creation with us, but unfortunately due to ingredient supply issues, NNSN is a limited edition. There will be a second batch released later this year, along with Emma Louise, another PS limited edition.
Here's my birthday mani:

The DIY nail decal technique I used is now my favourite nail art trick - it lets you split up your nail painting into multiple sessions, which is great if you're time-poor or a bit ADD!

Pretty Serious Mummy Mush

Another Pretty Serious polish from the Monster Mash Halloween collection today! This is Mummy Mush - a gold chunky shimmer with a greenish blue multichrome glow that really comes out over dark colours. Over the bare nail, like in my 3 coat swatch, it's warm-toned. Given my fear of shiny shiny nails, I won't be wearing this one on its own very often, but I'll be using this in gradients and layering combos!

You can buy Pretty Serious here, and they ship worldwide, so hide your wallets now!

Pretty Serious Poltergeist Puddle

Pretty Serious are one of my favourite boutique brands - their polishes aren't the standard chunky indie glitterbomb fare, but refined shades with excellent formulas, and the packaging is gorgeous. I've posted some of my favourites here before. Poltergeist Puddle is a new favourite that I've recently tried out from the Monster Mash Halloween collection (I posted the first one, Gargoyle Ganache, here).

It's a cool purple dense shimmer, with pink and blue sparks. I love how vivid this is! One of my top three PS polishes. This was 2 coats on its own.

This collection comes in adorable holographic green themed boxes, and are available along with all the other Pretty Serious products here (with worldwide shipping!). Customer service is awesome, and there are also eyeshadows and lip glosses available (though discontinued) - I recently picked up three eyeshadows, and they're amazing!

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!

Australia Day nail art, and some reflections on racism in Australia

January 26th was Australia Day, also known as the day where Australians like me sometimes get told to go back to where we came from by drunken, jumbo flag-waving hooligans (ironically, we're often doing just that - catching the train home). Given some of the unpleasant demonstrations of patriotism-cum-xenophobia that've occurred in the past (not to mention the lovely verbal abuse I get to receive on public transport approximately once a month), I'm slightly wary of leaving the house on any holiday tinged with patriotism. But I had a dance class in the CBD, and if I stayed home, that's just letting the terrorists win, right?

I went to an incredibly homogenous primary school (I was one of two East Asians in my grade. My high school, where 75% of the grade were East Asian or Indian, may have overcompensated for that). We were fed symbols of Australiana which we were (rightly) told to be proud of - our beautiful landscape, our weirdass flora and fauna, our sporting prowess. We had special days where we wore the national colours, green and gold, to school. I used to wonder why my parents were so bewildered by my enthusiasm for drawing gold kangaroos everywhere (by my infallible kid-logic, a country with kangaroos had to be the best country in the world). Given my trepidation whenever drunken white males enter my train carriage (augmented by the presence of flags, football scarves or Southern Cross tattoos), I can't imagine the alienation and paranoia my parents felt 20 years ago, as recent immigrants with thick Chinese accents, arriving in a country where, 8 years later, the unashamedly anti-immigration One Nation party would attract almost 10% of the nation's vote. Despite the greater visibility of migrants (no doubt helped by the work of Asian-Australian celebrity chefs), migration (more specifically, intake of refugees) vs. the dominance of Anglo-Australian culture is as big a political issue as ever.

Most Australians aren't overtly racist (cue "Everyone's a Little Bit Racist"). Most groups of drunken white males who get on my train could never imagine themselves hurling abuse at an immigrant. But often, sensible, intelligent, upstanding white people mistakenly assume that other white people also share these same views. My lovely, pasty white boyfriend shook with anger for hours after a girl on the bus repeatedly told me they "didn't like [my] kind" around there. To him it was unthinkable, lunatic behaviour that demanded violent retaliation. I just mentally crossed off October.

So how was my Australia Day? It was fantastic! I didn't witness a single racist incident, and I got to delightedly remind the boyfriend mutiple times that he's descended from illegal boat people, while I am a perfectly legal Cathay Pacific person (he's a tad embarassed about his ancestors, not because they were criminals, but because they were "dumb enough to get caught". Also their cuisine). Not to mention that Lacquerheads of Oz, the blog that a group of Australian nail bloggers/indie sellers/nail techs started for storing ALL THE POLISH KNOWLEDGE, launched!

To end possibly my most humanities-tainted post of all time, here's a shot of my nails (Pretty Serious VT100 with ulta3 glitter and stamping, by the way) with a work by possibly my favourite Australian, Nick Cave (fittingly enough, he's emigrated).

Pretty Serious - BSOD

Happy new year! Hope you've had a good start - Australia's been alternating between boiling hot and pleasantly cool, so nail polish application has been a bit of a pain. I'm still chugging away at my thesis - it's getting there, 4 chapters down and 2 more almost done, with one last chapter about 50% there... hopefully my supervisor also sees it that way.

Pretty Serious BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) is a polish that I've been lemming for a while, and it's one of the ones that you can wear by itself for days without getting bored - the jelly base and the metric buttload of glitter give enough depth for it to shine by itself.

You can buy this gem here, and Pretty Serious ships internationally. I bloody well hope there's no non-nail BSOD in my thesising future!

Edit: I also used this as undies for Femme Fatale Glinting Lodestone last week here -yes, it did feel like a pity covering it up! But it was magnificent.