Purple Chrome Mani with Holographic Tips

Hi everyone!

It's Golden Week here in Japan, that means VACATION for all work/schools. My good friends are visiting me from Tokyo now (I missed them lots :) so I won't be posting a new mani this week, but I do have an oldie but goodie that I haven't posted just yet.

I got some new nail polishes recently, including some from-you'll never guess-an arcade in Osaka. One of the crane games had nail polishes in it, and Yoshi won me some. I didn't have my phone at the time so I couldn't take a pic, but I'll see if he remembers where it was so I can go back and try for some more!

I'll put up some pics of my latest haul next time, but for now I'll post the mani that I mentioned that I had done previously before the pink marbled one.

As the main color I used Sally Hansen Chrome Nail Makeup in Violet Sapphire. The purple polish is Sally Hansen Chrome Nail Makeup in Violet Sapphire. It really is "nail makeup", nothing like nail polish. It goes on smoothly, without ANY streaks, however many times you swipe it with the brush (you know, how sometimes polish doesn't go on evenly the first time or two, and when you try to touch it up it goops or streaks? NONE of that.) It also dries instantly! I'd almost compare it to the way eye shadow primer applies and dries, smoothly and dries instantly. Here's a swatch:

Now the main event. I purposely took a blurry pic to try to capture the sparkle. I can't rave about these polishes enough.
On the tips, I used Sally Hansen Teflon Tuff Nail Color in Secrets Frost #62. This is the most amazing holographic polish I've owned yet. The photo does it no justice. It is truly amazing.
I am looking for ANOTHER one of this color (none on ebay as of yet) as mine is half empty. If anyone has, please, I will trade you LOTS of Japanese goodies for this!

Purple Chrome Mani with Holographic Tips, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

Homonym

Hey ladies !

Today I have for you the first polish I tried from the swap with Olivia and also my first Zoya ever ;)

Please let me introduce you to... Zoya - ELODIE ! Yeaaahh ! It's from summer 2008 Gossip collection.

Apart from the name (which is awesome btw...lol) you may think this polish isn't so particular. Maybe you're right, but I love it anyway. This is a bright coral which is perfect for spring/summer. It's a classic color but will look amazing on a tan skin. It dries a little bit darker than the color in the bottle.

I used 3 coats for the swatches just to be sure but you can go away with 2.

ahahahah

Formula was easy to work with but a little bit sheer. It has sort of a jelly finish to it that I like. I would really try other Zoya's. Let's hope Zoya will start to deliver outside the US soon. Which is your favorite Zoya polish ? Is there a Zoya with your name on it ?

Talk to you soon

xoxo

Zoya - Phoebe + first time tape!

New collections from Zoya always get me very excited, for this summer the brand came out with three (!) new collections (Sunshine, Summertime & Mod Matte). Right now I'm wearing a polish from the Mod Matte collection, Phoebe. This is how Zoya describes this nail polish: 

Bright azure with fine electric blue and violet shimmer with a velvety matte finish. The matte finish amplifies the bright color; this is a matte that positively glows.

I have a hard time finding the violet shimmer, but other than that: perfect description.  Phoebe reminds me of the sea - oh, I mean the Caribbean Sea, the sea around here has an awful colour. It's a very pretty polish, matte polishes can look dull, but not Phoebe, I love the velvety finish. The first picture shows how it looks shiny and matte (ring fingernail).

The formula wasn't that great, thick, gloopy and not very pigmented. So you have to be careful (to avoid streaks) and fast (it dries very quickly because it's a matte) at the same time when you're applying Phoebe. I got the most even result with thicker layers, I used three coats I believe.

As you can see I also had some fun with tape. :) I used two China Glaze polishes, Kiwi Cool-Ada and Millennium. These colours are awesome together, but I think it looks better without the silver stripes, they cover to much of that gorgeous neon green. But it was fun to do and I like the neat result you get with tape! What do you think?

Thanks for watching!

Kitty Kreations - Lufee Nails

This is Lufee

AKA: Foof, foofy, foofy pants, purry pants.

No idea what sort of breed she is, but I would guess at Himalayan-ish.  She is pale cream/white all over, with cream points and bright blue eyes.  She is also TINY, the smallest full grown adult cat I have ever seen.  She easily sits on just one knee, and can pretty much sit in my husbands hand!!

The story as to how we ended up with Foof is an interesting one.  An acquaintance of my mum was down at the local lake and found her. There is no residential area near the lake and she didn't know what to do with her. She had dogs at home, but knew my mum had cats, so she put her in the car and bought her over. 

We all thought she was a gorgeous kitten, and then I noticed the tattoo on the inside of her ear, a mark that shows shes been desexed.  We took her to the vet and had her scanned for a microchip.  They found one, and looked up the owner.  We were so happy to know that we were about to return this kitty to its home.  I know how upset we would be if we were missing a kitty.

Anyway, the vet called the owner and told them we found their cat.  Their reply was "oh, that cat, she ran away about a year ago.  We've got another cat now and don't really want her."   We couldn't believe it, first that this tiny kitty was a couple of years old and second, that they didn't want her back. So we scooped her up and took her home and never let her out again (except into our awesome cat runs).

So here are my Lufee nails.

I started with a white base, and sponged on OPI Samoan Sands to the tips.  I then added a franken blue fleck shimmer which represented her bright blue eyes.

Because the white was kinda thick and then I had to sponge a lot of Samoan Sands on to get a good colour, the tips ended up chunky and had massive shrinkage.  The blue shimmer also ended up looking really frosty. 

The top photo was outside in the sun, and the below indoors.  You can see the shimmer/frostiness of it clearly belown. It certainly was a different mani, and definitely represented my little Foofy, but I don't think I would wear it again.

So trilled !

Hey ladies !

I've just come back home from one of my dearest friend's and guess what I've found ? A package from the lovely Olivia over at Olivia Frescura Blog. She's the first person I arrange a swap with on MUA. She was also the owner of the first product I ever look for on MUA... that's right... nail polish ! Zoya in... Elodie (now you know my first name !).

I finally got her package and I couldn't be happier ! Everything she chose for me is PERFECT. So funny, we don't really know each other but she got me some amazing products I wanted to try, she couln't be more right !

She had a great idea for this swap: sending each other some candies from our country (YUMMY !) and a postcard from our city. That's what we did and look at what I found in the box:

Look at all those candies ! Beside from Zoya - Elodie, she surprised me with OPI - Big Hair... Big Nails and Wet'n Wild - Gray's Anatomy both of wich were on my wishlist. So sweet ! You can see that she also send me an E.L.F brush (I swear while I was putting my make-up on to go out tonight I was telling myself I need more eye makeup brush !) and a body spray from Bath and Body work which smells awesome.

Doesn't this look like the perfect swap ?! I certainely think so.

Please go check her blog out and her makeup channel on YouTube, she does some really great tutorials. Oh and she entered a beauty contest so please go vote for her here.

Now about my mani, I added some Black Shatter and here's the result (sorry about the  shrinkage):

Sooooo, that's it for tonight I guess. It's like almost 2 a.m here so I'm off to bed now.

Thanks for stopping by.

xoxo



Not Feeling So "Rescued" By Rescue Beauty Lounge - But I did Get To Try SCRANGIE!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Store Front

So I FINALLY made it over to the Rescue Beauty Lounge in the Meatpacking district of Manhattan today for a manicure.

I walked up and down the block a few times, stupidly looking for a store front, and not the store #, and then I finally found it! A walk up 2 flights of stairs took me to what I was expecting to be nail polish bliss.

They were out of ALL the good colors...the new spring line was sold out, Scrangie was sold out as well, so I didn't buy any colors which I definitely expected to do.

The manicure (a plain old nothin' special mani, mind you) was $30, and a $5 tip for the lady who conducted it.

It was ok, hand massage was lacking, and the weirdest part of it all was that there were no hand dryers. You have to "air dry". Even in the dankest of nail salons I've been to, I have never had to air dry. And whatever they used for the top coat sucked, because the nails never fully dried, and by the time I got home, I had dents and smudges on my nails. I actually topped off the mani with seche vite when I got home, to help it dry.

The store, once inside, was decorated nicely, had some cute stuff for sale, mainly hats and scarves for the winter. I noticed that the pedicures were done in these small station-like rooms, which is great for people who have ugly feet like myself, and wish for nobody to have the unpleasant experience of having to look at them...

But all in all, was it worth the money? No. Not even no. A big fat old HELL NO! I will stick to Long Island $8 mani specials, thank-you very much. And, not to mention, the place I usually go to gives me a back rub the entire time I'm getting my manicure...still, just $8. Beat that, Rescue Beauty Lounge!

Anyway, here's a look at Scrangie which they painted my nails to, but could not sell me...

excuse my dry hands please!

taken with my cell, sorry for poor quality

It's Wednesday, and I'm wearing pink!

Hi everyone, happy Wednesday!! I actually have an older mani and swatch to post, but I thought I'd post this one first since it's Wednesday, and well, I so happen to be wearing pink!

First the good news: The Japanese school that I will be attending isn't just a Japanese school, it isn't even just a language school. They offer all sorts of programs in the arts, which just so happens to include-are you ready for it-classes for Japanese manicures! The best part is- the regular class is about $10, and one class per month FREE for students! What does this all mean? Well I have a chance to become professional in Japanese nail art, SQUEE!

Ok so back to the manicure. Yoshi just got me a book on Japanese manicure tips and tricks (still learning some of the Japanese terms yet for this stuff) and I saw a relatively easy tutorial for marbling (well, much easier than water marbling anyway, and less messy) so I decided to try it.

First, here's a swatch of NYC Long Wearing Polyester Pink Creme #108A. Just like the other NYC polishes, it took four coats to get an even color, but it is a nice shade:

Now the mani. This is my first attempt at a marble manicure, so forgive me if it isn't super-awesome :p

First Marble Mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.
For the base color I used NYC Long Wearing Polyester Pink Creme #108A. I used Visee Glamorous Sparkle #10(I still can't find my fine brush, so I used a toothpick..) for the glitter half moons on my nails. Half moons are really big here. For the actual marbling, I used NYC Long Wearing French White Tip #134 and Revlon Limited Edition Diamonds Are Forever. I topped it off with Coffret D'or gel topcoat.

Thanks for reading!

OPI - Catch Me In Your Net

Hey there !

Long time no post, sorry about that ! I hope you guys had a wonderful Easter ! I spent time with family and friends and... eat way too much ! Lol. Anyway, today I have for you a gorgeous polish which is discontinued. In my opinion it's one of the best shade OPI came up with since the last 2 years. Love the name too <3

CMIYN was released in the 2010 Summer Flutter collection along with 3 other shades. CMIYN was my absolute favorite of the bunch.

Stop talking, here's Catch Me In Your Net (2 coats):

Outdoors - with flash

Outdoor - with flash (in the sahde)

Outdoors - no flash (in the shade)

Outdoors - no flash (in the sun)

Isn't it gorgeous ? I love it. I'm maybe gonna layer some Black Shatter over this beauty later to go out tonight, what do you say ? I'll let you know how it turns out ! ;)

Take care
xoxo

Christening nails

Today I have my nails from my baby girls Christening on the weekend.  I couldn't go last Ulta3's baby pink for this mani.  I added some flower embellishments that I bought from a kisok in our local Westfield last year.  They work really well, but I was lazy and didn't find the tweezers to apply them and that's why they aren't lined up nicely.

Here is the cake I made for her.

And the inside. White Chocolate mud cake, aarrgggghhhhh (wipes drool from side of mouth)

And my dolly dressed up ready to go.

Happy Wednesday everyone.

Drum roll please...

How I spent three hours last night:

• It started with 399 entries.
• Duplicate entries were removed.
• I individually determined how many entries each entrant received, they ranged from two all the way up to eleven. 
• My spreadsheet had follower names listed from line 1 to line 2914. 
• I got random.org to picked a unique number, 2727, which belonged to...

Lisa Mc

 

Congratulations, you are the winner of my holographic polish giveaway.

 

I've sent you an email.

Teeez - Smooth

Today I'm showing you Smooth, the third (and sadly also the last) prismatic nail polish from the brand Teeez. A pink-fuchsia coloured polish with prismatic particles. It looks fantastic in bright light, but indoors it's a pretty too! Let me think... do I have something similar? I guess I don't. And that's cool, 'cause it's a fabulous shade. And hey, everything that has something rainbow-y going on is a total win for me! The formula was very nice, I could've stopped after applying two coats, but after three coats the colour looked more intense, which I like, so you're looking at three coats without a top coat.

You like? In case you've missed it, I'm giving away Smooth's purty purple sister and her blowing-you-away blue brother (among others), so if you want to enter my giveaway click → here ←!

Thanks for watching. :)

ANZAC nails

Today, here in Australia we are celebrating an additional public holiday for ANZAC day, which was actually yesterday. You've gotta love Aussies for getting another holiday just because two holiday's coincide.

Here are my ANZAC tribute nails. In case your wondering, the middle finger is the rising sun badge.

ANZAC (which stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) day marks the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the First World War.

Birthday Nails

The weekend really got away from me.  I did hope to post sooner than this, but the crazy Easter weekend just took over.

Here are the nails that I wore for Bayden's birthday.  He thought they were so wonderful and kept wanting to look at them.  Yes, he turned three, and yes he loves Elmo.

I used Orly's Lunar Eclipse as the base, then did a white splodge on the elmo nails, so that the red would show through nicely.  I used Ulta 3 Fire Truck for the red and Carrot top for the nose.  I then used a black nail art brush for the dots and smile.  For the '3's' I first did them in white, then I painted over them in Ulta3 Citrus  Putting the white underneath really made the yellow pop. Apologies for the tip wear, this was at the end of the day at Monkey Mania.

And here is there little man's birthday cake.  He really loved it!!

Finally, for shits and giggles, here is my right hand.  OMG I really suck trying to do neat nail art with my left hand.  But from a distance they still matched, and when people asked to see my nails I just showed my left hand.

I still have my mani on from Saturday at the moment.  So no Easter nails, however I'm still planing to do ANZAC nails today.

Dorothy who? More like Dorothy..SAY WHAT?

So apparently, I have discovered that pretty much any nail polish will look a million times more amazing with black underneath it. As you saw from my post with Zoya Faye, black just brings out the color so much more! Also it saves about 20 coats of said polish.

I bought Dorothy Who? last year and I have to say it is one of the most gorgeous colors that china glaze has put out, but the sad fact is,  that you have to use about 5 coats to even look like what's in the bottle. So I thought, I wonder what it would look like if I put black as a base first. And VOILA!

I just can not get over how amazing this looks. And I am telling you, to the people who spent over 20$ for Chanel Black Satin, NYC makes an amazing black polish for 99 cents. Just saying.

But I'm going to keep this a short one, I'm just dealing with something private at the moment and I have a buttload of school assignments. I can not wait for June 17th, where I can call myself a college grad:) But ta ta for now ladies...(and gents!)

An Eastery Sparkly Day- And My Easter Present!

Happy Easter! 

Is that just about the scariest easter bunny you've ever seen? I couldn't help myself.

You know by now that I cannot just keep one color on my nails for longer than 24 hours, right? So consider the last Easter post a "trial" of sorts! A preparation for the real deal ;)

I was also just thinking, as I know I've pretty much created over-kill on sparkly accent nails. What do you, as readers of our blog, want to see more of? Because we are ready and willing (perverted thoughts aside!) to deliver what you would like to see! At first, we started this blog more as an outlet to feed our obsessions, and share our nail polish looks as friends, but now since we have followers, we want to keep you entertained as well! So speak up. Let us know what we can do more of, less of, no more of....and hey, we'll give it a shot :)

I recently purchased an armload of nail art stamps (copies of the real Konad deal on Amazon for  a fraction of the price) so look forward to many Konad experiments ahead in near-future posts.

And moving on to my Eastery Sparkly Day look.....

My new Sephora OPI swatch "Havanah Dreams" accented with Deborah Lippmann's "Today Was A Fairytale". The blue jelly blended in really nicely with the blue cream swatch, and I really like this look! Maybe I will try it over purple next time. I *like* the Deborah Lippmann swatch, but I feel like it's been done before, by just about everyone. I think they could have really knocked this swatch out of the park if they added super-micro glitter, too. 3 levels of glitter would have been bliss!

this is just 1 layer of TWAF

Now on to the Easter present....please note, this was an Easter present to myself! I don't expect Mr.Scary Easter Bunny to leave anything at my doorstep, so I have to take initiative and buy a present for myself, right? I found this Juicy Couture Kindle case for $35 at TJ Maxx, and didn't even hesitate. I had to have it. I love it!