Ozotic Elytra 528 over Ozotic 505.

I hauled all six of the Ozotic Pro multichrome polishes last week and I planned to post the swatches of them before posting the swatches of this, but I just can't wait to show you this little number I have been sporting for the last few days.

This is one of the new multichrome glitter polishes from Exotic Pro, Elytra 528.  There have been a number of great swatches around of this over black, like You've Got Nail and Vettelicious.  So I thought I would do something different.

This polish is basically a glitter version of Ozotic Pro 505 (which is a dupe of Sally Hansen Turquoise Opal (which I'm giving away as a prize for my franken polish contest)).  I thought I would layer Elytra 528 over Ozotic 505.

This is base coat, one coat black, one coat Ozotic 505, two coats Elytra 528, two coats Seche Vite. This first picture was outdoors in indirect sunlight.

This picture is in direct sun, and the turquoise glitter was so blinding that my camera wouldn't focus properly.

Here is an upclose of the glitter, showing the colour shift.

And even closer of the glitter.  You can actually see the tiny shimmer particles beneath of the multichrome colour shift of 505.

I found this glitter polish had a surprisingly smooth finish.  It certainly isn't gritty like you would expect a glitter polish to be.  I also found that it removed pretty easily, I didn't even need to use the foil method to get it off.

These photos are only showing the green, turquoise, blue and purple flashes.  When layered over black you see purple to gold flecks at the right angle too.  I personally think 528 has the best colours and most noticeable colour shift out of the three Elytra's.

In case you didn't know, these can be purchased from piCture pOlish, and they do ship internationally, although they are $$$$$ especially as the Aussie dollar is strong at the moment.

Turquoise glitter and stone pedi

Turquoise glitter and stone pedi, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

It was time to change the polish on my toes, and I had just gotten this really pretty turquoise nail polish, so why not?

The turquoise polish is by AC. I'll swatch it on my nails another time.. as soon as I think of a good manicure idea that uses turquoise glitter ;) It's very pretty, the polish base is a clear turquoise color with big and small glitter pieces. It is actually much shinier in person, but my camera didn't catch that too well.

Next, I applied gel topcoat to give the stones a good base to stick to. Then I used a gold jewelry jump ring to frame the center hot pink stone, and coated it with gel polish to make give it the illusion that it is bigger. Then I placed two light pink stones on either side.

This one is simple, but elegant :)

Franken Contest Reminder and ABCs

I thought I better do a reminder about my create a franken polish contest.  It closes this Thursday - 2 June, and so far I have received ONE entry.  So she's a shoe in for the prize at the moment!

And now, I've realised how much I enjoy reading other people's ABC's, so for the first time, I will reveal a little more about myself.

A. Age: 36
B. Bed size: King
C. Chore you hate: All of them, that's why hubby is so good at them.
D. Day: Sunday
E. Essential start to your day: Peeing
F. Favourite colour: Red, but not on my nails.
G. Gold or Silver: Gold.
H. Height: 5'9" or 175cm
I. Instruments: Recorder, triangle, tambourine - anything my 3 year old can play.
J. Job title: Team Leader in a Federal Govt Dpt.
K. Kids: Two, 3yo and 4 months.
L. Live: North Canberra
M. Mum’s name: Dorothy.
N. Nicknames: Caddy, Cath, Wellsy, Wellsette,
O. Overnight hospital stays: Two, to have my bubbies.
P. Pet peeve: Drivers that don't know how to merge.
Q. Quote from a movie: At the moment, Mr Three is totally into the Cars movie, so my favourite quote is Mater saying "He did what in his cup" after McQueen tells them that Doc won three Piston Cups.
R. Right or left handed: Right
S. Siblings: Two older brothers.
T. Time you wake up: 6.30ish
U. Underwear: Always, although I have been known to partake in an occasional 'No undie Sundie'
V. Vegetables you dislike: Jerusalem artichokes & broad beans.
W. What makes you run late: Kids, like Mr three chucking a wobbly, or Miss four months doing a serious mess in her pants, as we walk out the door.
X. X-Rays you’ve had: Wisdom teeth.
Y. Yummy food you make: It's all edible, but my specialties are: tomato savories and cheesies (both family recipes)
Z. Zoo: Love them, but only if the enclosures are appropriate, with plenty of room for the animals.

I like the fact that most other bloggers haven't been specifically tagging people with this, rather, they suggest you do it too if you enjoyed reading it. Jacie, I enjoyed reading yours, so anyone else that wants to do this, please do, and leave a link in the comments so I can have a read.

Essence - Got A Secret & BM-215

I was very excited when my new Bundle Monster plates arrived last week, I couldn't wait to try them out! I even shortened my nails to make the full nail images fit. It turned out they're not short enough, the images still don't fit and I had to do some double stamping. I really wish the full nail images were a tad bigger, 'cause I often fail at double stamping (and I want to keep this nail length :) ). But I think the result isn't too bad this time!

The base colour I used is Got A Secret from Essence, a light grey creme (two coats), I stamped it with China Glaze - Awaken and the fan image from plate BM-215. 

Thanks for watching!

Sorry

Hey,

I just wanna apoligize to you guys for not being able to respond to you comments. I have, like a lot of people, some issue commenting on blogger. It's driving me nuts ! I've tried different things but none of them seem to work. Do you know how to fix this ? Blogger better be fixing this s*** really soon... 

xoxo

Those numbers are impossible to remember...

Hey there,

What's up ? So today I have for you another Kiko polish. This is n° 346 (called Verdone Chiaro by Kiko) and it was missing on the haul pic, I totally forgot to put it in the pic. Anyway this is one of my favorite color from the bunch: a kakhi creme with a little bit of blue in it. My mom calls it celadon i that makes any sense to you...lol

Again, the application was flawless, 2 coats, perfect coverage. I love those Kiko brush too. Not as wide as OPI's but wider than China Glaze's, they make the application very easy I think.

Outdoors - with flash

Outdoors - no flash

Any opinion on n° 346 ? I don't have kakhi polish in my stash so I was really glad my sis picked this one up. Do you like kakhi polish or do you think their too fall/winter ?

Have a nice sunday you guys

xoxo

Nfu Oh 93

I was so totally into my last mani that I just didn't want to take it off.  It finally starting chipping on the tips today, so I reluctantly took it off.  Then I did some swatching.

This is Nfu Oh 93.  I picked it up from Vivid Nails clearance sale for $2.

I really wanted to see this polish on its own. I wanted that bottle colour, no matter how many coats - I can not be beaten!. Six coats later, this is what I got.  Love it, great colour, but it would have remained dentable for at least a day!  Dented polish really irritates me, so I took it off, and....

layer it over black.  Actually I didn't use black, it was Ulta3 midnight, which is the blackest navy blue there is.  But one thin coat of midnight is fully opaque, unlike Ulta3 black satin.  I did two coats of Nfu Oh 93.  

I love it on it's own, but really its a perfect layering polish.  I bought quite a few of these really sheer Nfu Oh colours for $2.  But I have a feeling that, although they are different shades, they will all look the same over black.

The Cadet Shouts: "Sir! Yes, Sir!"

I'm a little late with my post for today, because I had a busy day: I went rafting with my husband's work. It was a very exciting experience, but I did swallow a lot of water (whew)!

About the nails: I wanted to spice up the military colour Sir! Yes, Sir! from Catrice I showed you yesterday. It's definitely not a boring colour, but after a day of wear this creme polish screamed for a little something something. So I sponged the tips with Space Cadet from Orly, which turned out great! Every time I use Space Cadet I'm amazed by all the colours it shows, wow. 

That's it for today, have a great weekend and.. thanks for watching! :) 

Hello ladies !

I know it's been a while I haven't post but I'm not jobless anymore :D
So I have less time to do some nail art, and because of my job I almost stopped putting on funky colors on my nails ... Only red, pink, orange ... And of course I can't do too much nail art ... I'm so sad about that but I have a great job so I deal with it :)

Anyway, to forgive me, here are some nail arts you haven't seen ...

A soft pink mani with blue flowers and with dots.

Here is one of my favorite color and it is a neon !!! It's a Claire's polish that a friend of mine brought me back from the USA. It's named Flashy. In the dark it's purple and in the light it's pink ! I LIKE IT !!!

A mouse eating my cheese finger :)

Except that it is a fuzzy mouse because of the top coat ... I haven't waited enough time !


My first butterfly wing nail art on a sponged gradiant !



A sponged gradiant and pink/purple flowers.

That's it for the time but I promise to post more often :)

XD

Kiko Haul + some swatches

Hey there,

As you probably know, my sis went to Berlin and brought us some Kiko...well not some... a huge haul actually. Here's a pic:

Kiko is a makeup brand based in Milano, Italy. So far I've only tested their nail polishes but let me just say they are pretty awesome.

I have a few swatches for you today (don't you worry there will be plenty more during the week-end).

The first polish I tried is Kiko - 340 (described as Celeste on Kiko's web site), a baby blue creme. It's perfect ! Seriously, the application was pretty good, two coats for full coverage, no shrinkage... It's a bit darker than OPI - What's with the cattitude ?

Outdoors - with flash

Outdoors - no flash

Then I tried another gorgeous polish: 311 (can't bear the number name thing... This one is described as Rosa Elettrico). This is a fuchsia with very subtle golden shimmers. Here again the application was flawless, the formula is really easy to work with. So far so good, Kiko totally nailed it with this two polishes. Let's hope the other one are as perfect as those two.

Outdoors - with flash

Outdoors - no flash

Close-up

So what do you think so far ? Are you able to get Kiko where you live ? I don't and I can't help myself to think that's a shame... Fortunately, Switzerland has commun borders with Italy and Germany. And if you know Kiko, which is your favorite shade ?

Thanks for stopping by,

Take care

xoxo

Catrice - Sir! Yes, Sir!

Today I'm showing you Sir! Yes, Sir! from Catrice, a dusty brownish army green creme. Interesting colour, I'm surprised by how much I like this 'dirty' colour on my nails. 

The formula was quite thick, even after adding some drops of nail polish thinner it wasn't the easiest to apply. I got an opaque result after two coats though and I really shouldn't complain too much about a polish that costs only €2,49, right? :)

Thanks for watching!

Diagonal & reversed edge, holographic and "bullion" mani

For today's manicure I did get a little inspiration from one of my Japanese manicure magazines, the basic design, but to mix it up I changed the colors, reversed the patterns on two nails, and re-arranged the placements of the gold balls.

OPI Tickle My France-y swatch:

I called the gold balls bullion in the title, because well thats what they're called here, and well, I don't know what else to call them.. they aren't beads.

Diagonal & reversed edge, holographic and "bullion" mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.
After my base coat I applied the base color, OPI Tickle My France-y. Its a great color, a mauve-y nude, which works so well with other pink and purple polishes. I then freehanded (let me tell you how hard that is.. and I did mess up and fix it a few times) the diagonal hot pink (no name) polish edges, purporsely reversing the sizes,(look at index and middle finger, for example, the bottom corner on the index finger is bigger, while the top corner on the middle finger is bigger) and I reversed the pattern on the thumb and pinkie fingers.

Next, I took a nail art brush and painted stripes, reversing the placement on the nails of course ;) of Sally Hansen Teflon Tuff Nail Color in Secrets Frost. I LOVE this holographic polish.. I need more!! After that, I placed the gold bullion in alternating places on the nail (seeing a pattern here? ^_~.) The spacing/placement on the nails is on purpose, no gold beads are missing/placed incorrectly. Finally I topped it off with Coffret D'or gel topcoat.

I actually found a much better gel topcoat, will blog about that one later!

A really cute polish + me trying to do some nail art = Not so good

Hello lovelies,

Hope you're all doing great. Today I have for you a GORGEOUS polish... This is OPI - Rumple Wiggin' from the Forever and After Collection. It's a really pretty color, very femine. Perfect for spring. Too bad I only got the mini bottle... I should I've bought the regular size. Boohoo... Anyway here it is using 2 coats:

Outdoors (in the shade) with flash

Outdoors (in the sun) - no flash

And here's what happen when I think I know what I'm doing when it comes to nail art.... (Please be nice ! lol)

I add to RW:

• 1 coat of Essence Special Effect Topper in Mystic Mermaid (one of my fav layering polish right now)
• some stamping using H&M - Bella's Choice, H&M - Blue My Mind and OPI - Dim Sum Plum.
• 1 coat of Nicole by OPI - Let's get Star-ted (trying to get only the glitter and not the stars but as you can see, one got stuck...).

Now I'm too tired to do another mani so I'm gonna stick with this one until tomorrow.... Oh and my lovely sister is coming home from Berlin and she got us like 14 new Kiko polishes !!! I can't wait to try some new polish ! Stay tuned for those Kiko ;)

Ok so that's it for today ! I promise to post this week-end with some Kiko swatches !

Take care

xoxo

Cult Nails - Captivated

Captivated. A well chosen name for this nail polish, glittery goodness! I saw the first swatch of it and I wás captivated. Which was kinda surprising to me, because I'm not a big fan of chunky glitter polishes. But this one... oh, I nééded it. Captivated is part of a collection called A Day at the Races, a beautiful range of nail polishes designed by fellow blogger Maria! Creating your own nail polish line, isn't that the dream of every nail polish lover..? *sigh*

Maria describes Captivated as 'a coral based jelly polish packed with gold and coral glitter'. I have nothing to add to that description. It's extremely pretty, so sparkly, like a summer party on my nails! It'll be awesome for a pedi too, so applying it on my toenails will be the next thing I'm doing. The formula on this one was quite goopy, so the application wasn't the easiest. I hope some thinner will solve that, 'cause I want to wear this beauty all summer long! I used three coats and one layer of topcoat. On the pictures it may look a little see-through, especially on the pic taken in sunlight (3rd), but in real life it's more opaque. And more sparkly too! The nail surface feels slightly bumpy after applying Captivated, but that can be solved with a good layer (or two) of topcoat.

Thanks for watching!

Last days of Autumn

Well here we are in the last few days of autumn (although it feels like its been winter all month).  I received my Bundle Monster plates in the mail yesterday and was rather excited to use them.  The problem with so many plates is choosing which design to use.

I used plate BM21, stamping over a gradient striped design of the following colours:

• OPI - Meet & Jingle
• NYC - Delusion (vintage old metallic duochromish - will swatch one day)
• Artmatic - Copper Glow (another super old polish, metallic orange - need to swatch)
• China Glaze - Passion
• Ozotic - unnamed vintage bottle (circ 2002) green/gold duochrome.

Here is a close up of a nail so you can see the five coloured strips beneath the stamping.

Here is my inspiration for this design, Canberra in autumn. Isn't it just beautiful.

Big Nails ?!

Hey ladies !

I hope you are all doing fine and enjoying those summery days ;). I've just written the conclusion of my master thesis so I figured the next best thing to do is blogging ! I'll give my thesis to my teacher tomorrow morning, let's hope he will be happy with it.

So, today I have for you a polish I'm sure you have seen a zillion times but I'm gonna show it to you anyway ! lol This is one of the famous ''sorbets'' from OPI's Texas collection. OPI's people are fools if they think we didn't notice that those polishes were actually jellies. It's not like they came out with something new here...

At first, I was a bit meh about those sorbets but the more swatches I've seen the more I was getting into those. My favorite is definitely Big Hair... Big Nails and that's exactly the one the lovely Olivia got me for our first swap. I'm so glad she did because I LOVE this polish. It's just perfect for spring/summer. It's really bright and glossy. This is like an orange red with some drops of pink in it and it looks even better on me now that I got some tan during my express trip to the South of France this weekend.

Stop talking, let's get into the pics. This is 3 coats of BHBN (I don't usually like to do more than 2 coats but with this baby it's no big deal at all, drying time was fast and because of the thin forumla you don't have to worried about the bed sheets marks).

Outdoors (in the sun) - no flash

Outdoors (in the shade) - no flash

What do you think about those OPI jellies (I can't call them sorbets..) ? Are you a fan of jelly polish in general or do you hate VNL ? I don't like VNL but for some reasons I don't care about them when it comes to jellies. Do you recommand other jellies from the Texas collection ?

Have a great evening everyone

Talk to you soon

xoxo

Milani - Hi-Res

Gorgeous, right? This is Hi-Res from Milani. My camera wouldn't pick up the right colour and made it look quite blueish, in real life it's actually more lavender coloured (the picture below is the most colour accurate). Hi-Res has one of my favourite finishes, it's a prismatic! The prismatic particles are quite chunky, they remind me of small pieces of glass. Indoors it looks mostly like a polish with silvery flecks, but when sunlight is added Hi-Res comes to life, woah! I recommend wearing Hi-Res on a sunny day, you'll be amazed by its beauty! I really, really like this one. :L

The formula was good, I used three coats for an opaque result, no topcoat.

Thanks for watching!

Brown and Gold Studded Mani

Hi everyone!

How was your weekend? I'm back with a Street Wear swatch, and a new mani!

Sorry about the bad picture.. I just couldn't get a good one this time. This is something I came up with a little inspiration from my Japanese manicure book, and my first experiment with 3D nail parts. They used blue polish, jewels, and they didn't do the all glitter on two fingers look (I had to change it somehow!) but I wound up liking this look much more.

The base color is Street Wear Forbidden that I got from Erika last year for my birthday. I've been dying to use this gorgeous color in a manicure for a while, but I had to wait for the right idea. This color is so amazing, it is a reddish brown with gold shimmer in it (though it's hard to see in the picture.)

Then I did a graidient look with the gold glitter from my Beauty World Champagne Nail Cocktail kit, then used my dot art tool to dot two different sizes of Beauty World bronze dots, and finally I added gold colored studs on the ends. I sealed it off with Coffret D'or gel topcoat.

Brown and Gold Studded Mani, a photo by KitaRei on Flickr.

What do you think?

Giveaway Winner!

It's time to announce the winner of my 500 follower giveaway. I can't believe I've almost reached 1000 followers.. *faints* I needed some time to go through all the entries, a total of 725! :o Thank you all so much for participating, you guys are awesome!

I used random.org to determine the lucky winner of this giveaway. 

The winner is...

Congratulations Lady Delish!! I'll be emailing you shortly for your address. This lady also has a blog, you can check it out here.