Aussie Nails Disney- Mulan!

I'm a day late with this weeks Disney Challenge, I've had a hectic weekend so far! This weeks theme is Mulan, and although she's not TECHNICALLY a princess, she is lumped in as a Disney princess for some reason. And she's easily my favourite one of them...

I used a lot of polishes for this, so I'm not going to list them all, because I'll probably forget one or two! My nails, from pointer to pinky, are; a lantern (like the scene when they fight at the celebrations), her kimono, her face split halved into lady Mulan and boy Mulan, and some Cherry Blossoms.

I am super happy with how these turned out, except her face, that was a pretty epic fail...

My fellow challengers:

Strawbrie

LabMuffin
It's All About The Polish
ErinZi's Nails
WalkInMyEyeshadow
Ten Little Nubs
Nailed Obsession
Every Little Polish
For the Love of Lacquer
Nailoveology
Maeday Nails
LacquerDreams

MckFresh 

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

Femme Fatale Winter Hyacinth!

This is a polish that has been on my must get list ever since I first saw it, Femme Fatale Cosmetics Winter Hyacinth. A mint-y green-y teal-ish polish with large white diamond, and large white hex glitters, along with fuchsia hexes and some pink circle glitter. I love how amazingly complex the Femme Fatale polishes are!

3 coats alone, no undies, and Seche Vite on top. Slightly more 'green' in person. I love how these glitters don't need to be fished, or dabbed, or placed onto the nail. This is how they come out of the jar!


This is a must have for all indie lovers!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

Bondi New York- The Limelight

Bondi New York is a new polish brand, and today I am super excited to share one of their debut colours with you! Here's some quick info on the brand...

"Bondi New York is a collection of 20 fashion forward colors which are free from formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin, camphor, DBP and toluene. The collection has been formulated to be long lasting and chip resistant.

• 5 free (formaldehyde, formaldehyde resin, camphor, DBP & toluene).
• 20 fashion forward colors which will launch twice a year, as well as four limited edition collections.
• Available via select on line retail partners, as well as bondinewyork.com.
• 100% of the net profit (after costs) is donated to our non-profit which makes grants to organizations like Food Bank for New York City."

The polish I have for you today is called The Limelight, and as soon as I saw it I HAD to have it! I love all things green, and this is just perfect!

The last photo is not exactly colour accurate, but the other two are! It is slightly brighter in person, a very eye catching green! This is 3 coats, plus Seche Vite top coat. It applied nicely, the formula is spot on. The first coat was a wee bit sheer, and it was much better on the second, just a few bald spots to warrant the third coat. Dry time was good too. I really do love this polish, the colour is great and the packaging is sleek and nice too.

Also, some good news for Australian ladies (and gents!), they are planning to launch in Australia in May this year! So us Aussies can enjoy them too!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

*this polish was sent to me for review purposes. this in no way affects my opinion*

Aussie Nails Monday- Blue!

This weeks Aussie Nails Monday theme is Blue. That leaves it pretty open for anything to be done, so I decided to try my hand at a watermarble. I don't do a lot of marbling, but I actually kinda liked this one!

I started by using 2 coats of China Glaze For Audrey as a base, and then marbled with alternating 'blobs' of For Audrey and China Glaze Adore. I dipped two fingers in at a time, and all but the ring finger turned out quite nicely! I also used a coat of Essies Matte About You to matte it, because matte is coooool.

I enjoyed this marble, maybe I should do more!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

The ANM ladies

Elissa - Ten Little Nubs

Bec - Nail Gun XS

Marie - Marie’s Manicure Madhouse

Sarah - Shatter Me Claire

Chantelle - A Polished Prance

Teneil -Shades of Phoenix

Nicole - The Epitome of Superficiality

Bec - Lacquer Dreams

Naomi - NananaisNails

Eboni - Enamoured With Enamel

Adelle - Adelle1985 (Instagram)

Kelly - Kelly's Kolors

Rebecca - Polished Peripherals

Rosemarie - Every Little Polish

Melissa - Mel My Issta

Natalie - Walk In My Eyeshadow

Jennifer - JennLojko (Instagram)

Erin - Erinzi’s Nails

Astrid - Lovessweetas (Instagram)

Jasmyn - Jas’ Blingtastic Nails

Kate - Mckfresh (Instagram)

Jessica - Maedaynails (instagram)

Elizabeth - Lili_Bete (Instagram)

Cassandra - The Reluctant Femme

Tammy - Lacquer and Leather

Julia - Messy Mansion

Ann - Nailovelogy

Ronda

Theresa It's All About The Polish

Katie - Pretty Polish Please

Melissa - polished_off (Instagram)

Jennifer - jennersx (Instagram)

Rachael - thepolishedclaw (Instagram)

Julz - Julzperrinails

Caylah

Tash

Jane - Nails In Oz

Jasmine - Nailed By Jasmine

Sylvia - lilyandjinks (Instagram)

Genna - Eternal Dreamer

Tammy - http://ohmygoshpolish.blogspot.com.au/

Stacey - @staceymeldrum (Instagram)

Jess - radjecca (Instagram)

Shannen - shannen_arrowsmith (Instagram)

Born Pretty Store Black and White Stamping Polish Review

I have another Born Pretty Store review for you today, this time it is their Black and White Stamping Polishes. I'm still pretty much a novice at stamping, in fact, I'd say I am pretty awful at it. So please be aware of that when viewing my pictures!

First things first, I LOVED using these polishes for stamping. They are thick, and SUPER pigmented. I was quite surprised to be honest. I used a couple of my Bundle Monster plates for the stamps, and stamped over 2 coats of ButterLondons Pillar Box Red, because I felt it would show of the pigmentation of the stamping polishes, and it did! I see a lot of whites turn pinkish when stamped over red, but look how bright that white is!And, they are amazingly easy to clean up too, black is normally horrid to clean, but this was a breeze!

The only downside to these polishes are their size, they only hold a few mL. I do think that they will last quite long though, with how pigmented they are. Here's how they compare to a standard OPI bottle

Overall, I adore these stamping polishes- the fact that they are such high quality will definitely encourage me to stamp more!

Born Pretty Store have a fabulous selection of nail products for great prices, and to make it a bit better, use my code(AFL91) and receive 10% off your order!

 Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

*some products in this post were provided to me for review. this in no way affected my honest opinion*

Aussie Nails Disney Challenge- Snow White!

Snow White was never a favourite of mine. For some reason I preferred the Evil Queen. But that is the case with most Disney movies.

I tried to keep this mani simple, yet still very Snow White themed...

From Index to Pinky we have...China Glaze Lemon Fizz (2 coats) with a chevron in Ulta3 Lily White to symbolise the bottom of her dress.
OPI Gargantuan Green Grape Matte (3 coats) and China Glaze Ruby Pumps - the poison apple.
Ulta3 Black Satin (2 coats) with a 3D acrylic bow with Ruby Pumps- her hair/bow
China Glaze For Audrey (2 coats), ButterLondon Pillar Box Red and glitter fished out and placed on from Ulta3 Blue Years Eve- the sleeves on her dress.

I enjoyed wearing these a lot more than I had expected to. They turned out perfectly for what I had in my mind.

Check out the other Challengers...

Strawbrie

LabMuffin
It's All About The Polish
ErinZi's Nails
WalkInMyEyeshadow
Ten Little Nubs
Nailed Obsession
Every Little Polish
For the Love of Lacquer
Nailoveology
Maeday Nails
LacquerDreams

Until Next Time! 

<3 Bec 

Knocking Out My Untrieds- featuring Femme Fatale and A England

If you follow me on Instagram, you'll know that I got some Femme Fatale Cosmetics polishes this week, and couldn't wait to try them! I've also had some A Englands sitting in my untrieds pile for months, so I decided to combine two of them and this is what happened...

Gosh, this is the perfect layering combo (in my opinion of course!)... The base is A England's Tess D'Urbervilles (2 coats), a stunning blackened green with emerald shimmer. I then picked up Femme Fatale Keeper of the Grove, a grassy green glitter with multiple sizes of green hexes- some are holo, light pink hexes, blue and darker pink circle glitter (oh circle glitter, I do love thee) and there are even some light pink hearts in there. This is incredibly dense, what you see here is ONE coat, and not a thick one! I only needed one coat of Seche Vite and it was perfectly smooth. And sparkly. Oh so sparkly. 

I have 3 more Femme Fatale polishes to show off, but tomorrow is the next chapter of the Aussie Nails Disney Princess challenge, so I have to work on those!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

Blue, Sparkly, and... Greek Mythology?

I love a good dose of nail art, so recently when Teneil from Shades of Phoenix held a nail art contest on her Instagram last week, I had to enter. It was my first IG contest and I was a finalist, but didn't win. At least I got a gorgeous mani out of it!

The theme, like her first polish collection, was Greek mythology themed. So I did some googling and decided on Artemis, Goddess of the Hunt.

I used China Glaze Frostbite and Elevation Polish Ubsunur At Night as my base, and China Glaze GR8 and Ulta3 Crystallina for the artwork. I loved the end result, it turned out better than I had hoped! And because both Frostbite and Ubsunur At Night were untrieds, here's a small bit of spam...

I hope you liked it!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

Aussie Nails Monday- Ombre!

Today's ANM theme is Ombre. I've never done an ombre before, and wanted to do more than just plain colours. I orginally wanted to try owls, but a certain someone changed my mind...

My kitty, Pepper. So I turned my owls...

...into cats! I think these are absolutely adorable, I am so in love! I chose purple, because I have a lot of purple cremes. I tried to avoid shimmers, because I felt like cremes would look more consistent. The purples I used were:

(these are in reverse order- pinky colour to index)
Mode Party Crasher
OPI Planks A Lot
Ulta3 Violet Rumble
China Glaze Light As Air.
The black detailing was Ulta3 Black Satin and I used Seche Vite to finish it off.

Let me know what you think!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

New Challenge! Aussie Nails does...

DISNEY PRINCESSES! 

Yes, that's right! I've been wanting to do this for a while, so I recruited some of my Aussie Nails girls to join me! As you can see, every Saturday for the next 2 months, we do a mani based on a different Disney Princess. Today, we kick off with Jasmine (from Aladdin of course!)

Here's a breakdown of my mani:
Pointer and Pinky: 2 coats NYC Colours Blue Bird, 1 coat Gloss n Sparkle Ice Ice Baby.
Middle: Gradient with Blue Bird and China Glaze For Audrey, with gold glitter rim (like the gem on her headband), which I picked the glitter out of Ulta3 Pot Of Gold.
And Ring: 2 coats of OPI In My Back Pocket with messy tiger stripes (intentional) using Ulta3 Black Satin.
All finished with one coat of Seche Vite.

I was a bit stumped with this one, I was never a big Aladdin fan. But I did like that Jasmine had a pet tiger, that was pretty awesome!

Here are my fellow participants:

Strawbrie

LabMuffin
It's All About The Polish
ErinZi's Nails
WalkInMyEyeshadow
Lissa's Polish Addiction
Nailed Obsession
Every Little Polish
For the Love of Lacquer
Nailoveology
Maeday Nails
LacquerDreams

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec!

 

Random NOTD

Hi guys! Just a quick NOTD for y'all today, but I have something awesome Saturday for you ;)

I loved the orange and purple ANM theme I had earlier this week so much that I grabbed another orange and purple and came up with this:

 China Glaze Riveting and Milani One Coat Glitter Purple Gleam. This was super sparkly! I used 3 coats of Riveting, 2 of Purple Gleam and one coat of Seche Vite.

There you have it! Clashing colours can look SO awesome!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

Aussie Nails Monday- Stripes!

 *Don't forget to enter my giveaway!*

I'm not very good with stripes. And I'm really uninspired lately (I have another challenge starting soon though!). So last night, I was google searching for some ideas and decide to use colours that clash. I put 2 coats of China Glaze Light As Air on, and to make sure it was super dry, I left it over night. Then this morning I grabbed my striping tape and came up with this...

I used a thick coat of China Glaze Peachy Keen over the striping tape, did one nail at a time, and took the tape off slowly as soon as I had put the polish on. Then for my accent nail, I sponged on some Orly Here Comes Trouble.

What do you think? Clashing colours can work sometimes yeah?

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

 

Layring with Barry M and Revlon!

 *Don't forget to enter my giveaway!*

Hello hello! I've been going through my posts that need posting folder and pulling some out to share with you all, because I am really hating my nubs atm. They're too short and don't look good, so art and swatching (except my Aussie Nails Monday and a NOTD or two) will have to wait a bit while the grow out. All I can say is thank you polish gods for Duri Rejuvacote!

Todays post is one I did a while ago, and sadly the polishes in this mani were untrieds. One I actually bought as a birthday present for myself last year- my birthdays in June! I have a buttload of untrieds and really need to go through them haha!

I started with 2 coats of Barry M Vivid Purple. I love a dark, shimmery purple. I have at least 4 that are very close to this one haha. They're so vampy and lush! This one was lovely, the formula was fantastic. And one of my first Barry M's! I bought this one and Navy in August (again, Navy is still in the untrieds). I liked this alone, but it needed something more. So I grabbed Revlons Facets of Fuschia/Scandalous, whichever it's called, and put one coat on top, and then matted it.

I liked this combo, and especially liked it matte, but I feel like the black jelly base of the Revlon killed the gorgeousness (is that a word? It is now) of Vivid Purple. But, still pretty nonetheless.

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

Born Pretty Store Heart Rhinestone Review

Happy Friday! I have a Born Pretty Store review for you today. I have a wheel of heart rhinestones in 12 colours provided for review, and I did 3 manis with them! However, I had a nasty accident today and have had to nubbinize :( so my nails are quite short now.

First of all, this is what the wheel looks like, it is fairly large, but secure and sturdy:

There are plenty of rhinestones per colour! And there's a good colour range too, the only thing missing are some red ones.

So, here are the manis I did with them.

 This is 2 coats of 365 Days Of Colour Cotton Candy over 1 coat Ulta3 Lily White, with the darker blue and pink heart rhinestones.

 2 coats of ButterLONDON PillarBox Red with black and silver heart rhinestones.

And lastly, the lighter green, blue, purple and pink heart rhinestones over 2 coats of Candeo Colors Jellybean.

I LOVE these rhinestones. The are super cute, and very easy to use. The way I do it is to put a slow drying topcoat on the nail, then I use a very small dotting tool, dip it in a little bit of clear top coat and pick up the stone and press it onto the nail. Seal it with some topcoat to secure, and voila!

Born Pretty Store have a fabulous selection of nail products for great prices, and to make it a bit better, use my code(AFL91) and receive 10% off your order!

I hope you like these manis and can see how easy rhinestones are! They can turn something from plain to different very quickly!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

*the rhinestones in this post were provided to me for review. this in no way affected my honest opinion*

Essie Braziliant Mini Collection

*Don't forget to enter my giveaway!*

 I am a terrible blogger sometimes. I bought this collection AGES ago, and swatched it a fair while ago, and am only posting it now. Terrible. So, just so you know, I haven't cut down my nails, it's just old pics ;)

The Braziliant mini collection has 4 polishes in it, and I'll show you them all, starting nnnnnnnnnnnow! 

Just a note so I don't repeat myself- all swatches are 2 coats, with Seche Vite. Formula on all was really good too.

First up, Smooth Sailing. Denim blue with shimmer. Probably my least favourite of the collection, but it is nice, don't get me wrong. The shimmer was more visible and 'chunkier' than usual, but less than say, Picture Polish mesh polishes.

Braziliant. Bright but not neon orange with shimmer. I was expecting this one to be my favourite, but it's not. I do love it though. I have a soft spot for oranges, and the shimmer in this is super pretty.

Super Bossa Nova. Now this one, I LOVE. And it's pink! This is deep, yet bright in a weird way. And it has a gorgeous fuschia-ish shimmer. I've worn this before in some nail art, and I do love it.

And finally, Meet Me At Sunset. I would call this one a crelly (creme/jelly). This one is my favourite. It's vibrant, and yet sill on the darker side of red-orange. And super glossy too! I adore this one, I need to wear it more, or at least get a full size!

All in all, a good collection. Which is your favourite? I'd love to know!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec

 

China Glaze and Lacquer Convention Glitter Gradient

 *Don't forget to enter my giveaway!*

I love glitter gradients- can you tell? They are a simple and pretty way of doing nail art without much hassle. And with all the indies floating around these days, the combinations are endless! Today I have 2 of my most loved polishes, China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise and Lacquer Convention Snap, Crackle, Pop!

I used 3 coats of Turned Up Turquoise, and then dabbed on Snap Crackle Pop just using the polishes brush. It's a super dense glitter so I only used one 'coat'. Then, 2 coats of SV to smooth it out and we are done! I love the colours together, they really work!

Until Next Time,

<3 Bec