All The Things I Can't Live Without...

You know you're a hardcore nail polish addict when the first thing you do after exams is to sit down and paint your nails while watching Korean dramas. Ha ha, I did this to celebrate the end of my exams, may the bling bling gold bring me luck for the results! Huat arh!!!

Here's a close-up in natural lighting:

Holographic yumminess~

In my room, where the lighting is a little yellower:

And the holographic effect under strong artificial (table lamp) lighting:

You can probably tell I'm into painting my ring finger a different colour, I think it's kinda cool. Get to try out different nail polishes also, kill 2 birds with 1 stone.

The gold polish is Etude House's LuciDarling Glitter Polish; honestly, they do good glitter holographic polishes but their other shimmer and cremes tend to be streaky and not so nice to use. Underneath the gold glitter, I used China Glaze's holographic polish in "FYI", to give it a base colour.

The polish on my ring finger is Orly's "Space Cadet" over China Glaze's "Emerald Sparkle". I was trying to bring out the yellow-green duochrome more, but I think the pink duochrome became more obvious instead. -__- Nonetheless, it's still one of my favourite polishes because of its awesome duochrome effect!

Thanks for viewing this entry, guys, and don't forget to join the giveaway if you haven't!

I went kinda psycho last night. Instead of studying for my last paper (YESSSSS, finally), I spent 2 hours adorning my nails for them to be worthy of the upcoming christmas celebrations!

Ahh, exams, just let Santa Claus screw you.

Presenting my very glittery, very elaborate set of festive nails! Classic too~

Sparkly sparkly holographic awesomeness~~~

The black was actually Manglaze's Matte black polish, but I painted Poshe's top coat over it and it became a nice shimmery black. :) Who says the polish is only for veiny man hands? Mine's such a girly rendition.

The ribbon design (I love how it resembles gift wrappings) was done with my Konad set and China Glaze's "Millennium" Khrome polish. The glittery tips are with Etude House's glitter polish.

Lastly, when you have such gorgeous nails, who wouldn't like hiding your face behind them? I sure don't mind (since they look a whole lot better than my face).

Hope you like the design as much as I do, and thanks for reading this short post! Tootles lovely people!!

MIA, banzai!!!

Ha ha, yep, I've been MIA for a week and it's due to my school reopening (bye bye YOG and all you athletes! Seriously, it's all because of you that our school starts sooo late and my exams end only at the christmas period, WTF. Screw you all!). With that I've moved back to my lodging in the west and my camera was left behind, so no cam-whoring and no updates. ):

But I'm back for the weekends, so I'm kick-starting my blog again with my NOTD that I specially did for school!

(Should I bring my camera to the west with me so that I can blog??)

My left hand with 3 strawberries~

Here are the close-ups of the berries.

For my thumb, I used LA Girl's Matte Coral polish as the berry colour.

For the berries' colour, I used OPI's "Thanks So Muchness" for the index finger and Sally Hansen's Maximum Growth Nourishing Nail Color in "Lighthearted Lavender" for the ring finger.

The right hand, with another 3 berries! I liked the left ring finger's berry so much that I duplicated it on my right index finger, so no description for that.

Close-up of the other 2 berries!

Ha ha, I went unorthodox and did a blueberry on the middle finger instead (now I can point my middle finger at anyone and go "Eat my blueberry, sucker!". Ah ha ha ha)! The blue was Orly's "Snowcone" from the Sweet collection. The red on my little finger was OPI's "Off With Her Red".

All green leaves at the top were China Glaze's "Emerald Sparkle", the black seeds were Elianto's (sucky goopy) black polish and the yellow seeds were Orly's "Lemonade" from the Sweet collection. I didn't wanna overwhelm all my fingers with berries so I only painted 6 of them. The other 4 'empty' fingers I didn't know what to paint them with so I just left them alone to contrast the berries with.

It's a super cute manicure and it wasn't very difficult to do. All you need is a small pointed-tip brush, some patience and a good top coat (to even out all those streaks and gloops!).

Thanks for reading, and hope you guys enjoyed the entry! Oh, btw, I'll be putting up a small blog sale soon, so watch out for that! Tootles~

This was actually last week's NOTD since I couldn't wait to try out the pretty Orly polishes. Then I couldn't update due to my exams, so here it is anyway,  1 week late.

The left hand

The right hand

Ha ha, assorted colours! No choice, I was feeling so moody over the impending exams so I decided to add some colour into my bleak life.

The yellow is Orly's "Lemonade", the blue is Orly's "Snow Cone" and the mint green is my older China Glaze's "Refresh Mint". Of all the 3 pastels, I absolutely love Snow Cone the most. This polish, if you paint it correctly, is a one coater! The colour payoff is fantastic and the formulation is thin so there isn't any streakiness at all. I had 2 coats of it on my fingers though.

Lemonade's formulation isn't as good as Snow Cone's though. The polish is thicker so it applied a little streaky - you'll be needing 2 coats at least. At the 2nd or 3rd coat, it evens out nicely. The colour is really cheery though, and I like how it reminds me of Mr. Happy. I had 3 coats on my fingers.

Refresh Mint has been reviewed before (I had 2 coats on my fingers here) but if I were to compare China Glaze's formulation to Orly's, Snow Cone still comes out top, then Refresh Mint and lastly Lemonade. However, yellow pastel polishes are notoriously known for being difficult to apply, so I find Lemonade okay. One thing I noticed was the size of Orly's polish brush - it's sooo big! It's bigger than the China Glaze brush (can't say about OPI, cos I only have their mini polishes) and it overwhelmed me the first time I used it. After getting used to the gigantic brush, it becomes easier to paint though I'll take care when painting the edges of my nails.

2 more papers to go, woots! Fighto!!! Thanks for reading~

Ok, technically the cool-blue part and the metallics part are separate issues but I thought they complimented well with each other. Here's goes~

NOTD

Using China Glaze's Millennium from the Khrome collection.

Aaaand a close up.

I finally understood why it's perfect for konading. Cos the formula gets really think and goopy after a while. I had such a hard time painting my nails with this, cos it either applied streaky or the polish just shifted and came apart in blotches if you go over your painted nails a second time. In the end, I had to slap thick gobbles full of the polish onto my nails and hope it evens out. However, I'm pretty satisfied with the result - the plain metallic iciness and the awesome reflection. The finish may not be as good as foil or minx nails, but it's not bad. Just that the application is a horror on its own.

LOTD

Yay to shimmery blueness and dramatic winged out eyeliner! I tried to emulate Michelle Phan's look in this video...

.. but I kinda failed, cos I realized I didn't really have a crease and I'll just look stupid walking around with a purple line draw along my eye. So I just drew a blue line and blended it out to meet my eye's outer corners. And I overloaded on the mascara on my lower lashes, since I thought drawing the winged out eyeliner on my waterline will be too much for to wear outside in SG. In the end, it was a lot different from Michelle Phan's version but at least I'll feel safer wearing my version out. :)

So here's the whole look with my ever-present specs on. Be good everyone, and thanks for reading!

P.S. Damn this flu bug going around, I think I'm falling sick yet again. Zzzzz... =___=

I should really just put Nail-Of-The-Week (NOTW) instead of NOTD since I don't switch nail varnishes on a daily basis. No time and not enough creative ideas. But anyway, I received the 2 China Glaze nail polishes I bought from Lacquer Haven over the weekend. This blog shop offers one of the cheapest prices on OPI, Orly and ChG varnishes and the seller was so prompt in replying to my order and sending out the items. Though the range of polishes they're selling is quite limited now, I was told that they'll be bringing more of the upcoming collections e.g. Orly Sweet, ChG Shrek series.

Note: I wasn't told/paid to write about this blog shop; just thought of mentioning them since their services were pretty good and their prices even better!  The polishes were bought with my own cash. :)

2 heavily bubble-wrapped bottles. I was kinda surprised at how much bubble wrap and scotch tape they used.

More protective measures came in the form of white spongy stuff in the envelop. I LOL-ed when I ripped the envelop open and these jumped out at me.

And I got China Glaze's Re-fresh Mint (from the Up & Away collection) and Emerald Sparkle (I think it was from the Holiday Wishes collection).

These 2 bottles cost me S$17.80 altogether, with each bottle priced at S$8.50 and postage for both at S$0.80. Cheap right? Emerald Sparkle is soooooo pretty! I swatched it on one finger and I really liked how deep green but glittery it is. But that being said, I was tired of having design motifs and dark colours on my nails (1 week of the previous Konadicure made me a bit sian of those colours) so I immediately reached for Re-fresh Mint for this week's fix!

Re-fresh Mint is indeed a very refreshing colour. This is the first time I'm sporting such a nice cool creme green colour on my nails and I'm pretty psyched over it. After 1 week of fanciful nails, it's so relaxing to see your nails a pale shade of creamy mint-iness. :} Application was not too bad, it was quite streaky on the 1st coat but after the 2nd coat, it spreads out evenly. For me, I applied my 2nd coat quite thickly (slap on the goop!) so the finish was smooth, sans streaks and opaque. Of course, topped off with Seche Vite top coat.

I was trying to give a contrast of my nails against the dark background of Mocha! See, she's still sulking in my room. She got even more annoyed when I shoved my freshly lacquered hands (the smell was still quite strong) onto her furry body, ha ha, can see her twitching in irritation!

The nails look great on my black laptop!

Thanks for reading, take care everyone.

Another first!

I got my first bottle of China Glaze nail polish and Seche Vite top coat through a Transdesign spree 2 days back. Previously, all the nail polishes that I've been using were S$2 Rainbow polishes, some random cheapo brands from those neighbourhood beauty shops or most recently, L.A. Girls which is a drugstore brand. China Glaze, OPI and ORLY were considered branded to me, since they are easily sold for S$20 a bottle here.

After shipping and handling charges, these came up to about S$10 each. I got FYI, in the China Glaze holographic OMG collection.

Since I got the Valentine's Day edition of Seche Vite Fast Drying Top Coat, it came with a free sheet of nail decals.

Close up of the CG nail polish. Not sure if you can see the holographic effect in the bottle..?

Maybe a bit more obvious on my nails.

Argh, my lighting is really bad, the camera can't pick up the effect much. If you look at my nails from far or under normal lighting, it looks like a neutral taupe colour, almost like mannequin's hands. But if you look more closely, you'll see a slight greenish sheen and very fine silver glitter particles. It's really pretty. And my gosh, the Seche Vote Top Coat dries like PLASTIC on your nails! I was awe-struck at the finish - spent the whole day rubbing the smooth surface of my nails, so addictive! Ha ha, it's really good too!

I am sorely tempted to get the Konad Nail Stamps now...

I painted my troll-like toes too. :D Holographic toes, nice~

And my HOTD for yesterday:

I went all Sailor Moon with the freakishly hot weather - fried my brains, it did.

Thanks for reading, cheers!