From the Vault... SPAM

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These photos have been sitting in my edited file for a few months now, so I decided I had to post them now or say bye-bye...

Enjoy!

 Pahlish Twelve Drummers Drumming

 Twelve Drummers Drumming - I can't remember if this was 2 or 3 coats... Probably 3 since it's sheer. It's got a creamy nude base with gold/orange micro-flakes, iridescent and copper glitter. Beautiful!

L'Oreal 811 

 811 - do these mini sized L'Oreals actually have names or is the boring number all we get? Gorgeous blue with green shimmer though! This was 2 coats.

Sation Delete Your Junk Male

 Delete Your Junk Male was part of the Miss Antoinette Collection, but I couldn't get it to photograph true to life so I never posted it. In person, this is a dark pink jelly with subtle white sparks, just like Love Is In The Heir! Sadly it just looks super coral/orange/red in photos... Maybe it's got some neon to it? Anyway, this was at least 3 coats because she's pretty sheer.

 OPI Every Month Is Oktoberfest

Every Month Is Oktoberfest is a deep aubergine loaded with rich rusty shimmer. Two thin, easy to apply coats and you're good to go. Faboush!

Red Carpet Lacquer Glades over BYS Black & Gold

 Glades is a glitter colour-shifting top coat. The glitter is translucent and when layered you see a shift from green-yellow-orange. I applied two coats over a back base with gold shimmer flakes.

Elevation Polish Grotte et Cascade

 Grotte et Cascade is a rich, deep brown with blue, purple, pink and red micro-flake shimmer. It's opaque in 2 coats and sooooooooooooooo gorgeous! I've been rocking it a little this winter already.

Lilacquer Leeloo Multipass

 Leeloo Multipass - who didn't love The Fifth Element?! It's quite possibly the only Mila Jovovich film I've ever seen :) And Brucey is AWESOME as per usual. LM is another shade that would not cooperate with the camera. It's a warmer orange with pink shimmer, but it looks terribly yellow toned in these shots :( This one was a streaky sucker; I might have ended up with 4 coats because I was trying to even it all out! I think 2-3 coats was opaque.

Daring Digits Love Dragon over Pahlish Eight Maids A Milking

 Love Dragon is a pink to purple shimmery micro-flake top coat. I added two coats to a pink and purple Pahlish glitter and it looked so sparkly! The name is fantastic too!!!!!

Dollish Polish Mermaid Scales v2.0 with stamping and gems

I tried my hand at a mermaid tail themed manicure and all was swell until I put top coat over the rhinestones. It went all bubbly and nasty :( I learnt not to top coat these gems though... I used BM 209 and China Glaze Millennium for the stamping.

China Glaze Full Spectrum

 Full Spectrum is a pink/silver duo-chrome choc-a-block full of rainbow hexes. I've since sold this because I'm not that in to the rainbow glitter, but the base is pretty. This was two thin coats.

Femme Fatale Quivering Heart over Hits Unconventional

 I've posted Quivering Heart before, but this is it layered over a darker base. I love how the moody red-purple duo-chrome sets off the gold sparks in QH.

Candeo Colors Sweet Sierra over Essie Madison Ave-Hue

Sweet Sierra is a lavender and rose pink holo glitter top coat. It's squarey-hex and sparkles like mad! I'm wearing 1 coat over a pink from Essie.


Yes, that got rid of so much backlog! Now I need to go study and edit some newer snaps!!!!!


xxx
NPA

A Good Friday Mini Swatch Spam

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Good Friday to you ladies!

I have some random swatches for you today:

 Cult Nails Fetish

Fetish is a black wax finish from Cult Nails' Two Year Anniversary Collection. That basically means it's a matte finish, perhaps slightly satin-matte? I applied two easy coats, though one thick coat would do if you are pinched for time. I did get a few bumps on my nails which might have to do with the thickness of the polish. I'll try adding a few drops of thinner next time I wear Fetish. Fantastically naughty name, no?

Specialita HITS Mari Moon Unconventional

I've had Unconvential for at least nine months, and have woefully, only worn it twice!!! This multichrome from the Mari Moon inspired collection is magnificent though! What looks like a red-purple duochrome in the bottle actually shifts pink-purple-blue,orange/yellow-red! Here I've layered two coats over Fetish, but you can get away with 3 thin coats alone. The formula is very thick so I recommend thinning it to avid tip shrinkage. It's the perfect subtle multichrome, to ease you in to the trend!!

Nicole by OPI For Gold Time's Sake

 For Gold Time's Sake is a magnificent mix of micro flakes in a sheer antique gold base. It looks to be primarily made up of gold and colour shifting flakes in purple-blue-fuchsia. It is beautiful and intricate and no matter what the lighting, it is a sparkling sensation!!! I applied 3 thin, not quite watery coats for full coverage.

I hope Good Friday is treating you well, have you been munching on chocolate already?!

xxx

NPA

The wretched right hand makes an appearance

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I keep all my small and mini bottles of polish in a separate area from my full sized bottles. When I was in Christchurch, they sat in a desk rack; but since I moved back to Auckland they have been sitting in a box all jumbled together and forgotten!!!

All of my amazing Specialita Hits polishes have been shunned since November and truth be told for the second half of last year too.
So when I was choosing which polish to wear on my first day of Course, I decided the Hits had to make a comeback!

I ended up picking the orange jelly flakie Hula from the Mundo de Dancas Collection. I'd never worn it and the orange is eye-searingly bright and summery, so it was the obvious choice.

Specialita Hits Hula with Butter London West End Wonderful gradient

 Hula is a scorching orange jelly with orange flakies. It almost attacks your eyes it's so saturated. I applied 3 thin coats and there was still slight VNL.

On the second day I added a gold glitter gradient to the tips - just to hide them really!!! I'm not great at the glitter gradient and am yet to try a real gradient using The Nailasaurus' method so it's pretty messy, but change is good! Gotta keep stepping out of my nail comfort zone :)

 The first two photos were of my right hand, yikes! They look so back to front!! I once swatched on both hands but it has been a few years and I am severely rusty and shaky with the photos!!! I just can't position my right hand nicely for photos.

Have you mastered the Glitter Gradient yet? Feel free to give me pointers guys!!!!! Please?


xxx
NPA

Epic Layering - for a lazy polisher like me!

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A little background to my layering:

My nails have been a fright of late, due to the far too much swatching, peeling off my glitters (yikes!), and skipping the nail balm/cuticle oil routine. So I needed to keep them nails painted to strengthen them, and stop removing the lacquer every 5 seconds!

How did I manage to keep the same polish on for a full 3 days? By layering another polish on top every day!

Here's what they looked like step by step:
 Day 1:

The Dream Girl - 2 coats - white light

The Dream Girl - 2 coats - white light

 The Dream Girl from Spooky Bones - a brand I found on etsy - is a dark muted purple shimmer. In low light it looks a lot like the colour of pencil lead with a purple tinge. The shimmer is really pretty, as you can see in the (crappy) photos, it is green and pink and makes what could be a blah colour come alive!
I had a bit of cuticle drag probably because I didn't wait long enough between coats. I just left it like this because  knew I'd be layering it.

Moonbow over TDG - 1 coat - white light

Moonbow over TDG - 1 coat - macro

Next, I applied 1 thin coat of Specialita Hits Phenomena Moonbow on top and put on 1 layer of top coat. Moonbow is a colour shifting glitter top in a clear base. The colour shift is seriously gorgeous in this one! The dominant colour is the blue & green you can see in the centre of the nails and that shifts to purple & pink. But there is also some gold and orange visible at certain angles which just equals GORGEOUSNESS!

I didn't particularly like how sparse the glitter was, but it was getting late so I left it like that for the first day.

Day 2:

Moonbow over TDG - 2 coats - white light

Moonbow over TDG - 2 coats - white light

Moonbow over TDG - 2 coats - macro

 So, the next day I added another coat of Moonbow and was delighted with the results. It certainly looked better on the base with more glitter. I only regret not getting any photos showing the pink & purple colour shift better! It's a bit difficult to do using my lamp :( 


Can you guess what I did next?

Day 3:

1 coat Hefesto added to the mix

I added a holographic top coat of course!!! Specialita Hits Hefesto arrived a couple of weeks ago and I actually didn't touch it until this manicure. I think I must have been trying to preserve the tiny 6mL bottle it came in!!! And JAYSUS it looks amazing!!! From an average distance it really looked like a dark purple multichrome linear holographic. Then when I looked close I could see the individual glitters peaking through and all the colour shifting and rainbowness of it all blew my mind!

I really couldn't believe I hadn't done more layering in the past. I'm just seriously lazy. And I adhere to the 'take off the last thing you put on' rule when it comes to clothing, makeup and jewellery because whenever I add that 1 extra bit of pizazz to a mani it usually ends up ruining it! Not in this case though!!!!

Now here are a bigillion more pics for you to ogle!

 

 Crazy awesome, right?!

And here's a bottle shot

L-R: The Dream Girl, Moonbow, Hefesto

I've recently bought quite a few layering polishes (like colour morphing top coats) so I really ought to try out more combinations and share the results with you all.

BTW keeping my nails painted for 3 days straight really helped them so I'm going to try to keep on leaving manis on til they grow out and are stronger!

xxx
NPA