NotD: Lodestone Skittles

I've been checking out a lot of nail blogs lately for inspiration, and decided to try a glitter gradient manicure - over skittles!

Review: Australis MegaLash Mascara (Electric Blue!)

I had a bit of cash to spare and wandered into Price Attack to get a new mascara. They didn't have either of the two that I like (one is Covergirl and one is Maybelline), but when I saw this baby I decided it was definitely worth $10ish to try a coloured mascara. I grabbed a plain black Australis as well, which I'll review later on. It's in the same family as this mascara (MegaLash).

Review: Australis Manic Panic

If you've been reading my blog for a while, or if you know me personally, it's no secret that I love purple. I have a purple diary, a purple water bottle, and a ton of purple make-up. During the move I lost my favourite bright purple Mode polish, and I haven't been able to find a replacement.

That is waaay blue-toned, silly camera!

Enter Australis Manic Panic, a bright, red-toned purple creme.The original Mode polish I had was blue-toned, in fact remarkably like that inaccurate bottle shot above. This lacquer is similarly bright, if not the right tone, and opaque in two coats, as opposed to the Mode's one. It hasn't entirely filled the hole left by my favourite purple, but it's a good stop-gap for now. It dries quite glossy too. Excuse the weird bump on my ring finger, I accidentally knocked it with my camera while the polish was still wet.

That's still not quite as red-toned as it is in person, but you all know how much cameras LOVE to work with purple, heh. It's a fun, bright colour and if you're a purple fan like me, how can you resist a cheap lacquer?

Review: Australis Aqua

I have a bright, in-your-face turquoise aqua from Mode Cosmetics I use all the time, but I wanted something a bit lighter and softer, more Tiffany blue-ish, now that I think about it. I saw Aqua on the Australis stand and it looked like just the thing.

Unfortunately, it not only has a lighter tone but also a worse formula. This was disappointingly sheer and streaky - there was huge VNL and bald spots after 2 coats. A third coat evened it out but I can still a bit of VNL. It's a really pretty colour, but I don't think I'll be wearing it much because I'm not patient enough to do more than two coats!

The first picture is more colour-accurate. Can you see VNL on my ring finger, or am I just weird?

FOTD: Purple Monday

I had quite a bit to do this morning, so I opted for something quick and simple, but still with some colour.

How can my eyebrows need attention ALREADY?!

Eyeliner: Aromaleigh eyeshadow in Odile, foiled
Mascara: Maybelline One by One Volum' Express in Satin Black

Lips are a bit more plummy and shimmery in person.

Face: Australis Fresh & Flawless pressed powder in Darkest Brown, Lost in Makeupland Finishing Powder for Oily Skin
Brows: Wet 'n Wild Eyebrow Pencil 3 and a brow powder I mixed myself

Blush close-up.

Lips: Silk Naturals Kisser Slicker in Infatuation
Blush: Sobe Botanicals Enchanted

IS MAH FACE

Note to self: less thick eyeliner won't transfer, duh.

Review: Australis Vampy

This one is listed under the Australis LE polishes on their website. I picked it up from Priceline a couple of weeks ago.

I'm not a huge pink person - in fact, I only own one pink article of clothing and it's more coral than pink. I have pink in my makeup collection purely to round it out, and most of my pinky polishes are either neutral or sparklicious.

What attracted me to this polish is that it's a berry/maroon/raspberry-red rather than straight-out pink, and the red glitter is gorgeous.

Luckily the red glitter shows up on the nail - in fact this is a jelly sandwich in a bottle. Removal is a bitch because of said glitter, and it needs a good layer of topcoat so it doesn't feel rough, but I actually think it's worth is since this is such a beautiful, unique colour. Grab it before it's gone!

The patchiness on my index finger is because I dented it. Go me!

Review: Australis Here Today Gone Tomorrow

From the name, I'm going to go ahead and guess that this is a limited edition shade, since it's not actually listed on the Australis website, but it is new.

Super dark green creme (I really don't understand why the label text on this bottle is black, you can't freaking see anything), kind of reminds me of Nars Zulu. SO much hype around that polish, and I was way more into eyeshadow at that time so I never bothered with it. Speaking of Zulu, though...

Fluorescent light

Artificial light

Excuse my cuticles! If you never bought Zulu and you're an Aussie girl looking for some vampy winter colours, this is gorgeous. Blackened-green jelly - extremely dark but not quite black. Two coats featured here, no topcoat - first coat is a bit streaky and light, second coat creates dark, glossy perfection. I'm itching to put China Glaze Wireless over it to see if I can make a dark green holo (!) but of course that darn bottle's disappeared again.

I picked up another Australis LE shade which I'll try to swatch soon, because it's GORGEOUS and if it's sold out before I review it, you might hate me. I also have two lovely brights from the regular collection. Australis polishes are so darn addictive!

Speck-tacular Runway (NotD)

Pardon the tipwear, this is now a few days old. Runway from Mode Cosmetics with a thick coat of Australis Speck-tacular. Runway is a little darker and bluer in these photos than it is in real life.

I was originally going to put Runway under a coat of China Glaze Wireless (which is an awesome holo top coat) but my bottle is missing :( I might have to bite the bullet and purchase a replacement soon, it's been a week or so and it hasn't turned up!

EotD: first day at new job

I wasn't 100% sure how many of the other girls wear make-up, and whether or not they are as into brights as I am, so I decided to play it safe and do a neutral lid with a pop of colour on the lower lashline.

Products used:
Champagne Toast by Aromaleigh (lid)
English Rose by Lost in Makeupland (highlight)
Turquoise from Sleek Circus palette (lashline)
Covergirl liquiline blast eyeliner in brown to tightline
Australis Extenderlash Mascara in black

Lips are Morgana Cryptoria Roses & Violets with Rimmel gloss over the top.
Brows are a random old Revlon pencil that is down to a stub now... I guess that means I need to start brow product shopping soon! I promise my brows didn't look as raggedy in person. That macro is unforgiving!

To match this necklace (and the eye make-up) I wore a blush-pink dress with a turquoise belt and flats.

I'm going to make a concentrated effort to go through my eyeshadow samples - especially the ton of neutrals I amassed for work! - and finish them off. I have enough full-sized neutrals in a gamut of colours to last me for EVAH (never mind that there's still some Fyrinnae and Silk Naturals ones I want. Definitely don't need 'em!)

Priceline, take my wallet.

LOOK. AT. THIS.

That is a $10 black creme polish I got from Priceline, one of those really underwhelming brands - glamnails by manicare. It was opaque in one coat and ridiculously glossy. Over the top of that is a stunning flaky polish from Australis. I'm not making this up! 

The Australis shade is called "Speck-tacular". The description on their website is rather misleading. "A holographic light reflecting foil top coat that adds a new glitter dimension when applied on top of base nail colour." But the bottle says 'flakes' and when I saw it I knew straight away what it was. A FLAKIE EXPLOSION.

At $8.95 it's cheaper than the Picture Polish Flakie Covers and much easier to get a hold of than the U.S brands. I know flakies are 'in' for this year but I was extremely surprised to see an Aussie brand jumping on the bandwagon so darn fast, with something that is NOT a straight dupe of the Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure/Nubar 2010 one - this has blue flakes, more prominent red ones, and then some lovely green/gold/orange duochrome flaky action. Thankyou, Australis!

This was a fairly thick coat. The pieces are extremely irregular, as you can see by the massive one on my index finger. If you like your coverage a bit less random you could definitely add another coat or two.

GET THEE TO PRICELINE, STAT. I'm going to get a backup of both of these.

Review: Australis Eye Primer and Extender Lash Mascara

Picking these up was a bit of an impulse buy. Due to sweaty summery-ness, my TFSI just wasn’t performing as well as usual, and my beloved Covergirl Lash Blast was starting to get a bit old and clumpy. I don’t remember if I picked these up from Priceline or Price Attack, but these are quite readily available to Aussie ladies and they’re both under $15. Australis does a few other mascaras as well which I miiiiiiight pick up later on.

Anyway! I gather the primer is sort of new, since I certainly hadn't noticed it around before and it's listed under the 'new products' section of the Australis website (ME SO SMART, DO MY RESEARCH HURRR) The primer tube is made of metallic pink plastic in this sort of… serrated parallelogram? It has a doe-foot applicator.

It’s fairly sturdy, but it’s not heavy. The texture of the primer itself is really quite thin and wet-feeling (hence the doefoot applicator; I could see lots of accidents happening with this if it was in a squeeze tube!) It felt strange after using TFSI for so long, which is really creamy and thick. The instructions say to let the primer set for 30 seconds before applying product. I held my watch up to my ear and waited 30 seconds exactly. After that the product had set, it was no longer liquidy and had become transparent and creamy-feeling. My eyeshadows went on quite smoothly – there was ‘grab’ but not enough to make blending difficult.

In terms of wear, I would rate this up there with TSFI for those with oily eyelids. Overall, I experienced no fading and minimal creasing in the inner corners of my eyes. I would even go so far as to say this was a little bit BETTER than TFSI! In terms of price and availability, it is much better for us Aussie girls. A tube of TFSI retails at Kit Cosmetics for $34.95, whereas you can get the Australis Primer for $12.95 on their website (which is the price I paid for it as well).

The mascara tube is a lightweight, rounded-square shape with the product name on the tube in metallic pink writing, the same colour as the primer tube. It clicks shut really nicely BUT never ‘looks’ properly closed, there is always a gap between the lid and the rest of the tube (which in a way is good, since the writing is the only other indication which end of the tube is which…)

Is it definitely an ‘extending’ mascara only. Compared to my Lash Blast, there is a good deal less volume, so I would rate this as a good lengthening mascara, for those who have thick lashes or who don’t want a lot of volume. I always curl my lashes before applying mascara, and it held the curl quite well.

Another great thing about this mascara is the brush – it’s small enough that you can exert a lot of precision and control over your mascara application. To really test it out, I applied it on my bottom lashes for a full day at work. While applying I only smudged my lower lid once, and I was able to very quickly and easily correct my mistake. The formula is really non-clumping, my lashes looked defined and natural.

During the day I noticed my eyeliner did smudge a little bit, but it was definitely ONLY my eyeliner and not the mascara. Usually I would never mascara my lower lashes due to A) difficulty with brushes, especially the giant rubbery Lash Blast brush, and B) smudging due to sweating/oiliness.

If you’re not big on volume (har har, pun) and you’re looking for a nice daytime mascara to get you through summer, I definitely recommend Australis Extender Lash. I did get the waterproof formula so you will need a fairly strong cleanser to get it all off. I've been using Silk Naturals Apricot Cleansing Oil followed by my HG OHWTO Black Magic face soap and it leaves my face super-duper-uber clean, but not feeling squeaky/stripped.

Lid/browbone shade: 'Browbone' shade from Wet n Wild Comfort Zone palette.
Crease: 'Eyelid' shade from Comfort Zone.
Primer: Australis
Liner: 'Crease' shade from Comfort Zone.
Waterline: Nyx JEP in Milk
Mascara: Australis Extender Lash
Make-up applied approx. 8am, photos taken approx. 7:30pm (touch-up on inner corners done 3:30pm with eyeshadow palette and clean finger).

Love what it does to my bottom lashes!

Nekky lashes to compare.

Minimal creasing = happy Jade!

If anybody would like to see a more detailed vibrancy and wear face-off between TFSI and Australis EP, please let me know, and I’ll do it when I’m NOT at work and can use something a bit brighter! I also need to test out Pixie Epoxy over the primer. Hopefully there won't be any compatability issues.

Blue Tiger Butterfly: NoTD

I have a metric butt-ton of draft posts but I'm so swamped with uni work, and moving stuff (we still have a distinct lack of furniture!) so here's a quick NoTD so you know I haven't forgotten about blogging.

I bought a bunch of stuff from BornPretty.com as a celebratory "we got the house!", also using Lillian's 10% off code. Yay! It arrived just before my three-day break from work, so I pulled out a polish I bought a while ago but had yet to use. Blue Tiger from Australis. HOLY SHIT. I don't know why I never used this before! I mean, yes it's royal blue and I prefer turquoise/aqua shades but this is beautifully bright and OPAQUE IN ONE COAT.

A little snark about Australis polishes: "Intense colour with a high shine". The last polish I tried from them, Satine, was so sheer I didn't even bother trying to make it opaque. It was very shiny though. Blue Tiger is incredibly opaque, BUT it dries semi-matte. Obviously I have topcoat on in my photos, but still, I thought it was funny.

I got Konad plates, dotting tools, stamping polishes and some Fimo pieces from BornPretty and I honestly did not know what to do first, so... I decided to use a little bit of everything, minus the dotting tools. Please ignore the cuticle on my middle finger, I banged it at work and it's taking forever to heal up, despite twice-daily applications of cuticle cream!

Stamping done with China Glaze Millenium.
Layering on middle finger done with Mode Chillax.

The Fimo pieces have hard edges from being slathered in topcoat, and they do catch on things a little bit. I was SO tempted to do a French tip-esque line with the dotting tool, but LESS IS MORE. I think. Sometimes.

Another fun layering combo: Essie Demure Vixen topped with China Glaze Wireless holo topcoat. Subtle enough indoors that I didn't get in trouble at work, but SO GORGEOUS and sparkly outdoors! This does look a bit beat up, sorry.

The holo topcoat has the effect of almost merging the base colour (soft taupe-cocoa) and the shimmer (violet) into this lovely muted mauve-brown. The holo itself looks predominantly silver-green in the shade, but direct sunlight does give it more of a rainbow effect.

I think my bottle of Demure Vixen is reformulated, because it takes at least 3 coats to get opaque, and even then there's still a bit of VNL. I'm going to experiment with some of my nude/taupe polishes and see if any of them work OK as a base so I don't have to apply so darn much of Demure Vixen to get it looking good. It also develops tipwear really fast; I don't know if it's my base/topcoat or the actual polish though.

There you go, some pretty pictures! I'm off to Sydney next week for work training (boo) and a mini-holiday (yay!) so expect some posts when I get back. I should have some sporadic internet access while I'm there and I'll also be able to VISIT ILLAMASQUA! I'm so excited. I'm planning on getting an eye pencil and maybe a lipgloss as well.