NotD: Teal Paisley

After the reverse ladybug manicure, I wanted something that wouldn't show tip-wear as much, and I wanted to pull out my very neglected Konad plates.

From polish storage: Eurotrip (NotD)

This is one of my maaaaaaaany Mode nail polishes. I have a lot of them, mostly because they're cheap but also because some of them are amazingly good. I'm not sure I've ever actually worn this before, but here it is!

Slightly blurry pic to show the shimmer :)

This colour has amazing gold/copper shimmer in sunlight. I don't normally go for darker polish colours but I really like this one. I did two thick-ish coats to maximise the chocolaty base colour and make sure the shimmer showed up.

Pic with flash, makes the base look a lot more reddish than it actually is.

I added some polka dots with China Glaze Passion. I actually would have loved to do my whole mani with the dots but for some reason my left hand was SO shaky last night, after doing the accent nail on my right hand I kinda went, "Yeeeah no," so accent it shall stay. Or maybe I'll just do one extra nail a day for however long the mani lasts :P

Much better representation of the base colour.

Polka dots!

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.