Month of A-England: Chevron nails with Galahad and Ascalon

It was about time I used my absolute favourite A-England polish in a manicure for this month. I also wanted to try chevron or reverse french nails, and when I looked through my stash of A-England colours, I realised that not only had I not tried Ascalon at all yet, but it would contrast fantastically with Galahad.

Galahad is a gorgeously creamy creme tealy-blue polish. I adore polishes in the turquoise/teal part of the spectrum and yet Galahad is a colour I haven't come across anywhere else. It's also really hard to capture accurately- I think my second picture, just below, is the closest of my pictures. I used two coats of Galahad here, but it's actually decent enough as a one-coater. Ascalon is a grey-base holographic polish that flashes purple. I used just one coat of this.

Month of A-England: Ophelia and Tess D'Urbervilles

I mentioned in my last post how I normally opt for darker polishes when my nails are short. And as much as I loved wearing something much much lighter for a change, I couldn't resist going back to my preferred dark colours for today's manicure.

A-England has a collection of polishes called Gothic Beauties, and I have two of them- Ophelia and Tess D'Urbervilles. All of the polishes in this collection seem to be gorgeous shimmering colours with a blackened base, and I adore polishes like that. I couldn't decide between the two today, so I decided to go for both at once- Ophelia on three fingers, with Tess on my thumb and ring finger, and then reversed on my other hand. As with all of the dark pigmented A-England polishes I've tried, these were both one coaters! How insane is that?

Ophelia is a blackened base with a beautiful violet shimmer. Tess D'Urbervilles has the same base, but instead of a violet shimmer, it's a gorgeous emerald green. What I love about this is that from a distance and out of the light, my nails appear to be black. But when I look closely I can see that hint of colour. And when the light hits the polish- so shimmery and gorgeous!

Unfortunately, I didn't get around to painting my nails until later in the evening and only got photos under indoor lighting and flash, so I don't think it fully shows off how gorgeous these colours are. I can't wait to see sunlight hitting them tomorrow! And I think I'm definitely sold on the Gothic Beauties collection and I'm going to have to get my hands on the rest of the collection!

Month of A-England: She Walks In Beauty swatch

Today's post is a day late because yesterday was such an overcast day that I wanted to wait until the morning to try and get a picture of this polish in the daylight.

I sat down yesterday to try and decide what manicure I would try, and which A-England polishes I would use. As I looked at She Walks In Beauty, I thought of plenty of ways to use it alongside another colour, perhaps on the tips of nails with a darker colour. Unfortunately I'd filed my nails down a few days ago, so I didn't think that sort of manicure would look as good with shorter nails.

I set the polish aside, but kept glancing back at it- and knew that it would look gorgeous enough on its own. Normally, when my nails are short I lean towards darker colours, so it'd be a lovely change for me.

She Walks In Beauty is a shimmery gold base with rose coloured hexes. Out of the light, it looks like a lovely golden polish. In the light- well, that's when it really starts to sparkle. Here I used two coats. You can still see the VPL, which doesn't bother me, but I suspect with 3 or 4 coats this would be totally opaque.

Month of A-England: jelly sandwich with Iseult and OPI The Living Daylights

I've been wanting to try a layered 'jelly sandwich' type manicure for awhile, but since my preference runs towards darker polishes, I never quite get the sheer and shimmery, matte-ified glitter look I had in my head.

Then the other day when I used Iseult for the first time, I realised that it would work fantastically! I've had OPI The Living Daylights sitting in my collection for awhile, and I knew it'd be perfect for this look.

A-England Iseult and OPI Living Daylights jelly sandwich manicure. Love it!

Month of A-England: Excalibur and Avalon ruffian

For the second of my month of A-England posts, I decided to try a manicure I've never been brave enought to try before- the ruffian. I'm not the neatest of nail painters, and my saving grace is always my trusty clean-up brush. Obviously with a ruffian, my ability to paint in a smooth line would become very obvious, very quickly. Yet I'm really proud of myself and impressed with how this turned out.

Ruffian manicure using Avalon and Excalibur. I love how purple and silver look together!

Month of A-England: Iseult and Elaine dotticure

A few months back, when A-England had that awesome sale (which then turned a bit crazy with shipping restrictions and whatnot) I bought 13 polishes. That might sound crazy but I normally try and make a decently large order when I order polishes from overseas, considering how much shipping can cost, and how long it takes for parcels to arrive here. That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it.

The thing was, I wasn't sure if I was going to like A-England polishes. I'd seen them around and hadn't thought much- although I quickly learnt, once they arrived, that photos do not do any of these polishes justice. Since then, a few more have wriggled their way into my collection, and I realised the other day I have 16 A-England polishes, most of them unused. Clearly there's only one solution to that- One month of blog posts, focussing on A-England polishes, to show off their beauty and how well they work in nail art as well as on their own. So for the next month, every manicure I post about will feature A-England polishes as the main 'ingredient' in each manicure.

To start things off, I grabbed two of the polishes I haven't had a chance to use yet- Iseult and Elaine. And since I'm in a polkadot kind of mood these days, I used a dotting tool to create a dotted french tip.

Nail Art: Easter Egg polka dots

Ah Easter. There's nothing like a long weekend, and while for most of the world Easter gets everyone into the spirit of spring, down here in NZ it signals we're slowly but surely heading towards winter. For me, Easter means a lamb roast for dinner, and maybe a spot of baking.

When I was a kid, it meant chocolate. These days, chocolate doesn't play any role in my life as I'm allergic (something that luckily didn't kick in until my teens) and in particular the little caramel filled eggs with the polka dot foil wrappers. I loved them, more than any chocolate bar themed egg. There was something about them- sweet and gooey and oh-so Easter-y.

So when I sat down to think about how to paint my nails this Easter, they sprung to mind. Most people would choose pastel colours this time of year, but autumn to me is deeper, jewel toned colours, and that fit in nicely.

Yum! Easter egg nails! Almost makes me wish I could eat the caramel eggs I have clutched in my hand here.

Swatch: Butter London Dahling

One of my favourite colours in the whole world is a deep dusky rose pink. So when I came across Butter London Dahling for $15 in a bowl at Farmers a few weeks back, I snapped it up on the spot. Considering normally these polishes cost well over $30, it was a wonderful bargain anyway, and to make it even better, it filled a hole in my polish collection that really did need filling. Everyone needs a pink like this!

To give it a bit more sparkle, I added a layer of Elevation Polish Diasen to my thumb and ring fingers as accent nails. And I think the polishes compliment each other.

Swatch: piCture pOlish Tiffany and Big Ruby nail tattoos

I've had piCture pOlish Tiffany sitting in my collection for awhile, and haven't gotten around to trying it. In all honesty, I'm a bit wary of pale creme polishes like this- I always assume it's going to take a tonne of coats and can make my skin tone look a lot redder than it really is.

Then the other day my order of nail tattoos from Big Ruby showed up- including one set that has lots of little moustaches, and I knew the perfect colour to complement the tattoo would be Tiffany!

I really love how it turned out! The moustache is a bit of whimsy on a beautifully creamy polish base.

Swatch: Jindie Nails Candy Land Remix and Happy dance

It was a very happy day for me when I first discovered Jindie nails. So often I fall in love with a glitter packed polish, only to be disappointed with the formula or how it wears. But so far with the Jindie's I've tried, they've gone on easily and mostly worn for days.

Today I'm showing some swatches of Candy Land Remix and Happy Dance.

Candy Land Remix is a mix of large and small pink, yellow, purple, green and blue neon glitters in a white bas, and then a sprinkling of tiny blue glitters. This is three coats, with one layer of top coat to make it almost totally smooth, despite the large glitters.

St Paddy's Day nail art

Where has the time gone? Between actually moving and then unpacking, not knowing which box my camera ended up in, and absolutely destroying my nails and skin around them during the move, I've barely been able to paint my nails, let alone photograph and blog about them! In fact, my nails were bare for almost a whole week! This is unheard of for me!

Anyway, since it's St Paddy's Day tomorrow, I figured I'd play around with some ideas for a suitable celebratory manicure. I got some striping tape a few months back and never really got around to using it, so I decided to do a striping tape manicure!

Interrupting the regularly scheduled broadcast...

When I started this blog, I decided I would post every Tuesday and Saturday. I missed this Saturday and I'm going to miss today too, regretfully. My excuse- last week I bought a new house, and we moved in this weekend. So on Saturday I was exhausted, and today we're still not fully unpacked, so my camera, with its memory chip containing my most recent pictures, is...well. Somewhere in a box!

Plus, all of the packing and moving has played havoc with my nails! I broke them more times than I'd like to count so they're even shorter nubs than when I cut them back! Typical.

I fully expect to be settled in and my polishes all nicely unpacked by this coming Saturday though, so expect posting to resume as per usual from the 9th of March onwards! 

Swatch: Stay Behind, Catch a Wave by Elevation Polish

Today a long awaited parcel from Llarowe arrived bringing with it 7 glorious new polishes, and then my roommate surprised me with the OPI Euro Centrale mini collection (I love OPI mini collections so much!) so I have a zillion polishes I wanted to try and post today.

Instead I decided it was about time I tried the last of the lovely Elevation Polish colours I bought last month- Stay Behind, Catch a Wave. It's a glitter topper, so I spent a long time trying out different combinations of base colours- the obvious blues or whites or blacks, the lovely but predictable pinks, then some eye popping oranges, until I finally decided it would look great over the only yellow creme polish in my collection- OPI's Fiercely Fiona (also from a mini set!)

Elevation Polish Stay Behind, Catch a Wave over OPI Fiercely Fiona 

Swatches: Different Dimension

In a sad moment this morning, I cut my nails back- both because of a broken nail and because next week labs start up again and long nails certainly won't last long in that environment!

So I looked through my 'Yet to Post' folder, and found a couple of swatches from a week or so back, when my nails were longer. I swatched these as soon as I got them, and was in the process of trying out different angles/ways to photograph, so they're a bit random, and I'll hopefully get the chance to post about these again.

First up is Doppleganger, and is also the only one I ended up taking a picture of with the bottle. Doppleganger has pink and white glitters in a grey jelly base. This photo shows three layers, and I think it's wonderfully subtle, while still giving a nice burst of glitter. I also think it'd work well over a grey (naturally) or even a blue base.

Swatch: Ginza (Elevation Polish) & Guinevere (A-England)

I've had a very good and lucky week, polish wise, and it's only Tuesday! Not only did I score a bargain on two Butter London polishes on Monday (I would have bought as many as possible, but at $20 a pop they're still pretty expensive, even if that's 30% off!), but at lunchtime, on my way back from picking up sushi, I spotted a 1/2 price OPI sign at a pharmacy, and managed to snag Going Gonzo, which I've wanted for ages, and one more polish. Hopefully this is a sign that my two long delayed polish parcels will arrive this week.

For today's polish swatch, I've actually moved my schedule around a little, because one of these polishes is going to stop being sold this week, and I wanted to say, while I have the chance, how pretty it is.

Elevation Polish Ginza, over A-England Guinevere

Swatch: Elevation Polish Daisen over A-England Lancelot

For my second V-day week nails, I decided to wear one of the Elevation Polishes that had arrived the previous week. This was my first time trying Elevation Polish, and so far, I'm impressed!

Daisen is a gorgeous glitter topper- and the reason I wanted it was because of the circle glitter! I can't get enough of circle glitters, and this polish contains pink and copper dots in two sizes, as well as a sparkle of multicoloured microglitters, for this gorgeous blue to green to orange flash of colour. The base is mostly clear, with just a hint of pink.

V-day nails: Different Dimension Aorta Miss You over A-England Lady of the Lake

When my Different Dimension polish order arrived last week, I was overjoyed. Not just because I now own 8 more gorgeous polishes from a brand I hadn't tried before, but because one of the polishes I wanted to wear for Valentine's Day week had arrived! As soon as I saw 'Aorta Miss You But I Don't' on the Different Dimension shop, I loved it for its colours, but also because I knew it'd be perfect for this week. 

Different Dimension Aorta Miss You But I Don't, over A-England Lady of the Lake.

Aorta Miss You is a gorgeous polish, and unfortunately I didn't get a good picture of the bottle. It's packed with fuchsia and garnet coloured hexes, purple hearts and a sprinkling of holographic microglitter for maximum sparkle. Gotta say, I love the name too- I teach Anatomy so puns like this are right up my street!

Swatches: Emily de Molly Harmony, Jindie Tried and True and Gloss n Sparkle Unicorn Droppings

There's nothing quite like finding a stack of parcels in your mailbox, and it's even more exciting to find most of them are holding nail polish!

Yesterday, the Different Dimension polishes I ordered last week arrived, super quickly which was very impressive, and I can't wait to give them a try. This morning I woke up excited, because I knew there were several more packages that should be arriving soon (about six, I think which is both marvellous and horrifying, as I'm sure my bank balance won't be happy with me!) and some of them are a bit overdue. Alas, there were none, so we went about our errands for the morning, sure there would be more when we got home. At 1pm, there was still nothing, but later in the afternoon I glanced out the window and saw a flash of white envelope. I ran out in glee and skipped back, clutching the stack of parcels.

My very first Elevation Polishes, from the end of January restock were in one of the parcels, and my roommate's Llarowe package had somehow managed to beat mine to our house.

Immediately we opened them, and I tried to figure out which ones to try first. My roommate's polishes won out. I should hasten to add that we share our collection (a great way to get twice as many polishes without having to spend all of the money) so I didn't steal them away from her. Both polishes she received were glitters in white cream/jelly bases, and it reminded me I didn't get around to posting my Emily de Molly Harmony swatches. So here are all three!

L-R: Emily de Molly Harmony, Jindie Nails Tried and True, Gloss n Sparkle Unicorn Droppings

Nail Art: Splatter nails with Zoya and Chi Chi

I've been wanting to try splatter nails for a long time, but hadn't gotten around to it until now. I had a great time deciding what colours I wanted to include, and ended up going for black & white, and neon pink, on a grey base. And I love it!

I think the colours work really well together- I like how the black and white mutes the brightness of the pink a little. This is definitely the manicure that most people have commented on, and I've only worn it for two days so far! 

Swatch & Review: A-England Tristam, plus bonus galaxy nail art!

I love when I'm wrong about a polish. I'd looked at A-England polishes several times, on several websites, and thought 'eh, nothing special there'. Now I have some in my hot little hands (and on them!) I know I couldn't have been more wrong.

I guess that it was mostly that I have a finite amount of money to spend on polish, and others I wanted much more than this brand. But when someone posted a comment on a facebook page (which I probably spend far too much time looking at during work hours) about there being an awesome promo, well- I couldn't resist.

Polishes were being sold in duos, trios and on their own for great prices. And I had so much trouble choosing, that I decided that I had to at least get all the trios, to really try them out. And then I added a duo, and then a few singles and...this happened:

Oops? In my defence, it was a great deal, and to go to the trouble of ordering from the other side of the world, it seemed only sensible to get, um, fourteen gorgeous polishes. The great thing is that because of ordering the trios, I have some polishes that I didn't think much of when I looked at pictures on the internet, but now that I have them, I can't wait to wear them.

Which is what happened with Tristam. I love blue polish, but didn't love it until I held it in my hand. And I knew I had to put it on straight away. And after I wore it for a day, I ended up using it as a base for my first attempt at galaxy nail art.

Look at that bottle shimmer!

Swatch: Enchanted Hey Jude and Octopus's Garden

Getting my hands on all six of the Enchanted Beatles Collection polishes from Llarowe at once was a huge coup for me. I'd spotted the polishes on her site months earlier, but they were always sold out. I'm not the biggest fan of holo polishes (or, at least, I wasn't) but the gorgeous colours were too hard to resist, and combined with those names (I've been a Beatles fan as long as I can remember), well, I knew I had to get them!

The next time the restock rolled around, I camped out on my work computer- 1pm restocks are 9am for me and normally I'm busy at that time, but luckily it coincided with a fairly easy day, right before Christmas.  

I refreshed and refreshed, and once they became available I clicked like a maniac to get them into my cart. I was terrified of cartjacking, as I'd heard all about people's frustrations with it. I went to pay- and had issues with my paypal account! It took me a ridiculous number of tries to log into it, and I still don't know what the problem was. With a sinking heart, I finally managed to log in- and the polishes were still there! It was a glorious victory, and I may have performed a happy dance in my office (which luckily no one was around to see)!

When they arrived, I was smitten.

Femme Fatale swatches: Sinister Calling, Glinting Lodestone and Quivering Heart

Oh boy! This is going to be a mammoth post!

A couple of weeks back, my Femme Fatale polishes arrived from Llarowe.com and I ripped the package open with glee to find these three:

                                      L-R Sinister Calling, Glinting Lodestone, Quivering Heart

I couldn't wait to try them, so last weekend, I tried on Sinister Calling, and today I tried the other two. I used a PVA base to minimise cleanup, and it worked a treat! Sinister Calling lasted 24 hours before one finger fell off, and I peeled the others off early, but I expect they would have lasted about the same.

Nail art: Zoya Purity, Girly Bits January Morning and CrowsToes Triple Black Diamond

I thought I'd try out a bit of nail art, using a couple of indie polishes I hadn't gotten around to using yet. Here's the black-on-white glitter gradient I've been sporting for the past few days.

I'm quite pleased with the way it turned out, since I normally do my gradients from the tips. It was a bit messy, and I haven't done a great clean up in these pics (and my cuticles are horribly dry!) but I'm proud of it nonetheless.

This post is going to be very picture heavy!

Swatch: Emily de Molly's Flurocious

In my ever growing wishlist of polishes, a large portion are by Emily de Molly. There's something about the gorgeous base colours and bold glitters that just catches my eye. And it drives me somewhat crazy that, despite being only a hop, skip and a jump from Australia, rules and regulations stop me from ordering direct from the etsy store. Luckily, Llarowe.com sells these delightful polishes, and I managed to get my hold on Flurocious.

I love neon pink, and always have, so I knew I had to have this polish as soon as I saw it. And then, to my surprise and delight, when I opened the package and saw it in real life, I realised that photos do not do it justice. In reality the colour just pops!

The polish has a creamy neon pink base, and contains black and white glitters in a variety of shapes and sizes- large and small squares and medium hexs in black, and large and medium hexs and small squares in white.

My First Swatch! Lush Lacquer's 'Salt n Peppa'

It seems fitting to me to begin my swatch posts with the polish that got me hooked on indie brands.

At some point in the middle of 2012, while reading various polish blogs, I learnt about the infamous 'Connect the Dots' polish by Lynderella. Since I like my polish to come without drama, and not too bank breaking, I started looking around at similar polishes. I stumbled across a few blog posts, like this one and this one, and started searching out which ones I could get my hands on.

I was particularly taken by the shimmery glitter in Lush Lacquer's 'Salt n Peppa', and was pleased to find their etsy store, and, even more excitingly, that they would post to New Zealand. I looked through their collection and fell in love with so many colours- I wanted them all.

And then when I saw they did mini bottles, I was over the moon. I immediately ordered 8 mini bottles, including 'Salt n Peppa', and eagerly awaited their arrival.

'Salt n Peppa' is a clear base, with large and small square, small hex and bar glitter in black and white, with a sprinkling of holo glitter for a bit of shimmer, and comes in two sizes- regular and mini.

About me

Before I get to posting swatches and whatnot, I thought I'd write a little introduction post about myself.