Cosmetic Cupcake

I've been so uninspired lately. October is usually a great month because there's pink and Halloween manis to do but I haven't been in the mood to try out anything doh. I did manage to do a quick Halloween drip mani the other day though which I always love doing and always work!!


For my pinky I used 2 coats of Rescue Beauty Lounge Concrete Jungle and dripped essence You've Got the Art; for my ring finger I used 1 coat of Kester Black Cherry Pie* and Cult Nails Nevermore for the drips; for my middle finger I used 2 coats of China Glaze Roguish Red and China Glaze Happy Go Lucky for the drips and for my index finger I used 2 coats of Sinful Colors Mint Apple and China Glaze Grape Pop for the drips.


For my thumb I used 2 coats of OPI Alpine Snow and Kester Black Cherry Pie* for the drips. I think my fave colour combo is my pinky as it looks like slime!



What do you do when you're uninspired? I hate being in a rut and it seems to always happen!

* Product(s) provided to me for consideration but this in no way influenced my review in any way. As always, my reviews are my 100% honest opinion. My Disclosure Policy can be viewed here.

Today I I have another Easter manicure for you! Hopefully you guys aren't sick of them yet! Just a really simple yellow mani with a little chick as an accent. Although my chick looks a tad wonky haha - I think it's the eyes Xp


I used 3 coats of Essence Sundancer as my base which is a gorgeous amber yellow creme. I was going to do nail art on each nail but it's SUCH a lovely yellow I left it as is!


For the chick, I used a small nail art brush* from Born Pretty Store and OPI Alpine Snow for the egg. For the beak I used the same nail art brush and Sinful Colors Big Daddy. For the eyes I used Kiss nail art paint striper in black and OPI Alpine Snow and 2 different sized dotting tools. Lastly I outlined the egg with Face of Australia Titanium.




What are you rocking on your nails this Easter? I hope you're all having a lovely Easter! Thanks for looking as always =)

* Product(s) provided to me for consideration but this in no way influenced my review in any way. As always, my reviews are my 100% honest opinion. My Disclosure Policy can be viewed here.

Top O' The mornin to ya ladies! It has just ticked over into Saturday which means it's St Patrick's Day today. I don't celebrate but you know me - I just had to get into the spirit and do a St Patrick's Day manicure!


What I used:

Pinky: I used 2 coats of Essence Check Me Out as my base and the best St Patrick's Day glitter EVER - Color Club Object of Envy* which I used last year for my mani (fully swatched here).

Ring finger: A leprechaun hat! I used 3 coats of OPI Alpine Snow as my base and Nail Star Two-Way nail art pen & brush in green to freehand the hat. For the black band I used Kiss nail art paint striper in black and the yellow buckle is done using China Glaze Happy Go Lucky and a small nail art brush. The hat on my right hand is BETTER than my left. Go figure!


Middle finger: I used 2 coats of OPI Jade is the New Black and stamped shamrock-looking design from fauxnad plate B45 using China Glaze Passion and Metallic Muse.

Index finger: A pot of gold!! I started off with 2 coats of Barry M Blueberry ice-cream as my base and for the pot I used Kiss nail art paint striper in black. For the rainbow I used Nail Star Two-Way nail art pen & brush in red, green and blue and Sinful Colors Cloud 9 and China Glaze Happy Go Lucky. The coins are done using China Glaze Passion and a small dotting tool!

Thumb: Irish flag! I used 3 coats of OPI Alpine Snow and then freehanded thick stripes of OPI Jade is the New Black and Sinful Colors Cloud 9.






Will you be rocking green polish today? If you celebrate I hope you have a fab day filled with pints of Guinness! Don't forget to drink responsibly though ;) Thanks for looking as always =)

* Product(s) provided to me for consideration but this in no way influenced my review in any way. As always, my reviews are my 100% honest opinion. My Disclosure Policy can be viewed here.

Happy Halloween ladies!! Here is my Halloween mani for 2011. Halloween is definitely getting a lot more popular here in Aus. The stores are filled with costumes, props etc and most importantly there's heaps of limited edition Halloween food products available eeeeeeeek! I'm such a sucker haha. Now I only started my mani at like 10:30pm last night so my mani was a very last minute job but I think it turned out ok! I hadn't really thought out my mani properly (usually I plan a day or 2 before!) so I sort of just hoped for the best x) Frankenstein looks a little angry and cross-eyed but oh well haha!


Here's what I used:


Pinky: I used 2 coats of Color Club Wild at Heart and added Pa pumpkin Halloween sticker and silver Essence nail art glitter mix star dazzling gifted to me by my dear Christina.

Ring finger: Frankenstein nail! I used 3 coats of Sinful Colors Mint Apple and used Kiss nail art striper in black and a small nail art brush for Frankenstein's hair and mouth. For the eyes I used 2 different sized dotting tools* from Born Pretty Store and OPI Alpine Snow and Ulta 3 Black Satin.

Middle finger: Spider nail! I used 2 coats of Sinful Colors Cloud 9 as a base. I then freehanded the spider web using Kiss nail art striper in white and konaded spider design from Bundle Monster plate BM13 using Konad Special polish in black. Topped it off with a coat of my favourite China Glaze Fairy Dust!

Index finger: I used 2 coats of Ulta 3 Black Satin as a base and added a line of gold glitter down the middle using Art Deco striper in gold glitter. I then added Pa evil pumpkin and red ghost nail sticker and Essence nail art glitter mix silver star dazzling from Christina.

Thumb: Mummy nail! I used 3 coats of Color Club Who are you Wearing? as a base. I then used a small nail art brush to draw an oval using Kiss nail art striper in black and then used the striper to draw the lines. For the eyes I used 2 different sized dotting tools* from Born Pretty Store and OPI Alpine Snow and China Glaze Phat Santa.

How cute is this pumpkin lollipop! It was sent as part of a PR pack hehe


What do you think? What will you be rocking on your nails? If you're celebrating I hope you have a fabulous time!!

Thanks for looking as always! =)

* Product(s) sent to me for consideration but this in no way influenced my review in any way. As always, my reviews are my 100% honest opinion. My Disclosure Policy can be viewed here.

I completed some swaps this month and I was lucky enough to have 3 swap parcels arrive on Christmas Eve! It was like Christmas morning that afternoon let me tell you! I couldn't wait to open them all up and play with my international goodies. First package I'm going to show you is from lovely Freshie from Polish Freshie.


So many pretty polishes!


From L - R:
Sinful Colors Hottie, Purple Diamond, Dancing Nails and Pinky Glitter. I love Sinful Colors polishes! They are great quality for the price and I only wish these were more readily available in Sydney.


From L - R:
Icing Sunlit, Glitz & Glamour, Rebellious and Paparazzi. My first Icing polishes. The glitter topcoats look like loads of fun!


From L - R:
Color Club Wild Orchid, Untamed Luxury and Ulta Cocktail Waitress. My camera clearly isn't colour accurate haha. Untamed Luxury is a gorgeous green NOT blue as pictured above. I couldn't be bothered to tweak the colour as it would have made the other 2 colours funny. Greens, purples and neons can be such a pain sometimes! x( The Ulta red is simply stunning!


Freshie also included some thoughtful extras. The little bottle is bubbles which I gave to my boyfriend's little niece as she loves them! My sis kidnapped the tube of M & Ms immediately after I opened the package and devoured them within 15mins haha. I didn't even get one!

Thank you Freshie for this fantastic swap package! I love the colours and I can't wait to try them all out =D

Thanks for looking!

This week at work has been one of the worst I've ever had. Constant fights, tantrums, a lack of doctors, crazy workload.. It's full moon so everyone is going bat crazy! I needed to relax so I decided to take some time out and do a Halloween skittles mani. I'm loving doing different designs on each nail, it's a lot of fun plus I get to try some of my many untrieds!

My WAH nail pic =p
I wish I could spare more time so I could do more full manicures with the designs. I got inspiration for these designs from some of the great blogs I follow! I think my left hand turned out really well but my right hand was pretty much a fail because nothing I wanted actually turned out properly. My middle finger was supposed to be candy corn but my polishes would not cooperate! So I gave up and just used trusty Grape Pop and flakies instead.


Left hand:
Thumb: 2 coats of Color Club Wild at Heart with freehanded spider web using Kiss nail art striper in white.

Index: 2 coats of Sinful Colors Mint Apple as base, BYS Black Satin for the hair, CM nail art pen and striper in white and black for eyes and Kiss nail art striper in black for the mouth.

Middle finger: 2 coats of Essence Undead with Pa witch nail sticker.

Ring finger: 2 coats of Sinful Colors Cloud 9 with pumpkin design from Konad plate m13 using Konad special polish in black.

Pinky: Rimmel I love lasting finish in Double Decker Red with spider design from Bundle Monster plate BM13 using Konad Princess polish in Black pearl.


Right hand:
Pinky: 2 coats of Sinful Colors Big Daddy and 1 coat of BYS Cracked polish in black.

Ring finger: 2 coats of of The Face Shop OR202 with bat design from Bundle Monster plate BM13 using Konad Special polish in black.

Middle finger: 2 coats of China Glaze Grape Pop and 2 coats of Nubar 2010.

Index finger: 1 coat of BYS Black Satin with skull design from Konad plate m13 using China Glaze Devotion.

Thumb: 2 coats of Essence Undead, Kiss nail art striper in black for vertical stripes and spider design from Bundle Monster plate BM13 using China Glaze Devotion.

WHEW! I'm knackered now. Which design do you like the best? I'll be MIA for the next few days as my exam for my final subject is being released tomorrow so I'll be attempting to steer clear of browsing blogs and the net until it's due on Wednesday. Here's hoping x) Thanks for looking!

My Polished Pink for October giveaway ends in 2 days so don't forget to enter here!

I completed another awesome swap this week! Swapping is so much fun – I love meeting fellow polish lovers and the process of shopping and choosing polishes is very enjoyable =) This time I swapped with the lovely Jess from polish insomniac. She answered my call for swap buddies a few months back but I couldn’t swap til a few weeks ago. She managed to cross a few things off my wishlist which I am SO grateful for! Here are the goodies she sent my way:


The colours are just so pretty and include some brands I haven't tried before!


From L – R:
Sally Hansen Complete Manicure Hidden Treasure, Lagoon, Kook-A-Mango and Thinking of Blue. HIDDEN TREASURE!!! Need I say more? *dance* Lagoon is so so pretty, it reminds me of Gosh Ocean actually. I've very much wanted to try the Complete Manicure range however the prices down under are just ridiculous.


From L – R:
Wet n Wild Lust, Saved By The Blue and Orly Lollipop. My 1st Wet n Wild polishes and an Orly polish crossed off my wishlist - thanks Jess!


From L - R:
Jordana Mint Candy, Sinful Colors Mint Apple and China Glaze Metallic Muse. Some wonderful greens that I'm so excited to add to my collection! I've had Metallic Muse on my wishlist for aaaages now for konading so yay!

As soon as my exam is over next week I am going to have to polish my nails daily or at least 2nd daily! I have so many gorgeous polishes to try it's not funny. Thank you for these wonderful polishes Jess!

My Polished Pink for October giveaway ends in 3 days so don't forget to enter here.

Chris from Lacquer Wear from Tips and Toes is another awesome blogger lady I've had the pleasure of getting to know through our love of nail polish! When we 1st swapped we decided on doing it in 2 parts so here is the 2nd part of our swap which I received this week (see the 1st part here). This post will be light on words as I'm not feeling 100% at the moment but I just had to post about this awesome package!


So many pretty polishes!! Chris was very sweet and wrote little notes explaining the polishes too as some of the polishes are firsts for me.


From L - R:
Arissa colorvantage in rockin' amethyst, Sinful Colors Deep Red Ocean, Savvy Andrea's Mint, Borghese Stellare Notte and Art Deco gold glitter. Chris kindly special ordered the Sinful Colors for me as she knew it was on my wishlist! Another lemming crossed off my list *dance* and my 1st Borghese!!!


From L - R:
Claire's Glow in the Dark polish, Revlon Ruby and Revlon Slipper. Glow in the dark polishes and glitter Revlon = happy 'chelle!


Chris also kindly included 2 of my favourite frankens she's done yay: Accidental Blues and Black Rose. I still haven't had time to try out her fantastic franken tutorial =(


Thoughtful extras she included for me!


Candy corn YUM! My sis has devoured about half the packet already LOL.

Thank you for another great swap Chris! =D I can't wait to try out all the lovely polishes you sent me - especially your frankens!

Thanks for looking! Don't forget to enter my Polished Pink for October giveaway here.

Edit: See my updated nail polish storage from October 2010 here.

When I posted about my awesome swaps recently, Nur from Nur KissKat commented that I had a number of polishes and requested I do a post about how I store them. I love reading how others store their polishes (I love storage options haha) and was intending to do one but never got around to it so here goes. Thanks for the request Nur!

I actually don't have many polishes - especially compared to the hardcore nail bloggers - but I have WAAAAY more than I ever intended to accumulate! I'm an addict now haha. My family and I are currently renovating our house and are in rental accommodation at the moment, so this is my very temporary setup for all my nail bits and bobs until I move home and can set up a more permanent solution. I'd love to get a Helmer but we'll see.

My nail area:

Top shelf:

Nail storage box, nail art storage box, nail plate books and manicure essentials.

Bottom shelf:

Nail storage boxes, nail polish removers and other nail bits and pieces.

Nail polish storage:

I currently use these clear Homemaker storage boxes which I got from Kmart for only $6. They come with a clip on lid which makes transporting them easy and they are stackable which is fantastic. It also keeps your polishes dust free too and hold up to 45 China Glaze/OPI/Orly polishes or more if the bottles are smaller. I have 3 of these currently but I need another one to store my new swap polishes and others lying around without a home!

* I forgot to mention the dimensions of the containers as they come in many different sizes. This is the 7L container which is 33cm(w) x 22.5cm (d) x 15cm(h) if you're looking for them =)

China Glaze and OPI polishes:
Looking a bit empty because I'm lending to girls at work =p
Color Club, Orly, Essie, Nubar etc.

Miscellaneous polishes - Ulta 3, BYS, Sinful Colors and my lovely European lacquers.

My nail art box:

I love this storage box. I bought it at Riot Art and Craft a few months back (see my post here) and now use it to store all nail art stuff. It comes with 2 layers - the first is divided into little compartments in which I store nail dividers, droppers for Seche Restore and OPI Drip Dry, extra Konad stampers and scrapers, nail glue and blade for cutting fimo clay.
The bottom compartment I use to store all the polishes I use for Konading, striping polishes, nail stickers, rhinestones and fimo clay.

My nail plate storage:

I've been trying to find a way to store my nail stamping plates for quite some time now. My collection is getting larger and it was really annoying not having a quick and easy way to choose what design I want while trying not to ruin my freshly polished nails! I saw this great storage option by Susie but I couldn't find anything like this at all in Sydney. Her way of storing plates is perfect because it's small and compact. I went to Kings Comics, Games Paradise, The Collectibles Fair in Parramatta, dollar shops.. nothing like the one she uses. All I seemed to find were the A4 cardholders that hold 9 cards and I didn't want that. I finally found my perfect nail plate storage solutions at Office works and a dollar store.


It's a 4 to a page card holder and I can flip through my Konad, fauxnad and Bundle Monster plates like a menu, it's great!

Next are the essentials I use for every manicure:

I use Swisspers make-up pads to remove my nail polish which I cut in half and then store in an old Ferrero Rocher container along with cotton buds =p I like to reuse and recycle ok! I'm always in a rush so I use my trusty Manicare polish dryer (love this thing!!). I store my manicure essentials like topcoat, basecoat, Seche Prep, Seche Soft, Konad double sided stamper and plastic scraper, crystal nail file, tweezers, cuticle stick and my fave nail polish corrector in a plastic lipstick holder I found in a dollar store.

And lastly my nail polish removers which I use:

Nailene Artificial Nail & Polish Remover for removing glitter polishes (works fantastic and I'll have to do a review soon), Manicare polish remover, Konad One Touch remover and little travel size bottle of polish remover I got in my swap with Anita.

I hope that helped you a little Nur =)

Thanks for looking! Don't forget to enter my 200 followers giveaway here!