Cosmetic Cupcake

Hi ladies! I am so unbelievably happy that it is Friday today because this week at work has been pretty crap. I am totally tired so unfortunately no manicures for today. Bring on the weekend I say!

I have for you today an amazing swap which I just completed with the very lovely and talented Christina from Cel's blog. Christina is an absolute sweetheart and I love exchanging emails with her =) She has the cutest blog and manicures too and creates the most awesome deco products! Her Etsy store is totally droolworthy and I covet nearly every single item >.< Christina sent me some lovely Greek polishes as well as my 1st British polishes which she kindly got for me on her trip to London. She also included some wonderful extras and lots of food goodies for me!

From L - R:
Adamo polish in 83 and 86. 86 is similar to OPI Do You Lilac It which I was lemming from Christina's purple graduation mani!
And Art Deco polishes in 85, 83, 51 and 70. How cute are these bottles!


From L - R:
Erre Due polishes in 197, 94 and 109. These polishes look so pretty! Christina says the silver is perfect for konading which is great because I need a good konad silver. The pink glitter with hearts is so sweet!


From L - R:
Collection 2000 Hot Looks polishes in Button Moon and BMX Bandit and GOSH polishes in Rainbow and Gasoline. FLAKIES omg!!! Thank you for hauling this for me Christina!! =D


From L - R:
Barry M polishes in Strawberry Icecream, Blueberry Icecream and Pink Iridescent. My 1st Barry M's! A lemming fulfilled =)


Claire's mini polishes. These mini bottles are so super cute!


She also included a cute pair of tweezers and nail files (perfect size for my makeup bag yay!), and some BB cream samples. I've never tried BB creams so this is great!


So many Greek food goodies!!! She included sweets, biscuits, very luscious looking Greek honey and her hubby also included his favourite gum.

Thank you so much for this wonderful swap Christina! I cannot thank you enough and also for the blog award =D I love reading your blog so I award you back! I really look forward to our future swaps!


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

Just a super quick post for you guys today, I am seriously sleep deprived! I wanted to share with you my fantastic swap package which arrived in the post today from the lovely Chris from Lacquer Wear from Tips and Toes.

From L - R: Claire's mood polishes in Calm/Wild; Excited/Bored; Happy/Earth; Fabulous/Funky and Awesome/Silly and Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Extreme Wear in In the Spotlight.

Chris was very kind and offered to swap with me when I asked a couple of weeks ago. I love checking out her blog - she has awesome frankens and manicures! Not to mention a thoroughly droolworthy stash list (so many Zoyas!!) ;) As you can see, Chris totally fulfilled my Claire's mood polishes lemming!!!! *dance* YAY! I cannot wait to play with these but I'm going to grow my nails out a little before trying them so I can get the full effect. Chris also very sweetly included a Sally Hansen glitter flakie which looks divine! Plus a packet of delicious Starburst sweets =)

Thank you so much for this great swap Chris!! You've totally made my day =D I absolutely can't wait for the next half of our swap!!

Hi ladies!!
My NOTD today is using wearing Elianto Colour Lacquer in Thistle which I received in my fantastic swap with Nikki.

Thistle is a beautiful pale lilac that looks almost pastel pink in some lighting. It is absolutely bloody beautiful!!! It makes my hands look super white or something and I can't get enough of the colour! It was hard to capture the lilac in it though unfortunately so the pic below looks more pinkish.
Application is pretty good - the brush is a good size and easy to work with, requiring very minimal cleanup. The formula like with most pale shades is a little streaky on so I did a thin 1st coat followed by a slightly thicker 2nd coat. Below is 2 beautiful coats without topcoat and it dried to a high glossy finish.


I konaded full nail design from Konad plate m79 using China Glaze Devotion. I then added the double bows from Fauxnad plate B09 (identical to Konad plate m3) using Konad Princess Polish in Violet Pearl.


Hope you like it! Here are some bonus pics of breakfast at Ikea I had a while ago but never got around to posting. You all know my love for all things Ikea! I'm constantly bugging the boy to go to Ikea for breakfast because it's just so cheap and cheerful. The hot breakfast is only $2.95!!! It used to be only $2 but it's still an absolute bargain, it would probably cost more to make yourself =p

Hot breakfast:

Cinnamon scroll and bread roll:

The boys coffee (with unlimited refills):

I also wanted to thank you all for the wonderful and positive response to my last post about my nail storage =) I'm glad you liked seeing my little nail area and storage! It's nice that I may have inspired some of you to tidy up your nail stash and given you some ideas on how to store your image plates and polishes =) I'm just a neat freak who HAS to have things organised just so and am by no means an expert!

I'm always on the look out for interesting ideas so I'd love to see your storage ideas too! If you come across a great idea or do a post yourself, leave me some link love in the comments of the previous post =) Also, if you have any requests shoot me an email or leave me a comment in any of my posts and I'll try my best.

Hope you all are having a good start to the week! Don't forget to enter my 200 followers 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!