Australis - Milky Way

Oooooooo, sparkly things!!

I was stopped in my tracks when I saw this one. White, creamy jelly with multi colour glitter including hex bits!!!!!!!

Easy peasy to apply. Wear was ok. Would have loved to go with one coat but - creamy a little patchy and not enough glitter gets on. The sweet jelly effect was lost after 3 coats.

OPI - Bond Girls - Live and Let Die

This is a dark, inky green with gold and green densely packed flecks. OPI... I dunno, seems people love it but I tend to get really quick wear and tear. The tip wear shown is only after 1 day.

Still, I totally loved how this looked when I got it but it was a bit less exciting on the nail. This is a two coater. I dunno if you all have the same trouble but in all greens that I own, I find it incredibly difficult to get a good coat. Is there something about green pigments???

Still, the one thing I have to praise OPI with is that it is a very forgiving paint to work with - I was able to shift it about on the nail for 30 seconds and not get visible layering or balding patches. Lordy me though, is OPI ever so $$$.

Beauty Perfect - 999

This was a bit of a rescue polish. Mum bought a whole stack of these from Sasa (Asian beauty emporium) when she was overseas and when I recently redeveloped my love of polish, I had to revitalise them all with a bit of remover... so there was always going to be a question of how well it was going to go on.

Well this one was a little gluggy but not too bad, but being a frost it was definitely streaky.

What I don't like much about it is the choice of glitter. It's very chunky and that contributed to paint issues. They weren't very sun-catching either so thumbs down on that front.

It did take a while to dry and on my right hand I got some pushed up because I had to do the washing. Careful as I was, I removed my gloves to find humps on my nailbeds.

Dior Addict 570

I was given a set of two Dior polishes from mum. They were from sample bags. This is a dusty dark rose with beautiful pink microglitter. Sadly the formula left something to be desired and it was quite an effort to try and get what was a gluggy and sluggish application even on the nails. Even after 3 hours of careful typing, I woke up the next morning with sheet marks and a gouge on the third finger. I really like the colour though!

I know I have been major slack on updating this blog. I've got about 4 waiting to blog but its been so busy lately I haven't had much spare time. Stay tuned!! I'm still polishing. :-)

Eleanor and Face of Australia Molten Metallics

Missha - JGL01

A lovely soft gold foil glitter. That's right, both a foil and glitter mixed together from Missha's crystal range. It has a very wide flat brush which I dislike working with. But this colour performed admirably and is a pretty and feminine metallic that suits most clothing. The only Missha store I know of is in Sydney, in Town Hall station.

BK - 55711 Gold #01

I get BK from a place called Cosmetics Plus which stocks a lot of random stuff including out of season Revlons, Maybellines and current season BYS range. BK seems to be a Chinese cheap brand and while there are some cute colours, the polish is not really great. This one was pretty thin and also chipped right after application.

I got it because it had a real lovely oil slick range of colour to it. Pinks, greens, violets, golds and silvers. Iridescent. Very micro glitter. It came out well on the nail, but it was overcast all week and I could not get a glint of that great colour spectrum to show you.

This may work out better over a different polish, and maybe a top coat would stop it chipping.

Revlon - Popular

This is the colour of strawberry milkshake. It's milky. It's pink. And its semi sheer. It would have looked really nice on only 2 coats but I had mishaps with the brushing and so I had to cover it up with one more. What I don't like about this is that I can't get the glitter to sit on top, so instead of being silver and shimmery, most of them are covered in polish.

The polish is nice, the formula is nice. But... but I think it wasn't sheer enough. It should build up to look like a resin sculpture with bits trapped in there but instead most of the glitter looks white at first glance.

Orly - Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

Oh this is the greatest green ever. It's sparkling, deep, reflective and festive. I suppose the girls call this glass fleck. There is silver glitter, green glitter and soft jelly base to house it all in. I did 3 or 4 coats for each nail. What I found was that it did chip easily after 2 days. I had top coat on one hand and that survived right through to when I took it off, except for tip wear. The other hand, it started chipping off at the cuticle end.

Lots of people commented on this colour. It is just really lovely. I couldn't stop looking at it either.

Scrumptious! Click for bigger!

B Collection "Osaka" vs Bloom "Elise"

B Collection is the poor cousin of Bloom, so while you buy Bloom at Myer, you can get many versions of the same colours in the cheaper B which is stocked in Target.

Now who knows what I was thinking on the day but I came home with Elise and realised I already had Osaka. So what can I do but have a play off.

So on the 2nd and 4th nails are Osaka. On all the rest are Elise. Can you tell the difference? I can't. But I can say that the brush for Osaka was actually much nicer, resulting in a more accurate and enjoyable painting experience, and the formula of Osaka was really nice too.

Both were a four coat job. The first coat you could tell was streaky and patchy. The 2nd coat still had bald patches. The polish was a bit dull too, so over the top with some Mega Shine.

Well, they are both an electric magenta, lovely raspberry jewel tone with heavy amounts of deliciously fine glitter, also magenta.

At the moment Target have B on special for $10. I think they are actually trying to get rid off all their B stuff. Sad times, but we all gotta shine and fade away.

Christina Fitzgerald "Deborah" and Cosmiss glitter

Deborah is a milky blue with blue iridescence. It was interesting to look at and was in the bargain bin, so unfortunately not in its best condition and stayed tacky for the 3 days I wore it. Collected smudged from things like newsprint as the days wore on. :( Sad times.

Hard to see the iridescence once on the nail, but it was apparent in the bottle.

Because all the edges pushed up from not drying, I decorated the tips with glitter to hide it. I've blogged the glitter before, but just to recap it was a dodgy fake from China that I picked up along with a fake OPI. So the bottle has come from somewhere and I know nothing about Cosmiss.

The glitter is very nice though.

L.A Girl Metal - Bronze Medal

I grabbed a few different ones of these at Groove which is an Aussie discounter store. They seem to get a lot of remaindered stock from overseas and among them is Revlon, Maybelline, L.A Girl, NYX... Anyway, these were $5 I think. They look so good in the bottle but I was sadly disappointed upon application. See photo, but what it is is a clear base with foil toned glitter. It is very smooth, very fine. You will see in another photo that there is still heaps of visible nail even after THREE coats. I did another 2 coats the next day and found a better result by not shaking the bottle, swishing to obtain a big glob of polish, then just wiping one side of the brush to drain as much polish off as possible while retaining a nice load of glitter on the other.

It's quite nice on, but hard work to get there. Where other glitter polish you can usually feel the texture, this stuff is very smooth. You would not know just by touch that it was any different to a creme. Unfortunately I got a few dints because the first few coats I was trying to get coverage, so was doing thick coats. Major mistake. Next time I know I'll be doing several thin coats over two days! I haven't used a top coat on any of my pics here.

Missha Crystal nail polish - HKH01 (gold)

I was so excited to go to Sydney as Brisbane has no Missha shop. what heaven. This is the store in the QVB building. There were 3 ranges to choose from but I was most excited by the crystal range. I got four. This one I had an excuse to try the next day because my Sugar Baby had chipped. This one is a heavy bronze gold. It is unfortunately quite textured and even after two top coats feels bumpy. Under dim light it is a semi matte finish. Under direct light you will then see the red, green and blue sparks of the holo glitter. There is otherwise also gold glitter in the darker base colour. I am just not really sold. Its just a bit dull and the glitter is not that Wow even under good light. The brush is one of those flat and rounded broad strokers. The bottle is adorably heart shaped. Some of the bottles even have an airbrushed colour on the lid. Because of the heavy glitter content I found it clumpy on the end of my nails during application. Missha is a Korean brand and retails for around $7.95.

Claire's - Mood color changing polish - Lonely / Loved

Ok, so first two fingers from the left are normal body temp... then the last two are dunked in hot water. Actually I didn't try dipping in iced water.

Sky blue with silver glitter. Goes on ok, but smells funny and the glitter is kinda chunky so you end up with quite textured nails. Looks bumpy. :/ Not swish. I put on 3 coats for ok coverage. a 4th coat tonight on one hand... 4 coats looks better.

The mood changing bizzo... well I got 3 of these and the purple one is quite dramatic, but this blue one is hard to tell the difference. All these Claire's ones (Claire's is a clothes chain in the USA, like Sportsgirl in Aussie I guess...) have these dual names. My favourite was the grey and yellow one but I couldn't find it on ebay. :((( They have been discontinued but there is no shortage of mood polish, even locally. BYS has currently got a small range and you can find BYS in Cosmetics Plus, Crazy Clarks and Kmart in QLD.

On to the photos. I've taken a new tack... Try and find interesting locations to take photos of my nails. Unfortunately my favourite shot last night against the funky bus seat fabric was blurry.

Bourjois 1 Seconde - 9

So number 9... Number 9 is a very glittery port wine purple. I got this because it was the last one and was on special. Now I kinda wish I had looked at the others when these were out. The brush is really good. It is short (less than 1cm long) and flat and rounded but was much easier to use than the Cutex one I reviewed last time.

Unfortunately, since its old, something has also gone a little wrong with it. Now it doesn't dry well and even after 2 hours of typing carefully, I managed to dint one nail and then after I'd gone to bed I woke up this morning to crumply paint.

There's magenta glitter and a flush of gold too. When it first goes on it is such a fantastic colour. I may try giving it a bit of thinner and see whether that changes the game. Bourjois you can find in Target and Priceline.

Wet n Wild - Blue Wants to be a Millionaire

So this is the Wet n Wild range that distorts a few tv show names to be funny. Ha ha. This polish was happily sent over from USA by my mate Jeff who said that he got a few funny looks as he pored through the nail polish section, examining each bottle closely. In the bottle, you can see a lovely medium blue colour but I am thinking you might need several coats to achieve it. On my nails is already 3 coats and it is still a very soft powder blue. The holograph glitter is lovely though. Brush is bristly unfortunately, and splays out at odd angles. I noticed this in all the Wet n Wild bottles that came over, but HEY what do you really want from a $2 nail polish?! So yeah, hard plastic bristles is a little bit of a let down but we are not getting into a Chanel $32 polish are we???

Holograph glitter... *sigh* if only this kind of thing was around when I was 10. I would have gone nutso.

** addition - I've now put this on a nail wheel along with my other holographics, and sad to say I don't think this is a true holographic. It is more like blue with holo microglitter. Compared to the others, it just doesn't do that awesome visual effect. A true holo should give you stark bands of colour like a rainbow that shift when you move your nails.