Gradient WIN.

Hello my lovelies!
I was originally going to try one of those "swoop" manicures I've been seeing around the place with these colours.

But I can't draw straight lines. Ack.

So instead i broke out the sponges I used for zombie-toes and has my first ever crack at a PROPER gradient mani.

I'm immensely impressed with how well I did!

It looks so much brighter in real life.

As you can see up close you can see sections that look blotchy and a bit weird, but even I'm not looking that close IRL.

I think I might keep this one on longer than I anticipated.

Also - i'm feeling a bit better but still can't sleep though the night due to pain. Going to hospital today. Wish me luck. :)
Love,

Toxin's First Flakie! Plus Xtreme wear day 2.

Hello Ladies!
I love blogging. Apart from the chance to meet and share my love of all things polish related with people all over the world, I get to see things I never would have known about before!
If you had asked me last year how many flakie polishes I owned, my response would have been "What's a flakie?"
So thank you ladies.
Thank you!

I went to a friend's house a couple of weekends back (we've both been lurking on polish blogs for ages - she does a cocktail blog - SidecarBeastie - its in my blogroll!) and we were chatting about polishes, how we both love how all these different brands look but find it so hard to find them here in Australia.

Then she said "Oh wait - I had something to show you!" and pulled out a flakie. I nearly squealed.
"Where did you get THAT?!"
Then I saw the label.

Inglot.

Inglot is AMAZING. It's a standalone counter at Highpoint (for those Aussies that are curious!) which is fifteen minutes near my house. I went down there on thursday. They were doing a Valentines Day deal - a polish and a lipgloss for fifteen dollars.

Of course I walked straight to the flakies - they had different ones, red, orange blue and green.
I originally wanted the blue flakie but it didn't have a sticker on it - meaning it wan't available for the Vday deal.
I picked up the green with the blue/purple duochrome.

I thought it would look awesome over the pink... so here you go!

Check it out! Blue AND purple duochrome on green.

With flash.

Without flash

Sunlight

Shade

Inglot has over 200 eyeshadow colours and over 200 NAIL POLISHES. They have "02M" a "breathable" nail polish. All their polishes are big 3 free - if you're into that.
Check out the Inglot website here.

Also for today - day two of Jai's Xtreme Wear test:

No visible scuffs, chips or scratches. (And yes this is day 2. I was going to put up extra pics for day 1 last night but there was no difference!)

Love,

Guest Blogger and Model!

Hello ladies!

Remember when I said I picked up two polishes at the supermarket?
Well they were both Sally Hansen Xtreme wear polishes, one was "Wild Life" that I showed you yesterday. Here is the other - #24 - "Black Out"
I wasn't expecting to love the pink quite as much as I did, I thought it would be a shame to take it off straight away, so for the other I brought in a guest model, My Boy, Jai!

This is two coats.

"Real Men don't do clean up!"

Now for his review on this polish:

"I'm thinking it could have been thicker, it seemed so wet, if that makes sense, like I'm used to wet meaning thin and patchy and crap... but this was okay. Anyhow it has hardly chipped yet but that won't take long. This was okay but I really want the black matte one. I also want to paint my truck in it."

So the verdict is: These are thin. I used 4 coats of the pink to achieve full coverage and Jai used two coats but its still a little patchy. Also, Jai wants 60,000,000 bottles of Manglaze "Matte is Murder".

Because I can - I'm going to let you know how these wear using Jai as my tester. They advertise as "Xtreme" wear - lets see how extreme they are when Jai is elbow deep in an engine. Because it's black - any chips will show up very clearly.

So what did you think of my guest this evening ladies? Should I let Jai occasionally join in my polishing madness, should I let him go back to computer games and engine bits, or should I be worried about the competition?

Love,

Supermarket Special!

As I mentioned yesterday I picked up a couple of polishes on special yesterday when doing my grocery shopping.

Here's the first one:

This is inside. Ooh pretty.

But nothing compared to what it looks like in the sun!

Gak! Pale!

You would not BELIEVE the weather here right now.

It's 5:20pm and this is what's outside:

It's goddamn GORGEOUS. No clouds, it's warm but not humid, light breeze... *sigh*

And to think we had flash floods and crazy storms only the other day!

WTF am I doing inside!? I'm taking my laptop out in the sun!

But first... 200 litres of sunscreen!

Love,

A bit of class...

Hello ladies!

I know i'm a bit later than usual with my posts - I am trying to get my sleeping pattern back to normal!

After my last manicure I felt so damned gaudy... I felt like I had to step it up a bit.
This usually happens - after wearing black I tend to go for something totally different, then that ends up feeling like it was way too overkill so I usually go back to black.

But somehow I don't think that me having every other post with black nails will quite cut it, will it now?

So I went for something a bit different.
I still wanted something vampy, but something warm, something with class.
Originally I was going to go with a red but I found this in my little box of tricks and couldn't stop staring at the bottle! I made it a bit different by doing a half moon manicure with it.

I did this last night before going to sleep so excuse the sheet marks! Ack!

But isn't this colour just DIVINE?!
It's a burgundy purply elixir.

This one is "High Mantenance" by ChiChi - an Aussie brand.
Find out about them here:
http://www.chichicosmetics.com/story.htm

I love ChiChi - the names are amazing - Mortisha, Mermaid, Jitterbug - too cute! Also, most of them go for the sort of names like -"Plain Jane" "Movie Star" "Soapie Addict" "Paparazzi Princess" "High Heeled Housewife" "Corporate Femme".
Not to mention it applies like a DREAM.
This is two coats but it would have been fine with one - Except I'm a total doofus and bumped one of my fingers.

The moons are the "natural" colour from a french manicure kit by Sally Hansen - this one is "Sheer Romance".
But seriously, Sally Hansen? Natural? I'm a half british goth and that is in no way natural on ANY LIVING PERSON.
Also - it applies HORRIBLY.
It streaks and its sheer in a way that you end up with gross patchy globs.
Originally I just wanted a wash of colour but it just wouldn't work for me.
So I ended up just applying until it was opaque.
I lost count at 6 coats. SIX!!!!
Has anyone else tried these?

So what do you think?
I can't stop looking at my nails because of how much this colour ROCKS.

Love,