China Glaze Paper Chasing and Sephora by OPI!

After my little eBay haul I decided to try the China Glaze Paper Chasing first. It's such a gorgeous green:



In all these photos I really feel the colour is a deeper green and I'm sad that my camera didn't pick that up. Here's with flash:



The colour is somewhat sheer as it took three coats to get the colour above and you can still see my nails underneath. I didn't mind though because the formula was nice and thin and didn't dry too fast, allowing me to correct mistakes.



A very nice colour overall so I'm happy with my purchase :-) I should have worn this for St Patrick's day ;-P And speaking of nail polish, I went to the post office today to pick up another package:



Here we have the Sephora by OPI Modern Flower miniature set. Yay! I have been dying for It's Bouquet with Me and Leaf Him at the Altar :-) And these miniatures are SO cute! I doubt they'll still be there when I head to the states in a couple of months so I had to get these pretties now :-)



I really wanted a cute glitter polish and since I missed out on OPI's mad as a hatter, I got these instead. I can't wait to try them out!

China Glaze pretties

So I've been a little obsessed with nail polish lately. Namely purple nail polish, I have a need to get every shade possible. It is my favourite colour after all :-) I was googling swatches in order to choose colours from my fave ebay seller when I got hooked on some new Nail Polish blogs (namely Polish Me Happy and Scrangie). I was just 'oooh look at all the pretty polishes' @_@. Then there was nail polish talk on twitter and youtube and it seemed like the world was telling me to buy more nail polish. So I did :-)



I know these aren't new polishes but I'm still happy with my purchase :-D Honestly I was just hunting down Emerald Sparkle (and I'm thinking it's NOT the dodgy batch version, it looks far too pretty) when I was just hmm, I could go more green and purple. So we have Grape Juice and Paper Chasing. Heh, if only the bestie saw this, I'm obsessed with combining purple and green. Web site layouts... posters... bedsheets and pillows (sigh).

I'm still deciding which one to wear first and post about...

Currently listening to: Lorraine's day in the life video. Dang it I should be watching!! Back to it :-)

OPI Ink, oh how you tricked me...

Impulse nail polish purchases are my weakness. Friday night I picked up a couple, one of which was OPI Ink:



In the store you looked so brilliantly purple, so shimmery. I know better now. You're actually a blue nail polish! Blue with gorgeous purple glitter as you can probably tell from the picture above, taken in natural light. Same does not apply to my nails:



That's without flash. Look how blue that is! Of course now that I go to the OPI website, it says it's in the blue family. In some lights (mostly fluorescent) it is visibly purple, otherwise it's blue. And given that I work in a dungeon with no natural light, I'm thinking it'll look purple come Tuesday morning :-D



With flash it's even more blue, haha. It's a good thing I have a good number of purple polishes in transit right now to satisfy my purple polish craving :-)



See. That's what I saw in the shops. Purple!

MAC Liberty of London, Prep For Colour

Why is it that whenever I'm having a bad week I excessively shop at MAC :-P I'm a sucker for limited edition packaging so of course Liberty of London was going to get me. I found it very hard to resist the make up cases actually! But I have SO many Clinique 'freebie' cases that I just couldn't justify it. Onto the images...



MAC Peachstock lipstick (satin finish). I thought this would be a nice alternative to Crème d’Nude but I don't know... I was surprised by how pigmented it came out and didn't like it too layered on my lips. I think because the colouring was leaning towards the brownish look that I don't like. However a light swipe is nice.



MAC Shell Pearl beauty powder. Cute case, comes with a mirror and honestly this will be a nice blush for ole pale-o here:



It's light, has a slight shimmer and on the coral side. What's not to like? Onto Prep for colour. Everyone has already established that prepped for glamour is like satin taupe but not any better so I rage skipped. I was more interested in the Veluxe Pearl Hey eye shadow :-) Oh but surely I don't need anymore? Oh I do. Although I was a little worried when I saw how similar in the pan it looks to all that glitters:



But fear not, it sits somewhere in between all that glitters and grand entrance. Purchase justified! But if they ever bring out those starflash shadows again I'm buying at least four grand entrances :-| And trying all of the rest :-D

There was a bit of hype around the Ember Glow lipglass from the Spring Colour Forecast collection, and it was going to entitle me to free shipping on the Australian website (along with something else I haven't posted today) so I thought why not. While I'm on an orange peachy kick, let's just go all out:



Oh it's nice. Nice indeed. I think this is what I was looking for in peachstock. Hopefully I can wear this one and stop using up all of my LE runway fave lipglass :-| Overall I definitely prefer orange on my eyes than on my lips :-P Swatches below:



Currently listening to: Not Myself Tonight - Christina Aguilera (surprisingly not bad!)

Yay for cheap drugstore finds - Rimmel Pompous

I was in Priceline buying 4 different types of makeup removers/wipes because I tried the Swisspers cleansing eye make up remover pads and they didn't work. Seriously I could not remove a MAC paint pot off of my eye without tearing half of my eye off. And this is supposed to remove water proof mascara? Fail. Anyway I spied some Rimmel nail polish on sale for $6.75, and I did say I was looking at Rimmel Pompous in a previous OPI post so... here it is :-D



It has that sparkle that I was missing from OPI Purple With A Purpose but it's slightly darker than I would have liked. D'oh. But still gorgeous. I have a few Rimmel nail polishes and although they don't impress me (the dry in 60 seconds claim doesn't really fly with me when I managed to put a big hole in my polish with a tissue box 2 hours later and had to re-apply). But Rimmel do cheap and beautiful shades that sometimes you cannot ignore. And who wants to always fork out $20 for OPI! Or resort to Ebay and wait. I don't like waiting :-)



No flash version of the polish. I was worried this picture would turn out a little bluer than it really is because it has tiny blue sparkles in it, but it looks fairly true to colour here. It is slightly more purple I think.



I used a Rimmel base and top coat and it's still going strong after two days. Mind you I haven't done the dishes yet ;-) Sigh, goodbye pretty purple nail polish!

OT - I picked up this cute All About Eve hoodie in Myer today. They're having their mid season sale and this was $69.95 down to $45! It's so cute and the whale has a button for an eye!



They had so many different hoodies I was fully @_@ at them all. This is a cute one too! And wow since when do Myer deliver! That's fairly awesome. Well if you don't have 3 different Myers in your city :-P I might remember that when I go home for Christmas... although I think a Myer is opening up there soon. Coolies. Well since I'm on the Myer site I might go peruse the make up now... See if the shipping is better than the petrol + parking price. And if it's something that's only available in the City, no doubt it will be worth it.

Currently listening to: Sleeping Satellite - Karnivool cover version

Love That Look - Kristen Stewart

So I'm sitting here, home from work, experiencing what I can only call Sneezefest 2010 when the bf brings home some trashy mags for me to read. I grab the one with Kristen Stewart on it and go 'ooh I wonder what eye shadow that is' and it occurs to me that the look on her face is exactly how I feel today. So I decided to play with some darker colours and create my own spin on this look below:



It's a little washed out but it appears to be a more reddish brown look she's got going on but I am going to use a more golden brown,consisting of:

• MAC Prep+Prime Eye all over lid, under and up to brow


• MAC Constructivist paint pot as a base, not going past the crease (also going under the eye)


• NARS Galapagos eye shadow over the paint pot, blended with MAC 217


• Flip between the brown eye shadow and just below the brow, blended again


• Manila Paper in the inner corner

Add a whole bunch of mascara, particularly on the lower lashes and this is what I came up with:



I obviously didn't include the whole face shot where my nose is horribly red and the rest of my face deathly pale. This look is a LOT darker than this photo shows so it's not something I'm going to mosey on down to the corner shop in ;-) Great night look though.

Alternative colours I tried included the smoke & mirrors eye shadow from last year's holiday collection but I found it was too dark. I think creole beauty would be fine too (and aztec brick for that sheen) but the NARS galapagos eye shadow has this gorgeous golden sparkle to it (if you don't spoil it too much by over blending ;-) It really sparkles under the lower lashes.

Well I'm going to go pass out now and maybe later actually *read* this magazine, heh.

OPI Mod About You

While I'm in the posting mood, let's continue with nails ;-) It's Easter so pastel pink seems to be the way to go this weekend:



It's really a lot brighter and pinker than that picture shows. So we have the flash version (while washed out, more accurate):





Then I hurt my thumb and had to take the polish off to investigate grr. I'll repaint tonight. I did spy some Rimmel polish on sale in K-mart on the weekend. I'm tempted to get the Pompous shade (bright metallic purple) but I don't know. Maybe if I can scrape enough change together I can justify it...

March Faves

I haven't been posting lately... the bf managed to get sick and I was busy preparing to catch it so I was doing everything before I became incapacitated... which hasn't happened yet so I thought I'd bulk post today :-) I don't have a lot of favourites this month, and they are all makeup related.

• Clinique Quick Eyes Cream Shadow (sparkling nude): I was very excited to try these as an eye shadow base. They are supposedly meant to last 10hours but I don't know if you're meant to use a primer. I would use a primer underneath these (whereby I managed to make it last 12hrs+). Without the primer, it started to fade and crease closer to 8hours. Overall I love this (also have starlit pink) and it really brightens your shadow. I tend to pack it on more in the corner to highlight better :-)


• MAC Crème d’Nude lipstick: If you can tell by the picture above, I was going for a very bronze and neutral look this month. I like a lippy I don't need to wear a gloss over. This one got a fair workout in March, but definitely had to condition the lips first!


• MAC Rubenesque paint pot: Ah paint pots. Luck of the draw really with these. Sometimes they're hard to work with, other times they're wonderful. Luckily for me, my rubenesque paint pot melts like butter and is very easy to apply. I cannot say the same for my Artifact paint pot which requires a brush and a LOT of patience. I am tempted to move it back into the bathroom near the heat lamps... Anyway, this colour really brings out the colours in the Spring Colour 4 quad pictured above. Simply stunning combination.


• MAC Gleam Eyeshadow: I haven't been wearing this for a while as it's a lustre but it's a gorgeous sparkly coral which I've been using to blend and bring out the colours of the quad pictured above. I also tend to use it with woodwinked and grand entrance.


• MAC Spring Colour 4 quad: Love love love this quad. There's no satin finishes in this quad so they all pack on a lot of colour, and they're so easy to work with. It's simply love. If you're like me and already have a bunch of neutrals to work with, you can vary your look throughout the week whilst still using the same quad.


• MAC Mineralize Blush (duo) in Rhapsody in Two: I have very fair skin but since I've been doing bright bronze eyes lately I've just been using this blush on it's own rather than a highlight. A few times I've put Benefit Coralista underneath. It's shocking that I have finally put down By Candlelight MSF for more than a week, but this is a good substitute for me :-)


• Benefit Powderflage: This colour correcting finishing powder is meant for under the eyes, under the nose on the sides and also above the nose. Together with my concealer, this adds a lot of light to the area and a bit of sparkle. The brush that comes with the powderflage is rubbish and I don't recommend using it. Unless you've got nothing else ;-) I just find that it's horribly scratchy on my skin. For me, it helps under the eyes but did wonders under the nose, where it tends to get red on the sides. Definitely a problem area for me so this works well.

Well that's it for my faves. Sadly a lot of MAC, but it's good to finally be using so much of it consistently. Purchases now justified :-D

Lady Gaga Concert

I thought I would deviate from the make up posts and talk about the Lady Gaga concert. Typical Canberra, weather turns horrid whenever you need to go somewhere. I figured the outfit I had planned wouldn't be warm enough so I wandered into Temt (with a very low budget) and walked out with these options:



I decided to go with the one on the right, it was more tight fitting and sparkly @_@ I also decided on boots instead of heels because I didn't want to park and walk in mud :-| Sadly the bangles slid straight off my wrist so I pushed them up my arm until they didn't budge. I ain't wasting $12!



The concert was fairly awesome-o. I was too busy videoing on my flip camcorder to take many shots, but when I did get a chance...





Currently listening to: Lady Gaga - Dance in the Dark ... again