Chanel Soho Nail swatches - Strong and Steel

In my last post I mentioned that I also picked up the Chanel Soho nail polishes Strong and Steel. Both look extremely pretty in the bottle but both turned out to be very very dark on the nails. Steel was so pigmented, I only needed one coat!

Excuse the messy nail, I wanted to display how pigmented one coat was rather than fix my application :-) So that looks fairly true to colour, but appears slightly darker in natural light

I really got these polishes for Strong - it looked much more purple in store but it comes across more burgundy in real life. Oh and it also suffers from the Chanel paradoxal trick: it appears gorgeous in bottle but you'll be hard pressed getting that shimmer to show on your nails!

I took a lot of photos of this colour and it was fairly difficult to capture the colour. Most turned out like this daylight swatch (two coats):

Now if Chanel could stop bringing out gorgeous nail colours maybe I could start saving... for a new handbag! ;-)

Chanel Khaki Vert swatches

When I went to Sydney last weekend I discovered Myer was stocking the Chanel Khaki polishes. I was super excited but they only had Vert and Brun left - I wanted Rose as well as Vert. Oh well! I also picked up two other Chanel polishes from the Soho collection/range - Steel and Strong. Typical me getting suckered into a purple looking polish. Yeah it's not as purple as the promos show :-| I'm fairly certain fluorescent light makes everything look purple when it's really not.

As you might have already heard, Khaki Vert is very pigmented and you could get away with one coat if you were careful with your application. I went for two coats (no top coat):

The above is a natural light shot and the flash version is below:

Brilliant colour isn't it? I'm just happy when Chanel polishes turn out looking like they do in the bottle... I haven't swatched Steel yet but I'll put Steel and Strong up together at a later date.

I believe the Khaki range isn't being released here yet until October (according to the MA at David Jones) but Myer had them exclusively a little bit earlier. And it wasn't all Myers I don't think, just the one with the Chanel Makeup Studio. I know they aren't in Canberra Myer :-P

New Benefit Launch at Myer Canberra! And cupcakes... as usual :-P

So I heard that Benefit was launching at Myer Canberra today but I had no idea the whole Beauty floor was being revamped! I was absolutely dumbfounded when I saw a brand spanking new MAC counter, Chanel, Dior, amongst other goodies. And tweezerman! Since when did we have Tweezerman in Canberra :-| But the Benefit launch was certainly the place to be, complete with bright pink hair and pink balloons:

Nice that we have a brow bar as well as a Benefit counter!

And since the whole floor was revamped, they were celebrating with free cupcakes and a free photobooth! The cupcakes were delicious by the way.

The best part about today was that if you spent $100 on benefit, you got a confessions of a concealaholic! Plus a goodie bag with any purchase that had 2 samples in it. Here's my stash:

I already have the Boi-ing concealer in the first shade, but this box is just too cute! I also got two creaseless cream liners in r.s.v.p. and birthday suit. And a stay don't stray eye shadow primer.

I'm a big fan of paint pots, cream bases so I decided to add to my collection :-D r.s.v.p has more pink/peach undertones and birthday suit was a slightly taupey brown.

So that was my mini haul. I'm also stoked the Canberra now has a MAC counter! Now I can swatch things :-D

Sephora by OPI Rocker Chic Mini Set + Swatches!

When I discovered Sephora had a new set of OPI polishes out, I was excited to get my hands on them. I only really wanted the purple polish from the Rocker Chic mini set 'Just a little dangerous' but lucky I got the mini set of polishes! There are some standouts and sadly, it isn't the purple polish:

Let's start with the purple. I vow to try every purple polish out there that I can get my hands on so I was excited to try just a little dangerous:

Despite what I've read elsewhere, I think the colour comes out fairly true to the bottle. It's not like you're getting tricked like with Chanel's Paradoxal! All photos were done with two coats, no top coat. Flash shot below:

In terms of what I expect from a purple polish, I would rather a slightly lighter shade of purple but it's just another purple. Nothing special.

This is Already Famous taken in direct sunlight. Gorgeous champagne colour with silver glitter (and yes beware of trying to remove this sucker). I messily applied 2 coats and it was the sheerest of the lot but I was impressed with the colour. It warranted both a non flash and flash shot to show you the loveliness of this colour :-D

You can see in the flash shot above it's a bit messy but for 2 coats you get decent coverage.

I'm not a red nail kind of girl but this cream colour was a dream to apply! Even with the mini brush, the formula of this colour was superb and the pigmentation was the best out of all four shades. I was impressed as cream formulas are usually so difficult to work with. Streakiness was non existent in Fiercely Fabulous.

I was not impressed with my ability to stay 'within the lines' :-P Messy messy Leanne. But you can see how rich and pigmented that colour is in the flash shot above.

Last we have Go my own way, a metallic teal shimmer. It really stands out in the sunlight, but out of direct light it definitely comes across more gunmetal-ish which might explain why it's described as a muted teal. It was a little bit sheer as noted on Sephora.com but I do love this colour. Bold and metallic = love.

Flash shot above. So far I'm loving this set, so much so that I've ordered full sizes of both go my own way and already famous. Who can say no to another glitter polish? I know I can't ;-)

IMATS Sydney 2010, cupcakes and IKEA!

Last weekend I went to Sydney for a long weekend. Main purpose was IKEA but I also checked out IMATS as well. I did a bit of shopping in the city (sigh) but I thought I'd post some touristy shots from the weekend :-D

I love cupcakes on pitt st. I used to come here when this was the only store they had and the cupcakes were bigger. Now the cupcakes are much smaller and they sell macaroons (which are good too I discovered). This is what we got initially:

I had the carrot cupcake and the bf had the lamginton cupcake. Yummy.

To continue on our path of unhealthy eating we stopped by Max Brenner for lunch :-D

The fruit on this plate makes this sugary chocolate covered waffle healthy right?

It was a gorgeous day Saturday in Circular Quay. And since it's now spring, all the trees and flowers are blooming. Yay for the end of winter!

I already have 894083901 shots of the Sydney Opera House but none taken with the SLR and on such a gorgeous day.

The bf stole the camera from me. I included this to show the new hair colour I had done Friday. I wanted to get more darker highlights than I did previously. The blonde was starting to freak me out because I know I want to let it grow out naturally around Christmas. I fear the regrowth.

We did the rocks on our last Sydney trip but I don't know how I missed this sign? How odd.

The bf is an SA boy so we always have to stock up on our Haigh's chocolates. I love the dark chocolate covered macadamias and the cream assortment. We did the factory tour in Adelaide but I know there's a store in both Sydney and Melbourne.

Room service dinner! I just have to say that those onion rings were delicious! For some reason the next night they weren't as good. Boo.

Sunday morning we headed to the Sydney convention centre for IMATS. I wasn't really in the mood for shopping though? After Saturday I didn't need to buy *more* makeup.

The stalls were minimal in my opinion. But I don't think it got busy until around lunch.

I stayed to watch the character design show. The mad hatter look was pretty cool!

Monday we navigated through the burbs (our sat nav is sooo frustrating!) to IKEA. We made it in good time and I was sad I couldn't afford this vanity. One day... when we own a house and I can decorate properly. But it would make a really nice makeup vanity! Not too expensive either. Only came in white though. Which is good because they only had a white stave mirror which I bought :-D

We hired a nissan xtrail for the IKEA haul. And haul we did :-D Few benno cd towers and a billy. And a million smaller things. Such a hectic day and I'm glad it's over and we're home!

OPI Go On Green!

I was perusing the OPI colours at David Jones a while back when I spotted this pretty blue green and I just couldn't stop looking at it! I'm not sure what collection it is from, but I had to have it:

So it turns out this colour is very sheer, and it took 3 coats to get the look below:

This colour reminds me of fairies for some reason. The kind of green you'd see in a sparkly magical garden. I don't know why I keep thinking that! Fairy wings perhaps? It's a very unique and quite frankly gorgeous colour, despite it's sheerness.

It got very washed out in the flash shot but it is more pigmented like the non flash shot earlier. Then before I could do a daylight shot, I stuffed up one of my nails - TWICE! Couldn't be bothered to fix it a second time :-P so you can see it all smudged below:

Love the first swatch. I keep moving my fingers and watching the green reflect. This one is a winner in my collection.

OPI Go Goth! Halloween 2010

When my boss saw me unwrap my package at work and noticed the words 'go goth!' he was all Leanne, goth?! (sigh). However I was initially excited about this set because I was after yet another purple, Nevermore (second from the left):

So I rushed to apply Nevermore, a dark looking purple.

Then I'm thinking heeeeey you look blue. I remember the *last* time I was tricked into a purple polish that was really blue: OPI Ink! So I rushed to compare and looky here:

Can we say dupe or possibly exact match? The bf is not convinced... 'ahh the glitter looks more chunkier in one' but I'm thinking they are the same. At least to the naked eye/camera flash. Hmph! And I was all excited for more purple.

That's probably the only light I saw it purple. Even in daylight it still reflects more blue than purple. I'm interested in wearing the dark blue looking colour on the left and the red. Not so fussed on the black ;-) I believe it's matte. And I can't imagine applying with a small brush.

The mini brush wasn't easy to use to apply the polish. It felt quite uneven and generally produced a sloppy mess. I was quite frustrated and opted for 3 coats just to fix the mess I made with the small brush!

But hey, if you're never going to use up a bottle of OPI, this mini set can be a good purchase! Can't say I'm going to be wearing the cuff bracelet though...

OPI My Private Jet Original and New Comparison

So it appears I'm very late to the whole My Private Jet saga. I knew there was some hype about it but wasn't sure what it was until I was watching Keeping up with the Kardashians and she was on the hunt for My Private Jet. I thought hey I have that one! lemme go look. And it was the new one I realised after googling. So I hunted down an old one to see what all the fuss was about. And voila:

Now if you don't have the original you would think that my private jet is an interesting colour, brown with pretty green/yellow sparkles. Until you google and you discover it used to be holographic :-| And then I was miffed.

I wasn't able to obtain a direct sunlight shot of the new version but it doesn't matter, it would not reflect like the original above. The original is very sheer (3 coats and was still a little sheer) and very runny to apply. The new formula is thicker.

With flash you can see a bit more variation in colour in the new formula. It's nice enough but don't you just hate it when they change formulas? I wonder why they don't just make a new name for it and keep both :-D On a side note, I keep seeing that cube make up drawer on Keeping up with the Kardashians and I'm fully jealous @_@ Not that all my stuff would fit in that one cube or that I have a counter big enough to put it on (sigh). I do like how you can see all the stuff in it though, because then you'd be like oh I remember that blush down the back there, I should use that today...