Orly Holiday 2010 swatches!

I'm excited to be collecting the holiday 2010 polishes this year - I just love the holiday season. I would very much like to skip the next one and half months and jump straight to Christmas. It's always a happy time for me, being home in Queensland with the family and my kitties :-) But let's pretend Christmas is almost here and be swatch happy! Out of the six Orly Holiday polishes, I picked up the four that spoke to me the most:

Yes I left the red. Honestly didn't look too closely and thought Rockin' Rocket (shown on the far right) was kind of red but it isn't... heh. I was quite sick today so I only managed flash swatches and I wanted to get these out before I went away for the weekend. I'll start with Winter Wonderland as I have a daylight swatch of that one:

Three coats of Winter Wonderland and all other swatches below. I was quite reluctant to get this as I thought it would be like OPI Happy Anniversary but it isn't even similar. The glitter in the Orly is quite chunky (as you can see it hanging off the edges) and it's more yellow toned than Happy Anniversary. So yay for not buying a dupe :-D Purchase justified!

Next we have Glitz & Glamour - another golden shimmer with similar chunky glitter and quite thick in formula:

Here we have Meet Me Under The Mistletoe:

I would describe this polish as a deep sea green and it's not as chunky with the glitter and also the sheerest of the lot. I probably should have worn 4 coats rather than 3 - it was still looking a little sheer.

Here we have the star of the collection (ok sure I haven't seen the other two but let's just say star of *this* lot) and that is Rockin' Rocket. It's like a deep burgundy with burnt orange twisted through it and the photo doesn't do it justice. It's just gorgeous. The formula was the best of the four and wonderful to apply. If you had to pick one of these four I would choose them in this order: Rockin Rocket, Winter Wonderland, Meet Me Under The Mistletoe then Glitz & Glamour (simply for it's dupe-ability).

Currently listening to: Taylor Swift - Haunted. This album is a win. And that's coming from someone who dislikes anything with a country feel! :-P

Have a wonderful weekend and I shall swatch for you later!

Been Haulin', hopshopgo woes and other misc things!

So I've been stockpiling a few things lately. I'll begin with the excessive amount of hand sanitizers (and there's more to come in the post!)

Drama. So. I wanted to get some bath and body works stuff for xmas pressies this year. I quickly learnt that you had to use the 'buy for me' option because they didn't accept non US/Canadian credit cards. That was cool, I like buy for me :-P I wanted to order lots of hand sanitizer "pocketbac" thingys with the 5 for $5 deal and went ahead and authorized my big order. Then they contacted me and said that flammables cannot be shipped to my destination so they only purchased the remaining items in my order (despite the fact I said to cancel if something isn't in stock but I guess it's not the same thing) because of the specials on the others products that could be shipped (buy 3 get 3 free I believe). Which is again, ok by me. So I used the awesome dollar to spend up big and buy all the scents I wanted to try on eBay :-D

Then I decided to go back to hopshopgo and order more goodies from Target.com. Jewelry. Which Target decided to ship ONE AT A TIME. So I got charged shipping for 3x1kg boxes which basically had a small piece of jewelry in each box. I did use the 'live chat online' facility and spoke to a very polite Sophia who said that the boxes couldn't be repackaged because "... we do not want to change the way the merchant packed them for shipping. We fear that repacking the item would compromise its condition when it reaches you." again. Fine. Just thought I'd ask. But I paid for 3kg of jewelry. Seriously.

What can you do ey? If you want something you have to pay for it. And I'd rather be able to get it than not so at the end of the day all is good. Let's move on.

Of course a haul of mine wouldn't be complete without nail polish. My mum screamed 'oh my god' when she saw my nail polish rack. Sigh. I kinda filled it up completely... whoopsie. Anyhoo I found a pharmacy in Canberra that stocks Orly so I picked up It's Up To Blue. Gorgeous peacock. I'm so obsessed with peacock colours right now. And of course there's a purple. There's always a purple :-D Velvet rope. And a mini VIP because I'm also slightly obsessed with glitters. Which leads me to the OPI burlesque glitters. I didn't like the orange, blue or green ones and they didn't have the yellow :-| So I picked up sparkle-licious and show it and glow it!

Lastly we have a small lush haul. I wandered in and saw all these nice smelling things that looked like flat bath bombs and they were called emotibombs. Supposedly for the shower! Awesome idea, I can't wait to try it and see if they last a few showers like the sales assistant claimed. I picked up two Up You Gets (the orange man) and one Sex in the Shower. The bath bomb is a new limited edition I believe and it's called Calavera Bath Ballistic. It's actually two different colours inside!

Well I'm not feeling very well at the moment so I'm going to head to bed and hopefully not dream about hand sanitizers exploding in the mail. Oh the joys of online shopping... meanwhile my entire desk smells like 'zombie squad' / marshmallows :-|

OPI Burlesque Little Teasers Swatches and Happy Halloween!

Last night I was very excited to go get the Burlesque glitters but I stopped and thought, wow these burlesque shimmers are pretty too! I picked up the little teasers pack and almost go a full size of one of the other shimmers but felt it was too similar to The Show Must Go On! to justify the purchase. So here we have the teasers:

There are six colours in the OPI Burlesque shimmer collection, and the teasers pack has four mini sized polishes out of the six. Good pick up if you ask me, it's all about the mini's nowadays ;-)

I'll start with my favourite - Rising Star. This is what I wanted MAC Orginality to be, and now I have it. Three coats for the flash shot above and all swatches below.

Another gloomy weekend in Canberra so no direct sunlight shot. But still similar in natural light.

Here we have Take The Stage under flash. More red orange than Rising Star.

Again under natural light.

The Show Must Go On! is a gorgeous pink shimmer but I feel there would be dupes out there for it.

Sadly I was losing light and the daylight shots are a bit darker than I would like. People have said that the show must go on is similar to MAC bad fairy and that's probably because of a similar duochrome effect:

But in no means is it a dupe. Bad fairy trumps it in my opinion, as much as it horrifies me to recommend a MAC nail polish over an OPI :-P

Ali's Big Break is a red with subtle shimmer. Flash shot above.

And that is the last swatch I could do because it became stormy and horrible! But I did manage to layer on one of the glitter polishes from this collection, Sparkle-icious:

Not the best combo but hey, I was getting into the festive season a little early :-P

Now I shall leave you with a little Happy Halloween piccy - these were surely designed to be nail polish holders right? ;-)

Until next polish...

MAC Venomous Villains nail polish swatches

Last week I made my MAC Venomous Villains order and decided to get all three nail polishes - Mean & Green, Formidable! and Bad Fairy. All looked very promising, glittery with duochrome effects. I feel like the formidable! would have been the most lusted after but it falls flat for me. While beautiful in the bottle, the flash photos remind me of the new formula of OPI My Private Jet.

Let's start with formidable. In natural light, looks pretty but not quite what the bottle leads you to believe it will be on the nails (in particular that purple reflect):

Flash is less impressive:

Although formidable was 3 coats as they are very sheer, I went for 4 coats with mean & green, which pretty much meant that the green effect disappeared and you were left with a lot of pink glitter under flash:

However under lowlight and daylight I managed to capture the 'green' colour it gives under some angles and lights:

Very pretty in my opinion, but we're not done yet! The last polish was a bit of a surprise to me as I hadn't seen any swatches of it until I bought it:

While the photo at the start of this post suggested this might give off subtle yellow/orange reflects, I can't make it happen :-( Only went for 3 coats and I can wriggle my fingers until the cows come home and no real yellow. It's ever so subtle and gives the pink glitter a bit of warmth under natural light but more golden under incandescent lighting.

EDIT: So I can take a photo of the duochrome effect of bad fairy. I went downstairs for a coffee and the lighting revealed this:

Bam! Well that's it for now. I had a bit of peek at the MAC nail trend f/w polishes but after these pretties, they really aren't calling to me. Have a great weekend!

Illamasqua Art of Darkness Scarab, Viridian nail polish swatches!

So I indulged again. Illamasqua has a tendency to bring out some really bold and beautiful colours, the Art of Darkness collection being no exception. Here we have Viridian and Scarab:

Oh don't they look Christmas-ish together. Scarab is a deep metallic red and appears a little darker on the nails than it does in the bottle, not that you can tell :-P

I don't actually have a lot of reds so this makes a wonderful new addition to my excessive nail polish collection :-D Flash shot above and I believe 2-3 coats although 2 would be plenty.

The winner for me is Viridian. I know I lean towards the teal/green/aqua colours naturally but this colour, in sunlight is drop dead gorgeous:

Viridian is described as a peacock green. Flash shot below:

I think this might be a new favourite! On a side note, there is some amazing artwork in the Illamasqua Autumn/Winter 2010 catalogue. Blown away!

MAC Venomous Villains Haul, Philosophy, Haighs and other faves!

Last week I checked out my (new!) local MAC counter in Myer and by Friday the majority of the Venomous Villains collection was sold out :-( But I got to swatch the things I wanted and prepared myself to pounce on the website as soon as online orders were up. They were up Saturday so by 10am Saturday I was a very happy lady! I didn't even mind walking down to the PO Box in the rain to collect my stash:

I wasn't planning on getting much from this collection, I was particularly interested in the nail polishes which are a Pearl finish and gorgeous by the way:

My MAC counter didn't have a display version of bad fairy (for some reason there was a dark cream purple looking polish in its place?!) but I ordered all three going on the first two that I saw. In order of preference we have Formidable! Mean & Green and of course Bad Fairy:

I cannot wait to wear these! One of the MAs at the MAC counter was wearing mean and green and it was so interesting!

I also picked up the Innocence Beware! cremesheen lippie, the Her Alter Image veluxe pearl eye shadow, the Oh So Fair beauty powder and the My Dark Magic mineralize eye shadow. I love Malificent so I had to get something with the special packaging! I opted for beauty powders because I prefer them for travel as they have a mirror and I cannot explain the eye shadow. It was simply me going me want :-D

While I'm at it I might as well mention things that I've been enjoying recently. It isn't limited to makeup :-P I mentioned in an earlier post that I went to Haigh's to stock up on choccy - well my cherry ripe bars are gone and this is all that's left of my assorted creams:

That rose cream would be done and dusted by now but that's the bf's :-( And what's with the tiny pink sugar candy on top? Those used to be huge! Ripped off I tell you. But my faves are: Violet, Rose, Lemon Myrtle, Lime, Strawberry, Peppermint, sigh the list goes on... but I really hate coffee, and I'm not the biggest fan of almond, passion fruit or mandarin. But I love dark choccy so it's all good. And I always get dark choc pastilles @_@

Next we have the Philosophy shower gel in unconditional love. Oh my gosh I cannot describe how much I love this scent. I received a sample some time ago from Meccacosmetica and I was in love! Then I went to mecca and they said we don't have a purple shower gel, and I couldn't remember the name at the time and I ended up going home with Falling in Love shower gel instead. While it's nice and somewhat similar, this is so much fruitier and just wonderful! I just purchased a new bottle :-D

Lastly we have the beauty products I've been loving right now. I'm someone that finds something and runs with it non stop for a good month or so and I've been doing that with the NARS rajasthan eye shadow duo, MAC MSF in Stereo Rose, Dior shimmer powder in Amber Diamond and I although I've been mostly using the Clinique long wearing mascara, I just fell in love with the Volume Million Lashes by Loreal. Despite its odd smell :-/ And oddly I'm using the benefit stay don't stray eye shadow primer as more of an actual concealer due to a bad pump where it ALL comes out at once. But I love Stereo Rose. It was nice and warm but now that winter's over I don't think I'll be getting away with it for much longer. Time to tone it down. Perhaps with the Dior rose diamond shimmer powder that I have :-D

OPI Go Goth! Halloween 2010 part 2!

Whoopsie, I forgot about the rest of the goth polishes when I blew up over the OPI Ink replica so here they are! I alternated between 2 and 3 coats because for some reason today I found the mini brushes extremely frustrating... they are not as good as the Sephora ones in my opinion. Let's get the messy swatches started!

Here is sanguine, and I assume they were going for a blood red theme here but it had a berry feel to it. This is my favourite out of the lot, and looks pretty in both natural light above and flash:

Vampy. Anyhoo, onto Unripened, a black with blue glitter, very pretty in the sun:

I think I went for 3 coats here because I was completely unco in my application. Flash version:

And continued my unco'ness in lining up my fingers all pretty :-| But you get the idea.

Last we have obscurity. It's a black matte finish and quite frankly, gross. So well suited to Halloween then ;-) Small mini brushes are even more difficult when the polish is matte, I tried though:

And the flash version:

And while I was feeling icky, I decided to sport the cuff bracelet.

GRR, argh!