New Years Eve Nails! Orly Witch's Blue and Tiara and holiday snaps!

Happy New Year everyone! I know I am probably posting this a little late for those of us in Australia, but I spent all day traveling yesterday. Planes + holidays = delays. Anyway, thought I'd share my NYE nails with you guys, I went on a bit of a mini Orly spending spree in Queensland so I may as well use them up!

While on holidays I spotted Orly witch's blue and decided it was too gorgeous to pass up. So I layered a bit of tiara on the end (in a simple wave like fashion) and the above was the result.

I'll be honest I'm not a 'blue' person, it must be a high school uniform trauma type thing but I do love THIS blue. Then I thought, hmm look at all that space so whipped out my Sally Hansen silver nail art pen :-P

I added some simple dotted swirls. That actually look like nines or sixes now that I think about it :-/ Haha oh well! At least I'm appropriately blinged up for NYE :-)

And since I've been galavanting all over Queensland this past two weeks, I thought I'd share some holiday snaps.

The view from my hotel room in Broadbeach Gold Coast. The one day it was actually sunny during my stay...

Gorgeous day, got very sunburnt unfortunately... looking back towards surfers above.

Cloudy but oh so hot!

Ah yes we also made our way further down to Hooters on Mermaid Beach. Onion rings, curly fries, fried pickles and chicken wings. When on holidays eat like no tomorrow right?

And to correct the Hooters we also dined at Rhubarb Rhubarb, a fantastic French restaurant. My dessert above was the Meringue roulade of berries and marscapone. OMG this was the best dessert I've EVER had. Hands down. It beat the chocolate pie and the cheese platter also served at our table ;-) And I swear there was some berry cheesecake inside @_@

Well you know how I turned into bird lady. Butcher birds, Kookaburras and yes Plovers. These are our plovers (they live on our yard and are quite friendly to us, ie the don't KILL us :-) and they had babies... again :-| They're very cute but the problem is that they grow up to be, well, plovers :-P

That's it for now! Hope you all have a fantastic and safe new years eve and I'll see you in 2011!

Nicole by OPI Have a Heart and Virtuous Violet

Hi there! Meet my new friend, he's a very cute kookaburra and loves to sit on our porch. Isn't he (er or she) adorable? He shall be showing you my two new Nicole by OPI polishes - Have a Heart and Virtuous Violet:

I picked up these two polishes in a pharmacy in Brisbane. I don't know if I've seen these in Canberra but I know that they've been out for quite a while. I decided to of course get the purple called Virtuous Violet and Have a Heart (the other pink hearts one was not there).

Flash shot of Virtuous Violet above. This was three coats and was still quite sheer and thin in formula. Since I'm on holidays I don't have my regular fonts or photo editing software so bear with me :-)

Without flash above. And since it's been raining forever, no sun to reveal the prettiness of this polish. But it's purple and I'm biased, make of it what you will ;-) Up close the polish has very pretty blue shimmer mixed in with the purple.

I decided to layer Have a Heart on top of Virtuous Violet. Oh boy does that take some patience. As the formula of the clear polish with subtle glitter is quite sticky and glue like, it's best to put that down first without picking up hearts (although it's not easy to get any hearts with just the brush, you have to go fishing). I would recommend finding some other applicator to fish out and apply the hearts. The brush on its own can be frustrating. 

I think the only downside to these hearts is that they are a bit tricky to apply, and given the surface of your nail, they tend to stick up on the smaller nails where as they lie nice and flat on your thumb nail. Please excuse my messy nails as I didn't bring any of my mani essentials with me for this trip!

Anyway, I hope you enjoy and let me know if there are any other Nicole by OPI polishes that you like, I would love to check them out. Still feeling cold/fluey so I'm off to take some Betadine and lie down for a while :-) Hope everyone is having a fantastic week!

Boxing Day nails with Orly Oh Cabana Boy

Hi everyone, hope you had a fantastic Christmas with friends and family. My day was lovely but unfortunately I've woken up sick with a cold this morning :-( Nothing a cute mani can't fix right? So I present to you, Orly Oh Cabana Boy and Shine on Crazy Diamond:

I know it's been pouring with rain here in Queensland all week but I refuse to let summer pass me by. Let's just pretend it's sunny shall we?

These two Orly polishes were a gift from the bf for getting through my exec presentation (scary to say the least). I have been eyeing off Shine on Crazy Diamond for a while then I spotted Oh Cabana Boy and it was love.

Oh Cabana Boy is a bright blue pink with a subtle shimmer, and Shine on Crazy Diamond has a prettiest rainbow glitter. Actually I've been a bit naughty these holidays and have picked up quite a few new Orly minis... tsk tsk.

Anyway I thought I'd share a few more photos with you in case I'm completely incapacitated over the next few days... I've turned into bird lady apparently so meet my new friend the butcher bird:

Butcher birds have the loveliest song and she's been coming to see me the past two days. So adorable.

So it's been raining pretty much nonstop so ponds have formed in my backyard. And you know it's bad when ducks start floating on by...

And of course Bluey, who is adorable when he's sleeping but not when he's attempting to chase my butcher bird. Well that's it from me at the moment, hope everyone is having a lovely holiday!

Day 25 of the Nail Polish Advent Calendar: MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Merry Christmas everyone! Yes it's finally here and I hope everyone is with their family and friends having a wonderful Christmas Eve/Morning (depending on your location ;-) I promised one last polish and here it is: China Glaze Emerald Sparkle!

What no layering? Emerald Sparkle doesn't *need* layering, it's just that gorgeous on its own. And I know there were some repromotes with different formulas way back when and quite frankly I'm not sure which version I have but who cares - it's gorgeous.

Emerald Sparkle is just the ultimate holiday polish and is fitting for Christmas Day. Well, that's it for me, I'm going to be enjoying a nice break for a while but hopefully fit in a boxing day blog post or two in the very near future.

Anyways, since it's Christmas I thought I'd share a few snaps of our time here at the moment. It's not a white Christmas in Australia, but up north it's been a very wet and rainy Christmas holiday.

This is our mini pink Christmas tree. Pink with butterflies and pink decorations. I think I'm gonna steal this before mum sees!

This is a very cheeky kookaburra. I opened the door and he almost flew straight in! He's saying peek a boo!

I think we have a family of five kookaburras in the area. They are so cute even in the rain!

This is bluey, one of my two very fat cats. He's beautiful and he knows it ;-)

My other cat is guarding the Christmas presents!

Hope everyone enjoyed the Advent Calendar and I wish you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Day 24 of the Nail Polish Advent Calendar: Dashing Through The Snow...

Day 24 of the Advent calendar brings a combination of China Glaze holiday polishes I'm sure you've all seen before on every other nail polish swatch site but of course this belongs here, and that is Party Hearty layered over Snow:

You either love it or hate it but love/hate aside, you have to admit this is definitely festive! My swatches are nothing in comparison's to Jacie's on You've Got Nail so be sure to check hers out!

I originally only purchased Party Hearty for the red and green glitter that is just LOVE but Jacie's post made me NEED Snow ;-)

Well I'm sad to say the Advent Calendar finishes tomorrow. Are you wondering what the final polish is? Hehe, I bet you won't be able to guess! Come back tomorrow to find out :-D

Day 23 of the Nail Polish Advent Calendar: Holly Toledo!

Day 23 of the Advent calendar is similar to yesterday's in that I'm layering an Orly glitter on top of a China Glaze holiday polish:

Shown above is China Glaze Jolly Holly with Orly Rocker Chick layered on top. Rocker Chick has a similar iridescent sparkle to Cosmic Kiss but over the dark green shimmer polish, the China Glaze brings out bold glitter colours in blue and yellow. Click the picture above for a closer view.

I just love wearing green during Christmas and it's probably the only time you can really get away with it (minus St Pat's day ;-) I hope you enjoyed today's polish and come back tomorrow and the next for the FINAL two Advent calendar polishes. I can't believe it's almost over!

Day 22 of the Nail Polish Advent Calendar: Frosty the Snowman!

Day 22 of the Advent calendar brings to you Snow from the China Glaze Holiday 2010 collection and Orly's Cosmic Kiss. Cosmic Kiss is a gorgeous sheer white with iridescent glitter. Snow is a lovely cream white that is non streaky and needs only two or three coats, but I can't help myself and wanted to add a bit of holiday sparkle:

Hehe and that's my Frosty the snowman.

I wanted to show you a close up of the Cosmic Kiss glitter. Adds a bit of warmth to the stark white of Snow and gives off a lovely pastel iridescent sparkle.

Hope you enjoyed today's holiday polish and that you come back for another holiday themed polish tomorrow!

Day 21 of the Nail Polish Advent Calendar: Christmas Cake

Day 21 of the Advent calendar brings you a warmer holiday themed polish, and for this look I'll be layering Orly's Hair Band on Orly Rockin' Rocket (which is from the Holiday 2010 collection). I had previously said how much I loved Rockin' Rocket, so I couldn't *not* use it for my Advent calendar ;-)

So pretty isn't it. The gold complements the warm burgundy of Rockin Rocket and I just love this combination.

To me this is a lovely autumn/fall look but I think it would also suit the Christmas holiday season :-) As you can see in the bottle there's a bit of yellow/burnt orange throughout the Rockin' Rocket so the gold just adds to this nicely.

Sadly the Advent Calendar is drawing to a close, but we still have a few more polishes to look at, so stay tuned for another look tomorrow :-)

Day 20 of the Nail Polish Advent Calendar: Purple Princess!

Day 20 of the Advent calendar brings another purple look, which I'm excited about since I LOVE purple. When I was in Hawaii in June I found this little salon near Macy's and noticed they stocked Nubar. I couldn't go past Violet Sparkle and decided to layer it with Essie's Sexy Divide:

Just. Gorgeous. They are both absolutely stunning on their own and I was reluctant to put anything on Sexy Divide since it was so darn pretty but thank gosh I did - these colours were meant to be together:

Deep metallic purple + purple glitter = awesome. I don't normally say this but you need both of these polishes. Right now :-D

5 days until Christmas! Can you believe it? And of course there's another polish tomorrow so come back for another dazzling holiday polish ;-)

Day 19 of the Nail Polish Advent Calendar: Bon Bon Bonanza!

Day 19 of the Advent calendar brings are more subtle holiday look using a combination of Essie Playa del platinum and Sally Hansen's Disco ball:

Verrrry pretty when layered with the Disco Ball. And I can't believe how cheap it was! Sally Hansen come out with some beautiful polishes, I should really try them more often. Here's what the Essie polish looks like in the bottle:

When I was just wearing playa del platinum on its own, I wasn't sure I would continue. It's not really my colour, but what can't a bit of glitter fix hey? :-) I believe Playa del platinum came out this year with the Resort collection and I picked up the mini set. Loving the mini polishes right now. I finally feel like I'm 'using' my nail polish!

Anyway, hope you come back tomorrow to check out another holiday polish ;-)