OPI Vintage Glow in the Dark Halloween and Nail Art Ideas!

Hello lovelies! At the time of writing this I am still awaiting my 2011 OPI Halloween mini set so I thought I'd bring out the 2009 set that I got a hold of because it has a special polish they are bringing back for 2011 - Glow in the dark! Of course I took an 'in the dark' shot :-D

Now this box looks a little beaten up inside we have 4 mini OPI polishes and some FREE TATOOS! Haha. I hope those aren't coming back in 2011 :-S The gothic cuff bracelet from last year didn't get a lot of use either ;-)

Left to right we have Witch Arm? Glow-ink In The Dark, Tattoo You Want Candy? and lastly I Love Mummy. The purple is the glow in the dark polish :-)

Witch Arm? Shown above with 2 coats. Standard glossy black.

Glow-ink In The Dark above with about 4 coats I believe - this should probably be layered and halloween 2011 is bringing out a green version of this glow in the dark polish with the Spookettes collection. The other 3 colours in the Spookettes set are JUST like this collection - a black, white and an orange! I am eager to see if they are exactly the same.

Proof of glow in the dark polish. I also believe China Glaze are coming out with a glow in the dark polish this year. The battle of the shatters will now be the battle of the glow in the darks? Oh my.

Above is Tattoo You Want Candy? with 3 coats. I really love this colour and it will be good if it's repromoted with the 2011 set.

Above is I Love Mummy with 3 coats. I would say this is exactly like Alpine Snow. Which is great because I go through white nail polish like no tomorrow with all my nail art ;-)

Now the other great thing about these halloween sets is that they typically come with nail art how-tos on the back! Last year's was a bit 'meh' but I noticed the 2009 set was actually pretty cool!

I was mostly intrigued by the designs on the right and decided to test out a couple and see how well they turned out. Sadly, I had very short nails when I did these so one of them didn't work out, but I have two designs:

Firstly the spider webs! This is my favourite, the orange is gorgeous (although it looks VERY similar to Flit A Bit from Summer last year - maybe more sheer and a bit deeper) and the webs contrast nicely!

The second one is candy corn I think? Don't ask me, I'm Australian :-P I think it's missing yellow but that wasn't included in the set so I left alone.

Well that's all I have for now! I hope you enjoyed the swatches and you are inspired for Halloween! Even though it's a little while away... I absolutely LOVED haunted house type things growing up so I am eager to get into the nail art this year ;-) Also, I got back to Australia yesterday! So I'm back and eager to snap piccies of my ridiculous purchases and do some travel posts! Anyways, I hope you're all having a fabulous day and I will see you next time!

Crazy Pineapple Nail Art tutorial and second vacation update :-)

Hi everyone! This design was inspired by my hello kitty calendar for July which has hello kitty in cute little pineapple hats. I decided to just do the pineapples :-)

Yup these pineapples are totally cray cray and I like it! Very green which is unusual for me, but I was inspired by Orly's Fresh. Materials below:

Left to right we have Sally Hansen Green With Envy, Orly Fresh, Illamsaqua Smash and Boosh, OPI Alpine Snow, Essie Mink Muffs and finally OPI Fiercely Fiona. I really need a full size of that yellow polish! It is fab.

So to start off with I actually painted my nails with a white base. This was for two reasons - 1) To make the green brighter and greener and 2) I'm fairly suspicious when it comes to green/yellow based polishes as they often yellow your nails. I wasn't taking any chances. I worked with the thumb design then decided to continue with the rest of my nails :-)

To start off the pineapples I did the outline in and filled in white. This was OPI Alpine Snow.

Next I used OPI Fiercely Fiona to fill the pineapple part. Turns out lovely and bright over the white base.

Then I filled the pineapple top with Sally Hansen Green With Envy.

Now for the criss-cross lines! I very gently drew diagonal lines with Essie Mink Muffs over each nail.

Now the other way! I used a small nail art brush but a long striping brush may also work. I'm just used to doing everything with one brush :-)

With Illamasqua Smash I carefully outlined the pineapple leaves to give them some definition.

Now for the face! Using Alpine Snow again I drew the whites of the eyes and the mouth.

Finally I dotted the eyes with Illamasqua Boosh and faintly drew a line across the mouth with Essie Mink Muffs and we're done!

Vacation update: I am currently in New York and have been here since Monday evening. We finally purchased some expensive net and so I'm catching up on the blogging world and publishing one of my pre-saved posts :-)

Oh em gee. Times Square at night = crazy. I thought it was busy during the day but no way, night time is way worse! Shall be avoiding it now that we have gotten our photos :-) And everyone is trying to sell you something :-/

Hehe we made our way down to South Street Seaport after the WTC and Wall St and I did some good shopping at bath & body works. I picked up some new halloween hand sanitizers and quite a few body lotions :-S I have NO idea how I'm getting this stuff into my suitcase!

Today we went to the statue of liberty and stood in the rain for an hour at 7am waiting for the boat -_- That sucked mega but eventually the rain stopped and we made it ok. We only got Pedestal tickets (I wasn't about to climb 200+ steps the crown) and that was 150 steps!

Here's my disneyland video from last week. There's a few others up on the channel so check 'em out if you're interested ;-)

Well I hope you enjoyed the look, it's fun to do something silly every once and a while :-) Hope you're all having a lovely day and I will see you next time!

Orly Happy Go Lucky swatches and Vacation Update!

Hi everyone, I have some Orly swatches today and a little bit of a nail design at the end :-) This collection is called Happy Go Lucky and I believe it's the 'back to school' collection.

Left to right we have four bright colours, each starting with 'F': Frisky, Flirty, Frolic and Fresh. All are cremes except Flirty which has a gorgeous shimmer as you will see below :-)

Above we have Frolic with no top coat so you can see the finish - this was actually one coat so and you can see how much coverage you get with just one coat!

Above is Frolic with now two coats and a top coat.

Above we have Flirty with no top coat and just one coat of polish. That shimmer is to die for. If you're a pink polish lover, this is for you. I don't normally go for pinks but after putting on this polish I was just @_@ at my nails. So barbie, so pink.

Above is Flirty with now two coats of polish and a top coat. Dang this is gorgeous!

Above is Frisky with two coats, no top coat. It was more uneven than Flirty and Frolic so required two coats to be 'presentable' in terms of a swatch.

Above is Frisky, still two coats but with a top coat this time. Top coats make everything look nice. It's a nice sky blue and it makes a great addition to my creme nail art polish stash :-)

Above is Fresh with three coats and no top coat. I found this polish the most difficult to work with in terms of formula, hence the three coats. Orly brushes are very thin so that might have something to do with it.

Above is Fresh again with a top coat and still three coats of polish. It's a little 'sickly' green if you don't cover up each coat in the exact same place but to me this would make a great halloween polish! Not so much back to school :-P

And while I was in video conversion hell trying to rip videos for my Motoral Xoom tablet, I decided to do some funky bubble nails. Yes with a pink background. Everytime I look at them I think of that Sodastream commercial on tv and the dude yelling 'Sodastream is back! Get busy with the fizzy!' :-P Omg that ad annoyed me so much when they were spamming it non stop! Now you can all watch too! Haha.

I left the bubbles overnight and thought they could do with some extra cuteness so I drew purple starfish the next day!

Well I hope you enjoyed the swatches and the designs and I hope you're all having a lovely week! I am currently staying at one of the Disneyland resorts, I've just had a full day at Disneyland and I am absolutely exhausted! We have taken thousands of pictures but we have only JUST gotten some free net here! Wifi is so precious and scarce overseas :P Here are a few piccies...

This is part of Hollywood Blvd - the craziest tourist spot I have EVER been to so far. Do not attempt to walk around here when there are movie premiers! There were two when we were staying here - 30 minutes or less and Final Destination 5. Totally crazy. I have little patience for crowded walkways!

Next we havee Rodeo Dr - the shopping destination in Beverly Hills. We came through here twice - once on a hop on hop off bus so we could walk around, the second on a movie star homes tour (where I actually saw Johnny Depp driving his black Porche in the Hollywood Hills weeeee!)

This is the view from our room at the Disneyland Resort - freaking awesome! Eventually the sun came out and it was so hot walking around.

And if you're interested, I am in the process of making daily videos of my adventures so check out thisleanne on youtube for 3 vids so far - I have linked the first below:

My apologies for the quality - there is only so much you can do with an iPhone 3gs and no macbook or lappy ;-) Ok I really must sleep now! Until next time my lovelies...

Vacation Nail Art!

Woohoo! I finished up work today and very shortly I'll be flying to LA to begin my USA holiday! Weeeeee. And to celebrate, I did some vacation nail art:

They are palm trees with a hammock. My idea of a perfect vacation. My holiday however is not so relaxing - I have a lot of things planned and I can't wait @_@

The colours I used for this look are shown above. Left to right we have Sally Hansen Green With Envy, OPI Alpine Snow, Essie Mink Muffs, Sephora By OPI Leotard Optional, Essie Topless & Barefoot, Essie Borrowed & Blue and finally Essie Pretty Edgy.

Now I was frantically packing lastnight so I didn't do the normal 'progress shots' but I took one pre palm tree leaves and hammock. The base of the nail is Essie's Borrowed & Blue with Topless & Barefoot as the beach sand. I used Leotard Optional as the palm tree trunk and while I decorated the thumb nail tree trunks, I didn't quite like it so I left it off the other nails (which was Essie Mink Muffs). Sally Hansen Green With Envy was the base of the palm tree leaves.

Close up of the thumb design. OPI Alpine Snow was used to draw the hammocks. Then pretty edgy to do the leaves on the palm trees. And that is it!

Well that is all I have for now, I am going to go finish packing and making my Sephora/Ulta/Target/Bath&Body Works/everything lists :-D I have a few posts waiting to be published so if I manage a net connection (and I should do as I am addicted to the internet) I shall post while I'm on holidays! And maybe some holiday posts if you don't mind that sort of thing. I hope you all have a lovely weekend, and I'll see you again soon! :-D