MAC Mean & Green vs. Orly Space Cadet

I recently swatched the MAC nail polishes from the Venomous Villains collection. Then I spotted the Orly Cosmic FX collection and I noticed that Space Cadet was looking very similar to MAC's Mean & Green... so similar in fact that I can't tell the difference looking at the bottles:

I believe the Orly collection was available first but that said there are some interesting dupes in the Orly collection.

It really looks like an exact dupe in both the flash shot above and natural light shot below:

Even though my particular MAC mean & green has a crap brush (the bristles stick out in different directions) I would still recommend the Orly over the MAC polish due to its thinner but more consistent formula and longer brush (with a sturdier handle). Also I believe the Orly is slightly cheaper and you get 18mL/0.6Fl Oz as opposed to the 10mL/0.34 Fl Oz for the MAC. Honestly I don't know why I keep buying MAC nail polishes! That said Orly does chip easily... but so do most brands :-D

China Glaze Holiday 2010 Glitter swatches and Candy Cane nails!

With Christmas soon approaching I decided to try my China Glaze holiday 2010 glitter polishes and play with some Sally Hansen nail art pens. When I first saw the China Glaze photos for party hearty, I was in love. You either love glitter or you hate it, but party hearty was something special. So let's start there:

Party Hearty. What's not to love. Three different colours of glitter on a clear base - a big chunky red and smaller green and silver glitter.

These swatches are about 2-3 coats, I gave it a third where nails looked a bit patchy. party hearty would be great layered over another colour.

Mistletoe kisses, similarly named to the Orly Holiday polish Meet Me Under The Mistletoe which is also a green, is a subtle glitter polish that's not annoyingly chunky like Party Hearty :-P

In the flash shot above the first nail is 3 coats, the others are 2 coats. I quite like this one!

Despite being obsessed with getting Party Hearty, Mrs. Claus is probably my favourite out of the three. It's a gorgeous cherry with pink glitter.

I originally left on Mrs. Claus and got stuck into drawing candy canes but against a pink background it didn't look as good. So I started over and drew candy canes on Mistletoe Kisses:

Tee hee. I had a priceline voucher so I decided to get some Sally Hansen nail art pens. I didn't know what colours they had but I originally wanted to draw holly on there but they didn't have a green! So I picked up red and white pens:

I had a few practice runs and some tips on working with these pens:

• Let the base coat dry properly underneath! Especially when it's glitter else you'll tear it up
• Don't press the colour on, it will just 'fall' out and it works best if you lightly draw the colour on as if it was an airbrush
• If you're doing candy canes, draw a white base and let the first colour dry before applying the next colour else they'll mix
• Do a few even coats of colour, the white is prone to cracking
• Apply a topcoat later when everything has dried, such as Seche Vite

Well it's another wet weekend in Canberra. What a surprise :-| Hope everyone is enjoying better weather!

Orly Velvet Rope, my weekend in Wollongong and more hopshopgo goodies!

Last weekend I headed down to Wollongong for a wedding (on Halloween!) so I tried my latest purple polish which is Orly Velvet Rope:

The bottle has a lot of silver glitter but it's not chunky and not much glitter goes on the nails.

I've found the Orly formula to be quite thin but only two coats were required. I still had the fun of removing the remaining silver glitter afterwards. Anyway, I'll post some piccies from my weekend and recent haulage:

The reception was at function centre right by the beach, which had a gorgeous view (despite the shocking weather).

How people were out swimming, I have NO idea.

The wedding was on Halloween so all the kids got this huge container of lollies! So jealous!

The table names were cute as well.

The cake was outstanding and although I had a non-iPhone photo of it, this was the only photo that got the whole cake in the shot. The cake was chocolate and vanilla. Yummy.

While I was shopping at the mall before we drove home, I spotted the latest MAC Tartan Tale collection on display. I picked up the Later Pigment and The Faerie Glen lipstick. The lipstick is very close to my lip colour so I'm really happy with it. One practical item and one non practical item... that's how I roll :-P

My second hopshopgo order came through (I feel the DHL courier and I will become great friends haha) which included more bath and body works. Don't worry, these aren't all for me, they will be distributed across the family as Christmas pressies! Ok maybe one or two for me :-D

Here's my '3kg' of target.com jewels. I did not realise that large silver pendant was so darn large! Doh. These were supposed to be xmas pressies as well until I remembered my bestie was allergic to silver. Sigh. But hopefully mum will like the evil eye pendant necklace.

I hope everyone had a happy halloween and I shall swatch you later!

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!