Slushied! Gleek out with Sephora by OPI mini set swatches!

Here's what you missed on Glee! Sephora released a Glee themed set of mini nail polishes (a few full versions are available with some of the minis exclusive to the kit). They also brought out a few full sized colours that are not in the set but I'll be swatching the mini set and showing you my slushied nails!

If you've ever looked for Glee songs on iTunes, Amazon, etc you might recognize the above. Glee songs not yet part of an album generally have a big blue slushie as the artwork so I was inspired :-) I only used Glee colours except for the white Sally Hansen Nail art pen to draw the slushie and straw (and often mixed it with China Glaze Snow).

But onto the swatches! The set of six minis comes in the box shown below:

They come with Glee inspired names and they are left to right: Miss Bossy Pants, Slushied, Celibacy Club, Gleek Out, Sue vs. Shue and Express Yourself to Yourself:

Sephora minis come with 3.75mL or 1/8 Fl. Oz which is a little bit less than Essie minis (5mL/0.16 Fl. Oz) and Orly minis (5.4mL/0.18 Fl. Oz) but it's the standard OPI mini size. So if you really like a colour, I suggest you get yourself a full sized version :-)

First up is Miss Bossy Pants, named after Rachel and it's a pink raspberry shimmer, quite pretty on the nails. Flash shot above.

Natural light shot above. I believe this may be 2 or 3 coats. The problem I had with these polishes (and this may be due to the small brush of the minis) is that they were quite patchy and I had to do more coats than I would have liked.

Here we have slushied, a bright opaque blue which of course makes reference to the Glee club members getting slushie drinks thrown at them by the football team for being in the Glee club :-P Flash shot above.

The blue is also the colour of my slushie drink in my nails in the first shot :-) Natural light shot above.

Celibacy Club is a clear diamond glitter polish and makes a lovely topcoat for other base colours. Flash shot above.

I used this over Slushied in my slushie nails :-) Natural light shot above. This polish is only available as part of the mini set.

Next we have Gleek Out and this is described as a glittery lime green. It's very glittery and quite yellow toned. Flash shot above.

Natural light shot above. Not my cup of tea but may appeal to some.

Next we have Sue vs. Shue and this of course refers to the on-going battle between Sue Sylvester and Mr Shue. Very deep dark blue with a beautiful shimmer if you can catch sight of it ;-) Flash shot above.

The shimmer comes out brilliantly in the sunlight but it's still a very dark polish. This is also only available as part of the mini set. Natural light shot above.

Last we have express yourself to yourself. It is a bright glittery coral that is also the base of my slushie nails at the start.

Natural light shot above. This is also exclusive to the mini set. Well I hope you enjoyed - I know not everyone likes Glee and I find it quite hard to watch as it's quite a cringe-worthy show but I love a lot of the music, in particular the Thriller / Heads will roll mashup. LOVE IT. I have a lot of remixes of the heads will roll track :-) And that's what you missed on glee!

Hope you're all having a great week - I'm going away this long weekend but hopefully I get a post out when I get back... with some photos of where I went :-D

Mario Bros. Nail Art!

My family have been quite interested in my nail art lately and just recently my brother started making requests. One was ridiculous and the other was Mario Bros. So I'm not one to say no to a challenge so here we have it *insert mario bros. tune*

Presenting Mario Bros. themed nail art...er minus Mario himself :-P If I had flesh toned polish I would have... I have been discovering some serious colour gaps in my collection lately and I need to rectify that asap! Now if you're like my mum and don't really know Mario Bros (she just knew OF it :-) here's the wii version of the game :-D

I was obsessed with Mario bros. 1 and 3 on Nintendo when I was little. I really need to get back into it and finish the wii version! Here's the booklet inside with more of the chars on my nails:

You can see the mushroom, fire flower and the star :-) Anyway to begin my nail design, I started with some drawings of the characters I wanted to do:

I got a bit frustrated by my lack of appropriate Mario colours but I think I still managed ok :-) Here's a close up of the nails side by side (click to zoom):

That pinkie mushroom almost didn't happen! I was going to do the squid then thought what for? :-P Now for the colour list. The base/background colour is OPI What's With The Cattitude.

1. Goomba (thumb): Essie Mink Muffs (brown), Sephora by OPI Leotard-Optional (beige), Sally Hansen black nail art pen, China Glaze Snow (white)
2. Fire Flower: OPI Flit a bit! (orange), OPI Fiercely Fiona (yellow), China Glaze Snow (white), Essie Pretty Edge (dark green), OPI Who the Shrek are You? (lime green) and the ground was Essie Mink Muffs (brown), Sephora by OPI Leotard-Optional (beige) and Sally Hansen black nail art pen.
3. Star: OPI Fiercely Fiona and a black Sally Hansen nail art pen.
4. Piranha Plant: Essie Pretty Edge (pipe main colour), pipe outline in Essie Mink Muffs, highlighted in OPI Who the Shrek are You? and the flower used red and white Sally Hansen nail art pens.
5. Mushroom: Head is a red Sally Hansen nail art pen, dots are China Glaze Snow (white nail art pen to outline), Illamasqua Load as the base with a black Sally Hansen nail art pen for eyes.

Whew! What a list. You should have seen my bench afterwards. Well I hope you enjoyed this look! I have the sudden need to play Mario Bros. now. Can't imagine why ;-) Anyway, I hope you're all having a wonderful and relaxing weekend. Until next time lovelies...

Enchanted forest mushrooms... shopping, and a day by the lake!

Welcome to my enchanted forest mushies look! Deary me, it took me a couple of attempts but finally I was happy with them:

I am embarrassed to admit that this was inspired by Farmville :-/ They had a fairy tale/enchanted forest theme and I just loved the purple trees they had going so I took it to mushroom form :-) I used these pretties for the look:

Left to right we have Rumple's Wiggin' (light purple from the Shrek OPI collection), a mini Orly limelite, Funkey Dunkey (purple also from the Shrek OPI collection), Sephora by OPI Metro Chic, Essie Pretty Edgy and China Glaze Snow. Whew! What a lot of polishes. The base coat was Rumple's Wiggin' - a gorgeous light purple cream, then I drew the stalk of the mushroom and filled it with Metro Chic. After that I drew the mushroom top with Funkey Dunkey and added white spots with China Glaze snow. I was going to leave it as this because it was so cute:

I wanted it to be a little more 'enchanting' ;-) So I added Essie Pretty edgy as grass. Then decided to add some sparkle with Orly limelite. Progress shot below:

Limelite is really gorgeous, especially over other colours. Thumb swatch below:

Well after I drew my mushies I went out for lunch and cupcakes at the Canberra Centre. There is this fountain right outside the cupcake shop:

And we've switched to iPhone quality shots. You've been warned :-) Onto the cupcakes! I have posted about this shop before - Jazz Apple cafe:

Big claim. Best of where? I don't know. But we always turn up late and only have a few to choose from:

I picked up the yellow lemon meringue cupcake and the bf had the toffee looking one on the right. I can't remember what flavour it was. I still have the same opinion of these cupcakes, perhaps they weren't fresh but the cake is a little too dry and the cream too much. But I felt like pretty cupcakes :-)

We took our cupcakes to eat at Lake Burley Griffin, which is a lovely place to picnic (and many people were). The lake is well known for the Captain Cook Memorial Water Jet:

I shall be returning soon for a picnic and the SLR to take some better photos! There was also the Captain Cook memorial itself:

Which had a nice timeline of historic events, bringing back school memories :P

I can't believe I have been living in Canberra for 6 years and I never knew this was here? I've sat maybe 50 metres away (twice!) for Skyfire and yet never noticed the big globe fountain... sigh.

Yay onto my purchases! Purple flower havaianas (slim prints). I have been hunting these pretties down for ages! They never have my size. Purple and grey = love.

Saved the best until last! I caved and decided that breaking my nails wasn't worth it - I bought the Pandora clasp opener and my second charm, the Mother of Pearl.

The opener works a treat and the charm is lovely. I was going to get purple but didn't really like the shade as much as this one above. Well I hope you enjoyed this look and my apologies for the lengthy non nail related post - it was a bit of a 'day in the life' kind of post :-) Let me know if you liked it!

Oh and I have also managed to get a nasty head cold so I've spent most of my week in bed :-( I really want to be better for the weekend to try some new polishes. But let's see if I make it! Until next time lovelies...

OPI Texas Collection: Guy Meets Gal-Veston... with Watermelons?!

I couldn't resist - I picked up another sorbet polish from the latest OPI Texas Collection. In the shops it looks exactly like another in the bottle. I don't remember which. But the swatches were showing Guy Meets Gal-veston as more pink and it was pretty. So I went to work... and I kept thinking of watermelons for some reason? I know it's been done to death but maybe not like this :-D

Guy meets gal-veston looks pink painted over white, but comes out more deep coral pink on the nail. Like watermelon @_@

I'm a big fan of the 'sorbet like' finish from this collection. Regular flash swatch below:

Looks quite pink there. But less so in natural light but that might be my room light affecting the colour:

The watermelons were pretty easy to draw. Two crescents, filled with pink and dots for seeds. Easy. Progress shot below. I used Essie Pretty Edgy and OPI Who the Shrek Are You for the outside of the watermelon:

I actually have a full size of Who the Shrek Are You. Honestly I have no idea why but I'm glad I found a use for it ;-) I'm left handed so the left hand was the 'trial' hand and the right is better looking. They are super cute though and I received some compliments out shopping so that was nice :-)

Natural light shot below:

So for this look I used Essie Pretty Edgy for the first crescent, OPI Who the Shrek are you for the second crescent, Essie Knockout Pout for the watermelon part and Illamasqua Scorn for the seeds.

Well I hope you have a great weekend and enjoy the look. I rarely keep nail art on for too long but this one I'm really loving so why not? ;-) Until next time...

China Glaze Crackle Fault Line swatches and new Pandora goodies!

I recently ordered one of the China Glaze crackle polishes - Fault Line. It's a gorgeous purple shimmer. I was hesitant to order anymore 'crackle/shatter' polishes after the trouble I had with the OPI Black Shatter but the purple called to me :-) So here we have Fault Line:

And the little card attached has instructions in three different languages:

Basically you need to wait until the base coat dries. Otherwise it's going to be a gooey mess. I decided to go with OPI Coronation DS as a base coat. Silver and purple - can't go wrong right? And it turned out gorgeous:

It is matte until you put the top coat on but I wanted to show you both. I mangled the ring finger but it still turned out pretty. But again, I love purple and am biased so I'm going to put that out there :-D Swatch with top coat shown below (which clears up said mangled nail):

I love this effect in purple. Black was very harsh but purple gives it a whole new look. I feel the formula was different to OPI but the more you use it the more it's going to dry up the top of your bottle and be hard to screw the lid back on. Shatter/Crackle dries incredibly fast. I had heard that Fault Line is the 'thickest' of the China Glaze crackles so I used a very thin layer for the swatches above. I'm wondering whether or not I need anymore of the crackles. I was very temped to get the pink one... but am still undecided. Will it be as pretty? On a side note I visited Pandora recently:

It's the bf's mum's birthday soon so I picked up a charm for her bracelet. Then as I was looking at all the charms I spotted one that I fell in love with. So of course I needed a bracelet to start my own charm bracelet. I'm such a sucker for cute miniature things :-| This is what I picked up for myself:

A standard clasp silver bracelet (which is a royal pain to open - do I need the clasp opener?!) with a silver oxidized Cancer charm. The product description says it's black but it comes off more blue in real life if you can tell above. I love it. I'm thinking silver and purple charms would be really pretty as a theme for the bracelet. I would love a gold one too but I'm holding off on buying the expensive gold bracelet until my USA trip in August. I think it's a bit cheaper overseas (if the dollar stays strong). Do any of you lovelies collect Pandora charms/have a completed bracelet? I would love ideas :-) Well that's all I have for now, I hope you enjoyed and until next time...