Sunday 25 May 2014

Kester Black Milky Way

Kester Black Milky Way
Just a quick warning, this post is going to have the most photos of the same nail polish out of all of my posts....

I love Kester Black and wanted to swatch every single colour I own. To view all the other Kester Black Related posts click here!

This nail polish is incredible. This is Milky Way - a holographic micro glitter. In the shade it looks like a silver glitter, but as soon as light hits it (sunlight or artificial) it goes crazy! I'm so happy I ended up buying this one!!

Kester Black Milky Way







I layered it over Kester Blacks Lilac for these photos. I'm sure it'll look great over tons of colours but this post is already going to have a ton of photos so I thought I'd just stick to one colour.

Anyway! Like I mentioned before, in the shade this nail polish looks like a silver glitter. Still a very pretty silver glitter, but as soon as you step into any kind of light it flashes every colour of the rainbow!

Kester Black Milky Way







It's very hard to capture the holo so I blurred the photo. Look at all that colour! It's so vibrant and you can literally see every single colour of the rainbow.

Kester Black Milky Way

Kester Black Milky Way

Kester Black Milky Way
Kester Black Milky Way

Kester Black Milky Way

Thursday 22 May 2014

OPI Brazil Collection - Part 1

The OPI Brazil collection is the only collection where I own every single nail polish! The Brazil collection came out for Spring/Summer of this year and in consists of 12 colours, 11 of which are creme finishes and one shimmery duo chrome. There is a great selection of colours which I feel ranges to all seasons. It's got brights, and neutrals so there is something for everyone!

First up is AmazON... AmazOFF. I feel like this is a popular favourite from the collection. OPI describes this to be a deep jungle green. It's a gorgeous dark green that leans slightly blue. It has some hidden shimmers, which made me a bit wary about buying it, but you can't really see them unless you're in direct sunlight and staring closely at your nails.

The formula is amazing, probably the best from the collection. It just glides onto the nail without any problems. It's a super opaque polish and is fully opaque in just two coats. It also has a really shiny finish. Perfect!

The second polish is I Just Can't Cope-Acabana. This is the perfect sunshine yellow. I have always read that yellow nail polish is a big no no, but I actually do like it. This is a bright pastel yellow. It isn't bright like a neon, but it isn't soft like a pastel either. It's the perfect in between colour.

The formula on this is great! Yellows are notorious for streakiness and just difficult to work with, but this only took two easy coats for full opacity. I think it looks beautiful on a sunny summers day, but will also work great with nail art!

The third nail polish is Don't Bossa Nova Me Around. It's a gorgeous creamy pink toned nude. I absolutely love colours like this, and this was the first nail polish that I bought from the collection. I came home, immediately tried it and immediately wanted to try the other neutral from the collection. I have a few other pink neutrals, but nothing quite like this one. I will have a OPI Brazil Collection Comparison post coming up with I'm home from my travels.

The formula was really easy to work with. Normally light shades like this can be really streaky and chalky and need a million coats, but this only needed two coats. The first coat was slightly streaky, but the second coat evened that out perfectly.

The fourth nail polish is Taupe-less Beach. This is my new favourite neutral by OPI. It's the perfect neutral that isn't too light but isn't too dark either. In some lights this colour looks grey, other slightly more brown, and in other it actually looks purple!

This formula was the easiest out of the whole collection. I applied two coats but if applied like butter, super smooth and easy and it's like it was applying itself. It has a really glossy finish.

The fifth nail polish is another neutral but slightly darker. This is I São Paulo Over There. It's much darker than the previous polish. It's a much more brown toned polish, but still has that hidden hint of purple. It looks very sophisticated and I have a feeling this will be the new You Don't Know Jacques.

I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again. The formula was great, I used two coats for full opacity. It wasn't streaky and dried really quick. It has a beautiful shine on its own.

Finally the sixth polish and the final for part 1 is Next Stop... The Bikini Zone. This was the last one I bought from the collection, but I am so happy that I bought it!! It's a shimmery duo toned nail polish that goes from a taupe colour to a bright purple. It's so super shimmery and much better than I expected it to be. The duo chrome is also very apparent, you don't need to put your hands in awkward positions to be able to see the change.

The formula was really easy to work with. I used two coats, as you can see from the photos there is still a bit of visible nail line, but in real life it's a lot less apparent.


That's it for the first half of the swatches! The second half will have all the pinks and reds and oranges, but that'll only be posted when I'm back from my travels (start of june!)

Monday 19 May 2014

ABC Challenge: F

I started this ABC challenge series on my instagram and really enjoyed it so I thought I'd blog about it too! Check out the rest of my ABC posts here.

F is for French Lavender by Kester Black. French Lavender came out as part of the Winter collection and I think it's the perfect colour for winter. It's a light muted purple. The formula was super easy, depending on how careful I am with application, I couldn't easy get away with just using one coat. For the swatch I used two. Look at the shine! 

For the nail art I was inspired by @lieve91 (on Instagram). I love landscape/scenery nails that create an image over 4 nails. I think this is such a cute one and the colours are so beautiful! I don't remember which exact colours I used, but I used a Barry M black nail art pen for the detail and a white Barry M nail art pen for the moon. 

I really like how this turned out, and will doing more things like this in the future! 

Saturday 17 May 2014

Kester Black Silverbirch

Kester Black is my favourite brand. I say it allll the time! So I decided to swatch all of my Kester Black nail polishes on my blog!

Kester Black Silverbirch
Today I've got Silverbirch to show you. Silverbirch is part of Kester Black's winter collection and is a warm toned grey. In the bottle I feel like it looks a little more brown and I was worried it would be similar to buttercream, but when applied to the nails it's definitely more grey.

Kester Black Silverbirch












Silverbirch is a one coater! Out of all the Kester Blacks I own, I'd say this one probably has the best formula. The swatch to the right only has one coat and it's completely 100% opaque and super glossy. It's amazing!

As I was applying the polish it looked slightly streaky, but that completely evened itself out.

It's a beautiful neutral coloured nail polish. It's definitely a grey, but because it's got such a warm tone to it, it makes it very unique.

Kester Black Silverbirch

Wednesday 14 May 2014

ABC Challenge: E

I started this ABC challenge series on my instagram and really enjoyed it so I thought I'd blog about it too! Check out the rest of my ABC posts here.

I've been really excited to post this one.... E is for Every Month is Oktoberfest by OPI. Oh my goodness, this is the most amazing nail polish in the whole world. This is two super easy coats. 

This is a red shimmer in a deep dark purple jelly base. When you apply one coat the purple jelly is a lot more obvious, the second coat gives it more of a red tone because of all the shimmer. It's such a unique nail polish. 

At first I didn't want to apply any nail art, but I thought galaxy nails would look great over this base! I love galaxy nails, they're so easy to create but look like they're really difficult. I'm not exactly sure which nail polishes I used, but I know I used a white first to make the other colours pop. Then I used a blue/aqua, a purple, a pink and a dark blue to blend it together. I then finished it off with Barry M's Diamond Glitter. The most amazing holographic glitter top coat. 

I left quite a few dark areas surrounding the "galaxies" where the beauty of Every Month Is Oktoberfest is still very obvious. I love how they turned out! 


Monday 12 May 2014

Monday Randoms

The second post for my Monday Randoms! These posts basically look at the nail art I've never decided to post for some reason. Some might be nail fails, other might be photo fails etc.

The first is this glitter gradient using Butter London's Rosie Lee and (I think) OPI's Don't Bossa Nova Me Around. Glitter gradients are some of my favourite manicures to do, they're super easy and always look so pretty. I really like the colour combo, but I always find that glitter gradients don't look half as good in photos as they do in real life. It's always so disappointing! My photo skills for this one are pretty crappy too.. why on earth did I not photograph my whole pointer finger???

Second is this cute floral manicure. I kind of love them and hate them at the same time. I think they're cute, but it isn't how I wanted them to turn out. It seems like I might have a OPI Brazil collection curse, because all these unposted nail art photos all include the brazil collection!

I used OPI Don't Bossa Nova Me Around and Live.Love.Carnival as well as Wembley by Nails Inc for the gold.

Finally, my polka dot nails. I actually love these! I think they're super cute and want wear these all the time. I specifically photographed this for instagram though. For Instagram I only need to have one photo, whereas for the blog I like adding a few more different ones. Anyway, these did make my instagram, but never made it to my blog! I really love them though...


I hope you guys like my unposted nail art photos!

Friday 9 May 2014

Kester Black Cherry Pie

As you all probably know by now... I love Kester Black. I really enjoyed swatching the colours for my haul a while ago so I thought I'd continue through my entire Kester Black collection! To view all Kester Black related posts (swatches and nail art) click here!

Kester Black Cherry Pie
This is Kester Black's Cherry Pie. I'm a bit meh with reds because I feel like they all look pretty similar, but my boyfriend loves red polishes (he only really likes the tradition colours... that doesn't stop me from wearing something crazy though!) So when we were in the shop looking at Kester Black nail polishes this is the one he pointed out. I obviously can't say no to that....

Kester Black Cherry Pie 1 coat











This is a bright, in your face, beautiful red. I feel with a lot of bright reds like this the formula is a little sheered and jelly-like, but this was so creamy and opaque!! The swatch to the right is only ONE coat. It's so glossy and opaque!

Kester Black Cherry Pie 2 coats













I did add a second coat to see if it would make any difference. The colour stayed the same but the glossiness became 100x better.

The formula was incredibly easy to work with. It was a one coater, no patchiness, bald spots or streakiness or anything. Just a dream polish with super shine.

Kester Black Cherry Pie



Wednesday 7 May 2014

ABC Challenge: D

I started this ABC challenge series on my instagram and really enjoyed it so I thought I'd blog about it too! Check out the rest of my ABC posts here.

D is for Don't Bossa Nova Me Around by OPI. This colour was part of the Spring/Summer Brazil collection this year. This is actually the only collection where I own every single colour! This colour is the palest colour in the series. The swatch isn't 100% colour accurate, my camera did not like the colour and it was either just white or slightly more peachy toned.. Anyway, the actual colour is a very very pale neutral pink. So imagine the swatch to the right more pink toned than peachy, but still keeping that neutral tone. I just love this colour! The formula was surprisingly easy. I only applied two coats!! 

The nail art I decided to create was this crossed pattern. It isn't perfect, and looked much better in real life, but I'm still pretty happy with it! I use nail striping tape to create the design and carefully coloured it in with OPI Where did Suzi's Man-go, Toucan Do It If You Try and Live.Love.Carnival - which I also used for my pointer and pinky. It's slightly darker than Toucan Do It If You Try. 

Monday 5 May 2014

Monday Randoms

I really love nail art, but a lot of nail art doesn't go to plan or for some reason or another I decide not to post it. I thought it would be fun to have a blog series showing these nails! Since I'm going to be travelling for the next month, my posting schedule is going to be a bit all over the place, so I won't make it a weekly series yet.

The first one I did actually post on Instagram, but it never made it to my blog. I do really like the nails, but I only took one photo of it, not quite enough for a whole blog post.. I created these right after I quit my job and I finally had time to do my nails again. I worked at a fast food place for 4 months and couldn't paint my nails at all, so after 4 months of no nail art, this was the first creation I'd made. Not bad!

I used Alpine Snow for the white and a black Barry M nail art pen for the aztect print. Other than that I'm not 100% sure about the rest of the colours, but it looks like the turquoise is Barry M Greenberry, the purple Kester Black Bougainvillia and the pink... I have no idea!!

I really like the idea of these nails, mixing neutrals with neons but I was too impatient while creating these. I taped up my nail to apply the pink, but I didn't put the tape in the same place on every nail. When I pulled off the tape the neutral base on my pointer finger came off. I had to restart and couldn't be bothered with the tape again so tried to do it without, which didn't really work out.... Other than those two points, I do really like the colour combo.

I used OPI Taupe-less Beach for the neutral and Ulta3's Fruit Tingle for the neon pink.

Finally these floral nails. These are all kinds of wrong. I kind of created an ombre on my pointer and pinky using OPI's Where Did Suzi's Man-Go and Live.Love.Carnival, but that didn't work out at all. The flowers look pretty awful too, and then the hand pose is just awkward....

The base of the flowers is OPI Don't Bossa Nova Me Around.

That's it for my first Monday Randoms! I hope you guys like the idea of these kinds of posts and I'm sure I'll have tons more to post.

Thursday 1 May 2014

Kester Black Ice Cream Soda

Kester Black Ice Cream Soda
The final nail polish from my haul is Ice Cream Soda. I actually got this as a freebie from the amazingly sweet Anna (creater of Kester Black nail polishes) but you can read that story here.

Ice Cream Soda is a light lime green yellowy polish. That a great description!! Unlike all the other polishes, this has a lot of silver shimmer, that changes to a darker green as you twist the bottle, creating a frosty effect. It's such a unique colour and really reminds me of spring.

Kester Black Ice Cream Soda








This polish applied a little more sheer than the creme finishes, but regardless of that it was still opaque in two coats. It's has a very subtle colour pay off, so when it's on your nail it doesn't look too bright, more of a muted pastel type of colour.

The formula is really glossy and because of the silver shimmer it looks even more shiny. You can see the brush strokes, but that doesn't really bother me since the polish is so smooth.

This is one of those unique shades where you can't help but look at your nails.

Kester Black Ice Cream Soda