Every Month Is Oktoberfest - OPI

I managed to get my hands on two amazing polishes from OPI's Germany collection that has just been released, so today I'll be showing you the first of them. 'Every Month Is Oktoberfest' is one that I knew I had to have the minute I saw it popping up on all my favourite blogs. Turns out it is even more beautiful than I could have imagined in real life.

This is just such a delicious vampy shade. MMMMMMMM I love it! It is infact an indigo, purpley blue base with a ridiculous (ridiculously good) amount of shimmer. I think it's all red shimmer, but it seems to shift a little bit to gold in certain lighting. The blue of the base is really obvious on the first coat, but disappears quite a lot on the second coat. Even though it's less obvious, it still gives this polish a perfect little something extra in my opinion, that hint of underlying indigo is what makes this polish jump to the top of my favourite vampy polish list.

This shimmer was so hard to capture in all its glory. These photos show a little taste of the bright red glow that this beauty has. I decided to add a little stamping and so I tried a couple more designs from my new Bundle Monster plates. Both these designs are from plate BM-313. I used Barry M 'Gold Foil' to stamp and I think the gold played well with 'Every Month Is Oktoberfest'.

You can see here that slightly gold shift. The corners of my top two fingers are showing the base colour. I'm not quite sure why this is so obvious here. It must be a slightly thinner bit of application, but I looked and looked and could not see this blue in real life! Strange.

The formula on this was also lovely. One coat gives really good coverage and the second coat just deepens everything and gives the polish that beautiful glow. 'Every Month Is Oktoberfest' is not too thick or thin and has a perfect self-levelling formula, applying like butter. I can't say enough how much I love this polish and it really has to be seen in real life to fully appreciate it. As for the plate, BM-313, no problem at all! Both images picked up and transferred really easily. I am still a bit of a newbie when it comes to stamping, but I figure practice makes perfect and maybe one day I can learn to not panic every time I attempt it - you should see me, as soon as I've picked up the image, my heart starts beating FAST and it's panic station. I have to admit I tried to do my pinky finger one and missed literally 2/3 of my nail with the first stamp!

For the Kiwi's, I got this at Life Pharmacy and there is a buy two, get one free deal at the moment. I think OPI's cost around $25 at pharmacies so they're a bit cheaper than Farmers and made even better by the special deal :)

I also want to say that I have been nominated by two lovely ladies for a Liebster Award. I received one from Nicola from Always Trust The Gene Genie and the second nomination was from GelaNails. They both do some gorgeous nail art! I am absolutely swamped at uni at the moment but I have a mid-semester break in a couple of weeks so I will try and answer the questions etc then :) Thanks again ladies!

Kismet Elated - Sinful Colors

My Mum is so cute! She sent me a little parcel the other day with a polish in it for me that she's had put away for a little while. It is a Sinful Colors polish called 'Kismet Elated' and the reason this is special for me is because Kismet is actually my middle name. I've gone through most of my life HATING this name with everything I have, until several years ago when I learnt its meaning and I have since loved it. I have always been a believer in fate and basically "if it's meant to be, it will be" and that's essentially what Kismet means :) Anyway, naturally I put the polish straight on so here you go...

'Kismet Elated' is gorgeous. A really pretty pinky purple with an insane amount of rose gold shimmer (reminds me a lot of OPI's 'Rally Pretty Pink' but with fine shimmer instead of coarse glittery shimmer). When I first started applying this pretty, I thought uh-oh frosty looking shimmer, but nope, no such worry!

I love the shimmer! This polish isn't one I'd typically gravitate towards and who would've known I'd enjoy it so much. Thanks Mum!

When I first put this on, all I could think of was grandma colour (in the best possible way - I love me a nana colour every now and then), so what better to add to it than PAISLEY!! I just received the new Bundle Monster plates earlier in the week and I've been dying to give them a go and so far so fantastic. The stamping was really easy (even for a rookie). I used Barry M 'Gold Foil' with BM315 for the stamping. The design on my pinky finger is slightly blurred due to my awesome twisting motion that I've added to the rolling motion - DOH!

The design's pretty detailed but like I said, easy to stamp. Hopefully this is how all the designs on the new plates are going to be :)


'Kismet Elated' is fairly sheer but entirely able to be built up. I actually only used two thin coats and you can see VNL, but the large amount of shimmer made it much less obvious in real life. If you are a stickler for no VNL then I think three coats would be perfect.
Anyway, thanks Mum for finding me this polish! xx

St Patrick's Day

Happy St Patrick's Day! I said earlier that with my new blog I would get more into the holiday spirit as far as my nails are concerned, so here we go...

I started with a base of 'Cha Cha Cha' from China Glaze's Island Escape collection for summer 2011. What a gorgeous green polish! It's primarily a metallic leafy yellow green with a yellow/gold duochrome effect. You can still notice a little bit of VNL (visible nail line) here with only 2 coats, but I was planning on sponging the tips so I wasn't too worried.

In shade, the gold becomes a little more yellow and everything tones down slightly. I really do love this polish. I love this colour for St Patrick's Day because my whole inspiration for this manicure was green and gold for the leprechauns and their pots of gold :) Which brings me to what I did for the final St Patrick's Day look...

I thought about doing the old stamping of shamrocks or something like that, but I didn't feel like doing something quite so obvious. So this is what I ended up with. It's a bit full on, but I think I like it, although it does also make me think of Christmas... Hmm...

It's like I dipped my fingers in the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. For this, I sponged on Barry M 'Gold Foil' first on one third of my nails. Next I sponged on a-england's 'Holy Grail' on the tips and then I painted onto half of my nails, a layer of Butter London's 'Tart With A Heart'.

A photo taken in the shade shows you the cooler side to these polishes. Good thing is 'Tart With A Heart' doesn't seem to need much light at all to shine!

As for the formula... 'Cha Cha Cha' was really easy to work with. I was worried that brush strokes could be an issue but no need to have worried. It was fairly thin, but this really wasn't an issue either. I think a third coat would have been better had I been wearing this polish alone, but 2 was fine for this purpose and would be fine for shorter nails so VNL wouldn't be so obvious. I used Essie 'Good To Go' as my top coat and I think I could have done with a slightly thicker top coat as 'Tart With A Heart' has left a pretty gritty feel.