Illamasqua Velocity: Pantone Colour of the Year Radiant Orchid-ish Nails!

In a previous post, I've been going through my Pantone Colour of the Year Radiant Orchid makeup items in my stash. And this time round, I'm looking at another nail polish shade - this time it's Illamasqua Velocity!

Illamasqua Velocity: A Pantone Colour of the Year-ish colour!

I already have quite a few Illamasqua nail polishes, but I'm always game for more because the quality is pretty darn good. I've never come across a dud yet, and every Illamasqua nail polish I've tried has been fantastic.

Pretty Serious Cosmetics Atomic Brain: Pantone Radiant Orchid with Duochrome!

Since my last post on stuff in my stash that was similar to Radiant Orchid, Pantone's Colour of the Year for 2014, I've decided that I should bust out some of those products and actually use them!

Pretty Serious Cosmetics Atomic Brain: Look at all that duochrome!

One of these is part of my slow downward spiral as I continue to throw the contents of my wallet into this black hole called "indie nail polishes", but my, oh my, the spiral sure is pretty! For today's example, let's take a look at Pretty Serious Cosmetic's Atomic Brain. Isn't it so pretty?

Pantone Colour of the Year Radiant Orchid: Look at the Radiant Orchid-ish Stuff I Already Have!

Pantone has officially announced Radiant Orchid as the Colour of the Year 2014, and this time, I'm actually pretty excited for it because, as I've been saying in my previous blogposts, purple is my favourite colours. If you've been reading for a while, you'll also know that I think that this whole Colour of the Year thing is just another means of making them companies more $$$ through commercialization of a single colour shade, and those feelings still hold, but hey, at least this year I'm going to have companies try to make money off me with a colour I actually can get on board with! I wasn't feeling last year's Emerald or the previous year's Tangerine Tango, so FINALLY! Come get my money with a colour I actually like, companies! Haha.

Radiant Orchid is Pantone's Color of the Year for 2014. Here are my Radiant Orchid-ish makeup items!

Anyway, before I get all ready to get my commercialization on (yay retail therapy!), out of curiousity, I thought I'd just run through my beauty stash and pull out all the Radiant Orchid-colour-alikes I already have in my stash, and show them to you guys - and really also to myself, as a reminder to not bust my budget when Sephora puts out their Sephora X Pantone Radiant Orchid Limited Edition Makeup Set with Unicorn Whiskers, or whatever they have up their sleeve. Just a little reminder to myself. So here we go!

All the Radiant Orchid products we'll be bombarded with soon in the coming months! LOL! (Source)

Valentine's Day Nails: Purple Holo Hearts!

February would not be complete without a Valentine's Day manicure - I mean, without fail, V-day is one of the biggest highlights of the month - not just for us as individuals, but also, I'm sure, for the companies and retailers that bastardize the occasion every year in order to hawk their cheesy, red-and-pink-hearts-and-roses-bedecked wares, haha. Well, you know how I feel about crass commercialism, but a little (or a lot of) money-making never stopped us from enjoying the season!

This year, my Valentine's Day nails are purple! and holo! and they have hearts on them! and the hearts are holo too! So, what's not to like? For the base polish, I used Color Club Fashion Addict, which is a gorgeous lilac polish with a holographic finish. Unfortunately, the holographic effect in this isn't that strong (in a super old KOTD I've tried and failed to capture this lilac holographic finish). I then added on these cheap purple holographic hearts I got from Daiso. And then I was set!


For this look, I just added the hearts in a more or less random fashion. As long as they looked good, I didn't really bother where they landed. Each nail had three, except for my tiny last nail which only had two. Also, as you can see from the photos, I had trouble capturing the holo-ness of both the hearts and the polish in my photos. Bah, humbug!


So that's it - this one is really easy to do, and not even all that much work! And I think it looks fab in real life - purple holo hearts on purple holo polish is like, totally hawt! What are you guys doing for V-Day?

P.S. Want to see my older Valentine's Day nail art from past years? I get inspired in all kinds of ways, so I have a Valentine's Day nail look with no pink at all, an obnoxiously over-flowered V-Day mani, a V-Day mani that was hot pink and black, and an annoying-looking red-and-pink nail look, so you guys know this year's is already one of the "better" ones. I even have an Anti-Valentine's Day manicure!

Halloween Nail Art: Purple Glam, Stars and Scars

Halloween is coming up, and I just feel so inspired to do some Halloween nails! I'll be frank - the Halloween nail art that I did last year sucked, so I thought that this year, I had a lot of room for improvement. And this year, I present to you this!

This year, I used the classic Halloween of purple and orange. I used Zoya Yasmeen as a base. I have to tell ya, Zoya Yasmeen is da bomb. I've done a Zoya Yasmeen NOTD back in the day waaay back when, and I still love it!


I then placed these orange stars randomly on my mani, and then I added in the white scars freehand with a long nail art brush.


I actually really like the overall effect, the stars over the purple add a little bit of glam, while the white scars added a little bit of an edge. It's glam but still very much a Halloween manicure! Actually it already looked good enough with just the orange stars, but I figured out that a little edge to the nail look couldn't hurt!


Actually, I don't really celebrate Halloween at all, but I kind of just like utilizing some of the colours for nail art just to go along with the festive mood of the season. Anyone else having fun with Halloween on your nails?

Face Shop Face It PP409 Nail Polish: Total Glitter Gorgeousness!

I've been seeing photos of The Face Shop's PP409 nail polish online, and I finally decided that I absolutely HAD to have it. I mean - it's purple, and it's glitter, AND the glitter is multi-coloured and multi-sized! Awesomesauce! Turns out this is one of Face Shop's newer releases, perhaps for the upcoming season (I don't really keep track of Korean nail polish trends, I gotta admit...)

So I ran down to my nearest Face Shop store, and prompty bought up this little baby! There were only two left in the display when I went down, so I felt like I had really scored, LOL. I am proud to say I am now the new owner of my very own bottle of PP409! PP409 is from the FaceIt series of nail polish, so if you're buying online, take note that it's not this other Face Shop PP409, or this other OTHER Face Shop PP409 - do check the nail polish range in addition to the colour name! (If you want to know how some Asian brands name their nail polish and why this makes for confusing names sometimes, you may wish to check out the last paragraph of this post.)


Face Shop Face It PP409 is a gorgeous glitter polish - it's got a mix of lilac and blue glitter in various shapes and sizes, so if you're a glitter lover like me, this is totally right up your alley. There's larger hexagonal lilac glitter, normal darker purple glitter, and normal blue glitter, all mixed up in a clear base. The glitter isn't very thick, though, so this is really more of a layering polish - if you want to wear it alone, I imagine you'd need 4-5 coats for full opacity.


I layered mine over Barry M's Vivid Purple, which, while stunning on its own, really brings out the gorgeous glitter (I've previously tried out a combination of layering Barry M Vivid Purple with Orly Fantasea, and the results were fantabulous). I think a deep purple polish is the perfect base for PP409 - although I'm pretty sure deep blue (like navy) or black would also rock. Actually, you know what, I think a lighter lilac or even white would be reallly pretty, too, for a more ladylike, subtle look.


So there you have it - my current favourite nail polish at the moment! And it was less than S$10, too, so it was a great deal. Knowing The Face Shop, these may or may not be permanent (the shop assistant I bought the nail poish told me she thought that this shade was limited edition, but I could tell she was pretty clueless herself, so make of it what you will), so if you're keen to get a bottle, don't hesistate.

Summer At The Pool Duochome Layering NOTD: Sally Hansen HD Duochromes

After using Sally Hansen HD Polish in DVD for my previous mani, I got inspired and felt like layering further. So this time, I added Sally Hansen Byte, and this is what I got.

For those who need a recap, I used Nails Inc Belgrave Street as the base, and then layered Sally Hansen DVD and Byte, in that order.


I loved the previous mani, and I love this one too! I'm not sure if you can really see the difference between this mani and my previous mani in these pics, but there is a difference that is visible in person. DVD (blue reflects with a pink tinge in a clear base) already has a slight pink flash, but I feel like layering Byte (pink reflects in a clear base) on top really makes the pink pop, and brings it from being a blue that flashes pink to an actual duochrome. Awesome.


Anyway, I wore this mani to work, and when my mani flashed and twinkled in the sunlight during lunch (the effect is less obvious indoors due to the lighting), my colleagues claimed that my nails were "distracting". I was secretly happy.

I also went to the pool, on the pretext of getting some exercise (I was really just cocered by my sister into accompanying her), and then I noticed that in the water, my nails were absolutely twinkling and blinging in the water. So here you go: poolside photos, not of me in a bikini ('cause a model I ain't) but of my nails all prettied up.


It was hard to take these photos, by the way. The majority of them kept coming out blur. These were the best of the bunch. It was a pity, it really was. The blue pool would've made such an awesome backdrop for the nail colour...


Anyway, this has gotta be one of my favourite manis, since I love duochromes. Anyone else rocking a duochrome for the summer?

Duochrome! Sally Hansen DVD and Nails Inc Belgrave Place

So you know the Sally Hansen HD Polishes I got awhile back? I finally gave those a whirl - seriously, it's horrible how much stuff I have, so much that I buy things when they are shiny and new and don't use them til a year later...But anyway, I'm finally showing you guys a mani I did with them, and it is awesomesauce, if I do say so myself!

For this mani, I used Nails Inc Belgrave Street as the base, and then layered Sally Hansen DVD. I won't go into how much trouble I had to go to in order to get the US-only Sally Hansens. Seriously, Sally, please release more interesting colours here too? I promise you'll have customers...Don't hate us because we happen to be living on the wrong side of the Atlantic. But anyway.



I absolutely love this combi. Belgrave Street is a blurple creme, which makes it the perfect base for DVD, which is blue reflects in a clear base. The net result is that my nails have this super cool blue-flashy glitter reflects thingy going on, and it even flashes pink at some angles. Super cool.



Anyway, shame on me for waiting so long to use these. I'm absolutely loving it though - it's like a super cool way to add some duochrome to a simple mani.

Girly Glittery Nails: Sally Hansen Big Money and Essie Nice is Nice

So you know those awesome Sally Hansen Gem Crush shades that were recently released? I've been having quite a bit of fun with these ever since I bought them in the USA - they're great not just alone, but also lots of fun when layered. Just check out my latest mani as a case in point!



I was going for a pretty pastel look, so I layered Sally Hansen Big Money over Essie Nice is Nice. Essie Nice is Nice was from last year's Spring collection, but it's a very timeless pastel purple creme.



Sally Hansen Big Money consists of small gold glitter and larger (but not too large) light purple glitter in a clear base. This would probably be fully opaque in 3 coats if worn alone, but I was going for a gradient effect, so I just sponged it onto my tips. I just used a kitchen sponge, no fancy equipment. And yes, I still can't get my gradient right. It makes me sad.



Best part? I got em both on sale! I got the Sally Hansen Gem Crush shades when they were buy-one-get-one-50%-off, and I got Essie Nice is Nice from Marshalls for US$3.50! Score! It really made the cheapskate in me happy, it did.



Anyway, I like the overall look - it's a very pretty and office-appropriate way of wearing the glitters that are a mainstay of Spring and Summer collections. Now, if only I could nail the gradient technique properly...

Girly Nail Art: Spring/Summer Stripes and Pearls

I wanted to do a nail art inspired by some of the Spring/Summer colours I've been seeing around. I'm not very much into fashion in terms of clothes (the way I've got it figured - you either look good in a piece of clothing or you don't, and if you don't, no point wearing it just because it's trendy because you'll just look silly), but I do like appropriating colours I see on the runway and incorporating them into my nail art. After all, isn't there that quote along the lines of "Good artists borrow, great artists steal"? Here is my nail art then, inspired by the fashion runways.

Anyway, let me show you a few of the photos I was looking at that inspired my current nail art. Basically, girliness and sweetness with a little pop of colour.

(Source: Style)

So I tried to use a similar theme - girly, but with a bit of brightness thrown in - as a base for today's nail art. And I liked the pink-and-green combi, too, so I used that colour scheme as well. And because it wouldn't be nail art without any bling, I threw in some pearls for good measure. And that was it, really.




Okay, so not exactly like Prada on the runway. But I quite like it. For the pink base, I used Nails Inc Bruton Street, one of my favourites in terms of the perfect soft neutral pink. The green (or more accurately, aqua) is China Glaze's For Audrey, which I've already done an NOTD with before. The purple is Illamasqua Jo'mina, also a previously featured polish.



This was all done freehand, hence the messy lines. I just painted the pink first, then the green, then the purple. I originally wanted to cover them up with some striping tape, as I like to do when my nail art is messy, but I figured, well, maybe not this time. So yes, you get to see my messsy lines in full glory. The pearls were added last, followed by topcoat.



So there you have it! My runway-inpired girly nail art for Spring/Summer this year. It's pretty easy to do, if you have a steady hand (obviously I don't so it's not that easy for me), and I really liked the addition of the pearls - it really makes it just that little bit girlier.

Easter Nail Art: Pastel and White Stripes!

Look at my Easter nail art for this year! It's all pastel-ly and stripe-y and totally inspired by the shades and designs of easter eggs! Although it's pretty simple, I really like how it looks. I know it isn't the most original nail art out there (if I'm not wrong, there are TONS of people doing Easter stripes nail art too), but I feel like for once, I actually did freehand nail art without screwing it up (too much), so this look is special to me!

For the base I used RBL Lulu for the pink, Illamasqua Jo'mina for the purple, Nails Inc Spring Mews for the green, and Maybelline Banana Puddin' for the yellow. I don't have that many pastels, so this was about it I think. Still, I was glad that they worked together without clashing or anything. For the stripes, I just used this LA Colors white striper that I got from another nail blogger sometime ago (I believe it was Scandalously Polished, but her blog is no longer up. *sobs*). I was worried that the striper would be too sheer, but it turned out alright.



Being pastels, some of these shades had difficult application - that's the thing about pastels, for some reason, they're always trickier to apply than un-pastel colours. Nails Inc Spring Mews and Illamasqua Jo'mina were good, and fully opaque in two coats. (I've actually featured Nails Inc Spring Mews before, not just once, but twice, for my Valentine's Day nails, and I've also blogged about Illamasqua Jo'mina too.) RBL was sort of a two-and-a-half-coater, meaning that it was opaque in two coats, but still streaky, so I had to use three to even everything out. Maybelline Banana Puddin' was just a pain in the behind to polish - it needed a full four coats before it was opaque and not streaky. (I've actually complained about Maybelline Banana Puddin' before, but in the end I just put up with the application for the colour...it's hard to find a yellow that looks great on my skintone.)



Anyway, despite the painful application on some of the colours, I really love my Easter manicure. It's not particularly original, or perfect, but I'm really loving it. I know Easter isn't really all about eggs and bunnies and things like that (it really has a much deeper meaning to it that's so powerful), but I figure that anyway I can celebrate Easter on my fingers can't be bad.

Magnetic Nail Polish NOTD: L'Oreal Star Magnet Purple

Magnetic polish is back in vogue again, with China Glaze releasing their Magnetix Collection, a line of six magnetic nail polishes. I'm always amused by how trends come and go with nail polish - first crackle/shatter polish, which Covergirl had in the late 90's that has made a comeback in the past 1-2 years again, and now, magetic polish. I remember these during just a few years back, perhaps in 2007 or 2008 (anyone remember?). Back then, L'Oreal and Lancome both had magnetic polishes, and both of them made quite a splash, too. The L'Oreal ones I have were from this range called the Star Magnets, which have since been discontinued.

This one that I'm wearing is in the colour Purple, although to my mind it's not really truly purple. It's a gorgeous shimmery pinky-purple that looks more pink than purple, and if you hold the magnet over your nail when the polish is still wet, you get a star design on your nail. Pretty cool, huh?



There are various ways of using the polish and the magnets to get the best possible star design on your nail (meaning, clear designs that actually look like a star shape, not a blotch). The one important thing is to hold the magnet over the polish while it's still wet, so the magnetic particles can move into shape. Once the polish is dry, you won't get any design. Because the L'Oreal Star Magnets are discontinued, a lot of people I know conserve their bottles by painting a base coat of similar colour, and then layering the Star Magnet colour on top. For me, I personally don't get as nice a star shape that way, so I just do it the wasteful way, and do two coats of Star Magnet polish.



I still remember all the trouble I had to go through to get my L'Oreal Star Magnets. I only wanted them after they had been discontniued (of course), so fortunately the lovely ladies on MUA (Makeupalley) pointed me to an online etailer based in the UK, who still had some bottles left. These have been the babies of my stash since then. Anyway, since magnetic polish is in again, I thought I'd dust off my L'Oreal Star Magnets and give them a shot!



I'm loving these magnetic polishes, although I feel like they're a little more time-consuming to apply, because you have to hold the magnet over the polish while letting it dry. But they're pretty fun, and I like seeing the stars form. Anyway, has anyone else been bitten by the magnetic polish bug? Do you already have any magnetic polishes? Tell me!

Valentine's Day Nails with Flowers and Gems!

After my Valentine's Day nails with no pink at all, as well as my Anti-Valentine's Day nails (gasp, I know!), I decided to be nice and do a proper Valentine's Day nails - with a little of my style added, of course. I did do a nail look with flowers and girly colours, but it's also something I would actually wear out, that's not puke inducing (you know, all pastels and stuff).

Basically, for this Valentine's Day nail look, I used Nails Inc Queens Park, a gorgeous deep pinky-purple with a shimmery, almost-metallic-y, duochrome-y finish. I really love this colour, the jewel tone of the shade just makes it so striking, and very gorgeous! I can't think of very many colours I love more than this, and if purple is your thing (as it is mine) you know you HAVE to get this shade, even if it's only sold half the world away.'

On top of Nails Inc Queesn Park, I added some flower stickers, to give that girly touch. And if I were a little bit more normal like most people, I would have been happy to stop there, and it would have been a perfectly fine Valentine's Day manicure for a night out. But nooo, something inside me was crying out for more bling. So I added on some flower-shaped gemstones! So now my nail is so blingy right now. Both the nail art stickers and gemstones were bought from Viva La Nails.



The first thing I did after I had done this nail look of course, was take it to Twitter (if you follow me on Twitter you would have seen this) and Facebook (ditto the friending me on Facebook), to ask professional opinion (by professional I meant "other awesome bloggers and whoever was online then") if I had really over-blinged my nails. Fortunately, noone thought I over-blinged my nails. I guess there's worse out there, for sure, but I don't think I've ever worn so many stickers and gems on my nails at one go...



Anyway, since noone thought my nails were too blingy, I wore them out to work the next day, and to my surprise, the world didn't crumble. So there you have it - my overenthusiastic attempt to add some flowery girliness to my nails! I think, though, next time I wear Queens Park, I'm going to wear it alone. I feel like the colour is stunning enough to deserve a whole mani by itself.

Orly Fantasea NOTD: Multi-chromal, Multidimensional Shimmer

Orly is one of the most underrated nail polish brands to me. There's something about the Orlys I have that just makes them that little bit more special. Maybe it's the range of colours, or maybe it's that the application and the wear time of Orlys works very nicely on me. In fact, their Foil FX Collection sometime back was the only nail polish collection of which I bought every single colour, and I would totally guard Orly Luxe with my life.

Today I present Orly Fantasea, another guard-with-my-life shade. I love, love, love this shade so much, and truly, I have never seen another shade quite like it (if you know of anything similar, let me know!). I bought it after reading one of the older entries on Scrangie's blog, and I'm so glad I did! It's absolutely, gorgeously multi-chromal and multi-dimensional, and the base colour is purple, my favourite colour! What's not to like? Behold the beauty!

Orly Fantasea is hard to describe, just because it's so complex. It's a purple multi-chrome that looks pink and bronze in different lights. I also love the shimmer - you have that smooth duochrome due to the pink/purple base colour, but there's also some bronze-ish shimmer thrown in, that just takes that shade to the next level. In the photo above, you see how it looks purple. In the photo below, Fantasea is showing off it's pink size, with a little bit of bronze.



And here's Fantasea, in indoors light. With this light, you can really see that there are bronze/copper/gold-ish shimmer bits in the polish. They contribute to that bronze/copper flash that sometimes appears at certain angles in the polish. Apologies for my fingers being in the same pose for all 3 photos - this NOTD was actually taken a year ago (that long, yes!), and I happened to stumble upon it when I was looking through some of my older photos in my laptop.



The only downside there is to Orly Fantasea is that it's very sheer. What you see on my nails is 3-4 coats, and you'd need at least 3 coats to prevent VNL (Visible Nail Line). Thus, when I use Fantasea, I tend to layer it over another polish, as in this previous NOTD where I layered Orly Fantasea over Barry M Vivid Purple. If I were to wear it alone all the time, I'd probably run out of my bottle of Fantasea, so I try to save it by layering (purple and black make great options)! But I thought, why shouldn't I wear such a great colour on its own, for once?

Orly Fantasea, how I love you so much! There's nothing I don't like about this shade - the duochrome effect is gorgeous, the shimmer adds depth to the shade, and I love that everytime I move my fingers, my nails display a different flash of colour, whether I'm indoors or outdoors. And I don't even have anything that's remotely close to Fantasea in my collection! What can I say, despite the sheerness, this shade is just such a beauty.

MUA Nail Quake Shatter Polish Swatches: Jailbreak, Shattered Ice, Broken Arrow

Superdrug MUA has come out with a whole range of colours for their new Shatter Polishes! As a huge shatter fan, I'm so excited. They have not one, not two, not three, but SIX colours of shatter polish! How exciting is that!

I'm featuring three of the shatter polishes today, and three more the next time. There's just so much shatter goodness that it simply won't fit into one post!

Here is a closer look at the MUA Shatter Polishes below. There is a shimmery deep royal purple, Broken Arrow, a silver, Shattered Ice, and a black, Jailbreak. These come in tiny little bottles that are slightly smaller than your average nail polish bottle - think along the lines of the Rimmel 60 Second Nail Polish range, and you've got the size about right. Still, for the affordable price, these still make good value for money.



First up, let's look at Jailbreak, the black. This is just plain, pure black - not very interesting as far as colour goes, and of course black shatter polish has been done by a gazillion brands. The good thing about MUA's Jailbreak, though, is that it's not thick or goopy in texture. It's actually very thin and fluid, and thus has a tendency to crack into finer, thinner pieces, although you could layer it on more thickly for bigger shatter pieces. I quite like this - it has the visual effect of looking shredded into thin, long pieces, rather than crackling into big fat chunks.



Next, we have Shattered Ice. Like Jailbreak, Shattered Ice is also a colour that
other brands have done before. But unlike other shatter polishes I've seen before, Shattered Ice also has a very thin, fluid texture that makes it easier to apply than some of the thicker types. This one doesn't "shred" as much as Jailbreak, but if applied thinly it would produce a similar effect. I quite like Shattered Ice, the silver finish is really cool and it twinkles a little in the sun.



Last, but not least, we have Broken Arrow. I'm not sure why the polish is called Broken Arrow - to me, that gorgeous shade of shimmery royal purple doesn't resemble an arrow or anything being broken, but it's a lovely shade all the same. Like the other shatter polishes, the texture of Broken Arrow is also thin, fluid, and easy to apply, and the polish also shatters vertically, giving it the same shredded effect. I really love Broken Arrow, and out of all of today's shades, this is probably my favourite, simply because I love purple.



For the price of the MUA Shatter Polishes, I've got to admit I'm very impressed by the quality. If you're looking for a range of shatter polishes that is easy to apply, come in a variety of colours, and is of good quaity, these are definitely worth looking at. These colours are so value for money, there's nothing stopping you from getting one of every colour!

(Product was sent for review. Review is my complete and honest opinion. I am not affiliated with/compensated by the company.)