Little bit of this, little bit of that.

   I promised you all cherries didn't I? So here they are:

   This is two coats of China Glaze It's a Trap-eze! over Revlon Lily, with the thumb Cherries accent nail. Pretty darn random but the awesomeness of the CG makes up for it! If unicorns existed and it were to puke on my nails.. this is what it would look like... absolutely stunning! 

A little later in the day, I took my cherry nail off and replaced it with the CG and topped it with Pochacco and Choppy! (Even after painting my nails, I still wanted to re-paint my nails.. haha you think I have a problem?) 

   I have another treat for you guys! And no I didn't repaint my nails a third time! Any other night and I would've been painting my nails right about now, but it's such a waste to wear such a lovely polish for only a few hours, so instead I preoccupied myself with finishing my first nail art wheel!

  This is just an amalgamation of all my past designs, the top half being the most recent designs. My second wheel will be more focused on gradients, ikat and floral designs. It's about a quarter way done, but I'll be sure to post it soon as well :D

  I have more news! Christmas came early this year.. I got amazing nail mail the other day!

   The top half is from my secret santa Natalia (from cats-n-nails) and the bottom half is my nail swap with Tina from California! Such awesome pretty polishesssss ^_^ the highlights include OPI Nothin' Mousie Bout It (it has pink glitter hearts in it OMG!), China Glaze It's a Trap-eze! and the Color Club Holos Cherubic and Angel Kiss. So excited to try them all!

Chi.. Chi.. Cherries!

   Hey y'all! Hope you all had a lovely weekend! I know I did :D spent the weekend away from suburbia and in good ol' country Australia. We visited Young, the cherry capital of Australia, a week before the National Cherry Festival to avoid peak season and take our pick of the cherries before everyone else! 

   They were big, red and plump! Part of the "pick your own" cherry experience is being able to eat and taste the cherries as you pick. I would have probably eaten several handfuls of cherries by the end of it haha They were so deliciously juicy!

  We ended up bagging 10kg of cherries (4kg were for my dad's workmates) and at $7 a kilo, it's not a bad deal + the experience and cherry buffet while you pick! ahah On a side note, I don't think the country air agrees with me, because for the whole trip my hayfever was going crazy! I probably hold the record for most consecutive sneezes! 

   Okay. So back to nail business! For the trip I wore the cherry blossoms from my last post, and for this post I was meant to have actual cherry nails for you but I decided to swatch my ChiChi glitter polishes first. I've been itching to try these babies since I first got my hands on them and I can say now that I have 2 clear favourites in the set of 8! 

  The problem with these polishes is that they're unnamed! So please bare with me. Starting from the top left corner:

1) This is filled with medium sized gold hexes with gold micro glitter in a clear base. This is 1 coat over 2 coats of black. The consistency is pretty smooth and fluid, not gloopy, and a decent amount of glitter comes out with every stroke.

2) This is my favourite out of all of them! It's jam packed filled with different coloured, different sized glitters in a clear base. So much colour I decided to swatch them on different colour bases! L-R Australis Sky's the Limit, Australis Bombshell, Australis Peek-a-boo, Ulta3 lily white. This also had a good formula and plenty of glitter with each brush stroke.

3) This would be my third favourite. It's very similar to polish (2) but this time without the micro glitter and instead in a pink jelly base. This is 1 coat over Sally Hansen I Pink I Can. Although the glitters are great, the consistency was horrible and thick, glitter placement was a must.

4) This polish has fuchsia pink medium and micro sized glitters in a clear base. It's formula is nice and smooth but not as densely packed with glitter. This is 1 coat over Australis Bombshell. 

5) This is filled with medium sized purple hexes and micro glitter in a clear base. Although I usually love purple, this is probably my least favourite of the 8. It's just so boring in my opinion haha, so I thought to swatch it in a jelly. This is 1 coat in between The Face Shop PP404.

6) This is my second favourite in the set! It's filled with silver hexes and blue micro glitter in a blue jelly base. This is 1 coat over Ulta 3 Blue Marlin. The consistency was great and fluid, it also picks up plenty of glitter with every dip into the polish.

7) This is filled with silver hex glitters in a grey-blue jelly base. It's kind of thick but plenty of glitter comes out with every stroke. A little glitter placement is required though. This is 1 coat over black.

8) Last but not least, this polish is filled with blue, green and yellow hexes and tons of green micro glitters in a clear base. It's not thick, it spread quite evenly and the colour are perfect for Australia day next year! Green and Gold!! This is 1 coat over Sinful Colors Irish Green. The ring finger is actually a jelly sandwich, just wanted to try it out :P

   So there you have it, for $20 that's a pack of 8 glitters (with single bottles that usually retail for $13) that are pretty decent. I think it was worth it just because they're all so pretty to look at haha But the blue and multi coloured glitters were my faves! Which are yours?

   P.S. Please excuse the non square tip of my middle finger ): My nail broke at work and I wasn't prepared to file all of the down, so I kept the slanted edge. 

Roses Are Red

   ...and these were meant to be cherries =O !!

   So my family have spontaneously decided to go cherry/ berry picking this weekend and hence why I wanted matching cherry nails ): but every time I painted them on they just didn't look right...they weren't as cute as all the other cherry nails I've seen! So in the end, I cleared my nails again and I put my own spin on the "cherry nail art" notion by painting cherry blossoms instead!

   At first, I was so discouraged by my fail cherries that I was going to wear just plain nails (a coat of black and a coat of Essence 'Jacob's Protection' from the new twilight range which is the base for this mani, unfortunately I didn't take a swatch picture for it *boo). But I know I wouldn't be able to stand plain nails for  a whole 3 days so I struggled on haha

   I don't actually know if cherry blossoms actually look like this in real life, but hey, blossoms are blossoms, and they're pretty so I don't mind :P

   See you all on the other side of the weekend! Look forward to cherry nails then (hopefully) AND pictures of actual cherries that I picked! Toodles ~

Look Deeeeeeply into my Nails...

   

Are you hypnotised yet? @_@

   This mani was inspired by the three new Australis polishes I bought recently. I found them on the shelf at kmart, sitting besides each other and HAD to have all three, they're so fun and bright - perfect for summer! 

   I added black to the colour combo to make it pop a bit more, et voilà this design composed of randomly placed stripes was produced ^__^

   Please, please excuse my pinky. Somehow, unbeknownst to me, I dented my nail while the polish was still wet under the top coat ): Other than that, I think it came out alright. I'm not digging how messy the stripes are, but at the same time I'm digging the messy/rushed look to them haha even I confuse myself sometimes. What do you guys think?

   On an awesome sidenote, I FINALLY got my hands on the ChiChi glitter polishes from Target! ALl 8 of them for $20, but with their sale last week, it went down to $15!! I am one happy chappy :D

Blue Ombre Mosaic

   on a glitter base ...and I absolutely love it!

   I've tried ombre mosaics on white nails:

Ring finger blue ombre mosaic

   I've tried ombre mosaics on black nails:

Thumb purple ombre mosaic

   But I've got to say, I'm totally digging the ombre on a glitter base! 

   I bought a polish called Amour "Rain Glitter" from a blog sale last week and have been anxious to try it out. It's a dense glitter polish that is jam packed with different coloured holo glitters, much like Sally Hansen's Gem Crush glitters, and is opaque in 2 coats!

 It's another IG picture, sorry!

   Though it was super glitzy on its own, the nail art addict in me was just itching to put something on top of it! So I decided on the blue ombre mosaic and they turned out very "mermaid-y" in my opinion haha like glittery fish scales :P

Marbling Mayhem

Anyone else think water marbling is stressing?! 

(the claw pose rawr! haha)

   This was very first attempt at water marbling about three months ago. I chose to do a pink/ white/ silver marble over black nails, with some added glitter, kind of like a galaxy. It was a disaster, it didn't look pretty at all ): like all the other marble nails I was seeing on tumblr. 

   I was so disappointed I pretty much gave up on marbling altogether. It just took too much time taping my fingers and mixing the polish in the water trying to get a decent pattern; not to mention the waste of polish when I mess up ): So for a good few months, I left water marbling be. 

   Until tonight, I was lacking inspiration and had time on my hands, so I thought I'd give it another shot. And this is what came out:

   I used a black base again, and white/ pink/ silver for the marble. But this time I opted for no glitter and used different brand polishes, I guess the ones I used now had a better formula for use in water marbling because IMHO these turned out great! Not very galaxy-like like how I intended them to be, but more like a smoky pink!

   Hopefully this wasn't all a fluke! haha

ALSO: don't forget about my nail art contest on Instagram! @xtinemayyy for details (:

Nail Contest

So. Much. Love.

Feeling all the love recently from my followers on Tumblr, on my blog here, and on Instagram AND I've crossed the 1000 mark on tumblr! So to show my appreciation I'd like to hold my first nail contest! Three of the first things I tried when I started nail art were gradients, flowers and ikats... so I want you to show me your creative take on these. You can include just one, or two or go crazy and combine all three to create ombre floral ikat nails! 

 

This is a contest that will be held on Instagram, so ladies, head on over to IG for complete rules/details and get your entries in! Ends Friday Dec 21 and I'll be posting pics of the prizes tonight ^^

These were my first roses:

These were my first ikats:

And a bonus picture of Butterfree:

POP!

POP!

AND POP!

   Plenty of poppin' colour for today! As you can see, this mani is based off of my awesome aztec ring from Sportsgirl. The colourful design is what caught my eye in the store in the first place.  The colours are so bright, and fun, and I guess you could say they clash... but in a good way! *grin

   I also dug this ring up from my Jewelry graveyard when I went hunting for the earrings in my guest post on Natalia's blog. Really digging the gold details recently, need to buy me another bottle of Orly Glitz!

   ALSO:

   I got my Black Cat Lacquer polishes in the mail the other day and was ecstatic! Took advantage of the sun today and swatched them :D

   First up is Let Them Eat Cake:

   This is a glitter polish unlike anything I've ever seen before, it's filled with pastel blue, green, and pink hexes and micro white glitter. It looks delicious in a jelly sandwich! *grin

   Next up is Bloody Kisses:

   It's a black jelly jam pack full of red glittery goodness! I chose this on a whim, and I'm glad that I did, it's absolutely gorgeous. This is one coat over one coat of black- plenty of glitter to go around!

And yesterday, lo and behold, nail mail AGAIN... this time from a blog sale!

   The top row are Booty Babe polishes... aren't the bottles just so cheeky?! (excuse the pun haha) I LOVE THEM. The bottom row includes The Face Shop PP404, OPI Fresh Frog of Bel Air and Amour Rain Glitter. I am one happy chappy right now!

These are pictures from my Instagram (@xtinemayyy)