Love Month. Day 4: Cutesy V-Day Water Decals.

Valentine's Day is less than 2 weeks away, so I created some cutesy nail art to share with you today. (How poetic of me!)

A super easy way to create nail art is by using water decals, like these ones I have used from Born Pretty Store.
These decals (pattern BLE1774) include pictures of little bird cages, birds, roses and some little quotes that don't really make sense. You get 21 decals for $2.86.

I used China Glaze Something Sweet for my base colour, and Rimmel Aurora from the Space Dust line for the accent nail. These colours are both perfect for a Valentine's Day manicure!

I really love the bird cage decals especially!

If you'd like to know how to apply water decals, I talked about that in this post.

I couldn't resist sharing a close up shot of Rimmel's Aurora.

You can get 10% off your Born Pretty order using the code CAL91. They do free worldwide shipping all the time.

*Product(s) in this post were provided to me by the company or PR for my 100% honest review.  For more info please read my Disclosure Policy*

Bridal Nail Idea #2 {ft. Nailz Craze Stamping Plate NC 04}

Hi guys! I have my second bridal nail idea to share with you today! If you didn't see my first one, you can check that out here.

I was provided with a few stamping plates from the lovely Natalie from Nailz Craze a few weeks ago, and it's taken me a while to get around to completing my reviews which is quite pathetic on my part, so sorry about that, but I did show you one of the plates last month here.
Today I've used plate NC 04 to create this bridal nail art. I chose this plate specifically for the cute diamond ring image! So cute! I thought this plate would be absolutely perfect for some cute bridal nail art. It would also be cute for Valentines Day, which is less than a month away!

The polishes I used for this manicure were OPI I Theodora You {one of my absolute favourite pinks. It's a jelly but builds up pretty much opaque in three coats, which is what I did} and It's Frosty Outside, which I talked more about here.

I stamped the images using China Glaze Devotion, from the Romantique collection. It's a metallic chrome, and it's technically a purple colour but it almost looks silver to me. The whole Romantique collection is amazing for stamping. Along with this I used my favourite Winstonia XL squishy stamper and scraper to stamp with.

So far I have found that the Nailz Craze plates are amazing quality, and actually work better than some more well-known brand plates that I have tried! I find I get a much crisper image with Nailz Craze. Even the images with large areas are amazing!

I'm not sure that I would actually wear this on my nails for my wedding day... It's more of a novelty for me. It would be fun to wear for something like an engagement party, or maybe a bridal shower or hens party, however!

What do you guys think? :)

*Product(s) in this post were provided to me by the company or PR for my 100% honest review.  For more info please read my Disclosure Policy*

OPI It's Frosty Outside

I thought for my first official post in 2014 {and under a new name} I'd show you the manicure I wore for New Year's.

I didn't do any nail art and opted for something easy and quick for my nails as I was in a bit of a rush. But I was super happy with what I chose.

OPI's It's Frosty Outside is a frosty silver textured polish. When it dries, though, it sort of loses the frosty effect and just looks ultra glittery. This polish is from OPI's Mariah Carey Holiday '13 collection, which was full of awesome shades, by the way!

{ Note: Aussie girls - I saw the OPI Holiday sets on sale at David Jones last week for 30% off! Definitely check your DJ's to see if they still have them if you're after any of this collection. }

I thought this polish would be absolutely perfect for New Year's. It's really sparkly and fun. The formula was great. Opaque in two coats, and dried very fast. I love that about the OPI Liquid Sands.

Sorry that my photos for this post aren't the best. I only took a few. And for some reason, on my computer, the quality looks awful. Let me know how they look on your screen. I know that the lens I'm using on my camera at the moment isn't great for nail photography. I'm looking into possibly getting a macro lens some time this year.

Face of Australia Carnivale Manicure {Ferris Wheel & Masquerade}

Hi ladies! I just wanted to let you know that I have a blog sale up if you didn't know, and I added about 40-50 more polishes to it last night so be sure to check that out. :)

I'm on a self-appointed no/low buy at the moment {but unofficially have been for a while now, really - I haven't wanted a lot of new polish honestly!} but when I found out that Face of Australia just released some new textured polishes I couldn't resist getting a couple! The collection, called the Carnivale collection, has 7 or 8 polishes I believe. Some are shimmery and some are creme colours, all with a textured finish.

I grabbed Ferris Wheel, a green texture with a silvery foil finish, and some larger glitter in there; and Masquerade, which is the same sort of concept as Ferris Wheel, but in purple.

These polishes are super packed with glitter/shimmer. The formula is a little thick, and are very opaque too. You can pretty much get away with just one coat! Which I think is really nice because a lot of textures on the market can require 3 coats for an opaque finish.

I would say that these polishes take around 15 minutes to dry enough that you can go and do stuff, but still be careful obviously.

I was very tempted to do two coats of both polishes for my manicure - but I had to stop myself because it was pretty much perfect with only one coat!

I'm glad that more mainstream brands are finally catching up with the textured trend & now we have some more easily accessible textures, but I hope they don't carry the trend on too long after we're all bored of it... I can see it becoming another crackle disaster. But anyway, I'm not sick of texture just yet. :)

I found the FOA Carnivale collection from Priceline for $5.95 each. You could also check out Kmart and Big W, I assume they will also be stocking this collection.

Born Pretty Texture Minis (Set #15)

Hi guys! I recently made an order from Born Pretty Store entirely using my BPS points I've accumulated over {a long} time! To get BPS points, all you have to do is write reviews on the site for items you've previously purchased and upload photos of the items you've purchased. It takes a while to build up enough points to make an order but once you have enough, you can get a big discount off your order or even get your whole order FREE. This is so awesome for people who order a lot from there! I've been ordering from them for about 2 years now so I had quite a few points saved up. :D

In my order I got a mini set of textured polishes. I chose set #15 which includes four 6mL textures in pink, orange, purple, and blue. I decided to swatch these for you guys in a little skittle sort of mani, since I don't think I've seen any other swatches of them around.

pink
This is a rosy red-y pink (I kinda can't decide whether to call it red or pink) jelly filled with silver glitters, with a textured finish.
orange
The orange texture has more of a shimmery base rather than jelly {which the other polishes in this set have}. It also has some golden orange micro glitter/shimmers.
blue
Blue jelly with silver glitters, with a textured finish. Absolutely gorgeous and probably the most sparkly out of the set.
purple
Purple jelly base with silver glitters, with a textured finish. A little thicker in formula than the rest.

These all had a very nice formula. Not too thick, not too thin and all were opaque in two coats. I think the blue had the best formula of them all, however. The purple was the thickest but not too bad that you can't work with it. They didn't take too long to dry which was very nice. They're so sparkly and beautiful in the sun, but still beautiful in the shade.

I thought I should mention that these four polishes do resemble some of the colours from the Zoya Summer 2013 PixieDust collection and that is the main reason why I purchased them. I would love to be able to get my hands on the Zoyas but they're just not accessible here at all and cost a fortune online, so these are the next best thing! :D I was super happy that these Born Pretty polishes dried fairly quickly as well.

After posting a little swatch video on my Instagram, some lovely people told me that these are basically identical to the Zoya colours. BOOYAH! ;)

Thanks for visiting! ♥

Born Pretty Store Textured Polishes #16 and #17

Recently I saw that Born Pretty Store has started selling textured liquid sand nail polish (similar to OPI's Liquid Sand, Zoya Pixie Dust etc.) and I was really curious to see what they're like because I LOVE textured polishes and these are just a fraction of the price of the other brands that do textures! :)

Thought I should mention: Both of these polishes were quite thick when I got them, so I added some nail polish thinner. #17 was much too thick to even use, and needed a lot of thinner but #16 only needed a couple drops. After I added the thinner, though, they worked fine. :)

#16 is an inky blue shimmery base with blue micro glitter that dries to a textured finish. This is the first texture I've tried that has a shimmery base rather than a jelly base. The consistency was awesome on this after adding a little thinner! I really liked the brush, also. I found it super easy to cover my nail evenly. It was also opaque in almost one coat, but I did two. This polish dried super fast and dried gritty, but felt smoother than some brands I've used.
I didn't expect I'd like this one as much as I do. :)

#17 is a red jelly with red glitter that dries to a textured finish. Even after using thinner in the polish, this was still fairly thick. Not so thick that I couldn't use it, but it did require a bit of patience. It also did not dry quickly which is disappointing because most liquid sand polishes do dry pretty quick (and #16 dried super fast). So please excuse the smudge on my middle finger! I wish I had been able to get a shot of this in the sun, also because it was quite sparkly under light!
This also does not feel nearly as gritty as the OPI/Zoya/China Glaze textured polishes. It feels really really smooth to be honest, but it does look textured. This might be a great thing for some people because I know many people can't stand the textured feeling, but love the look.
Apart from the slow dry time I really liked this polish. Super pretty.

The textured polishes are $5.59 usually, and $3.99 on sale right now! :D Go get you some! ;) If you haven't tried any textured polishes, this would be a great time to give them a go because they're really affordable!

You can get 10% off your Born Pretty Store order with the code CAL91. They also have free worldwide shipping.

Thanks for visiting lovelies. ♥

*Product(s) in this post were provided to me by the company or PR for my 100% honest review. For more info please read my Disclosure Policy*

Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat - Wool Knot

Hi ladies! Hope you all had a lovely weekend. :) It's been really rainy and icky here.
I'm skipping ANMonday this week because I'm not at home for a while and don't have much of my polish with me! But I do have a polish to show you that I picked up last week. :D

When I first saw these fuzzy/confetti nail polishes, I have to admit, I thought they looked really weird. The first polishes like this that I saw were these ones by Barry M and I didn't like them. Then I saw the Sally Hansen ones and for some reason, I liked them. But now looking at them again, most of the colours are exactly the same as the new Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat polishes! So what was going on in my head then, I don't know. :P
When I found out that the Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat polishes were available here now, I was so excited that they came over here so quickly so I had to try at least one to see what they're like. :)

I picked up Wool Knot. (They have super cute names too!) Wool Knot is a clear base with bright blue and white short little matte bar glitters. I think the colour combinations in these make them cute.
You could wear the Fuzzy Coat polishes alone, with 2 thick coats or 3 thinner coats, but I layered 1 coat of Wool Knot over a P2 nail polish called Lust, which is a super pretty pastel purple with a silver shimmer in it. (Thanks Tammy for this polish! It's gorgeous, I love it!) I think if you choose a good colour combo, the Fuzzy Coat polishes can look so cute! I definitely loved the combo I did.
I only had to use 1 coat of Seche Vite top coat over the top to get this mani smooth. The bars don't stick up on the nail which I love. Most bar glitters are notorious for sticking up and making your mani bumpy.

Excuse the shrinkage from my top coat on my thumb nail. >:( Darn that Seche!

I'm really glad I tried one of these out. :) I may pick up one or two more in the future. I have to admit, half the reason I wanted to try these was to try out Sarah from Chalkboard Nails' flipping adorable monster nail art. :D I may do that sometime soon, sooo cute!

Sorry that my photos are quite dark. :( I took these photos on a super rainy day... And while I was removing the polish, the sun came out! I was so annoyed LOL.

I picked my Fuzzy Coat polish up at Priceline. They have Sally Hansen products 20% off right now so it would be a great time to pick one of these up if you want to! :) I think they are about $12 full price. (Sorry, I threw my receipt away before I wrote this post!)

ANMonday - Winter

Hi guys. I hope you had a nice weekend. :)

Today is another ANMonday! The theme is Winter, because it's winter right now here in Australia! It's been absolutely freezing. I always miss winter when it's super hot in summer, but then when winter actually comes I wouldn't mind the warm weather back, hehe. I think my favourite season would be autumn or spring.

For some reason it took me forever to come up with an idea for my winter mani but I ended up doing another mani inspired by Marta from ChitChat Nails! This is inspired by her Solitaire Chevron mani.

The only colour I had in mind for this mani was OPI's Solitaire, because it looks very winter-like to me! Kind of snow-like. I've never seen snow but I'd like to! I love this polish, I can't believe I haven't bought a full size bottle yet because it's a perfect accent nail colour. I used 2 coats.

The other colour I've used is Essie Borrowed & Blue. This colour to me, has an icy/cold feel to it. I love this colour for all seasons, though. :) The PERFECT baby blue.
The formula on this colour isn't great. When I first got it I had to thin it out quite a bit because it was SO thick. It's pretty good now but still a little thick. It's not too streaky though which is nice. It levels out in 2 coats.
On my middle finger over Borrowed & Blue I did some zig zag stripes (yes I've been told these are not in fact 'chevrons' :P). If you'd like to know how I did this, let me know and I'll see if I can do a little tutorial. :)

I'm actually surprised I was able to get pictures in the sun of this, haha. It's freezing, though.

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