NOTD Glitter Gal Deep Green

oooOoohHhhhhhh! Dark green scattered holo with a gold shimmer flash. Look how awesome it is in the bottle.

Lots of thanks to Kaz for helping me with my bottle pictures :)

It's too beautiful. No words.

You can purchase Glitter Gal's via their website. They have *excellent* customer service!

Precision Toxic Love Fall 2011 Collection

I stumbled upon these polishes at a nail supply place here in Melbourne. They had a big rack and sell these for $6 which is a steal. I picked up these three colours that were sitting at the bottom of the rack looking kinda lonely.

Click to make them larger if you so wish

Swatches...

Intoxicated. Pink leaning purple shimmer. This is three coats. It applied really nicely. It reminded me a lot of China Glaze Cowgirl Up so I did a quick comparison.

As you can see, Cowgirl Up is much more pink and a little more brushstroke-y. Also, those beautiful blue shimmery flecks in Cowgirl Up is much more visible than in Intoxicated.

Toxic Wast-ing My Time. What a name... This was a little thinner than the others but it was good at three coats. It's kind of a warm chestnut brown with a heavy gold shimmer. Very pretty.

Poison Ivy. HOLY SHEEET! Just look at this. I want to cry for the beauty that is this polish. Dark forest green with lots of pretty gold shimmer. Intense love. Two coats.

No information for these polishes came up in Google so I sent the company and email and apparently these are from the Toxic Love Collection for Fall 2011 and they have been released early in Australia to coincide with our different seasons. How nice! Usually companies release collections here sooo much later than in the US. Yeah, you know I'm looking at you Revlon.

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Ulta3 Floral Fever Autumn/Winter 2011 Collection

These came out around the start of March but I've only just got them. I didn't know Ulta3 collections had names until I did a quick Google and their media release came up labelling this as the Floral Fever collection which makes sense since all the names have 'fever' in them..

Kinda random colour choices right?

Swatches...

Blossom Fever. Light peachy pink with hidden red shimmer. The shimmer is very subtle - almost invisible. It does at interest to an otherwise pretty "regular" shade. This is three coats. It was a little uneven but ok overall. I don't think this one works with my skin tone very well.

Royal Fever. Dark purple creme. Really nice formula - 2 coats. I have quite a few dark purple cremes. I love them. This one leans more red than most of the others I have.

Pacific Fever. IMO, the star of the collection. Bright turquoise with lots of blue microglitter. So beautiful. This isn't the type of colour you'd usually see in an Autumn/Winter collection but I'm not complaining.This was two coats.

Midnight Fever. Two coats. Really, really dark navy with a bright blue shimmer. This is one of those colours that look pretty much black in most lightings. Under sun or bright light though, the shimmer really comes through. It's deep, dark and dramatic. I like it!

Gold Rush Fever. Ahh... here we have my least favourite. Gold frost. Really frosty frost. I hate frost. Just look at all those brush strokes. Plus, this shade of gold looked decidedly bad with my skin tone. The only saving grace for this polish? It konads really well.

You can probably tell by my the crappy alignment that I rarely pull out the konad (I am excited about the new BM plates though). This is konaded with plate HB24 on The Face Shop BL605 which is a gorgeous blue.

Twilight Fever. Another Paradoxal dupe. Everybody's done one. Still a great colour though. The formula was nice - 2 coats.

Overall a nice collection. I think the colour choices were a little random. They didn't seem to tie in with one another very well. It was like they just threw a bunch of colours together, gave them matching names and called it a collection. I'm a little miffed at the price increase - $2.25 from $2 but that's still really good compared to other cheaper brands such as BYS which now go for around $4-5. Plus, I like bin diving :)
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OPI You Don't Know Jacques Suede and a couple of Random Orlys

I'm not really a big matte fan but the I really do like those shimmery mattes like Zoya Matte Velvets and OPI Suedes. The shimmer has so much depth. and they also look really awesome with a glossy top coat.

Here is YDKJ Suede

Two coats. In my experience these are easier to apply than the non-shimmery mattes because they dry a little slower giving you more time to work with it on the nail.I love all those little metallic glittery bits in the Suede polishes so so much! I wish I had an awesome camera so that I could show you the detail. Check out Cilucia's shots of Russian Navy Suede here. See what I mean?? HOLY CRAP!

With top coat. Look at all the depth. Though I do think I like this one better matte.

And here are a couple of Orlys I swatched recently

Snowcone. I have worn this blue a few times as NOTD which is pretty rare for me since I try to go through my untrieds as quickly as possible. It's beautiful. There's something about this shade of blue that just really appeals to me. This is two coats and it's perfect. The mini gloss that came with it was also surprisingly really nice.

Enchanted Forest. My bottle was missing the dangly charm that came with this collection :( LOL. Dark green creme. I can't ever have enough of these kinds of colours.

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Happy Easter!

Mario the Bun Bun wants to wish you guys a Happy Easter! He wants to sniff you with all of his noses!!

Are you in a nose booping mood? :)
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Misa Poisoned Passion Collection

Yes, another old Autumn/Fall collection for you and again, I don't have all the colours. I'm missing one out of the six - Love Bite. Poisoned Passion was from Fall 08 and it is glorious. Glorious!!!

Aren't Misa bottles just lovely? They're all square and bottom heavy; very luxurious IMO.


All swatches are three coats

Forbidden Lust. Glowy purple shimmer. This is really beautiful IRL... it completely lights up in the sun.

Dying Love. Dark smoky grey/black with a silver shimmer running through it. The colour brings to mind ashes which I guess is very appropriate.

Toxic Seduction. My favourite. Lots of sparkly green shimmer in a green-tinged grey base. The green shimmer is very predominant and almost covers up the base colour. Gawjus.

A Sin Worth Committing. Dark electric blue shimmer. Dupey to OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue but with a much better name. Lacquerized has a great comparison here (I miss her!).

Fatal Affair. Deep plummy purple with blue shimmer. The shimmer in this is different to the rest of the collection. The particles are bigger and it seems to only really come out and play where the light hits.

Overall, a great collection. One of my favourites. Formula was really good on all of them. I keep putting off picking up Love Bite because I seem to have a lot of similar colours to that but I'll get around to it someday. *edit* Swatch of Love Bite here.
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NOTD Zoya Cheryl

Here's a quick NOTD for you guys. I actually had this on yesterday but my nails are nakie today so I thought I'd share anyway :)

Cheryl is from the Wicked Fall 2010 Collection. This is highly underrated IMO. I think it just got lost in the throng with all the other releases.

It's a really rich brown. Very sparkly- it has that same glass-fleck/foily finish we saw so much of in 2010. I know a lot of people don't like brown but I really do quite like it!

Black Holo Comparison

I got more nail wheels in the mail yesterday so I decided to dig out all my black holos and do a little comparison.

From L to R we have Bloom London, Glitter Gal (Sparkle) Black, BK 02, Catherine Arley 805 and Economy Class (my MPJ franken)

I made the franken about a year ago and sent some over to a friend with the original charcoal MPJ and she confirmed they were dupes in terms of colour and holoness except mine was a little more opaque. I've since added just a touch of clear to get an exact dupe.

Also, I decided not to include ChG Let's Do It In 3-D, CC Revvvolution etc because I felt they weren't dark enough to be considered black.

Anyway, enough jabbering from me...

I've kept the pics extra large so click for a lot more detail. This is 2 coats of each except for the MPJ franken which is 3 coats.

You can see here that the first two, Bloom London and Glitter Gal Black are scattered holos while the other three are linear.

Closeups...

Again, you can click to make them much bigger.

At first I thought these two were dupes. But as you can see, the Glitter Gal is clearly more holo- the particles in it seem to reflect a more distinct rainbow than the Bloom which is really, really weak.

Out of these three, the least holo was Catherine Arley 805. The holo effect in this one seemed a little less pronounced and it mostly reflected red/orange/yellow instead of the full rainbow.

The other two (BK 02 and my MPJ franken) are very similar except the BK is almost opaque in one coat while my MPJ franken requires at least three. Also, the base colour of the BK is very obviously black while the franken leans charcoal.

After I did this comparison I decided to do my nails in BK 02.

Can you see a corner of my middle nail broke off? It's too low down to make all my nails that length :( Oh well, what can you do.

Hope you enjoyed!

MOAR Spam??

I still have quite a few pictures lying around. They don't follow a specific theme so, here's another round of spam!

Zoya Mimi. Man, Zoya does those glass-flecky/foily/sparkly finishes so well.

Bloom Goa. Teal/blue creme. Really smooth, pigmented formula.

Revlon Powder Puff. A more unique take on white. I do wish the blue shimmer was less subtle though.

Zoya Blair. Just take a look at that glow!

China Glaze Emerald Sparkle. Sorry about the out of focus pic. My camera couldn't capture the Epicness.

Essie Smokin' Hot. Not unique by any means but these dark purple-y taupes are lovely.

China Glaze How About a Tumble. There really should be a question mark in that name. Light pink/purple scattered holo. It's got that pretty, light and delicate feel to it.

Butter London Fash Pack. This was free in an earlier issue of Aussie Harper's Bazaar. I quite like the delicate gold shimmer in it.

Australis Blue Tiger. Love! It's a muted, dusty blue that's still somehow really bright. It even dries semi-matte (neon pigment?).

I hope you enjoyed!