Pro Nail Supply

I'm pretty sure everyone in Sydney knows about this little gem, but if you don't go - go now! Pro Nail Supply is over in Bankstown that sells China Glaze, OPI, Orly, Essie, Seche Vite, and all the odds and ends you  need at a super low cost. Sure, they don't always have a great range and it can be quite hit and miss but I generally find there's at least a CG I can buy (although I wouldn't make a trip out for the Essie - I've never seen any new shades come in). CG and Essie are $6 a bottle, Orly is $7
and OPI is $12. They also have various box sets and minis but I've never bought any to find out the price.

So here was my little haul from my last trip:
CG DV8 (I nearly squealed a little when I realised that they still had a handful of the OMG collection. If I had more on me I would have bought the lot!)
CG FYI
CG Rare & Radiant
and a new bottle of SV (although they have started stocking Out the Door so I might give that a shot next time I'm there).





The best thing about this place is they always seem to be open! Sundays, public holidays, doesn't seem to matter! So there's never an excuse to go stock up  ;) (although be forewarned I find parking can be a bit of a biatch around there sometimes, so it's just easier to park in the Centro and walk! That and it gives me an excuse to do more window shopping !)


Pro Nail Supply
9 Greenfield Pde
Bankstown NSW 2200
website (prices on there don't reflect instore)




Gloss 'n Sparkle

One of my dear friends bought me the most awesome gift the other day to cheer me up - 3 bottles from Gloss 'n Sparkle that I've been lemming for a while now. I'm always a sucker for amazing glitter polishes, and when they came in the mail I had them sitting on my desk all day sparkling at me. The pictures just do not do them justice.
So over the next few days I'll  be wearing my way through them, and here is the first one. Perpetual Darkness. It's a combination of square glitter, small silver hexes, and tiny fleck of holographic glitter (this doesn't show up very well in the photos, but that's what the tiny red dots are) all in a very dark purple base. Here I'm wearing 2 coats and that gave me quite a thick coverage. It was a little difficult to apply and I had to use 2 layers of top coat to smooth it over, but it was well worth it! There is just so much depth to this polish and I can't stop looking at it!




Gloss 'n Sparkle is available through their Etsy store and they are also stocked through Femme Fatale Cosmetics



Neons!

 After quite a bit of hunting, I managed to lay my hands on the Colour Me Mini sets from Ulta3 (hint... their facebook page has a handy store locator. Wish I had known that earlier!) Most of the sets have loads of pretty colours, but the neon one was the only one I didn't already own most of the colours. And TBH neon isn't really my thing, so minis are perfect for me. The colours aren't labeled so I can't tell you which ones they were, but I'm certain they're the same neons  you see floating around in the Ulta3 bins.

Of course rather than doing something tasteful, I had to try all the colours at once. These are all 3 coats, but you can see the yellow and the green are still quite sheer. I think they would would really benefit with a white basecoat, but I wanted to trial them by themselves first.



And just to dress them up a little (and tone down the neon a bit) I stamped them with my CH52 plate.



Holo pretties

 I just had to throw these pics up of my absolute favourite polish I own - China Glaze 2nite from the OMG collection. It's such a stunning colour, and has plenty of holo even when you're in the shade. You could get away with one coat (I've got 2 here), it dries super fast and applies beautifully. The only downside is it does chip fairly fast, but that's minor for how pretty it looks. And because I feel wrong without some kind of art or glitter on my nails, I added the star nail tatoos from Essence. I realize that this is an older collection, but if you can find any of the colours, buy them!


Muppets






I finally laid my hands on OPI Rainbow Connection! For some reason when this first came out I decided that I didn’t really want it and got Divine Swine instead, but ever since it left the shops I’ve been lemming it. So trying to copy a mani I found on pinterest, here it is layered over Rimmel Grey Matter.





And while I’m posting, wow those Rimmel 60 seconds brushes are weird! Rather than a normal brush, they’re flat like a big paintbrush which I guess helped apply the polish as it was so incredibly thick, but I really didn’t like it. Think I’ll stick to their lasting finish range in future.  


Here’s an old pic of Divine Swine I found on my hard drive – I still have a soft spot for this colour! Wish I had bought the whole Muppets collection while I could have.

Golden Gun

I was very lucky this Christmas that my sister bought me the 24k gold top coat from OPI - Man with the golden gun. I was lemming this from the second it was announced, but just couldn't bring myself to spend that much on one single bottle. But I am so glad I have it now. Not only is it stunning, you only need a small amount for a decent coverage, and when I topped it with SV it will not come off. With the amount of typing I do everyday at work, my nails chip like there's no tomorrow, but  I've been wearing this mani for a week now and there's barely even any tip wear! 




So here it is with one coat over Essence 98 Walk on Air and topped with my SV that's started going gluggy (hence the terrible application. We all know what I'll be out buying on the weekend ;) )

More stamping

Today I have 2 mani's using this plate set from Cheeky. First up is CH44, using Something Sweet China Glaze and stamped with Essence white stampy polish.

And the other one (which has to be one of my fav mani's to date) is using CH51 with Designer de Better OPI stamped with the same Essence.


Have I mentioned how much I love my Cheeky plates? I've bought quite a few plates online, but so far these are the only ones that really live up to the Konad quality.

Australis Milky Way

I got a phone call from a friend the other day that went along the lines of "I think I just found some unicorn pee! You want?" As 2 polish addicts, I knew she meant a dupe of this polish I had been lemming on Etsy, rather than the Clarins that most of us think of as unicorn pee. What she had found was Australis Milly Way. To be honest this is the first Australis polish I've owned. I loved the look of it, but by the following evening most of it had peeled off (although this may be mainly due to me not putting on a basecoat...). As you can see, there's 2 different sizes of hexes with fine blue and gold glitter. Here I'm wearing 3 coats here, although I feel it could have used a lick of white polish underneath.

Dots

Here’s a quick one I found going through my old photos (whichis why my nails/cuticles are in bad bad shape)…. But here we have SomethingSweet, Light as Air, Re-fresh Mint and Lemon Fizz all from China Glaze withdots in OPI Alpine Snow which I put on with a pin head. I’ve since boughtproper dotting tools, but this worked just as well.

Something blue...


Here is my go at doing this tutorial using Something for Audrey China Glaze and Alpine Snow OPI and instead of a brush I just used a black nail art pen from Glamnails. So much easier than it looks!

Revitanail


I was lucky enough to win a pack of Revitanail products, and just wanted to share (slash be crazy excited... I never win anything!). I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with how good these actually are. Admittedly I normally just used quite cheap nail polish removers, which is naughty, so I loved all the various removers they had. By far the best wipes I've used - they do leave an oily residue, but they do such a good job! The oil is nice, not solar oil and it has a sickly sweet smell, but still nice enough to keep in my office drawer. I think the only thing I didn't love was the treatments, but that's more to do with my nails than with the products. I have quite thick nails so strengthening isn't really an issue for me.

But still, glad to have tried all of these, and will definitely be buying the polish remover from now on!


Konad!

I made a very exciting discovery over the Christmas holidays... while I was killing some time window shopping I discovered that there is now a stockist for Konad in Hurstville (Sydney). For anyone that happens to be in the area, it's in the little arcade that runs underground between Westfield and Forest rd. It looks like a normal clothing store, but they have all the Konad behind the counter. Seeing as I've still been using my cheap Essence stamping kit I bought in Germany, I decided to pick myself up a new stamper and 2 plates. As well as my little kit has done me, you can really tell the difference in quality. I still suck at stamping, but I suck less now!



So here was my first go at using my new toys - with the S6 plate, Essence black stampy polish over China Glaze 2nite. (Sorry for my super blurry photos - my camera went walkabout and iPhone just doesn't do a decent macro!)

Rub-ons!


Seeing as my work involves a lot of craft related stuff, I’m always looking at random craft supplies and seeing what I can attach to my nails. So after a little bit of experiment I figured out you can actually use scrapbooking rub-ons!

Simply paint your nails in a good base colour and once it’s dried, you put the rub-ons on just like you would onto paper, add top coat and voila! Just need to make sure you cut the designs out rather than trying to rub off from a large sheet, otherwise they tend to shift a lot and it smudges up the design.
I found these little houses on a sheet from Kaisercraft at the last craft show here – they were the only patterns small enough to fit on a nail, but they are very cute!  For my polishes I used China Glaze Re-fresh Mint as my main colour and OPI Alpine Snow for the dots. 
It’s not nearly as neat as it could be, but this was one of my first attempts of doing my nails this way and I think it still turned out pretty well!

Foil goodness


After much stalking and mixed reviews, I finally caved and bought myself some nail foils so I could try it myself. I bought 2 foils along with the adhesive from Shardee Nail Shimmer on eBay - being based in Aus so I didn't have to wait! (I will be the happiest girl alive when eBay invents a teleporter!).
So this is the first mani I did with these babies...

I started with my usual Essie First Base, 2 coats of Ulta3 gold Rush Fever and once that had dried, I applied the adhesive to the tips and then put on my Gold Nugget foil. Ignoring the fact the adhesive smells like craft glue, they were actually very easy to apply. This stuff is insanely shiney when you put it on - it's like having a mirror on your fingers. I then topped it with a top coat of Sally Hansen Double Duty (it was all I had on hand that wasn't SV - which I've been warned not to use on it). The foil did buckle a little, but still kept a lot of its luster.
Seeing as I'm usual to the dry time of SV it did mean I bumped a nail, but apart from that they looked great... for one night. I don't know whether it's the foils or the fact I only put on one layer of top coat, but I had tip wear by the next morning. In my frustration, I caved and chucked on a coat of SV, which did buckle it slightly more, but at least I thought they would be better protected.


Here's a pic of what they look like now, 24hours after I did the mani. Sure they don't look too horrific if you don't look too closely, but there is a lot of wear and tear and chipping for such a short amount of time!
I will give them another go, and try an extra layer of top coat, but I think these are a for novelty manis - they look amazing for going out, but don't expect to get  a full weeks wear out of them.



**Ps sorry for the terrible photo quality - I don't have my camera and the iPhone just can't deal with low light :S