This has been a long time coming, as it is already December. But I still wanted to share my first What's In-die Box! This was so exciting - buying a box of polish where you don't know what you're going to get until you open up the box of goodness. Your only clues are the pictures for each months theme. The November theme was Pokemon, and as both me and my husband are HUGE gamers and Pokemon fans (seriously we had a Snorlax and an Electrode as our wedding cake toppers) this was a must have. 

I will let all the pictures then speak for themselves, as every single one of these applied beautifully, and I honestly love every single one of them. All swatches are 2 coats topped with Out the Door.

#134 by Sayuri Nail Lacquet

Vivillon by Bella Nail Couture

Glooms Vileplume by Arcane Lacquet

Pikachu by Peita's Polish

Such a cute bow!!!

Tornadus by Lilypad Lacquet

If you love this idea as much as me, be sure to check out the What's In-die Box Facebook Page, or preorder your box at Peita's Polish.
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Ciate Corrupted Neon

Hooray! I finally got my hands on my very first Ciate kit. I know many people have had issues with this brand for good reasons, but hey when you see a set for $10, it's hard to say no! For anyone in Aus, I highly suggest going to your local Chemist Warehouse to grab one of these sets. They have them in a few colours too.

So this kit comes with a neon pink polish, neon pink loose glitter and a UV reactive top coat. I carefully followed the instructions and painted my nails with 2 coats and then sprinkled glitter all over them, except my feature nail as I can't stop stamping! The stars are from Cheeky Beauty summer collection. The glitter is very fine and gets EVERYWHERE. I wish this kit had come with one of those tiny funnels to get the left overs back in the bottle.
Once that's done with you then put the top coat on. It looks very pretty with the glitter but the topcoat then smoothed it down a little so it is more like a liquid sand. The topcoat was also very smudgy with the black of the stamping. Also you have to be careful when applying it - it REALLY shows up under the blacklight!
Do I love this kit? Perhaps not as all 3 elements together, but the polish with the glitter OR the UV top coat are amazing. I just wouldn't do all 3 together.

Halloween!

Hey guys! I realize I'm a few days behind in this - I had a rather eventful night out for halloween that meant I spent almost the entire next day in bed. I hope you all had a blast!
Here are the nails I did especially for the night. I started with a plain white base, sponged the yellow, orange and purple (all random Ulta3s) on using a wet makeup sponge (I only recently discovered soaking the sponge in water first makes a huge difference!) and then stamped the graves using HD03 from Bunny Nails and did a tiny black tip for the ground. I just LOVE how this worked out, it possibly could have been neater but from a distance it looks rad. Also the black tips make it super easy to touch up, so I've been wearing these for almost a whole week.

yeaahh a little smudgy, but still looks good I think!

Sharks!

Football season is finally over for the year - but this didn't stop me from doing a slightly NRL themed mani. I was originally just going to paint my nails blue, but my husband insisted I added white and black to make them into his fav. team colours - the Sharks. So here I present Face of Australia Isn't It Delicious sponged with Ulta3 Lily White and topped with China Glaze Fairy Dust. The stamping plate is from the Cheeky Summer collection.
Can I also just rave about how much I am loving the FOA polishes at the moment? The hubby bought me a whole bunch of them and they are just so nice to work with! Very opaque and easy to apply - pretty good doing for a polish that's less than $5! The only downside is you need to go stalking to find shops that have a decent range of their colours in stock!

OPI My Private Jet

 I did a little bit of dusty shopping on the weekend and felt I had to share! On Sunday, while I was waiting around for my husband's band practice to finish, I decided to drop into Trade Secret while I was in the area. I had a friend mention she had seen $10 OPI there, so of course it needed investigating. Sure enough they had a giant stand of old shades which were mostly $10, but this baby was marked down to $5 and I also picked up a few for $3. With how crazy Aus polish prices are, I feel I need to boast this to the world! ;)
So here are some swatches of the new formula of My Private Jet. It's an almost black brown that is slightly shimmer and filled with holo flecks. It's one of those colours that swatches have never really done much for me, but it is SO pretty in person. It applied very smoothly and in true OPI fashion I've gone for 3 days with no chips yet! I've tried my best to capture it, but my photos still don't show it's full glory. This is 2 coats topped with Out The Door.
In other news, I've started posting a lot of my nail spam photos on Instagram, so follow me at @papagana and I'll follow you back :)

Emily de Molly Setting Sun

Emily de Molly has to be one of my fav indie brands, and although she dropped off the radar there for a while, she is back and has started doing restocks. The very first restock I got all excited and got this baby along with some stamping plates. This is Setting Sun, a bright coral with subtle holo. It is a fantastic summer shade (and yes it is still winter, but I'm pretending ok?). I'm having a slightly coral obsession at the moment - in the last week alone I have bought 5 different coral shades! But here I am wearing 2 coats with a coat of Out the Door. The formula is a dream and dries very fast so I manged to do this all in the half hour before I went to bed.

I think I have been won over the OTD instead of SV. I got it on good advice that it wouldn't have the same shrinkage problems that I get with SV so while over at my ususal supply shop I picked up some. It is pretty amazing - the dry time is slightly longer than SV, but it is still very fast and glossy, but ZERO shrinkage! 

Anyway, enough rant from me. Go forth and buy this polish. You won't regret it!  Visit Emily de Molly's store.

 

Tony Moly SH01

Another Tony Moly today - this one is SH01, a pastel green polish filled with green, pink and blue glitters in hex, square and heart shapes. I'm not normally a green fan but this polish is SUPER cute (although I am a huge sucker for polish with hearts in it)! This is 2 coats topped with SV. Once again, for such a cheap polish ($2.50) I'm really impressed! I think I may need to go out and find more of these! The store I bought these polishes is A'HA Sydney, but I have also seen them in various Morning Glory stores and on eBay - go check them out, they have a lot of fun collections worth looking at..

Tony Moly GR30

I discovered a new cheap brand a while ago that I'm in love with now. A new Korean beauty store opened up near me that sells all kinds of adorably packaged cosmetics and a wide range of Tony Moly polishes. I'll post up pics of them all as I slowly swatch my way through, I may have gone a little crazy and bought almost all the glittery colours they had. The bottles don't really have much of a label on them other than a small barcode and some details written in Korean. This one is GR20 - medium and small sized glitter in various shades of silver and blue in a dark blue base. It applied quite nicely and for a $2.50 polish I'm stoked at how pretty and sparkly it is! Here I am wearing 3 coats to get a really solid coverage and then stamped over them using Essence silver Stampy polish and the plate is MM09 from Messy Mansion.
The store I bought these polishes is A'HA Sydney, but I have also seen them in various Morning Glory stores and on eBay.

Sally Hansen Pink Rose Diamond

Sorry I have been so absent lately... the not-so-new job has kept me very busy, but I've been lucky enough that it's allowed me to travel quite a bit. The most exciting of which was China but funnily enough I couldn't find a single polish worth buying in the areas we went to - Sephora didn't have any of the usual brands which I was disappointed by. Oh well next trip I'll do better ;) But I have still been buying plenty of polish at home and taking photos so I need to post them all for you to see. 

Today's pretty is an oldie but a goodie one of my friends managed to find in Hawaii a few weeks ago, although I believe there are still bottles floating around the Internet. Sally Hansen Pink Rose Diamond from the Nail Prisms collection. It is a very pretty linear holo pink. Here I am wearing 2 coats topped with the usual SV. It is quite a nice polish, and it sort of is the grandmother of holos. It's only a pity I couldn't get my hands on some of the other interesting shades in the collection

Reverse Stamping

So last weekend in the rainy weather, I finally decided that while I was stuck indoors I should give reverse stamping a go. Rather than explaining to anyone that might not already know about technique, I'll just point you in the direction of Shatter Me Claire's tutorial. This was using yet another one of my Cheeky Beauty summer plates and various Ulta3 polishes and a coat of Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure. It's not exactly a neat mani, but I think it still looked quite cool! I've gone and ordered a whole lot more plates so I can try my hand at doing a lot more of these designs! It's worth a try - a little time consuming, but at least all the work isn't done on wet nails so can you can work on it in stages and make enough for several manis if you're really conscientious.

Polished by KPT Nostalgia

Happy Friday! Today's polish that I have to share with you another polish from Polished by KPT. This is Nostalgia - a duochrome shimmery thermal polish that changes from a sheet grey/pink to dark purple that has a slight green shift to it. Here I am wearing 3 coats topped with SV. As you can see, it could use an undie but it still looks stunning on it's own. I love all of this brand and highly recommend it to anyone else out there that is obsessed with thermals. I got these from Femme Fatale Cosmetics.