So apparently there's this thing called Amethystos...

... and it's very, very sparkly. <3

This is two coats of HARE - Amethystos, no undies. Even though it looks more like four coats, with the depth of all that beautiful glitter! <3 It has silver, pink, champagne gold and iridescent blue hex, silver squares, and what appears to be a tiny sparkle of some sort running through it. It is a glitterbomb and a half in a lilac-purple jelly, I love it!

Being such a glittery thing, it is a little on the thicker side, and it doesn't flow quite as easily as my other HAREs. It's still lovely though, and you can understand why it's a bit thicker; I'm sure if it bothered you that much, you could put a few drops of thinner in, but I'm happy enough with the finished result that I didn't mind a bit of careful application.

I managed to get my hands on this polish through my very lovely, very wonderful friend Liz (<3). I'd missed out on ordering in the first Llarowe restock of that day, and wasn't about to stay up until 2am to catch the second one. However, she very sweetly grabbed this one for me and sent it my way; you wouldn't believe how excited I was when she tweeted me about it! <3333

The sky was pink...

This is two coats of HARE - The Sky Was Pink. No undies, just beautiful glittery jelly goodness.

Now I'm not normally a 'pink' kinda girl. It doesn't normally suit my skintone, and I'd usually prefer a nice deep raspberry as opposed to a girly candyfloss pink. This, however, is just pure unadulterated awesome. <3

There is a lot of fine hot pink shimmer that doesn't show up in this photo, but it's there, trust me (you can see a little bit of it at the tip of my pinky nail). The polish is so pretty in person, and sometimes in low lighting or at a distance, it even looks a little more blue than pink. It's just gorgeous.

I could waffle on some more about how much I love, worship and adore my HAREs, but I'm sure you get the idea already. <3

Fire in the taco bell!

I'm starting to think I have a problem with collecting indie polishes. I've been trying several brands over the past month, but honestly, my main contenders appear to be Pahlish and HARE.

The above is two coats of Pahlish's brand new formula of Fire In The Taco Bell, over two coats of OPI's Y'All Come Back Ya Hear. Fire In The Taco Bell was one of the first indie swatches I saw that really made me want to take the plunge and buy from independent polish creators; imagine my disappointment when I found out it was discontinued!

Turned out it had been discontinued for formula problems (a curling type of glitter), but thankfully Shannon worked her glittery polish magic and fixed it, and therefore we now have the brand new version. Despite not being a lover of orange (by a long shot, seriously, it and I are not normally friends), this is looooovely.

Look at the squishyness! Look at the bright, happy, party vibe of it! Look at the tiny glowing gold specks, and the iridescent violet hex squished inbetween the orangey goodness, and the fuchsia squares. Squares! Have I mentioned how much I love polishes with different sizes of the same colour glitter? Sigh. So pretty. <3

An afterglow bouquet.

Long time no see, blog! Apologies for my absence, but I've been geeking out over GW2, and it hasn't really left me any time to blog! Nevermind, on with the pretty pictures!

Above is one coat of the gorgeous HARE - Afterglow over one coat of Rimmel - Blue Vogue. You can see in the bottle that Afterglow has a much lighter blue jelly base, but I really wanted the tiny purple glitter to stand out more, so I layered it over a darker colour. I really like how it came out!

The flowers are painted on just with the edge of the polish brush, in (Boots) 17 - Orange Soda, and dotted with Kleancolor - Metallic Fuchsia. They look really cute from a distance, and a little messy in these close up shots, but you know how macro picks up all the little flaws!

Afterglow is another feather in the cap of HARE polishes, for me; beautiful smooth application, the glitters just flow out and place themselves, good dry time and gorgeous colour schemes as always. <3 I really can't get enough of these, I'm so excited for her new Fall collection coming up soon and the re-release of her older colours (I must have Pegasus!).

I'll try to get around to posting the slightly overdue September haul and a quick & dirty gallery of my recent (and not always interesting) manicures soon!

August 2012 - New Additions...

So, really, I have been quite bad this month. Oops. Nevermind, the rest of you can live vicariously through my lack of impulse control. :P

First up are my very first HARE polishes! I was lucky enough to catch a flash sale on her etsy,  which resulted in Dog Day Dream and Why So Igneous? making their way into my grabby little hands. :D

 

 

See how pretty they are? The shiny beautiful polishes? Mmmmm. <3 I've only worn DDD so far, but I've painted both Katti (the flamingo queen) & Jade (the wife) with Why So Igneous? this week! :D

Click the cut for more polish bottle pr0n and the rest of my haul.... <3

A dog, a hare, a dream and some purple jelly...

I am so bad with updating my blog. Weep. I almost always take pictures of my manicures, but writing them up and actually posting seems to take me forever! Anyway, the most recent polish I have fallen in love with (and therefore jumped my own post queue with) is this little gem, Dog Day Dream by HARE polish.

Look how sparkly it is! So much depth! So pretty! Also, so easy to apply; the formula is fantastic, not too thick, not too thin, smooth and almost full coverage in two coats. The picture above is two coats of Dog Day Dream over two coats of OPI's Houston We Have A Purple (a plum-purple jelly, seen in the bottle I'm holding there).

DDD is so sparkly in real life. Not an immediately flashy, "OI I'M GLITTERY", just a lovely continuous shimmer of light, no matter how you angle your nails. The bottle is quite mesmerizing as well, one of those ones you keep tipping and staring at with an expression of vacant joy while the glitter moves. Or is that only me? :P

I was extra excited because this (and Why So Igneous?) are my first HARE polishes, I managed to snag them on a recent flash restock on etsy. I really hadn't expected to be able to get hold of them for ages yet, but apparently luck was on my side, and here they are! The brand is wonderful; the bottles are adorable too, they have little bunny stickers on (bottle shots to come in the next haul post). In fact, I loved these two so much that I ordered The Sky Was Pink from llarowe yesterday, haha. I can't recommend them enough, so if you're thinking about taking the HARE plunge, go for it! :)

Space, the final frontier...

Okay, apologies in advance, I have had a bit of a busy week and I'm a little tired, so this post might be a bit rubbish! For a while I'd been wanting to try out galaxy nails, but always felt a little daunted by the idea. So basically I had to paint tiny galaxies on my hands? Pretty, but challenging. However, my urge to have space-age nails overwhelmed my performance anxiety, so armed with some sponges and some determination, I went to work.

All of the nails have a basic black coat underneath (my standard, trusty Rimmel - Black Out), with a bit of white sponged on (Natural Collection - Nail Tip Whitener :P). The purple nails then had Zoya - Tru, Zoya - Valerie, and China Glaze - DV8 sponged on in bits across the nail. The green nail had the same treatment, but with China Glaze - Lighthouse, Zoya - Ivanka, and China Glaze - DV8.

Once that was done, I lightly sponged a few dips of CND - Sapphire Sparkle across the top, for extra bling. Using a dotting tool, I put a few little white 'stars' (might try to make them more star-like next time, haha!), then covered everything in one coat of China Glaze - Fairy Dust (and, obviously, my beloved Seche Vite to finish). Ta-daaaaa! :D

Despite the trickiness, I'm quite happy with how they turned out! Next time I might try to leave a little more black space (especially obvious on the green nail!), use a smaller dotting tool for the stars and/or embellish them a little. (And maybe if I'm feeling super geeky, I'll paint a tiny Starfleet ship somewhere in there.)

So there you go! Galaxy nails! I have a red accent finger on my right hand instead of green; polishes used were Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Golden Tourmaline, China Glaze - Lighthouse, and Zoya - Valerie. :) (Maybe a bit tooooo close, LOL, but all the other photos were blurry! Sorry!)

Arista has big hair...

So this week's manicure is three coats of OPI's Big Hair, Big Nails. It's a jelly (or 'sorbet' if you're OPI and you like to sound pretentious), which means it has this gorgeous juicy glossy finish. Name stupidity aside, I'm really, really starting to love these OPI jellies. <3
The jelly sandwich filling on the ring finger is Sea Lore's Arista. I honestly have not been able to find or take a photo that truly shows how sparkly this polish is in real life. See those large, paler hexes? They're actually holographic, and they still flash & twinkle beautifully through the jelly in person, but on camera? Nope, too shy, no dice. :(
Quick recap of other news; my Andrina manicure lasted all week while I was on holiday, which is pretty impressive! Also, I am a bit nervous about posting my upcoming stash hauls, as I have gone a little bit mad. :/ This month and next month may be a little... uh... packed. :3

Andrina gradient and Sea Lore love!

The short; Creme gradient done with Models Own - Utopia, Barry M - Berry Icecream, Revlon - Rock. Topped with one coat of Sea Lore - Andrina. <3 (The tiny shimmer flecked throughout? That's Andrina too. <3)
Also, my camera seemed to be having trouble with this set of purples; it is pulling a little tiny bit too blue in this picture, apologies! Imagine a bit more royal purple and a little less blue-purple. :)

The long;
So recently I went on a massive indie polish splurge, and one of the most exciting ones I stumbled across was a relatively new company called Sea Lore. It's run by a sweet, delightful lady called Jamie (although previous to this knowledge, I had just been calling her "magical mermaid nail polish lady", which also worked for me).

Her polish collection is called Triton's Daughters, and since I'm a fan of glitter -and- Disney, how could I resist? I swiftly ordered mini bottles of Andrina (the first swatch to catch my eye), Alana (so pretty and delicate!), Adella (step out of my comfort zone, but more on that shortly), and Arista (red! holo glitter!).

These bottle shots were taken in my rubbish lightbox (I opened the parcel late evening after work, so no sun), so they're in no way as representative of the awesome shimmer of joy that is in these babies. I am sorry, I will try to learn better photography skills just for these. <3 Having only briefly swatched them on one nail each, and spent a lot of time oohing and ahhing at the bottles, Adella surprised me by being a bit of a runaway favourite. I'm not usually a great fan of gold or lime green, but this polish is -gorgeous-. It'll very probably be my next manicure, but I digress. LOOK AT THE SPARKLY PRETTIES.

Shipping, even internationally, was fast and lovely. The polishes came wrapped in glittery tissue paper, with little Ariel and friends stickers all over them. And sweets! :D She also had a promotion where the first 100 people to make an order over $20 got a handmade polish ring of their choice (I have an adorable ninja octopus stamped over Aquata - photos in the fangirl post to come!) Communication is spectacular; swift replies, plus she's a total sweetheart and her polishes are both gorgeous and professional looking, even down to the adorable little bottles. Seriously, I cannot recommend this lady and her beautiful polishes enough. I'm hopefully going to make another fangirl post later this weekend swooning over her some more.

Go forth! Buy the pretties! You know you want to!

Jul 2012 - New Additions....

 It's that time again! Bottle porn, stash pictures, new additions... whatever you want to call it, it's a lot of new polishes for me! :)