Swatch: OPI’s Just Spotted A Lizard

I’m just going to start this post with a note first. I have actually bought this nail polish, a long long time ago. Approximately around the time The Amazing Spider-man movie came out in mid-year 2012. I know, that must have been months. No, it is months ago. =.= I have somehow never found the time to swatch this polish, until today I have decided, “Hey, I’m going to swatch this now.”

And I’m in love.

No, really. If you haven’t heard or seen the swatches for this amazing polish, you will fall in love with it now. This polish is actually part of OPI’s The Amazing Spider-man collection. Hence, Just Spotted A Lizard – you’ll probably get it if you watched the movie. Anyways, the polish is a gorgeous duochrome with a gold greenish hue. Just lovely.

Review: As always, OPI’s formulation has been pretty consistent with a smooth application and the usual thick brush. Two coats would be sufficient, but I like my nails to be painted with three coats, so my nails (as pictured) have three coats. It is a slightly metallic polish, so you can see the streaks but this is not obvious unless you start scrutinizing it. 

I think it’s worth noting that this polish is actually a dupe for Chanel’s Peridot. Chanel’s Peridot is just love love at first sight. I stumbled upon pictures of it, way back in 2011 and I just fell straight in love. (You can check it out here.)

Nail Art: ‘Ming’ Dynasty’s Vase Inspired

It’s been a while since I last did a nail art, but I was at work when this nail art idea came to mind. There was a contest on Instagram, and the theme was vintage. A simple Google search on vintage nail art would show you images of those gorgeously hand drawn flowers painted meticulously over each nail. Unfortunately, I’m not that good, not even close to drawing anything on my nails. So, I thought about the vintage theme. And then, *snap*. One day, I saw a print of blue and white and I thought the ‘Ming’ Dynasty’s vase. Although, that is more antique than vintage. But hey, worth a shot. This was how the nails turn out to be.

The polish I used for this were Sally Hansen's Blue It and a white stamping polish. The designs were stamped and this is my first time stamping so it didn’t stamped as neat as I hoped it’ll be. Well, practice makes perfect. :) I’ll be trying my hands on more stamping nail art.

And here is the entry I submitted on Instagram.This was for a contest organized by @followthatway (a talented Singapore Instagram user who does these really amazing nail arts). Let’s hope I’ll get lucky :)

Till next time, loves!

Keep Calm and Polish On.

Swatch: Essence’s King of Mints

About a few months back, I was going nuts trying to find the right shade of mint green polish. I have fallen in love with the colour, especially after seeing the colours on lookbook.nu. But somehow back then, the mint green colour trend hasn’t hit off here in Malaysia yet, and so, none of the usual nail polish brand carried this colour. :( Then, one day while I was at Watsons, I went over to the Essence shelves (This is the only way to get Essence products after the Coci Coci shops in Mid Valley and Lot 10 closed down). The products left for sale was almost miserable, Watsons rarely stock up on Essence’s products. :( But here I saw a polish which was named as King of Mints.

And in that moment, I thought I found treasure, literally. Haha, even though the colour wasn’t too promising from the bottle I still got it because it was named King of Mints and I, Carmen Hong has been looking for a mint polish since forever. There was only two bottles left and I knew I didn’t get it now, I wouldn’t ever be able to. So, I thought why not give it a try, it was only RM8.90 after all.

The colour was, frankly disappointing and isn’t anywhere close to being a minty green polish. It is a very dull colour, but it was actually a rather unique polish actually because it had a glazed effect after applying it. This effect is not obvious under normal lightning conditions, but once in the sunlight, you could see that little glazed sparkle.

I have always been amazed by polishes from Essence but for Kings of Mints, I am afraid I can’t say the same. Putting the colour aside, the brush itself is different from the usual polishes. This is probably because King of Mints is from a limited edition collection called Rock You, released way back in 2011. (See how slow Malaysia is? =.=’)

As you can see the design of the bottle is square-ish which is strikingly similar to Butter London’s design of bottles. I quite like a square bottle which is a nice change from the usual designs. But what I really hated was that Essence made the brush for this polish so ridiculously microscopically small. It was so difficult to apply the polish with such small and short brush. The second time I applied this, I learnt that to apply this polish smoother, you’ll have to take up more product to apply it evenly.

Overall, I don’t really like this polish as much as I liked the name, which was disappointing really. But nevertheless, I’ll still get more Essence polish when I can, because I know the brand has been usually consistent with its other polishes.

Nail Art: Chinese New Year nails!

What is Chinese New Year without loads of Mandarin oranges? Once you see these oranges, it can only mean that the Chinese New Year was around the corner. :) So, I thought it would have been appropriate to pose my nail with a Mandarin orange. Haha.

Nail Art: Heart Shaped Matte Pink

With the Internet these days, it has been so easy to find and share pictures of pretty nail art designs. There are so many nail arts that I have seen from the net that I wanted to try. In fact, I was so inspired by some of the gorgeous ones that I actually sketched them out (with guides and notes) in my sketching notebook. Anyway, before I get side tracked any further, I stumbled upon a picture on Pinterest (Yes, I’m on there. :] Follow my boards HERE.) of a super simple nail art; matte heart. It was such an easy nail art to do since you only need stickers + matte top coat, not forgetting the base colour too. So here is my version. :D

How do you like my version? :) I used the Neon Pink polish from Elianto, which I swatched and reviewed before. Click here to read it.

So, how do to do this nail art? What you’ll need is a sticker. Draw a heart shape, cut that out and then paste it over your nail. The nails should be painted with a base colour before that. After pasting the sticker, top it off with a matte top coat. Whenever I use stickers for my nail art designs, I prefer to let my base polish to cool or dry for at least 24 hours because sometimes the sticker may be too strong and ruins the base colour, Just like that, and you’re done.

You may notice that there is a white outline over the heart shape. That is actually because of the matte top coat. I used Essence’s Matt(e) Top Coat for this nail design and somehow, after I peeled off the sticker, it left a white outline. But fret not, it’ll be go off after sometime. Of course, if you’re irked by it like myself, you can slowly scrapped it off with your nails, like I did. Haha.

It was a really simple nail art to do, something that I finished in less than 15 mins. To be honest, these days I find myself preferring to swatch instead of doing nail arts. Maybe I got lazier, :(. Which is why I am so going to make it point to do more nail arts. I know I’ll never be short of inspiration with the Internet these days, anyway.

Swatch: Elianto’s S12 (Neon Pink)

Like I mentioned in the previous Swatch post; the black polish from The Face Shop, I rarely shop for new polishes at shops like Elianto, The Face Shop or even Etude House which used to be my favourite places to get new stash. For Elianto, the main reason why I didn’t like their polishes previously was because I really didn’t like formulation. Of course I am not comparing them with OPI, seeing that it is a different league all together. But even for the RM5 price tag, I would expect at least a decent polish, non-streaky and thinner formulation. I used to get tonnes of air bubbles whenever I apply the Elianto polishes.

I knew, Elianto released new polishes, about sometime ago and they also increased their price by 50 cents, if I’m not mistaken. I still didn’t have the confidence to buy their range, but luckily my sister’s friend have gifted her with this Neon Pink polish from Elianto recently. I couldn’t resist swatching it, since it was sitting nicely and tempting me to. Previously, Elianto named their polishes but they now go by codes only, and the packaging is still similar with the previous one.

Review: Compared to the previous formulation, it seemed to have improved a lot. It's now so much easier to apply and the product is less thicker, enabling thinner coats to be applied. But fear not, it's not too sheer and I have three coats on. As you can see, it still gives a pretty even coverage. The brush is also big in size so it's very easy to apply and maneuverer it around. It also doesn’t have an overwhelming smell, which was still acceptable to me. Overall, I love this polish and the colour is amazing too.

Nail Art: Matte Black with Glossy French Tip

You would have probably seen this nail art around, it was been done quite a number of times not only because it was uniquely nice but also because it’s superbly easy to do. All you’ll need for this simple nail art is a good black nail polish, matte top coat and a shiny top coat. :) Read on, I’ll post up the steps to this nail art.

Before I go on, I think this nail art was probably inspired YSL Duo Terriblement Noir black nail polishes. This was from the YSL Holiday Collection back in 2011. I absolutely love the matte black polish from YSL, read more about it here.

Anyway, back to the nail art, in addition to the three items I mention above, you’ll need some cello tape or scotch tape or stickers. For this manicure, I used The Face Shop's BK901 , Seche Vite Top Coat and  Essence's Matt Top Coat. You can click on the links for my reviews. :)

* * * * * * * * *

Step 1: Paint your nails using black nail polish and finish it off with a top coat. Please allow it time to dry completely.

Step 2: Then, stick the cello tape just slightly over the tips of the nails.

Step 3: Paint your nails with the matte top coat. Wait till it is dry before removing the sticker.

* * * * * * * * *

And that’s it! It’s so simple. :) But just a note though, if you’re using Essence's Matt Top Coat, you may see that a thin white line between the matte and the shiny region. Need not worry about that because it is only temporary. If you cannot wait, then you can lightly scrap it off.

I hope you found the short tutorial useful, if you tried the nail art out, I would love to see them :) Thank you for reading this post, and do look out for more nail art. You can check the rest of my manicures here on Facebook or read about them here on my blog.

Swatch: The Face Shop’s BK901

I don’t actually remember when was the last time I got a nail polish from The Face Shop, it could have been that time when I would drop by shops like Etude House, Elianto and of course, The Face Shop too. But after a while it seems like the colour selections were rather stagnant and there wasn’t any new shades. I moved on to Sally Hansen’s range after that, if I’m not mistaken. Click here to read about all the previous nail polishes swatches, whether they were worth getting or for any new shades. :)

But I needed a new black polish after my Etude’s one got so difficult to apply since it was quite some time since I got them. I read on one of my friends blog that The Face Shop black polish was really good, it wasn’t too sheer and that was one of the main criteria I look for in a black polish.

Review: There is really nothing much to a black nail polish, like I said earlier, the only thing I look for is one that is not sheer and gives a pretty good coverage. Seeing that that is my only criteria, I would say that The Face Shop black nail polish had achieved just that. I painted three coats and the result is as above, pretty even and nice. :) It was also smooth to apply and with a fairly big brush. So, if you’re ever considering a black polish to try to get the one from The Face Shop.

Hope you enjoyed the short review and the pictures! :) Thank you so much for reading this post, and do look out for more swatches.

Nail Art: Neon Green Tips

Just the other day, I watched this video that blogger, Xia Xue did for ClickNetwork.tv and her nails in the video caught my eye. It was nothing fancy, very simple nail design. Her nails were painted at the tip in mint green colour. Very pretty, chic and simple. As you can see, I haven’t been painting my nails since I’ve been rather caught up with a lot of things. But this was so easy to do, so I decided to do it but in a different green colour. You’ll see it in the pictures below. 

And here is what my version looks like;

Since I did my nails in a jiffy, I didn’t give my nails ample to dry and hence, it smudged a little as you can see. This was despite the fact that I used Seche Vite super fast dry top coat, because the polish I used was a rather old one. Hence. it was thick and very streaky. Also, the colour is a bit more neon than shown in the picture but I think the sun sort of lighten it up.

This is the first nail art I’ve done since like forever, I hope with this I can get my mood back to doing nail arts. :) Before work starts and I’ll be back to only French, nude or bare.

Swatch: Sally Hansen’s Flirt

I’ve always been a fan of Sally Hansen Xtreme series, I have the gorgeous deep blue colour; Blue It and Green with Envy, a funky happy green one. And now I have another amazing colour to add to my collection, Flirt! Thank you Yuberactive for sending me the polish.

When I first saw the colour, I couldn’t tell from the bottle what colour it was. It didn’t help that when I first applied the polish, it was in a rather low yellow-ish light. So, I thought the colour was somewhat more to the black goth polish type. Which is actually what the colour looks like for most of the time.

However, under the sunlight, it is a different colour all together. You’ll see a shimmering dark purple/magenta colour which is actually really pretty. But this is only limited to when there is sunlight. In the absence of that, the colour would appear as a rather boring, flat dark coloured polish which I think is a waste.

Application wise; it was easy to apply like the others in the same series. However, there was a minor defect in my brush which probably is a unique case. Other than that, it was a nice nail polish, three coats for even coverage. Pretty easy removal as well, although it may leave a slight tint on your nails.