Weekly nail: Polka Dots and Glitter

Im sorry that these posts may seem to be starting to get a bit repetitive, but I really like pastels and I really like polka dots! I decided to give MUA's Pistachio Ice Cream another go, because there are a few colours of their polish I want to get when I'm in England, and so far I've hated this polish. It's safe to say that the reason this polish is so bad is the brush. It's so hard and leaves streaks. I put it over Face of Australia Castle On a Cloud (I accidentally painted all my nails) and it was perfect in one layer! I'm still not happy with the colour, i'd rather more green (although, against the purple of Castle on a Cloud it looks quite green) but now they've changed their brushes I'm keen to try out more colours. I also finally bought some of the new face of Australia glitters! I wasn't able to get them during the 75c Kmart sale, so I only bought 2. I used Heart of Glass over Castle on a Cloud and I'm pretty happy with it. Obviously I would have preferred of it had more glitter, and more hearts (I did 3 coats on both my middle fingers and no hearts were seen) but I bought it after reading many reviews, so I can't really complain! I'll have a post up later this week with the other polish I bought, Studio 54, which I'm over the moon with!

MUA Pistachio Ice Cream, Face of Australia Castle on a Cloud and Heart of Glass.

I've only got 3 days left of work now, and I leave the country next week! The boyfriend and I had our goodbye drinks to see some friends before we left and it was seriously so fun! We had so many friends show up, and even though I'm going to see most of them again before I leave, it was nice to hang out with them. I've got a pretty full schedule this week. I'm going to get ice cream on Wednesday night with friends, dinner with work friends Thursday, a 21st on Friday, going up to Sydney for the day on Sunday, then I'm having coffee with a friend on Monday and then going to dinner with some other friends. Not sure when I'll have time to hang out with my family, or even pack my bag! (Just kidding, I did most of my packing last night because I got too excited and I'm going to just leave everything in there!)

Weekly Nail: Pink Glitter

I've been wanting to try something like this for quite a while, after seeing a manicure similar to it on Tumblr a while ago. I was really keen to paint my nails pastel pink.

I used Bourjois number 13, and Ulta3 Lollypop Lilac. The bourjois polish is really sheer, and I needed 4 coats to get it this opaque. You could still kinda see through the tips of my nails, but that's not really an issue because I was painting over the tips. My bottle of lollypop lilac is getting really gluggy, which meant my tips weren't smooth at all. That could also be because I used super long nail stickers and managed to wipe 3 tips off while taking the stickers off!

There's only 2 weeks till we leave for England now! I'm getting kinda nervous! We're going to be gone for about 8 months!

I've been thinking about what it's going to mean for blogging too. The boyfriend doesn't really 'get' blogging, so I don't know how he'll feel if I spend a few hours a week on it! I got an ipad mini, so I should be able to write up quick blogs on there, but I'll probably end up writing more about our travels than beauty products (even though I would love to write about all the new products I'll be able to get over there!) I'm still unsure whether I want to start a new blog all together, so I can properly document our travels and I'll feel less weird about letting friends and family read it.

I'm probably not going to get much time to blog between now and when I leave, even though I have a few things I want to post about (I want to show you all the makeup I'm taking with me, because I'm pretty proud of how little I'm taking). So sorry in advance!

 

Weekly Nail: Precious Blue

After a week of going bare nailed, I really had to get some colour on my nails. I probably should go a little longer without painting them to try and get them a bit stronger.

I used Ulta3's Precious and the blue from the Be Mine mini set. After reading a review on a lovely bronze polish from Orly on Mishelle's Sleepy Time, I really wanted to use a bronze glitter. Alas, I don't own one and I couldn't find the new Face of Australia Glitterati polishes during the Priceline sale (I was keen to get Studio 54 to go over the blue), so I had to settle for gold. I really like the combination, but I would have rather have used chevron shaped stickers instead of the circular ones, but I couldn't find them. I did this for Groovin the Moo which was on Sunday because I wanted nails that stood out, and I think I succeeded.

As of today there are only 23 days until I leave the country! I'm getting kind of nervous, but I'm still super excited. I don't know how I'm going to go 8 months without seeing my dogs, eating Zamberos, or watching CTFxC every day, but I hope I'll be having to much fun to notice. I went shopping with Mum yesterday and she bought me an iPad mini for a graduation/birthday present! I haven't even opened it yet because I'm waiting to get a case and screen protector for it. I ended up buying a Batman case off ebay for it, because the boyfriend didn't want to be using an ipad with a pink polka dot case.

There's still so much to do, but and I'm working 5-6 shifts a week at the moment so on my days off I'm not too keen on the idea of cleaning up my room, packing, or anything that doesn't involve lying in bed watching TV (especially now it's getting cooler!)

Weekly Nail: Strawberry Ice Cream

Sorry this is a day late! Today is my Friday, and I've had a really busy week at work. I get one day off and then have to get straight back into it! I can't really complain though, gotta work to make money. I wasn't too sure how I was going to do my nails this week. I've been trying to decide what nail polish I should take overseas with me, and now I just need to figure out which pink to take! I have a lot of pinks, so I think I need to use a few to see which is my favourite.

Weekly Nail: Watermelon

I've been meaning to get out my Essie Bikini So Teeny collection for a while now, but have pushed it back for pastels. This week I wanted to use Mojito Madness , and decided to pair it with Off the Shoulder. This combination made me immediately think of watermelon and summer! I'm a lot happier with my polka dots this week, and took a bit more time to do them.

Off the Shoulder and Mojito Madness

Weekly Nail: Pastel Spots

I guess this is really similar to the nail art I did a few weeks ago, but I really liked it so I thought I'd give it another go!

Weekly Nail: Pink Army

This week I really wanted to use OPI Stranger Tides from the Pirates Collection. I've really been liking the khaki trend that's in at the moment, but I can't afford to buy any more clothes before I leave for England, so I thought I'd wear the trend on my nails instead!

OPI Stranger Tides and Chapel of Love

I was a bit too lazy this week to bother with nail art, so I decided instead to make my nails a little more interesting by pairing the khaki with a pink! I wasn't sure if I'd like the combination, but I'm pretty happy with how it looks. Chapel of Love is a polish my sister gave me when she moved last week, score! I don't think these photos really do it justice, it's a bit lighter in real life, more corally (my favourite!!) The khaki also fitted with work on Friday, as we're raising money for Fifth Army (a collaboration with Headspace - raising awareness of youth depression, bullying and homophobia). It's a great cause and I'm glad I get to help spread the word.

I'm sorry for my lack of posts lately! I've been super busy working (I did a 6 day week!) and I didn't get any time where I could take photos :( I'm going to try planning a bit better from now on so I have a few posts ready to go. Bad blogger.

It's now exactly 2 months till I arrive in London and I'm getting more and more excited each day. I've been spending a lot of my free time looking up travel websites at all the places we can go to.
Unfortunately we can't actually book anything till we get there, because we're going to be working and haven't found out exactly where yet. We are there for a while so it should be easy to get enough time to organise trips to everywhere we want to go (maybe not everywhere we want to go, because we literally want to go everywhere). We don't have a return date set yet, so we might not come back until we've seen everything. I'm going to try spend my time off this week doing a big clean out and hopefully putting some of my clothing on ebay, or at least getting rid of them!

What are you wearing on your nails?

Weekly Nail: Easter Eggs

Recenlty I was inspired by a post from Bellabox on facebook to create lovely pastel nails with a lot of my polish stash. I've managed to try this a couple of times, as you can see from my 'my life in pictures' post from last week. I'm totally in love with doing my nails like this and I still have so many ideas so you haven't seen the last of it yet!!

 I used OPI Italian Love Affair on my thumb, middle finger and spots on my ring finger, Ulta3 lollypop lilac on my pointer, Essie Bikini So Teeny on my ring finger and spots on my thumb, and the bright pink from my Ulta3 mini's set in be mine. I used a bobby pin to get the polka dots, which I think worked quite well.

I've really been loving using Bikini So Teeny and Lollypop Lilac when I'm doing my nails, and this combination especially reminds me of Easter! I also feel like I'm finally getting somewhere with growing my nails. I know, they're still very short, but they feel stronger! The skin around my nails is very irritated at the moment for some reason, so I think a lot of moisturising is in order.I'm still being really boring lately. Really all that's been happening is work, and I've been picking up as many shifts as I can get. I've been really lucky managing to cover shifts for people lately, so I've been stressing about money less. I managed to get some money exchanged to pounds this week too, because the exchange rate is definitely in our favour at the moment (£0.69 per $1 AUD) and hopefully it can stay that way for a while, haha. I'm going to exchange some Euro's soon for traveling too! There's just over 2 months till we leave, which means I'm going to have to start thinking about packing up my room (because I'll want to move out soon after I leave, and so my parents can use my room for whatever while I'm away, haha) and think about what I want to bring with me! I'm also thinking about selling some stuff on ebay (mostly clothes) and maybe have a blog sale for some of my makeup (although it's not really worth anything so I'd be better off just giving it away). I also want to do a lot of baking before I leave because I don't know how much baking I'll get to do in England, and I'd love to do some posts here about what I'm baking (I'm planning on baking a Malteser and Frangellico cheesecake soon!) I've also joined bloglovin' so feel free to follow me there if you haven't already imported all your contacts due to the impending doom of no more google reader/gfc. I'm not actually sure what's going to happen when google reader gets shut down, nor do I really understand/like bloglovin' but I thought I'd give y'all the option!

Don't forget to enter my giveaway here!

Weekly Nail: Tea and Ice Cream

This week I knew I wanted to use Earl Grey, but wasn't sure what else I could add. I toyed with the idea of adding some polishes from the Essie Summer collection Bikini So Teeny, but thought they would be too bright. Then I saw this post on The Dainty Squid and knew I needed some gold and pastel blue.

I ended up using Ulta3 Earl Grey and Precious, along with MUA Pistachio Ice Cream. I really love this colour combination! I think I'm getting better at using nail stickers, the lines here are much cleaner than my previous tries. I still need to work on my patience and let the polish dry completely before I do anything so it doesn't go lumpy. I don't think it helped that I put Pistachio Ice Cream over Earl Grey, and Pistachio Ice Cream goes on very streaky, so I needed more coats than I would have liked. I also made it more difficult by using the gold in the middle, and Pistachio Ice Cream wouldn't go on well over Precious so I had to use a whole lot more nail stickers, and time, than I would have liked.

Not much has been going on in my life lately since I got back from Brisbane. I've been working a fair bit which is great as I need all the money I can get for my UK trip, and I caught up with friends over dinner one night which was lovely. I've also been getting back into Tumblr recently, so if you're on there you can see mine here.

What are you wearing on your nails this week?

Weekly nail: Green

Here's a little nail look I did using Rimmel Lasting Finish Misty Jade, Rimmel 60 seconds Sky High and Ulta3 Mermaid Green. It seems Misty Jade is getting quite old and is running out - it's so gluggy and I'm finding it hard getting enough polish on my brush to get decent coverage. I haven't actually used Mermaid Green before, it's such a lovely colour I think I should get it out more. I still can't seem to get the hang of manicure guide stickers, no matter how much I use them I always end up with uneven lines and texture. This wasn't my favourite guide either but I couldn't find the ones I wanted to use. I'm going to try using guide stickers more often so I can really get the hang of them.

left hand

right hand

This past week has been really great. I flew up to Brisbane on Wednesday evening with my boyfriend and another friend. We stayed on the 24th (top) floor, overlooking some of the city, which the boys enjoyed but I really didn't (I'm a little scared of heights. The flight wasn't fun either.) On Thursday it was meant to thunderstorm so we decided to hit up Wet'n'Wild instead of Movieworld like we had originally planned. Turned out to be a good move because it was practically empty! I think the longest we waited was about 20 minutes. When we got in, we went straight on the newest slide - the Aqua Loop (which has a huge almost free-fall, then a loop-de-loop) before I could realise how scary it actually was. I seriously have no words! We went on almost every ride twice, and almost went on the aqua loop again, but I chickened out and had to do the walk of shame down the stairs. No regrets.

We found a really nice pub (Criterion for anyone is interested) which had great (cheap) food and even cheaper beers. Friday was spent shopping and walking around the city with an early night ready for breakfast with some friends in the Valley before Soundwave on Saturday! It was incredible and not as big as I expected, Grooving the Moo being the biggest festival I've been to. Blink were just as amazing as I expected and I managed to stay close to the front, even though it got me covered in sweat (tmi?). I also saw Paramore, All Time Low, a bit of Sum 41 and The Offspring, Bullet for my Valentine, and possibly my favourite for the day Motion City Soundtrack.
I think it got me even more excited to go to England, if that's even possible, because I hadn't been on a holiday in a really long time.

Weekly Nail: Pistachio and Peach

This week I thought I'd share a mani done with two polishes that are new to my collection. Both polishes I've actually never used before, and I couldn't decide between them so I went with both!

I used Revlon Peach Smoothie, from their scented collection, and MUA Pistachio Ice Cream from my latest MUA haul.

Peach Smoothie is a lovely pastel orange colour with a slight shimmer, which I managed to pick up at Priceline for $5 a few weeks ago. It applies quite sheer but builds colour easily, with only 3 coats needed to get opaque. It was definitely the easiest of the two to apply. It does have a little peach scent to it when it's dry, but it's quite a chemically smell and not that strong, so I wouldn't purchase if the only reason you're getting it is for the scent. For some reason it dried with a lot of bumps! All the nails with this polish on seem to have them.

I was really expecting a more greeny colour from Pistachio Ice Cream, so I was a bit disappointed when it dried more blue than green. This is without a doubt the streakiest polish I've ever used! The brush is really coarse and small, and to get a decent coverage you really need a lot of polish on the brush. It wasn't too bad after 3 coats (2 heavy coats would have done, but I made the mistake of doing a really thin first coat) and it evened out a little. The wear time on this is not great. I had chipping on almost all of the nails with this polish the day after I applied it (and used Sally Hansen Diamond Shine Base and Top Coat). None of the nails with Revlon nails had chipped yet! I'm a bit dissapointed with this polish, but I can't really complain for a polish that's worth all of about $1.50 (and I got it half price too). I would like to try some more MUA polishes when I get to the UK and I have my eye on Mud Pie, so hopefully that works out better.

Weekly Nail: Sparkle Grey

I've been wanting to pull out Ulta3 Earl Grey for a while now since swatching my nail polish collection. I thought it might be a little boring on it's own, so I decided to pair it with Australis' Crystal Colour Top Coat after rediscovering it after seeing it on MaterialGurl88. Earl Grey is one of the best Ulta3 polishes I own. It's opaque in 2 thin coats, and it applies really nicely and smooth, which is great because I haven't used a polish like that in a while. I think it's the perfect grey colour. Australis' Crystal Top Coat is a great flakie polish. It can be a bit gloopy (I've had it for a while now so maybe that's why) and you need 3 coats to get a really good coverage of flakes. It takes a while to dry and because of that it ended up quite bumpy looking.

I managed to go a whole day wearing this without any chipping, which is pretty good for my nails. They did chip a bit when I did body pump this morning, but not badly enough that a little touch up couldn't get them looking new again.

This weekend I did a lot of trip planning with my boyfriend. We booked a place to stay in London when we arrive in the UK and decided what we'd do that day (yes, we're seriously that prepared). I also went out and bought a huge suitcase that's bright blue, and then spent wayyyy too much money on a cute travel diary, a pen with anchor and boats and ships all over it, and monthly diary from Kiki K. They're cute so hopefully I end up using them and not wasting my money. This is also the first year I haven't been able to buy stationary for school (that was always my favourite part about going back to school!) and I got a little upset when I saw stationary being sold everywhere last month, so I guess this is a little pick me up, hehe.

What are you wearing on your nails at the moment?

Weekly Nail: Italian Lemon Drop

This manicure was inspired Sophia from Tattooed Tealady's manicure, where I thought the pastel pink and yellow (which turns out was actually an orange, but looked a little yellow in the photo, whoops) looked lovely together.

I decided to use Rimmel's I love lasting finish in Lemon Drop and OPI Italian Love Affair, and use Sally Hansen Diamond Shine base and top coat.

Lemon Drop could possibly be the worst polish I've used. Sure, the colour is lovely but it is such a pain to apply! It took 3-4 coats to get opaque, and it still wasn't really even. The polish doesn't even out at all like most do, so you end up adding more and more coats to try and get it even. The first 2 light coats dried in a reasonable amount of time, but to get the polish even you need to use a heavy coat, which took ages to dry . Apparently this is supposed to be scented when dry too. Couldn't smell a thing. I'm glad I didn't have to pay for this (it was in a Priceline goody bag I got during their 30 days of priceline). I have 2 other colours from this collection, Pop! and Misty Jade, and although Misty Jade is basically just as bad, Pop! seems to apply just fine.

I decided to pair it with Italian Love Affair, which is another polish I usually have problems with, but it turned out to be great this time. Just one coat over the yellow was enough.

As for Sally Hansen's Diamond Shine base and top coat, I'm not sure if it's the kind of base coat I need to be using (My nails are horrible, and I accidentally picked this out instead of the Diamond Strength Instant Nail hardener) but I might be replacing Seche Vite with this as a top coat (as Seche Vite isn't 3 free).

It's a real shame that the yellow is so bad, as these colours go so well together. It also seems that I'm finally getting the hang of using nail guide stickers. Most of the lines on this manicure turned out really well. :D

Do you have any polishes you just can't stand? What are you wearing on your nails at the moment?

Weekly Nail: Mod-ern Girl

I got this polish for Christmas off a friend, and I thought I'd wear it when I went down the coast this weekend. OPI Mod-ern Girl is an orange with a slight coral tinge. It's the kind of polish that looks completely different in different lighting, and under certain lighting it looks a lot more orange than it looks in sunlight. Although it's a lovely colour (and the kind of colour I've been loving to wear lately), unfortunately it's not the best formula. It's quite thin and needs 3 coats to become even and opaque. 

Again, my nails are looking pretty terrible sorry! I've run out of the base coat I've been using (Sally Hansen Maximum Growth) and I really need something that's going to strengthen my nails.

Do you have any products you use to keep your nails healthy? What colours have you been wearing on your nails lately?