OPI Euro Centrale minis!

The OPI Euro Centrale collection has been out for a while now, I know. I never really paid much attention to it before I went to Europe. But now I've been to Eastern Europe, the area which these polishes base their names from, I've opened my eyes and realised how pretty these colours actually are! They're like little souvenirs of my adventures! I was eyeing the larger bottles off towards the end of my travels, and although I knew there was a mini collection somewhere, I was going to wait and buy a few full sized bottles when I got to duty free in Sydney airport. But of course, they didn't have them. But then my lovely friend Patty bought these for me when we went for coffee recently because she's amazing.

The mini collection consists of 4 colours,

Can't find my Czechbook - Bluey teal. It also makes use of a pun that got extremely overused while in Prague.

Suzi's Hungary AGAIN! - Coraly Red. Another overused pun from my trip.

You're such a BudaPest - Grey toned purple. This joke also doesn't work if you're using the Hungarian pronunciation - 'Budapesht'.

OY - Another Polish Joke! - Yellow gold glitter with a clear base.

Can't find my Czechbook and You're such a BudaPest both apply opaque with about 3 coats, Suzi's Hungary AGAIN! only takes 2 coats, and the glitter takes about 4 coats, and that's with a colour as a base. The glitter in OY-Another Polish joke is really tiny, and quite sparse. When I applied it over 1 coat of You're such a BudaPest, I needed 4 coasts to get a decent coverage, and could have even gone another coat. That being said, because the glitter is so tiny, you could get away with just using one thin coat over other polishes to give them a nice gold shimmer. If you're looking for a full on gold glitter, I would suggest trying Ulta3 Precious (if you can get your hands on it).
There is a little bit of shimmer in You're such a Budapest, but you can only really notice it in certain lights, like in direct sunlight. Unfortunately it doesn't photograph, so I can't show you.
They wear like your average polish. I usually find I get chipping the day I apply polish, which I found with Can't find my Czechbook, but I've worn You're such a BudaPest for a day now and had no chips! This was over Essence Studio Nails XXL nail thickener, and only had Essence nail art express dry drops put on top.

Can't find my Czechbook, Suzi's Hungary AGAIN!, You're such a BudaPest, OY-Another Polish Joke.

Natural Light

Sunlight

I think the mini's are an excellent way of allowing you to own a lot of a collection, without having to spend all your money on full sized bottles. They can be quite annoying to apply, as you need to make sure the brush is really full of polish to avoid the polish going on unevenly.
This set also had the colours I wanted from the collection, except for Polka.com which is a really beautiful blue, teal and purple glitter.

OY-Another Polish joke and You're such a BudaPest

Can't find my Czechbook

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: 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!

Wish List: Nail Polish

Nail polish is the product that basically ignited my love for makeup. I started collecting them around the start of last year and now I have a collection of over 60. My family seems to think I have all the colours I would ever need, but I'm sure you can all agree with me that you can never have enough nail polishes!

1. Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear White On  

2. Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure I Pink Can   3. China Glaze For Audrey   

 4. OPI Berlin There Done That     5. Australis Space Jam    6. Essie Matte About You

I don't actually have a white nail polish and it would be great to use in nail art (I recently accidentally bought Maybelline Marshmallow thinking it was white and was very disappointed). I saw I Pink I Can on Lilit's blog as a match for MAC's Viva Glam Niki Lipstick, a lipstick I love the colour of but don't (yet) own. I love pink polishes and don't have a shade like I Pink I Can yet (although might be close to my BYS Isn't She Lovely polish - which isn't a great quality polish anyway). I'd also love to try the Complete Salon Manicure range.

I don't own any China Glaze polishes yet, and of the few (Ok, I want all of them) I want, For Audrey really stands out. I love pastel bluey greens, and I don't think I have anything like it in my collection.

OPI Berlin There Done that is another polish unlike anything I own. I really want a nice taupey shade and this looks perfect. I'm a little obsessed with the entire German/ Holland/Euro collections because I'm excited about going to Europe this year, haha.

Space Jam is from the new collection of glitter polishes that Australis has brought out. It's a purple jelly with blue glitter, and although some reviews say it's quite gluggy, for some reason I still want it anyway!

I don't have any matte polishes and have been thinking about getting a matte top coat so I can turn any of my polishes matte (doubling my nail polish collection with just one polish? Yes please!). I was going to get the BYS one, but after seeing some reviews it doesn't seem to work that well. Essie's Matte About You seems like one of the better matte top coats, and I'm going to try and hunt it down when Myer has an Essie sale (they always seem to be on sale there!). I also noticed that Essence have a matte top coat that is comparable with the Essie one, but after a quick look in Target and Priceline it doesn't seem to be available in Australia! If anyone knows of any great matte top coats that I could find easily in Australia, please let me know!!

What polishes are on your wish list?

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?

Coral Polish.

After my last (last as in previous, and because I'm no longer allowed to buy polish) nail polish haul, I've had a look through my nail polish collection. It's grown enormously over the last 6 or so months, and I'm starting to get a lot of similar colours. I've had a bit of an obsession with corals lately, meaning I've collected a fair few coral polishes. Here are the 6 corals (or close enough) that I have in my collection. I do love all of these, but I am still on a hunt for the perfect coral (which would be OPI Tropical Punch, which is discontinued and I can't find it online). However, these will tide me over until I use up some polishes and am allowed to buy more again.

OPI - I Eat Maily Lobster. This is my favourite of the 6. I got this for Christom my Dad (my sister had also bought it for me online but Dad didn't know, woops) after I've been wanting it for months. It's the darkest of the 6 and also has a slight gold shimmer to it.

Essie - Cute as a button. This is my second favourite colour. It's more of a pink toned coral. However, it's probably my least favourite formula of the lot, with an annoyingly small brush and long drying time. I'm not a fan of Essie's formulas, but I do like the colours once I've actually got them on my nails.

Ulta3 - Watermelon. This is the darkest coral I own, and my favourite of my Ulta3 polishes. I've talked about how much I love Ulta3 before so I don't need to say any more.

Rimmel 60 Seconds - 415 Instyle Coral. This coral is more orange toned. It also was the polish that went on the most un-evenly.

Australis - Todays News. Ok, this one might not be exactly a coral, but I'm adding it in because it reminds me of tropical punch. I prefer my corals to be more pink toned than orange, so I think this is a fantastic colour.

Face of Australia - Would you Like Some Orange Sherbet. Ok, again, not a coral, but if the Australis polish is included I thought this should be. I like the pink tones in this orange (which, ok, I may be imagining) so to me it's kind of a pastel coral. Click here for NOTD using this colour.

Clockwise from thumb: Today's News, Cute as a Button, Instyle Coral, I Eat Mainley Lobster, Watermelon.

NOTD: pastel rainbow

(l-r) OPI Italian Love Affair, Face of Australia Would You like some Orange Sherbet, Rimmel lasting finish Misty Jade, Face of Australia Blue Moon, Australis Peek-a-boo.

Ever since I painted my nails like this, I can't stop looking at my hands. I think doing rainbow nails is a really great idea when you can't decide what colour to paint them, but you're too lazy to do any nail art. I did 2 coats of each polish (except Blue Moon which has 3) and used Seche Vite as a top coat. It's stood up surprisingly well, this photo was taken after a long shift at work unpacking stock (which usually destroys my nails). I might put OPI Rainbow Connection over the top when it starts chipping, but at the moment I'm content with it as it is.

I also bought some Ulta3 yesterday, which I can't wait to use (although I'm not excited enough to take off this manicure) and share. I've been lusting after the China Glaze Holiday Joy collection, but found a few lookalikes from ulta3.

What do you think of different coloured nails? And what polishes are you lusting over at the moment?