Nature Republic EPP402

My aunt gave me 5 polishes from Nature Republic for Christmas, which I think I've heard of, but I've never actually seen the store of/the place where it's sold. If I'm not mistaken, it's a Korean brand (there are words written in Korean on the label on the base of the bottle). Though if it has a name in Korean, I wouldn't know, because I can't read Korean.

My cousin also experienced his first Christmas away from home, as he's studying in the UK now. He spent it with our uncle who lives in England. I've always wondered, when I watch movies, why there are bucketloads of presents under the tree, whereas in my home, one half of the base is surrounded by presents which aren't even piled on top of one another.

I never found out the answer until we were on Skype with my cousin and he said that each person buys a present for everyone who's attending the Christmas celebration at whatever place they're at. Even my youngest cousin, who's... um.. I can't remember her age, but she's still little, bought a present for everyone. I guess my older cousin felt awkward because everyone was giving him gifts and he didn't get anything for anyone.

Apart from that, everyone can't open all their presents at once (we do that over here like the buffet's about to close), instead, they have to open each present, one by one. The point of this is to see each person's reaction to the present they open. Which would be absolutely terrible for me, because I am terrible at reactions. I guess whether I like it or not, it'll show on my face, but I'm not the type to have outbursts of joy when I get something I really like, you know?

So maybe I'd have to practise my reactions a little, in case I ever get stuck into some situation like that.

Anyway, EPP402.. I don't like it when polishes don't have names because names are easier than codes/numbers. So I'll rename this Midnight. I wish I could look out the window at 12am and see this in the sky.

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of this. It was better than I expected. I did two coats. The top coat (China Glaze Fast Forward) dragged it a little but I tried not to put so much pressure on the brush with my right hand.

Midnight is a very dark, almost black, purple with fine purple and a bit of pink and blue shimmer. The shimmer's not apparent unless it's in bright light. This looks pretty much black in normal light. The wear was quite alright, but I had some peeling after the previous mani and some parts of my nails were thinner than others and more prone to chipping. I wanted to change my mani too, so I messed around with this one and got a couple more chips and decided I could finally change it :D

The first 3 photos were taken in sunlight and the rest under my desk lamp.

The only minor problem I had with this polish was the brush. It was insanely short. I have no idea how I'm going to get to the bottom of the bottle, ever. It also had an uneven length. I did like that it was wide though.

I forgot to mention, I spilled half of what was left in my bottle of nail polish remover, which was quite a lot. Dammit. This happens every time. After spilling, I close it after taking what I need, but I need to get more quite often, so I have to keep opening it and closing it. So after a few manis I decide to leave it open and the moment I do that, I spill it.

I'm going to wake up early and go out for breakfast tomorrow. I love breakfast (:

Nail Polish - Nikko Gray (song)

Yes, you read that right. It's a song. About nail polish. I haven't heard any of the names I assume are polish names in the song, but...

A song about nail polish?!

A friend of mine sent it to me, and I thought it was awesome. The opening verse: "Pull it out my file, Gimme a base coat, Wait a little while". Except... The lyrics on the page spell 'lacquer' wrongly. But who cares about spelling when Nikko Gray is singing about one of my favourite things in the whole world?

Hah. This could not be filled with any more awesome. Click *here* to go to the song page. I think I like the end of the song. (:

Color Club Coastal Creme

I had an amazing dream a couple of nights ago. I dreamt that my aunt had returned from her one month long work stint in the UK, and she brought a lot, and I meant A LOT of polishes back for me. And I was happily arranging them according to color. I was upset when I woke up because the dream was very realistic. ):

I've been using China Glaze Fast Forward top coat. On one hand, I'm pleased with the drying time, since I've never used a fast drying top coat before. On the other hand, I absolutely HATE the smell. It gives me headaches. It's a sickly almost sweet smell, very overpowering. I'm nauseous from the smell. It's absolutely disgusting. After 12 hours I can still smell it a little. But now that I've discovered fast drying top coats (I know, which cave have I been living in?), being able to paint my nails at midnight, how can I go back to regular ones?

Anyway, the interview was a lot more complicated than I expected, but at least I managed to answer a few of the questions well. I hope. I also literally bumped into my high school classmate who was studying at the campus itself. Luckily it was someone I knew, because he was walking in a big group, and he wasn't looking where he was walking and it would've been extremely awkward if we were strangers.

I had to send my grandmother to the hospital for a check-up. The consultant orthopaedic surgeon was my mom's uncle. This probably means I can get a free consultation too :D  I also woke up at 4pm today, after sleeping for 12 hours. And I woke up too late to take my grandmother to the supermarket to buy vegetables because we're apparently out of vegetables. Woops. 

This is my first Color Club, and I am pleased with it, despite the lack of pigmentation in the polish. It had a good consistency and the brush was alright. The pictures are terrible though, so don't judge the polish by the pictures.

I did this on New Year's eve, at midnight, while the fireworks were going off. Yup. Story of my life. I originally did 3 coats but I was dissatisfied with the streaks I saw so I did another coat, even though I'd already put on top coat. So altogether that's 4 coats of the Color Club Coastal Creme and 2 layers of top coat, plus one base coat.

I guess it was the thickness that killed it, because I could see it starting to detach from the corners of my nails. Okay, note to self, paint less coats in the future.

Coastal Creme is a pale pink off-white creme. It's very light, but definitely not white. Depending on the light, it sometimes looks a bit too orange-y for me, but I liked the color overall. I did a terrible job on clean-up, so bear with me. All photos were taken in natural light.

 

It sometimes looks like this, which bugged me a little.

It'll be over a week before my aunt comes back, so maybe I'll have a couple more dreams about getting bucketloads of polish. I wonder if she did get my anything. Hmm.

Also, I have a game for you today! Can you guess what brand/name this color drop is?

I just realised I haven't watched a single football match since last year. Damn :/

You might have noticed that I now have a twitter button on my sidebar. Yup, got my blog a Twitter account! Now you'll know what I have on my nails at any one time, since by the time I post something, I've usually already changed my polish. 

Glitters on white

(Picture heavy)

I just realised that this post would've had 13 photos, but I think I'll split it. The best I could do was 10 in one post and the rest.. in another post.

(I'm typing this as I watch a Swedish film dubbed in English, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo. I'm 'learning' to make meatballs. Wet your fingers before rolling and always counter-clockwise. Maybe I won't have to go to Ikea for meatballs now.)

After a couple of days, my hands got itchy, but I wasn't ready to take China Glaze White on White off yet. So, I decided to layer something on it. But I couldn't decide on just one thing to layer on it. So I went with as many things as I could find.

Today I'll show you what I had on my left hand, because what I had on my right hand was completely different. I had 5 coats of China Glaze White on White and an uncountable amount of glitter on each nail. All photos were taken in artificial light.

 

L-R: OPI Show It & Glow It, Elianto Glitter Silver, China Glaze Party Hearty (here on white), OPI Simmer & Shimmer.

 

 

Blurred to show the sparkles.

I think I just saw an Ikea clock in the background of the movie!

Now for the individual pictures, because they were way too pretty to pass up.

First I tried OPI Show It & Glow It as a tip.

 

Then I decided I wanted a gradient instead.

 

Everything I wrote about OPI Show It & Glow It is here.

 

Elianto Glitter Silver is small mostly square, some rectangular and some irregular silver glitter with silver micro glitter which could've been tiny pieces of the larger glitter that broke off. Everything else I wrote about this polish can be found here (note that this was while I was still using the .png format on my photos, so loading might take awhile)

 

China Glaze Party Hearty (large hexagonal red glitter, medium hexagonal green glitter, small hexagonal gold glitter and small square glitter). I decided not to do a gradient with this one because I liked it like this. I wish I had a dress like this, white with sequined hem.

 

The same thing happened with OPI Simmer & Shimmer as with Show It & Glow It. I didn't do a full mani with S&S, so I don't have a link to that.

OPI Simmer & Shimmer has mostly blue, silver, gold, orange, pink and green hexagonal glitter, with smaller blue &silver/gold square glitter

 

Okay that was long. The movie just ended. It was great! Although there were some parts I didn't really get because I wasn't paying attention, because I was trying to type this post.

Day #2 of 2011, so far, so good. Hopefully the rest of this year will be great (:  Have you guessed my current polish yet?

Blackberry Bling

First, HAPPY NEW YEAR! (It's past 12am already)

I'm sure you can guess what I was doing to "celebrate" the coming of 2011. Painting my nails with some (kind of) new polishes.

I'm not one for new year celebrations, because the one and only time I've gone out to celebrate, I got sprayed with that foam spray thing, had to squeeze through many people in the crowd, and on top of that, I had to drive through a massive traffic jam. So, that one time has really put me off celebrations in public places.

Anyway, while I still had China Glaze White On White on, I decided to try my first Blackberry Bling mani with China Glaze Party Hearty. I was really excited about using Party Hearty, because.. it's awesome. Who can disagree?

Party Hearty has large hexagonal red glitter, medium hexagonal green glitter, small hexagonal gold glitter and small square glitter. It just screams Christmas. I'm so glad I managed to get this online before it sold out completely everywhere (something I failed to do with OPI Mad As A Hatter).

Here is 5 coats of China Glaze White On White with one coat of Party Hearty. All taken in artificial light. I did kind of cheat and placed some glitter on spots that looked empty. It will need top coat if you need it to be smooth.

Ignore the sheet marks on my nails.

I didn't do much texting while I had this on, so I didn't get to enjoy much of the bling.

I have an interview for my university application on Monday, hopefully all goes well. I think I've chosen the polish that comes as close to perfect as it can for the occasion. You'll never guess what it is, but you can try ;)