April 2018 Favourites

Usually I start off my monthly favourites posts with some comment about how the past month has gone really quickly and how I can't believe that it's time for monthly favourites again.  Well this month is a little different.  April hasn't gone by really quickly, but it also hasn't gone by slowly either.  I think April has gone by at a good pace.  Hopefully the rest of the year goes by at a nice pace and not too quickly.  Anyway, today I have my favourite things that I have been loving this month.

Nail Art

This month has been a good month for me and nail art.  Well at least I think so.   I have done quite a lot of nail art (probably because I haven't been swatching as many polishes and have been playing a lot with stamping plates instead).  I definitely struggled to narrow down my favourites again.
 

Stamping Plates 

As I mentioned, I have played with quite a few stamping plates over this past month and there have been a couple of stand outs for me.
 

Lina Nail Art Supplies Totally Negative 02

Full sized images are always my favourite type of images to use and negative space images always make for great manis.  I loved the first plate in this series and I love this one just as much.
 

Image from Lina Nail Art Supplies

Uberchic Beauty Collection 25

I really like Uberchic's collections.  They are always full of fantastic images and Collection 25 is no exception.  You know a plate is good when you struggle to decide what to use first and have a bunch of mani ideas for other images.  That is me with these plates (particularly 25-02 and 25-03).
 

Image from Uberchic

Indie Polishes 

Oh indie polishes have stolen my heart again this month.   Although come to think of it, I don't think I have played with any new mainstream polishes in April.  How interesting.  Anyway, so many stunning indie polishes in April!
 

Emily de Molly April Releases

Emily de Molly killed it with their release this month.  Seriously, there are soooo many amazing polishes in this collection.  It's probably one of my favourite releases that they have done...maybe.  Hayley really makes my job of deciding favourites hard!
 

Emily de Molly Created By Man (Polish PickUp April)

I'm slowly becoming obsessed with thermal nail polishes and Emily de Molly make some amazing thermals.  Created By Man is easily one of my favourites.
 

Picture taken in light box (cold state)

Emily de Molly Limited Editions March

I am a little late in swatching the Limited Edition polishes that were released in March but better late than never.  I do love LE90 and LE91.  Both are such awesome polishes.
 

Grace-full Nail Polish A Day At The Beach Collection

We all know that I am a sucker for bright coloured polishes and Grace-full have released a collection full of them which I love.
 

Dance Legend Enigma Polishes

I'm really not sure if Dance Legend are considered as "indie" or "mainstream".  Some people say indie, others say mainstream so your guess is as good as mine.  What I do know is that there are two polishes that I have fallen in love with this month - Mea Tulpa and Meanwhile.
 

That's everything I have been loving this month.  Next month, I have a bunch of new things to play with from plates (which aren't really new but I still haven't played with them yet) to polishes (both mainstream and indie) and a new (to me) brand!  I am excited for May!  I don't plan on daily blogging next month but looking at my planner I will still be blogging five to six times a week anyway.  So until then....

Emily de Molly March 2018 Limited Edition Polishes - Swatches & Review

I know I have mentioned this a few times now but I have now officially up to date with swatching all of the polishes I have purchased this year.  Now to just get on top of these stamping plates of mine... that's a job for another day.   Luckily for me the end of the year isn't just around to corner.  Anyway, today I have the three limited edition polishes I picked up from Emily de Molly back in March.

LE90 is a bright pink holo with silver holographic micro glitters.  I love this one - I mean it's pink, holo and has an awesome formula.  What isn't to love about it?  I used two coats for my swatches.

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in direct sunlight

Picture taken in direct sunlight

LE91 is a dark green base with subtle pink to green multichrome shimmer and gold holographic glitter.  I love this one!  The colour is stunning and I love the multichrome shimmer!  I wish I could have gotten better photographs of this one.  The weather did not play nicely!  Anyway, the formula is fantastic and is opaque in two coats.

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in overcast sunlight

LE92 is a light turquoise green crelly with silver and lime glitters and subtle gold and blue shimmers.  This is a really nice colour.  I really like the shimmer and the added green glitters for something different.  The formula is easy to use and didn't require any fishing for the larger pieces of glitter.  I used two coats for my swatch, however I do question if I should have done a third coat or not.

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in light box

I'm so happy to have these polishes in my collection.  I definitely want to reswatch LE91.  I really want to share how beautiful this polish is!

It Girl Nail Art IG101 Stamping Plate - Swatches & Review

Happy weekend everyone! It really doesn't feel like the weekend to me (we had a public holiday on Wednesday so it has thrown me out with what day of the week it really is).  This weekend is quite a busy one for us so I imagine it is going to fly by but it will be a fun weekend so no complaints there.  Today I have another It Girl Stamping Plate to share with you.  This is the IG101 stamping plate.

Image from It Girl Nail Art

Sometimes when I am swatching polishes I either a) don't want to take the polish off or b) get inspired to do some nail art over it.  Well this polish fell into both of those categories.  I really love how this mani turned out.  For my base I used Emily de Molly Sample 598 and stamped using Essie's Penny Talk.

I had a lot of fun with this next mani and love the result.  This is one mani I could happily wear for a week (maybe - a week is quite a commitment for me when it comes to nails).  Polishes used are Color Club French Tips (base), Out Of The Blue and Darling Clementine.

Big fan of this stamping plate.  There are some really cool designs and they stamp well. 

The IG101 plate is available now from It Girl Nail Art.

26 Great Nail Art Ideas: Creatures With Scales

It's 26 Great Nail Art Ideas challenge time again!  This week's theme is creatures with scales.  As soon as I saw the word scales I knew I had to grab out the dragon scale image from Powder Perfect.  I think this is by far my favourite scale image ever!  It's so much better and more detailed than it looks in my mani today.

For my base I used A-England Saint George, Princess Sabra and Dragon.  Image is from Powder Perfect's Kings & Castles 1 stamping plate.

I am going to guess that we will be seeing a lot of mermaid manis this week. 

An InLinkz Link-up

Emily de Molly Samples 2018 - Swatches

Apart from three polishes, my swatch racks are currently empty.  That is a little scary but exciting all at the same time.  It's exciting because it means I can officially tick off my goal of swatching all the polishes I purchased in 2017 (woohoo) and I am on track for swatching all of the polishes I have purchased this year.  That being said I do have more polishes on their way to me, so hopefully I can stay on track.  Anyway, today I have three sample polishes I picked up from Emily de Molly in January (I think).  As they aren't available I won't talk about them too much, I'll just share my swatches.

Sample 433.  My swatch shows two coats.

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in light box with flash

Picture taken outdoors in overcast sunlight

Picture taken outdoors in overcast sunlight

Sample 465.  I wish I had better lighting for this.  It has the most beautiful shimmer through it but I couldn't capture it.  My swatch shows three coats. 

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in light box

Sample 598.  My swatch shows two coats.

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in light box

I do like having a few samples in my collection.  Makes me feel a little special knowing that I have a one off polish.  And limited edition polishes.  I like having really limited edition polishes.  

Do you like having samples in your collection?

Uberchic Beauty Collection Twenty Five Stamping Plates - Swatches & Review

PRESS SAMPLE

New plates!  You can never go wrong with new plates!  Ok, well maybe you can, but I do love Uberchic's stamping collections.  There is usually so many fantastic designs within each collection and Collection Twenty Five is no exception.  I actually had trouble deciding which images I was going to use first.  That's definitely not a bad problem to have is it?  Lol.  Enough babbling, let's get onto the swatches and review!

Image from Uberchic Beauty

25-01

There are some really cool designs on this first plate.  I particularly love the layering images, the image in the top left corner, and the bottom two on the left side.  I'm not sure how I feel about the massive image in the top right corner.  I feel like it may be a little big and a lot of the details may get lost once it's on the nails.  

Image from Uberchic Beauty

I could not resist the floral layered image on this plate.  I think it's so pretty.  I'm still working on trying to layer images properly.  I think it may be one of those things that I will never get 'perfect'.  For my base I used Essie Backseat Bestie and stamped using Hit The Bottle As Black As Night and Powder Perfect's White Stamping Polish.

Again, these image layers I just couldn't resist!  Apparently I also love stamping with black and white with these images.  For my base I used Emily de Molly Sample 465 and stamped using Hit The Bottle As Black As Night and Powder Perfect's White Stamping Polish.

25-02

I think that this may be my favourite of the three plates.  There are so many awesome images that are right up my alley.  You can bet I will be getting a lot of use out of this plate.

Image from Uberchic Beauty

The first mani I did using this plate was a very simple one.  It looks so much prettier in person than in my picture.  For my base I used Emily de Molly LE75 and stamped using a pink polish from Ya Qin An.

This next image screamed black and white accent nail to me. I absolutely love it!  Polishes used are Color Club Right On!, Pretty Serious Cosmetics Presence and Absence.

25-03

This plate also has images that are right up my alley!  I am excited to use more of these images.

Image from Uberchic Beauty

It has been forever since I have done a simple gradient so I thought it was time to do one again.  For my gradient used Pretty Serious Cosmetics Bunny Foo Foo and Doodle Bug, and stamped using Powder Perfect's White Stamping Polish.

I was putting some polishes away when I rediscovered Emily de Molly's All The Feelings and I just had to use it.  I sponged it on over Emily de Molly Borrow Time and stamped using Hit The Bottle As Black As Night.

I am loving this collection.  There are so many awesome images, particularly on the second and third plates.  Now to just find some extra nail time so I can play some more.  

Collection Twenty Five is available now from Uberchic Beauty.

Topic Tuesdays: Nail Polish Backups

I stumbled across a new group on Instagram that looks like a little bit of fun.  Each Tuesday there is a different topic which everyone then talks about.  I believe some people do this on Instagram in a post, others do YouTube videos and maybe there are a couple of bloggers that do it too.  I'm really not sure who does it or who even started it but I thought that it would be fun to do some of the topics here and there.  Today's topic is Nail Polish Backups.  I actually considered doing a post like this some time ago but bumped it from my blog planner for other things.  I don't actually have swatches on my blog for a lot of these polishes so I will just include some bottle shots instead so you have a bit of a reference for what I am talking about.

Indie Polishes

Emily de Molly

I only have one back up that I have from Emily de Molly and that is Quest For Immortality.  This polish was originally released back in 2016 and has now been discontinued now.  It is one of my all time favourite polishes from EdM and while I probably won't ever get around to using my back up bottle and I so happy knowing that it is there.

I also have six bottles of Clean Up Crew.  Technically not a nail polish but I thought I would include it anyway. 
 

Grace-full Nail Polish

The only backup polishes I have from Grace-full Nail Polish is their base coat.  I believe I have about three back up bottles at the moment.  I say about three as one of the bottles is a refill bottle so it is a little larger. 

Powder Perfect

My Powder Perfect back ups include two bottles of the black stamping polish and one bottle of the white stamping polish.  I have gone through so many of these bottles in the past and will be very sad when I use up all of the back ups.
 

Pretty Serious Cosmetics

I have quite a few back ups from Pretty Serious Cosmetics - although honestly not as many as I had originally thought.  I thought I had a couple of bottles of Presence but I guess I have used them.  Oops.  Anyway, I have five bottles of Absence:

And a backup set of the Pastel Pets Collection.

Mainstream Polishes

 

China Glaze

Before I go into the details of which of the polishes I have I just want to mention that a lot of my backup polishes are actually slightly different colours than the originals.  Has anyone else found that? Some are a couple of shades different but then there are some shades that you could easily stick different labels on and you would never know that they were the same polish.  It's very frustrating especially since I have to buy my China Glaze polishes online.  I don't get to see the actual shade until it arrives here.

My backup China Glaze polishes include the Sunsational Cremes:

Glistening Snow, Plurple, For Audrey and At Vase Value (which is a prime example of how different the 'new' version is to the original)

Orly

Glowstick is by far my favourite neon yellow polish ever so it just makes sense for me to have a back up of it.  This is one of the back up polishes that I will be needing to break out very, very soon.

OPI

The brand that started my whole nail polish collection.  There are quite a few older polishes from OPI that I wished I had backups of but sadly I don't.  I do however have five bottles of Alpine Snow (it was my go to white until I discovered some other white polishes), Crown Me Already, Not Like The Movies, My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Pink Friday, What's With The Cattitude?

Crown Me Already:

Pink Friday:

I have also recently opened up my backup bottles of My Vampire Is Buff and Mod About You.

Sally Hansen 

My one and only backup Sally Hansen is the original Pacific Blue.  I think this is probably one of those polishes that most people have a back up of.

That is all of my backup polishes I currently have.  As I mentioned earlier, there are some polishes in my backups that I may not get around to using but I am ok with that.  I also am aware that it is quite strange that I have so many back ups of things like black and white polishes.  In my defense, a lot of the time I purchase them when I am trying to fill up my cart.  I figure they will get used at some point.

What are some of the back up polishes you own?