Shades of Phoenix - Let's Hear it for the Girls - Pt 2

Here is the second part of the collection released yesterday by Teneil from Shades of Phoenix.

Chloris - a light pink creme base with multi coloured, multi sized square and hex glitters. Three coats with Seche Vite.  The Mythology: Chloris is the goddess of flowers. 

I found I needed to wait for each coat to dry quite well before applying the next coat, otherwise if the brush moved any of the lower glitters, they would leave gaps in the creme base.  This polish looks kind of bumpy until you apply top coat, and then it looks smooth and oh so pretty.

Enyo - a deep rusty red jelly polish with multi sized red, orange and yellow glitters, some matte and some holo, with micro red glitters that give it a slight shimmer. Three coats with Seche Vite.
The Mythology: Enyo is the goddess of destructive war! 

Formula on this was really great, smooth and easy to apply with just a scattering of glitters.

Eris - a black jelly base with various iridescent glitters colour shifting glitters, including red to gold and orange to yellow. There are also fine blue to purple iridescent bars and small bright red glitters. Three coats with Seche Vite.  A little tricky to apply because of the bar glitters, but totally worth the effort.

The Mythology: Eris is the goddess of strife, discord, contention and rivalry.

Hermera - This one is the only one that can't be worn on it's own, it's a glitter topper in a clear base.  The glitters are copper, gold, rose gold and light pink hex glitters in various sizes and the sparkle projected from this is just gorgeous.  I layered two coats of Hermera over OPI Designer de better finished with Seche Vite.  The photos don't show just how stunningly gorgeous this was in real life - of course it was gold too, so I'm absolutely completely in love with this one. 

The Mythology: Hemera is the goddess of day time.

Persephone - this one is the limited edition polish and it has a deep plum purple base, with a blue/purple duochrome shimmer. There are also small purple glitters and lavender flakes in it. Three coats with Seche Vite.

The Mythology: Queen of the underworld and wife of Hades (God of the underworld)

Shades of Phoenix polishes are available on the Shades of Phoenix Etsy shop for $9.50AUD.  The Etsy shop only ships to Australia, but international ladies will soon be able to get these through Color4Nails.

Shades of Phoenix - Let's Hear it for the Girls - Pt 1

Aussie indie brand Shares of Phoenix opened her Etsy store tonight with her new collection "Let's Hear it for the Girls".  I have all nine polishes, including the Limited Edition, to share with you tonight and tomorrow night.

Artemis - a white creme/jelly base with rose pink hex's and small pink and gold holo glitters. There is lots of glitter int his one and it does look rather rough and bumpy until you put top coat on.  But as soon as you put top coat on everything levels out beautifully. Two coats with Seche Vite top coat.

If you're not familiar with Shades of Pheonix, then let me tell you that all the polishes are themed around Greek Mythology.  Therefore each polish has its matching mythology: Artemis was often described as the daughter of Zeus and Leto, and the twin sister of Apollo. She was the Hellenic goddess of the hunt, wild animals, wilderness, childbirth, virginity and protector of young girls, bringing and relieving disease in women; she often was depicted as a huntress carrying a bow and arrows.

Athena - deep red jelly base with small red hexes and matte black hexes.  Also a few large matte black hexes.  The jelly base for this one is gorgeous, just enough tint to hide the nail line, whilst still being super squishy. Three coats with Seche Vite.

The Mythology: Athena is the goddess of wisdom, courage, inspiration, civilization, law and justice, just warfare, mathematics, strength, strategy, the arts, crafts, and skill (busy lady).

Ceto - A dark teal jelly with small matte light green hex's, round aqua dots and small blue glitters. In full sun you can still see through this one to the nail line, but the jelly finish allows you to see through to al the layers of glitter providing heaps of depth.  Three coats with Seche Vite.

The Mythology: Ceto goddess of the dangers of the ocean and of sea monsters.

Mother is God 2.0 - a rustic plum creme base with rose coloured large holo hexes and small pink glitters.  Two coats with Seche Vite.  This is another polish that looks so much better with top coat then before top coat.  I applied my Seche Vite while the base polish was still wet, and I think the Seche Vite brush may have wiped some of the polish of the very top of the large hexes.  This made them shine through and sparkle so much more.  Really pretty.

This one isn't named after a greek goddess, rather this is what Teneil says about this polish. "This polish is dedicated to my mum. Mother Is God 1.0 was the first polish I ever made and I gave it to my mother for a Christmas gift and this is a second re-vamped version."

Shades of Phoenix polishes are available on the Shades of Phoenix Etsy shop for $9.50AUD.  The Etsy shop only ships to Australia, but International ladies will soon be able to get these through Color4Nails.

I'll be back tomorrow with the five other shades from this collection, which are totally worth the wait if you are trying to decided before placing an order.

Polishes provided for review.

Duri Cosmetics - Rejuvacote, Miracote, Drop N Go & nail colours

Tonight I've got a review of whole bunch of Duri Cosmetics nail products to share with you.  All these products were provided to me from Pink Tiger, Australia's official distributor of Duri nail polish, and Lust Have It beauty box, who featured Pink Tiger in the recent April box.

Lets start with Miracote. Miracote is a super fast drying three free top coat.  I love it.  It dried fast and to a beautiful shiny finish.  I really wish I had this top coat while I was pregnant a few years back, because I would have painted my nails a lot more.  I didn't want to use Seche Vite because of the toluene, but Miracote is free of it, so it would have a great option.

Drop 'n Go is a bottle of instant drying drops, although rather than applying it as drops, is comes with a pump spray like a perfume bottle. You can see in the picture how much I have used. I'll talk more about it below where I have a photo of it on my nails.

Now Rejuvacote. "Rejuvacote "the nail doctor" will heal and cure your split, cracked and acrylic eaten nails. In a matter of weeks you will enjoy the look and feel of strong, vital, natural nails. It's not a promise, It's a guarantee."  Firstly, I feel like some kind of hermit for the fact that I know so many girls who use Rejuvacote religiously, yet here I am finally getting to try the product for the first time.

I've never worn acrylics so my nails are not damaged from that.  However I have recently buffed my nails to remove yellow staining so I was able to photograph some sheer polishes.  I'm pretty sure I overdid the buffing and thinned them too much, making them weak and prone to breaking.

I've been using Rejuvacote as a base coat for the last 12 days.  Here are my nails on 8 May, when I first got Rejuvacote and nearly two weeks after a break resulting in me filing my nails down.  The next set of photos were today.  I'm very happy how quickly my nails have grown in that time and of course, no additional breaks.  I'm certainly going to continue using Duri and hope to see an improvement in the thinness of my nails, and ideally bring them back to their previous steel like glory!

Next up are two of the Duri nail colours.  

Bonjour France is a pretty lavender creme polish.  The formula was beautiful and easy to apply.  It was well pigmented and dried fast.  This is two coats of Bonjour France with Miracote top coat.

Venom is a super bright neon pink creme. Again the formula was excellent, especially given this was a neon, which can often be a bit streaky.  This is two coats of Venom with Miracote.

Next I decided to create a bit of nail art with the two duri polish colours.  I started with a white base because I was going to do a gradient.  I also decided to try something new for me that I read, and painted PVA (Elmers) glue around my cuticles.  Doesn't this look delightful!

When the PVA glue had dried, it was just super glossy and transparent.

Next I created a vertical gradient using both Bonjour France and Venom.

After I let that dry a bit, I peeled the PVA off.  It came off easily but was still a bit stuck around the cuticles were the polish was still moist.  I ended up just cleaning that off with acetone and a brush and it was very clean because there wasn't actually any polish on my skin, only on the glue.  I definitely like this method and prefer it to taping off my fingers with sticky tape.

Next I smoothed the gradient out with top coat, following that I thought I would try out the Drop 'n Go spray.  I spritzed two sprays on my fingers, one would have been enough if I had lined up the spray a bit better on all four fingers at once.  The finish looks very wet and oily, but I just left it to dry and soak in.

I think I like the Drop 'n Go, and it seems to dry nail polish nice and fast.  I say 'think' and 'seems' because the truth is, when using products like this, I sit there thinking 'I wonder if my nails are dry yet', but I don't want to touch them in case they're not, so you wait a bit longer.  When I did check if they were dry, they certainly were.

I really should do a test with Seche Vite, Miracote and Drop 'n Go spray all at the same time - with a stop watch.  Then after, say 30 second increments, test each nail to see how much it has dried compared to the other nails. I'll add that to my to-do list.  

Here are my gradient nails with the Drop 'n Go spray on them.

Lastly, because my nails were perfectly dry, I did some stamping.  I used Konad black polish and BM223 for the design.

Pink Tiger is the official exclusive Australian distributor of Duri nail polishes. The prices are as follows:

• Rejuvacote: $25
• Miracote: $25
• Drop N Go: $25
• Nail polish colours: $18
• Lint Free Gauze (200 sheets): $13

If anyone is interested in joining up to Lust Have It so you can get to sample products from brands like Duri, then my code "MORE", will get your a $5 discount of your first months subscription.

Cause I'm so new to this brand, I'd love to hear from you guys that use Rejuvacote (or other Duri products) and to tell me your experience with it, and any do's and don'ts you may have learned