I'm on a real green kick at the moment so when this polish arrived from Gloss 'n Sparkle I was very excited to put it on. Goblins Grave is a dark green jelly with lime, turquoise and black holo hex glitter. This was three coats and in real life it provided full coverage, but these photos do still show it looking a little sheer at some angles.

The jelly base is just perfect in this.  It has such a rich dark colour but it is still perfectly sheer so that all the glitters show through. That's exactly what I love about a good jelly polish.  

This dried nice pretty smooth and I only applied one coat of Seche Vite top coat.  Needless to say, I am completely in love with this polish!

This one is available from the Gloss 'n Sparkle an Etsy store for $10 AUD each (but internationals will have to wait until her shipping is sorted).

Ok, quick post tonight cause I want to watch Kerry Packers HOWZAT which has just stated on TV.  I only saw bits of it last Sunday night cause I was doing my nails, but what I saw was really good.  I feel so Aussie watching the show and it really brings back memories for me as a little kid with that classic World Series Cricket music.

Swanky Silk is from the recent China Glaze Bohemian collection. It is a neutral peachy base that has a good duo chrome shift to yellow gold.  This is another one that I have read reviews that say it doesn't have a very strong duo chrome effect, however I thought it was pretty good.

Normally I wouldn't put sticker decals onto a shiny chrome polish like this, but I was nursing a break on my ring finger, and I find things like water decals, stickers and temporary tattoos are excellent at creating some stability for the broken nail.  It was also very late at night and I still had naked nails and I couldn't go to work the next morning sporting my gorgeous yellow tinted natural ones!

Yep, it's a little frosty and shows brush marks like the others in this collection, but I'm a simple girl and am easily pleased, so these still get a double thumbs up from me.

I was looking for another reason to put on Picture Polish Kryptonite, so I decided my next mani should be be Lynnderella Salad Days.

WOW.  I had seven separate people comment about this mani today, all at different times and in completely different situations.  They were all dazzled by it. I think that is a record for me!

This was two coats of Picture Polish Kryptonite with one dabbled coat of Salad Days. Topped with just one coat of Seche Vite.  Lynnderella's blog notes that this polish may have challenging application and curing glitters.  I found the application to be a piece of cake, it was smooth and easy to apply. None of the glitters were curly, even the little orange carrots, and dried quickly to a very smooth finish.

I also tried the PVA glue peel off base coat for the first time with this mani.  If you haven't read about it, there are a number of blogs that have done posts about, check out:

I bought a new bottle of Aquadhere and filled an empty bottle with it. It worked ok for me.  As a base coat it lasted well, bearing in mind that I change my polish daily. At the end of the 24 hours I had no chips.  I found it a little hard to get the peeling started.  I really had to pick and scratch at my nails, but once I got something under it, it came off alright. Mine didn't come off in sheets, rather in about 4-5 chunks per nail. OK I admit it, I didn't use an orange stick or anything, I just picked them off with my nails, so that might have made a difference too.  I think I will try a thicker coat of PVA glue next time. 

After peeling (scraping) the polish off, I just did a quick clean up with remover and then washed my hands.  it was nice not to have to soak in acetone to remove the glitter, which is really drying on my cuticles, so I have to say it was a success!

I have two great polishes from Aussie indie brand Gloss 'n Sparkle today.

After wearing the black and rainbow nails for a few days I wanted to wear something neutral.  But I never expected to reach for a neutral glitter - in fact I never really thought that one existed!  But that is exactly what Antiquity felt like and I loved it. It is made up of gold, silver, bronze, copper, sand and brown micro glitters and the overall feel is a light golden brown.  Indoors and in the shade it is a soft neutral colour, but in the sun it sparkles beautifully.

I applied three coats of Antiquity for this mani and to my surprise it dried very smooth.  I was expecting the micro glitters to make this really top coat hungry, but I only a applied my regular one coat of Seche Vite and it was glossy and smooth.

The second polish I have to share is one that I wore this weekend for my mum's birthday.  I specifically chose this because it felt very much like a birthday kind of poilsh.

Unicorn Droppings has a silverly white sparkling jelly base that has the teeny tiniest micro holographic glitters as well as the much more obvious matte rainbow glitters. Once thing I love about matte glitter is that it is so much easier to photograph.  I was able to take these photos in full sun and the glitter doesn't reflect the light with any sort of glare or flare.

This mani was also three coats with one coat of Seche Vite.  It too dried very smooth and only needed the top coat to make it dry faster and be super glossy

This is another great Aussie made brand.  The bottles are the lovely Zoya shaped ones and the product branding is really exceptional, with high quality clear labels with metallic print. I really that professional touch on an indie product.

Gloss 'n Sparkle has a fancy website as well as an Etsy store and her polishes are $10 AUD each. Currently shipping is only within Australia, but I know they are working on other arrangements for international orders.  

I have a few more Gloss 'n Sparkles to wear, but I enjoy wearing each of them as full manis, rather than just swatching them, so it means you will have to wait a bit for photos and individual blog posts.

And just for a bit of fun, here is the cake I baked and decorated for my mum's birthday.  After mentioning a few ideas to her, she loved the idea of a dragon cake, and this is what I came up with.

These polishes were sent to me for review.

One thing that I really love about all the amazing nail blogs that are out there now, is the endless source of fantastic nail art inspiration.  Today's mani is exactly that.  Inspired by another blogger (Kayla Shevonne) who was also inspired by another nail blogger (solensdanserinde) and her pin on pinterest.

This mani is just a simple coat of a black creme polish and then individual rhinestones placed in a rainbow order.  I can't remember where I got my wheel of rhinestones, maybe it was ebay, but I do remember that it was only a few dollars and that they are really easy to find.  When I placed the rhinestones I painted a line of a regular top coat and placed them on using a pair of tweezers, it was amazingly easy to do.  I finished it off with a coat of Seche Vite.

I originally planned to make this matte using a matte top coat, just like both the original designs.  But I just couldn't stop looking at it while it was so shiny and gem like.  Mr 4 even commented on my nails today saying "Mummy, look at your nails! They are bewwfull. You should wear them every day".

Thanks for all the nail inspiration ladies.

Here is a design I did using China Glaze - Want My Bawdy from the recent Bohemian collection.  I taped off a chevron design and painted it with China Glaze 2NITE from the OMG collection and added a silver edge using Layla Metal Chrome.

Here are a couple of photos of Want My Bawdy on it's own.  Every single review I have read about this polish has said that its the only polish in the Bohemian collection that they don't see any duochrome in at all.  I have to say I completely disagree.  I definitely can see a duochrome effect.  I've captured a little of it in the below photos where you can see the bright cobolt blue base and a purple glow near the cuticle edge.

Does anyone see this duochrome in their bottle?  I'm sure any other people that get a perfect score on this colour test will be able to see it too.

Aussie nail polish brand BYS recently released collection of magnetic polishes.  I think there is nine polishes in the collection and I was send four of them to try out.  

Magnetic polishes have been huge this year, and just like crackled polishes last year, some of us might be getting a bit tired of magnetic polishes.  I personally love them and I love having a full rainbow of colours to choose from.  

For all these photos I show two coats, the first applied without the magnet, the second with the magnet (thanks Captain Obvious!)  All with one coat of Seche Vite.  There are three magnet styles available (horizontal stripes, diagonal stripes and waves), and you can choose which style you want which which colour.  I like that!  Just about every other brand makes you buy a specific colour to get the magnet you want.

Magnetic Cosmos - the base colour for this one is a rusty rose red.  The magnetic pull is a dark vampy burgundy.  The base colour is rather frosty looking and if it wasn't a magnetic polish it would keep showing brush strokes.  But it is a magnetic polish and once you apply the magnet, any hint of frostiness disappears beneath the bloody red tones.  This polish came with the waves design.  I placed the magnet over my finger using the finger placer (which you can see in the last photo below), but you could of course turn the magnet and apply it at any angle.  I'll go into a bit more detail about the magnets at the end.

Magnetic Jupiter - this one is a tone on tone warm gold magnetic polish.  The magnetic colour shift in this one isn't as obvious as with the other polishes.  It's not that the polish doesn't have a strong magnetic effect, because the design shows instantly, but more that this is a subtle colour difference.  This one was supplied with the horizontal magnet.

Magnetic Neptune - is a teal base with a blackened dark navy magnetic pull.  I apologise for this swatch,  I made a classic mistake while in 'automatic mode' of applying top coat immediately.  As you can see the brush strokes from the top coat pulled lines down over the magnetic design.  Love this colour.  It really reminds me of Layla Turquoise Wave, but at a much cheaper price point. This one was supplied with the diagonal magnet.

Magnetic Venus - here is the one for all you purple lovers out there.  The base, like all the others, is a shimmery, nearly frosty, metallic, this time in a lilac purple.  The magnetic pull colour is a blackened aubergine. This one was supplied with the wavy magnet.

Here is a quick bottle shot. Unlike my other BYS polishes, this bottle is round not square.  The cap pulls off so you can have easy access to the magnet which is in the top of the lid.  Each magnetic design is very clearly printed on the magnet, with my only note being that the magnetic lines appear much closer together on your nail than they do on the printing.  The wavy magnet is pictured below. There is also a little finger rest which I placed against my cuticle skin.  The height of it was perfect.  Close enough to pull a quick design, but not too close to touch it.  My only wish is that the wavy magnet would have been a little bit bendier so you could really tell its wavy and not just crooked.

 

I found the supplied magnets on each bottle were really strong.  They pulled each design out very fast.  Three of the four polishes I received had really strong colour changes too.

The formula on these was good, but definitely on the thick side.  Painting my first coat was great and smooth, but as I do the second coat, I just put the brush back into the bottle and I don't screw it up so I can quickly apply the magnet.  Because of this the polish tends to get thicker as you go along because it is essentially sitting there open.

BYS might be a little bit late to the party with their magnetic line, but at least they have come out with a really good selection of colours and the quality of both the polishes and the magnets seems good.  I'm still waiting to see muggles catch on to the magnetic crazy.

I've not seen these in store yet, but you can buy them online from Fashion Addict. They are $6.95 individually and they have sets of three for $18.95.  Free domestic shipping for orders over $40, no international shipping for nail polish.

These polishes were sent to me for review.