I received these two gorgeous Smitten Polishes as part of my package from my Secret Santa.

The Holly and the Ivy - white jelly base with bright red and green matte hexes in two sizes.  This is three coats with top coat.  

Merry Christmas everyone. Christmas day is over, the kids have played all day with their new toys, we all ate way too much turkey and I personally must have eaten about 3/4 of a pavlova!  

I can't believe it's been a whole year since I did my last holly leaves mani like this one.  I used the beautiful OPI Golden Eye for my base (which I received a mini of for my birthday earlier this month - I think I will need a full size of this gold!). I hand painted the holly using a green franken and China Glaze Emerald Sparkle.  The holly is created with red rhinestones.  

I can't believe how long my nails are at the moment. I think I must file them down soon, although it's kinda fun having nails this long when I'm not working.  I got this extra length using the Gelicious hybrid gel nails.  I've not got gel on for this mani, but it certainly has helped my nails grow out without breakages.

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas!

Like most parents with little kiddos, tonight I'm running around like a made women to get everything wrapped and prepped for tomorrow.  We only have one thing to 'build' this year, but it happens to be a play kitchen - hopefully that wont take too long.

For any of you that are so organised you have time to read blogs, then I have some lovely Emily de Molly spam for you. Sorry, no descriptions of the polishes, but you can read about them the Emily de Molly Etsy Store.

Emily de Molly polishes are available from:

Bright Young Things - two thin coats over black with Seche Vite top coat.

Fifth Element - three coats with Seche Vite top coat.

Harmony - three coats with Seche Vite top coat.

Insomnia - three coats with Seche Vite top coat.

Simplicity - three coats with Seche Vite top coat.

Have a wonderful Christmas everyone!

I recently spotted this Ulta3 shade mixed amongst the others in the big polish bin at my local chemist.  It was a shade that I didn't have in my collection, it is made in PRC (which means it's newish) but it was never released as part of any collection.

Melted Marshmallow is your classic very pale pink pearl polish with a fantastically frosty finish.  Urrgghhh, really, I can't believe polish companies still make shades like these.  But I guess someone out there likes them and keeps buying them, otherwise they wouldn't keep making them (well I guess I just bought it too, so maybe I'm perpetuating the demand)

This was three coats of Melted Marshmallow, applied very carefully so as to minimize brush strokes as much as possible.  Just looking at the bottle I knew I wasn't going to like this polish much, and after the first brush stroke I was right.  But, and I can't believe I'm going to say this, at three coats it actually looked ok. 

Do you have any classic frosty shades in your collection?  If so, did you buy them in the 1980's or were they just a buying mistake :)

I'm a day late with my 'gold' post for the Aussie Christmas Challenge cause I wanted to do the apocalyptic nail art yesterday.  But there was no way I was missing the 'gold' themed day, because gold polish is definitely my most favourite polish.

For today's gold polish I have actually combined two of my most favourite recent gold polishes.  One coat of Zoya Ziv then one coat of Pretty Serious Mummy Mush.  On the ring finger is Zoya Reva.  I then added the contrasting rhinestones off set to one side of the nail, to each finger using a layer of top coat.  Then I sealed them in with top coat again.

I really love this mani, although I wish that the gold rhinestones were a cooler toned gold and not so yellow.  I think I need to get myself some of the gold studs from the Born Pretty store, they would have been a much better match.

Whether it be death by solar storm, death by an unseen comet or death by planetary alignment, I thought I might celebrate with some matching nail art. 

For my apocalyptic nails, I created a galaxy design using a black base and sponging on random bits of light blue, dark blue and purple.  Then I put a thin layer of a  holo silver glitter.

In case you were wondering, the middle finger is the earth blowing up, maybe after the comet impact or the solar storm.  I painted it freehand using Ulta3 Blue Marlin, Frog Prince and Lily white the explosion is with Kleancolor Metallic mango, metallic yellow and Pretty Serious Santas Sunburn. 

On my ring finger I stamped today's iconic date. 21.12.2012.  Here is Australia we always put the day first, then the month - although I know that is back to front for many.  I got the numbers from the plate numbers at the bottom of the Bundle Monster plates.

Lastly, I placed some silver holographic hexes randomly on my nails, they look a bit too big in these photos, but in real life they are just right.

Are you doing anything exciting for the end of the world?

Two weeks ago I shared with you my first experience using Gelicious Hybrid Nails.  I was very quickly won over by their product and completely get why so many girls love using at home soak off gels.  One of these days I'm going to buy some other brands of soak off gel to test out and compare, especially with regards to removal.  I recall reading a facebook comment from someone that found the Gelicious Hybrid Nails so much easier to remove than other soak of gels, so I want to try that out. But then again, why change when you've found something you love.

The only complaint I had with the Gelicious range was the lack of real swatches to see what each shade looked like on a real set of nails.  That's why I'm so excited to say that Gelicious sent me a few colours to swatch and review.  The one I'm showing you today is called Dip in the Pool.

Dip in the Pool is a stunning bright blue shimmer polish with small blue holo hexes.  The shimmery base doesn't apply streaky, and is packed full of blue glass fleck shimmer.  The holo glitter pieces flowed perfectly onto my nail and spaced out nicely.  Of course if they didn't, you have all the time in the world to wipe, giggle and place the polish and glitters before putting your hand under the UV lamp.

Colour coverage was excellent.  I applied two thin coats of Dip in the Pool and then applied the Ultra Glaze Top Coat.  There is nothing like putting on a full glittery mani, and then putting on the gel top coat and immediately getting that high shine gloss that would normally take me about two or three coats of Seche Vite to achieve with a glitter mani.

Here is Dip in the Pool shown in full sun.

Here is Dip in the Pool in the shade. 

This is such a stunning colour and, to use a nail blogger cliché, it has so much depth.

After putting this on I actually went for a real dip in the pool.  This polish is nearly an exact match of the fiberglass shell of our pool, right down to the glitter and shimmer.  During summer, when we swim a lot in the backyard, my nail polish generally chips and flakes off very quickly.  My nails get so soft in the water that the polish just flakes away.  And I wont even mention about wearing a PVC basecoat in the pool - your nails literally float away into the skimmer box.  So where I am I going with all this babble?  Ah yes, my nails looked just a perfect after getting out from a two hour play in the pool with the kids, as they did after I just applied it.  Whoo hoo.

The removal of this one was different to the other two gelicious polishes I have tried (Gold Digger and the optional base coat)  I used the foil method to soak for 10 minutes, and when I went to take them off, they were completely removed and the entire full piece of nail polish was sitting on the cotton swab.  I didn't need to do any scratching or rubbing at all.  I'm not sure if this will always be the case with this bottle of polish, or if it was just a one off, but I loved removal because it was so clean and easy.

What do you guys think of this colour? Oooh, and can I just say I'm really loving my nails right now.  They have a bit of length, they are all even and none of the corners have come off.  I think I can attribute much of that to wearing gelicious base coat 90% of the time for the last three weeks.  Now I just need to remember to moisturize.

Polish provided for review.

I'm blowing off the Aussie Christmas Challenge tonight cause I want to show you the Contrary Polish Holiday Collection that I just got in the mail on Monday!   I had a few spare hours this afternoon so I did a bit of a swatch-a-thon and then kept the last mani on.

Candle Light - a soft black crelly with a scattered gold shimmer.  This is two coats with Seche Vite top coat.  It looks mostly black indoors, but does have visible gold sparkles.

Bauble -  a bright cherry red jelly with red micro glitter and silver shimmer. This is three coats of Bauble with Seche Vite on top.  This colour totally reminds me of those red glace cherries!

Mystery - a smoky brown with golden bronze shimmer.  I really loved this one. This one is the classic Contrary Polish style that I love, with it's smoky finish and rich shimmer.  Two coats with Seche Vite.

Spruce - blackened green with green shimmer that shifts lightly to gold and teal.  The larger shimmer particles in this on really sparkle in the sun and it almost has a blacked green foil finish.  This was two coats with Seche Vite.

Adorned - is a top coat that has gold flakes and a golden shimmer in a clear base.  I'm a huge fan of this polish.  I have heaps of gold glitter top coats that have the regular hex glitters in it.  I love that this is gold flakes. There were two polishes in this collection that screamed out to have Adorned layered over the top.  First up is one coat of Adorned over Candle Light.  I didn't add an additional layer of top coat, cause it was smooth and glossy without it.

This is two coats of Adorned layered over Mystery.  No additional top coat added.

Frozen -  white with blue micro glitter and silver shimmer.  The silver shimmer in the white base give this polish a sparkly wet look.  I ended up doing four thin coats of Frozen with Seche Vite on top.

I added a light glitter gradient using Color Club Jingle Jangle from their holiday collection last year (which was one of the best for 2011!).  This is the mani that I decided to keep wearing and still have on now.

The formula on all these was excellent, something which I have become accustomed to with all the Contrary Polishes I have.  Only Frozen required a number of coats, but it was still very smooth and easy to apply and dried quickly, so the additional coats wasn't an issue.  If I had to pick a favorite from this collection, it would be Mystery, but they are all lovely. 

Contrary Polishes are available from Llarowe in the USA or Shoppe-Eclecticco in Singapore.  Minis are also available through the Contrary Polish blog. 

Polishes were sent for review.