Just a few random things tonight.

First up, a comparison swatch for a reader who asked me to compare Picture Polish o'hara, vegas and OPI The spy who loved me.  Here are two photos, one in natural overcast light, the other in artificial light.  The colour of o'hara is more raspberry and the scattered holo bits look pink toned.  Vegas and The spy who loved me are actually very similar.  TSWLM was more opaque that vegas and the red/gold shimmer in vegas is slightly finer, but otherwise they are very close.

Next, check this out.  This is the break I have been nursing on my left hand ring finger now for 10 days.  I've decided not to use the silk wrap or tea bag method with nail glue, because in the past I've not had much luck with it.  Usually I find it too thick and I end up with a big fat lump at the side of my nail where the wrap is.  I also find that it is so stiff and ridged, with no 'give', that I inevitably break it the very next day.

I've only been holding this break together with soak off gel polish - Gelicious in my case.  I put a little dab on my break and lift the nail a bit to get it in the crack.  I then line it up carefully and cure.  Then I apply the base gel coat to the full nail and usually two coats of gel top coat.  So far so good.  I usually remove the gel polish and redo it every three days or so.  I know it will eventually break off and leave me with quite a round looking nail, but I hope by then I have enough length back to file them even again.

Lastly, aren't these the cutest rocks you've ever seen?  Mr 4 and Miss 4 really love playing with nail polish, and they take any opportunity to paint stuff with it.  My solution was to grab some small white stones from our backyard and let them loose with my stash of franken polishes.  All piled together they look absolutely stunning.  In fact I'm thinking of painting a whole bunch of them myself and putting them into a glass fish bowl and putting it at my desk at work.  It would be a great talking piece and would allow me to look at my pretty polishes all day long.

Do you guys do anything with your nail polishes, other than paint your nails with them?  I recently saw a press release from OPI about Australian artist Jen D'Arcy painting a portrait of Julia Morris using only OPI lacquers.  She used 1071 bottles (16 litres of nail lacquer) apparently.  When the photos of the portrait are released later this week, I post a copy of it.

Aussie indie brand Femme Fatale Cosmetics has recently released a trio of polishes, in which $5 from every bottle will be donated to a close friend of Sophie's (the creator of Femme Fatale Cosmetics) who is in need of heart surgery. More details of her fundraising efforts can be read on the Femme Fatale shop.

When I received the collection in the mail I fell in love with all three instantly, in fact I even told Sophie that I felt like she made the collection just for me.  There are two golds and a green - I'm in love!!  While I can pretend she made these just for me, the truth is they are inspired by the beach, which is a big part of her friend's life.

Sparkling Sands - is a golden glitter polish created to resemble the the complex shoreline. It has a shimmery golden base which provides excellent opacity at three coats.  There are all sorts of caramel and golden glitters and holo gold glitter in mainly smaller sizes of hexes and squares, although there are also gold holo stars and some light pink small hexes too.

The shine of this polish is amazing.  Like I said, you can build this polish to be opaque on it's own, like it is shown here, or for a quick golden glittery topper you could layer one coat over gold.  These first three photos are taken under artificial life, the macro and finger shot are outdoors in the shade.

Suffice it to say, I love this!

Abyssal Reflections - this one was created to resemble the dark depths of the ocean. It has a dark green tinted jelly base, jam packed full of turquoise, teal and green glitters, of which some are holo.  This was two coats on it's own, and it was easily opaque, but of course you could wear this layered over a darker polish.  I did find my bottle was quite thick and dry as it was so packed with glitter. In fact it reminded me of the consistency of Crowstoes polishes. I needed a few layers of top coat to make this one smooth.

Check out the macro, imagine if the dark depths of the ocean really were this glittery and sparkling.

Veil of the Siren - looky here, its another gold!!  This one was created to resemble the delicate colours of a sea shell. In the bottle this has an iridescent almost foggy look to it, which is created by a low opacity pale cream and rose shimmer.  It is full of small bronze gold glitters, red flakies and colour-shifting iridescent hexes. 

I really wanted to recreate the look of the bottle on my nails, so here I layered two coats of Veil of the Siren over OPI Don't Touch my Tutu.  It was so soft and pretty in natural indoor lighting, but then in the sun, it just sparkled and shone!  In the last photo I tried to capture the colour shifting golden hexes with show green.

Femme Fatale Cosmetics polishes are available directly from her shop for Australians.  And in case you Aussies didn't know, she is now stocking a number of international indie brands such as Crowstoes, Girly Bits & Contrary Polish as well as Aussie indie brands Emily de Molly and Gloss n Sparkle.  It looks like the Femme Fatale shop could become our own Aussie version of Llarowe, which is great news for us Aussies to save of shipping costs and time frames.

For all you international ladies, Femme Fatale polishes are available in a bunch of places around the world now.  Check the international stockists page for more info.

Polishes provided for review. 

I really enjoy being able to bring you swatches of new indie brands.  I can't say that JENsations is really new, although it is new to me.  I distinctly remember seeing swatches of JENsation polishes around the middle of last year, and I say 'distinctly' because Jens brand has something that I really remembered!

With so many indie brands out there now, having something that will make people remember your brand is a huge bonus.  I'm sure you can guess what it is that I remember...  Yep, those gorgeous little star shaped bottles.

Let's get straight to the three shades that Jen sent me.

Hearts on fire - a mix of multi-sized holographic red & holographic silver hexes, squares and hearts in a clear base.  I used one dabbed coat of Hearts on Fire and then added a few extra glitters if I felt there were any bare looking spots.  I did have to dig around to get the glitters out onto the brush to start with because they had settled just a little bit, but once I swirled the brush around inside the bottle, they were easy to get out.  

All the glitters lay beautifully smooth and flat and there was no sign of bleeding in the crystal clear base.  Hearts on Fire is shown here layered over Picture Polish Vampire, which is a gorgeous bloody jelly red.

Rainbow Sprinkles - too many different shapes, sizes and colours to describe individually, but as you can see this is a bright multi-coloured mix of glitters in a crystal clear base.  Again all glitters were smooth and flat on the nail.  Like Hearts on Fire, I did swirl the brush around to lift up some of the glitters that had settled slightly in the bottle, but application was quite easy.  This is two coats of Rainbow Sprinkles layered over black with Seche Vite on top.

Ups-A-Daisy - The epitome of spring in a bottle.  Such a cute little mix of pastel satin finish glitters in various sizes, including those large yellow and pink flower shaped glitters, all in a clear base.  I felt that white was a perfect base to show off all the pastel colours, but this would look gorgeous over any pastel creme shade.  Again everything was smooth and flat, and even those large flowers were easy to get out and didn't feel too big and flat on the nail - even on my very curved nails.

Overall I'm very impressed with these polishes, there are no tacos or bleeders and the glitter combinations are all pretty.  My favourite would be Ups-A-Daisy as I feel it is the most unique (certainly in my collection anyway), although I really loved the vampy red with the hearts too.

The little star shaped bottles contain 10ml of polish and they are available from the JENsations Esty store for $8USD. If you can't see a shade browsing the store, try the search - it works well.

These polishes were provided for review.

What's this? Another Picture Polish collaboration shade?  

Today's beauty is called Paradise by Liquid Jelly, which Liz launched on her blog on Sunday.

I can certainly say that Liz has created a very unique and beautiful polish.  I have nothing like this in my collection.  I love seeing what creations come out of these collaboration shades and it's wonderful to see different ideas and combinations. 

Paradise has a very sparkly, almost metallic looking green to blue duochrome shimmer in a tinted blue base.  It also has fine purple glitters and a sprinkling of bright pink holographic glitters.  I think it's the addition of the purple and pink glitters that really make this polish interesting.   I thought that the shimmery base might make the glitters look gritty, but they somehow manage to float on top of the shimmer and it all looks and feels very smooth.  

I did three thin coats plus Seche vite top coat for these pictures and my photos show the polish both indoors and in the sun.

These photos show the green to blue duochrome shift, as well as the sparkling pink and purple glitters.

This was the best one I got showing the bright sapphire blue shift.

All the new collaboration shades are now available on the Picture Polish website and will be available soon through the various Network members.

Polishes provided for review.

There are two words that get me pretty excited lately "Collaboration Shade".  Yeah baby, when you see those words you know that Picture Polish has been secretly hard at work with someone around to world to create something special.  Today's post is no exception.

Today I present Starry Night - by Llarowe - big & bright heart of Texas.

First up, I have to give props to Picture Polish for their marketing genius relating to these collaboration shades.  What better way is there for nail bloggers and their readers to get a real connection with a brand? This is also the same brand that brings you the annual Blogfest of their shades.  Certainly someone at Picture Polish has their innovation hat on and has really thought about creating a relationship with their customers.  Colour me impressed!

Not only have Picture Polish collaborated to create another polish, they have also carefully coordinated with a handful of bloggers to simultaneous launch Starry Night at the exact same moment around the world.  I don't know who the other bloggers are - but I will certainly blog jumping to find out (just as soon as I get out of work meetings today at lunch time).  I am honored and excited to have been selected to share this polish with you, I just hope I can do it justice.

Starry Night by Llarowe is a charcoal black scattered holo jelly with multi-coloured sparks.  The polish is quite sheer because of it's jelly finish and takes 2-3 coats for opacity.  If you are familiar with Picture Polish Opal, then this is the same colour but with the addition of scattered holo bits and more jelly like finish.

These photos are three coats plus Seche Vite top coat, taken in full sun.

In this macro shot you can see the various irregular shaped holo pieces, but you can also see the very fine multi-coloured sparks, which are multiple colours, not holo.

This photo is taken outdoors under a shaded area.  You can see the sparks are still obvious in lower lighting.

Here is a quick comparison with Ozotic 623.  Starry Night is much more jelly like and the holo particles are bright and easy to see.  It is shown here at three coats.  Ozotic 623 is very opaque (one coat shown here) and the holo particles do no shine through as easily.  Starry Night also has additional fine multi-coloured sparks.

At this stage, Starry Night will only be available for purchase directly from Picture Polish for $12AUD or via Llarowe for $14.50 USD