Pretty Serious In The Night Collection

Notice anything different? I finally made a custom header for my blog! Yay! What do you think?

Apologies in advance for this brief, non-wordy post (or maybe you might like less words?). I have to finish my graduation project next week so I've been really busy trying to catch up. I'll still be posting this week and next but I won't have as much time to write in depth. I'll try and take really good photos to make up for it :)

While Pretty Serious was having their sale on the Hello World! collection, I figured I may as well grab the In The Night collection as well to save on shipping. It's apparently based on a video game called NiGHTS into Dreams, which I've never heard of, but my boyfriend tells me it's outstanding. He said something along the lines of "guy with a magic hat, lots of bright colours". So I think this collection will be pretty interesting!

The collection consists of 6 polishes: Into Dreams, Nightopia, Elliot, Dream Delight, Claris and Nightmaren. These photos are all taken without top coat.

Into Dreams

Into Dreams is a shimmering, vibrant purple. I love that this is a very pure purple, and isn't too dark that it appears black indoors. I seem to have that problem constantly with purples. The formula is fantastic, and it's completely opaque in 2 coats.

Sun

Sun

Sun

Nightopia

Nightopia is a teal green polish with gold shimmer. It applies a little streaky but it's not that noticeable. This is 3 coats.

Sun

Sun

Shade

 Normally I'm really excited by bluish colours like this, but I think I'm a bit "meh" about it because it's a dupe of a polish I already own: b by Bloom San Francisco. San Francisco is a tiny bit greener. The b by Bloom collection was produced exclusively for Target but is now discontinued (they may still be floating around on clearance though).

L-R: Nightopia, San Francisco, Nightopia, San Francisco

L-R: Nightopia, San Francisco, Nightopia, San Francisco

L-R: Nightopia, San Francisco, Nightopia, San Francisco

Elliot

On the Pretty Serious website, Elliot is described as a "sky blue with multi-coloured micro flecks." I think it's actually darker, more like a mid blue, with silver micro flecks. The flecks are difficult to describe. They're not glitter, they're not shimmer - they're kind of like glass flecks, but in a creme polish. I think it might be similar to China Glaze Carribean Blue, but I don't have that polish so I can't do a comparison unfortunately. This is 2 coats of Elliot.

Sun

Sun

Shade

Dream Delight

Dream Delight is jam packed full of dark and light silver glitter. It's pretty thick because of the jelly base but is pretty much opaque in just one coat. This is 2 coats for good measure. It dries gritty so will probably need a couple coats of top coat. I really like this one, I don't own anything like it.

Sun

Sun

Shade

Claris

Claris is one of my favourites from this collection. It's a pink jelly with gold shimmer. Such a beautiful combination, and perfect for spring! I like that the gold is obvious in both sun and indoors. The formula is really easy to apply. This is 3 coats.

Sun

Sun

Sun

Nightmaren

Nightmaren is a gorgeous shimmery warm red with a golden glow. Again, great formula, opaque and smooth in 2 coats. It's a bit streaky in this photo but that might be because I applied it a bit too thickly. It reminds me of a warmer-toned A-England Perceval.

Sun

Shade

Shade

The In The Night collection is available for $9.95 (or the full set at a 10% discount) on the Pretty Serious website. They're also releasing a Halloween collection on October 10th which looks amazing, and a limited edition polish!

OPI Absolutely Alice vs BYS Through the Looking Glass

One of the nail polishes I was able to pick up in my little haul the other day was OPI Absolutely Alice.

This polish was released in 2010 to coincide with the Alice in Wonderland movie, and included some amazing glitter polishes that were completely different from the usual OPI reds and pinks. Unfortunately, as all good collections are, it was discontinued, and now Absolutely Alice and Mad as a Hatter remain elusive lemmings for many.

So when I came across this polish by BYS, a cheap Australian brand, I did a double take:

"What is this?? Absolutely Alice in a BYS bottle??!" I thought to myself. Almost. It's called Through the Looking Glass, and is also (obviously) Alice in Wonderland themed, and contains predominantly blue glitters with a sprinkling of gold. I immediately sent one of my friends out to her local Gloss store (unfortunately there were no BYS stockists near me) to grab it for me, as well as one of the others in the collection. I didn't have Absolutely Alice at the time, and it was beautiful and close enough to cure my lemming.

But then of course I ended up finding AA and of course now I have to do a comparison, so here goes:

Both AA and TtLG are bright blue glitter polishes in a clear base, with some gold glitter. They are insanely, eye-blindingly sparkly in sunlight. The main difference is that the glitters in AA are much finer and denser. It is completely opaque in 3 coats, whereas TtLG is not. (Please excuse my wonky right hand finger. This is why I do all my swatches on my left hand.)

As you can see, TtLG is still quite see through. Here is 3 coats of Absolutely Alice:

Pic heavy, so please click "Read More" to keep reading!

Max Factor Fantasy Fire + Blog Sale!

Hi guys, I've created a blog sale page with a couple of HTF polishes - take a look and share it if you know anyone who may be lemming these polishes. They come with freebies, too! :D

This nail polish has a bit of hype around it - Max Factor Fantasy Fire is claimed to be a dupe for the famous and unobtainable Clarins 230. I don't have Clarins 230 so I can't do a comparison, but other swatches seem to show a fair comparison. Either way, I think Fantasy Fire is a beautiful polish, dupe or not!

Previously, it was only available in the UK, but as with all things that are available overseas, it has slowly drifted its way down to Australia, and is now readily available. I found this bottle at Priceline, and bought a few as backups because the bottle is so tiny!

Fantasy Fire is a blue-leaning royal purple jelly filled with crazy multichrome shimmer - it seriously looks like it's on fire! Most of the time the shimmer looks bright red, and the polish looks like it's glowing with internal embers, but from time to time you catch a glimpse of the yellow and green shift in that shimmer as well. Formula is great, smooth and flows beautifully. This is 4 coats with no undies.

Sun

Sun

Sun

Warning: Pic heavy, so click "Read more" to see more pics!

Cult Nails Enigmatic

Enigmatic is one of the polishes I picked up in the last Cult Nails sale and just haven't gotten around to trying. I'm not sure why I bought it - I have plenty of dark, vampy shades already, but this just called out to me for some reason. When it arrived, I was breath taken. In the bottle it's not just a dark purple, it glows with an inner shimmer that is just so beautiful!

Then I put it away in my nail polish drawer and promptly forgot about it. Until today! It's kind of a cold, cloudy day today with plenty of dark ominous clouds (compared to all the swelteringly hot and sunny days we've been having recently), so I was in the mood for a more vampy polish.

Enigmatic is an aubergine/eggplant colour with sparse silver shimmer when viewed indoors. In the sun or direct light, it explodes into a gorgeous eye catching purple shimmer. The first coat was runny and sheer, and I had to start again a couple of times due to cuticle pooling, but if you're careful and apply really thin layers you'll be fine. It's completely opaque after 3 coats. I topped this with a coat of Cult Nails Wicked Fast, but honestly it would be smooth and shiny enough without a top coat.

Sun

Sun

Indoors, Natural Light

Indoors, Natural Light

Cult Nails polishes are available from http://www.cultnails.com/ for $10 each. Maria, the creator of Cult Nails, often announces sales on the facebook page, so subscribe to grab a bargain!

Pretty Serious Hello World! Collection

I picked up both full nail polish collections in the Pretty Serious Hello World! 50% sale! These have been on my wishlist for a while and when the sale was announced I jumped at the chance to grab all of them. I love to support Australian brands, and I love that Karen, the creator of Pretty Serious, is creating indie polish that is so unique and not just the usual flood of glitterbombs.

I have to say, she has fantastic customer service. In my excitement I checked out with the wrong address on Paypal, and she replied to my email requesting a change of address within minutes! They arrived 2 days later at the correct address - just in time for me to put one on for uni (I do an Architectural Computing degree so I felt BSOD was particularly apt!).

The Hello World! collection is a collection of 6 nail polishes based on everything geeky/technology related. For the non-programmers out there, Hello World! is a common phrase used in programming to test text in programs and other coding scenarios.

So without further ado, here are my swatches and review of the Hello World! collection:

BSOD

BSOD stands for Blue Screen of Death - if you've never seen one, I envy you! It's basically when your computer just has a brain implosion and stops working, deleting that entire assignment you've been working on for the last 4 hours... But I digress. BSOD is a gorgeous, vibrant blue jelly packed with tiny blue glitters. It has amazing depth and in some lights looks like a bright glittery blue, while in other lights looks more like a metallic navy.

This was a bit difficult to apply, as it's a bit gloopy (as jellies are expected to be), and dries very quickly, so if you try to fix up patches in a coat it'll drag horrifically. It was extremely patchy on the first coat, but after 3 it's gorgeously smooth. It could have been opaque in 2 coats but I wanted that extra depth. It dries a bit bumpy and dull, and is weirdly top coat hungry - it was smooth with one coat of SV, but after a couple of hours it went dull again.

Sun

Shade

Shade

This post is pic-heavy, so click "Read More" to see the rest of the polishes :)

Candeo Colors Divebomb

This is the last of my Candeos (except for Orchid, but I don't have the energy to tackle its sunken, unfriendly glitters at the moment!). Here is Divebomb, a glitter top coat consisting of blue, aqua/green, copper and brown hex glitter. I think the aqua/green glitters are holographic too, but it's not very obvious. I was on the fence about this one for a long time but when my package arrived from my Llarowe shopping spree I discovered I'd bought it in my excitement. I don't regret it at all!

This is 2 coats of Ulta3 Spring Shower, 1 coat of Divebomb, 1 coat OPI Top Coat and 1 coat Seche Vite.

EDIT: There is definitely some cuticle shrinkage there! The last photo under the lamp was taken straight after painting my nails, but the daytime photos were taken a day or two later. My nails definitely don't grow that fast so the shrinkage must be from the Seche Vite... How annoying! Sorry it looks so terrible!

Overcast

Overcast

Shade

Incandescent lamp - can you see the holo?

Candeo Colors are available from Llarowe or direct from the creator at http://www.candeocolors.com/.

Nerd Lacquer Pinin' for the Fjords

Nerd Lacquer is a delightful indie brand created by Amanda, who a couple of months ago just disappeared without a trace :( Luckily I managed to grab a bunch of these beautiful crelly (cream-jelly finish) polishes in her last sale, and I am so grateful because they are to die for! Every Nerd Lacquer is so unique and full of depth, and to top it off all the names are nerd-themed! Seriously, even if the polishes were fugly I'd just buy them for the names.

Here is my favourite out of my collection, Pinin' for the Fjords. Every time I look at my nails when I'm wearing this I hear a voice in my head saying "Pinin' for the fjords? Pinin' for the fjoooords??" This polish is so complex I can't even begin to describe what's in it. It's a dusty, pale periwinkle-lavender, packed full of multi-sized silver, blue and dark purple glitter, and a ton of silver microglitter. The crelly finish allows it to be built up to full opacity in 3 coats, while allowing the glitters in all the layers to peek through very subtly. It applies smoothly, but it does dry a bit bumpy so I used one coat of OPI Top Coat and one coat of SV over the top.

The purple colour of this is slightly lighter and less saturated than my pictures show.

Sun

Shade

Shade

Shade

At the moment Nerd Lacquers are only available through swaps, blog sales and ebay. My fingers are crossed that Amanda makes a reappearance someday because I really want to get my hands on some more of these amazing polishes!