Revlon Parfumerie Apricot Nectar Scented Nail Polish Review

The Revlon Parfumerie nail polishes have recently hit the shelves in Australia. They are something a little different as they are scented nail polishes and to be honest I haven't come across any drugstore scented polishes before. The range itself is very extensive and contains three categories; the Fruits & Florals, Sweets & Spices and the Freshes. I found it very difficult to pick only two to buy but eventually I decided and Apricot Nectar is one of the lucky ones that got to come home with me.

Apricot Nectar is from the Fruits & Florals section of the range and is a very pretty orange based peach creme that somehow manages to be a pastel bordering on neon.Does that even make sense? I found the first coat to be quite streaky but a second coat seemed to fix most of the problems. Next time I will probably go for three coats though because the drying time of this polish is so great that an extra coat is no worries.

When I was painting my nails the polish smelt very sweet and a bit fruity. The scent continued to hang around once my nails dried, even after washing. After a day of wearing the polish the scent is less noticeable. From reading other blogs I decided not to wear a top coat (as I had read that this might interfere with the whole scent thing). Without a top coat you can get 2-3 days of wear before tip wear starts to appear, which is pretty decent. Colour me impressed!

Apricot Nectar is a beautiful peachy orange creme polish with a good formula (although a little streaky), good drying time and is accompanied by a yummy sweet fruit scent that lasts days. Overall I really love this polish and can see myself wearing a lot.

Essence Ticket to Paradise - Sun Said Red Nail Polish Review

Hi guys. Today I have a review of one of the new jelly polishes Essence has released in their limited edition "Ticket to Paradise" collection. Sun Said Red is a bold tangerine orange jelly polish.

Despite being a jelly polish I didn't find it too sheer, after two coats it was pretty much perfect but I ended up doing three coats. Next time I'll probably just do two.A very easy formula to work with and dry time was okay but I recommend a quick drying top coat to be safe. After three coats I didn't want to risk getting orange polish on everything!!!  The brush was good although it might be worth mentioning that it isn't Essence's usual wide brush. I think this is the first true jelly polish I own (how is that even possible???) and I am in LOVE!

So that is what happens when I run into Priceline to buy sunscreen... I end up buying nail polish :)
Have a great day, cheers.

CoverGirl nail polishes have landed in Australia!!!

Hi Guys!!! Happy Easter, I  hope you are all enjoying the Easter break whatever you are doing. I quickly popped out to my local shops today to get some Easter eggs for my family today but couldn't go into Target without checking out the make-up department. I wasn't expecting / wanting to buy anything.....but I came out with two polishes. CoverGirl have released their nail polishes here in Australia so I decided to grab some and give you a review of my first impressions.

So before you rush off to Target here are some things you need to know:

CoverGirl in the U.S have a total of 45 shades of polish however I don't think we have them all here in Australia. Also, these were not on the CoverGirl stand with the rest of their products, there was a large cardboard bin with an assortment of different polishes and on the counter there was a smaller cardboard kind of display unit thing with, again, a random assortment of colours.

The colours I saw (and can remember) include: a metallic bronze-y colour, a lilac creme, an orange creme, a vampy red/plum, a black creme, a red creme, a blue/green glitter mix (called Midnight Magic)......this isn't a complete list of the shades but the just the ones I can remember.

I think the range of colours in the range is quite good, not unique by any means however there were a couple of polishes that grabbed my eye. Example, as soon as I saw "Midnight Magic" I had to have it even though it's a glitter and I'm not a glitter-lover!

Packaging is quite nice, especially for the price, as the glass bottle is a cute square bottle with a black lid. The brush, although not one of those "wide" ones was easy to use and a good size. The packaging of these polishes are really nice and feel like good quality which is definitely a great thing to see from Covergirl and for the price. I think their retail price is around $6.95 but they are on sale at the moment for $5.21 which is pretty good I think!!!!! :)

I grabbed two polishes from this range, "Midnight Magic" which caught my eye immediately and a bold orange creme called "Go-Go Mango".

I am currently wearing go-go mango on my nails. Application was brilliant, brush was easy to use and the finish was fantastic - very creamy, smooth and shiny! It was near a one-coater however I did two. Not sure if my coats were too thick but I found drying time to be pretty average on these. I smudged two nails and had to each for my quick drying topcoat which was disappointing because this polish is promoted as having a built-in top coat.....Hopefully next time I wear this polish drying time is better, maybe I'll do thinner coats or something? Because apart from the drying time issue (which hopefully I can sort out) these polishes are pretty much perfect. 

Thanks for reading and take care :)

Happy Australia Day! 31 day challenge day 26

G'day mate......Happy Australia Day!!!! I hope everybody has a wonderful day and enjoys the long weekend, whatever you are doing. Two of my best friends are coming over for bubbles and some nibbles before we head into the city for some dinner. Fingers crossed we get a table and its not too chaotic :)

For the 26th day of the 31 day challenge which coincidently (I assume) falls on Australia Day the prompt is very fitting as it is  'Inspired by your country'. I have super-short nails at the moment :( so I feel quite limited in terms of nail art. Plus, I'm ashamed to feature these short nails on the blog, they are so yuck!
I know I have a missed a couple of days for this challenge but I will definitely go back and complete them before the end of the challenge.

I went for a burnt orange polish with gold speckles in by Essence called 'Gorgeous Bling Bling'. I'm thinking this could represent the outback. I've never been to the outback although I would love to go. I have however been to the 'bush' and, especially when we were in drought, it was very dry. I also did a gold accent nail using Essence's 'A Piece of Forever' because according to our national anthem we have "golden soil". I guess our colours our green and gold and a green and gold skittle would have looked cool but with short yucky nails I'm just not brave enough. I did however stamp a kangaroo onto my accent nail using 'Gorgeous Bling Bling' and consequently discovered that that polish is definitely not good for stamping. But oh well, you can't win them all!

So if you're not a fan of Australia I guess you should stop reading now (bye) but I thought I would write a little about Australia :) First up, our anthem. We use to sing this every Monday morning at assembly in Primary School, while raising the Aussie flag up the flagpole.

Here is a video of  'Advance Australia Fair' the name of our anthem:

I also though that for the long weekend I would showcase some more of Australia, do some more Aussie nails and maybe some more videos from youtube. I have to laugh, when I was searching for videos, I found a video, '10 reasons not to come to Australia' :) 

Happy Australia Day and be safe!

31 day challenge day #16 - colour opposites

Hi guys, today is the 16th day of the 31 day challenge, yay!!! And the theme is "colour opposites". I decided to go for orange and blue as they are colour opposites on the colour wheel (I think....it has been awhile since my last 'art' class).

I was literally out all day and just got home so this is a pretty basic tape mani but oh well. I love how these two polishes go together and think I might do some stamping with them in the near future.

The polishes I used were:

• Endless Blue - Sinful Colors
• Doc - Essence Snow White Collection

Both of these polishes apply like a dream and dry super quick. I did one coat of each and think this mani took less than ten minutes. Polish it more blue than it is appearing on my computer monitor. Why is it that purple polishes look blue and vice a versa on computers? Today it got to 42 degrees Celsius so was too tired to do anything amazing! But the result is still cool I think. What do you think?

Thanks for reading and have a great day! :)

31 day challenge #7 - pacman nails!

Today for the 31 day challenge we had the option of doing either ombre or skittle nails. I attempted sponging ombre nails but failed miserably. I cannot sponge to save my life! I've lost count of the number of times I have attempted it. So it had to be skittle nails.....I have admired all of the 'pac man' inspired nails that are floating around the internet and decided to have a stab at them myself. So today I present to you PAC MAN NAILS!!!!

The polishes I used for this design were:

• Sinful Colors - Be Happy {minty blue}
• Essence Snow White Collection - Doc {orange}
• Essence - Meet Me Now! {fuchsia}
• Ulta3 - Black Satin {black}
• Konad white stamping polish {white for the eyes}

I am really really really happy with how these turned out and while they are not perfect I still think they look pretty damn fine for my first attempt, especially considering my lack of skill in regards to nail-art! 

Thanks for reading and please do not forget to check out the other bloggers' designs :) Cheers

Christmas Day Nails

I love the Christmas season.....and Boxing Day! Boxing Day is brilliant, I always spend it with my family and we usually spend a good proportion of the day watching the cricket! One of the only days of the year that we are all home and spending time with each other. Anyway this is just a quick post to show you the nails I wore for Christmas. Don't forget you can click on the photos to enlarge them :)

This is two coats of Essence's 'Gorgeous Bling Bling' and two coats of Essence's 'Gold Fever' and a coat (or two?) of Essence's 'gel-look XXL shine topcoat'.

I was super thrilled with how these nails looked. SUPER shiny and very festive with all of the glitter. However I am kicking myself because I didn't use essence's 'peel off'' base coat which means that this is going to be an absolute pain to remove. The thing we do for beauty......lol

I took these photo's this afternoon so there is a little tip-wear but no major chips, wish I had gotten photos yesterday but as usual Christmas day was chaotic!

I hope you had a great Christmas,
cheers.

Essence - Gorgeous Bling Bling

I have a new essence polish to show you today - gorgeous bling bling. Gorgeous Bling Bling is a vivid burnt orange with some gold shimmer particles of different sizes. 

 Despite the gold particles being subtle I still like them because they give the polish depth and I think if I had 3 thicker coats (instead of 2 thin coats) and if I had added a top coat the photos and end result would have turned out even better! The shimmer effect is fantastic, especially under light / in the sunshine. What a shame the sun couldn't make an appearance when I swatched this! It was a pretty cloudy day.....

 The formula was good and drying time fantastic with this polish. The formula is quite thin but totally workable, two quick coats and it's all good :)

Overall I love this polish and the gold shimmer-y particles even though you can't see them properly in the photos. The polish is actually super similar to the bottle cap..... A great polish for all year round and definitely a polish I would re-purchase: over all score = 8/10

Cheers and thanks for reading this brief review of Gorgeous Bling Bling. 

The Battle Nail Challenge - Stripes

The battle for this post is between stripes and dots. I decided to do a manicure for the stripes side of the battle.

I used two polishes from essence's snow white collection, happy (yellow) and doc (orange). This was one of  my first attempts at free-hand nail art and I guess it's okay. What do you think?

Thanks for reading :)

Essence Snow White Collection - Doc

The Essence Snow White Trend Edition collection was released this week (yay!!!) so I got myself to the shops last night and was pretty devastated to find the stand already trashed and only a few polishes were left. I was lucky enough to get Happy, Doc and Sleepy.

I haven’t been able to swatch and review them all yet….but don’t fret, they’re coming.

Doc is a stunning orange creme, Happy is a lovely yellow crème and Sleepy is a pale blue. I’m yet to swatch Sleepy but in the bottle there is a very subtle colour-shift so we’ll have to see how that goes.

The first polish I swatched was ‘Doc’ which is a really stunning orange with a shiny creme finish. The formula was thicker than other essence trend edition polishes (which I think is a good thing) such as the season of extremes polishes. The formula was pretty good, drying time was good and I loved the brush. Sometimes with small brushes they are impossible to manoeuvre but this brush was great to work with. I even managed some free hand nail art with it! I was palnning to do some nail art over this colour so I only used one coat but I am undecided if this is a one-coater or two-coater. Next time I will probably do two coats so it is perfect but if you are careful you could get away with only one coat, for sure!

Sorry I haven't been posting much, my internet keeps disconnecting :( Hopefully I can get back on schedule soon!!!!