December's Haul

December's haul was so epic I had to split the entire haul up to take photos. I actually paid for most of the polish you're about to see in October/November but the polishes only arrived in December which is why they're featured in this month's haul. So technically, I wasn't THAT naughty in December!

This first set of pictures are of the polishes I collected from Cheeying from Inkypolisholicious and from Susan. I wasn't able to meet up with Susan to get my polishes but she was meeting up with Cheeying anyway and I too was going to meet Cheeying during the weekend, so she was kind enough to help me collect my polishes from Susan and passed me all my polishes! Thanks Cheeying, if you're reading this!!



December's Haul: Batch 1. This batch consisted of the Cult Nails polishes, Nfu Oh polishes and mini franken bottles the Yings helped me to order, and the RBLs and piCture pOlish Festival that I bought from Susan!

Don't worry, I got some close up shots for you! (:



Love how the Cult Nails bottles came wrapped up in brown paper with their names on the sticker! Doesn't the packaging look so chic? It really makes the packaging look so much more personal, showing how every bottle was individually wrapped by hand, with love!



Here they are unwrapped! The order's opposite from the above picture (i.e. L-R: Wicked Fast to Clairvoyant).



RBL BiBs! These were the RBLs that got shipped to Singapore first because they were from an earlier batch of BiBs. BUT, not all four are mine. One of them is actually for the giveaway that Lynn and I are going to have! We have yet to discuss the details but we should be doing the giveaway very very soon so do look out for it! And for now, I shall keep you in suspense as to which colour we'll be giving away! (:

Susan sent me the remainding two RBLs when they arrived and here they are!



These two Catherines are all mine! They're so pretty!



FLAKIES GALORE! Here are the two Nfu Ohs the Yings helped me to get and piCture pOlish Festival which I purchased from Susan! The Yings aren't really selling polishes, I just tagged along with their Nfu Oh order but Susan is selling piCture pOlish as well as Ozotic Pro polishes so if you're interested, head down over to her blog for more details!



Festival is a gorgeous multicoloured flakie in a clear base which makes it VERY interesting! Here is it next to Clairvoyant, which is also a multicoloured flakie, except it had a darker base!



You can see the flakies better from this angle! Aren't they so purdy? (: And if you're curious how they compare on the nail, Susan did a good comparison post between Clairvoyant, Festival and Nubar 2010, so do check it out!




Here, we have the Starbites pigment I bought from TKB Trading. They make really nice glass fleck duochrome topcoats when put into clear polish! You can check swatches out here, here and here! I've made my glass fleck top coats already and you only need a little pigment for a 5ml bottle and I have plenty left so if you're interested, drop me a comment and I can make and sell you a bottle! (:



And I ordered another 20 mini fraken bottles! I've already used up 17 bottles from my previous batch of 20 mini bottles I ordered a couple months back so I needed to restock my frankening supplies! I somehow don't remember using 17 bottles! WEIRD!!!



December's Haul: Batch 2. These polishes are the ones Janelle helped to buy from the US and mailed it over to me! She was very patient with all my orders because I was collating orders from 4 other gals and she also included some extras for me because she was busy with school and had to delay sending the polishes out! She was way too kind and I'm going to repay the favour when she send me the list of polish she wants from over here! (:

Top row: Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe, MAC Blue India (!!!!!!I FINALLY OWN THIS BABY!!!!!), Sally Hasen Gray by Gray, Sally Hansen Fairy Teal, NOPI Green Up Your Act and Color Club Artsy Crafty

Bottom row: Color Club Bojo Mojo, Manglaze Matte is Murder (these were the two extra bottles Janelle got for me!), Revlon Perplex, Orly Fowl Play and OPI Nantucket Mist

Really happy with this US haul because I got to satisfy so many of my lemmings. I finally own Blue India! It's been on my wishlist since the second month of my addiction and when I saw it on eBay for a reasonable price, I jumped at the opportunity! I also managed to get Perplex, which is a well know dupe for Chanel Paradoxal, which I also have but who can resist such a good dupe? Certainly not me. I also got a backup bottle of Fowl Play and Nantucket Mist. Sadly, I overpaid for Fowl Play, Nantucket Mist and Artsy Crafty but considering Janelle threw in Bojo Mojo and Matte is Murder, I'm still a very happy kid! (:



December's Haul: Batch 3. Collected some of these polishes from Candy and bought the rest during my outing with Lynn and Candy. Oh, and some were Christmas gifts from the very very very generous Candy too! I tell you, shopping with two fellow polish addicts is very damaging to your wallet! HAHA, this batch contained so many polishes I had to take a vertical shot! D:

Let's go to close ups shall we? (:



L-R: Essie Size Matters (What a fabulous name! HAHA!!), Topless and Barefoot, Color Club Fashion Addict and Worth the Risque (THEY BOTH ARE THE FRIGGIN STUD HOLO VERSIONS!)



Nameless Beadstreet polishes again! I friggin love Beadstreet polishes because they're of a very good quality for the price you pay! And since they are nameless, I shall exercise my super creative (read: lame) brain power. L-R: 3 bottles of clear which I'm not gonna bother naming, Yellow Yellow Dirty Fellow, Orange You Glad I'm Only $2 and Night Sky. And yes, I'm VERY happy they only cost $2 per bottle!



L-R: Color Club Magic Attraction, Art Club Glitter Hologram and Gold Hologram



Took a blurry picture just to show you how holo these three polishes are! :D



Finally bought myself some proper yellows! I was doing my nail wheels and got so pissed off at having to paint 5 coats of cheap yellow polish to get it opaque! L-R: China Glaze Lemon Fizz, Happy Go Lucky, Refresh Mint and Essence Lime Up!



And lastly, Essie Smooth Sailing, Orly Sapphire Silk and Pixie Dust!

Okay, as you can see, I'm pretty much broke and need to eat grass for the next two months so I can afford to buy the gorgeous polishes coming out in 2012! I'm praying my addiction will improve in the New Year! HAHAHA! That shall be my New Year's Resolution! TO BUY LESS POLISH! :D



(L-R: Elianto White, Twilight, Perisian Indigo, Night Glitters, Etude House BL505 and OR207)

December's Haul: Batch 4. These were the polishes I bought during my one day trip to JB. I was searching extensively for Elianto and when I finally spotted it, I squealed! Got myself a back up of their black and white polishes because I love how creamy and opaque they are, and I also got two more polishes from their Sparkling Diva range. Etude House was ahaving a 30% off for their polishes so I grabbed a multichrome blue and a dusty salmon/coral colour. Really Happy with the coral colour because I've been having a tough time finding a coral I like and this one is so pwetty!



(L-R: Extra Strength Lacquer Remover, Emerald City, Sacred Ground and Twisted Vine)


December's Haul: Batch 5. These were from the SpaRitual nail class I went to with two of my friends as well as Cheryl! Emerald City came with my goodie bag, along with a buffing block, zebra file and samples of their Handprint Hand Serum and Hydrating Hand Salve (which are not in the picture above). As for the rest, the course fee of $38 was fully redeemable for products and I chose to redeem the lacquer remover, Sacred Ground and Twisted Vine.

31 Day Challenge: Day 31 (Re-create Your Favourite Challenge)

WOW, last day of the challenge! Can''t believe I actually managed to finish the challenge although I took a total of 76 days.

For this last challenge, I had to re0create my favourite look and I really liked Day 15: Delicate Print. I really liked the lacey look and wanted to try another similar look, this time with konad.

The inspiration for this manicure came from here and mine is so much messier but I couldn't wait to finish the challenge so I didn't restamp my nails even though some of the lines were blurry.

First, I painted Essie Jazz then stamped on a fishnet design using konad plate m57.



Totally hating myself for not doing a better job on my index finger and pinkie.

Next, I stamped on what I call the "toilet paper" design using konad plat m71.



There you go, lacey nails in a snap. So much faster than the crazily intricate lace design I drew on my nail wheel for Day 15!

Polish used:
- Essie Jazz
- Elianto Twilight

YESYESYES! I'M FINALLY DONE WITH THIS 31 DAY CHALLENGE! I'm so happy and not to mention tired from painting my nails almost every night. I'm totally going on a one week break after I post the next entry I have lined up, as a promise to a friend!

31 Day Challenge: Day 25 (Inspired By Fashion)

Last year, when Miu Miu released their swallow print shoes and dresses, I WENT NUTS! Personally, I really really love swallows. I have swallow necklaces, rings, bracelets, notebooks, pens, anything you name, I probably have it or have thought about buying it.

So when I saw "inspired by a fashion", I immediately thought of SWALLOW PRINT!



I stayed true to the Miu Miu colour scheme and chose to do the design in pink and black.I think I drew a couple of swallows too fat though, and some of them look like dophins with wings, instead of swallows but overall I'm actually quite happy with the design!

31 Day Challenge: Day 19 (Galaxies)

I did a galaxy manicure a while back which was inspired by a cutepolish tutorial and I wanted to do a different look this time round so I googled some nebula / galaxy pictures.

Here's an overall picture of all five nails!



And now we have close ups.



I did a swirly design for my thumb.





The design on my index finger was inspired by this picture of the Starburst Galaxy M82.





The design on my middle finger was inspired by the Galaxy M81.





The design on my ring finger was inspired by the really pretty Rosette Nebula. It really looks like a rose if you look at it!





And this last pinkie nail was inspired by a Galaxy Cluster. You can't really see but I did use a purple polish (Siberian Nights) and it's pretty dark so perhaps that's why it isn't obvious and just looks black where it's supposed to be purple.

Hope you girls like this manicure better than the first one! (:

31 Day Challenge: Day 14 (Flowers)

I saw this lovely floral design on mentalforpolish a while back, which was inspired by this robinmoses video, and I actually just did the manicure on the spot, while watching the video.



I think it looks really messy and sloppy but this was probablt my first real attempt at a more complex nail art design so I cut myself some slack! It actually looks VERY different from the design shown in the video. Ultimately, I really coudn't stand how sloppy and different it looked so I recreated it on my nail wheel, along with a couple of other floral designs!



The design on my nail wheel really looks much better and I'm so much more pleased with it! I also did a couple of Cath Kidston-inspired designs because I absolutely adore her floral prints!





My grandma saw my nail wheel and requested for one of the designs so I took the opportunity to practice painting the design on real nails instead of a nail wheel!



My grandma really wanted to pay me so I charged her $1 for her mani! HAHA! So technically, she's my first paying customer! (:

Delicate print nails next, so see you then!

31 Day Challenge: Day 13 (Animal Print)

Hey everyone!

Since the end of my exams, I've been working on some designs on my nail plates just for fun, to see what I can come up with. And also, in case I ever decide to do manicures at fleas, I'd have the designs already done up!

If you're following me on twitter, you'd probably have seen the animal prints I'm about to show you but the picture I tweeted wasn't all that clear because of my sucky phone camera (fine, iPhone users, your camera is really good, no need to rub it in) so I took better pictures with my camera!

L-R: Leopard print, zebra print and giraffe print



These 3 designs were actually much easier to do up than I had expected. They're all drawn by hand in case you're wondering!

Sadly, the moment I painted on a top coat, the black acrylic paint became a little mirky and I'm not too sure why! I've had better luck with waiting for the paint to totally dry for a few hours before painting on some SV but I don't think I'll have that much time to wait for the paint to dry if I do such designs at fleas so do you gals have any suggestions as to why this is happening? Is it the brand of acrylic paint I'm using? I know some of you gals use acrylic paint from Spotlight but mine is from Omni which I bought at popular. It's just regular artist's acrylic paint. Does the brand really make a difference though? :(

31 Day Challenge: Day 12 (Stripes)

I initially had a different idea for the Stripes challenge as I planned my original design a month ago but since it's so near Christmas, I thought I'd bring some holiday cheer and do a Christmas-inspired theme for Day 12!



Here's my candy cane themed nails! I'm not very pleased with how uneven the stripes are on my different nails but I did this manicure at 1am while watching Jerseylicious and Dirty Soap, and I didn't really wanna redo my index finger when I knew I was gonna remove it in 2-3 days, so bear with me. And haha, in case you can't figure out what's on my ring finger, it's the actual candy cane. I think it looks so funny, like some snake head, probably because my line wasn't as crisp as I wanted it to be!

Elianto Indigo Shine and Glittery Nickel

Headed down to Tampines Mall for dinner with my family a few months back and while waiting for them to arrive, I dropped by Elianto and got some babies! I bought Indigo Shine and Glittery Nickel from their Sparkling Diva collection and a basic white polish since my current white polish is old and goopy.

Here's Indigo Shine on my index and middle fingers and Glittery Nickel on my ring finger and pinkie!

(Click on the image to enlarge)

I love how my index and pinkie are blurred out so the glitter particles are more obvious, while the middle two fingers are in focus!

Here's a close up of Indigo Shine. Oh, look how pretty it is! How the glitter particles shine in that gorgeous sea of teal! This was 2 coats that easily glided on.

And here's Glittery Nickel! It's a beautiful smokey purple with the same kind of gorgeous glitter particles in Indigo Shine. This was also 2 coats.

They cost $5.90 each and for such pigmentation and quality, I think they were worth the price tag!

 

 

31 Day Challenge: Day 7 (Black and White)

Showed you guys this photo in my last post:



Were you able to guess what I'd be doing for today's challenge? I was really excited to do this mani because I already knew what I wanted to do. I didn't get to do a Halloween mani and even though it's long over, I thought I'd do one just for fun! I thought doing spider webs would be a good black and white theme and here's my humble attempt at hand painting the web pattern!



Wanted to do an accent nail so I decided to do a white base for my ring finger and paint a whole web.
But the more I looked at it, the plainer it seemed and the white part where the different lines joint together on my index finger seemed too thick so...



I decided to do a spider! I didn't know how to draw a spider on so I just used a dotting tool to do a large dot for the body and another smaller dot for the head. Then I dotted one two extremely small dots for the eyes. I wanted the spider to look evil so I chose red for the eyes! After that, I drew on eight short lines for the legs!



Here is an extreme close up of the spider. I hate that you can see how uneven my strokes are but I'm not perfect so I'm still gonna give myself a pat on the back for figuring out how to do a decent looking spider!



Slapped on a coat of Poshe and took an overall shot with the spider! Sadly the Poshe smudged some of the webs, which was weird cuz they had at least 2 hours to dry before I painted on the Poshe! =/
Ahh, but I'm still quite happy with my spider web Halloween mani. I guess this 31 Day Challenge is making me more creative and forcing me to think outside the box a little! (:

Oh, and in case you're wondering, I used Elianto White and Black, and China Glaze Hey Sailor for the base and the spider, and Daiso Nail Art polish in Black and White to draw the webs for this manicure!

October's Haul

There's still a couple more days left in October but since I'm on my polish ban (apparently until Christmas or so, although I'm already starting to crack),  I don't think I'll buy anymore polishes in the next few days. Maybe when November approaches...hehe, my birthday's coming up soon so maybe, just maybe, I can get away will another haul. EXCUSES, I know, but I need to be cheered up among all the studying I have to do!

Now, I bombed ALOT this month and I bought so many polishes, that the normal "background" I use to take my pictures, which if you are interested to know, is the cardboard backing of my foolscap pad, wasn't large enough so I had to resort to using the cover of one of my Ikea boxes to take the next few pictures. LOL!

Presenting, the haul that put a big fat hole in my wallet...



Really really really, my savings this month is abysmal. I only manged to save a couple of bucks. I am so thankful I'm only hooked on nail polish and not other forms of makeup as well. Phew. To be totally honest, I got 3 more polishes but because I already spent so much in October, I pushed to to November's Haul! HAHA! Earnings (or rather, expenses) management.

Gonna show you close ups with names now..



Chanel Blue Rebel, Chanel Blue Boy, OPI DS Glamour, OPI Last Friday Night and Elianto Indigo Shine



Elianto Glittery Nickel, Beadstreet Barney's Suit (there are no names so I shall christian them! HAHA! Love how Barney, from HIMYM loves suits but this is obviously for Barney, the purple dinosaur), China Glaze Snow Globe, China Glaze Atlantis and Essie Bobbing for Baubles



Essie School of Hard Rocks, Beadstreet Enlistment (again, it's my own name for it), OPI Warm and Fozzie, Elianto White, Beadstreet Brick It Up and Beadstreet You Mustard! (HAHA! I love my corny names for the Beadstreet polishes!)



And lastly, four bottles of Sasatinnie Q10. I first saw swatches of them on a nail blog by someone who lives in HK so she had easy access to Sasa and I didn't think our local Sasa would ever bring them in but when I was there a few weeks ago and I saw these babies, I went ballistic. I bought four bottles in total, two for me, one for my (future) giveaway and I only got the last one because it was retailing at two for $5 so I might as well get four. From swatches I've seen, it's a good substitute for OPI Merry Midnight so go grab it if you want Merry Midnight and don't want to buy Orly Fowl Play. It's so cheap so just BBBMTL (Buy Buy Buy, Mai Tu Liao, which loosely translates to Buy Buy Buy, don't wait any longer / procastinate)!

Okay, end of haul. I'm gonna start planning November's Haul now! I already have 10 items on my to-buy list! :D