National Day Mani

Happy National Day to my peeps in Singapore!

This year's nail art idea came from my colleague. We were talking during lunch and she suggested painting the Merlion so I found the eaisest Merlion outline and viola!

After last year's national flag with the crazy small stars, this year I decided to go simple with a glitter polish. I'm wearing one coat of HARE polish Leap Light Year painted over a base of OPI Vodka and Caviar. It's the perfect patriotic red shade!

Here's a close up bottle shot of Leap Light Year.

On my thumb, I'm wearing two coats of piCture pOlish White Wedding  and I used a red nail art polish from Daiso.

Hope you're having a great long weekend! :)

Christmas Eve Nails

HEYHEY!

It's Christmas Eve today and my company gave us the day off. That's probably why I sound so happy! :) This morning, I woke up and decided to do some Christmas nails for the Christmas party I'm going to tonight! 

This is two coats of Winter Holly. The first coat went on pretty sparse so I'm actually surprised it managed to become opaque in two coats.



I love how fuzzy Winter Holly looks sans topcoat, really looks like a Christmas tree!



With a topcoat on, the gold holographic bits start shining through.



Winter Holly is such a festive polish! Perfect shade for Christmas!



Here's a close up shot. Pretty pretty pretty!



I decided to add an accent nail to spice things up with piCture pOlish White Wedding and China Glaze Ruby Pumps with a striping brush.



Here's a close up of White Wedding. I'm loving how the tiny irridescent flakies make the polish so much more delicate, instead of a boring flat white polish.



The glitter in Ruby Pumps reminds me of cranberry bits in some turkey sauce! It looks so delicious! 



That's all for my Christmas Eve mani! Hope you guys have jolly plans for Christmas!

piCture pOlish Orbit

Orbit is one of the three new Mesh shades from piCture Polish and it's the last of the three piCture pOlishes that I recently hauled and this one was a no brainer. Quite simply put, it was a BBBMTL (Buy Buy Buy Mai Tu Liao for all you hokkien speakers, or loosely translated to just buy, don't wait any longer if you don't understand Hokkien) polish for me.



Same thing with Amethyst and Denim, orbit came with a QR code that will lead to Star Trinkets, where I got my piCture pOlish babies from.



Orbit actually reminded me of Essie Starry Starry Night, a VHTF Essie that I have resigned to never owning so I thought Orbit would be a good polish to own to satisfy my SSN lemming.





Silver and blue glitter amidst an indigo base. What's not to love? Especially with my love of galaxies, nebulas and the night sky.

This is two coats of Orbit with no top coat.









Here's a super close up shot of Orbit. I love how there's a blue glow behind the silver glitter! Makes the polish look even more intergalactic, don't you think?



Here, I'm wearing a top coat over Orbit on my index and middle fingers and no top coat on my ring finger and pinkie. Somehow the top coat makes the polish appear bluer and more intense.




This is with a top coat on all my nails.





Of course, with any glitter polish, a matte top coat ALWAYS makes the glitter stand out more so on went a layer of Essie Matte About You!





Ironic how a matte top coat makes the glitters shine even more right? This picture convinced me that Orbit was worth every single cent.





I actually had to do very minimal clean up for this manicure and I'm attributing it to piCture pOlish's brush, which I'm slowly but surely falling in love with. PP's brush might not be as wide as OPI's pro-wide brush but it fans out nicely and that definitely helped with the polishing!

Brushes from left to right: Picture Polish, Essie, OPI, China Glaze



As you can see, PP's brush is the shortest (from end of the cap to tip of the brush) out of the bunch so it was easier to control my brush strokes and I think that was the main contributing factor to the neater swatches.
I haven't been this happy with an entire haul in a long time so my recent piCture pOlish haul has been quite "fulfilling"!

Stay tuned for my Olympic Mani for Polish Days that's coming next! :)

piCture pOlish Denim (and comparisons)

I've wanted to get Denim for quite a while now and since I got Amethyst, how could I separate the two shimmery and mini-flakie siblings?



Similar to Amethyst, Denim came with a QR Code sticker and scanning it would lead to Star Trinkets, piCture pOlish's Network Memeber right here in sunny Singapore! These QR stickers seriously make online shopping much more convenient, especially on your phone!



And now, two close up bottle shots to show you the shimmer and flakies in Denim!





Denim had a similar formula and consistency as Amethyst (or is it the other way round?), which was on the thicker side, but nothing unmanageable. Two easy coats and you're good to go!













And now, presenting to you, the shimmery and mini-flakie siblings!





They really do have the same finish and I love that Denim now has a purple sister! This is two coats of each polish.









Bonus time! I have another comparison which I was very curious about when I was considering whether to buy Denim or not. This is Essie Smooth Sailing VS piCture pOlish Denim.



This is two coats of each, taken under artificial lighting.





The first difference is their colour. While both colours can be classified as cornflower blue, Denim is much more purple than Smooth Sailing, which my pictures sadly do not show very well. It's something like Essie Lapis of Luxury vs China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le. Both lie in the same colour family but one just looks more purple.

Finish wise, both polishes have a similar mini-flakie finish but Smooth Sailing's finish (as its name would imply) is smoother than Denim's. It like someone put Denim in a blender and blended it up a little. Denim also has an underlying blue shimmer which Smooth Sailing does not.

Lastly, Smooth Sailing has a thinner consistency than Denim but both covered well with two coats. Sadly, even with Smooth Sailing's easier-to-work-with formula, Essie's anorexic brush pull the
Bottom line: I love friggin' Denim, Amethyst and Smooth Sailing. That's all folks!

Stay tuned for swatches of piCture pOlish Orbit!

piCture pOlish Amethyst by Star Trinkets

The moment I laid eyes of Amethyst, I knew I HAD TO HAVE IT, and when I found out that Susan (a dear friend of mine, Hello Susan if you're reading this!!!) from StarTrinkets and TheSubtleShimmer was the one behind this shade, I had to had Amethyst even more.



According to Susan, she thought that Denim needed a sibling and after some correspondence with piCture pOlish, Amethyst was born! I particularly love the description "guards againsts intoxication" of Amethyst on the bottle. Actually, to be honest, it was a little ironic because after seeing this baby up close, I was even more intoxicated by its beauty!



Ohohoh, here's a new thing that I'm finding extremely wicked! The new bottles from piCture pOlish come with a QR Code sticker stuck to the side of the bottle and scanning the code will lead you right to the shop selling it. In this case, I tried and was thoroughly amused, cheap thrill I guess, that scanning this code led me to Susan's shop! Go try it for yourself!





Can you see the bee-yee-eh-you-tiful blue shimmer and silvery flakes from these two close up bottle shots? Click on them to see the gorgeousness up close! They remind me of a mermaid's tail.

Amethyst was surprisingly opaque and I only needed two coats. I was busy swatching the Layla Holograms which mostly needed three coats and I guess I got so used to applying three coats of polish that I was a little taken aback at how pigmented Amethyst was! The formula was a bit on the thicker side but it was still very easy to work with.









GAHHHH, I'm in love!



And for my last shot, I wanted to show you Amethyst at an angle so you can see the shimmer and flakes a little better! I promise you that it's well worth clicking to enlarge the picture!

After seeing these swatches of Amethyst, I'm super eggcited to try out Denim now! :)
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If you would like to purchase piCture pOlish Amethyst by Star Trinkets, it is available exclusively on Star Trinkets (in Singapore) for S$16.50 (~US$13.20; the Singapore Dollar is rather strong against the USD now). Susan is currently offering free international shipping for orders above S$80. Alternatively, you can also purchase it directly from piCture pOlish.