August Haul

I know I'm a month late but I was waiting for a couple of polishes I ordered in August to arrive and they finally have!

Gonna apologize now for the crappy pictures to come. I didn't have much time to take them so they're not really colour accurate!



Close ups:



L-R: Rubi Emerald City (I hate how it never remains a uniform colour in the bottle), Tony Moly TR05, OPI Uh Oh Roll Down the Window, OPI A Taupe Space Needle

I really like these 4 colours! Totally no regrets buying any of them! Just showed you guys A Taupe Space Needle just a while back and I gonna have a military green comparison soon with Uh Oh Roll Down the Window soon so watch out for that!



L-R: Misa Push Up Bra, CND Tropic Coral, OPI I Lily Love You

I hate how similar the Misa and CND colours look! Plus I stupidly ordered them in the same spree so it's an extra bummer! I was so into the whole coral thing bac when I placed the order and I wasn't expecting them to be so pink! :( I have Tropic Coral on my digits now and I'm feeling so bimbotic because it's so bright and it's just pinker than I thought it'd be. The only plus point is that it really goes with my skintone so it's really just a matter of personal preference! That said, I like the brush and the formula of Tropic Coral! And as pink as I Lily Love You is, I layered over Road House Blues and it's AMAZING!



L-R: Color Club After Hours. OPI Road House Blues, China Glaze Meteor Shower and China Glaze VIII
GOD, I ordered VIII and when I got it, the cap was loose and it made the polish so friggin extra thick! I even added 16 drops of OPI Lacquer Thinner and still no change! In the end, I decanted some into a smaller 5ml bottle and added some clear polish and I actually love it so much more like that! It's now a 2 coater jelly and it looks a little lighter so it doesn't look like black under low lighting anymore! YAY! I also made another more jelly version (very jelly, it probably needs 4-5 coats to be opaque) and it's really good for a jelly glitter sandwich! Really disappointed with transdesign (I'm not blaming the spree conductor cuz I know it's not her fault) though.

Love the other 3 polishes though. LOVE!

And lastly, I got a couple of empty 5ml bottles along with some metal ball bearings for shaking!



I FRIGGIN LOVE THESE BABIES! I've already made a couple of frankens! They are the perfect size for frankening because they're small so you don't really make too much of something! I actually want more so if you're reading these, can someone please organize a TKB spree? PRETTY PLEASE? In case you're wondering, I paid $0.97 per bottle including shipping.

Okay, end of my August Haul! I guess I actually bought less polish then I imagined! YAY!

Rubi Emerald City

I was at Cotton On at VivoCity when I saw this Emarald City and since it was only $2, I thought what the heck, just get it! But when I went home and opened the bottle, all ready to swatch, this was what I saw!



Friggin slanted brush! :(



Slanted. And worst of all, since it was a sale item, I couldn't go back and exchange it!



This is what it looks like then it's held flat at the angle I'd use to paint my nails. Tell me how to paint? I tried and the brush went everywhere! It was so hard to control! Luckily, I had an extra OPI brush (from a broken bottle I received in the mail, from which I managed to salvage the cap / brush)!

I promised Candy from Cherub's Lips I'd swatch Emerald City soon! I didn't do a full mani with the Rubi polish but here's a comparison!

L-R: Tony Moly TR05 (it's one coater yo!), Misa Dirty Sexy Money (2 coats) and of course Rubi Emerald City (2-3 coats)



I'm in love with TR05! I've been on the lookout for it since I saw it swatched on some other blog but it was ALWAYS OOS whenever I dropped by Tony Moly to check. I even left my contact number for them to call me once their stock was replenished but no one called. And then yesterday, I decided to try my luck and what did I find? TR005! Whoooooo! (: I only have 2 Tony Moly polishes but they're both one coaters and they go on so smoothly! Definitely worth the $4.90 I paid!

Emerald City went on rather unevenly. Even with the OPI Pro-Wide brush! I did one coat but it was uneven and a bit sheer so I did a thicker second coat to even things out! Color-wise, it was pretty nice but the smell, OH! I have no idea why Rubi polishes have that smell! And don't tell me it's cuz they're cheap! Because TFS and Etude House polishes are cheap too (only a few cents more) but they smell like regular (by regular I mean OPI, China Glaze and every other polish brand I own). Rubi polishes smell like PAINT. The kind of paint you use to paint your house! Weird right!

Oh wells, gonna remove the polish and let my nails breathe for a few days before painting them again!

May's Haul!

This is my new monthly haul segment that I decided to do, instead of accumulating a few hauls then showing you at once cuz I always scared myself when I take the photos and realise how much I've spent! Breaking it down into monthly hauls seems less daunting!

So for the month of May, these were was I got!



The Rubi polishes were going at $2 each only cuz the Citylink outlet was having a sale! My friend and I went down on 24 March and all their prices were still normal but when we went down again on 26th, almost everything was on sale! I bought a couple of other stuff from Rubi too (like 3 bracelets, a pair of flats and another pair of sandals but since this is a polish blog, I shall only feature the polishes). The first Rubi polish I got is called Purple Haze (top row, first from left). It's a lilac coloured polish, took 3 coats and it's quite close to OPI Done Out In Deco.

Second polish from the left is a mauve one called Rose. My mum and I love shades like that so it's always a good excuse to buy polishes of this shade! (I always think "Mum will like it even if I don't and she won't get mad at me because she will wanna use it too!" HAHA!) It's a darker version of OPI Kreme de la Kremlin (which has been discontinued but I managed to hunt it down so it's really precious to me).

Third one is called Gunmetal. It's a darkened silver metallic shade and it has silver particles. I've recently been on a metallic spazz so this one was a must get for me. And since I got this and another dark metallic (which you'll see later on in the post), I decided not to get OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous anymore. This one needed 2 coats I think.

Last one from the top row is TR11 from Tony Moly. It's a slate blue which has a dustiness to it. I bought it a few months ago and it reminded me of MAC's Blue India so I decided to buy another bottle to franken Blue India. I'm done with the franekn but I haven't swatched it out properly yet so I show it to you guys another time! The funniest thing is that Tony Moly doesn't state the name of their polishes on the bottles itself but when I saw my receipt, it said "Indian Blue" so I took it as a sign I should definitely make a Blue India franken!
Bottom row now, first one from the left is BR307 from Etude House. Gosh, I really hate it when polishes have no names but only number codes! It's a nude polish that looks like a really light taupe so it was a must get for me! And Etude House was having a sale the day I bought the polishes so I got it for only $1.75 (usual price $2.50)! It needed 2 coats but they went on easily enough!

Next is a purple duochrome again from Etude House at $4.13 (usual price $5.90) and it's called PP904. Sophia said it reminded her of Chanel's Paradoxal and to be honest, it does have a certain resemblance but this baby has got a gold sheen that Paradoxal doesn't and while Pradoxal is straight up purple, this one comes across as brown in certain lighting.

Last of the Etude House polishes is WH701 and it's the other darkened metallic shade I got this haul. It's a gunmetal base with tiny multi-coloured shimmer particles (the particles are smaller than that of Gunmetal from Rubi) and it reminds me of Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous so it was a $4.13 dupe for me! I wanted to also get WH702 that Sophia got but I had to control myself.

Last of the haul, Essie Da Bush! I love love love it so much. It's a murky sage green that's neutral enough for me to wear to work without people saying "SHE HAS GREEN NAILS!!!" It's a really close shade to OPI Stranger Tides (which I just ordered from nailvibe so that'll be in June's Haul) except Da Bush has a blue undertone while Stranger Tide has a yellow undertone. They are really close though so like I always say, unless you're crazy like me, you don't need both. I tried out Stranger Tides at BHG last month though, and the pro-wide bursh made it so much easier to apply so I may have to choose Stranger Tides over Da Bush (but it's only cuz of the brush). Da Bush needed 2 coats and it was a little thick so I may add in a drop of thinner later on!

So that's May's Haul for you. Total damage done was quite minimal cuz of all the promos so I'm rather relieved! I foresee my wallet dying after June's Haul though so stay tuned!

Also, if you'd like to see any swatches, comment away! I'll eventually use every colour I buy, just depends when but if you comment and the colour you requested suits my mood, it'll probably get swatched on sooner! :D I'm gonna try to do my nails at least once a week so I'm hoping I'll get through my stash faster than I buy new colours. So much for my a different colour everyday project! Such an epic fail because I didn't foresee how fracking busy I'd be during this internship!

Resort World Part II

Happy CNY everyone! Hope you already collected enough angpaos to fund your future purchases!

I did up my nails a while back with a coral polish from Rubi and Essie Turquoise and Caicos (T&C)! I wanted to have rad nails while playing the guitar but I was initially hesitant to paint them because I know they'll chipped pretty fast with all the chord changing and strumming. Then, I saw Orianthi on youtube and she always had pretty painted nails so I figured why not! Plus I was still on my school vacation when I painted my nails so I had time to repaint them if they chipped!

This colour combi is similar to the one I showed you in the Resort World post, which is why this post has been aptly named Resort World Part II. I love these two colours together because they remind me of some island resort of the Maldives! I can already picture myself there chilling! The two colours also manage to look so chill, yet so cheery at the same time so I really like this combination a lot.

Picture time!

This was taken in sunlight.

And this one was with flash.

Pardon the mess on my cuticles because I did my nails at 2am and I was too lazy to clean them up before sleeping. Oh, and big mistake painting my nails before sleeping because I woke up with smeared nails, even though I waited almost an hour after painting before sleeping! I would have thought one hour would be sufficient for them to dry but apparently not. Hence, I layered a coat of Poshe on top those smeared nails.  

For T&C, I used 2 thin coats and 1 thicker coat and for the coral Rubi one, I used 2-3 coats ranging from nail to nail. T&C was surprisingly manageable and not as frightening as I had imagined. Perhaps it was because I had time to patiently wait for each coat to dry fully before painting the next one on (I was watching How to Train Your Dragon while painting my nails).  

Hope you like this colour combi! I also realise that I now find it boring to simply have one uniform colour on all my nails! It's so much more fun to have an accent nail! (: 

PS: The coral colour lasted almost 3 days (with a Sally Hansen top coat) and T&C is still going strong (with Poshe Fast Drying Topcoat). Essie usually wears like iron for me so I guess that's something good about it. I hate their thin brushes so at least I get some reward for my effort! 

 

Resort World

Oh no, not resort world sentosa, but rather polish resort world! Just look at the 2 polishes I got from Rubi, don't they remind you of some girl relaxing in a resort somewhere in the Maldives, lazing under a big huge umbrella, drinking from a buddha! The polish on the right is supposed to be a mint green but it looks more blue in the picture. It's a little hard to photograph so you'll have to use your imagination.



Here, I have OPI Nantucket Mist on my pinkie and ring finger, the Rubi colour on my middle finger, and China Glaze IV on my index finger! Weird how the polish looks so different on the nail than in the bottle!



Another picture, this one with flash so you can get a better view of the colours!



And the polish on my thumb has started chipping (after a miraculous almost-seven days) so in a desperate attempt to keep the mani on for as long as possible, I painted 2 coats of OPI Sparkle-icious on top! This is my first real accent mani and I must say, it's GORGE!



Close up of the thumb!



I used 2 thicker coats for the Rubi polish and you might have noticed that the bottle looks so similar to the OPI bottle! It's actually a tiny tiny tiny bit taller than the OPI bottle and hence it's 18ml compared to OPI's 15 ml capacity. Also, both my Rubi polishes have weird tiny particles inside them, like black particles, so painting can be a bitch when the particles get on the nail! Other than that, the polish is decent, the brush is good, really like OPI's pro-wide brush!

Oh, and btw, the polish on my thumb nails lasted 2 solid weeks before chipping! Super record!