Tony Moly Galactic Glittters

I hauled these babies back from the affordable polish motherland (i.e. Korea) a couple months back and I'm finally getting down to swatches them.

I have a feeling all three of them were inspired by Deborah Lippmann's Glitter In The Air.



I love how delicate yet funky they look!



This is three coats of GS08 Milky Way, a Deborah Lippmann Glitter In The Air dupe.  It's a pretty good dupe. I actually own GITA and yet, I bought Milky Way. Yes, that's how much of a polish freak I am. I think I like buying cheaper dupes of more expensive polishes so I can use the cheaper ones more frequently and save the originals for more special occasions.



This is three coats of GS09 Shooting Star. This is my favourite polish from the bunch. It has such a sweet base and yet pack a colourful punch of glitters!



This is three coats of GS10 Pinky Star. She's the sweetest of the bunch. If it was only the pink base, it would be a very not-me kind of polish but the glitters adds to the fun and I couldn't resist getting this baby as well!


Overall, I love how easily these polish apply. The glitters came out easily and I didn't have to fish for anything. And the squishiness, oh, I love how they look like effortless jelly sandwiches! 

May's Haul

Sorry I'm late with May's haul. I haven't really been keeping track of my polish collection of late, reason being it's getting harder to do so with the ever-expanding polish count. Also, I've been trying to stay off polish to save for something I would treasure more, a new guitar! That being said, I only started my serious low-buy in June so May's haul was a little crazy (as usual).

The first two pictures are of the polishes I got in Korea, while on my graduation trip. The polishes were dirt cheap I tell you and I grabbed so many that my baggage was overweight on the flight back. Thank goodness my friends who didn't shop a lot, so I "ate" into their excess weight limit.





As you can see, I'm really loving the chunky glitter trend right now, especially with all the indie polish trend so I had my chunky glitter fix with the Korean polishes! I'm not gonna name them because in all honestly, they're all alphabets and numbers and it's just too much work.

Next, we have the three Cult Nails polishes I got (Seduction, Captivated and Toxic Seaweed), Floam, as well as a couple of Beadstreet polishes I bought. In the bottom row, I got Jawbreaker and Dream Queen, Catrice Sold Out Forever (a Chanel Jade dupe), Essence Glorious Aquarious, GG 10 to Midnight, Inglot 204 (a blue flakie) and GG Andamooka Blue (a supposed blue flakie but I see random bits of red and green flakes in there too! D:).



Then we have four Essence Colour3 polishes. Three of them were CPs from EuropeI didn't know Singapore was gonna bring them in and sadly, I paid almost double what they cost at Watsons but hey, you win some, you lose some. And I'm still very grateful to my dear Evillee who helped me buy all the gorgeous European polishes on her trip there!



And lastly, I did an epic Ozotic / Picture Polish / A-England haul at ninjapolish. I'm so glad I snapped up all the Ozotic 500 series polish that I wanted because they're now discontinued.



So ther you have it, May's Haul. An epic haul if I might add. I seriously need to cut back on buying polishes! My Helmer is now full and I'm storing all the polishes you see in this post in an empty A4 paper box cover, which incidentally, is almost the same size as a Helmer drawer. I know us polish addicts always say we need to cut down and then we go on no/low buys which always turn out to fail but we'll see.

I'm pretty damn adamant this time and considering it's already 26th June, I've only bought a couple of polishes from a US blog sale because those polishes were quite unique and were going at some exremely reasonable prices! I did pay for my Pretty and Polished pre-orders but I placed those orders a long long time ago so they don't count!!! I also have the Nails Inc Sprinkles and some Nubar duochromes in my beautybay cart, which I'm sure I will check out by the end of the month but it's a considerable improvement already so yay! :)

February's Haul

Okay, before I start, I need to justify myself. If it weren't for BeautyAsia, Feb's Haul wouldn't look THIS bad.



I bought so many polishes that I had to grab them from my Helmer and put them into a plastic bag to transport them to my desk for their mugshots.



On the left is my BA haul and on the right is my "regular" haul. I told you my haul wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for BA!



This is my non-BA haul. They're mostly pretty cheap to boot so I don't feel as guilty!

Top row: Two bottles of Essence Nail Art Espress Dry Drops, Essence Hard to Resist, In Style, two bottles of Time for Romance,  a back up of Lime Up!, On Your Gracile Tiptoe and Essie Gold As It Gets
Bottm Row: Three crackle polishes I found at Aries ($4.20 each only!!!!), Tony Moly Milky Way (which is extremely close to Lippmann Glitter in the Air), OPI DS Original (courtesy of Gwen, who sold me her backup bottle), and Sally Hansen Harderning and Resistance Continuous Treatments (they were going for Buy One Get One Free!!)

Opinions:
I love the Essence drip dry drops. Fromt he reviews I read, it's pretty comparable to OPI's and it's only a fraction of its cost ($4.20)! It does leave a slightly oily feeling after it's dry but I like it because I just treat it as a cuticle oila nd rub it into my cuticle area.

I haven't tried On Your Gracile Tiptoes yet but I've been looking for the perfect coral and I haven't found one yet so hopefully this will be it. I like my corals more orange than pink and this one is slightly dusty and not too orange that it's just orange.

The crackle polishes come in a huge variety of colours and I just picked the ones that I found more interesting, like green, teal and slate blue! They're pretty okay and they do crack so I have no quelms!
The Tony Moly GITA dupe was purchased for me by a friend who went to Korea (shoutout to Annette if you're reading this!) and sadly, I haven't seen it in the Singapore stores yet.The glitter in the tony Moly polish is slightly bigger than the ones in GITA and it's also bluer but unless you paint them side by side, you won't know the difference so it's a good enough dupe for me!

I've been using both the Sally Hansen treatments on my toes. The hardening one for my second to forth toe nails because they always tear and I suspect it's because they're too thin, and the Resistance one for my first (big) and last toe nails because they're already hard so I just want they to be stronger and not crack as easily. My big toe nail was peeling very badly and I've tried a number of treatments (other Sally Hansen treatments and NailTek) which didn't work but after about a month's use of Resistance, it's peeling less! I've also noticed my other toe nails becoming thicker so I'm liking these two SH treatments!



BA Haul, picture one.

Top Row: Zoya Flecks, Skylar, Bevin, Yara, Neeka and Cynthia

Bottm Row: ChG Tronicas; Cyberspace, Digital Dawn, Electric Magenta, High Def and Techno Teal
Opinions: I grabed the Zoyas since they were only going for $7. I actaully regret not getting more! As for the Tronicas, I love them! They're so much more holo than all the swatches I've seen online!!! My only quelm is that Lynn bought a bottle of Digital Dawn on the first day and I got mine on the second, from the same shop, and hers is SIGNIFICANTLY VERY MUCH MORE HOLO than mine. Mine is pathetically scattered while hers is linear! D:



BA Haul, picture two.

Top Row: Nfu Oh #62, Orly Rage and Night Owl and China Glaze White on White

Bottom Row: Misa Indian Tan, China Glaze Ruby Pumps, Lubu Heels, Orly Out of This World, Haley's Comet, Misa Green with Envy and DL Glitter in the Air

Opinions: I LOVE THE NFU OH. HOLO TO THE MAX! It chips very easily though so I recommend using the Aqua Base Coat and SV on top. SV will dull the holoness but only minimally and it's worth losing a tiny bit of holoness for longer wear IMO. Don't really have anything much to say about the rest of the polishes.
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Okay, so overall, it's a large haul but I knew I was gonna do some major damage during BeautyAsia so I'm not all that disappointed with myself! March's Haul is set to be quite expensive even though it won't be as much polish. I caved and just ordered the entire Layla Hologram collection because holographic polishes seem to be my archilles heel, my kryptonite, my extreme weakness if you will. And I also purchased OPI DS Diamond during Nailvibe's recent discount special. Not to mention I finally managed to go down to DYON to get the OPI Holland and I want some Essie Sping colours too! As for ChG Hunger Games, I only want Smoke and Ashes and Stone Cold but I haven't had the time to grab them yet. Damn, March's haul will be an epic one too! :(

Ten Fingers, Ten Nude Shades

First of all, I'd just to to wish everyone a Happy Lunar New Year! I live in Singapore and most of us celebrate this day so if you are celebrating it too, GONG XI FA CAI! (:

This week, I'm going to show you some nude polishes, and next week, I'll show you some holographic ones! I've actually had quite a few posts done up in anticipation of my busy school semester so at least I can still concentrate on my studies while keeping this blog updated. Gonna finish posting my nude and holo posts before moving on to showing you my normal manicures again. Also, since I won't be painting my nails as often as I did when I was doing the 31 Day Challenge, I'll probably go back to posting at most 3 times a week.

I actually did this swatch a really really long time ago but after transfering the images from my camera to my hard disc, I totally forgot about them until I was looking through the pictures in my hard disc and realised I haven't blogged about these 10 differennt nude shades yet!

Like I said, these pictures were taken a long time ago so I'll try to recall the colours as best as I can. Hopefully I'll name them correctly!

 I'll try my best to recall the names!


From pinkie to thumb: Essie Jazz, Essie Sand Tropez, OPI Tickle My France-y, Etude House BR307 and Tony Moly TR07. They should all be 2 coats here if I remember right. These are the cooler nude shades from my stash.



From thumb to pinkie: OPI Dulce de Leche, OPI Miso Happy With This Color, Rimmel Barely There, OPI Bare It In Trafalgar Square, OPI Barefoot in Barcelona. 2 coats each, except Miso, which should probably be 3-4 coats! These are the warmer nudes.

I definitely have more nude shades but these few are the better ones! I'm starting to invest in more nudes, just bought myself OPI Samoan Sand, Coney Island Cotton Candy, Let Them Eat Rice Cake, Have a Tempura Tentrum and Essie Topless and Barefoot. I'm preparing my Helmer for the boring nail colours days that are soon approaching (this coming August)!

I think out of the 10 nudes, I really like OPI Barefoot in Barcelona the best. Weird thing is, I've never worn it before! This is what happens when you have a Helmer full of polishes but only 10 fingers! Do you have a favourite nude shade? If so, please share what is it! (:
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MAC Blue India and Comparisons

OH YES, YOU READ RIGHT. MAC FRIGGIN BLUE INDIA. And this didn't even cost me as much as I thought it would so double yay! (:

A few weeks back, Candy sent me an email requesting for a comparison swatch between Sally Hansen Gray by Gray, MAC Blue India and Essie Bobbing for Baubles, and I decided since I'm gonna swatch my precious, I might as well throw in some similar shades too.



L-R: Tony Moly Indian Blue, Sally Hansen Gray by Gray, Blue My Mind (my own franken), Mac Blue India and Essie Bobbing for Baubles



The closest of the five are Gray by Gray and Blue My Mind.The latter is a tad greener though. Just a tad.
Gonna show you individual swatches first before the comparison.



This is Tony Moly Indian Blue. I'm not even lying about the name. On the bottle, it only says TR11 but when I checked my receipt, I saw the name Indian Blue. I mean seriously? Come up with a more original name! Two coats here. I love Tony Moly's formula. Real nice and buttery to apply. They just glide on!



Sally Hansen Gray by Gray. I wanted this the moment I saw it on ALU, being compared to Blue India. Sadly, my bottle had swirls in it, like the pigments weren't blended together. And it caused streaks when I painted it on my nail. Grey streaks. It isn't that obvious but close up, OMG, the horror! I'm cringing! Colour-wise though, lovely colour. The tappered brush is similar to Rimmel's brush and it does miraculously help me to paint neater. Wearing two coats here.



My gorgeous franken Blue My Mind. See how much more original my franken's name is than Indian Blue! This baby's formula is great, applies like butter, isn't too thick and best thing ever? It's a one coater.



The star of the show, or rather, post, MAC Blue India! This was two coats but I have a teeny tiny bald spot so maybe three coats would have been better. I'd still wear two coats though, probably with a ridge filler below to make it apply more opaque. This one had the jelly-est consistency of the bunch.



Essie Bobbing for Baubles. Deep blue polish that applied well with 2 coats. Very hot colour! I'm waiting to get Essie's Luxeffects and layer them on this baby! I must save up because Smoochiezz will be having a booth at Jurong Point when school reopens so I NEED TO SAVE MONEYYYYY!



Thumb to pinkie: Indian Blue, Gray by Gray, Blue My Mind, Blue India and Bobbing for Baubles.



Same order but from a slightly different angle. The colour is slightly more accurate here.



These three are so close to each other. Gray by Gray, Blue My Mind and Blue India. So so close. Which means my franken was pretty darn close! :D

Blue My Mind is greener than Blue India and Gray by Gray is greyer. Blue India is, well, bluer than the two, so technically, no dupes here but for all normal-people-who-are-not-polish-addicts purposes, you don't need all of them.

I got my Blue India on ebay and Gray by Gray from the US, just in case you're wondering.
Okay, going on my one week break now! See you!

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!