Today I want to show you Arcane Lacquer's oh-so-pretty "The Power, The Passion"

Hello to you all on this cold and dreary Saturday, I hope everyone is having a good weekend.
The house I'm renting is (unfortunately) currently on the market, which means my daughter, our youngest cat and I all have to nick off for 20 minutes every Saturday morning while they have an open for inspection. It is such a pain in the arse... I just want to spend a Saturday morning in my pj's, lounging around and being completely unproductive, so I really hope the house sells soon.

This Saturday in particular is a bit bleh as I'm starting to feel nervous about Monday's surgery. I'm getting my bag packed, running through my list of things to take and feeling like I'm forgetting something, like I always do. And just to add to the mood my skin has broken out, which is par for the course when I'm stressed.
Oh well, it''ll all be over by Monday evening, which will be a huge relief.

Anyway, in the meantime here's a mani I did yesterday featuring my other recent Arcane Lacquer purchase, "The Power, The Passion". I also used Nubar's "Star Sparkle" on my accent finger to add to the bling factor... and it really is blingy :D

"The Power, The Passion" is a dark, purple based glitter polish, not exactly what I'd call a jelly as it's not particularly viscous, but that's the best description I can think of. And in that base is a veritable smorgasbord of different coloured microglitter- from hot pink to green to holographic- all of it adding heaps of character to the polish and phenomenal levels of bling.

As with my other Arcane Lacquer's the formula is a delight to use, the dry time is minimal and I only needed two coats to achieve full coverage. Of course, being a glitter dense polish it dries slightly gritty, but one generous coat of Seche Vite was all it took to achieve a glassy smooth finish.

And will you look at that bling? So beautiful! The sun makes the colours jump out from that gorgeous, rich purple base. It's another "keep your eyes on the road" type polish that has me constantly distracted by the rainbow flashes as I'm driving.
I wonder if you can insure for nail polish induced accidents?

I don't know if I'll get around to doing another mani before I head off to hospital, especially as it all needs to come off for the operation, but if I do I'll try to take some nice pics before I go.

I must admit, the best part about all of this is that I'm coming home to a ridiculous amount of nail mail... I ordered far too much this week, but I justified it with the fact that I'm about to be operated on.
Plus, I'll use the polish as a recovery tool- happy minds/healthy bodies and all that.
So really, it was all for my health. Totally legitimate, right? See, I knew you'd understand. Those silly debt collectors, they just don't get it ;)

Arcane Lacquer is available through Etsy as well as through several overseas nail polish stockists- for a list of names just check the info page on Arcane's Etsy store.

If you happen to remember, please throw some good thoughts my way this Monday arvo when I go under the knife, and I'll see you all soon,
Em xox

A quickie post today- hospital news and Arcane Lacquer's The Power, the Passion

Well, I got a call from the hospital yesterday, I go in for my third, and hopefully last, surgery on Monday (well, last for a while anyway).
They really didn't give me much notice- five days isn't cool when you're a single mum needing to organise school runs and house sitters and all that jazz. Thankfully we're all pretty used to this, so it only too a few phone calls for things to fall into place.

Of course, going in for surgery also means having to take all my polish off and show my stained nails to the world haha. And they are badly stained, thanks to a cheap black polish that managed to breach my base coat's defenses and leave my nails a delightful shade of gangrene.

I'm currently umming and ahhing about whether to go nuts and paint my nails everyday leading up to Monday, or be a tightarse and stick to what I have on now for as long as possible.
IDK, chances are I'll have a new colour on by tomorrow's end.

Today, however, I just had a very quick play with my other Arcane Lacquer acquisition "The Power, The Passion", a deep, dark purple that is so full of different coloured microglitter I almost drove off the road staring at it.

The Power, The Passion

I thought it would look good with the pink of Funhouse and I was right, the colours really compliment eachother.
So I did a very quick gradient and then spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to capture the ever elusive sparkle...

Anyway, there you have it, a very quick, slightly messy but oh so shiny gradient using the gorgeous Arcane Lacquer's "Funhouse" and "The Power, The Passion".
Hope you like it :)

Today lets have a look at Nubar's "Purple Rain"

Hello all (just kidding- no one reads this blog but I like to pretend hehe).
Anyhoo, today I received two bottles of polish in the mail, Nubar "Purple Rain" and Nubar "Cactus".
It was hard deciding which polish to use as one is purple and sparkly and the other is a fabulous looking green, but I decided to try the glitter polish because why not.

I also recently bought a "peel off" base coat on ebay, so I figured using a glitter heavy polish was also a good time to test this undercoat too (I just spelt out "undercats" haha... I almost adopted a third cat the other day too, but that's for another post).

So, on with the swatches;

Nubar "Purple Rain"

Purple Rain is a sheer dark purple base with lots of bright purple and holographic microglitter. The first two coats had me thinking that it wasn't going to look too good and that it was too patchy to wear without an undie, but a third coat evened everything out and it looks fine now.

with flash (shows off that lovely microglitter)

This was a bit of a surprise, it's a lot darker than I was expecting, but it looks really good on my hands and when sunlight hits my nails the polish goes from "nice" to "woah".
I ended up using two generous coats of Seche Vite to give it a nice glossy finish and overall I'm quite pleased with this polish.

Obviously this is not on the level of, say, Emily De Molly's "Cosmic Forces", but for a $4 polish it's pretty damn good and I am definitely becoming a fan of Nubar- it's just a shame that it's only available through a couple of vendors on ebay (I have the same issue with Color Club, another polish that I really like that's freaking near impossible to buy without paying ridiculous shipping fees).

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed these swatches and keep and eye out for an upcoming post featuring my first Femme Fatale polishes... I am soooo excited for that package to arrive, any day now :D