Another quickie, this time with Arcane Lacquer

Hi everyjuan (thank you ediotz for that- every time I pronounce "everyone" in my mind it's like that now).
Anyway, that's a totally obscure reference to e-drama that I'm guessing 99.99% of you will find completely meaningless, so onto something we all know and love, nail polish :)
Today is just a very quick post featuring a couple of new Arcane Lacquer releases, Strutter and Lividity Setting In. Both are fabulous on their own, as usual (Bec makes fantastic polishes) but they also look great together in a subtle, vampy gradient.

I only have a few, sub par swatches of Lividity Setting In, but here's a couple to give you an idea of how lush these colours are;

Lividity setting In

Lividity setting In is a deep, deep eggplant purple with a gorgeous gold shimmer effect that I totally failed to capture in these pics- I will take some better ones over the next few days and you can see just how lovely it is.

Strutter

Strutter is a stunning deep burgandy with a subtle gold shimmer running through it and it is one of my current favourite polishes, full stop. It is so rich and lush and yummy.

And here they are together, such a fantastic match;

And there you have it, a very simple but very effective gradient using two gorgeous polishes from the wonderful Arcane Lacquer.
Arcane Lacquer is (are?) also releasing a Halloween duo that looks amazing- the always lovely Christine over at Serenity Nails has a review of them up now and her swatches are fantabulous, so go check them out...they've been added to my "must have" list (even though I'm technically on a "no buy" boohoo).

Welp, I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend... it's school holidays here so I'm just going to be chilling with the kid for the next couple of weeks.
In other news, I have emailed the vet clinic where I had my job interview, just to touch base and keep my name fresh in their minds and I really, really hope I get the position as I need to be working at a vet clinic for 15 hours a week if I want to get in to that veterinary nursing course next year *fingers crossed*. I will definitely post about that when I find out, either way.

Oh, and I also have some very exciting news regarding a lovely Aussie indie polish that I'll be revealing soon, so keep an eye out for that one.

Until next time, ~love and polish for all~
Em xox

My best ever gradient (that I am so proud of)

Hey all, how are we today? Hope everything is fine and dandy.
Today is something a little different, I'm going to share with you one of my best ever gradients.
I love gradients, they're my go-to nail art favourite. I also love dotticures, but for some reason gradients are my favourite and I can't seem to help myself from whacking on more polish if I get the chance. And this one is by far the prettiest I have ever done, it's like a tropical sunset or a deep space supernova. Something bright and gorgeous anyway ;)
So, without any further ado here it is;

The polishes I used were Mud's Pink a Lot and Dark Room, Pretty Serious Cosmetics' My Darling Clementine, Arcane Lacquer's Funhouse and The Power, The Passion and finally Miss Ashleigh's Too Hot to be Blue. All but Mud are Australian indie polishes and they're fabulous too.

I can't begin to express just how stoked I was with how this turned out, it really is my best gradient to date and I think I'll be hard pressed to top it.

What do you think? Do you like gradients? What's your favourite go-to nail polish trick (if you have any) that you use to jazz up your mani with?
I'm going to be doing another gradient today as I'm going to a family do tomorrow and want my nails to be really bright, so if it looks as good as I'm hoping it will I'll post some pics of that soon.

Until next time ~love and polish for all~
Em xox

Sorry I've been MIA but I'm making up for my absence with 3 AMAZING polishes by Glam Polish, so you've gotta forgive me ;)

Hey there, I'm really sorry for being so sporadic in my blog posting recently- I am struggling a bit with feeling down, which always leads to crazy levels of apathy and 16 hour sleeps.
But I'm still around, still buying, and playing with, nail polish and the odd bit of nail art. I just haven't really been taking many photos, and those that I have just haven't interested me enough to warrant uploading and colour adjusting and blah blah blah.
But I have to say that I am absolutely falling in love with two particular indie polishes at the moment- Two Birds Lacquer (which you may have surmised from the last couple of posts) and Glam Polish.
Glam Polish is another Aussie company that makes exceptionally beautiful polishes, and their formulas are consistently fantastic too. Oh man, the colours! The depth, the intensity, the sparkle and, well, glamorous-ness of their products... seriously, you need to try these babies out to experience the glory first hand.

I'm going to post a couple of different polishes of theirs, and hopefully you'll see what I'm on about.
First up is Coven, from their "Cast a Spell" collection (of which I have now ordered the rest, because reasons!), a bright red beauty with holo, glass fleck, shimmer... there's so much in there, yet it's all done so well that nothing outshines the other, and it all balances perfectly. I also say that about every polish of theirs that I currently own (and yes, I"m about to own a lot more haha).
I don't know quite how to describe their bases tbqh; they're sheer enough that you get to see the glitter and shimmer, but they're also very pigmented, so opacity is achievable in only a couple of coats and they are thin enough that they're super easy to work with. I suppose a tinted, jelly-like base is the best description, but they don't have that syrupy feel to them that a lot of jellies tend to have, which makes them super easy to apply. But that's my best description, so that's what I'm going to go with. If you have a better descriptive term please let me know ;)

I mean, this polish is simply stunning- it glows from within and is so sparkly and rich... ahh, heaven!

And that's no exaggeration either. Just look at that inner fire!

And for a little bit of fun I also did a gradient using Glam's "Maleficent", which is a rich, red leaning purple polish with glassfleck, holo and shimmer and also red glitter running throughout, which helped to tie it together with the red of "Coven".

Isn't is gorgeous?

And now onto the third Glam Polish beauty that I want to show you tonight- the amazingly vibrant "Evanora". This was soooo hard to photograph as it's so shimmery and glowy that my iphone kinda freaked out over it.

Evonara in direct sunlight- my iphone couldn't handle the amazingness

I can't fangirl enough over this polish. It was like I had some supernatural force glowing on the tips of my fingers. And there's these awesome little iridescent diamond pieces in the polish that added such an interesting twist to the depth and dimension already on show. And of course, it's green, and a fabulous green at that. It's neither too blue or too yellow, so I think it would look great on any skin tone (and hey, who cares anyway? you wear it, you rock it!).

Formula wise this was slightly thinner than Meleficent and Coven, but it was in no way difficult to apply. This was three thin coats and one coat of Poshe (I'm trying Poshe to see if I get less tip wear- I think Seche might be shrinking back from the tips a bit- alas and alack as it's a brilliant top coat).

Dry time between coats was minimal and it was really easy to achieve opacity. I did try to place the little diamond shaped glitters as I really wanted them to pop, but the rest was easy, standard application, no dabbing required.

I'm sure you can see what I mean by magical- it's so luminous, it's amazing. And I love that regardless of whether you're out in direct sunlight on indoors at night under dim lighting the polish still looks fabulous, picking up whatever light is available and twinkling away. It's definitely a "keep your eyes on the road" polish hazard!

 

Glam Polish is available through their website for Australian buyers and also sells to the States. There's also a list of other stockists on its website.
I would wholeheartedly recommend Glam Polish as I think their wares are stunning and of excellent quality.
What more can I say- I think the photos, even coming from such a humble source as my iphone, speak for themselves.

And needless to say, I will have plenty more of their polishes to review in the coming month or so... I kinda went a little overboard on their site, but it was all so sparkly and pretty! It hypnotized me, I had ~no choice~ Hmmm, would that stand up in court I wonder? JK ;)

Anyway, I promise not to take so long between posts again- I'm trying to get on top of the shitty mood I've been in for the last couple of months, but unfortunately it's not always as easy as just "snapping out of it". I'm sure any of you who have dealt with long term depression can understand that one :\

Until next time, as always, love and polish for all!
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 :)

Lyme Disease in Australia, or why our governement needs to step up

Hi guys,
Today is a little bit different because I want to discuss a pretty shitty situation that's been going on in Australia for countless years. We actually have a lot of stuff that needs addressing, like any 1st world country that is a result of colonialisation, but this little rant is about Lyme Disease.

Now, as I'm sure most of you know, Lyme Disease is a well known illness that occurs when bacteria from a tick bite infects the host. It can cause a whole range of symptoms, many of them debilitating and baffling, and because no one person has the exact same symptoms of another, it can be hard to diagnose and many people spend years being told they have MS or neurological illnesses when, in fact, they have Lyme Disease.

Unfortunately our government here in Australia refuses to acknowledge that Lyme Disease occurs in this wide brown land, relying on a flawed study that supposedly showed that our ticks do not carry the bacteria responsible for the disease, even though other studies have shown that yes, our ticks do  carry the bacteria.

What this means is that people presenting with the symptoms of Lyme Disease are not afforded effective treatment, to the point where people have actually been harmed by hospitals  providing treatment detrimental to the patient because they refused to acknowledge the illness.

I cannot imagine how frustrating and simply soul crushing it must be to live with something so devastating, only to be told that's not what you have and to be denied effective treatment.

So, in recognition of this situation, and in part as a gesture to a young woman who I have met on one of the Australian nail appreciation pages who is suffering from late stage Lyme Disease, I decided to do my nails as part of "nails for lyme awareness".

For this manicure I used a white base, Sally Hansen's Xtreme Wear "White On", and used Arcane Lacquer's "Little Quibble" and Rimmel 60 Seconds "Camouflage" for the green gradient.
I then used a generous coat of Essence "Quick Dry" top coat to help blend the colours even more, waited til that was reasonably dry and then whacked on a coat of Essence "101 Dalmations" glitter topper. I finished it all off with some Poshé topcoat and voila! There you have it;
My "Lyme Disease Awareness" mani.

If you want to find out more about Lyme Disease in Australia you can read about it here and this gives you an idea of the uphill battle those doctors who do recognise Lyme Disease face in trying to treat their patients effectively.

Here's hoping that our government steps up and does the right thing, sooner rather than later.
Em x