Orly Pretty-Ugly Swatch

Hey guys! Realised I've been neglecting this space again. I've actually got 2 different manicures to show you but I'm still getting those photos up so to buy myself time, here's an old swatch! 

This one's Orly Pretty-Ugly. 

I think this shade is super similar to Butter London Poole and maybe China Glaze For Audrey. I think I'll do comparison swatches one day!

In natural lighting (outdoor),

I love dreamy shades like this! What do you think of Tiffany blue polishes? Do you have a favourite brand for this shade?

Nubar Rockin' The Garden Swatch

Hey guys! I survived the first week of school! Hurray! Here's a swatch that I've yet to post! This one was done before I decided to try a new watermark so it's still the old one. Hmm, I actually kinda miss the block-like and bold font. Should I switch back? :O

Anyway, today I have Nubar Rockin' The Garden. This one's a sky blue with slight shimmer. 

What do you think of this one? I really like it and I can totally imagine adding fluffy white clouds to it but I gotta practice my nail art before I attempt that.

Polish Haul Saturday #17

Hey guys! I'm starting school again on Monday *cry* which means my posts are gonna be even more sporadic. I apologize in advance although I will definitely will try my very best to post at least once a week. In addition to that, my Polish Haul Saturday's will probably become once a month since I most probably will not be able to buy as much polish as before.

Anyway, in case you haven't noticed, I've changed the way I watermark my photos. I've started using this thing called GIMP and I'm not sure if my photos are really better edited or if they suck haha. I would appreciate feedback on my photo cropping (like maybe I crop too much or something) or anything about the way I watermark my photos (eg. maybe you would prefer if I kept the watermark in a specific corner instead of tossing it into whichever part of the photo I see fit).

Okay, on to my new polish! I've been splurging a lot the past few weeks on more expensive nail polish yikes. But the colours are too pretty to resist!

First up,

 Butter London All Hail The Queen - This is a really pretty brown; I guess I could call it nude on my tan skin? And it's really pretty because it has this shimmer which cannot be seen here but I've done swatches on this and those will be up sometime in the next 2 weeks.

Butter London Marbs - I think I've found the perfect gold polish!!!!

Butter London Stardust - Damn my horrible phone camera. There is like holo blue, green and red glitter in this silver-looking polish. The base actually isn't silver though, it's transparent. I think I used this over my Christmas French mani in one of the posts below.

Face It Wide Nails BK901 - I'm a sucker for marble black looking shades. They look super classy. Swatches of this will also be up soon.

Face It Wide Nails OR201 - Orange isn't really my kind of colour but... my friend was sporting it and it looked really good and once I saw the polish in person, I knew I had to get it. It has a yellow/gold shimmer!!

Orly Pink Waterfall - The polish name is adorable. But no, I didn't get it because of that. I think the week I bought this, I was having a pink/purple mood as you will see with the two polishes below as well.

Nails Inc. Devonshire Row - A gorgeous medium purple.

Nails Inc. Lowndes Square - This is known as a pink lavender. I initially thought it was just lavender but turns out lavender is brighter in colour!

Anyway, that's all I have for you today. This isn't all the nail haul I have. I've been buying a lot of nail buffers, filers, nail polish remover that come in a bottle for you to stick your fingers in and nail stickers but.. silly me didn't think to take photos of those :/ Oh well. But I'm willing to do a separate post for those if you want to see them :)

Thanks for reading! Remember to feedback in the comments about anything you have in mind :)

Newspaper Nails

Hey guys! Guess what? I finally attempted newspaper nail art. And they were much harder than I thought! After reading many tutorials online, I thought it sounded pretty simple but when I actually got down to trying it, I realised how hard it was to transfer the newspaper ink clearly.

I smudged a couple of nails and so the newspaper ink looked a bit blurry :( When you see the photos, you will know what I mean.

Yeah, so the newspaper ink looks very faint. I thought the words were supposed to be more black and clearer. Like I Googled newspaper nails and there are some really good ones out there.

And we have a surprise guest on my blog today.

Everybody say hi to my right hand. ^^ Its first appearance because the newspaper look turned out better and clearer so I want to show that I'm not a complete failure at newspaper nail art haha.

I think my left hand nails look prettier though. Or maybe my right hand is just awkward because I've never had to take a photo with my left hand and pose with my right :O

Oh btw, the white polish I used was OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. And I had to paint about 3-4 coats per nail to get it fully covered. Ugh, white nail polish is not one of my favourite things in the world.

Lastly, I have edited my Christmas update post and posted my two simple Christmas manis there because it would be funny to post them up in a separate post now hehe :P

Thanks for reading~ :)

Merry Christmas

Happy Boxing Day everyone! Hope your Christmas gatherings went well. As you can tell, mine were really hectic and busy so I didn't have much time to blog. I will remedy that soon though :) Anyway, I wanted to update about what was going on in my life recently.

Firstly, I have actually borrowed this book: Rescue Your Nails by Ji Baek which is basically all about the proper way to take care of your nails, give yourself a mani and pedi and how to paint your nails well. Despite painting my nails pretty regularly, reading this book made me realise there were still a lot of steps that were missing in my nail polish routine. And I'm not even done with the book yet! Some tips that I found really interesting/useful were:
 - that unused facial scrubs could be used to exfoliate hands and even feet as part of the hand care regimen
- the three ways to sterilise tools to prevent bacteria, fungus and viruses
- the proper way to use a buffing block (which actually prompted me to go out and get one)
- nail polish smudges on the nail itself can be easily remedied! Just use a clean nail polish brush to paint nail polish remover onto the smudge to even out the polish and once that dries, you can just go over with the same colour

I really liked these tips that I found in the book and when I finish the book (which is hopefully soon), I'll be sure to share more.

Secondly, I also have an Instagram account. Okay, well, I kinda always had an Instagram account. It's just that it started getting neglected when I got my blog. The account is currently called "nailcrush". I will change the name soon to be similar to my blog name but I will update again when that actually happens. Anyway, I'm going to start posting nail art more often soon and those, as well as my normal swatches will be posted on Instagram.

Lastly, I have a couple of Christmas manis to share.

Thanks for reading and happy holidays ♥

Nubar Calla Lily Caramel

Hey everyone! I hope your Christmas preparations are going well. Today I have Nubar Calla Lily Caramel on my nails. I'm not sure if this shade really suits my skin tone but it is a lovely brown colour with pink shimmer that's slightly visible in my photos. 

The formula was a little on the thin side and I'm guessing this might just be Nubar's normal formula because I bought another Nubar polish and I had to use about 3-4 coats. So this might not be a good brand to use if you don't have a lot of patience to wait between coats. But this is a pretty reasonably-priced polish so it's kinda hard to resist :P

What do you guys think of Nubar polishes? Do you have any favourites?

Color Club Antiquated Swatch

Hey girls, sorry for the week long break! I just got back from Krabi. Hope all of you are enjoying holidays and getaways too since it's December! Today I have Color Club Antiquated. I might not have mentioned this before but this is my first Color Club polish. The place where I normally get my nail polish from recently, or a few months ago maybe, started stocking Color Club so I decided to give it a go since they were quite affordable. I'm not loving this buy a lot though, you'll see why in a moment. 

The formula of this was decent, 2-3 coats for each nail. It's a silver, metallic shade, reminds me of aluminium foil. 

I had no problems with the polish itself. It's just that, the shade I expected wasn't what it looked like when I painted it on my nails. 

In the bottle, it looks slightly more bronze-ish and copper-y but it disappeared when I painted my nails with them :( So this was a slight disappointment. Nonetheless, the polish itself was great so no complaints there.

Thanks for stopping by!