Sportsgirl Nail It! in Emerald City - Swatch and Review

I recently showed two out of three Sportsgirl Nail It! nail polishes that I bought. Check out my swatches and reviews of Cobalt and Phoenix. Today I've got the last of the three, which is the green one called Emerald City.

It is a beautiful shimmery jewel-toned emerald with a slight blue tinge. It is a one-coater but I did two out of habit and to achieve a smoother finish. I topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite.

None of the photos are really colour-accurate, unfortunately. It leans much more green than the photos show. Definitely not a teal but a green, albeit slightly blue-leaning.

You can see a bit of the blue tinge here.

Probably the most colour accurate picture.

This is what my right hand looked like after two days - massive chip!

Pros:

- Nice colour, would be good for Christmas! (It is a medium Christmassy green in real life, not the aqua/teal that my photos show.

- One coater, but I did two out of habit and to smooth it out.

- It is flattering with my skin tone.

Cons:

- Wear time is bad - it chipped after two days. I usually don't mind chipping much since I change manicures around twice a week, but big (and irreparable) chips after only two days is pretty annoying!

- Formula is quite thick, but not terribly hard to work with.

- Slightly brushstrokey.

- It stains badly during removal. I don't like having green fingers and cuticles :(

Overall:

4/10. This is the first polish I've blogged about that I'm not happy with! It is a nice colour but not unique. The formula and wear time were disappointing! I also hate polishes that stain. The colour is nice enough but if I could go back in time I wouldn't buy this.

Availability:

I know that Cobalt is still sold in Sportsgirl stores, and I'm pretty sure Emerald City is too. I think Phoenix has been discontinued but I saw a few bottles of it for $2.95 in the sales area of the Sydney Pitt Street Sportsgirl! 

Thanks for visiting!

- J

Essie Sexy Divide - Swatch and Review

This is just a quick review of Essie Sexy Divide which I got in Hong Kong for an equivalent of about $5 Australian dollars. Essie retails for almost $20 in Myer... ridiculous. Anyway, onto the photos and review!

Sexy Divide is a vampy, dark, glowy purple shimmer. On the Essie website they describe it as "a bold deep purple with hints of shimmer". The shimmer consists of small red and blue particles, as you can sort of see in the bottle shot below. In the bottle the purple looks satiny and on the nails it translates into a glowy, lit from within kind of colour. Application was lovely and smooth and I did three coats plus Seche Vite.

I think this was after maybe four or five days of wear and it still looked good!

 Pros:
- Nice formula.
- Classy yet sexy colour.
- Wear time was really good.
- The shimmer is really nice and it's got that lit from within look.

Cons:
- Nothing really... I guess it's not unique but I don't have any dupes in my collection!

Overall:
- 8/10. I think it's a must have for a purple lover. I don't personally love purple polish but I still really liked it.

Thanks for visiting!

- J

Pastel rainbow skittles!

Today I've got a pastel rainbow skittles mani to show you :) Not much to say about it but I've always wanted to do a skittles mani - I thought rainbow pastel colours would look nice together!

Polishes used: (from left to right)

- Eleanor (I got this in Hong Kong but it says it's formulated in France... the bottle is pretty hehe) No. 51: light pink with subtle sheen.

- China Glaze Peachy Keen: light orange creme.

- Revlon Lemon Fizz: this one gave me some problems, it was thick and didn't want to smooth out evenly. Light yellow with subtle silver shimmer.

- China Glaze Refresh-Mint: mint creme.

- Revlon Blue Lagoon: light blue with subtle silver shimmer - looks like the same shimmer as Lemon Fizz.

 I like how this turned out :) Maybe when I get enough neon polishes I will do a neon version!

Thanks for stopping by!

- J

Festive manicure

I wore this to one of my best friend's 21st party about two weeks ago. The day before I was at work and one of the students that I tutor said that my nails looked "festive". I think that's a pretty good description! So I'm calling this manicure a festive mani :P

This was a base of Milani Gold Glitz from the One Coat Glitter collection, which I absolutely adoreeee. I have all of the original ones from the collection, and the new ones look awesome! I waited for the glitter to completely dry. Then I used normal sticky tape and cut out thin long triangles, which I put over the areas that I want to keep gold. I painted Zoya Lisa over the top and removed the tape while the polish was still wet. I topped it off with Seche Vite for a completely smooth and glossy finish. Sorry the mani doesn't look very glossy, I probably should've done another coat before taking the photos since we all know top coat is glitter's favourite food!

Blurry photo to show how glittery it is in real life.

Polishes used: Zoya Lisa and Milani Gold Glitz.

I think this look would be great for something like a Christmas or a NYE party! I loved this mani and I'm looking forward to trying different colour combinations! Which colours do you guys think would look good together? I think a basic black and white would look cool.

Thanks for stopping by!

- J

Max Factor Fantasy Fire Swatch and Review

I know the hype over Max Factor Fantasy Fire has mostly died down by now, but I still wanted to review it in case there are some people who haven't seen this gem of a polish! It's supposedly a dupe of the most coveted Clarins 230 (aka Unicorn Pee) which I sadly do not own.

This polish is a gorgeous purple with shimmer that shifts to all colours of the rainbow. It really is mesmerising!  Fantasy Fire is the perfect name for it. I made a GIF to show you just how shape-shifting (well, colour-shifting) this polish is.

It seriously looks like three completely different polishes at these three different angles!

The polish itself was very sheer, and I did 5 thin coats to achieve maximum opacity. To save polish and to avoid doing so many coats, you can layer it over a similar purple. I used Seche Vite for a glossy finish.

This is what it looks like front on and what it looks like most of the time. It's a medium royal purple with pinky-redy-purpley shimmer. It has so much depth to it.

Here the shimmer is an olive green and almost a bronze colour.

The shimmer is shifting to gold and peachy coloured.

It is orangey-pink here.

At extreme acute angles, the shimmer becomes an intense green and teal, and you can see a bit of yellow as well.

A few more pictures where you can see several different colours at once! (Sorry for the tipwear, these were taken when the manicure was a few days old.)

This reminds me of a lizard... somehow... lol.

The bottle is tiny though!

You can see how small it is next to a regular-sized Revlon bottle.

And here it is next to my Nikon lenscap haha.

 Pros:
- THE SHIMMER IS COLOUR SHIFTING FROM BLUE TO GREEN TO YELLOW TO RED!!!!!!!!!! So incredibly awesome!
- The base purple is a beautiful colour. I would love it even if the shimmer isn't colour-shifting.
- Might satisfy some people's lemmings for Clarins 230.

Cons:
- Pretty hard to find. Only sold in the UK... I got mine on eBay a few months ago, and it seems like the price has dropped since then. So if you haven't bought this, now is a good time ;)
- Bottle is tinyyyy, only 4.5 mL...
- Very sheer, probably better over a purple base colour if you want to conserve polish.

Dupes?
- See Scrangie for a great comparison of Fantasy Fire with several similar polishes.

Overall: 
9.5/10

Thanks for stopping by!

- J

The Amazing Spiderman!

I went to watch The Amazing Spiderman with my boyfriend and of course I couldn't miss the opportunity to do an awesome Spidey-Man(i) (haha see what I did there). Spiderman is one of my absolute favourite superheroes so I was really excited to do this nail art. It took me ages though coz it kept turning out badly. I actually did this on the 4th of July so it could have been an Independence Day mani if it wasn't for the accent nail, though we don't celebrate 4th of July here in Australia. :P

I did a base of three coats of the beautiful blue glitter China Glaze Dorothy Who? (one of my fave polishes of all time), waited for it to dry completely, then used sticky tape to diagonally tape off half the nail. I painted a thick coat of shimmery red Zoya Lisa over the nail and peeled off the tape before it dried. See Nailside (the queen of tape manicures) for fantastic tutorials including how to do tape manis. The silver foil stripe was Color Club What a Drag and I actually used a small lip brush to do it coz I don't have any nail art brushes (how sad). The lines weren't too straight so I went over a bit of it using the red or the blue on either side to straighten the lines out.

Accent nail: I got inspiration (slash basically copied lol, so all credit goes to Nailasaurus) from this lovely mani by Nailasaurus. The base was Zoya Lisa, I drew on the eyes and web using a toothpick (due to aforementioned lack of nail art brushes :( haha) dipped in Color Club What a Drag and outlined the eyes using a black creme Asian polish - Go Go #88.

Lastly, I used two coats of Seche Vite on all my nails for a glossy finish.

I'm a nail art noob so I was pretty proud of this! :D

- J

Sportsgirl Nail It! in Cobalt - Swatch and Review

Recently I purchased three Sportsgirl nail polishes - Phoenix, Emerald City and Cobalt (from left to right).

My experience with the Nail It! polishes has been good. Normally I wait till they're on sale before buying but I couldn't wait to get these three! These were purchased for $7.95 each. Last time I checked they were still available for sale in Sportsgirl stores (for some reason polishes aren't for sale anymore on www.sportsgirl.com.au, what's up with that?).


Today I've got Sportsgirl Nail It! in Cobalt for review. I had to have this because it's such a saturated and vibrant blue! It's a medium-dark blue with beautiful blue and purple shimmer. The purple shimmer isn't visible except at extreme angles, giving the polish a slight purple duochrome. The polish was on the sheer side and I did 5 thin coats plus a coat of Seche Vite. If you do thick coats I think 3 may be enough. The end result was worth all 5 coats!

This polish lasted and lasted. This is what it looked like after 5 days - minimal tipwear and two small repaired chips (that aren't really visible).

These two photos were taken in the shade and that's what the polish looks like most of the time - it's a really saturated blue. The first photo is too light due to the reflective shimmer.

Here you can see the the slight duochrome on the nail and the lovely purple shimmer in the bottle.

Pros:

- Amazing, rich, vibrant colour.
- Relatively affordable at $7.95 for 11mL.
- Lasts for a week with minimal chips and tipwear.
- Slight purple duochrome. :D
- Pretty bottle (lol).


Cons:
- Sheer, needing around 3-5 coats to reach maximum opacity.


Dupes?
- None in my collection.


Overall:
8/10


Swatches and reviews for Phoenix and Emerald City will be coming!


- J