Priti NYC Polish: Lambstail Cactus

A little while ago I won two bottles of Priti NYC nail polish from Australian online natural and organic beauty store Bare Naturals in my choice of colours! *does a happy dance*

I'd heard of Priti NYC - 5 Free, non-toxic, vegan polish - but this is the first opportunity I've had to try anything from the range.  Lambstail Cactus was my first choice and I was impressed immediately.  The polish was that perfectly smooth consistency so it applied easily and evenly and I had no issues with flooding or thick application.  And shall I talk about the colour? This is a deep taupe with tiny, almost holographic sparkles.  I just wish I could have captured it better in the pictures below.  This is two coats of colour with - you guessed it - top coat.

All pictures taken indoors in artificial light:

Have you tried Priti NYC polish? Do you have any shade recommendations? The other shade I received is a grape cream called Geisha Girl.

The hunt for the perfect brown-red lipstick (shopping my stash)

Here's a fun post for Hump Day!

So, I alluded to my change of hair colour in my last post and how it's influenced my taste in other things - namely makeup! It's amazing (pretty logical really) how a new hair colour can get you out of a makeup rut.  Taking advantage of that brief window before the red tint fades from my lightened hair - as it inevitably does and is already - I'm suddenly all about wearing complimentary warmer shades of lipstick and that had me zeroing in on brown-red.

My knee-jerk reaction was to go out and buy a new tube of lippy (Great excuse right?) but I've done the sensible thing first - this time - and gone on a treasure hunt in my lipstick collection to see what I have in brown-red.  Brown-red...is that Pantone's Marsala?? Hmmm...  Before I let myself muse any more on that point, here are the three lipsticks I came up with...
  
L - R: 
MAC - Dubonnet, Natio - Flame, Revlon - Wine With Everything

• MAC Dubonnet was the first lipstick I specifically dove into my collection for, as this Amplified formula lipstick is almost the colour of dried blood.  It definitely leans more to red but has the hint of brown to give it the warmth I'm looking for. This lipstick is by far the deepest shade in this trio and with its rich pigment and slight sheen it makes for a strong statement lip.  My only issue with this lipstick is because it's so dramatic and not a matte it requires more care to ensure it doesn't end up everywhere but on my lips when drinking and eating!

• Natio Flame is a shade lighter and brighter than Dubonnet and sits more in the middle of red and brown so is the true brown-red.  This shade looks like terracotta on my lips and has more of a low maintenance semi-matte finish.  This is the newest of the three lipsticks, which I bought on an unsuspecting whim a few months ago and is my favourite of the bunch because it is exactly what I was looking for in terms of colour and finish for a daytime lipstick. Success!

• Revlon Wine With Everything is an old tube (as you can see by the outdated packaging above) but this colour is a Revlon classic and still available in their core range of Super Lustrous lipsticks. This leans more towards the cooler end of the red spectrum as a plummier red, so kind of misses the brown-red mark although it still flatters strawberry-blonde hair, and is an appropriately classic rediscovery for a winter lip.

The swatches (top to bottom in the same order as above):

Besides having obvious fun playing in my own little makeup pit, the end result of this exercise were the realisations that:

I actually do have the perfect brown-red lipstick in my collection;
I don't need to go lipstick shopping after all;
I've embraced Pantone's colour of the year....maybe???
My own stash is the first place to shop!

When did you last shop your own makeup collection?

Revlon Parfumerie: Autumn Spice

I bought this polish for the interesting colour but I ended up falling for the scent!

 

Autumn Spice is from Revlon's still available (phew!) Parfumerie range of scented polishes.  The colour is perfect all in itself - a rich warm red-brown with golden flecks which play in the light so I'm loving it.  Now for the scent:  this one smells just like spice cookies or my old aunt's homemade gingerbread.  I found it literally craving inducing so my own little joke is this particular scented polish should come with a warning cos it's not suitable for those on a diet! Okay enough silly musings and down to the nuts and bolts.  Application was non-problematic and considering I chose to go without top coat because I preferred the slightly textured finish the polish didn't take forever to dry and wore well for most of the week.  Onto the all important pics:

 

Sun:

 

 

Shade:

 

What's your favourite scent from this range?

 

Zoya: Shivon

I was in a real autumn mood when I went digging through my older polishes and found Shivon, a vintage beauty from Zoya.  I don't know if it's officially "vintage" because Zoya still sell it but it's been around for quite a while!

 

Shivon is from Zoya's 2008 (Eep! That is a while ago!) Flourish collection and to me it's pretty much autumn in a manicure. The rich reddish bronze with its subtle gold duochrome shimmer is reminiscent of the changing colour of the leaves around here.  Because of the complexity Shivon is one of those chameleon colours which somehow goes with everything and can appear either cool or warm depending on what you accent it with.  Application was excellent considering I've had this polish hanging around for easily 4 or 5 years as it painted on smoothly in 2 coats, taking care of my colour craving. 

All pictures taken in indirect daylight:

 

 

 

What nail or makeup colours do you love wearing in autumn/fall?

 

Missha The Style Crystal Nail Polish: JBR01

I was digging around for something not purple (or red or blue...) to wear on my nails when I found an interesting little gem from Missha worth swatching.  JBR01 - Can I call this something more interesting like, say, Jackie Brown? -  is the name of today's featured polish from Korean brand Missha's The Style Crystal Nail Polish collection.

According to Missha's official website these polishes actually contain "...little crystal pearls [to] make your nails sparkle..." and are rose scented (I can't say that my nostrils noticed that!)  'Jackie Brown' is a milk chocolate shimmer polish, subtly glinting with holographic micro-glitter.  I applied two coats and omitted top coat so as not to diminish the holo effect however it still appeared on the subtle side in most light and unfortunately the sun wasn't around when I did my nails so...  I couldn't capture the full rainbow holo sparkle here.  Oh well *sigh*. 

All pictures taken in cloudy conditions:

That's it for Wednesday

Revlon: Cocoa Wine

Nail fail ahead...

Cocoa Wine is a vintage polish from Revlon and this brown cream screams 1990's to me. It must be an old one cos I can't find anything on the interwebs about it either!  Back in the '90's (in my youth, haha!) it was all about brown, bronze, nude, beige etc and chocolatey lips and nails seemed just so right and THE height of fashion.  Well, okay so this polish looks a little dated but that's not why it's a fail.  It applied smoothly for a prehistoric polish too, but after the top coat went on it wrinkled like an old sheet.  Not a good look.  Of course I later saved it with one of my layering experiments but I'll leave that for another post.  Let's just take in the initial disaster for now.  You can see it on the pinky...

Full sun

Indoors

Until next time.

Vita :)

Recent hauls: MAC & OPI

I've only been away from posting a few days but I'm so relieved to be back after an annoying malware scare.  Unfortunately to clean up my site I've had to wipe my entire blog roll for the time being but rest assured I'm still keeping up with everyone's posts via my reading list. 

So, this post is actually featuring two separate hauls from Catch of the Day (COTD).   The MAC and OPI sales popped up a matter of days after I finished my Project 10 Pan and my husband (the 'enabler') let me know all about them!  I'm not going to ramble on too much about my selections tonight - I'll just let the pictures and the swatches do most of the talking this time...

OPI selections L-R:

Guy Meets Gal-Veston, Charged Up Cherry, Koala Bear-y

OK, I have to say something.  Very summery choices for winter, eh?  I'd been lemming the uber bright pink creme Charged Up Cherry for an age and, I dunno, I was obviously in the mood for all things bright, loud and out there when I made this particular impulse purchase. 

Swatched in same order as above:

MAC selections L-R:

Idol Eyes, Woodwinked, Coppering, Carbonized 

Aside from the cool toned lilac Idol Eyes, I stepped over to the warmer side with my MAC shadow choices this time,  really stepping outside my comfort zone by choosing the red/copper Coppering.  My MAC shadow collection's got to be complete by now surely???

 

Swatched on bare skin (same order as above)...

...and swatched over primer

What do you think of these shades?

Until next time

Vita :)

Milani: Brown-a-Licious

I feel nostalgic every time I wear a deep brown polish like this!

I used to favour darker brown and purple shimmers during the 1990's and Milani's Brown-a-Licious takes me back there to my youth, ahh...*sigh*  It's a gorgeous deep reddened brown shimmer and has such a depth that it looks like mahogany on my nails.  Brown-a-Licious is the one and only Milani polish in my collection and I was quite impressed with the even glassy finish and depth of coverage in two coats.  Apart from minor tipwear which showed up after about a day this polish wore well with no chipping for the entire working week. 

No sunlit pictures but this polish still glows in the gloom...

Outdoors daylight

That's it for this evening!

Vita :)

What my nails wore to work: OPI - San Tan Tonio

TGI Friday - It's been such a long week for me...

San Tan Tonio is another recent buy for me and it was motivated by nail polish envy in a slightly unusual setting.  I was on yet another interview panel last week when one of the interviewees' nails caught my eye.  Of course I paid attention to what she was saying but I couldn't help noticing the wonderful camel/tan creme polish on her nails.  I didn't ask her what polish she was wearing - just too weird an interview question - so I made a mental note of what I thought it could be and ended up with OPI's San Tan Tonio as the closest shade.

San Tan Tonio is from the recent Texas collection so it's still widely available.  I was so taken by how classy and professional it looked I wore it for this week's business trip and it's still on my nails right now.

Outdoors shade

 

Full sun

What's your favourite work-appropriate nail polish?

Have a wonderful weekend!

Vita :)

Face of Australia: Aussie Beach

Happy Friday!

Here's a quick post to share what my nails were wearing to work this past week.  I chose an old metallic brown shade by Face of Australia.  Face of Australia are actually currently launching a new Molten Metallics range of nail polish shades but I've yet to see it at my local Priceline stores :(

Aussie Beach is a rich dark caramel brown with a metallic finish.  I applied two coats to achieve a smooth finish.  This polish was a little on the goopy side, probably because of its age and it took a long while to dry.  Unfortunately because of the long dry time - and my impatience - I had to live with a few dents in my mani this week.  On the plus side this old formula was resistant to chipping.

The golden undertones are enhanced in lamplight:

I took some outdoor shots but the natural light was pretty gloomy this week.  Here's one for comparison anyway:

I hoping for some better weather this weekend so I can get some sunlit photos of my next mani.

That's all for now.

Have a wonderful weekend!

Vita :)

My autumn lipstick wardrobe

One of my very close friends (and one of my first followers) mentioned that I hadn't done a proper post on lipstick in a while, so...

Here's a peek at the lipstick shades I've got on high rotation this autumn.  I've got a pretty light complexion - I'm an NC20 on the MAC scale - so as the weather gets cooler I gravitate towards deeper nudes, maroons, plums & berries to liven up my colouring.

From L - R these are:

• MAC Amplified (Cosmo) - a warm creme deep nude, high in pigment.  This has carried over from my summer collection as it's such a versatile nude and contrasts enough against my skin
• MAC Amplified (Molassie) - a warm milk chocolate creme shade, also high in pigment as per the Amplified formula
• L'Oreal Colour Riche (Plum Brulee) - deep red/maroon creme, also very rich in pigment
• MAC Cremesheen (Party Line) - deep plum creme
• Rimmel Lasting Finish Lipstick (Temptation) - bright strawberry red with slight shimmer and semi-matte finish.  This one's a newbie I bought to try out the new Rimmel lipstick range

I've swatched these in the order of lightest to deepest shade on the inside of my arm.  This photo was taken indoors in natural daylight:

Swatches from L - R:

Cosmo

Molassie

Party Line

Temptation

Plum Brulee

Do you change your lipstick shades to match the season or do you have a signature lipstick look?

Until my next post.

Vita :)

Some beautiful Xmas presents: Part 1

First of all, wishing you a happy Australia Day!!! Yes, we had a little barbecue for lunch today...

I thought it would be nice to show off some of the lovely girly gifts I received last Xmas. 

These objects of beauty were all given to me by a very close friend and her lovely daughter.  They'll remain nameless but they know who they are!!  Naturally we need to take a closer look at these.

First up the keyring from Georg Jensen - minimalist, chic, gorgeous!

Now, an extremely clever piece of jewellery.  This piece is a flexible metal rope which can be worn as a bracelet or around the neck.  I've worn it and it makes a great statement piece.

And last but not least the nailpolish.  Full credit to my friend's daughter who selected the shade for me.  She knows my taste!  Apparently, she was so determined to get this she had to trawl through a few stores until she located the elusive bottle.   Here is Revlon Autumn Berry and some swatches:



Gratuitous bottle shot



Flash

Indoor lamp 



Outdoor shade

As you can see this is a lovely plum/brown colour with a subtle gold shimmer shot through it.  I actually wore it as a mani-pedi out to dinner at Taxi in Melbourne earlier this month and it coordinated beautifully with my outfit.

That's it for now!

Vita :