Chinese New Year Nails: Year of the Rabbit KOTD!

I know I just posted a Chinese New Year NOTD just awhile back, but hey, since Chinese New Year comes only once a year, why not do another one? This time, I have cute little rabbits on my mani, you know, because it's the year of the rabbit!



The absolutely adorable kawaii rabbit imprint is, of course, thanks to the wonders of Konad! I'm using plate S10, and it's full of kawaii animals. There's a rabbit, a cow, a cat, a bear, a dog, and so on. Very cute, if you ever want to do a zoo-inspired mani.



The polishes were different this time, because after the glitter of the last CNY (Chinese New Year) NOTD, I decided I wanted this one to be a creme. So the base was a colour from the Face Shop's Nail Talk range, RD302. The first coat produces a pinky-red colour not unlike Benefit's Benetint, but in nail polish form. The second coat produces the primary straight-up red you see in the photos. It also comes in a very kawaii bottle, although the bottle is quite tiny.

The konad colour was China Glaze Hi-Tek, a gorgeous orangey-gold chrome that is absolutely beautiful for konading. I love the China Glaze Khromes, and if you're a konader, you need the entire Khrome collection, since they all konad very nicely.



As you can see from the photo, my konading skills are obviously quite lousy - there's a konad fail on some of the fingers. Oops. But still, my mistakes don't detract from how cute the rabbits are!

And just so you can really see all those rabbits on my nails up close, including my mistakes:



Since the year of the rabbit comes once every 12 years, I may as well get a kawaii rabbit on my nails while I still can, right? Happy Chinese Year, everyone! :D

Stargazer 232: Mirror-like Nails with Nailene Stickers!

Stargazer is an European brand of cosmetics, and they have a pretty awesome range of metallic nail polishes. The one that is most popular is 232, which is a silver metallic polish like China Glaze Millenium, but they also have the metallic polish in other colours, like gold and pink. They are all awesome colours, but I have an enduring love for Stargazer 232, just because it's silver.

I combined the Stargazer nail polish with some Nailene nail stickers, to disguise the fact that my nails aren't looking very good today. Today's NOTD is inspired by Lady Gaga's "Lovegame" song. In partiular, it's inspired by the lyrics of the chorus:

Let's play a love game, play a love game...Do you want love?...



...Or do you want fame? Are you in the game?



See, see? Is that awesome or what? I guess you know someone's officially become a pop culture phenomenon when they influence your nails!

I absolutely love this colour - it's not Minx, but it's the closet nail polish equivalent of getting a mirror-like finish to your nails. When I was wearing Stargazer 232, I couldn't stop looking at my nails - it was like someone had plated them with metal!

Unfortunately, weartime wasn't as good as your average polish, and it chipped and peeled pretty fast. I suspect that this has to do with the smooth, metallic finish of the polish, and I have noticed that other polishes with such a finish also suffer from a similar lack of staying power.

If you want a mirror-like polish, this is definitely one to check out. You'll just have to be prepared for the chipiness of this if you do end up wearing it. If you can't stand polish that chips or peels easily, you're probably better off giving this a pass.

Illamasqua Jo'mina and China Glaze Sci Fi KOTD: Purple and Silver

Illamasqua released Jo'mina (is it Jomina or Jo'mina?) some months ago, with the Body Electrics collection, and out of all the three nail polishes in the collection, Jo'mina was the hot favourite. I snagged it for 50% off because it wasn't "in season" anymore (sigh, I guess you know autumn is coming when the Spring/Summer collections start going on sale). But you know me, and you know I don't give a hoot about what's trendy or not - I wear what I like, regardless of season. And a 50% discount is timeless :P

Here it is in sunlight. I think this was the most colour-accurate I could it to be, but it's still not quite there. The base for the konad was Jo'mina, while China Glaze Sci Fi was used as the design. The konad plate was M65. Man, my fingers look fat.



Jo'mina is a gorgeous beautiful bright lilac purple. I'm not sure quite how to describe it, and unfortunately, my photographs aren't that colour-accurate because it's also really hard to photograph! It keeps turning out a lot more blue than in photos. I took a gazillion photos, and they all turned out blue-purple. And I tried colour-editing it, but with my limited photo-editing skills, there was only so much I could do. I'm sorry I couldn't get a more accurate portrayal of this, so just try to imagine this as being a lot more red-based purple instead of a blue-based violet, okay?



I've read a lot about how Jo'mina was a total PITA to apply, so I was totally prepared to struggle with this one when applying it. To be fair, it isn't the best, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be either. I used two coats for all my photos. To be fair they were thick-ish coats, so if you used thinner coats you might need more. Still, I didn't get as much pulling, tugging, or unevenness as I expected. Weird right?

China Glaze Sci Fi is awesome to apply and opaque in just one coat, which makes it perfect for konading. Of course, that's evident from these pictures!



I really love this KOTD. I mean, I love purple, and I love chromes, so combining them makes me a very happy girl!