Imma Raid Your Indie Stash! Pretty and Polished - Newer Collections

Hello! Welcome to the second installment of 'Imma Raid Your Indie Stash!' where I show you some swatches of the cool indie polishes my friend Tegan back in Australia let me play with before I left! It's not everyday that we get left loose to purge our lemmings in someone elses collection, so of course I had to share!

Tegan loves Pretty & Polished which make up the bulk of her indies, last time I showed you some of their older releases and this time I've got some newer stuff, in their new bottle designs and everything!

The first one I'm going to show you is a total glitter bomb, this is 'Rainy Day Lady' which is a clear base with large red and silver hexes, large blue diamonds, and medium hexes in green, yellow and purple.

I probably should have worn this polish over a base colour, but it seemed so packed with glitter I wanted to show it on it's own, so there I go making things difficult for myself because trying to get good nail coverage with just glitter is difficult to say the least!

This is not my cup of tea due to the primary and clashing colours, and it was a bit tricky to position the glitter on my nails and had a long drying time.

Next is 'My Lumps' and this is a shimmery blurple jelly, with yellow glitter cut into glass shard type shapes of all sizes. This was quite an unusual polish and I did quite like the effect.

The polish itself looks pretty cool and I like the combination of colours, but the formula was a bit tricky. The polish itself was quite thick and pasty, and that combined with the irregular shaped glitter shards and needing 3 coats to get good coverage meant the end result was quite thick and lumpy. I didn't even put top coat on as I could see it would need 2 or 3 layers to really smooth it out, but it already looked so thick on my nail and I think the top coat would have just been too much.

This last one is my favourite of all my friends Pretty and Polished that I tried, and this is 'Peebles' a shimmery pink crelly with gold micro dots and small pink and yellow hexes.

The formula on this polish was much better than the other 2, it went on nice and smooth and gave good opacity in the usual 3 coats.

So this is the end of the Pretty and Polished raided from my friends stash, in the next 'Imma raid your Indie stash' post Ill be showing a couple of other different indie makers that I was fortunate enough to get to try out!

Multi - Coloured Neon Zebra Print!

So I had a craving for an animal print mani (if such a thing is even possible!) but I didn't just want to do your standard stuff, I wanted to mix it up a little and do something a bit different! Most of you all are into your winter colours by now, but I'm still down here in the southern hemisphere and my summer is just about to start, so while you guys are packing away your neons for the winter, I'm just dusting them off and preparing myself for a season of lots of fun colour! At least this way while your all miserable in your cold winters, I can bring some sunshine into yer life! :)

I decided to go for a Zebra print, and I wanted as many colours in there as possible, so I decided to do a neutral base with lots of different coloured stripes!

 

I did this mani in September hoping to post it in October, and since then a lot of these polishes have been posted home to my mum in the UK so I can't check the bottles for names anymore, so let's see what I can remember!

I do believe the base is Australis 'Sinfully Sweet'. The pink stripes are Duri 'Voodoo', The purple is Nfu - Oh 517, the blue is Mode 'Happy Snaps' and the orange is Sinful Colours 'Hazard'. The last 2 colours I'm a bit vague on, though I do at least remember the brands! The green is BC & Co and the name is actually a number so good luck remembering that! The yellow is Rimmel and I think (but don't hold me to it!) it might be called 'Lemon Drop' or something similar, it's definitely lemon something or other! I probably have used these colours in previous mani's already posted on the blog somewhere, so if you really want to know the names and can be bothered, you can take a trip down Nail Jems memory lane and have a look back through my older posts!

I painted the stripes on free hand with a fine striping brush, and I think it looks pretty damn nifty even if I do say so myself! 

If you guys have any links to interesting and unusual animal print nails, I would live to see them! Leave your links in the comments!

                                                                                                                                            

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Imma Raid Your Indie Stash! Pretty & Polished - Older Collections

Before I left Australia my nail besty Tegan came over for one last night of manicure madness together, and that lovely lady brought along her collection of Indies to leave with me for a week so I could play with them! Of course I did proper swatches to appreciate my short time with them properly, and I thought I would share them all with you, but as there are too many to show in one post I've decided to divide them up for a little post theme under the theme of ''Imma Raid Your Indie Stash!' (It probably won't be the last time I raid a friends stash anyway!).

Upon raiding Tegan's Indie stash it became quite apparent that she has a favourite Indie maker, and this is Pretty and Polished. Her collection included some of their earlier releases and some of their most recent, so I decided to split them us this way so I could compare new formula to old, and today I'm bring you the older releases first, so here we go!

As you usual I'm starting least favourite and finishing with the most favourite, (that's not to say that I don't like the least favourite!) first up is 'Pool Party' which is a bright sky blue crelly with a combination of different sizes of hexes in red, blue and yellow, medium silver hexes, medium green squares, and bar glitter in red, blue, yellow and silver.

I really love the colour of this polish, but for my personal taste the glitter kind of spoils it for me, I'm not a fan of bar glitter, or of combinations of primary or clashing colours, but there is absolutely no denying that the glitter in this polish really does give the idea of people and various inflatables having an awesome time in the pool! It might not be to my taste but for a pool party it is rather well done!
In this picture I am wearing 3 coats and as you can see the opacity is not bad, the formula was nice and smooth, and though you don't get much glitter on the nail with each brush stroke, by the time you've done 3 coats there is just the right amount for the pool party effect.

Next up is 'Jaw Breaker' which has so much different glitter in it I don't even know where to start! Its a slighty off white with a very subtle pink tone crelly, as for the glitters, let's just say that the majority are made of the primary colours red, yellow, and blue, in a variety of hexes, squares and bar glitters, and a spattering of tiny black dots. It certainly does remind me of those giant balls of sugar I used to spend weeks sucking on anyway!

Again this had a nice smooth formula, great opacity in 3 coats, and nice and easy to get a nice even coverage of glitter.

Last up is my favourite of the older releases, this is 'Elvis's Pink Cadillac' and much like Jaw Breaker is an off white pink tone crelly, but with matt black micro dots and medium hexes, the effect is really cool but doesn't much remind me of a pink cadillac!

Tegan mentioned this polish also looks amazing mattified, so of course I had to grab my matt top coat and see for myself, and she was right!

As with the other 2 this had great coverage with just 3 coats, nice smooth formula with glitter that spread on nice and evenly.

Watch out for the next installment of 'Imma Raid Your Indie Stash!' where I'll be bringing you some more recent, and very pretty polishes from Pretty and Polished!

Guest Post for Pish Posh and Polish

So I have only just realised that during my time off and whilst I have been way too preoccupied with the BS that is my life, I completely missed the publication of a guest post mani I did for the awesome Kerrie of British blog Pish Posh and Polish. I'm feeling like a bit of a douche because I totes forgot about it, she posted my mani almost 2 months ago, and lets face it, even one link to my guest post would have been better than the deep slumber my blog has been in while I was away! DOH!

So Ladies, head on over to Kerries blog and check out these nails that I did way back in September before I started packing my life up, when I still had long beautiful nails! Gah!