I've decided to change nail swatch entries to 'On My Nails' instead of just 'Nails'. A random small change and I haven't gone back to switch them all but one thing at a time!

Speaking of 'one thing at a time', I finally got to using my Chanel Paradoxal nail polish. I hauled it way back in September, even before the Jeans collection which I ended up swatching before Paradoxal.

I read some reviews back when the color first launched and there were certain mentions about people being a tad disappointed with how it swatches. In the bottle there is a lovely purple shimmer that shines through when it hits the light however on the nails that same effect is downplayed quite a bit.

When it catches the light

When it isn't 'reflecting'

In truth I really don't mind that factor because the color on it's own is a gorgeous darkened aubergine, very pretty! Only under bright or strong light (such as camera flash and the sun) does the purple glint make its appearance. To me, this kind of reminds me of those car color choices, with a general purplish base color and a glint when it hits the light.

Out of complete randomness I decided to do some (hideous) nail art on my thumb, if you can even call it nail art. It started with a purple strip (LA Girl) down the centre and just evolved to 'I don't know what the heck the design even is'.

At least the polish is kinda dark so you can't really see it but it's quite cute to look at (from afar).

I think Paradoxal sits on the same shelf as Metro Chic, the two colors that I absolutely love and I think are classic to wear in any situation.

What are the polishes that you love and can throw on anytime when you're not sure what to use?

Thanks for reading!

Oh how I love the combination of the 2 nail polish names, Gemma Breathes Life!

Before I delve into my haul, I just wanted to say a quick hello again and update on what's going on with me. I realize I used to do updates about my life in the past probably because schooling days were a lot more exciting with projects, exams and holidays.

I've neglected this little space of mine for the past 2 weeks because I've been caught off-guard with a wave of hectic-ness. Not with dramas, variety shows or anything else this time, sadly no. It's like I'm working 24 hours lately because while most of you know I have a full-time job, I'm also still doing some design freelancing along the side since my current full-time job is now more marketing-centric. Probably not the most interesting facts you guys might want to know about me so skip before the 'cut' if you're bored but for those who want to hear me ramble, read on!

So once home from work-work, I'll switch over to design work and its so odd how lately there's been quite an influx of projects (not even festive cards/designs!). While my boyfriend handles majority of the freelance things right now, he can't cope with everything on hand so I'm stepping in to help. As with design, one draft doesn't cut it, there will be amendments etc. So yes, pretty much the story of my life for the past 2 weeks... and oh yes, not forgetting having a social life!

But I guess as they say, when you're young you should live life (and earn money), so I'm trying my best. I know I might not be able to run on 3 hours of sleep a day 10 years later so I'll make the best of time right now!

Blabbering aside, on to the actual haul. It's almost as if I lured you in with a haul to talk about my life. ha!

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Awhile back Sophia (retailtherapy) had a little nail polish sale on her blog and yes I am still in that nail phase so it is predictable that I would have hauled something.

Not just one, but two!

And only now do I realize how both colors seem to have this one resemblance that attracts me to them, the sheen.

OPI's Breathe Life

Zoya's Gemma

Another Zoya to my collection! I only have two right now..

As expected Breathe Life swatches rather sheer but it is a lovely color and you can choose to build it up or use it over a solid color for that ethereal sheen.

The following are 3 coats of each polish.

I've been lazy with manicures lately... Though a part of me wants to try all the colors and combinations, another part of me is lazy to remove, file/trim my nails and go through the whole waiting-to-dry period after painting.

I know, its quite horrible to even be lazy to do that but like blogging, I'll probably get back to taking my time and enjoying it once I am able to get a breather with all thats going on.

I can't promise a flow of frequent updates right now but once the hectic period passes I will be able to!

Thanks for reading!

p.s. I finally sat down and did a quick sidebar link-image design (for Twitter/Youtube etc). Let me know what you think! I've been so irked by my lazy method of using text links alone but was too lazy to do it till now :P

Hello everyone, I know I haven't been the most active on here lately. I tell myself to try and post every day but I guess procrastination just got the better of me.

Have been a little busy and running around of late, whenever I get free time I'm more inclined to turning on some Korean variety shows, catching up on sitcoms/drama serials or just slacking away.

Speaking of drama serials, has anyone seen HBO's Game of Thrones? I was a little zoned out in the first episode but now I absolutely love it.

Anyway back to this... slacking aside, there's always time for a haul!

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Awhile back I was at Takashimaya with Chantana (everbluec) and we dropped by the Chanel counters. I was indecisive about whether I needed the Mat Topcoat in my life but after swatching it on myself (and Chantana's demonstration earlier), I guess I caved...

Whats new!

One argument of mine for getting this mat topcoat even with its pricetag of S$32 is that the bottle is so sleek and chic! What's more, it's Limited Edition.

I'm really loving the matte black exterior even though I've noticed, from their testers, that once abused the black will chip away.

Sad to say I don't have swatches of this provided in this entry.

I have an idea of how to play around with this mat topcoat but I'm not changing my manicure just yet (it's still 'Vegas Moon'). I'm keeping my nails a little low key for some personal stuff coming up. Yes, Marquee Moon on one finger is considered 'low key'. heh

I'm no huge fan of matte polishes, which is why I like the idea of a matte topcoat. This way you can play around with it and transform existing nail polishes in your stash. If you were to get a colored matte polish, you would be 'stuck' with a matte polish in that shade. Don't get me wrong, I don't deny that matte shades are quite lovely but for someone like me, this is most ideal.

Anyway, swatches of this soon and I'm still caught in some aspects but will try my best to keep this updated regularly. And perhaps with more focus on makeup now, though I can't help that nail polishes have stolen my attention.

What is this change of heart?!

Thanks for reading!

I'll bet by this stage you aren't surprised by the influx of nail related entries anymore! If I post something makeup related then that will be new! But bear with me and my current nail polish craze/phase alright?

First up, an unannounced haul.

Luxola had a couple of flash sales awhile back and during one of them, Deborah Lippmann's Waking Up in Vegas was going at 30% off (I think it's 30...), making it about S$10 cheaper then usual. I scraped all ideas of feeling bad about having them come all the way to deliver a bottle of nail polish to my door step and bought it without a second thought.

With that, I have FINALLY swatched and tried on the Deborah Lippmann polishes.

I couldn't just stop at trying one color so I did an accent using Marquee Moon since I am intrigued about how that applies.

Left: Waking up in Vegas / Right: Marquee Moon

I remember tweeting about my 'surprise' with the opacity and ease of application with Deborah Lippmann polishes. The following swatches are done with just 1 coat with Seche Vite's fast drying topcoat thrown on for that extra shine.

Above 2 Taken with Flash

Taken with Daylight

I know Waking up in Vegas is the color that I wanted to get since forever but can I digress a little and focus on how gorgeous Marquee Moon is?

With flash on its about as metallic as metallic can get yet in daylight it doesn't stick out too much but is still so pretty. And can you spot the little hexagonal sequins within the polishes? Sadly those didn't stand out as much as I wanted them to but it still added an interesting touch.

Did I already mention the above were all done with just one coat?

Yes, even Marquee Moon and while that is a metallic polish, some streaks are inevitable but I don't find it particularly hard to work with. You might need to fish the hexagonal bits out but it just takes a bit of rotating the brush around the polish - No need to really dig at it (as with some other examples).

I think the next time around (not the next manicure, but when I reach for Marquee Moon again) I would want to try it on all 10 fingers. That would be so futuristic!

Thanks for reading!

I happened to be at ION the Friday when Les Jeans de Chanel collection was launched, last Friday of September. Since I was in the area, why not drop by and give it a quick look?

Well, a bad decision for my bank but I left the store happy and that's all that matters. Funny thing is, the color that caught my eye through online swatches was Blue Boy but in person everything changed and I ended up not even getting that shade.

I had the intention of only getting one nail polish but the sales assistant was so nice, friendly and helpful that I left with more. See: a happy customer is a spending customer.

I ended up walking away with Blue Rebel, which I was undecided about, and Coco Blue.

I never cared for Coco Blue when I saw the swatches online but in person I guess it's just a different thing. The whole combination of placing these 2 shades side-by-side was really attractive too.

Coco Blue has little specks of glitter within the polish (hardly visible) but you can see in this next photo.

The reason I got both was because the sales assistant had a french tip styled manicure of these 2 shades on and I thought it looked gorgeous. I didn't have the exact shade of blue as Coco Blue (I'd like to think not) so I needed (yes needed) it to replicate that.

Now I can have a Les Jeans de Chanel collection french tip manicure~

I'm also toying on using Blue Rebel as a base and Canmake's Crack Lac in Silver over it... In my head it looks pretty but guess I'll have to try to know.

Each bottle retails for S$36. I believe it's only available at MBS Chanel and ION Chanel.

Thanks for reading!

The Canmake Crack Lacs are making an appearance on our shelves again! Speculated to be released around mid-end of October

I have featured 2 shades back in my 'Chinese New Year' nail combo entry but I will be swatching all the Crack Lacs within this entry.

Aside from the Crack Lacs I also received 5 'normal' nail polish colors.

Top Row: 51, 50, 48 // Bottom Row: 49, 52

I'd say it's pretty generous of Teeni (Canmake's local distributor) to provide the nail polish shades along with. I did a swatch of the normal polishes as well, since I was going to be swatching them anyway and I think my favorite color of the bunch is 52.

It reminds me of a bronze-ier and lighter version of a nail combination I once had by layering LA Girl's 24K over a black polish (see here).

Shade 49 is more of a sheer shimmer polish then anything and I think it would work best layered over an opaque cream polish, maybe 48?

While red polishes really isn't my thing (I've only worn them in Nail features once) I'm actually quite liking 51. It has subtle shimmers to it so it's not a flat red shade.

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And moving on, here are the Canmake Crack Lac shades they are putting out for October 2011! Sadly they are going to be Limited Edition again.

The Crack polishes come in Red, Black, White, Gold and Silver.

The gorgeous Blue Crack Lac that was launched the previous time around was a 2010 Limited Edition and will not be making an appearance, but oh well. These 5 shades are lovely too, especially the gold and silver ones!

With the multi-colored manicure I already had on I thought I could throw the White Crack Lac over but... I'd say it didn't quite turn out as I had imagined.

I probably didn't do it justice wearing it this way but just to give you an idea of how the White Crack Lac works. While it's not the most flattering with the red and blues, I think it looks lovely with the Bronzey shade... no?

I removed it shortly after (and did the CNY nails) because it looked like I got correction fluid all over my fingers, but I guess that's just a White Crack Lac/Shatter effect. Gotta be careful with that one.

A few days later I layered the Black, Red and Silver Crack Lacs over China Glaze's Something Sweet.

The Silver Crack Lac would probably look better on a darker base and incase you have missed it, here's how the Gold Crack Lac looks, probably one of the loveliest shades.

The only other Crack/Shatter brand of polish I have used is OPI so I'm no guru but I do prefer the Canmake ones to OPI's. The (Canmake) polish tends to crack nicer and more consistently. It dries pretty fast but yet you can rush on a second layer in the nick of time if your first layer was quite thin and it still cracks fine, unlike OPI where you might just end up covering the cracking.

In all, I think these are pretty Crack polishes and if you are sick of Crack/Shatters at least check out the Gold and Silver, they'll add a nice (subtle) touch to your manicures.

Canmake Crack Lacs will retail for S$14.90 at Watsons (starting late October 2011)

Thanks for reading!

Disclosure:
Products were provided by Teeni/Canmake - I am not affiliated to them.
All opinions expressed are my own.

Just before my Hong Kong trip I tweeted about receiving a love pack from the folks over at Canmake.

I wouldn't be going into detail about what I got here but it's basically a couple of nail polishes and the popular (till it got wiped out) Canmake Crack-Lac polishes! Will be posting more information soon, I want to get swatches for it all and appreciate the polishes while doing so.

I finally took some of the shades out to play and ended up with this combination.

Base – Canmake 51
Shatter – Canmake CL08 (Gold)
Topcoat - Seche Vite

I think this might be my first post with red nail polish on! For some reason I hardly ever wear red nail polish and while this came out quite nice it seems to look a little Chinese New Year-ish?

I got sick of it the next day and used a no-brand black polish to create some (rather jagged) french tips to lessen that Red Packet look.

Not the best picture, but from afar its quite cute however I didn't achieve my 'goal'.

According to my mom, it looks even more Chinese New Year-ish with the black tip on. Oh well... it's pretty and I'll probably be changing it up in a few more days anyway.

I have recently hauled some polishes and combined with the Canmake goodie pack, it seems like you'll be seeing my fingers quite a lot in the next few entries to come.

Thanks for reading!

Thy combo,

Flamming is probably an exaggeration, but that's the first thing that comes to mind when I see these Inglot flakes. Pictures in a bit.

Anyway, I never got onboard the matte nail polish bandwagon because I always liked my polish glossy and all polished up. That is until Mag (makeupstash) had gifted me MAC's Black Enough? nail polish.

Black Enough? is matte matte black and it's intriguing to apply a polish on wet and watch it dry all smooth and not glossy after. I guess I'm starting to see the appeal that matte polishes hold. Though I'm still not getting the gritty suede finish, no offence to suede lovers!

Seeing it all matte and dark made me want to try and layer Inglot's polish in #202 over a single nail, for a contrast effect.

Something about the Inglot polish flakes, especially #202, makes it seem like little flames dancing on the nails. A bit of an odd visual but that's what first comes to mind... no?

The one thing I don't like about mattes would be how quickly they wear out. Have had these on for maybe 4 days now and I'm so in need of a new manicure.

Thanks for reading!

Awhile back I hauled 4 Etude House nail polishes during their 20% off.

Within the haul entry I had swatched the purple and periwinkle-ish shade so now I'm swatching the other two -- the teal-ish (GR01) and grey (WH702).

These two shades are from the S$5.90 range and they apply very well.
The following swatches are with two coats on.

From the bottle WH702 (the grey) seemed to have some subtle shimmer but on the nails, it's hardly visible. Oh well, guess it's not something I totally mind since I do like grey shades anyhow.

When picking up GR01 I assumed that it might look a little off with my skintone but turns out I really love how the color looks on. It's a tad deeper then how it looks in the pictures (since the sun was bright) but it's sort of there, no funny color tricks with this shade.

Thanks for reading!

It's been awhile since my last 'whats on my nails' post.

I had a rugged and weathered coat of OPI's Baby It's Coal Outside for the longest time ever and didn't bother to change it. Long story short, I had a minor case of eczema around my thumb and it made removing polish a pain -- literally -- because of the alcohol in nail polish removers.

My thumb is all better now plus I was attending ScreenSingapore and it wouldn't be nice to show up with rugged polish. Since I was attending ScreenSingapore, what better polish to use then OPI's Not Like the Movies!

(click to enlarge)

Although I initally picked it up to use with Black Shatter, it's lovely on it's own too. The consistency is quite thin thus the swatch photo above was 3 coats of the polish. Though I don't have any issues with streaking and it wasn't a hassle getting 3 event coats on.

I love how it's a silver-ish metallic shade that shines purple in some light and looks green in others. Photos truly doesn't do this polish enough justice!

Somehow I used to think it's a lighter and silver version of Orly's Space Cadet, but I'm wrong it's completely different!

Before I end this off, here's one picture from ScreenSingapore! It's was craaaazy out there at the red carpet, but more on that once I sift through my picspam.

Thanks for reading!