Orly Galaxy Girl

Monday blues anyone? I'm not because in a week's time I'll be leaving my company! Can't say I'm sad to part ways with them but I'm actually moving back to Singapore in early March. I have been living in Malaysia for 7 years and grew to love every part of it; places, food, people... Due to personal reasons I gotta pack my bags (tons of them) though I'm very-verry-verrrrrrry reluctant to go.

Anyway! I'll be extremely busy in the remaining days of my stay but nail stuff cannot be skipped! :) Last Wednesday was my birthday and Orly Galaxy Girl became my birthday manicure! Nope, no poor attempts on nail arts, I suck at it! Let's not spoil the awesome polish, shall we?


Bottle pics!

Orly Galaxy Girl is part of the Cosmic FX collection, sibling of Space Cadet. Compared to the latter, Galaxy Girl appears matured, subdued and mysterious. Space Cadet is like a child on a rampage, flaunting all out with its glorious colors :)

Galaxy Girl is a mix of plum purple with berries, topped with disco blue, violet, green and gold flecks. Plumish, think eggplant. The overall shade on the nails look like burgundy, winey with purple as base. Interestingly, though it's in different purple, Galaxy Girl with its name reminds me of Hit Girl in Kick Ass movie!

Courtesy of Screencrave

My swatch didn't do any justice, I was too lazy to work on a proper table and chair, opted for a couch instead with big windows at the side. With the humidity and heat, my manicure resulted in bumps and bubbles. Ugh.

It's difficult to capture the true colors even with all the angles, contortions and twists. Not that colors are deceptive, it's just the topcoat applied that were too shiny to allow color accuracy. Have made a mental note to avoid this for future manis!

Galaxy Girl is a duochrome. Albeit it's not flashy, all colors on the nails ding-a-blingbling onto your eyes without deliberate movements needed. What you see in the bottle is exactly what you get on your nails. This is cool, you don't get to have such polish often!

I normally refrain bad photos making their way to the blog but this is an exception for Galaxy Girl to show you the color shifting goodness this babe has.

2 coats are good for coverage but I used 3 for the bumps (yea it didn't help).
Do you have Galaxy Girl too? Do you adore her as much as I do?

Orly Space Cadet

Heya everyone! How was your weekend? For this post I'm showing couple of photos of Orly Space Cadet from Cosmic FX collection.

Bottle pics first -

The polish from Orly Cosmic FX collection is unique: textured like minerals in glass-speckled manner and extremely well-duochromed. 

Quote from Orly:

The MINERALFX technology includes specialty mica, that allows for a clearer, vibrantly bright lustrous shimmer. Crystals allow for a multi-dimensional color transformation. Glass particles carefully controlled in shape and size create a luminous phenomenon. This combination infused with the Silica and specific colors selected create this exclusive technology that gives nails a unique optical effect that’s magnified as the lighting source intensifies or viewing angle changes.

So many colors flashes insanely even from the bottle -

Pink, copper, gold, green... even purple/plum

This pigmentation is thin, you need to put either 2 thick coats or 3 thin layers for decent opacity. Application is excellent, brush is good and Orly rubber cap is simply awesome for grip and control. However I did my manicure in a humid condition and resulted in bumps...

Under artificial light, the color changed to plum-pink-purple. Under natural light, the green with gold undertone shone. Orly has created a new standard for duochromes: You don't have to contort & twist your fingers to find the duochromes. You can see the colors on the nails at any angle or even when fingers are at rest! The glass speckles add dimension and depth to the overall look. Fabulous.

I have another bottle from Cosmic FX collection: Galaxy Girl. Will swatch it soon!

Jesse's Girl Blue Moon + Orly La Playa

Hello everyone! How's your week? Today is a public holiday so I finally have time to post my manicure pics :)

A while back I purchased a mini bottle of Jesse's Girl Blue Moon from an online seller, who had ordered Confetti but it arrived as Blue Moon. I grabbed it as soon as she published them! That's quite typical of me!

From the bottle, you can see Blue Moon is more of a purple tone with hints of blue. People coined a new term called Blurple, a shade that's purple and blue with obvious reasons. You can see the color contrast between Blue Moon and La Playa, the latter is a deepened navy creme and it appears darker on the nails than in the bottle.

L-R: Orly La Playa, Jesse's Girl Blue Moon

Blue Moon is not 3-Free

The brush is super short with a rectangular-shaped block as the holding end.
As a result I had issues in application, the block hindered and kept hitting the table

Application was almost good, being buttery and smooth but it left bald patches with 1 coat and resulted in brushstrokes. It was opaque in 2 coats but I put on the third one to even out everything.

Blue Moon dried in satin matte finish, which looked really cool in blurple. You can keep this look for a mod style but I added top coat since I used La Playa as french tip.

Jesse' Girl Blue Moon under artificial light. It became deep cobalt blue

Added La Playa as french tip. 

Finishing touch: Brandless top coat & Sech Vite top coat

Next day with the sun soaring high up, I took some outdoor pics:

Blue Moon's true blurple showed up!

It's jewel toned in the shade. Look at the pink flashes!

I absolutely love jewel toned polish. They glow from within and look oh-so-dandy. I couldn't stop staring at them everywhere I go.

Now when I went directly under the sun, holy molly, the pink and blue shimmers were so vivid I was blinded instantly!

From jewel toned to gorgeous shimmers!

The shimmers bounced back and dazzled

Close up shot on the pink and blue shimmers

Jesse's Girl Blue Moon is a must-have! It's like a chameleon on your nails, glowing in the shade and dazzling in the sun! I simply couldn't get enough of it. I stole glances at them during a 3 hours' workshop, admiring them with secret smiles!

Was almost sad to remove them after 5 days. I'm not sure if it's the work of La Playa or Blue Moon, they remained chip-free for a week :)

3 coats of Jesse's Girl Blue Moon
1 coat of Orly La Playa (yes a one coater!)
1 coat of OPI Ridge Filler
1 coat of brandless top coat
1 coat of Seche Vite dry fast top coat

Remember how I complained about the shrinkage caused by Seche Vite? I did my research and found out that it has to be applied on WET polish. I hate to spoil the freshly painted nails so I added a coat of brandless top coat and when still wet, drop a glob of Seche Vite and spread evenly on the nails. So far it works! No shrinkage anymore!