Tag Archives: Cult Nails

Polish Us Pink! An Untamed Carrie

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It’s another Monday in October and that means a post featuring pink polish as part of Polish Us Pink, an initiative directed at Breast Cancer Awareness devised by Susan at The Subtle Shimmer and a few other nail bloggers.

Today I’m wearing pink in the true Barbie Doll sense. I give you Cult Nails Untamed under Darling Diva Polish’s Carrie.

Cult Nails Untamed & Darling Diva Polish Carrie

I’ve got to say that this isn’t my usual polish choice. I think I’ve said before I’m not a huge one for pink polish. And yet despite that I own both of these babies:)

Cult Nails Untamed & Darling Diva Polish Carrie

Untamed is a lovely mid pink jelly polish which could probably be great for jelly sandwiches – a feat that is still beyond me. It has a very ver subtle (if that’s a word that can be used in conjunction with a pink like this!) shimmer thanks to a sparse smattering of very very fine micro glitter.

Darling Diva Polish’s Carrie is an fine an slightly larger iridescent glitters in a very lightly tinted mid pink suspension base. The base is slightly thick but not so as to be difficult to apply and suspends the glitter beautifully. I’ve really very impressed with the DDP polishes I’ve worn so far and I’m quite surprised that this brand hasn’t been picked up by the likes of Llarowe or some of the other online stores that stock indies yet. Darling Diva Polish is available from their Etsy store. They ship internationally for a really quite reasonable price.

Cult Nails Untamed & Darling Diva Polish Carrie

Untamed was part of the recent Cult Nails collection designed by Maria’s daughter Coco. I bought the set of five polishes as part of the pre sale pricing arrangement that Cult Nails tends to do when they release a new collection, which is why Untamed made it’s way to the LCF stash. It probably would have otherwise. But it’s a fun polish to have and I’m sure as my competence confidence with all things nail artsy grows I’ll be pulling it out again. I own quite a few Cult Nails polishes because the formulas are generally great and they strike me as great value.

Do you have any polishes by these brands? Have you ventured on to Etsy in search of some good indie lacquers yet? Be warned – it will be the ruin of your wallet:)

xx


Cult Nails I Got Distracted – Perfect Birthday Nails

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I had a birthday a bit over a month ago. I made it a rule years ago not to work on my birthday . My partner had the day off as well and since it was a Friday it made for a lovely long weekend. On the Friday we had brunch in a garden cafe, went to the zoo, had foot and body massages at a local beauty spa and then that night we had a couple of friends over for drinks, indian take out and lowbrow movies.

So, given that it ended up being a little ‘mini-festival of me’, I just had to do my nails for the day. It wasn’t hard to pick which polish. Cult Nails I Got Distract was begging to be worn, being the latest acquisition in my on-going quest for the perfect black jelly glitter polish. And what a ‘mini-festival of me’ appropriate polish it is.

Cult Nails I Got Distracted – indoor light

As you can see, the dominant glitter is a teal green but there is a lovely smattering of multicolour holo glitter kicking about in there too.

Cult Nails I Got Distracted

Cult Nails I Got Distracted

Now because of the teal dominance, my search for the perfect black jelly glitter polish will no doubt continue but this was absolutely gorgeous to wear. It made it feel like it was a special day. Application was great, very easy. The polish is thick enough and the glitter small enough to be easily controllable. It dries a bit gritty so I applied two coats of Gealous and then one coat of Seche Vita to smooth it all out. Removal was easy too. I can’t comment on wear as I think I removed it by the Sunday.

And for those of you who have cats, you can well imagine how this shot occurred:)

Esmarelda getting her tail in the way

xx

 

Cult Nails – Manipulative: or the benefits of being organised!

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I think I was only just discovering the world of nail polish around the time that the pre-sale event for the Cult Nails Divas and Drama collection was happening. Being only just vaguely aware of the brand, and also having the polish palette of a 12 year old at that stage, the Divas and Drama collection didn’t hold any interest for me then. It was only a couple of months later that I started seeing a number of blog posts featuring shades from the collection that I threw caution to the wind and went ahead and ordered it.

I’ve had this collection for about a month now but hadn’t got around to wearing any of the polishes until recently. Being in the southern hemisphere, in inland south-east Australia, it’s winter and damn cold so I’ve not been hankering after summery shades. But if there is one thing that swatching your polish collection to swatch sticks is good for it is reminding you of what you already own. So it was that Manipulative came to mind when I was selecting a polish to wear last Saturday.

Cult Nails Manipulative

The pic of the bottle doesn’t really do Manipulative any justice as the camera hasn’t picked up the brightness of the colour that it has in person. The formula for this polish is great. I’ve worn three Cult Nail colours so far and so far it has been three out of three. They apply beautifully, are not too thick or too thin allowing you good control over the polish. And they are very fast drying. A win all round in my mind.

Cult Nails Manipulative

Anyway the other spin-off of swatching 280+ polishes to nail art sticks in one hit is that you can readily compare what polishes you have on the nail (the fake, swatch stick nail that is). I don’t know why I hadn’t realised it before, but this was how I cottoned on the fact that Manipulative was quite close in colour to China Glaze’s For Audrey.

Cult Nails Manipulative & China Glaze For Audrey

Now I had bought For Audrey on a bit of a whim in an ‘off-the-cuff’ order I did from Trans Design. I was helping a friend work out the postal costs so of course I had to demonstrate the entire checkout process didn’t I? For entirely scientific, researchy type purposes you understand. Anyway, For Audrey was one of those polishes that I kept on hearing people rave about and that piqued my curiosity. But I hadn’t worn it before I decided to compare it here.

Cult Nails Manipulative & China Glaze For Audrey

So which is which? You can probably spot it given the slight sparkle that Manipulative has.

Middle & Little Fingers - Cult Nails Manipulative; Index & Ring Fingers - China Glaze For Audrey

Manipulative is ever so slightly darker than For Audrey. For Audrey is a plain creme whereas Manipulative has that slight shimmer to it. Formula-wise, Manipulative is hands down the winner. As I said above, Manipulative is, to quote Goldilocks, just right. Whereas For Audrey is thin and quite runny in comparison. Still readily workable but just not as easy as Manipulative.

So which would I pick? For formula, ease of application and colour I’d have to say Manipulative. It’s slightly more complex in colour than For Audrey though they are both lovely colours. My polish palette must be developing at lightening speed as a few months back I would never have dreamed of wearing either colour. But now it’s a very different story. I loved having Manipulative on my nails and I can’t wait to wear it again.

Since taking these photos I’ve also acquired Color Club’s New Bohemian which strikes me as another polish very close in hue to these two. Any thoughts? Do you have any of these polishes? Which would be your pick?

xx

Rescue Beauty Lounge – Stormy: or why I now get what the fuss is all about

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In my post about Orly’s Royal Navy here I said I was unsure about whether or not to order any polishes from Rescue Beauty Lounge (RBL). So with the benefit of some of the comments I got on that post I now understand the RBL limited edition thing and the Bring it Back etc. Anyway, I caved in to the RBL temptation.  A girlfriend and I went in together on an order to share the postal cost. As it turned out we needn’t have worried about postal cost as between us we easily ordered enough to qualify for free international shipping. Erm, in deed my order alone would have qualified for free shipping…yes, I got a wee bit carried away.

I’ve heard mention of the quality issues associated with IKB: 2012 but that ordinarily you can expect great things of RBL polish. So on receiving my RBL nail mail the other day I was only too happy to put that expectation to the test. Thus far I’ve worn Catherine and Stormy. Catherine was a last minute purchase of the ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ variety. And I’m so glad I did because it is so much more complex and lovely in real life than it appears on the RBL website. Unfortunately though I didn’t get around to taking any photos so I’ll have to share that one with you another day. However, here is Stormy.

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Stormy

Stormy was a last minute purchase. I’ve got half a dozen grey cremes of slightly different hues and I didn’t really think I needed another one but my inner Lacquerhead got the better of me and I put Stormy into my cart. I can tell you I’m very glad I did.

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Stormy

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Stormy

I wore Stormy for two and a half days and for much of that time I was completely distracted by my nails. It’s medium grey creme with a fair amount of blue as far as I can tell. In low light, it looks almost dusty blue. I couldn’t stop looking at my nails. The formula was just lovely. It was very easy to apply, very pigmented and you could almost get away with a single coat if you were careful.

I can safely say that I entirely get the ‘hype’ around RBL. Like Cult Nails, it’s entirely apparent that it is devised by people who actually love and wear nail polish. So on the strength of Stormy and Catherine, which was also gorgeous to apply and wear, I ordered four colours from the pre-sale event for RBL’s new Georgia On My Mind Collection last Friday and I can’t wait to receive and wear those.

xx