Essie Garden Varity Spring 2015 with Accent Nail + Review.

G'day people!

Today's design is very simple and a little bit boring, but still looks good! Basically it's a fancy swatch. Haha.

Here we have Garden Variety from Essie's 2015 spring collection. It's a stunning colour and I absolutely love it!  This was gifted to me by a dear friend of mine, along with a bunch of other awesome nail supplies (she knows me so well). This, along with Blossom Dandy (also from the 2015 spring collection), was one of my first Essie colours.

I wasn't sure what to do with it because it's a very unique colour, and on its own it is just gorgeous. So, after painting all my nails in this majestic colour, I opted for something simple. I did a thick horizontal strip pattern on my accent nail. At this point I only had striping tape and I didn't want the lines to be so thin, so instead, I did two coats of OPI Alpine Snow and then I used Essie Garden Variety to do two straight(ish) lines horizontally across the nail. I had to use a decent amount because the white underneath made it a little less opaque, and since I was free handing I didn't think I'd be able to get a second coat quite as neatly.
And there you have it!
A super cute, super easy, accent nail!

 Indoor natural lighting with top coat.

Outdoor natural lighting with top coat.

Indoor natural lighting with top coat & the bottle.

I wanted to do a bit of a review on this one, so if you're interested, keep reading!

As I said before, I love this colour. Surprisingly, I managed to get a photo that's true to colour. I've looked at this polish online before and found that most pictures don't do it justice. I'd call this a deep green creme with undertones of blue. I feel that it's true to its name, it definitely reminds me of a garden!

It has a wide brush which I love! Always makes everything easier. The application is flawless and if I recall correctly, it was mostly opaque in just one coat (except over the white). I still did two coats for this one, though.
I honestly think that this is a year-round colour. You could use it in any season and it'd just be so fitting. 

I'm still not sure what other colours would go with this one, but I'd love to find out. I think a really nice deep purple would look stunning.

Got any ideas? Let me know, I'd love to hear them.

Thanks for stopping by!

Golden Chevron

Howdy y'all & welcome back!

Today's design is super cute and easy. I love this one for so many reasons! Firstly, I love the colour combo. This beautiful peachy-pink "Isn't She Lovely" from BYS is just adorable, and the metallic gold "Hidden Treasure" (also from BYS) just adds a bit of a high-end feel, in my opinion.

I'm calling it Golden Chevron. Super creative, I know, I know, thank you. Haha.

This one was a little tricky with the actual chevron pattern as I don't have any chevron vinyls, so I had to use multiple pieces of striping tape. Hence the less than even lines. If you're familiar with striping tape, you probably feel my pain here. Sorry 'bout it!

But still, not a bad effort, I think. I didn't notice that they were uneven until I got to editing my photos a few hours later. If you aren't looking at them too closely, you probably wouldn't even notice.

I really enjoyed wearing this design. I could not stop looking at them. The soft creamy peach paired with the sparkling gold is just amazing. I will definitely be using these colours together again! I think they'd be great for a more formal event, or possibly as a spring accessory. 

For this design I used a peel off base coat. I did two coats of my base colour Hidden Treasure, just to make sure it was opaque. I applied a top coat to stop the tape from removing the polish underneath, then added the striping tape in a chevron pattern. With the tape pressed down firmly and as neatly as I could get them, I painted a really thick layer of Isn't She Lovely over the entire nail. Quickly and carefully I removed the striping tape and continued with the rest of my nails. Once they were all dry I added a top coat to seal everything. 

It was rather easy and quick. I only wanted the gold to come through in the chevron so I had to use a thicker coat of peach as it's a very thin polish, and a standard coat would have been a little too sheer. I used 4 x 1mm pieces of striping tape for the middle finger with the larger space between. Another 4 pieces directly on top of each other for the index finger and I'm pretty sure I used 3 pieces for the pinkie. I didn't want them all to be the same. Sometimes I hate working with striping tape because it can be so difficult to get it right. I plan on finding a better way of doing this, as nail vinyls are not always easy for me to get.

Oh and if you happen to notice the cracks that I tried to cover up, I was testing out a peel off base coat. It didn't dry quite enough before I applied my base colour, which led to the slight cracking. I may even do a review of that one later on. 

What do you think? Will you give this one a go? Have you done something like this? 
Feel free to share them with me(:

Thanks for stopping by!

Essie Blossom Dandy Spring 2015 Dry Brush

Howdy y'all!

Today I'm gonna share with you the first nail art that spiked my obsession. This is not the first one I've ever done, but the first one that turned into a snow ball effect. Admittedly, I have done this technique so many times because I love it. It's quick, easy, super cute and you can do so much with it! 

It's the dry brush technique. So basically, you choose your base colour, for me, its usually white, because what doesn't go with white? Then you grab your second colour and wipe off as much of the polish as you can, effectively making the brush "dry", and just swipe the brush across your nail in any way you see fit. The results are sort of a distressed abstract look. You can use as many colours as you like, but I just did the one this time. If you check out my last post there's a three toned version that I also love.

For this design I used BYS French White and Essie Blossom Dandy. I think these colours pair well together. At the time it was the middle of winter and we were receiving an unusual amount of rain, so I wanted to do something a to match those winter vibes, whilst still adding a splash of colour. Honestly this is still one of my favorite designs to date. It just wears so well and I could not stop looking at them!

Now I know my gap is HUGE and very uneven and inconsistent, but this was actually the first time I'd done it. I was getting sick of my polish chipping so easily, and only lasting a day or two, so I did some research which lead to the gap (as well as some other really useful tips) This will get slightly better over time, and then slightly worse again haha.

I know it's a little over done, but I totally understand why, its so awesome! I love it. I feel I need to get a little more adventurous with this one. Watch this space!

What are your thoughts on this technique? Have you done it before? Let me know!

Thanks for stopping by!

G'Day y'all & Welcome to the AustraNAILian!

My name's Sophie and as you can probably tell from my blog name, I'm Australian and I love nail art.

I'm forever researching nail related things online, only to find they're either American or Canadian, which makes it bloody hard to get my hands on some of the things I want. So I decided to make my own blog, with products that are available to Australian's that are not going to take 6 weeks in shipping or cost my first born child.

Now, bare with me children, as I have not long been doing nail art, despite always loving it, I've only recently decided to do all the really intricate designs that I've seen before. So to get started, let me chuck in some older nail art that I somehow managed to pull off.

This was my first attempt at the dry brush technique. I actually really loved these nails and got so many compliments. Heaps of women thought they were Frozen inspired. They were not. I just happened to like these colours. (Spoiler alert, these colours will be featured a lot).

These are one my first intricate designs. As you can see, I tried a sponge gradient, but because I used an actual sponge, like the kind you'd do the dishes with, they ended up being very spacey and not opaque enough. Sad face. They also took me 3 day! As you can probably tell from the wear on the tips. But all in all, I loved them!

Now here is one of my favorite techniques so far! This is a wicked splatter technique created by using a straw. I obviously didn't bother cleaning up properly before taking this shot, but I believe it was a lot worse before this. It is a very messy technique, but its very worth it. I loved the results of this and the best part is, they will NEVER look the same!

Unfortunately at this time I didn't know much about nail art. But, there is hope! Looking back on these images, I actually get frustrated with myself because of things I know now. So you've got some nice designs to look forward to. Or at least, I think they're nice.

That's all I've got for you today. I have a few back logged images of my designs, so hang in there my friend, more nail magic coming soon!

Thanks for stopping by!