Ulta3 oranges

Here are four Ulta3 colours in the orange range.

First up is Spring Fling.  This is a peachy cream that almost blends with your skin colour, but then you look at it again and it looks like it clashes with your skin.  This is two coats, which applied beautifully and dried fast.

Watermelon - this colour has received some awesome raves.  I like it, its a pinky salmon colour to me.  This was two coats and I can just see a nail line.  Applied great like the other Ulta3s.

Crazy - is a bright orange with a gold shimmer.  Very cool, I like it a lot.  This was three coats, and there is still and slight nail line.

I actually published the post and forgot to include 'Tahiti'- which is a neon pinky orange.  This was three coats, with one Seche Vite top coat because like all neon colours it dries matte. 

I have a big batch of Ulta3 pinks that I have swatched and am writing up, so stay tuned to see.

Eighties Fuchsia

Flashback Fuchsia

Footloose Fuchsia

Gooseberry

Mulberry

Black plum

Silver pink

Star dust

Tahiti

Pink Supreme

Pink Colada

Beesting

Bo-peep

I also swatched my Ulta3 blues and greens which I'm writing up:

Bottle green

Jelly

Jelly bean

Lagoon

Little boy blue

Razzle (and a comparison between the razzle and little boy blue)

Metal

Wasabi

More Ulta3 swatches - Gold, bronze and metallics

In this batch of swatches, I have chosen my gold/bronze/metallic Ulta3 colours.

Let me start by saying I love gold polishes. I just can't get enough of them.  In fact at least 1/3 of my polish collection would be gold toned polishes.  And the one polish that started my crazy obsession with nail polish in the last six months - "Palladium" by Jessica, is the most amazing gold polish ever!!

First up, Antique copper - Beautiful - I think my favourite of the bunch. And there are some great polishes here. And remember they are only AUS$2. AWESOME!! Anyway, this polish is a light metallic gold. It's a cooler shade of gold than precious and it has tiny flecks of particle glitter which makes it look so blingy. This was three coats.

Earth - This was three coats and it had a streaky finish. It's a purply brown shimmer. I had a bit of trouble applying this one cleanly, but that might just be a reflection of my painting skills, not the polish.

Envy - Beautiful. A metallic pinky mauve silver foil. Very shiny with full coverage in two coats.

Jazzle - An interesting polish. I'd describe it as a peachy gold with blue, green and gold shimmer. This is three coats, and it was still quite transparent. I think this polish would be great layered. So I tried it.

Jazzle over black - up close you can really see the blue and green shimmer to this. I might just have to try make a frankenpolish out of some of this as I think it could be really great.

Neutral - Almost a flat brown colour, but catch it at the right angle and you see a lovely subtle gold shimmer. Applied very smoothly and this was two coats.

Precious - BLING - This one is right up my ally. A very shiny warm gold foil finish. The foil finish looks to be made up of tiny flecks of particle glitter. But the application is totally smooth. This gold version of Envy and Snazzle.

Snazzle - BLING again - just like the gold above, this is a silver foil finish. It's very similar to my Revlon Diamonds are Forever. I believe it would also be similar to the Orly Foil FX range.

Sunkissed - A warm shimmery bronze. It showed a few streaks on application, but they almost all disappeared on drying. This is three coats.

Tropez - This is a pearly shimmer finish. It's a warm netural bronze colour. A little streaky, even after drying. This was two coats.

All in all, I love the range on bronze colours and the foil finish polishes from Ulta3 are just fantastic for the price.  What I want to see from Ulta3 now would be some good glitter polishes (their current ones aren't great) and some holographic polishes!  Wouldn't that be awesome!!

Ulta3 reds

I went a little crazy on the weekend doing new swatches of my Ulta3 collection, which is now up to 59 polishes.

Here are the three reds I have.

English rose - is a great bright red with a slight red and gold shimmer.  The first coat on this one looks very pink, so you have to make the effort and do three coats. But it's totally worth the effort.  I have actually made an awesome frankenpolish out of this, which I will show to you soon.

Brandy wine - is a very pretty maroon with a pinky red shimmer. It applied very nicely. This was two coats.

Finally Fire Truck.  This is one of the speed dry range.  Which to me didn't really dry any quicker than the other Ulta3 polishes - they all dry super quick.  This one was a rich strong bright red.  This was two coats.

None of these had a top coat, and they were all a lovely shiny finish.

It's my turn to konad

Just a quick one, because I forgot to post yesterday.

This was China Glaze - It's my turn from my last post, stamped with Ulta3 Chocolate Cake using plate m63.

That's all.

China Glaze Kaleidoscope Collection

I only have six of the eleven polishes, and I think I will gradually have to get them all.  These polishes are really awesome.  My favourite collection in my whole stash. I really, really love them. Really!

'It's My Turn' is a gold holographic.  I love gold polish and this is no exception. I think this was three coats.

'He's going in circles' is a light pastel green holo.  And I just had to bling it up more by adding green stars.  The stars just didn't really stay on, they kept catching on everything.  I don't know how people manage to do anything when they wear all sorts of embellishments on their nails.  This was three coats and it was very sheer. 

'Visit me in prism' is almost a silver holo, but it has a slight pinky mauve tone to it.  It's beautiful.  Again three coats.

'Sexagon' is a pure silver holo.  It was a little cloudy for this picture, so you can't see the holo effect as much as you can in the other pics, but believe me, it's just as holo.

'Spin me round' is a tan coloured holo.  Really beautiful again.  I'd say it's a work appropriate holo, but then again I wear just about anything to work!

Finally, my favourite of them all, 'Lets do it in 3D'.  This is amazing polish.  It just yells WOW at you.  It's a charcoal base holo with so much holo speckles that it's, well, just amazing.

All these polishes are super fast to dry, which is good, because they all needed at least three coats.  The holo particles in these are much chunkier than the ones in the OMG collection, but they still apply absolutely smooth on the nail.  They also lasted a bit better on my nails than the OMG ones, but still not very long.  But when the polish is this spectacular, it just doesn't matter.

My camo copy

Inspired by the Daily Nail's camo design I thought I would try my hand at it. I didn't have any of the colours she used, so I went through my stash to see what I could do.

The brown is Ulta3 chocolate cake and the two greens are ones that I frankened up based on Ulta3 Jelly. I used a french nude as the base - can't remember the brand. Did two coats of Essie Matte about you for the top coat.

I loved this polish, and wore it to work when I was in a Prince2 training course. My nails kept distracting me from all the principles, themes and processes.

Fluro spatters

This is another Konad design I did a couple of months ago. It was the first one I did using real Konad special polish. I thought it probably didn't matter about using the special polishes. But it really does. I've only got black and white at the moment, but hope to build on that soon.

This design was NYC (same as Ulta3) Citrus as the base, then konad plate m70 for the splatters. It looked really good. But my only problem was with a top coat. I don't have the konad special top coats, and really don't think I will ever get them. I tried a top coat on my pinky, and the black all smeared. So I didn't bother with top coat on the other fingers. I have since worked out how to apply Seche Vite top coat to konad without this problem, but thats another post.

I've also read that you should put on a coat of top coat before you stamp with konad.  That way if you stuff up, you can usually remove the konad design without having to take off the entire base.  I will have to try this.

Here are the stamping steps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Konad plate 70, which has four full nail designs and one tip design. I then painted the plate with Konad special black polish and used the konad scraper. Then roll the stamp onto the plate, then roll it onto your nail.

Holo nail art

Can there be any better combination that holographic nail polish and nail art stamping. I don't think so.

Here we have OPI DS Original stamped with Konad special polish in black.

This design uses image plate m73, which has four full nail designs and a heart tip design.  I then painted the plate with Konad special black polish and used the konad scraper.  Then roll the stamp onto the plate, then roll it onto your nail.

I love the idea of this, its just that I'm a unco at applying it.  No matter how hard I try I can't get the damn konad stamp lined up right on my finger. I think I just need more practice.

Konad silver white argyle diamond pattern

I actually got this idea from someone else's blog. Sorry it's a while ago now and I can't remember who to give the credit to.

Its one of my first Konad efforts and I think it shows. I also didn't clean my polish on the cuticles very well.  This is Revlon Diamonds are Forever for the base then Konad special white polish with m60 stamp.  This Revlon polish is really beautiful and I pinched it off my mum (thanks mum!).  Its a very sparkly foil finish silver polish.

This Konadicure was before I got Seche Vite so I just used a Revlon top speed top coat, which did smear the white polish.  Although luckily with the silver beneath its not that noticeable.

The effect looked very pretty, almost matrimonial.  I could see a bride wearing it with a white dress with sparkles.

Ulta3 yellow comparison

When I was swatching up my first batch of Ulta 3 polishes, I swatched three yellows. So I thought I would do a comparison swatch. Not that the colours are that similar, but what the hell.

From left to right is, Honolulu, Spring Blossom, Citrus and my very own lemon pop frankenpolish.

I'll post about the gold frankenpolish on the end soon.