Inside the jewellery box

I was inspired to do this post by the fabulously creative and very lovely Asami who did this great post about pieces from her jewellery box. Her jewellery is absolutely beautiful and very special as pieces are handed down to her from her mother and grandmother. I think this is really wonderful and very sentimental. Unfortunately my mum and grandmother are not very big into jewellery! I actually don't have much jewellery as I like to wear signature pieces ie. same pieces of jewellery all the time as I'm lazy haha. Here are a few of my favourite pieces of jewellery:

This is a ring I got from Diva on sale for only a couple of dollars but I love it. I adore roses and the coral colour just pops and adds a great burst of colour to any outfit.


I've worn a charm bracelet practically everyday since I was in high school. I've changed the bracelet only about 3 times and lost countless charms and this is what it has evolved into after many years. Each charm represents something about me and was given to me for a special occasion but I have purchased 1 or 2. For example: the snowboard represents my love of snow and snow sports; the book charm represents my love of books and reading; I was given the Tiffany shopping bag charm as a graduation gift; and the ice cream charm represents my lifetime love of confectionary and ice cream; etc.


These Chanel studs were a Valentines/birthday gift from the boy about 3 years ago when we were on our 1st trip to Hong Kong together where he met my extended family. These studs are chic and simple and I love wearing them as it brings back so many wonderful memories of that trip.


I can't remember where I got this ring from! I like the different sized pearls and the size of the ring and I wear it as a "statement" ring.


This is my most treasured item and I would cry my heart out if I lost it. My boyfriend gave this to me on our 1 year anniversary many moons ago and it was my 1st time receiving a famous Tiffany blue box. I was so excited! Lol. I wear it nearly everyday even though it chokes me when I sleep (no matter!) and have it polished regularly.


Hope you enjoyed it! Thank you to Ansa, Yokemun and Ronnie for tagging me with awards! Ladies you are very sweet and kind to think of me and my little blog =)

Essie Strawberry Sorbet NOTD

Just a quick post today my dear ladies! This darned cold is still not going away and it's making me super tired =( It doesn't help that Sydney is absolutely FREEZING at the moment either! I nearly got frostbite on the unheated bus this morning and I was wearing a 4 layers, a coat, scarf AND gloves haha. Todays NOTD is using Essie Strawberry Sorbet which I picked up a while back.

Strawberry Sorbet is a pinky-red polish with silver shimmer through it which is very hard to see on the nail but very visible in the bottle . I love colours like this but it's so hard to capture for you to see! Below is 2 coats to ensure no VNL. Like most other Essie polishes I own, this was lovely to apply and cleanup was minimal.


I then stamped a full plate design using Bundle Monster plate BM 21 and China Glaze OMG. It didn't work out perfectly because I didn't really line them up properly but oh well =) Topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite as I'm in a hurry!


Thank you for looking =) My giveaway ends very soon so enter here if you haven't already!

OPI Mad as a Hatter and yummy Malaysian

My NOTD today is using OPI Mad as a Hatter. I'm sure everyone has seen swatches of this glittery goodness in a bottle but here's my manicure to add to the mix! Below is 3 coats to ensure no bald spots.


The glitter is so dense and it's just so blingy and magical, I can't stop staring at my nails! I know it will be an absolute pain to remove but I think it is oh so worth it.

The boy and I went to our favourite Malaysian restaurant Mamak for lunch today after having not been there for a while and boy was it good! It’s actually probably one of our top 5 favourite restaurants and I think many Sydney-siders will agree with me. It’s so popular that you have to get there at least 15-20mins before they open to line up (for dinner especially) and even then the line is already at least a few metres long. You shouldn’t even bother going at peak times like at 7:30pm on a Friday night because the line stretches around the corner and who only knows how long the wait is!

We got a Roti telur bawang (roti with egg and onion)each:


And a dozen of chicken satay and also a piece of the ayam goreng (Malaysian style fried chicken) but I forgot to take a photo of it because we just dug in =p


Thanks for stopping by and looking! Enter my 50 followers giveaway HERE!

My 1st Color Club polishes and I received 2 awards!

I'm still not feeling 100% and now I have a massive earache too, ARGH! So I was very pleased to get home from work yesterday to find a parcel waiting for me as retail therapy can be even better than chicken soup sometimes =) I've seen so many lovely manicures using Color Club polishes but like everything else in Aus they're hard to come by and if you do it's pricey so I turned to Ebay. I won an auction that was a bargain and am now the proud owner of 21 Color Club polishes!

These didn't come with official labels but the seller kindly labeled them for me so I didn't have to do it myself. I'm assuming that these must have been part of a multi-pack or something.. can any ladies confirm this? Thanks in advance from a Color Club noob!

From the Sweet Seduction Collection:

From L-R: Milky White Base Coat; Rock Candy; Sugar Baby; How Sweet It Is; Candy Girl; Sugar Rush and Yummy
These colours looks perfect for french manis and more demure looks, obviously hence the name of the collection.

From the Poptastic collection:

From L-R: Almost Famous; Wham! Pow!; Poptastic; Warhol; Pucci-licious; Twiggie and Chelsea Girl
Omg these are SO bright! Can't wait til summer when I can rock these colours loud and proud hehe.

From the Rebel Debutante collection:

From L-R: Who Are You Wearing?; High Society; Best Dressed List; Charity Ball; Uptown Girl; She's Sooo Glam and Ms. Socialite
Unfortunately it didn't include Rebel Debutante or Gossip Column but oh well.

I also received an award from the very lovely and awesome Lacquer Ware for Tips and Toes. Thank you so much for this award! =)


The rules are: Copy the award above, place it on your blog - link your blog back to me and name five things about yourself! Then pick 5 bloggers you'd like to tag with this same award.

1. I can play the violin and piano - not very well now as I haven't played in ages.
2. I am a MASSIVE fan of the Harry Potter books - I started reading them when they 1st came out (ages before all the hype!) and I re-read the books at least every few months. I also have a wand =p
3. I absolutely love food but I can't cook! But I'm learning so that I can make a good wife in the near future (hopefully!) ;)
4. I love TV - stick me in front of a TV and even if it's the most boring show on earth I will watch it with total concentration.
5. I would love to quit my job and travel around the world visiting exotic places!

I tag the follower awesome and stylish bloggers with this award:
Konad-licious

.little green heart.

PetiteLittleGirl

Absolutely-Alice

Cel's

And thank you so much to the lovely and fantastic Tassa for awarding me with the Sweet Blog Award! You are much too kind =)


I hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!

H & M Liberty Girl fimo NOTD

Why oh why are purple polishes so darn hard to photograph??? I had SUCH a hard time capturing the true colour of this gorgeous polish sent to me by Anita from KONADOmania in our swap. Please excuse the quality of the pics in this post as I had to play around with my camera settings. It kept capturing the colour as blue and not purple which really frustrated me! I must have taken at lease 2 dozen shots and the ones below are the ones closest to the colour in real life.

H & M Liberty Girl is a gorgeous pastel purple creme. I love purple polishes and this is no exception! Unfortunately the formula is quite thick which made application for me really tricky. I must add some thinner to this for next time and hopefully application will be easier! The 1st coat is quite streaky but a 2nd coat evens things out however I still had some bald spots. Below is 2 coats without top coat and it dries to a nice glossy finish.


I then used CM Nail Art striping polish in Pearl to draw 2 lines across the tips of each nail. In real life CM Nail Art striping polish in Pearl looks exactly like the name - it's a pearl polish off-white in colour with a pearl finish. However on top of Liberty Girl here, it appears silver which was unexpected and surprisingly I'm really liking it! I then placed some flowery fimo on a couple of fingers and topped it off with a coat of Nailene Acrylic Strong Topcoat.



Hope you like it!

If you haven't entered my giveaway yet there's still time! Enter HERE!

Socceroos NOTD

Hi ladies!! How has everyone's week been so far? I'm currently sick and laid up at home for the day. Boo! I have no idea who I caught this darned cold off but I'm just hoping it passes soon.

I managed to get the energy to do a quick World Cup themed NOTD to show my support for our Socceroos!


This is a really simple manicure but quite effective and patriotic I think! I used OPI Passion as a base and used the brush from Nail Star Two Way Nail Art Pen & Brush in green and yellow to do thin lines of each colour. Please excuse the puncture marks on my index and pinky - I stabbed myself on the sticky tape dispenser at work yesterday lol. I'm such a klutz!!

I'm holding limited edition green & gold Mentos which taste very yummy! I love it when companies bring out themed items =p


I haven't really been following the World Cup much this time around as the matches are played at like 4:30am in the morning and I just can't bring myself to get up at that time. However I might watch the match against Serbia early tomorrow morning because it might be the last time we play but fingers crossed it isn't though!

C'MON AUSSIE!!

Thank you for stopping by =)

My favourite truffles and Shiseido warehouse sale

I have a major sweet tooth. There is absolutely no denying the fact! I love sweets (or candy depending where you're from) be it gummy or caramels or lollipops or hard candy or chocolate and I love international sweets. You seriously cannot leave me with an open pack of lollies as they will be gone within a matter of minutes. I especially love truffles =) One of my favourites are the lime truffles from Adora Handmade chocolates.

Love the purple packaging!
I've never actually been to their store as my wonderful bf kindly gifts me with them (on rare occasions only) and it's probably a good thing because I would probably have to buy one of everything in the store! The boy works very close to their Bligh St store and he picked these up for me yesterday as he had to work in the morning. YAY!


These lime truffles are described as "a burst of lime white chocolate covered with roasted coconut" and they taste soooooooooooooo good. I'm not a huge fan of white chocolate - I prefer dark - but these are fantastic!

Delicious centre! Please excuse the crappy lighting.
So after the boy finished work we went on our annual excursion to the Supanova pop culture convention at Olympic Park and I stumbled across the Shiseido warehouse sale. I picked up a few items for myself and my mum and aunty. This has got to be the worst I have ever been at sticking to a shopping ban LOL. I blame end of financial year sales!! Plus I am an absolute sucker for warehouse sales, I am one of those girls who will line up 2hours early to grab a bargain ;) Pictured below is what I bought for myself.


I'm a Shiseido noob so I thought this was the perfect time to try them out at a fraction of the cost! I went late in afternoon just before they closed so didn't get much time to browse through everything. It was a pretty darn good warehouse sale! Prices started at $5 and there were tons of lip products to choose from; HEAPS of very heavily discounted skincare products; some eyeliners and shadows and foundations and powders. If I was a devotee of Shiseido I would have gone nuts like other women there who were buying LOADS of stuff - literally bucketfuls of stuff. I limited myself to some lippies, a lipgloss, a lipliner and White Lucent brightening set. I also picked up 1 or 2 items that I may use for a future giveaway ;)

Shiseido White Lucent Immediate Brightening Set:


This came with a 15ml tube of the Concentrated Brightening Serum and also 3 sheets of the Intensive Brightening Mask.

Shiseido Lip liner pencil in no.9 Red Rouge:


Nice smooth red lipliner to use with my NYX lippie in Snow White!

Shiseido Lipgloss in G28 Polished Pearl:


Really pretty clear gloss loaded with heaps of silver shimmer. The sales girl said she uses it to add shimmer to eye makeup too which I will have to try!

Shiseido Shimmering Lipstick in SL 1, SL 12 and SL 5:


SL 1 is a nude colour and SL 12 is a coral-y colour and SL 5 (lying down) is a really pretty pink. I can't wait to try these out!

SL 5 didn't come in a box and only came with a plastic lid as I believe it's a brand new tester because it's got a plastic thingy on the bottom with the shade. No biggie but kinda annoying to cart around as you can see below. Will just have to swap the lip from the others I guess!


Hopefully I'll get time to try these out soon. What do you ladies recommend from Shiseido?

I hope everyone enjoyed their weekend and has a great start to the week! Don't forget to enter my giveaway HERE!

Chanel Nouvelle Vague NOTD

Now I don’t normally buy very expensive nail polishes, but an opportunity came up that I couldn’t resist so now I own my very 1st luxury polish - Chanel Nouvelle Vague. Need I say more!


So the boy and I were shopping in the city about 2 weeks ago and as usual I was drooling over countless products in the Myer beauty department. I was drooling over the Chanel 2010 Summer display and the boy told me to just bite the bullet and buy the darned polish if I wanted it that much. Now don't get me wrong, I love to indulge myself on the rare occasion but $39Aus for ONE nail polish is just RIDICULOUS. For that price I could purchase almost 20 Ulta 3 polishes!

Of course it’s not the same but you can see the crazy mark ups Aussie girls have to deal with when it comes to beauty items. I resisted and we left the store but he insisted I get the polish and offered to go halves with me as a gift for getting through my assessments so back into the store we went. The rest they say is history and this little aqua baby is all MINE! It was the last bottle they had – someone had put it on hold but never picked it up so their loss was my gain. I also had a $20 Myer gift card that needed to be used so this polish comes guilt free as I didn't break my shopping ban. YAY!


Nouvelle Vague is a gorgeous shade of aqua which is very similar to China Glaze For Audrey but with very subtle shimmer through it. It’s difficult to see the shimmer unless you’re in sunlight or direct light.

Application was a bit of a pain which I was expecting after reading reviews. The formula is a little thick which is disappointing. I’ve been debating whether or not to thin it.. any suggestions ladies? The 1st coat was a streaky mess and it took another 2 to get it perfect. Below is 3 coats.


All in all an absolutely gorgeous polish however the formula could use some improvement. I will leave you with some picture spam of the jewel of my polish collection!!






Hope you like it! Thank you for looking =)

Don't forget to enter my 50 followers giveaway HERE!

Nonpareil haul and lipstick swatches

I ordered some stuff from Nonpareil a few weeks ago to take advantage of their 20% discount for Memorial Day. I know that I'm on a shopping ban an all but I couldn't resist - I saved myself money! =p I finally received my package today and it was worth the wait.


My haul consisted of mainly NYX products because I think the products are awesome but of course us Aussies don't get it here. It took a while to reach me - nearly 3 weeks which is what they tell you to expect - but other packages I've ordered from the States have only taken about 5days to get here. Nonetheless they reached me in the end and I was very please to find that the items were really really well packaged as you can see in the pic below. It was layer upon layer of bubble wrap!!


Here's what I hauled!

NYX Individual false lashes #137 and NYX Liquid eyeliner in black:

NYX 5 Colour shadow in I Dream of Jamaica. I plan on depotting these into my MAC palette some time hopefully.


NYX blushes in Mosaic Powder blush in Dare; Rouge Cream blush in Rose Petal and Powder blush in Peach:

NYX lipsticks in Summer Love; Snow White; Thalia and Wet n Wild lipstick in Retro Pink:

I decided to swatch these and I can't wait to wear them out! They applied quite smoothly and the texture is quite creamy. The scent is not too bad and at less than $2 you can't go wrong!

Summer Love - a pretty nude, great for everyday wear I think.

Thalia - a nice plummy colour with hints of brown.

Snow White - my 1st red lippie! I'm not sure if I can pull off such red lips though, maybe for a party with lashings of black eyeliner. It definitely needs to be applied with a lip brush for a perfect Snow White pout! Sorry for the very messy swatch =p

Retro Pink - a great hot pink lippie. I saw this shade on Krissy's blog and I just had to have it!

What have you hauled lately? Don't forget to enter my 50 followers giveaway HERE!

OPI Meet Me on the Star Ferry NOTD

I was really excited to get OPI Meet Me on the Star Ferry after seeing swatches of it online. However, I'm not all that happy with the colour on me after using it as a full manicure so this is just a short NOTD post.


Meet Me on the Star Ferry is a pretty mauve with golden shimmer. It applied like any other OPI polish - the Pro-wide brush was fantastic and it was very smooth to apply. Above is 2 coats for good measure but you could probably get away with 1 nicely applied coat. I then stamped stars using Bundle Monster plate BM14 using OPI Alpine Snow.

But like I said above, I'm not digging the colour on me unfortunately. The colour just kind of.. made my hands look old or something. I'm disappointed because the colour is pretty! My manicure doesn't do the colour justice.

Thanks for looking! Don't forget to enter my 50 followers giveaway here!

S-he Stylezone 427 butterfly NOTD

Just a quick post featuring my latest NOTD using another lovely polish from Anita! I used S-he Stylezone 427 which is a stunning pink holo. HOLO!!! It went on like a total dream - no cleanup necessary! The brush was great and it was super quick to dry. I'm very impressed so far with S-he polishes. Above is 2 coats which is needed for good coverage.


Just look at the colours! Gorgeous. Please excuse my dry wrinkly finger and cuticles, it's just been so cold lately in Sydney! =( My hands get so dry by the end of day.

I then stamped butterflies using Konad plate m36 with Special polish in white topped with Seche Vite. On a side note, Seche is still my go to topcoat when I'm in rush (like when I'm about to go to bed!) but when I have time I reach for Nailene Acrylic Strong.


Hope you like it! Don't forget to enter my 50 followers giveaway HERE!