39: Nailtech.com.au haul

Hi Guys

Gosh I've been updating a lot haven't I? Anyways in my 37th post I talked about some online e-tailers. Mainly one of them was http://www.nailtech.com.au/ for my Aussie nail fanatics! I ordered 5 items..

1 yellow armrest with removable terry cloth cover
1 portable mini nail dryer
1 clear manicure bowl
1 heart shaped dappen dish
1 star shaped dappen dish (you can never have enough cute dappen dishes!)

Just to let you guys know I placed my order with them on late Wednesday night. They called me Thursday morning to confirm the order and I recieved my package today (which is Friday) at 12pm!!! Which was only 30 minutes ago! I was so excited I opened my package right away but I was upset to find this..



My star shaped dappen dish had been broken during shipping :(

I really didn't know what to do because I've never recieved a damaged product before so I decided to call Nailtech. I spoke to Lisa again and asked her if we should sue the courrier company (I was obviously distraught lol) but she laughed and insisted that she would send me a new one free of charge :D

Anyways on to the other good stuff..




Meeka is just as excited as I was!



This is the cutest thing! A baby yellow armrest and it's so soft too. When it gets dirty I can take off the cover and wash it as well :D

This is a portable nail dryer! I haven't tested it out yet but I'll let you girls know if it's good when I get the batteries! I'm thinking of covering up the 'Nail Dryer' symbol with rhinestones. What do you guys think?

My manicure bowl in clear. Nice and simple!

My heart shaped dappen dish <3>

I'll take another picture of the star shaped dappen dish when it arrives. I'm so happy with these purchases. I paid $30.45AUD including shipping for all 5 items so that's a big bonus :D

PS. On a side note. I've been a huge Etsy freak buying everything in site. This week I wanted to buy new bedsheets and came across a very special seller. His name on Etsy is 'Kind Supplier'. Isn't that just adorable?! And look at his shop for all the lovely fabrics! http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7117976..
I'm thinking about buying some patterns to make cute pillows or seat cushions. Do you girls like his print fabrics?

xx
Joyce

38: Random

Hi Guys!

I just came back from the movies with my boyfriend. We watched Bruno. Ok I'll just leave it at that because I know that people are split right down the middle with this movie. I spoke to 3 of my coworkers today and they hated it. Then again last week I asked 4 of my friends and they thought it was funny. I laughed but I think there was too much nudity. Most of the people in the theatre laughed so I guess they enjoyed it.

Anyways I have an announcement:

Well not really because many of you already know her. Asami. She's the writer of 'My Manicure' and 'Nails by Asami'. She is my true hero :) Back when I started getting in to nail polish hers was the first blog I found. I was so happy to find her blog because she had such great tutorials! It's like having a private lesson at home. And her pictures are really great quality (which is always a plus). When she decided to take a break from blogging I was devastated and still checked her blog everyday to see if she came back. It's a bit late but I'm happy to sasy that she's finally back again! Yayyy :) And she even left a comment on my Strawberry nails post! I'm such a nerd I'm so excited about that. Anyways welcome back Asami!

PS. If you're not familiar with her then click on this link to go to her site.. http://www.nailsbyasami.blogspot.com/

xx
Joyce

37: Must.. Stop.. Buying.. Things..

Hi Girls!

Someone needs to take my computer away because I am 15000% addicted to online shopping! I've just finished a $90 purchase (from my boyfriend's credit card.. shh don't tell him!) and I'm also expecting more packages from 2 other online retailers. For some reason I can't help but smile :D

Just so you guys know these purchases are all nail related. No polishes though just more acrylic powders, nail art organizers and other little knick knacks!


2 of my favourite online stores are..

www.bf-beauty.com - I think this company started on eBay but now they've expanded to their own website. What I love about them is their super cheap shipping costs! My order of $90AUD costs less than $7AUD to ship! YAY!

http://stores.shop.ebay.com.au/Crystal-Wholesale - This is a great store for genuine Swarovski crystals at an awesome price! They also have sales from time to time so be sure to check up on them regularly!

Sorry guys but I just wanted to add a few more..

www.beverlybeaute.com - This site is special to me because it's the first site I ever purchased nail polish from. Now living in Australia has restricted me to the $1 and $2 bargains you girls find sometimes (which by the way makes me super happy jealous for you) so it's great to see a site where nail polishes aren't over the top expensive and who have a flat rate shipping fee as well.

www.nailtech.com.au - This site is more for the Aussie nail fanatics. They have good shipping charges and they're very nice ladies! One of the girls named Lisa called me this morning to say that they've ran out of the heart dappen dish that I ordered but I told her I really like it so she managed to find one for me from another supplier! How nice :) And in the end she called me back to confirm my order.


I'll be back to update later! Off to work now :)

xx
Joyce

36: Rant

Hi Guys

Sorry about this post but I'm about to go on a rant here. Now I love CNN. I think it's a very great website for news coverage and they have very interesting articles related to world issues, politics, entertainment, law, technology and health. Even just now I was on CNN and I was reading a very fascinating article on how BBG can reduce secondary damage caused by spinal injuries! The article says that BBG is similar to a blue food dye that is regularly used for colouring in M&Ms and Gatorade and since it's been sucessful during testing the researchers are applying for FDA permission to test on humans. VERY COOL! After reading articles I generally like to look over to the side to see what other top stories are popular or just to see if there was anything else I missed out on. But what I saw on the list today really annoyed me..




WHO CARES ABOUT THE BACHELORETTE?!!


Don't get me wrong. When I was in Canada I was a fan of the show. I thought it was entertaining to watch but when news about who the Bachelorette chose beats out major world issues that's when I have a problem. Isn't this what websites like People.com is for? I remember watching Oprah one day and she commented that she saw an article on CNN regarding Beyonce and how she didn't want to be known as bootylicious anymore. She thought it was ridiculous. Obviously that's so random and I think it wastes the readers time. I really don't need a full 1200 word article on how the Bachelorette fell in love while she was on the show. Come on CNN this is messed up. Then again it's the readers on the site who are the ones clicking to read the articles and that just makes it even more upsetting.

Sorry about all the complaints. Thank you for reading :)

xx
Joyce

35: NOTD and nail art

Hi Bloggers!

Man I've been updating so much lately. Guess it's all the free time I have off from work :) I've been doing some swatches and watching communitychannel on youtube! I love Natalie's videos she's such a funny girl!

Here's my NOTD. I had to use 4 coats of OPI's Give Me The Moon. I'm not a big fan of this colour and it was such a pain to apply. I only bought it to complete the OPI Night Brights collection. The other thing I wanted to share was a mani I did for my friend Teresa a few days ago. She works for Waverly Council which is government related so we couldn't go all out with the crazy colours. I miss hanging out with her so much and we had so much fun talking and laughing while doing the manicure. She has great nails so all I did was 3 coats of OPI's You're A Doll with some rhinestones and 3D nail art..

My NOTD..

Teresa's mani..

I'm sorry that this picture turned out to be a bit blurry I didn't know how to use her camera. I tried to focus on the 3D nail art but it wouldn't work. I guess it was too old school!

Hope you guys like it. I'll talk to you soon :D

xx

Joyce

34: Movie date NOTD

Hey Girls!

I was playing around with my polishes and I thought it'd be fun to do a random mani. I painted my nails with China Glaze's It's Poppin' and then added a few details to my ring finger with China Glaze's Entourage and L.A Colors Art Deco in white. Hope you guys like it..





MMM.. Strawberry! I didn't know what to do with this hot pink colour but I think the strawberry is kinda cute. I should've used a dotting tool for the white but I was too lazy to search for one (my room is like a battlefield at the moment). The only problem I have with this look is that I think it makes my ring finger look super small. I think this would be better on someone with nice long nails :D

xx
Joyce

33: NOTD

Hi Bloggers

I wanted to play with my new Art Deco polishes tonight but I actually have a movie date night with my boyfriend tomorrow so I didn't feel like swatching around with different polishes. Instead I decided to do a colour I wouldn't normally pick since it is so sheer.

I used OPI's Midnight Blue Glitter (which takes approximately 6-7 coats to be fully opaque) and made it my nail of the day. It's a bit hard to believe but I only used 3 coats for this mani. The trick was to just pile on the polish! I did the first layer thin and waited for it to dry. The 2nd layer however I picked up a large amount and just swirled the polish and brushed it a bit on the nail. By the time the 2nd coat was dry it looked about 3/4 opaque so I decided just to do 1 last thin layer to finish it off. I'm pretty happy with how it looks on my nails right now. The blue glitter is really pretty and sparkly..







What do you guys think? Do you like the colour? :)

xx
Joyce

32: L.A. Colors Art Deco haul

Hi Lovelies :D

I actually don't know if I can call this post a haul since I only ordered 6 colours but I'm running out of titles so this will have to do. While I was walking home from work today I was thinking to myself gosh it's been almost 2 weeks since I ordered the Art Deco polishes from eBay seller ceelow4. Did it get lost in the mail? Maybe it's here today! Well I got home and found my package waiting nicely on my bed yayyy..




THIS was the packaging! It's huuuge and all for 6 little polishes. I'm glad it was carefully packaged though because I would've been sad if they were broken in the mail.



As if that huge evelope wasn't enough I opened it to find that there was even more bubble wrap inside!



These were the colours that I ordered. I got silver glitter, white, yellow, baby pink, magenta and black.


I think that these little nail art polish are really great. They're not really expensive and they're very easy to use. I paid $16.38USD for 6 colours plus shipping. I haven't tried those Art Club nail art polishes but I think they're probably the same. Have any of you tried the Art Club polishes?

PS. I've been using the China Glaze Calcium Gel Fortifier for almost 3 days now (actually I just put it on once on day 1 and it's stayed on since) and so far so good! My nails are longer than before (but that could just be the fact that they grew by themselves) but I do feel that the nails on my ring fingers have gotten stronger :D

xx
Joyce

31: Beverly Beaute haul and NOTD

Hello Wonderful People..

Sorry I haven't been updating or commenting lately but I've been super tired for some reason. Maybe it's because of the cold weather? Aaanyways I also didn't want to post a lot of stupid little one liners so I waited until today to share my most recent haul from http://www.beverlybeaute.com/ :D

I'm not sure about the rest of you guys but since I'm living in Australia at the moment I find that a lot of US suppliers don't like to ship internationally. But luckily I found a great site that ships to Australia for a flat rate of $19 (used to be $12). Flat rate for those of you who don't know means that no matter how many items you order or how heavy the package is the shipping rate will only be the flat rate which is $19. Honestly I think that's pretty great for shipping to Australia. I've ordered from Beverly Beaute once before and this was my 2nd time. Shipping is fast I think my package arrived in approx. 5 days or so? And they have a wide selection of the brands I'm familiar with. The first time I ordered through this website I purchased about 12 OPI nail polishes but this time I wanted to stock up on nail and cuticle care. Have you guys tried any of these? Would you recommend it?..




CND's cuticle remover: Cuticle Away. 177ml worth!



CND's cuticle pusher. On the website this was listed as CND's cuticle pusher but when I recieved it I saw that it was by Body Toolz and not CND. Weird.



CND's Cuticle Eraser. I ended up getting the huge one because I think it was only a $7 difference!



I've been using OPI's Nail Envy for a while now and the bottle is almost empty so I wanted to see what other nail strengtheners were out on the market. I came across China Glaze's Calcium Gel Fortifier and I remember reading on All Lacquered Up's blog that this was a great strengthener! I hope it works for my poor nails too.



Base coats are always super important to us girls who love nail polish! I used to use OPI's base coat but since my mom cleaned my room a few months ago I have no idea where it went. Instead of bumming over the loss I decided to test out 2 very popular base coats. I asked my nail teacher if CND's Stickey was a good base coat and she said yes (she's a CND ambassador btw) but she preferred CND's Toughen Up.



Another beloved base coat to many swatchers seemed to be Orly's Bonder so I decided to order this one as well because I could never find it at my local nail supply store. I hope it works well :)



Last but not least.. Seche Restore! If any of you girls have used Seche Vite I'm sure that you're familiar with your bottle drying up fast. I convinced myself that I had to buy a super huge Seche Restore to give new life to my old Seche Vites since I love that top coat soo much!



As a bonus gift (since I spent more than $100) I recieved a nice baby blue mesh bag with a nail file, orangewood stick, toe separator, buffing block, and sample of CND's Sensations hand lotion in Chocolate-Covered Cherries. This stuff is amazing I wanted to eat it when I tested it on my hands. I went to nail class today and told Megumi (my nail teacher) about the lotion and she told me she loves Sensations too! She got me to try the Citrus and Green Tea scent and I was fully hooked. I even asked her to order a full sized bottle for me :) It smells like heaven!

After nail class today I had some time left before I met my boyfriend for dinner so I decided to visit a nail supply store in the City. It's not as cheap as the one in Bankstown but I did manage too find some cheap stuff. I think..




A frosted dappen dish for monomer. I've always adored Mitsue's heart shaped dappen dish but as hard as I searched I could not find the same one so I ended up settling for this one. The metal cover looks kinda ugly so I think I'm going to cover it up with some rhinestones. We'll see how that goes.



Plastic liquid dropper. I bought this to pick up monomer from it's original bottle. I didn't have this the first time I tried to pour monomer into a dappen dish and a lot of the monomer was spilt onto the floor.


I'll try to update for you guys again soon! I ordered another 6 L.A. Colors Nail Art Deco polishes and they should arrive any day now! See you guys then I'm off to do my nails now :D I'll leave you with my half-assed NOTD..



xx
Joyce

30: My 30th post!

Hi-lo Everyone!

I've missed you girls a lot! I've been a bit busy lately and haven't had the energy or the time to do any NOTDs but since I don't have to work tomorrow I thought I'd go ahead and try to make some new nail art :D




This one was made with just OPI Happy Anniversary and different coloured acrylic hearts (which I punched out from my heart puncher).



I originally wanted the bow to be purple but the purple colour I had was very light so I didn't think that would go well. Instead I added a purple pearl in the center of the bow.


I'm not 100% happy with these designs because it's so poorly done! I couldn't sculpt the bow the way I wanted to because I had to do this STANDING UP. My dummy boyfriend has taken over the desk and he's been sitting there all day playing games and watching his movies. Boys will be boys..

I promise to make some better ones next time! :)))

xx
Joyce

29: More horror!

Hey Guys!

As many of you know I broke my nail yesterday and was forced to cut all my nails short :( I thought to myself it was actually a good idea since I was going to the driving range today with my boyfriend and a couple of other friends. We had a great time there. I hadn't been in a long time so we were all just practicing and having fun.. until..




BEFORE: my beautiful baby in it's original glory :)




AFTER: my boyfriend swung and cracked my DRIVER! :(((


I was sooooo angry at him! It was 10000% his fault because he wouldn't listen to me. The stall he was at didn't have a tee so I asked him to go find a tee somewhere else. He went and found one. On the mat there were 6 holes where you could insert the tee. He inserted it into one of the slots but that didn't match up to where he was standing so being the genius that he is he decided to stand on the ground.. OFF THE MAT! I told him he shouldn't do that but he wouldn't listen to me and just wanted to show my friends his drive. He swung the driver and hit the ball but during his follow through the driver was pounded into a steel pole which was behind him the whole time. I was going to cry because I was so frustrated. This could've been avoided if he had listened to me! I looked at my poor baby and it had a crack all the way around. It was ruined. I thought i was going to die at that moment. It was like someone beat me over the head with golf clubs :(((

Booooo for stupid boyfriends!

xx
Joyce

28: The horror!

Hi Girls,

I was going to do a NOTD today after work but I guess God had other plans for me because..



NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! It broke while I was organizing hangers today at work :(

Darn I guess I'll have to trim all of them now. I was so excited yesterday that my nails were slowly growing out (since the gel nails incident a while back). Anyways I'm gonna be hitting the driving range tomorrow anyways so I guess it's better to cut them now so I don't hurt myself and break any more nails.

I'm gonna go and work on some more nail designs. Talk to you girls later :D

xx
Joyce

27: Jay Chou concert

Hi Guys

I wanted to post this for some of the girls. Mainly the Jay Chou fans out there. My boyfriend and I went to his Sydney concert on July 3rd and it was pretty amazing! I managed to take pictures and record 2 or 3 songs (but I wasn't supposed to shhh). Hope you enjoy it! Also the last picture is a picture of some guy and Jay Chou after the concert. That random guy is my good friend Jason and believe it or not he was Jay's bodyguard for 5 days while he was here in Sydney! He ate with Jay, slept near Jay, went shopping with Jay and guided Jay to the washrooms! Jason even managed to get a signed poster for me and Kadi :)

Acer Arena was filled that night!







There were huge screens with chinese subtitles so everyone could sing along to his songs! So karaoke :D



Kadi's enjoying the concert with cup of beer :p

Jay and his posse (Nan Quan MaMa singer)




Nan Quan MaMa's Lara and Chase? (I'm not sure about all the members)




One of his dancers proposed on stage to his girlfriend! You would think she accepted but we actually don't know her final answer :/



Jay and his drums :)




Jay and his guzheng (a traditional chinese musical instrument)



During the final song of the night he performed Nunchucks again this time in the original format and in the end he threw his nunchucks to a lucky fan! Now I know what you're thinking *WOW THAT'S SO NICE OF HIM. I'M SO JEALOUS OF THE FAN WHO CAUGHT IT*. Think again. We're talking REAL wood sticks and metal chain nunchucks I mean that would hurt! Why couldn't he just throw a hat or something you know anything but a dangerous weapon. But still everyone went crazy and it was totally awesome!


Videos..

Jay Chou - Silence



Jay and his piano :D



Jay Chou - Nunchucks (alternate version)

Jay and his guitar :))



The thing I love about Jay Chou is his ability to sing live. Once the piano came out his fans hit the roof. It was the loudest screams I've ever heard! He likes to change his songs too. For example a lot of the songs we heard that night had a lot of ad libbing! He would sing things like "It's great to be in Sydney" or "Are you guys having fun?" and sneak it into his songs. It was fun night!

PS. I had dinner with Jason the other night and I asked him about Jay Chou. He told me he isn't how the media portrays him. He told me that Jay is really nice. He laughs a lot and likes to play with everyone on his team.

PPS. Jason also told me that Leehom Wang is coming to Sydney in March 2010!!!!!!!!!!

xx
Joyce