Beauty Blogger Tag: 32 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About Me!

I'm been so swamped with essay-writing (it's that time of the semester) that it's been virtually impossible to do much over here, dear readers. Got a really delayed post on Jindie Nails Swoon and Zomboy that I haven't posted up because I haven't got the perfect swatches yet. Here's a sneak peek I posted a few days ago:

I hope to post the full review post soon! Sigh so many posts lined up but no time right now.

Anyway, I was recently tagged by the lovely Miss Rusty to do this little meme. I figured it wouldn't take up too much time and would be a welcome break from writing long, tedious essays, so here goes!

Cirque Fleur est Belle Swatches and Review

Today I finally present to you... Cirque Fleur est Belle, sent to me for review by Mei Mei's Signatures!

I was intending for this to be a Valentine's Day post as this polish is a perfect mix of whimsicality and romance that's date-appropriate, but my plans were thwarted by an essay deadline on V-day itself. That was a pity, as the description of Fleur est Belle - "Petal pink evokes images of the warm tropics and pink flowers that emanate whimsical femininity" - perfectly represents my idea of a nice, summery day of love in the tropics. More after the jump!

Glitter Gal DuoChrome Hell-Bent Blue Swatches and Review

Recently, Glitter Gal released a collection of six duochromes that have a metallic chrome-like finish. They sound similar to the Glitter Gal Shade Shifters collection, which can be worn over black or alone, but the DuoChromes are meant to be worn over black to bring out the duochrome better.

Today I'll be reviewing one of the duochromes from Glitter Gal's new range of six duochromes that was sent to me for review by Mei Mei's Signatures. This one is named Hell-Bent Blue - let's find out if it's really hell-bent on staying blue - or not!

Swatches of my 600 FB Followers Giveaway Bloop and Elianto nail polishes

Like any of these nail polishes and want a chance to win them? You're in luck. These are part of the prizes for my 600 FB Followers Giveaway, which if you haven't joined, you should join now because there's less than a week left until it ends! I have great prizes to give to one lucky winner - they include 5 nail polishes (I've swatched them in this post) and 2 nail art accessory wheels, shown below.

Swatches and a short review of the polishes I'm using in this giveaway after the jump!

Scotch Naturals On the Rocks Top Coat and Base Coat Review and Pictures

In today's post, I'll be sharing about my experiences with Scotch Naturals Top Coat and Base Coat. I did some tests to check whether the top coat and base coat extended wear time on the water-based nail polish, Scotch Naturals Seaboard. To find out whether they fared well against my stringent criteria for great, healthy and efficient beauty products, read on after the jump!

Cherchez Beaute's 600 FB Followers Giveaway 1

Hello everyone, it's time for an epic series of giveaways to thank all of you for your constant support and love! Here's the first giveaway and it goes out specially to all my nail buddies, because the nail polish community was the first community I was inducted into in the blogosphere.

Lex Cosmetics (for Mei Mei's Signatures) Love Me More Swatches and Review

Recently, Mei Mei kindly sent me Lex Cosmetics Love Me More, a hot pink polish with fucshia microshimmer for review. This is the signature polish of Mei Mei's Signatures (her e-store), and was specially created for her by Lex Cosmetics, so I was pretty excited about receiving and reviewing it. Read on to see more pictures and find out my thoughts about this sizzling hot summer shade!

Watsons (Taman Maluri Jusco) Haul

And today, I proudly present my haul from F.O.S. (at Viva) and Watsons and Daiso (at the Taman Maluri Jusco)! Just like yesterday's haul, I have no idea why today's haul isn't that fantastic - I just didn't like most of the things I saw. Am hoping that tomorrow will be different. I still have to hit Times Square and Sungei Wang before I head back to Singapore, so I'm crossing my fingers on being able to get better hauls in the next few days. Full haul post and more pictures after the jump!

Watsons (Suria KLCC) Haul

Just a quick haul post to show you what I bought from Watsons at Suria KLCC today. Pardon the grainy quality and bad lighting of the photos; it was really late at night. Full haul post and more pictures after the jump!

Megan Miller Coral Bliss Swatches and Review

Today, I have a nail post (finally) for everyone. A truly luscious warm-leaning coral red, Megan Miller Coral Bliss is the perfect shade for summer. Read on for swatches and a discount!

Megan Miller Coral Bliss in the shade

OPI Pirouette My Whistle and Don't Touch My Tutu Swatches and Review

A quick post because I'm nearing the end of my hell week at school. I was swamped with so much work I didn't have much time for anything else. Thankfully I'll be much freer after today is over!

Anyhoos, I'm guessing everyone has already heard of the OPI NYC Ballet Soft Shades Spring Collection 2012, so I won't do a rehash. After checking out swatches by Let Them Have Polish, I was utterly convinced that I needed Don't Touch My Tutu and Pirouette My Whistle in my life. I didn't buy the other colours because I didn't think they would have suited my skintone, which has very warm, yellowish undertones.

A day ago, I decided to try on Don't Touch My Tutu and Pirouette My Whistle and couldn't stop staring at my nails after that! The combination of Don't Touch My Tutu's sheer white jelly finish and Pirouette My Whistle, which contains pearlescent hex glitters and small silver glitters suspended in a clear base, really looks like Lynnderella Snow Angel (which I don't have). Based on swatches I found, I figured that it probably looks even prettier than Snow Angel because of the tiny silver glitters! Pirouette My Whistle looks similar to Nubar Moon Drops too, but it is more delicate as the round glitter is silver and smaller than Moon Drops' slightly larger green/silver/blue round glitter. I don't own it though, so I can't compare the two.

Many bloggers have already swatched Don't Touch My Tutu and Pirouette My Whistle in combination, so I thought I'd do something a little different. First I did three coats of Don't Touch My Tutu for all nails and two coats of Pirouette My Whistle. I added another thin coat of Don't Touch My Tutu for my pinkie to get the jelly sandwich look. Then I suddenly remembered that I had an beaded bracelet on hand and decided to play around with it.

Look at the jelly sandwich - I really love it! It's not very obvious in the photos, but it's amazingly pretty in real life because the hex glitters appear white and the silver glitters glimmer through the milky, translucent layer on top.

Anyway, I love the combination of Don't Touch My Tutu and Pirouette My Whistle. It looks so sweet and delicate - perfect for days when you prefer something more neutral and feminine with a hint of sparkle. I have few pastel/neutral shades because I love more intense colours, but this collection is definitely worth investing in. I hope I've convinced you of that, at least. We nail polish addicts who blog aim to be lemming creators ;)

EDIT: I was walking outside today and the sun was extremely bright. My mani looked so awesome that I had to snap a photo with my iPhone!

Malaysia Haul Part II

Wow this is really backdated. I found it in my drafts and figured I should just post it anyway.

---

So, Part I's done and now for the mega haul in Part II of my Malaysian shopathon. (Shopathon. I like that word.)

I went to Berjaya Times Square in December 2011 and had a whopping haul of Bloop de Paris, Elianto, Etude House, Sasatinnie and Sally Hansen nail polishes.

Bloop de Paris is an interesting brand I've heard of, but never got the chance to try. By some coincidence, I saw this counter of Bloop de Paris nail polishes going for 9.90 RM each, with 50% off the 2nd bottle. I got 6 shades:

From left: H525, H174, H138, H140, H202, H201

Here are pictures of 5 of them - enlarge them to see the pretty glitters and shades after the jump!

Malaysia haul Part I

Greetings all from Malaysia! Sorry for the lack of updates - I've been shopping, eating and resting well for 2 days and almost don't want to do anything but that. However, I thought of all of you and decided to share the spoils. Let's check the damage done thus far... after the jump!

Nail Polish: A teaser...

Just a teaser on what's coming up soon on Cherchez Beauté...

Red shimmer and
multichromatic glitter

Look at the colour gradient!

This is no ordinary gold glitter...

The gold glitter reflects blue!

For the first 2 pictures I layered two glitters over a black base. The glitters are from an Asian brand. For the next 2 pictures, I layered one sheer shimmery polish over another creme polish. Both are European brands. For the last two pictures, I layered a sheer shimmery polish over a creme polish. One is from Asia and one is from the UK.

Anyone want to guess what polishes these are? :)

Featured: SG Nails - Don't Panic, Don't Blink, just buy now!

I am breaking my "hiatus" of writing proper posts to do this because I just couldn't stop myself.

---

Oh gosh oh gosh as I speak bottles are flying off the... (metaphorical) shelves!

There's a new kid on the block and boy is he ever so tempting.

SG Nails is so many kinds of awesome I cannot even start without gushing on about it. Helmed by a husband and wife team, SG Nails has brought in a collection of custom-blended nail polish made by the talented Amanda of NerdLacquer fame at 25 SGD a bottle (excluding 3 SGD for registered mail) that reminds one of Lynnderella's glitters.

Everyone knows just how hard it is to get ahold of NerdLacquers because they keep selling out. Harlow & Co. has a wide range of NerdLacquers too, but they sell out very fast! That is where SG Nails steps in to help us local polish addicts.

SG Nails' nail polish offerings from NerdLacquer include polishes named "Don't Panic", "Hyperspace Bypass", "Entirely Unlike Tea" and "Regeneration". If those references just went over your head, I'll explain for your benefit: The first three make not-so-subtle references to Douglas Adams' cool, wacky, crazy book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and the last makes a very obvious reference to Dr Who and the regenerations of the different doctors. When I first saw the lovely colours sitting in their geekily labelled bottles, I almost cried for joy. Here at last, someone who understands the needs of geeky nail polish lovers and brings such an awesome range of polish!

If you were wondering, I just bought a bottle of "Hyperspace Bypass", described as

a massively glittering big yellow something that hovers on your fingertips in exactly the way that bricks don’t. Packed with pale gold glitter, medium and large golden hex glitter, and small and medium black glitter, plus a sprinkling of holographic hex sparkles, it’ll disintegrate every other polish in your collection.

The description brings a tear of geeky joy to my eye. I am so upset I can't snag "Don't Panic" and "Exterminate" as well, in addition to currently out of stock nail polishes "Don't Blink" and "All of Time and Space", partly due to my current lack of funds and also due to the fact that there are so many nail polish lovers out there grabbing those lovely bottles.

Here is "Hyperspace Bypass". Feast your eyes upon it (it looks like a yellow kiwi to me hm)!

 Credits to SG Nails

Credit: SG Nails

Just look at that. Convinced now? Visit SG Nails without further ado and be transported to a world where nail polish and geekdom coincide. But like I said, do it quick, because many of the most gorgeous colours are already sold (within the same hour of the store's opening) to people who either appreciate 1) awesome local small businesses 2) awesome geekiness 3) awesome nail polish colours or all of the above. I snagged the third last bottle of "Hyperspace Bypass" so that's one less beauty for you to grab. Oh and there's a discount ongoing - just use the discount code of "WELOVESGNAILS" when you checkout to get 10% off.

Final thoughts: I just adore the selection at SG Nails, and I can't wait to get "Hyperspace Bypass" on my nails. I guess no matter how much nail polish and girly make up implements I have, I'm still a huge geek at heart. Remember: Don't Panic, just grab the bottles you want that are available, and Don't Blink - you may not live to regret not getting these beauties.

P.S. Like SG Nails on Facebook as well to show your appreciation :)

EDIT: SG Nails is selling NerdLacquer at 18 SGD per bottle now. Yay for more affordable polish! Amanda is currently missing in action and no longer produces NerdLacquer, so grab all the available bottles you can before you don't have the chance to!

Disclaimer: This was not a paid advertorial. The views expressed in this post are 100% my own.

China Glaze He's Going In Circles Swatches and Review

Today will be the first time I'm reviewing nail polish over here, and it's China Glaze He's Going In Circles, as shown above.