Rainbow Honey Pink Cloud Review and Swatches

Just a very quick, very straightforward post today!

I'm currently off work for a week, so I am planning on getting some serious work done so I can bring you some really in-depth posts in the coming weeks. But I'm also wanting to squeeze in a bit of R'n"R as well, so I've been alternating research on sumptory laws in 16th Century Italy with watching movies like the delightfully ridiculous Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters while stuffing my face with chips.

(I like bad movies and I cannot lie.)

Today, in the spirit of taking it easy, having fun and not thinking too hard, let's have a look at a lovely little polish by Rainbow Honey. It's called Pink Cloud, and was sent to me for review by the wonderful folk at Femme Fatale Cosmetics.

Dia de Muertos Collection - Shades of Phoenix Review

You might have noticed I'm kind of a not so reformed Goth; this means Halloween is a BIG deal for me. They don't call it Goth Christmas for nothing! So I'm gearing up for a big month of all things creepy, ooky, kooky and spooky here at the Reluctant Femme.
Shades of Phoenix very kindly asked me to review their Halloween season offering, a quirky little trio of Dia de Muertos themed polishes. Dia de Muertos, or Day of the Dead, is a Mexican holiday thought to have emerged from a collision of an Aztec festival around the same time of year that centred around remembering and celebrating the dead, and the Catholic holidays All Saints Day and All Soul's Day. There are similar celebrations in lots of different cultures, but in Mexico the declared Dia de Muertos is a public holiday, and there are often festivals on either side of the actual day. Dia de Muertos has also developed a very distinctive set of visual trademarks - skull motifs, bright clashing colours, and big bunches of marigolds everywhere they can possibly fit. Despite being a festival all about death, and remembering everyone we know who is already dead, Dia de Muertos is actually quite a joyous event. Traditionally, Mexicans don't like for the dead to be thought of as sad in their afterlife, or to be thought of sadly at all. They prefer to consider all those who've gone before us to be having one big party while they wait for us, and Dia de Muertos is an expression of how happy we are that they get to party on down in the afterlife, how happy we are to have known them, and how excited we are that we will see them again.

Chosen Ones and Ones Who Choose - Powder Perfect Indie Polish Review

To round off the week, I have a post for you today with something I love, and something I hate.

Let's start with the positives! You might remember the delightful lipstick I got from local indie label Powder Perfect that I posted about a little while ago. Powder Perfect also make nail polishes, so of COURSE I had to try out one of them as well. The one that really jumped out at me is called Children of The Moon, and is apparently inspired by the Mortal Instruments series of books. Honestly, I am NOT a fan of these books, and I'll go into more detail about why in a little bit, but this polish looked SO pretty that I decided I didn't give a damn about the association with the books, it was worth picking up anyway.

Children of The Moon is dark indigo jelly base filled with tons and tons of blue, silver, and grey hexes in various sizes. It's not quite as much of a glitterbomb as the average Femme Fatale, but it's certainly right up there. I decided to wear it over a plain navy base, but to be honest I probably didn't really need to bother.

Echoes - Cadillacquer Review

Recently I decided to take advantage of all the lovely international indies that are being stocked at Femme Fatale Cosmetics - they've had this up and running for a little while, but I had something of a backlog just working through all the amazing Australian indies I wanted to try. But finally I got around to checking it out, and I'm SO glad I did. There is some freaking awesome stuff there, that is really difficult to get any other way - Happy Hands, HARE Polish, Smitten Polish...lots of lovelies I'd been meaning to track down, all there for my browsing pleasure!

Among all the brands I was familiar with, I came across one I'd never seen before that really jumped out at me. Echo from Swiss indie label Cadillacquer is a stunning dark blue glitter in a jelly base. It was very easy to apply, and if you're one of those patient people who can do thin, even layers of jelly polishes this would do well without any undies.

How To Apply Indie Nail Polish (Without Going Mad)

I promised I would follow up my Indie Polish Buying Guide with a little tutorial, and finally, here it is! I did a basic How To Do Nails tutorial here a looooong time ago, but not only have I learned a LOT since then, it also didn't include the special peculiarities of using polish that's 90 per cent glitter. SO I've made up a tutorial that's start to finish - bare nails to sparkly goodness!

You'll see below a little video I've made for you, with the ever-patient help of Mr. Reluctant Femme.



(As a former film student, I take RIDICULOUS delight in using the absolute cheesiest, tackiest effects I find for these videos)

Suicidal Tendencies

This is a brutally honest post, with a great deal of raw emotion exposed, so please proceed with caution. I will be discussing points in time when I was suicidal, and talking to other people about their suicide plans, so if this is triggering you might want to stop now.

Here's a corgi puppy taking a nap to make you smile before you go

Still here? Cool, let's get into this then.

Antipodean Beauties - No Makeup Makeup

 Good lord, two AB posts in a row! What IS the world coming to? It's actually because my last one was extremely late, and this one is more or less on time, so there isn't likely to be another until next Monday.

This week's theme was "No Makeup Makeup", and I considered being a smarty pants and putting up a photo with no makeup on at all, and try and convince you that I was wearing some complex "au naturale" regime. But for ONCE, I decided not to be sarcastic and actually do the theme as intended, mostly because I have a really lovely lipstick I want to show you that totally suits the theme.

Antipodean Beauties All About Eyes - Venomous Cosmetics Review

I have to admit, I've been putting this post off for a little while. You know when everyone else is super excited about something, and so you get it too, and then you wonder what the fuss was all about? Yeah, I finally ran into one of those situations. ANYWAY, I realised this post would fit perfectly with the Antipodean Beauties theme for this week, All About Eyes, so I finally got my crap together and got it done.

After attempting to pack up all my eyeshadows for a recent cross country trip, and failing to fit them all in the bag, I've realised I might have a bit of a problem with acquiring new eyeshadows.I just love them so, SO much. Discovering indie eyeshadows changed my whole attitude towards eyeshadow - I was used to years and years of grinding away at cheap palettes trying to get some sort of shadow of colour, and then I come across these rich, beautiful, opaque powders that could transform my eyes in the swipe of a brush. I've always wanted to be a bit more daring with my makeup, but I'm too self conscious about my teeth to go in for bright lipstick. Bright eyeshadow was the answer I'd been looking for, and indie eyeshadow is as bright as it gets!

I'd heard excellent things about Venomous Cosmetics, an American indie outfit, and checking out their colours it seemed they had some very bright colours indeed to offer me. They also had quite a large Alice in Wonderland themed collection, and lord knows I love any excuse to talk about Alice In Wonderland. So I ordered a bunch of samples, as I do when buying from a new company, and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I tried to contact Venomous by email, and received no reply.

I waited some more.

Eventually by stalking their Facebook page, I realised the email address they had listed on their site was actually out of commission, and so I emailed again to a different address. Finally I got a response, and to be fair, an absolute torrent of apologies. The owner offered to resend my parcel as it was quite likely the first one had gotten lost, and stuffed it FULL of so much extra stuff I was a bit shocked with it arrived. Not a great first impression, but the owner was just SO NICE and SO GENEROUS I was willing to get over the long wait time. I mean, international postage can be a right bitch, and there's nothing anyone can do about that.

But anyway, at long last the package arrived, and out tumbled my pretty little pans of colour! Unfortunately in the meantime, most of these colours have been discontinued, but you will still get an idea of the sort of thing that Venomous tend to do.

Pool Party!! Pretty Serious Party by The Pool Review

Here in my Australian corner of the world Summer has arrived with a great big bang! Most years we get a nice, slow transition from a cold, damp winter to the scorching humidity of summer, but this year it's gone straight from coat weather to t-shirt weather. I'm trying not to sulk about this too hard - I love winter and LOATHE summer - by brightening up my wardrobe and trying to put on a happy face beneath the sweat. While pawing through my untried polish pile (it's under control, I swear) I noticed this beautiful peacock blue jelly polish from Pretty Serious called Party by The Pool, and decided that this was where my Summerfication should begin.

Image courtesy of the Pretty Serious website

While not as uber-sparkly as more recent releases like Cybernetic, there is still a lot of sparkle swimming around in the squishy jelly base. As with every single Pretty Serious polish I've tried so far, I have nothing but effusive praise for the formula. Perfect consistency, perfect coverage -  the almost unbelievable consistency of this brand is one of my favourite things about it. Because it's a jelly base, it will remain a teeny bit transparent unless you layer it, so I put two coats over a base of Ulta 3 Get Teal.

In the glorious sunshine! One good thing about summer, plenty of sun for swatch photos.