Shiro Cosmetics Seven Kingdoms Collection Swatches

Ever since someone tipped me off to the delightful randomness of Shiro Cosmetic's Nic Cage Raking Leaves on a Brisk October Afternoon eyeshadow, I've been something of a Shiro fangirl. Not only does the owner have a delightful sense of humour, their shadows are deliciously rich and pigmented. I've even started using them to colour resin for my jewellery, because a tiny tiny amount makes it just GLOW. Because I haven't shut up about this brand since I stumbled across them, and we all know how much I love Game of Thrones, my lovely Mr. Reluctant Femme got me a sample pack of the ENTIRE Shiro Cosmetics Seven Kingdom collection!

My face when I opened up the package

Now, I know a lot of you look at the bolder colours of eyeshadow that I tend to prefer and get all shy, so you lot in particular will be delighted with how overall worksafe this collection is. There's a lot of earthy, mellow browns, tans, and peaches, as well as some brighter shades, and I'd be pretty shocked if there wasn't at least something here for everyone.

Gimme Gimme Gimme - Getting your hands on Aussie indies internationally

I've been getting a few questions lately from international readers about how they can get their hands on the delightful Australian polishes I'm so fond of showing off around here, so I thought it might be useful to put all my advice on squashing Aussie lemmings in the one place.

Just let me state something first, for the record: posting nail polish from Australia, if you don't have the appropriate license to do so, is illegal. It IS legal to post domestically so long as you specify that it's to travel by road only, but the actual implementation of this can vary widely between post offices. Some refuse to post it at all, some don't care. You just have to take your chances. But unless you have the appropriate license, posting polish internationally from Australia is always illegal.
So there's that technicality out of the way. On to how to source the shinies!

Sea Siren Cosmetics - Call of the Ocean

Once again, it's time to introduce your eager eyes and wallets to another new Australian indie polish company! The lovely Sea Wenches at Sea Siren Cosmetics sent me a package recently absolutely BURSTING with goodies, and I'm pretty excited to share the excitement with you guys. This is going to be a REALLY picture heavy post, so settle in and get comfy.

This is the enormous bundle of gifts I received from Sea Siren after answering a call for reviewers over on their Facebook page. I don't think I've ever received so much from a single brand, even when I was paying for it myself - to be honest, it was a little overwhelming! But never fear, I managed to put aside my feelings of being buried under a pile of beautiful bottles and got to work.

Valentine's Day? Bah Humbug!

I hate Valentine's Day.

No, seriously, I'm not saying that to be edgy or cool or grunge era bleak. I just really, honestly don't like it. I still remember my very first proper Valentine's Day, way back when I was just a wee fledgeling Cassie. I celebrated by dumping my very first boyfriend. Well, rather, I asked my best friend to dump him for me. You see, we'd been dating for a few weeks, and I got word through the grapevine that he was planning on trying to get me to kiss him for the first time by showering me in teddies and hearts and general smooshiness. I was NOT down for any part of this plan, so I dumped him without explaination.

Teenage girls can be AWFUL.

Fast forward to now, and while I'm slightly less vicious to my boyfriend, I'm still not a big fan of Valentine's Day. Every year, we have the same stupid conversation. He asks what I want to do for Valentine's Day, I flail around and whine and complain that I hate it, and it's stupid, and do we have to. Then he does this damn puppy dog face at me that just KILLS me, and says he really wants to do something, so I relent and say I'll go along with whatever, so long as he plans it.

Middle aged girls can be pretty awful as well.

There's just something about the sense of obligation and pressure and normalcy around Valentine's Day that I find really icky. I'm rolling along, having a perfectly happy, perfectly weird relationship, then all of a sudden there's all this pressure to be all excited over hearts and roses and sickly sweet perfumes. Considering I don't actually like any of these things at the best of times (especially roses), the expectation that for one day I year I'll just drop all the interesting, cool parts of my relationship to be totally normal and heteronormative and like I'm off the back of an inflight magazine annoys the crap out of me.

Traditional romance is always so impractical. I look at this and think, "Who's going to clean all that up?"

But enough griping. I might not like Valentine's Day, but you know what I DO like?

PRESENTS.

Season of the Coven

It's been a while since I've done one of my patented Polish+ posts, but at last I've got a polish and topic that are plenty exciting to fill up a post - today we're talking about witches!

I picked up Crow's Toes Season of The Witch quite a while ago, and while it's a really lovely polish, I didn't have much to say about it until the most recent season of American Horror Story rolled around. I've been a fan of American Horror Story from the first episode, and while the last season tried to jam about three times as many plots as would actually fit into it, I thoroughly enjoyed the most recent season, Coven. If you haven't finished it yet, maybe jump off after the pretty nail pictures because there will be spoilers aplenty!

Before you go though, be sure to stop and take a look at this beautiful polish, Season of The Witch. Crow's Toes Nail Color are known for their wide variety of stunning duochromes and multichromes, and Season of The Witch is no exception to the excellent I expect from this brand.

It's My Party And I'll Make You Dress Up If I Want To

After putting so much effort into my meandering thoughts-on-a-birthday post, I wanted to follow it up by sharing one of the much happier aspects of being so obsessed with my birthday - the kick ass party.

This year, I decreed the party was to be fancy dress, and made my guests interpret the delightfully vague theme "Imagined Futures". I suggested a couple of ways they might like to interpret this - they could come as what they really wanted to be when they grew up, what their parents imagined they would be, or just part of how they thought the future in general would be. Because my friends are awesome, clever, and love an excuse to dress up, there were some fantastic outfits on the night. One person came dressed as Lois Lane (in an amazingly gorgeous purple pencil skirt), her partner came as a starving artist complete with a sign saying "Will Art For Food", and someone else came as Huntress. Unfortunately, I didn't get photos of everyone because I was kind of flat out partying, but I did get a few, and my ridiculously photo happy friend Lucas got a few of his own. Because I'm a ginormous nerd I'm going to go ahead and put people's Twitter handles in with their names, so you can go and follow them if you like. Which you probably should, because my friends are great.