Warning Fake Shellac for sale on Groupon

Groupon in New Zealand are advertising a product called Shellac for sale on their website.
This is a FAKE product, form a Chinese company called Bluesky.
The only real produces of shellac are CND and they are not endorsing the sale of this product.

I found this review online here about bluesky shellac:

"i bought one colour, the base coat and top coat of this not realising it was different from the proper CND, i tried it on myself and 3 other memebers of my family before trying it on my customer. we all have different uses, one has a horse, her's peeled of the 1st day, one is a "normal housewife" 2 peeled of the 2nd night and the rest lasted a week, mine, chipped, i am a trained nail tech and data processor, but worse of all, my mum had such a bad reacation to it that the skin on her fingers literally ripped and bleed within 2 days of application, so badly that i had to VERY CAREFULLY file them off as they are so swollen and sore i dearnt' but acetone anywhere near them. when i wanted to contact the company to tell them, the only address on the bottle is china! this obviously wont happen to everyone, it didnt happen to the rest of us, but it definately doesn't even last a week so i have ordered the proper CND which i will test on myself before my family and clients"

This Groupon deal might seem like a good deal, but it is not true shellac.

Do not make the mistake of thinking it is real shellac.

Lots of Love

Lisa

NZ Beauty Expo Part 1

The past two days I spent in Auckland at the New Zealand Beauty Expo. It was amazing!

On the Saturday morning I met up with Steph from Nail Juice and her mum and we went to check out the expo together. I love the fact that her mum loves nail polish as well.

Our first stop was the Nfu Oh booth. For those who are still wondering how to say this - its N fu Oh (said like kung fu).

Steph's mum went nuts over the polishes they were selling cheaply - I'm not going to say how much we paid for all of our polishes as it may make some of you a tad jealous. But I am going to say we brought LOTS here. I brought 9 Nfu Oh polishes (48, 50, 124, 90, 29, 93, 68, 80 and 69) and some heart shaped diamantes. We had to visit this booth again at the end of the day so that Steph's mum could buy even more polishes here.

The ladies at this booth were really nice to talk to as well. They come from the New Zealand Nail Academy based in Tauranga.

They are also the suppliers of Sheekee nail wraps. These have some great patterns and everyone has been commenting on this one finger all yesterday at the expo and today at work.

This is how it looks after three days. It isn't lasting two well on my fingers, but they have had a lot of use of the last three days. They do however look super cool and apparently last a lot longer if you do a gel top coat over the top. These are stuck on the nail like a sticker, heated up and stretched over the nail and filed down to fit. It seems a relatively easy process, but I am not sure I would be able to do this myself to my right hand.

I also got one finger done with the new colours from the Entity Colour Couture Collection of Gel Soak Off Gel polishes.
This is a beautiful red glitter called "All made up" after 3 days of wear. This is just like other gel polishes, where the polishes is cured under a special light and dries immediately. They had some nice new colours coming out as well.

Next up was the Zoya booth. I have never seen such a big supply of Zoya polishes in such a small space before.

Zoya is only really sold in Salons in New Zealand (well at least Wellington anyway) so it was great to be able to actually see the polishes in person before buying them. They also had all the collections in sets here, which is such a bad temptation for my wallet. After the experience of the Nfu Oh booth I was thinking OMG I have to control my spending but it was soooo hard.

I picked up Mitzi and Phoebe from the summer 2011 Mod Matte collection, Mimi and Ivanka from the summer 2010 Sparkle collection and Apple from this years summer Sunshine collection.

Nothing was bought by any of us at the Creative (CND) booth. These polishes were still super expensive in New Zealand. I am sure their booth was great for those who own salons and are interested in Shellac, but we kind of just passed straight by it.

Nail Systems NZ Ltd are the suppliers of China Glaze in New Zealand. I was surprised to find out that China Glaze was in New Zealand, as I have never seen it here. Turns out it is available in some salons, but to be honest, once the lady in charge there found out we were just bloggers and didnt have a salon we were kind of brushed aside and ignored. They also did not have many polishes on sale here and really were only selling sets of the new collections. I would have loved to have been able to get some of the Island Escape polishes.

Young Nails is an acrylic and gel nail systems with glitter and colour powders.

This is the one finger I got done with the Young Nails system, and it seems like something I would get done again. It is a clear gel polish that stimulates healthy nail growth, followed by a black coat and then any combination, pattern or colour of glitter you can think of. This is super thick on the nails once it is complete, I think its about 5 layers and takes a while to do with curing under a special light. Some ladies were getting their whole hands done like this and they looked great. They were even doing it on toes. I am going to endeavor to find a place near me that does this.

Ok this is getting super long so I am going to stop here and continue tomorrow.

Lots of Love (and although it is not celebrated here - happy 4th of July for all my international followers)
Lisa

Update on Shellac and Giveaway

Today is the last day to enter my 300 Followers giveaway. Click here to go to the post about this to enter.

My shellac is gone. I took it off last night. It was a really pretty colour but it had chipped on all but 2 fingers. I think it is my nails, because apart from my experiences everyone else I know has found it great and really long lasting. It is a shame that it doesn't seem to like me much. I have tried it three times now, but really don't want to spend the $60 each time to get it, if it is going to chip on me. I didn't take any pictures of what it ended up like because I didn't want to give it a bad rap, when I know it does work well on many others.

Luckily it is sunny today (first time in about 3 weeks), so I'm trying to get a lot of swatches done.

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Lots of Love
Lisa

Shellac 2.0

Since Shellac brought out new colours, I thought I would give it another go.

Shellac still hasn't brought out a great range of colours, but there is a lot of layering going on of the current colours to make new ones. I went for a great dark green colour that was make by layering Iced Coral over Black Pool.


Unfortunately the sun hasn't come out and I couldn't get better pictures. It is a lot more emerald green and brighter in real life. These pictures do not do it justice - I will work on getting so better pictures over the long weekend.

This was 2 coats of Black Pool followed by one coat of Iced Coral, which is a green shimmer (it seems a lot like CND Emerald/Teal Shimmer)

So far I have had this on for 3 days. Luckily the colour is shimmery a pretty so I am not yet bored with it.

This time my nails and cuticles are in much better condition than they were about a year ago when I first got shellacked. Last time the shellac peeled off when my nails flaked off. This time I am expecting it to last a lot longer.

I got this done at Finishing Touch Salon in Wellington, and it cost $60.

Have a great Easter ladies.

Lots of Love
Lisa

I got Shellacked again :)

Thanks to the wonderful Kathy at The Finishing Touch Nail Salon in Wellington I got Shellacked again.

This time I went for a light pink colour called Romantique. It is a light pink creme. It almost looks like I have a french manicure done on my fingers with my nail line showing through. This looks very professional - one of the reasons I picked this colour as I am still going to job interviews.

Unfortunately my camera has not been co-operating so this is the best shot I could get of it.

Currently we are at day three - there are no chips, no scratches, no anything. They still look as if they were just done.

What are your feelings on shellac? Would you have it done? Can you cope with having the same colour on your nails for 2 weeks?

Lots of Love
Lisa

My Shellac came off

As of this morning my shellac was still looking pretty good but as the day wore on big bits started to peel off a couple of my fingers. Over the last 2 weeks I had gotten a few new polishes that I was waiting to try out so it seemed like a good time to take of the shellac.

I dipped cotton wool into nail polish remover (this I had to go and buy because to get rid of shellac you must have Acetone in the remover). Placed these over my nails and wrapped the finger in tin foil


I sat like this for 10 minutes and then pulled it all off.The shellac was all soft by now and I just scrapped the remaining shellac off my fingers.

I finished off my conditioning my nails with some CND Solar Oil - Nail and Cuticle Conditioner.

The particles in this oil are so small that they can condition your nails and cuticles even while you are wearing nail polish as the molecules in this can get through the layers of nail polish.

My nails did seem to grow a decent amount while I was wearing the shellac - maybe about 3-4 millimeters. Which may not seem like much but its a lot better than them breaking.

Yay so now I can get back to swatching again (depending on the weather of course)

Lots of Love
Lisa

Shellac 4 days later

Yesterday we got some sun and I managed to take a picture of my shellac in the sun.


Here you can see the shimmer in the polish much better than in my previous pictures (click on the picture to enlarge it).

I have some tip wear especially on my right hand and I'm not sure if this is meant to happen or whether with Shellac its not.

I was peeling potatoes for dinner tonight and also managed to peel a bit of my shellac off with the peeler - completely by mistake, so that was a bit of a bummer.

That's all for the moment.
Lots of Love
Lisa

I got Shellacked!!!!

I got Shellacked!!!

This was my first ever nail salon visit and I enjoyed it.

I went to The Finishing Touch in Wellington. They were the first salon in the world to have shellac - they actually bought the demo kit off CND so that they had it before anyone else - they had it at the wedding show I went to a while ago. New Zealand was the first place CND released Shellac. Shellac kits have been so popular that they have sold out around the world and demand can not be met. Apparently Oprah's Nail technician cant even get hold of it for Oprah.

Kathy was the lovely lady doing my nails.
She cleaned, shaped and lightly buffed my nails. I was embarrassed by how short they are, but as we discussed I have thin nails (and they always will be) and it just makes my obsession a difficult one.

Next I got to pick which shellac colour I wanted. At the moment there are 12 colours to pick from, with more colours to come in the future (I'm hoping for some blues, purples and greens)

I knew that I wanted a bright pink colour and there were a couple to pick from. I was thoughrly suprised to find that one of these was actually a shimmer colour! I ended up choosing Hot Chilis which was a bright pinky/red colour with shimmer in it.

A UV base coat is applied and then set under UV light for 10 seconds. Then the first coat of colour followed by 2 minutes under the UV light, another colour coat, 2 more minutes under UV light and a final top coat followed by another 2 minutes under UV light.

Outside in shade
The shimmer is not visible here but I can tell you it is definitely there.
And this is more pink in real life.

I love it! This product is amazing. It is thicker than regualer nail polish and my nails feel much stronger with it on. I'm hoping I can gain back some of my length over the next two weeks while I am wearing the Shellac. I haven't even had it on for a day yet and its amazing. Normally (even with a top coat) I would have chips and nicks and be trying to be really careful but with Shellac I don't need to be.

The Finishing touch guarantee no chips for the first week - but are unable to do it for any longer than that because of how people treat there own nails. This cost $55 and took around 45 minutes for the whole process.

Shellac took over 5 years to create and perfect - removal time was the biggest issue, with it originally taking over an hour - they have now reduced this to 5-10 minutes with the use of acetone.

More information on shellac can be found on the CND wedsite.

If you are OK with having the same colour on your nails for 2 weeks I highly recommend trying Shellac. You will be pleased once you do.

Lots of Love
Lisa

Essie and Shellac come to New Zealand

Essie and Shellac have arrived in New Zealand!!

Thread announced a while ago that Essie was coming to New Zealand. They say that Essie is coming to Salons and Department stores (I have been checking in Farmers but haven't seen them there yet). But I have as of this week seen them in New Zealand. Body and Skin in Wellington on Lambton Quay is the first place I spotted Essie. They are selling them for $23.50. I'm not sure of how big the range they are selling is yet.

Shellac has also come to New Zealand.

Image from Creative Nail Design.

I got a pamphlet from The Finishing Touch (Nail spa in Wellington) and they say:

"This revolutionary product is the answer to your nail problems. Shellac applies like a polish, wears flawlessly for 14 days of high gloss shine and is removed in minutes. A true innovation in chip-free extended wear colour."

The Finishing Touch are doing a Shellac Manicure for $55. So far there are 12 colours to choose from but they are aiming for 50 in the future. You can read about the release of Shellac in New Zealand, also on Thread here. And here is a list of Salons in New Zealand that are offering Shellac at the moment.

Check out the Creative Nails Website for New Zealand here.

I am so looking forward to getting shellacked when I have some money. I have to stop buying nail polishes for the next three months while I finish my thesis, otherwise I wont be able to pay my rent!

Lots of Love
Lisa