52 weeks of untrieds: Darling Bellini

Mind the scary cuticles! I must apologise for how they look - when the going gets tough, my cuticles get ragged. It's a vicious cycle (the more ragged they get, the more they get picked at, you know the drill) and it's one I am currently desperately trying to break.

These pics were taken after some wear and you can see some minor tip wear on a couple of fingers - no major damage after tap tap tapping away on the keyboard all day and some housework thrown in.

Darling - Bellini

Bellini is a gorgeous peachy, apricot-y, delicious beauty. The colour is vibrant, application is smooth and easy (this could be a one coater if you have patience and a steady hand - of which I have neither!) and the wear is like iron. Almost a full work week with little damage.

The colour is reminiscent of butter LONDON's Trout Pout, and personally one of my favourite shades to wear. I received so many compliments on my nails when I wore this one!

Darling lacquers are available from their website and also select salons. Check out their spring presale while you're there - I am loving their take on pastels and neon!

52 weeks of untrieds: Essie Mint Candy Apple

This is one that's been knocking around my nail polish drawers for a while. I'm such a sucker for this particular colour family, even though it's not the best match for my skin tone.

Essie- Mint Candy Apple

Some serious colour correction was needed to try and fix the redness in my skin. This polish does enhance the redness on my skin tone, but I think the lighting in these pics really brought out the red something terrible. The first photo of the two really doesn't show the colour of the polish very true to form, the second pic is much, much closer to the real thing. My application on this one was also... umm... creative? I managed to pretty much get it everywhere.

Mint Candy Apple is from Essie's Winter 2009 collection. It's a pretty almost robin's egg blue with aqua leanings. Application is smooth, requiring either three thin coats or two slightly thicker coats. Wear on this was absolutely exceptional - it was a good three days before I had any visible chips or tip wear, which is just unheard of for me.

Essie polishes are available from Myer in Australia, along with a multitude of stockists worldwide. If you can find Mint Candy Apple I highly recommend snaffling it!

Challenge: 52 weeks of untrieds

Let's face it: I have quite a collection of nail polishes.

Something I'm not particularly good at is wearing all of different colours I own. I have a bad habit of sticking to many of my tried and tested favourites, even though I go positively nuts over the sheer prettiness of some of the untouched polishes in my collection.

So my challenge for the next year is this: I will be working my way through my collection, and each week I need to use one polish I haven't worn before. I think it's a pretty hefty challenge!

For week one, I tried not only a polish, but a brand I haven't used before...

Models Prefer - Meltdown

Meltdown is a gorgeous milk chocolate creme. Application was pretty smooth, with only two coats needed for a nice coverage. The brush is extremely wide and has a curved tip - most of my nails were able to be coated in a single stroke! Unfortunately the tip of the brush is a little unevenly cut, which meant that some cleanup effort was needed. Given my usual (no)skill in applying polish, I need to cleanup anyway, so no biggie.

Models Prefer is available through Priceline, and the polishes are usually $5.99, but can often be found on sale.

I give this one a thumbs up - not only did I enjoy wearing it, but it also scored quite a few compliments. Great for around the office!