Face of Australia - Dark Side collection swatches and review - Part 1

I have part one of my swatches of the Face of Australia Dark Side Collection to show you tonight. Plus I get to show you the first four nail art designs I created on false nails to feature with each colour.

With all of the feature nails, I printed them onto water decal paper and then tried something new with them. Because all of the polishes in this collection are very dark shades, I knew that anything I printed onto a water decal would show up at all. After I printed them I intensified many of the colours on the decals by painting over them with acrylic paint. I didn't paint over any of the fine features, like on the face, as I couldn't get by brush lines fine enough. This also means that some of the faces are a little 'dotty' when my printer didn't print the decals very well - I was running low on coloured ink and I think that may have affected the quality.

Once the acrylic paint was dry, I soaked them and slid them off the water decal backing paper and turned them upside down onto a piece of regular paper. I then, very carefully, painted the underside of the water decal with white acrylic paint. This provided a nice contrasting background for each of the decals to show the printed details. I then stuck them onto the nail using a layer of top coat.

I'm so happy with how they turned out, and I don't think you would even notice they are false feature nails if I didn't tell you :)

Jafar - a very dark oxblood jelly creme. The jelly-ish finish does mean you need either two thick coats, or three thin coats like I've done here. My photos are taken in the full sun. This shows off the base colour perfectly, but it also makes the polishes appear lighter than they are. This whole collection is very dark, and in most conditions this one looks nearly black.

Mystique - a rich and intense dark teal creme. The finish isn't a jelly on this one and you can get away with two coats. This is my one of my favourite colours in the collection (together with the next two), but probably my least favorite water decal. The fine details of mystique just didn't come through, although she really does seem to blend in with the colour, and given her real life ability to transform, this was pretty cool.

Ursula - this is the perfect shade for Ursula, the horrid fat sea witch from the little mermaid. I just love this colour, it's so intense and rich, almost royal looking. Nicely opaque at two coats.

Wicked Witch of the West - a dark green creme that looks great at two coats. I can never have enough shades of green cremes, and this dark forest green is really flattering and the sort of green shade that anyone can get away with wearing.