Orly ~ Rococo a-go-go

Orly ~ Rococo a-go-go
Plum/purple base with multichromatic glass fleck particles

and

NYX ~ Pink Avenue
Clear base with multicoloured confetti


Rococo a-go-go is from Orly’s Mineral FX collection from Autumn 2011. It looks so beautiful in the bottle – and the big question is as always: Will all that beauty transfer onto my nails?

The answer is yes. And in one coat only. I was amazed about just how fantastically smooth the formula was – the polish covered perfectly and glided straight on without leaving brush strokes or bald spots. Sweet!

Here’s one coat, with one coat of Poshé top coat:

I think it’s beautiful! I was really thrilled over the fact that the beauty didn’t just stay in the bottle – because as you know, there are plenty of times it just doesn’t work like that

I couldn’t leave it as it was, though. I had stamping in mind, but went for what I thought was a flakie top coat from NYX instead. It turned out to be little flecks of multicoloured “confetti”– not at all what I expected. Here is two coats over the Orly:

It quite liked it, but it was very lumpy, and not even an extra thick layer of Poshé top coat could fix that.



Orly ~ Rococo a-go-go
Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 9.5/10
Buy again: Yes


NYX ~ Pink Avenue
Opacity: -/10
Colour, prettiness: 6/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 6/10
Overall: 6/10
Buy again: No

Nfu Oh ~ GS14

Nfu Oh ~ GS14
Holographic Black

I think that “holographic black” sounds intriguing. I’ve seen a couple, but haven’t been tempted to buy them until recently. When I saw Nfu Oh’s GS14 I knew that if there was ever a black holographic for me, this would be the one.

The formula was a bit on the thick side, but it was very easy to apply. Drying time between the coats was somewhat on the slow side, but I managed to sit still long enough not to dent it. :D

The holographic content definitely works for me. Tiny little stars twinkling on my nails – I can’t wait to see this in the sunshine!! She’s a total b*tch to photograph though. I didn’t manage to get any pics where the holo shows for real, so these will have to do:

The holo shows more in the bottle than on the nails, but it *did* show in real life. Anyway – these are two coats, no top coat.

This polish dries up pretty gritty, surface-wise - so it really does need a top coat. I wanted to stamp on this first though. I went for a design of moon and stars, since I thought it would fit my little starry night sky so well. I had such a design on a plate with no name on it other than B22.

Here’s a close up of the thumb, where the holo actually shows itself.

I stamped with Essence’s stampy polish: “Stamp me! Silver”



Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 7.5/10
Buy again: No

Essence ~ Where’s the party

Essence ~ Where’s the party

Duochrome that shifts between green and purple

and

Essence Nail Art Twins ~ 06 Edward
Clear base packed with green and teal glitter in various sizes


I haven’t had the best of luck with duochromes, but I decided to give this Essence a go anyway. It looked so pretty in the bottle, and I so wished that to transfer onto my nails.

The first coat went on smoothly – no streaks whatsoever. It looked pretty cool already, but I added another coat. This is a fantastic formula, so easy to work with and it leaves no streaks at all.

And the duochrome actually works. Here it is, from the green angle. No top coat yet:

And here it is from the purple angle. Looks good, eh?

But hey – there was supposed to be a party on my nails, according to the name. But it’s a well known fact that there can be no party without glitter. So I went for Edward, which is a beautiful green glitter, also from Essence. The greens in these duochromes tend to be a bit on the dull side, so I thought I’d spice it up with some real bling.

Here is the purple angle with glitter:

And here is the green angle with glitter:

It totally works for me! And I love the combo!



Essence ~ Where’s the party
Opacity: 9/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes


Essence Nail Art Twins ~ 06 Edward
Opacity: -/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 9/10
Overall: 9/10
Buy again: Yes

Max Factor ~ Blue Energy + MAC

Max Factor ~ Blue Energy
Dark, shimmery, almost foil-ish blue

and

MAC ~ Unconditionally Fabulous
Clear base packed with holographic glitter


I really like the things that Max Factor does. Make-up and nail polish – it just works for me. And so did this fabulous blue nail polish from the Nailfinity series. The formula was perfect – the polish went on smoothly. It was almost a one coater, but I gave it two, just because I wanted to see the full potential of it.

No streaks, no brush strokes, no bald spots, no problems. Just perfection.
Here it is, two coats, no top coat:

 

I wanted to add a little extra to it though. I chose the glitter "Unconditionally Fabulous" from MAC – a brand that I’m usually too tight fisted to buy myself, but that Alice Snow decided was the perfect gift for me. I’m such a lucky girl! <blows kisses to Alice>.

Here it is, with a layer of Seche Vite top coat.

 

The glitter reflects the polish underneath it so sweetly, it shows up in all shades of blue, from baby blue over turquoise to dark blue.

I love it! That MAC is worth every cent!!

I think it’s gorgeous!


Max Factor ~ Blue Energy
Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes


MAC ~ Unconditionally Fabulous
Opacity: -/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Don't think so, even though it's fabulous!

Be-Yu ~ 329

Be-Yu ~ 329
A dark, shimmery purple with a tint of red in it

This polish is very beautiful in real life, but frustratingly hard to capture on photos. It’s a dark, vampy purple with shimmer, and if you look closely you can see there’s some red in it too

The application was quite difficult. If I didn’t work fast enough, it would pull on the polish I had already applied. So I had to be absolutely sure that there was enough polish on the brush before starting to apply. I am so glad that the second coat smoothed out the irregularities.

Two coats, no top coat:

It didn’t look streaky or have bald spots in real life at all.

I decided to stamp on it with my new silver polish from Essence: “Stamp me! Silver”. I chose plate BM203 from Bundlemonster. I’ve got a coat of Seche Vite top coat over it here, and no smudges!

This is the most beautiful silver stamping polish I’ve seen so far. It shows up just perfectly on darker colours too! I definitely need to get myself a backup bottle of this next time I’m on vacation!!

Be-Yu ~ 329

Opacity: 7/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 6/10
Overall: 6.5/10
Buy again: No

s-he ~ 290

s-he ~ 290

Metallic blue

and

NYC Color ~ Lights-Camera-Glitter

Clear base packed with silver glitter, and larger silver and light blue hexagons

This is my first s-he nail polish, and I can’t believe I had to go all the way to Hungary to lay my hands on it. :D It’s a metallic blue, and the formula was very good and smooth to work with. It pulled a little bit on the polish if I worked to slowly on a nail, but working faster solved that perfectly.

Here’s two coats – no top coat:

I never understood the concept of giving the polishes numbers instead of names. Who would ever guess that number 290 is a blue? <shakes head>

Anyway! I had glitter in mind with this polish. I went for NYC Color’s Lights-Camera-Glitter, which is a clear base full of silver glitter bits, along with larger pale pink and light blue bits in it. This is also my first NYC nailpolish, and I also bought it in Hungary.

It went on very smoothly – no need to push the glitters around with the brush to make it cover the entire nail! 

Here’s one coat plus one coat of Seche Vite top coat:

It’s even prettier than I imagined! What do you think?

s-he ~ 290

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

NYC Color ~ Lights-Camera-Glitter

Opacity: -/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: No

Misty Rain

Hi girls,

Here’s the third of the Frankenpolishes that Alice Snow put under the Christmas tree for me. It’s a dusty green colour, that’s very difficult to describe. The polish also contains glitters in various colours – silver, blue and green.Its name is Misty Rain!

The formula was very thick, but the brush was good so it was easy to apply it evenly onto the nails. It covered perfectly in one coat only. Here it is with one layer of Seche Vite top coat:

The glitter effect is not very prominent in this polish, in fact you have to look very closely to even see it. It’s not because it’s not there, it just doesn’t pop for some reason. The “invisible” glitter makes the mani bumpy – I applied two layers of Seche Vite top coat, and it still wasn’t smooth. I don’t mind that actually, it adds a bit of a 3D-effect to it. :D

I love the colour. It looks pretty ordinary in the bottle, but it looks so much better on the nails. It’s cool when polishes are like that, and so much better than if it was the other way around.

♥

Essence ~ Time for romance (#72)

Essence ~ Time for romance (#72)

A mauve-ish jelly base with small and large pink glitters and hexagons

The hardest thing about this polish is actually to describe the colour. It’s brownish/mauve-ish and even pink-ish with lots of small and large glitters. It looks so pretty in the bottle. I don’t think it’s quite as pretty on my nails though. I don’t know what’s wrong with it – it’s just “meh!”  Thinking of it, it might be the fact that I though it was Bordeaux – and then it turned out brown. Not really my colour, to be honest.

Here’s three coats, no top coat:

It grew a bit on me over the next day or so, but I think I need to try it over a more powerful colour, to make it stand out more. Drying time between the coats was pretty good.

Oh – I did try a new top coat after taking this picture – also from Essence. It’s called “Gel look-top coat”. There’s a label on the bottle, saying "XXXL shine" – which sounded promising.

And yes – it did make the mani very shiny. But man – it just took forever to dry. It was as if it wouldn’t stop being tacky. :/ I probably won’t bother buying that again.

Essence ~ Time for Romance

Opacity: 5/10
Colour, prettiness: 4/10
Durability: 4/10
Value for money: 5/10
Overall: 4.5/10
Buy again: No 

Essence ~ Gel look top coat

Opacity: -/10
Colour, prettiness: -/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 6/10
Overall: 6/10
Buy again: No 

Sephora in Denmark

Yay! Sephora is finally opening a store in Denmark! This is great news, because a lot of us love Sephora - but they don't ship to Denmark.

Now it happens. On May 9th 2012 the dream should come true!

The first thing I'll be buying is one of these:

They are sooo cute! 

Sephora i Danmark!

Det er ganske vist! Sephora åbner nu endelig sin første butik i Danmark. Det sker den 9. maj 2012 i Illum på Strøget i København. Og jeg skal nok være der og tjekke det hele ud - så jeg håber, at de har gjort sig umage. Jeg håber også, at de ikke har skruet priserne for meget i vejret, for så er det ærligt talt lige meget!

Ses vi? Det tror jeg nok, vi gør! :D

Amour ~ Silver Glitter

Amour ~ Silver Glitter
Polish packed with silver glitter

This is the third time I use a polish from Amour, and each time it’s just getting better.
This silver is so dense that it’s like recycled Pepsi cans. As with the others the formula is excellent, with no streaking or bald spots, and I received full opacity with only two coats.

Here it is, two coats, no top coat: 

Silver can be a bit bland on its own, and I wanted some extra colour. I chose B. O. number 63 – it’s a glitter from BornPrettyStore.com. It’s a clear base with pink holographic glitters in various sizes. I wanted some of the biggest glitters on each of my nails, and that was a bit of a challenge. I had to make sure there was at least one on the brush and then push it around to arrange it on the nail.

Here’s one coat: 

I decided that that wasn’t enough, so I went fishing in the bottle once more and found some more big glitters, and then I was satisfied.
Here’s two coats: 

I think this mani is very festive and extremely beautiful, and I did receive compliments for it. :)

Amour ~ Silver Glitter
Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

KleanColor ~ Bite Me

KleanColor ~ Bite Me
A deep red, very shimmery polish with micro glitters


Here's another polish that surprised me positively. Like I mentioned in my previous post, you never know quite what to expect from KleanColor, and that means (sorry to say) that I sometimes expect the worst.

"Bite me" was a pleasant surprise - both with the formula and the coverage. The formula is a thick jelly - I wouldn't have been able to make the brush drip even if I had wanted to. The coverage was absolutely fantastic.

Here's one coat - no top coat:

No streaks or bald spots at all! I was amazed.

It reminds me a lot of the other various brands of red glittery shimmery polishes that are out right now, but it's refreshing that it's not called something with ruby red slippers/pumps! Who wears red slippers anyway? I mean - Doc Martens...yeah, maybe! :D

There is one bad thing about this polish though, and that's the time it takes for it to dry. I waited for more than 20 minutes, and it was still more than tacky, so I decided to give it a generous coat of Seche Vite top coat and that helped!

Despite the time-to-dry, this is still a winner in my book! 

Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

Kleancolor ~ Blue eyed girl

Kleancolor ~ Blue eyed girl

Dark blue jelly with blue glitter and hexagons

Kleancolor make a lot of pretty polishes, no doubt about that. But there’s one thing that puzzles me, and that’s how different the formulas are from one polish to the other. Some of them are a dream to work with, and others are just living hell.

Blue eyed girl is such a polish (the living hell variety). It’s very difficult to apply, both because the jelly is so thick but also because the hexagons are curly instead of flat. That means that you have to manoeuvre the brush around to spread them evenly onto your nail. It is pretty opaque though, I only needed two coats to reach the desired opaqueness.

Here’s two coats, and one coat of Poshé top coat.

I really like the extraordinary depth in this polish. It’s rather bumpy though…

However, pretty as it is, this polish dries *very, very* slowly; in fact so slow that I decided to use my China Glaze “Fast Freeze Quick Dry”, which I bought by mistake and hardly ever use. It’s amazing stuff, though - it really does dry all the layers of polish, as if by magic. My mani certainly wouldn’t have survived the evening without that!

Later that evening I applied an extra layer of top coat, to smooth out the surface completely. I quite like it, but it’s tricky to work with.

Beware though! This took two people half an hour to get off my nails again. It took two times the foil method, and then we ended up scraping the rest of the hexagons off. *faint* 

Opacity: 7/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 7/10
Buy again: No

Amour ~ Yonkers Maroon

Amour ~ Yonkers Maroon
Dark red with a little shimmer

I quite like Amour’s polishes... the formula is good, and easy to apply. The brushes are a bit narrow for my liking however, but I think it’s just a matter

of getting used to them, because they’re actually pretty good at applying the polish precisely where you want it to be.

Here’s two coats, no top coat: 

Then I stamped on it, using Bundle Monster’s plate 212, and Konad’s white stamping polish:

This was a very difficult design to apply - as you can see on my little finger. 

I like it, but I decided to add a little bit more shimmer and glitter to it with a discrete coat of “Fairy Dust” glitter from the cheap brand “La Femme Beauty”. Nice. :)

 

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

China Glaze ~ Skyscraper

China Glaze ~ Skyscraper
Silver micro glitter in a blue/purple base

Skyscraper is from the Metro Collection from Autumn 2011, and just as pretty on the nails as it is in the bottle.

Applying was pretty easy once I got the hang of it. It’s a fairly thick jelly, so it’s possible to move the brush around until the polish covers evenly. I only needed two coats to reach the opaqueness I was hoping for.

Here’s two coats, no top coat:

I love the colour. The name Skyscraper fits the polish perfectly. It’s like a night sky full of twinkling stars! In the daytime it’s definitely purple. But when it’s dark outside, it switches to being blue. It’s so pretty.

But! I wanted to stamp on it. I went for Bundle Monster, plate 213, and Konad’s own white stamping polish. It went pretty well, take a look:

I’m more than satisfied with this mani. The design wasn’t quite big enough for the thumbnail, but I managed to work my way around that with a bit of careful double stamping.

I have read a number of reviews of this polish, and they almost all say that it chips very quickly. Well – let me say I didn’t experience that, for some reason. I don’t know if it’s got to do with the base coat or the top coat that other people use. Perhaps.  Anyway, I used Poshé’s base and top coat for this mani, and it went pretty well for me. This is a really nice polish.

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

Versatile Blogger Award

Another award came my way - I am amazed! :)

Thank you so much to A Girl and her Polish for passing this on to me.

There are 2 rules that come with this award:
1) List seven things about yourself
2) Pass to 15 bloggers


Seven things about me:

1. My nail polish addiction is fairly new. It started only 4 months ago. I did paint my nails before, but I didn't develop the addiction until recently. I blame blogging! :D

2. I would love to get myself a dog. And a cat.

3. I hate snow!

4. I love to travel and experience new things!

5. My favourite colour is red, but my favourite colour nail polish is purple.

6. I love chocolate. White, milk, dark, it doesn't matter, it's all good. Just don't add raisins and stuff to it! *yuck* :D

7. I am a movie freak. I watch a lot of movies, but I never watch TV!

That's it. :)

Frankenpolish ~ Cherry Red

Hi girls,

Here’s another Frankenpolish that was under the Christmas tree for me. It’s a Cherry red shimmery beauty, that covered superbly in two coats:

It’s got tiny bits of glitter in it. It’s very subtle though, so you don’t really notice that, when it’s on. All you see is this shimmery red polish, that Alice Snow named “Cherry Red”.

It’s impossible to re-create this beauty, since it’s made from several red and purple polishes, shimmers and glitters.

After having enjoyed the look of it for a day I decided to pimp it with a polish I bought in Hungary. It’s from “Aden Cosmetics” – a brand I’ve never heard of before. It hasn’t got either a name or a number – but it’s a clear base with silver and red glitter in it.

Here’s one coat over the Cherry red:

I quite like that :)

Models Own ~ Peacock Green

Models Own ~ Peacock Green A Peacocky Teal shimmer

and

H & M ~ Confetti Kisses

Clear base packed with multisized silver glitter

The formula of the Models Own polish was somewhat on the runny side, so even though I found it to be very easy to apply, it kept flooding my cuticles, and I haven’t quite got the technique of how to completely clean that up just yet.

This is a very opaque polish, so one coat could have done the job just fine. But I wanted the extra richness and depth, so I applied two coats (no top coat yet):

And then I added a coat of H&M’s ‘Confetti Kisses’, which is *so* easy to work with. Here is the result, with one coat of Poshé top coat:

Drying time on Confetti Kisses was a bit on the slow side, but it was definitely worth waiting for!

Models Own ~ Peacock Green

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

H & M ~ Confetti Kisses

Opacity: -/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 9/10
Buy again: Yes

I won a prize...!

...in Kay's from "Nuts about nails" giveaway! 

And seriously - I won the best prize of them all. 

I won Two China Glazes and a little teddy bear, called "Holly Bear-y". 

Take a look:

She's holding two China Glaze nail polishes: 

It's the green creme Holly Day and the red creme Winter Berry.

It's the perfect prize, because I didn't buy these two particular polishes, and I kind of regretted that. But now I have them anyway! Yay!

And it gets even better, because Kay had included something extra in my well padded package. A package of nail protein treatment and a red polish called Moscow, both from Nailtiques.

It's awesome. I am so grateful!! Thanks Kay. ♥

My Hungary Haul

Hi girls!

I was in Hungary for five days over Christmas, and man did I buy a lot of polish. It was so cheap there - it was impossible to say no. :D I have sorted them all out, photographed them and named them, all for you. ♥

Here they are:

Aden Cosmetics

This brand doesn't name their polishes, and they don't give them numbers either. So from left to right it's a magenta/purple glitter, a metallic light blue, a purple glitter and a red/silver glitter. These were ridiculously cheap!

Be-Yu: 326, 329. Miss Sporty: 060, 313, 311.

I already knew Be-Yu from last time I was in Germany, and I like the brand.

I bought a dark shimmery blue and a dark shimmery purple. 

Miss Sporty is new to me - the polishes are: an greenish blue, a very dark purple and a foily silver.

Catrice: Alluring Night, Forget me not,  I Wear My Sunglasses At Night, After Eight.

These are my first Catrice polishes. I've heard so much good about them, so I chose these four: A dark blue, a glittery purple, a black with various colours of shimmer and a dark green. They all look beautiful.

Glitter polishes from Claire: Minis: Purple, red, blue and pink. Normal sizes: Green and pink.

Can you tell that I'm a glitter addict? The mini bottles were a set of six - I already gave the gold and silver glitter away. The others are purple, red, blue, magenta, green and another purple. All glitters.

Lovely: None of these polishes has names or numbers on them.

Lovely is another brand I've never heard of before. I'm looking forward to trying them though, and if they're not like they look, I'll use them for frankenpolishes. :D

Essence: Stamp me! Silver, Time for romance, Choose me!, Where's the party?

Essence! I'm so sad that I don't have access to Essence polishes in Denmark. I went crazy, and bought a whole lot of them...

Here's silver stamping polish, a brownish pink with glitters, a blueish green with glitters and a green/purple duochrome. 

Essence toppers: Circus Confetti, It's purplicious!, Hello Holo, It's purplicious, Vampire's: Hunt me if you can!

More Essence polishes, toppers. 

Multicoloured, purple, holographic, pink/purple and black with glitter.

I'm puzzled that two of them have got the same name even though they're clearly not the same colour...?!

Essence nail art twins: Edward, Blair, Julia, Gabriella.

I would have bought the entire set of Essence twins, but these were the only ones available.

Flormar: U06, U26, 431, U13.

Flormar. Never heard of it before. But the colours look so pretty!

NYX: Pink Avenue, Max Factor: Extra Glitter, Blue Energy, Silver.

I am all excited about the NYX flakie and the top glitter polish from Max Factor. The blue is so vibrant looking and I thought the little charcoal would be fun to play with.

NYC: Disco Ball and Lights-Camera-Glitter. Maybelline: Electric Blue. Manhattan: 78S

My first NYC polishes, silver glitter and pink/blue glitter. And two pretty blues from Maybelline and Manhattan.

s-he: 290, 110, base coat, 280, 255.

S-he. Another brand that's completely new to me. But pretty indeed! :)

So, that was the huge haul I filled my poor suitcase with. 

What do you think?
Are there any of them you'd like to see before the others, or...?

Xx