Accessorize: Copper

Accessorize: Copper

Copper brown metallic

"Metalized One Coat" is what it says on the lid of this polish from Accessroize, and that's exactly what it is. The formula is on the thick side, but it did only take one coat to make this beautifully opaque. The drying time is good.

When it was fully dry, I applied a layer of foil glue on to it, and then dapped gold and purple foil onto it. I also wanted to ad a pink foil to the mix but that wouldn't stick to the nails for some weird reason.

I topped it all with a holo glitter topper from P2 called "Just Fantastic".

Here's the result of my work:

Accessorize Copper with foil

I quite like the mix of colours here.

Accessorize Copper with foil

This is "Copper" on its own; one coat and a layer of topcoat. It's brown, isn't it?!

Accessorize: Copper

This is the stuff I used today.

"Copper" is too brown to be my colour. But there are ways around that, as you can see.

Number of coats: 1
Drying time: Good

Finish: Metallic
Overall impression: Great quality. Not a great fan of the colour

Buy again: No

Accessorize ~ Sapphire with OPI ~ Servin’ up Sparkle

Accessorize ~ Sapphire

Metallic dark grey with a blue tone

&

OPI ~ Servin’ up Sparkle

Clear base with silver glitter and holographic hexagons

When everything else fails, use glitter. If things still don’t work, you’re obviously just not using enough glitter!

I’ve become really fond of Accessorize’s nail polishes. This one is another one from the Metalized series of one coaters. The formula is so nice and so easy to work with, and I always love me a nice one coater. The colours aren’t extraordinary, but they’re really nice base colours for something else. So, here’s a pic of one coat of Sapphire:

The polish dries quite fast, which is another lovely feature. On this pic you get to see it from a different angle:

I was in the mood for something simple (yeah, I know you’re thinking ‘WTF’, right?) and yet shiny and sparkly. So I dug out an OPI polish from the Serena Williams’ Glam Slam collection from spring 2011, namely “Servin’ up Sparkle”. It’s a lovely glitter that can sparkle up pretty much any mani! I applied one coat, and waited like forever for it to dry, then applied one coat of Catrice Quick Dry & High Shine top coat, and Boo-ya! My mani was done:

Here’s the mandatory blurred picture, so you can see the holo glitter :D

This may be simple, but I love it. What do you think?

Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

Accessorize ~ Mineral Violet - Taped!

Accessorize ~ Mineral Violet  

Purple/brown duochrome

&

Bourjois ~ Bleu Moonlight

Dark blue shimmer

Accessorize seems to be my to-go tapi mani polish :D I used “Mineral Violet” as my base colour. The formula is really nice and easy to apply, and it takes two coats for it to be opaque. Unfortunately the colour isn’t really me, despite the fact that it’s a duochrome. I am not really so crazy about the brown tone that it flashes.

Here’s a pic of two coats; no top coat:

The pictures aren’t as good as I’d like them to be. I couldn’t get that polish to show its true colours in my light box, so these pics are all taken in the bathroom :D After having tried taking pictures in all the usually good spots, I found that the bathroom was the best place!

Then it was time for some tape! I taped my nails, and painted one coat of “Bleu Moonlight”, and removed the tape right away. Bleu Moonlight is a fantastic blue shimmer that covers perfectly in one easy coat. It says “1 seconde” on the bottle; I’m not quite sure what that 1 second implies, but it’s certainly not the drying time. It actually took longer for this to dry than I imagined. Perhaps it’s the “silicone texture”-label on the bottle that tricked me into thinking it wasn’t quite dry – but hey, what do I know? :D

Anyway, here’s that step:

I wanted something more though. I browsed through my stash for a nice glitter, but ended up with a blue flakie instead. It’s from Sephora and is called “Twinkle Twinkle”. I thought that the blue would be dark enough to let the flakies show themselves.

So, without any further yapping from yours truly, here’s the final result:

I hope you like it :)

Fireflies ~ Was: Mermaids

Fireflies!

Accessorize ~ Morning Dew & Wet n Wild ~ Happy Holidaze

This is a mani that suddenly took a turn other than that which I had planned!

I actually started out with another polish from Accessorize. This time it was “Morning Dew” which is a Seablue foil. Y’know...I’ve become quite fond of Accessorize’s polishes. They’re really well pigmented: They really mean it when they write “one coat” on the bottle. I love that. The formula is also great, and the drying time is good. All a girl can ask for in a polish.

Enough with the talking already: Here’s one coat of Morning Dew:  

I had mermaids in mind when I started this mani, so I added a new glitter I’ve got from overseas: Wet n Wild’s “Happy Holidaze”. It’s a blue/green/iridescent glitter in a green jelly. We can actually buy some Wet n Wild’s Fast Dry series here in sunny Denmark, but not glitters like this one, which is from a Christmas collection last year.

Here’s a coat of the glitter over the Accessorize polish:

And from a different angle:

I really like this, but here at this point I changed my mind. I would have made this into a mermaid-look, but when I looked at how the iridescent glitter blinked at me, I was thinking more of the beautiful colours of a firefly.

So I stamped fireflies on it. I used a no name black stamping polish, and a stamping plate from Cheeky, CH-41. And I topped it all with a coat of Poshé top coat:

I placed the fireflies randomly on each nail, and the thumbnails had room for two of them :)

Here are the pretty polishes. They’re definitely both keepers!

I love fireflies, I think they’re both special and pretty. What about you – do you like them?

OPI ~ Fly with dots and iridescent glitter

OPI ~ Fly

Teal/turquoise crème

Fly is from OPI’s Nicki Minaj collection from Spring 2012. I have bought this from eBay and it was really cheap. It’s also a fake, but more about that later.

It took two very easy coats to achieve full opaqueness, and the drying time was really good. OPI usually dry really slow on me.

Here’s what two coats look like:

After having admired this pretty polish for a little while, I decided to make some dots on it. I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri “Blazing Blue”. I made a swirl of dots on each nail, except for the thumbs, where I made two :)

Here’s that step. There’s no top coat involved just yet:s

And from a different angle:

 Then I added some iridescent glitter. I used “Crystal Shimmer” from Accessorize. It’s not as dense as some other iridescent glitters I own, but this flashes mostly purple, blue and teal, and I really like that. I added one coat, and sealed it all up with a layer of Catrice speed dry top coat:

And here you have a pic of the polishes, I used:

So, back to the fake OPI. As some of you know, I’m definitely not a true OPI fan, nor a connoisseur. But when I took this out of its wrapping, I had a feeling something was wrong with it. The lid is different than on any of my other OPI polishes – it’s quite textured, whereas the regular ones are quite smooth by comparison. I am so lucky that I actually got another OPI Fly to compare this with; a regular shop bought one. So, the letters printed on the bottles aren’t the same - the regular lettering is as though the type is bold, where the fake lettering isn’t. The smell of the polishes are different. The colour tone isn’t quite the same. I can’t catch this colour difference on pictures, it’s quite subtle - but they’re definitely not the same. And then there’s the little printed number that’s supposed to be there at the bottom of the bottle, underneath the volume\weight info; it’s missing on the fake one. 

If you weren’t already quite familiar with the real stuff, you probably wouldn’t know the difference, to be honest. But: girls do not like to be cheated!!

I have contacted the seller, who refunded me the money for the polish. I have to be honest and tell you that I really don’t mind that this polish isn’t the real deal. Perhaps that’s why it dried so fast and looks so good on me? ;)

Opacity: 7/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 7.5/10
Buy again: Yes

Accessorize and Hits = Dreamy Mermaid

Accessorize ~ Aquamarine

Metallic teal

and

Hits ~ Blue Jazz

Blue base with blue and green glitters

I had one of those days where I came home from work, and I was absolutely knackered! So I removed the “old” polish, and went for something easy. I didn’t want to mess around too much, being that tired. So I used a new polish from Accessorize called Aquamarine, which is from their Metalized series. It looks so pretty in the bottle, which is obviously why I bought it in the first place. But on the nails? OMG, it’s absolutely beautiful!

It is indeed a one coater, and here’s what one coat looks like:

It isn’t really blue and it isn’t really green either, so I guess that makes it a teal, or what? I don’t mind what we call it – I’m in love:

 

Now for the extra. Like I said: There was no way I was going to challenge myself, so I went for something know and tried before: Glitter tips!

I used a glitter from Hits’ MTV series called “Blue Jazz”. It’s a lovely blue and green glitter, which I figured would be perfect for this teal base. I sponged my tips with it and gave it two layers of NYC Turbo fast dry top coat:

And from another angle:

This mani did wonders for my mood. I was still tired, but now I was happy that my mani turned out even prettier than I dared hoping for.

It reminds me of mermaids. Dreamy mermaids – which is what I’m going to call this mani. 

What do you think? Do you have a special polish that you use as your “to go”-polish, when you want to make sure it actually works?

  
Both polishes: 

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

Nicole by OPI ~ Fabulous is my middle name

Nicole by OPI ~ Fabulous is my middle name

Silver Glitter base with gold, red, pink and blue micro bar glitter

Before I show you the glitter, I’m going to put on some underwear for it. I chose Gosh’ “Berry Me”, which is a lovely deep, berry red crème polish. Formula is great, like with most other Gosh polishes, and it took two coats to make it look like this:

Pretty, no? And perfect for the glitter. ‘Fabulous is my middle name’ is apparently from a limited edition collection from spring 2012, only released in Walmart. I picked mine up in a blog sale, and am very happy with it, even though I was in for a surprise!

I applied one coat over my ring finger and my thumb. On the other fingers I applied a coat of Accessorize “Lady Bird”, which is a red jelly with black dots in it. Here it is, with one coat of BK top coat over it:

The surprise I mentioned was that the glitter contains bar glitters. I seriously didn’t see that before I looked through the pictures I took of this mani after I’d applied it. And I actually wear my polishes, which means that I’m having it on for at least a day before I take it off. And I just didn’t see the bar glitters, even though I looked at my nails often!

Here’s a close up of the bottle. Look at all those colours in it!

And here’s one of the entire mani. This is definitely not the last time I wear this glitter, despite of the bars!

Here are the pretty bottles:

Have a polish ever revealed secrets to you on the pics that you didn’t see in real life?

Accessorize and Isadora - in black and grey tape mani

Accessorize ~ Lolite  

Metallic silver with a purple tone

&

Isadora ~ Black Galaxy

Black with holographic glitter

Today I have another one of my tape manis for you. I started out with a polish which I got in a blog sale, namely Lolite from Accessorize. It’s a metallic silver, but with a purple/mauve-ish undertone. It says on the cap “Metalized – One coat”, and that is actually true. It is indeed a one coater, and an easy one to work with too! Drying time is good. The only downside is that it reveals every imperfection on your nails, but nothing that a good base coat can’t fix :)

Here’s one coat, no top coat:

You should be able to see the mauve undertone on that pic!

I waited until I was absolutely sure that my nails were dry before I taped them diagonally across and painted the “bare bit of nail” with Isadora’s Black Galaxy. It only took one coat to make it look good. I love black polishes with a little extra added to them, and the holographic glitter does wonder for this black.

I striped the line between the two polishes with a silver glitter striper from Flexbrush. Apparently it hasn’t got an actual name or number. Then I topped it all with two coats of BK top coat, and my mani was done:

Here are the pretty polishes lined up:

This is a design that I really like. It’s simple and looks so different depending on the colours you use. I think this black and silver grey look is totally awesome – but what do you think? Are you also into tape manis?

Accessorize ~ Autumn Gradient

Accessorize ~ Pink Spice and Aztec  

Red/golden duochrome and Purple/golden/green duochrome, both shimmery

Pink Spice is a dupe for MAC’s Bad Fairy, and Aztec is a dupe for MAC’s Mean and Green. I must admit that they’re both impressively pretty in the bottle. They are obviously different colours, but the shimmer in them is the same colour, so I figured that I’d make a gradient with these two pretties.

I started out with one coat of Pink Spice, which is such a pretty shimmery duochrome. It would be fantastic on its own, that’s for sure. I didn’t take a pic of this step – I went directly to the sponging instead.

I sponged twice to get a decent coverage with Aztec. I must admit that these autumn colours aren’t my first choice of polishes, but these two are really pretty.

Here’s my gradient – there’s one coat of Poshé top coat on:

And from another angle, holding the other bottle:

I love the way the duochromes work in this mani. On the last pic you can see both orange, red, purple and green, and I really dig that!

I figured that this mani would be perfect for some fall leaves, I just wasn’t sure which colour I’d stamp with. I tried with black first, but that totally drowned and weren’t very visible. I switched to white instead. It wasn’t the perfect colour choice, but hey… I used Bundlemonster's stamping plate BM04 and a no name white stamping polish.

Here’s the final mani, with an additional coat of Poshé top coat on:

Another one, just for the heck of it:

 

You won’t be seeing a lot of autumn manis from me, even though I quite like this. What do you think? Do you like the two Accessorize polishes together?