NYC, Divage and B. O.

Shimmer, duochrome, flakies and glitter in harmony

I grabbed a few polishes today, for another layering experience.

I started out with NYC’s “Midnight Amethyst” which is a lovely deep purple with microshimmer. The formula is ok I guess. The first layer was a bit patchy but the second coat evened out most of that. I wasn’t quite satisfied though, also because I know that the camera enhance the irregularities, so I applied a third coat, and then I was happy. The drying time between the coats is really good so happily it wasn’t a big deal with the three coats.

Here’s a picture of the first step, the picture is taken in the evening sun:

Isn’t that just pretty? I think it’s an amazing purple!

I grabbed Divage #4908 from the special effect collection. It’s a microflecked polish with a slight duochromatic effect too. I applied a layer over my already purple nails, and here’s what that looked like:

Did you see the blue to purple effect? If I switch the lighting you can see that it almost flashes red as well. Pretty!

Last step was glitter! I used a Chinese polish from B. O., I think it’s number 66 (it could also be number 99 :D ). It’s a clear base with red  and silver holo glitters in various sizes. I brushed a bit of it on the fingertips and let it dry, and my mani was done. I have to say that I don’t like the smell of this glitter (appropriate that it’s by B. O. then ;) ) and it doesn’t have a very good drying time either, but I do like the way it fits with the rest of the mani. Here’s the final result:

That was my little layering experiment for today. I hope you like it as much as I do! :)

Retro-mani with black and white dots

Red Retro  

Back to another decade

I feel like doing manis where I don’t review the polishes I use. I will write what I think of them and state how the formula is and drying time and all that, but sometimes it’ll be more ‘for the record’, than a real review.

I’ve actually done this design before, but it’s been a while, and I had already decided that I wanted to do it again. It’s a retro mani – reminding me of old wall paper :)

I started out with two coats of NYC “Penn Station”. It’s a bright shimmery red. I used two coats for this mani, but if I ever should want to wear this polish on its own, I’d definitely go for three. Drying time is fantastic; it dries really fast.

Here’s the polish on its own:

It’s pretty, but I want glitter. I applied one coat of OPI DS Bold. It’s pinkish and silver glitter in a red jelly base, and it’s from autumn 2011. 

Here’s that step:

Then I used two stripers from Claire’s: A black and a white. I made stripes alternately on each nail. I started on my middle fingers and worked my way out. I ended up with nails looking like this:

I used Essence “Ahoy!” from 50’s Girls reloaded collection, and Essence “Black is back”. They are just plain white and black crèmes. I dotted white polish on the white lines and black polish on the black lines. Easy peasy, Lemon squeezy. Here’s that step:

And then I dotted white dots onto the black, and black dots onto the white, and after a layer of Poshé top coat my mani was done:

It’s quite retro-ish, don’t you think?

Here is a pic of the stack of polishes I used. I could have used the two way nail art polishes to make dots with too, but I find it much easier to make it look neat with an ordinary dotting tool.

I can feel that I’m getting a bit better working with both hands, so that both sets of fingernails look equally good. In the beginning I was very shaky, and couldn’t quite place the dotting tool where I wanted to, but I could really feel today that it’s become much, much better! I guess practice is what it takes…

I think this is exceptionally cool! This is the type of mani I don’t want to take off again!! But hey – enough about me: What do you think of this?

Nail Mail from Hungary

It's the second time I receive polishes from sweet Tünde in Hungary! 

She knew I was dying to try some new top coats, so she sent me two different ones, namely NYC Turbo Dry top coat and Miss Sporty Nail Expert Manicure for glossy nails. And then she sent me something else - something special. 

Take a look at what I got: 

The third bottle may look like Esssence "Blue Addicted", but it's not. It is in fact a Frankenpolish that she made especially for me! If that isn't the sweetest thing I've ever heard, then I don't know what is!!  It's a dark blue base, packed with blue glitters and also some green ones in between the rest. It's absolutely gorgeous. I had to try it on right away, of course. 

Look at the depth of this!!

I am totally overwhelmed! It's only the second time someone made a polish just for me, and I can assure you that it feels very good every time.

Thanks, Tünde, for doing this swap with me! ♥

PS. She sent candy too, but that magically disappeared...

Summer Challenge Day 9: Rainbow

Summer Challenge Day 9: Rainbow

I love rainbows. They’re so pretty and special and full of colours! So I have really been looking forward to today’s challenge.

I picked 6 different polishes for my rainbow: Green, yellow, orange, red, purple and blue. Here are the involved polishes:

Constance Caroll: Neon green, NYC: i114A, Wet n Wild: Sunny Side up, Astor: 025, L. A. Colors: Morning glory and Essence: I’m a marine girl

My idea was to make a rainbow gradient over the nails, going from green to yellow, orange, red, purple and blue.

I started out by painting my nails like this: 

Two coats of purple L. A. Colors Morning glory, two coats of red Astor 025, Three coats of orange Wet n Wild Sunny side up and three coats of yellow NYC i114A.

The yellow was a complete and utter bastard to work with. It was very sheer, streaky, making bald spots… I really ended up disliking that polish a lot. The orange Wet n Wild caused me similar problems, but it wasn’t quite a sheer as the yellow. But - the red and the purple could have been one coaters if I had used a thicker coat.

Then I sponged on each nail – I sponged half the thumb with green: Constance Caroll, the index finger with orange, the middle finger with red, the ring finger with purple, and the pinky with blue.

After that I applied a thick coat of Jesse’s Girl Opal Glitter, which is a very pretty iridescent glitter I use a lot to give the final finish to my manis.

Here’s the final result – my rainbow nails!!

Would you believe that this my first attempt of rainbow nails? How do you think I got away with it?

You should also check out these other Danish girls’ blogs to see what they came up with for rainbow nails:

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel - for (even more) gradient nails!

Orly ~ Grave Mistake

Orly ~ Grave Mistake  

Dark, vampy red crème

Grave Mistake is from the recent Orly ‘Dark Shadows’ Collection inspired by the Tim Burton movie Dark Shadows. I can’t wait to see that movie – it looks like great fun! I got this beauty from Katee from "A Girl and her Polish" in a swap :)

Anyway – the formula was great, like with most of the Orlys I’ve tried. It took two easy coats to reach desired opacity, and I had no problems with streaks or bald spots at all.

Here’s what it looked like without top coat:

Amazingly shiny! I really like this vampy red!

Then I applied one coat of NYC Big City Dazzle. It’s a glittery topcoat: Clear base with blue, magenta, red and silver glitter in it.

Here’s one coat over the Grave Mistake:

I decided to apply a second coat of the glitter to bling it up a bit more. That was a good idea – it looked so much better with the extra glitters. And the cool thing is that this is really a top coat, so it dries up completely smooth, so no additioncal top coat is needed.

So here’s two coats of Grave Mistake and two coats of Big City Dazzle:

I quite like this glitter. It ads a bit of bling to the mani without taking it over completely. :)

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 9/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 9/10
Overall: 8.5/10
Buy again: Yes

Swap with A Girl and her Polish

I've got nail mail! This time it was from A Girl and her Polish, who was so sweet to say yes to swapping with me. She lives in the US and has access to a lot of polishes that are not available to me.If you don't know her already, you should totally check her blog out. She's making such great manis and she takes beautiful pictures!

Here's the fantastic haul that arrived yesterday:

Sinful Colors: Nail Junkie, I love you. Orly: Mysterious Curse, Grave Mistake

Sinful Colors' Nail Junkie has been a lemming of mine for a long time. Now it's mine, woohoo!!! 

Look how beautiful it is!This'll be the first one I'll be trying on!

Sinful Color's Nail Junkie up close

I also got Maybelline polishes. I know Maybelline, but this series called "Color Show" is not available here. Cool and nice colours, and just me!

Maybelline Color Show: Keep up the flame, Tenacious Teal, Styled Out, Blue Freeze

Then there's Nina Ultra Pro, I've never even heard of the brand, but man, that purple glitter is just fantastic! Ma.Nish.Ma is also completely unknown to me, but it's a very pretty blue. I've got a couple of toppers from NYC myself, but not "Big City Dazzle" which is very pretty and sparkly, so that's great. I know both China Glaze and Color Club, and I am a huge fan! Good picks!!

Nina Ultra Pro: Purple-Xing, Ma.Nish.Ma: Bolts of Blue, NYC: Big City Dazzle,
China Glaze: Flying Dragon, Color Club: Metamorphosis

And there were other things than polishes in the package! 

Face masks, hand scrub and body scrub.

And candy! I've already tasted the "Now and Later" (what a funny name!) and I like them, especially the blue raspberry. :D I'm looking forward to trying the other deliciousnesses.

I loved everything! I can't wait to try all the new pretties on. ♥

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

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