Sally Hansen ~ Save the Date, with striped glitter gradient

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength ~ Save the Date

Deep burgundy with a beautiful shimmer

My local drugstore had a 2 for 1 Sally Hansen offer recently, and since they only had one cuticle cream left, I decided that the other thing should be this pretty nail polish. I swear that this vampy polish winked at me and tricked me into buying her!

So – the formula was good, and the polish glided on effortlessly. It took two coats to make it look really pretty. Drying time was pretty average, but I was watching a movie while I did my nails, so I didn’t mind. I watched “Jack and the Beanstalk – the real story”, in case anyone’s interested!

Here’s a pic of it in my lightbox: 

And there’s a bonus pic for you today, because the sun was actually out! And behold! This polish looks amazing in the sun:

I’m seriously impressed! I guess that’s why it took me a little while to figure out what to do with it. I ended up deciding for a glitter gradient over striping tape. I’ve done that before, and I really like the way it looks, so I thought why not!

I placed striping tape on my nails, three on each, except for on the ring finger, which got four. And then I made my glitter gradient with a WIP polish from Urban Outfitters called “Tinkerbell”. It’s a pink glitter with a dash of green and yellow glitter in it. I finished my mani with a layer of Catrice Quick Dry & High Shine top coat. 

On this pic, you can see some of the green glitter I mentioned before on my accent nail.

And here are the two pretties posing for the camera:

I’m so glad that the Sally Hansen is as pretty on the nails as it is in the bottle, and I still think that all the work with the striping tape is worth the effort.

What do you think of glitter gradients made over striping tape? Have you tried it yourself?

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

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 :)

OPI Liquid Sand ~ Stay the Night

OPI Liquid Sand ~ Stay the Night

Black base with pink glitters

Behold: Here’s a mani without nail art on it!! *gasp*

I have been so curious about the liquid sand polishes from OPI’s Mariah Carey collection, so I knew I had to get my hands on a couple of them. Stay the Night is the first one I try on.

I used two thin coats for this mani. The formula was good; I didn’t have any problems with getting an even amount of glitter all over the nails. Drying time is a killer, though. I’m not the first nail blogger who states this fact, and I’m probably not going to be the last either.

But. I managed to sit through the drying time without denting or making any other damages, or indeed going off my head :D

I obviously didn’t apply a top coat. I wanted to feel how it was to wear the polish the way it’s meant to be worn. For once ;)

That is also why there isn’t any nail art on this. It doesn’t happen very often that I wear a polish all by itself, so this is a very special day!

The glitter in the polish makes this very special in low light. It makes my nails look all velvety with a deep pink glitter to it. Prettay!! :D

So – my verdict is that the liquid sand polishes are a good buy, even though they are OPI polishes (I’m not an OPI fan). They are fun and easy to apply, but please note, dear reader – they are dreadfully slow dryers.

Have you tried any of them? If yes – did you like them? If no – why not? What’s keeping you? I’m curious to know, so please don’t hesitate to share your thoughts in the comments below!

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?

Miss Sporty ~ 030 - with Fingerpaints effect

Miss Sporty ~ 030

Duochrome that shifts between purple and blue

- with a couple of Finger Paints on top

This is an example of how a mani can change direction completely!

I started out with two coats of Miss Sporty #030. It looks like a fantastic duochrome in the bottle, and I thought it would look like that on its own. But it didn’t. It is one of those polishes that only reaches its full potential when layered over black or another dark colour. I didn’t know that though, so here’s a picture of two coats on its own:

I was totally “meh” about this. I was not in the mood to remove it all and start all over again though, so I dived into my stash and found two Finger Paint polishes, namely “Vintage Violet”, which is a lovely purple, and “Art you Wondering?”, which is a fine green glitter.

I used my fan brush to add the two polishes. I painted diagonally across my nails with my fan brush; first with the purple, then with the glitter – I did that twice.

The look didn’t get as striped as I had wish for, but I must admit that I like it anyway! :D

I sealed the mani with a layer of Catrice Speed Dry topcoat, and here’s what it ended up looking like:

And another shot:

The polishes involved:

There was quite a lot of clean up after having worked with the fan brush, and the glitter wasn’t really easy to remove around the cuticles. I am still not really good at cleaning up after manis like that; I hope to improve over time!

I think the green glitter compliments the purple quite nicely, and it definitely adds to the duochromatic effect! What do you think about this, girls? :)

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

Zoya ~ Elisa - with stamp and glitter

Zoya ~ Elisa

Classic red with shimmer

I really like Zoya polishes. They usually have great formulas, they cover well and they are easy to work with. Elisa wasn’t quite as cooperative as her sister polishes though, and I found her a bit difficult to work with. It was really hard to get the right amount of polish on the brush. Too little polish meant streaks. Too much polish meant flooded cuticles. And I hate both.

Anyway – apart from that, she’s a nice little polish, I really like these classic reds, although I don’t wear them very often.

Here’s what two coats, and no top coat looks like:

And here’s a shot from a different angle:

 I stamped on it at first, using a stamping plate from Bundlemonster, BM310. I used a no name silver stamping polish, and here’s what my mani looked like after that. There’s still no topcoat involved:

 Then I sponged some silver glitter on the tips. I used a glitter from Hits called “Synth Pop”, which is from the MTV collection. I sealed it all up with a layer of Poshé topcoat, and I was ready to rock:

I’m pleased with this, so here’s a final picture:

 Have you got Zoya Elisa? If so, do you also have issues with her? Which Zoya is your favourite?

Revlon, Icing and Orly – Half moons

Revlon, Icing and Orly – Half moons

Today it’s time for another half moon mani. It didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted, but that was my own fault.

I started out with one coat of Revlon Matte “Ruby Ribbon”. It’s a polish I bought in a blog sale, and it’s probably the thickest polish I’ve ever worked with. It applied nicely though, and covered really well. Drying time was pretty average and it dries up matte, of course.

Here’s a pic of one coat, no top coat:

 Then I used another untried, namely an Icing polish, which I thought would be a one coater as well. It turned out that it wasn’t. I didn’t give up though, I dotted it onto my nails, both big and small dots in between one another.

I don’t have a pic of this step.

Then I dotted the Revlon onto the Icing dots, creating half moons on my nails. I left the small dots of Icing alone.

And since I wasn’t really satisfied with what I had created, I covered the whole thing up with one coat of Orly’s hologlitter “Shine on Crazy Diamond”. And here’s what it all ended up looking like:

I like it much more on the pictures than I did in real life, and the only polish that didn’t end up in the box of shame is the Orly, that can pretty much save almost every fail-ish mani.

Here are the pretties lined up for having their pic taken:

I’m not satisfied with this; none of the polishes worked the way I wanted them to. Please don’t hesitate to tell me what you think of this in the comments below!

Ninja Polish ~ Hanukkah Floam

Rimmel ~ My Denim and Ninja Polish ~ Hanukkah Floam  

I only have Hanukkah Floam because of Stinna from The Nailant – so let me start by shouting out a huge thank you to her!

I know that Ninja Polishes go really well with Rimmel as underwear (check this post out to see), so I started this mani with one coat of Rimmel’s “My Denim”, which is a lovely blue denim, that covers really well. I must admit that I’m quite impressed with Rimmel’s polishes. You should check them out if you haven’t already – they are definitely worth a try!

Here’s one coat on its own:

Not bad, eh? I would have added another coat if I should have worn this on its own, but one coat is enough for underwear.

Hanukkah Floam is a light blue glitter with holographic glitter mixed in. It’s in a light blue jelly base, so I can’t imagine how many coats it’d take to be opaque on its own – hence the blue underwear for it!

The glitter spreads out evenly and easily, and Hanukkah Floam likes to be applied with a light touch. If you’re too heavy handed, the brush will pull on the glitter, and leave some of the underwear bare. So: A light touch for this beauty.

I only added one coat of the glitter, since it’s pretty dense. It dries up gritty – here it is without top coat:

And here it is with one layer of BK topcoat:

You can’t really see the difference on the pictures, but the topcoat definitely smooths out the grittiness.

Here’s one last pic, where you can see the sleeve of my new sweater. I just thought it would be fun with a little bit of variation in the pics :D

And here is the pretty couple:

Not bad, eh? It makes me want to put more Ninja Polishes on my wish list… as if it wasn’t long enough as it already is haha!

I can feel that blue is becoming quite dominant in my polish stash; and teal and purple are my favourite colours. Which colour or colour combo is your favourite?

OPI ~ Into the night with silver stripes

OPI ~ Into the night

Deep shimmery purple (or blue?)

‘Into the Night’ is from OPI’s Spiderman collection, and I seriously must be colourblind or something. When I read reviews of this polish, everybody states that it’s blue, but for me it’s definitely purple, with blue undertones. Isn’t that just weird?!

As I may have mentioned before, OPI is not my favourite polish brand, so I don’t know why I just don’t stop buying them! The formula is thin and tends to flood my cuticles, which I really hate, argh! If I must say something nice about this polish, then it is that it only takes two coats to reach the opacity I want. Drying time is slow, slow, slow. Me and OPI – our chemistries simply don’t match, LOL!

OK. Enough talking, here’s a pic that shows two coats, and no top coat:

Sure, it’s pretty alright, but I dunno if I think it’s worth the effort ;)
Here’s a pic from a different angle:

I made some silver stripes on it. I used a silver glitter striper from Flexbrush, and made two stripes on each nail, except for the thumbs that got three each. One layer of NYC Turbo Dry top coat completed my mani:

I like this, but like I said: It’s purple to me, not blue :D

What do you think of OPI in general – good or no good? And do you have any of the polishes from the Spiderman collection?

Opacity: 7/10
Colour, prettiness: 6/10
Durability: 5/10
Value for money: 4/10
Overall: 5.5/10
Buy again: No way!