Colors by Llarowe ~ OABTRAD (Orchids Are Better Than Roses Any Day)

Colors by Llarowe ~ OABTRAD (Orchids Are Better Than Roses Any Day)

Pink/magenta linear holo

I’ve got a bunch of untried CbL polishes, and I spent some happy moments rummaged around in the box to find a really nice looking one. I was in the mood for red, but the two CbL reds I have didn’t speak to me today. So I ended up with OABTRAD, which is a lovely magenta/orchid-coloured holo.

The application was a breeze, I have nothing bad to report about the formula. Drying time is good, and two easy coats is what it takes to make this polish look its best. Sweet as, bro.

Here, sweet girls, is a pic of two coats, no topcoat, taken with flash:

“Whoa” is the first word that springs to my mind!

Here’s a low light picture. Still a neat looking polish!

I added glitter, because glitter makes everything better. I used “Radio Superstar” from Icing: A clear base with blue microglitters, magenta glitters and holo stars. I made sure I didn’t get any stars, because I wasn’t in the mood for that. I sealed the whole thing up with a layer of Ellagee’s topcoat Glass, and here’s the final mani:

Here’s what it looks like without flash:

And here are the pretty sisters:

I’m getting more and more impressed with CbL polishes. Great colours and amazing holo effects – I love that.

Number of coats: 2
Drying time: Fast

Durability: Good

Finish: Linear holo
Overall impression: Good colour, also I lower lights, and great holo effect. I’m glad I bought this!

Buy again: Yes

Lacquer Lust ~ Un-Teal We Meet Again

Lacquer Lust ~ Un-Teal We Meet Again

Teal linear holo

There was a time where I thought that my favourite colour nail polish was purple, and that nothing could change that. That was before I got my first teal. Regular readers here know that I have a soft spot for teal, I think it can be such a gorgeous colour! Allow me to show you my latest teal, namely Lacquer Lust’s “Un-Teal We Meet Again”. I think it’s a stupid name, but let’s find out if I like the polish, shall we?

It’s my first and only Lacquer Lust, but since this is not the cheapest brand on the block, I did have high expectations. The formula is no less than great, and so is the coverage. It takes two easy and fast drying coats to achieve full opacity. And wow, this polish is amazing. Take a look for yourself if you don’t believe me:

Is that a Me-polish, or what???

Here’s a low light picture. It is a bit dusty out of the flashlight, but as you can see it still shows a corner of a rainbow in low lights, so I’m willing to forgive the dustiness.

It took me a while to figure out what to do with it. I ended up with dots. I used Ellagee’s “Chase the Clouds Away” and I painted four relatively big dots diagonally across each nail. Then I made three smaller dots on each side of them. And when it was dry I topcoated it with Ellagee’s topcoat Glass. Here’s the final result:

Low light picture:

I think these two polishes look really great together. And they also have a thing in common: They both have hearts on the bottle:

I really like the result of this! What about you? And do you always know how your manis are going to end up before you start doing them? Please do share in the comments below :)

I bought Lacquer Lust from norwaynails.com – they also sell Ellagee polishes.

You can find more info on NorwayNail’s Facebook page, link here.

Norway Nails have kindly offered my readers a 10% discount code. Just use the code RAINBOWIFYME10 at checkout, and you'll be getting 10% off your purchase.

Lilypad Lacquer ~ Happy Holo-Ween

Lilypad Lacquer ~ Happy Holo-Ween

Deep purple with holo shimmer

I hope you’re ready for something really cool today, because I’ve got something really awesome to show you: Happy Holo-Ween!

The colour is red-based purple, it’s holographic and it’s gorgeous.

The formula is great, pigmentation is really cool and so is the drying time. Two easy coats is what it took to create beauty on the nails.

Behold, here’s two coats, no topcoat – picture taken with flash:

Lilypad Lacquer ~ Happy Holo-Ween

"Whoa" is the first word that springs to mind here.

Lilypad Lacquer ~ Happy Holo-Ween

Here’s a low light picture. I still love the colour. Score!!!

Lilypad Lacquer ~ Happy Holo-Ween

I dapped some glitter on the tips: Coco Allure’s Family Jewels, which is a clear base packed with blue, red and purple glitters and hexes. A layer of Poshé finished my mani, and here’s a flash picture:

Lilypad Lacquer ~ Happy Holo-Ween

And a low light picture. The purple glitters fit the purple Happy Holo-Ween just perfectly in my opinion.

Lilypad Lacquer ~ Happy Holo-Ween

Happy Holo-Ween could end up as one of my favourite purples, because I think it’s absolutely gorgeous. Do you like it too?

Ellagee ~ Yeh Laal Ishq

Ellagee ~ Yeh Laal Ishq

Rich wine colour with linear holo shimmer

Yeh Laal Ishq is probably the weirdest name for a polish ever. The story is that it’s created with Babi of Color Sutraa and named for one of her favorite Bollywood Songs, Yeh Laal Ishq, which translates as This Red Love.

The formula is no less than great, which is the norm for Ellagee polishes as far as I’m concerned. The polish is opaque as well, and I used two fast drying coats for full opaqueness. And man, this polish is amazing.

Here’s two coats, no topcoat, pic is taken with flash:

Amazeburgers, yes?! I love it, it’s right up my alley!

And the mandatory low light picture for you. It’s still gorgeous out of the flashlights!

I decided to pair it with a flakie. I used Essie’s Shine of the Times, which I got for Christmas from my sweet boyfriend. He knows what I like for sure! I sponged it onto the base of my nails, applied a layer of Ellagee’s Glass topcoat, and here’s the whole thing photographed with flash:

Does that just look fantastic, or what?

Let me turn the lights down so you can see the flakies play:

Ooooh la la!! Those colours are just perfect together. I’ll definitely play more with flakies in gradients!!

You can buy Ellagee polishes on norwaynails.com.

Norway Nails have kindly offered my readers a 10% discount code. Just use the code RAINBOWIFYME10 at checkout, and you'll be getting 10% off your purchase.

Ellagee ~ Chase the Clouds Away & Like a Sleepy Blue Ocean

Ellagee ~ Chase the Clouds Away & Like a Sleepy Blue Ocean

Ice blue with tiny red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple hexagon glitter and scattered holographic shimmer & Teal with scattered holo effect

Chase the Clouds Away is ice blue, and would under normal circumstances be too pale for me. I was intrigued by the added glitters though, and decided I had to try it.

The formula is great and so is the drying time. It takes two coats to make this look its best. Here’s a sunshine picture for you.

  

I paired it up with Like a Sleepy Blue Ocean. I used craft scissors to cut a pattern into some tape, taped my nails diagonally across and painted. When I was done I sealed it up with Ellagee’s topcoat Glass, that I’ve come to like so much, and here’s what my final mani looked like in the sun.

I love these two polishes together!

Here’s a lightbox picture.

I’m getting really fond of Ellagee’s polishes, and these two are definitely keepers both of them!

You can buy Ellagee polishes on norwaynails.com.

Norway Nails have kindly offered my readers a 10% discount code. Just use the code RAINBOWIFYME10 at checkout, and you'll be getting 10% off your purchase.

OPI ~ Ink suede meets Manglaze ~ ILF

OPI ~ Ink suede

Deep matte purple with shimmer

meets

Manglaze ~ ILF

Turquoise matte with shimmer

Ink Suede has been sitting in my infamous box of untrieds for a while, and so has ILF. I love the colours of them, but in all honesty: Matte is not my favourite finish. I love all things shiny. Which is also why I ended up topcoating these.

I applied two coats of each on my nails. Ink is a one coater, but since ILF needed two, I decided to treat them alike. Drying time is ridiculously fast on both polishes. That means that it may end up looking as if you’ve got weird ridges on your nails :D Here’s my result:

I especially love that Ink; it gorgeous!

I decided to check out if Ink could stamp. I found a big heart motif on Moyou London’s stamping plate Princess Collection-14. I stamped and applied a layer of Poshé topcoat and here’s my final mani:

Ink stamps beautifully, I really like the look of this!

I know it’s silly, but I do prefer my matte polishes with topcoat. How about you?

Number of coats: 2
Drying time: Really fast

Finish: Silky matte polishes

Removal: No problems at all

Overall impression: Matte polishes often contain a ridiculous big amount of shimmers that really shine when a topcoat is added.

Buy again: Yes

Various nail goodies from Born Pretty Store

It’s time for another Born Pretty Store haul: A stamping plate, nail stickers and little glass stones for nail decoration.

The first thing I tried was the stamping plate. It’s called QA24 and you can find it right here. It looks like this:

It’s the first time I’ve managed to take a good picture of a stamping plate, yay!!

I fell for two of the designs: the top left and the bottom right. The designs are not the biggest ones on the block, but the just fit my relatively small nails. If you’ve got a large nail bed or long nails, then you’ll have to either do some double stamping, or only stamp on some of your nail. But having said that, they are perfect for me.

Here’s what they look like on my nails:

And here’s another shot:

The blue polish I’m wearing underneath is from Miss Sporty and has number 3317. I stamped with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri: Whirlwind White.

The verdict:

Pros:

Cool designs, good price (US$1.99 with free shipping), and I had no problems with transferring the designs onto my nails.

Cons:

The motifs are not big enough for longer nails than mine.

♥

The next thing I want to show you is nail stickers. Cute, adorable nail stickers with cats on them. You can find them here. It’s a huge sheet with lots of stickers on it; take a look:

I thought it would be appropriate to use a CATrice polish as my base colour, haha. It’s Forevergreen, a metallic light green and I have two coats on. I applied random cats, a bow and a butterfly, applied a layer of topcoat, and here’s what that looked like:

They’re cute, aren’t they? I love them!

The stickers were very easy to apply, and I didn’t even use tweezers, just my fingers :)

Pros:

Super cute cats, easy to apply, great price (US$4.96 for a brazillion with free shipping).

Cons:

I didn’t experience any cons.

♥

The last thing up is rhinestones. A huge bag of rhinestones, as displayed here.

Here’s what it looks like, along with the polish I am going to pair them with today:

The bag contains 15,000 rhinestones – somewhat more than a life time’s supply, I should think. Amazing!!

Anyway, I paired them up with Coolcos #05, a gorgeous shimmery green. It’s a one coater, so I applied one coat on a nail at a time, and then added my rhinestones with an orange stick while the polish was still wet and before moving on to the next nail.

I didn’t topcoat it, but I’ll recommend that you do so if you’re a picker like myself :D

Pros:

A huge bag at a low price ($7.25 for 15,000 pieces). Easy to use, great size also for smaller nails.

Cons:

It can be tricky to make them turn the right way for picking up – but that pretty much goes for all rhinestones.

Catrice Luxury Lacquer ~ The Glitters - swatches

Catrice Luxury Lacquer ~ The Glitters

Swatches

I was so lucky to get my grubby hands on a bunch of the limited edition collection from Catrice. I’ll start out with showing you the glitters I got.

First one up is Glitterati, a lovely green glitter leaning teal. I tried without underwear first, but that didn’t seem to work at all. I was disappointed, since I thought that these would work on their own. So I took the glitter off again and started with one layer of VT100 from Pretty Serious. It looks like this:

Pretty, yes? Then I applied a layer of Glitterati. Application was easy, drying time was good. Here’s what it looks like over VT100.

It’s on these pictures you can see it’s leaning teal – the glitters stand out from the green background.

One last shot:

It’s a great glitter and I love the colour, but I do not love that it’s a topper.

♥

Next one up is The Big Bling Theory. I didn’t test it first, but assumed that the purple glitter also needed underwear so I applied one layer of Pretty Serious’ Into Dreams, a lovely rich purple. Here’s what that looks like.

Little did I know that The Big Bling Theory doesn’t require underwear. I applied two layers over Into Dreams, and here’s what that looked like:

You can only see the underlaying colour around the edges of the nails, so this purple glitter with blue accents does work on its own, hurra!

I love the little splashes of blue in this.

I like it: Polished thumbs up from me!

♥

Last one I got from the series of 8 glitters is Glitters are a Girl’s Best Friend, the pink of the collection. I tried it without applying underwear, and it magically worked on its own! Two coats is what it took to make it opaque. I applied a layer of topcoat before I took my pictures. Here’s what it looks like.

It’s a mix of microglitters and hexes and they match each other perfectly.

It isn’t quite my colour, but it’s a nice polish anyway.

Verdict: Good glitters. I would have bought more, but they were already sold out from all the places I knew.

Number of coats: 2
Drying time: Average

Finish: Microglitters mixed with matching hexes
Overall impression: Catrice did it again with this collection. Great quality, good colours.

Buy again: Yes