Kiko - 352 layered over NYX - Algae

Hi everyone.

Today, I have a couple of a gorgeous pictures of one of my first Kiko polishes for you. I'm talking about Kiko 352, also known as Emerald Nebula. It was part of last year's winter collection called Light Impulse. The polishes all have "hologram nail lacquer" written on their bottle, but that was very misleading... there's nothing holo about them. They're gorgeous still! Instead of a holographic effect, there's a light hidden duochrome effect.

Since Emerald Nebula is rather sheer, I layered it over another matching polish. I chose NYX Algae for this task. It had been in my untried stash ever since I bought it, but it's perfect underwear for Emerald Nebula.

This is one coat of Emerald Nebula over two coats of NYX Algae. Emerald Nebula is a tiny bit goopy, but applies just like my other Kiko polishes: easy! It levels nicely and drying time is good.

The emerald green almost has some magical sheen to it... But it's the tiny golden flakes that make the polish so special. I just love the combination of teal and gold. No wonder I bought it, despite the (high) price. (5€ for one polish was still a lot for me a year ago... haha)

Looking at the whole combination... someone please tell me, why I didn't wear any of those polishes until September!? I should probably go on a no-buy for while...

Lastly, a couple of pictures of NYX Algae on its own.

I played a bit with different topcoats here. On my pointer it's with essence BTGN Top Sealer and my on my ringfinger with essie Matte about you. Both topcoats kind of change the base color, don't they? I think I like it best without any. Something that won't happen...

Thanks for looking!
Until next time!

Pastel Check

Hi everyone!

With this post, I'd like to show you some incredibly simple yet eyecatching nail art. I stumbled upon the idea on a >Korean blog< I'm following. The idea is creating a checkered pattern by layering sheer polishes. The original post uses an actual nail art kit including three sheer polishes in pink, blue and yellow and I decided to go through my stash and look for similar colors.

I decided to use
- essie French Affair (pink)
- Rival de Loop 481l (yellow)
- BeYu 142 (blue)

My polishes are far from being as sheer as the Korean ones, but they're sheer enough and worked quite well.

So what you have to do for this mani is really simple. You just apply stripes of each color next to each other until you reach your desired grade of opacity. You don't have to be very accurate painting those stripes. When that's dry, you take the same colors again and paint one more layer of stripes in a 90 degrees angle. Layering the sheer polishes over another creates new colors such as orange or green. Just like the original post, I took a white striper and added some lines. Mine turned out a bit thick though. One thick layer of essence BTGN Top Sealer sealed off my mani and made my white stripes even thicker. But also very shiny~

I got quite a lot of comments on this one and when I explained how easy it was, they wouldn't believe it. But it really was easy. The most annoying thing about this mani was the clean-up, because I didn't paint very neatly. This mani was quickly done, fun to do and the result is great. Nice idea! I like it!

I think this could look very nice with other sheer polishes too, layered over white or something. Maybe that's a way I can use my sheer nudes. Or a sheer white, sheer blue, sheer green for some wintery nails. I might have to try that soon...

What do you think about this idea?

H&M - Peppermint Fusion (Comparison)

Hi everyone!

Since I need to work on my nail art pictures first, I have yet another swatch post today. It's about a H&M polish I grabbed last week, when I went to my local H&M store. I had my eyes on Peppermint Fusion for a while, but only when I saw some swatches a few weeks back, I decided that I would get it. It falls into the special category of blurple shades that I'm drawn too... I'm still looking for my perfect cornflower blue, but I guess I won't know until next summer which of my newest additions comes closest.

Well, I was lucky and this particular polish was 50% off making it easier to justify getting yet another shade like this... But when I was on my way back to work, I suddenly had this feeling that I might have a polish almost identical to Peppermint Fusion... and I also had this feeling that it is in my untried stash... I was right about the latter...

The polish that came to my mind is essence Forget-Me-Not from the Blossoms etc LE from 2011. I'm really glad that it's different enough from Peppermint Fusion. Compared to Forget-Me-Not, Peppermint Fusion is a tad darker and the blue shimmer the two have in common is a lot stronger.

Since the shimmer is stronger in Peppermint Fusion it looks more interesting to me. Application was similar for both. Both applied easily, but drying time could have been a tad better. I used two coats for H&M and three for essence. I like the essence brush a lot better though. I don't like the rectangular caps. (I'm glad you can take them off of Butter London polishes!)

If you compare them in the bottle, they almost look identical. On the last picture you can see the shimmer in Peppermint Fusion quite well, even though the lighting is horrible.

I think I'm going to do a comparison of all my almost cornflower blue polishes. That would be interesting to do for me and maybe interesting to see for some of you too.

Anyway, thanks for reading this time too! How do you like Peppermint Fusion?

p2 - blue galaxy (Swatch)

And here are a couple of pictures of the second polish from the Fly me to the Moon LE by p2 that entered my stash. It's called blue galaxy. Same as turquoise galaxy, it applies smoothly with a tendency to light brush strokes. Drying time is fine in this one too.

In my lightbox, blue galaxy appears to be quite bright blue. In the sunlight though, it's more of a denim blue. I like both sides of the polish. But what I like most about it, are the pink and turquoise shimmer particles. They're the reason I bought it. I wish they were a little bit more prominent. If you didn't know they're there, you probably wouldn't notice them.

What do you think about this one?

Thanks for looking!

p2 - turquoise galaxy (Swatch)

Hi everyone!

My plan to reduce my pile of swatch pictures sure backfired. Nevertheless, I'd like to show a couple of pictures of p2 turquoise galaxy from the recent Fly me to the Moon LE. At least in my city, it is still available. From the promo pictures, I wasn't very interested in this LE. Seeing it in the drugstore, I ended up getting two of the four polishes. One is turquoise galaxy.

Turquoise galaxy is a greenish teal shimmer bordering on a metallic finish. Depending on the light, it looks more or less green. My lightbox pictures show its blue side, the sunlight pictures the green side. It applied well and drying time was okay too. It definitely needs at least two coats to be opaque. If you're not careful, it could be a little streaky, but that's manageable.

I find this color very fitting for the theme. It screams sci-fi to me somehow. That's also how I ended up layering another polish on top. The day I bought this polish, my order from transdesign finally arrived at my doorstep. It included a couple of the Color Club Halo Hues. Before applying turquoise galaxy, I had played around a little with those holos. They sure are gorgeous, but the base color could have been a tad stronger in my opinion. When I had turquoise galaxy on, I decided to layer Color Club Angel Kiss on top, to see if that changes anything.

If you've tried the Halo Hues polishes, you know that they're quite opaque in just one coat. But I actually think that some underwear really does deepen the overall look a bit. While the holo rainbow is strong in the Halo Hues, the polishes look a little flat when applied. I think that turquoise galaxy underneath took away some of that impression.

I'm really glad I got me three of the Halo Hues. I can't wait to see the new China Glaze Holo collection. <3

Thanks for reading! :)

Let it Snow! Challenge 3: Ugly Christmas Sweater

Hi everyone!

Today, I thought I'd finally post my third manicure for the Let It Snow Challenge. It was supposed to be inspired by some ugly Christmas sweater. Honestly, I had to google this. All the designs that came to my mind were bordering on nordic prints and I ended up doing one that came close.

The flowers are supposed to be poinsettias with some leaves, but they look kind of random. The white French turned out way too thick. It actually started crackling away after a couple of hours. What is it with white polishes that this happens so often... The X's are supposed to represent the huge sweater stitches that I associate with this kind of sweater. When I was done, I thought that something was missing, so I added the little hearts for some extra tackiness.

It's interesting how different the polishes look depending on the bottle of polish/not holding polish. My camera sure picks up colors oddly...

For this mani, I layered the blue jelly polish essence Cool and the Gang over essence Stairway to Heaven, because I didn't have the right kind of blurple in my stash. On the upper third I applied p2 grey denim and lined the top with white polish. Using essence berry me home, models own Slate Green and Jade Stone, I painted the poinsettias and the leaves. The yellow dot is Rival de Loop 481. After adding the stitches with white polish, I also added the red hearts using the red essence polish again. Topped with essence BTGN Top Sealer... and done.

Thanks for looking! Please take a look at the other members' sweater manis!

Catrice - Lavender Breeze stamped

Today, I'd like to show you an oldie... even though it's not the oldest from my picture stash. It's the first manicure I did after breaking my pinky nail. I wanted to divert the attention from my pinky and thought that light polishes would do the job.

I decided on Catrice Lavender Breeze which was part of some LE back in 2010, I think. It was from before the time Catrice became available to me. It goes on rather smoothly concidering it's a purple tinted white polish. (I think the name actually fits the polish!) I used two coats for this manicure.

 

For the stamp, I used essie Nothing Else Metals from the mirror metallics. I originally wanted to use a playful floral stamp, but after the first nail (my pinky), I couldn't get the image to stamp again. I gave up after about 20 tries. That's when I switched to another image, that stamped perfectly.

Despite the stamping problems, I really like the outcome. I wish I had had more time at hand back then, so I could have redone the pinky nail, but because of a dinner party, I had to leave it like that.

Do you think I diverted enough from my broken pinky nail?

Let It Snow! Challenge 2: Inspired by a Holiday Song

Okay, this manicure is not to be taken very seriously. I admit that I didn't wear it very long after finishing it... we're talking about 2 hours max. But it was very fun creating it while listening to song that was my inspiration. :D

Do you know Rolf Zuckowski? He's a german composer and probably most known for his children's songs. My sisters and I used to have loads of tapes with his songs and we listened to them until they were done for. The most memorable songs to me are from a collection of Christmas songs and the most outstanding is called "In der Weihnachtsbäckerei" (christmas bakery; the server might be slow...). I still love that song so much! It's basically about children baking christmas cookies, the difficulties they're facing... but mostly about the mess they're creating.

So here's my Weihnachtsbäckerei-manicure. :D

I wanted to use a cookie dough colored polish as my base, but it appears that I don't own one. Probably, because the color doesn't go with my skintone. Anyway, I ended up mixing my cookie dough base. I think it turned out quite nice.

Next, I  thought about which parts of the song I wanted to recreate on my nails. On my pinky, I picked up the refrain "zwischen Mehl und Milch", so I sponged on some white and white glittery polish to represent that. On ring- and middlefinger nails, I splattered some brown polish to represent the chocolate they're using in the song. I also added the spilled egg from the song on my middlefinger. My index is more of creative interpretation of the decoration... basically remembering how it was when my family made cookies. All sorts of sprinkles and chocolate to create the ultimate decoration (= more or less unrecognizable mess)!

Honestly, I can't say what polishes I used for this manicure. I just grabbed and used what I wanted. At least I can proudly say that I did not use acrylic paints this time, haha.

Now that I wrote this post, I probably can't get the song out of my head for the rest of my day again. That's how addictive it is. :D

Do you have similar Christmas songs in your country? Or Christmas songs from your childhood that you still love? I would love to hear them!

Let It Snow! Challenge 1: Snowflakes

...or: In Memory of my favorite sweater.

I guess it was to be expected, but I'm going to participate in the newest seasonal challenge by same group of bloggers who did the past three challenges. The group decided to name itself The Nail Challenge Collaborative from now on. Makes it easier to refer to the group. So two weeks late, I'm starting to post my first manicure for the new Let It Snow challenge.

At first, I wanted to do something totally different. I bought a new skirt last winter and I loved the snowflake print on the label. I wanted to recreate this print, but failed somewhat. I can't find the label after my last move... -.-" But the same day, I got some sad news... my favorite sweater was ruined... A pair of new green jeans discolored my snowflake sweater. Even after trying to reverse the process three times, the white parts stay bright green. So in memory of this sweater, I did another snowflake mani - a more or less classic one.

Excuse the following pic spam... :P

I used only few materials for this mani, obviously. On top of two coats of essence Black is Back, I painted my white snowflakes using acrylic paint. One coat of essence BTGN Top Sealer on top to seal it.

While painting these nails, I thought once more that I really want some more pigmented white acrylic paints. I got a couple of paints for free at work yesterday and I hope some of the brands are worth the money I usually would have had to pay for them. :)

And here two pictures of the first snowflake mani I did. The other one looks nicer, right!?

For this one, I used essence trendsetter, essie Good as Gold, Orly Solid Gold and Kleancolor Metallic Pink.

Thanks for looking!