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!