Reddit Challenge - Week 4: Gradient

I suck. I missed last week's challenge. I was busy with a bunch of other things and just never got to it. :( Seeing as I'm way too late to catch up with it I decided to just continue with the next challenge, even though it's quite late in the week already. :P

So this week's challenge was Gradient or Ombre. I still haven't gotten the hang of making gradients and I don't own enough similar colours to make an ombre manicure with. So I decided to do a glitter gradient with one of my newest glitter polishes.

And this is the result! The base colour is Catrice Welcome To Roosywood, which is a very elegant sort of dusty deep pink colour. I'm not very good at describing colours, and this one is pretty hard to describe! It is very pretty though. I was wearing this one on my nails for a day already which is why there is some visible tipwear.

So then I went through my stash to find a combination when I picked up Essie As Gold As It Gets and figured it might look very good with Welcome To Roosywood. Seeing as I was about to remove that from my nails anyway I decided to try it out. And it actually did look very nice! :) I ended up using it for the challenge and wearing it on my nails, haha.

I really love As Gold As It Gets. It consists of very tiny gold flakes and it's very pretty. It does seem to dry a bit slow for me, but that was nothing a fast drying topcoat couldn't fix.

Wish me luck for next week's challenge because the theme will be orange - my least favourite colour!

Pink Wednesday: 112

Hey guys! It's wednesday, so it's time for another pink manicure. Next week will be the last wednesday of October already. This month sure is passing by quickly for me!

Anyway, today I have for you a polish by a brand that is unknown to me. I think it's a Polish brand, and it is named Qltowy Kosmetyk. This nail polish doesn't have a name, but a number: 112, which happens to be the emergency number in The Netherlands, lol!

So 112 is actually a pretty nice polish! It's a cute shimmery, kind of dusty pink colour. I don't have a polish similar to this in my stash, so it's a nice addition and I have occasionally worn it already.

I only needed two coats for full coverage. The formula is a bit thin and runny though, so I did need quite a bit of cleanup around my nails. This is no biggie, though - the colour makes up for it.

And if you are wondering where I found this polish... my mom works at a local store where they were selling cheap nail polishes of unkown and foreign brands, so she picked some out for me to bring home. So I don't know if this is normally available in The Netherlands at all and I know next to nothing about it. All I know is that I like the three polishes I own by them! :)

Essie - Scarlet O'Hara turned holo

Hey guys! I have to apologize for my recent inactivity in both blogging, and checking and commenting on other blogs. That is partly because I forbid myself from purchasing any new polishes for at least a month, and with that, doing my nails hasn't been a big concern of mine. Today I do have something very pretty to show you guys.

I love holographic polishes and I love every colour of holographic polishes. However, I haven't seen a red holo yet that I actually adore, so when I was wearing Essie's Scarlet O'Hara I wanted to spice it up with two layers of Spectraflair top coat.

It turned out super pretty and sparkly, and I kept staring at it all the time, lol! Taking good pictures of it was pretty hard though, with how gloomy the weather has been around here. So forgive me for that.

So this is two coats of Essie O'Hara and two coats of Piper Polishes Spectraflair topcoat and it created an amazing looking red holo. I found out that Spectraflair is especially amazing over deep shimmery polishes and in my mind I have already been creating a bunch of combinations I will try out sometime.

And this is a picture of Scarlet O'Hara by itself, although this picture shows it lighter and brigther than it is. It's a deep shimmery red. Super pretty, easy to apply, and it looks classy!

Pink Wednesday: Sweets for My Sweets

Hello! Today is wednesday, that means I'm posting another pink manicure in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Today I have for you a super cute baby pink colour, Sweets for my Sweets by Catrice. I love the colour, but do I love the polish itself?

Answer: No, I don't. :( It's very disappointing. The colour is a perfect bubblegum pink and I love it, but the application was downright terrible. Maybe that is because my bottle is about a year old, but I've barely touched it. 

It needed three coats to be opaque, which in itself is not a problem, but the formula is. The polish was thick and gloopy and it was almost impossible to apply decently. Even with a quick drying top coat, it simply refused to dry, and I ended up taking it off soon after.

So while I love this colour, I probably won't be wearing this anymore. I'll be on a search for a similar colour with a formula that is much nicer, though. If you have any suggestions for me, please do tell me!

Reddit Challenge - Week 2: Blue

It's a bit late into the week, but oh well! Here's this week's post for the Reddit challenge I am doing. I did this one on monday, and the theme was 'Blue'.

This theme was nice and easy, and I wanted to keep it simple but I didn't want to simply wear a blue colour, so I painted them a pretty blue colour and took out my striping tape once again.

And this is the result! Simple, easy, but very nice looking,if I do say so myself. :) The blue is Catrice Blue's Brother which is very shimmery and flashes to green in real life, but I couldn't capture it on camera.

Then after it was dry I used my silver striping tape to apply some diagonal lines across the nail, and I think it looks really cute. Application of the striping tape went much better this time, because I got very tiny scissors to help me with cutting the strips.

Here is the colour all by itself. Like I said, shimmery! I don't have a lot of blues but I do love this colour, even if I don't wear it very often.

Next week's challenge will be a bit more challenging for a nail art noobie, wish me luck!

Pink Wednesday: Mod Squad and Fairy Dust

Hello! As most of you might know, October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month, an international health campaign that is organized to raise funds and awareness, and a bunch of nail bloggers decided to post pink manicures on each wednesday of this month. I sadly missed the first one, but I'll be posting pink today and the next ones, to show my support and in honor of survivors, or those still battling the disease.

Today I have for you two very recent additions to my collection, that I got thanks to an amazing friend of mine. This is Essie Mod Squad and China Glaze Fairy Dust.

Mod Squad is a gorgeous and bright blue based pink creme. The pictures make it seem more red toned than it is, but the last picture in this post is the most colour accurate one. It's a lovely colour that applied very nicely and reminds me of Barbie. It's perfect. I needed two coats for it to be opaque.

To make the manicure a bit fancier, I applied a coat of Fairy Dust on top. Oh, Fairy Dust. I can't tell you how happy I am to finally have this amazing glitter. It's been my lemming for a long time and now I have it and I'm probably going to use it a lot. Fairy Dust is a top coat with very tiny holographic silver glitters, and the name is perfect for it, because I definitely felt like I was wearing fairy dust on my nails.

What do you think? I think the two of polishes go very well together. I can't wait to try out more combinations with Fairy Dust. I definitely want to apply it over a gradient sometime!

Eyeko - Vampira

Hi guys! Today I have for you another very nice vampy colour. This one is by Eyeko.

If you're not familiar with Eyeko, it's a British company that focuses on eye makeup. However, they used to sell some very cute polishes as well. They were discontinued quite a while ago though, so I'm happy I managed to get my hands on this polish.

This is Vampira, and it has a black base full of amazing red glitter. The name is very fitting for it! I suppose this could be considered a dupe for China Glaze's LubuHeels, but Vampira seems a bit brighter. Also, the bottle is adorable.

The application of this polish is very smooth and on most nails I got away with two coats. In some places I still saw some bare spots an I used 3 coats. It also dries up rather bumpy because of the glitter in it, but a topcoat fixes that and gives it a real nice depth as well.

So all in all, I really like this polish and it's definitely a little jewel in my collection. Because it's discontinued I try to not use it too often because I don't want to use it all up! :P

What do you think? Do you own any Eyeko polishes?

Catrice - Genius In The Bottle

I love duochromes. In fact, I have a weakness for anything that can shift from one colour to another, especially with nail polish and jewelry. So today I'm going to show you one of my duochromes, Genius In The Bottle from Catrice.

I had some trouble taking pictures of this one. It's a lovely duochrome that flashes from a gold/bronze colour to a green that sometimes looks blueish. It's very pretty and it could be considered a dupe for Chanel's Peridot, which is nice because Chanel's price tag is way out of my league.

Application was also troublesome. I found that this polish was thick, runny, and overall a pain to apply, which is very disappointing because I do love the colour. I have had it for a while, though, and have barely worn it because of that reason. It's a shame. I'm hoping it's just my bottle.

Reddit Challenge - Week 1: Taping

Hi guys! As some of you may know I am a frequent Redditor. :) Yesterday I found out that the laqueristas on there are hosting a 52 week challenge. That's right, fifty two weeks, each with a different theme. And it seems very doable, even for a nail art noob like myself, so I decided to have a shot at it. I will try my best to come up with a manicure for each week, so hopefully every week I will have a challenge post for you!

The theme for week 1 is taping, which just happens to be my favourite technique for nail art. I often use scotch tape to spice up some manicures, but this time I decided to try out my striping tape. So far I have only used my striping tape as accents on my nails, but this time I used them for masking.

And this is my manicure for the first week! I started out with Essie Turquoise And Caicos as my base coat. Once that was dry I applied a lot of small strips of striping tape on my nails. This was such a hassle to do and it took me quite a long time. Anyway, once I was done applying the tape I went over it with a coat of Essence You Belong To Me and then quickly removed the tape while the polish was still wet.

I personally like the outcome a lot, even if it's sloppy in some places. Overall though, I think I did a good job, especially for a first attempt at using my striping tape like this! I also love the colour combination.

Here's a picture of Turquoise And Caicos by itself. It's a very pretty creme and for me it was opaque in three thin coats. You could probably get away with two coats if you have shorter nails, though.

Essence - Gold Old Buffy

It's been a while since Essence released the Vampire's Love LE, a collection inspired by, well, vampires! It reminds me of Twilight, which I am totally not a fan of, but I did pick up two of the polishes from this collection. Today I'm showing you my favourite: Gold Old Buffy.

This polish is gorgeous. It's full of golden shimmer and irregular shaped golden flecks. The base looks black, but to me it seems more like a very dark brown or olive colour. I'm not sure, but either way, I love it! I'm a sucker for dark shimmery colours like this one and I'm very happy I added it to my collection.

The formula is great too. It's fully opaque in two coats and the application is very nice. No complaints there.

I felt a little silly after swatching this. I wore it shortly after I bought it, but for some reason it just didn't appeal to me as much then. Good thing I gave it a second chance because it's an awesome polish and I'll probably be wearing it more often this autumn and winter. 

Sadly, this polish isn't available anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. I recently heard that Essence will be releasing another collection like this soon, though, so I hope that one will also come to The Netherlands!