Heads up: Forced break from blogging

Hi guys!

You might have noticed it has already been a while since my last post. This is because I had a little accident where I injured my finger by slamming it in a door. What happened is I was holding a big strong dog by a leash, and the poor pup got scared by something and tried to run away. It basically dragged me through an open door and in a reflex, I held onto the door post to stop myself... just as a gust of wind blew the door shut.

I will spare you the really gross details, but the nail on my left ring finger, which is my swatching hand, is completely black. It is feeling much better at the moment (almost no pain anymore!), but I had to go to the doctor who made a hole in the nail in order to drain it, so now I can't paint it. The doctor also told me there is still a chance my nail could fall off somewhere over the next couple of weeks. Nooo! :(

One of the things I like about blogging is providing my readers with good quality swatches and pictures of nail polishes, and I am a perfectionist when it comes to that. I don't want to show you my busted up nail and a bandaid in the picture would look weird. I also don't want to have to Photoshop it! I tried taking pictures of my right hand instead, but unfortunately, they just didn't turn out right. I don't want to post pictures I am unhappy with, so for now it is probably better if I take a forced break until my nail either healed, or fallen off and regrown, haha... both of which will probably take a while. Maybe I'll find some other things to post in the mean time. We'll see!

Alright, thank you for reading this, and I'll hopefully see you guys soon! Take care.

NYC - Greenwich Goddess

Hi guys! Today I have for you an interesting nailpolish that I bought when I was shopping by myself one day. I hadn't planned on buying any polish that day, but I randomly came across this one and it caught my eye. I ended up liking it a lot more than I originally anticipated, which is always a nice surprise!

I'm talking about Greenwich Goddess by NYC. They don't sell this brand at the drugstore in my town anymore, which is a real shame, because they have some really great polishes in their product line. Their black creme, for example, is amazing and I've used up three bottles of it so far, and still have two bottles of it in my collection.

This nail polish is a white creme with black hexagonal glitter in two sizes. There were a number of similar ones (one was light blue with black glitter, for example) but the white was my favourite. And it really is quite nice. Look how pretty it is!

The formula is really great! I used two coats that applied on very smoothly. I had to dab my brush on my nails a few times to get a more even glitter placement, but that is pretty normal for polishes with big glitter, and it didn't cause any problems. I really, really liked how this looked on me so I actually ended up wearing it for 5 days before taking it off. By then, I only had a few minor chips at the tips, which is very good for such a cheap nail polish. I love it, and I will definitely be wearing it more often.

OPI - Midnight In Moscow... I'm back!

Hellooo everyone! It has been a while, hasn't it? It's been almost two years since I silently left, and I'm sorry for that. Life got in the way, and things happened that made me very demotivated to paint my nails or blog about it. Sure, I would wear nail polish, but I'd just slap a colour on and not care about it any further than that. But a few months ago, I started slowly regaining interest, and after lurking around on other nail polish blogs I decided that maybe it was time to come back. So here I am!

I'm not going to bore you with a wall of text any further, I will just go straight to showing you one of my favourite new nail polishes. :) A while ago, a local drug store me had an awesome deal: OPI polishes for only €6,- each! I couldn't let this offer pass. I don't have a lot of money to spend, so OPI nail polishes are kind of a luxury for me. I owned a few before this, so I knew they were pretty awesome.

I ended up buying three colours - mostly because they only had 5 different ones (really?) - and today I will be showing you my favourite one.

This is Midnight In Moscow, which is a perfect vampy nail polish. It has a very dark brown base and it's full of red shimmer. From a distance it looks like dark brown, sometimes even black. But in the right lighting the beautiful shimmer is visible, so you can see the depth it has. Very pretty! I love colours like this, I don't think I'll ever have enough vampy colours in my collection. This polish in particular looked very nice with my skin tone.

I used two coats to make it opaque and the application was very smooth, so no comments there. I'm not sure how great the wear is, though; I wore it for two days without chips and then I took it off. If it's anything like my other OPI nail polishes, it can probably last a while longer than that.

Hope you enjoyed this blog post. I'm excited to start posting again, I hope you are too!

Leopard mani with Bluesea bow review

Hi guys! Today I have another review for you. I already showed you the studs from KKCenterHk, but they also sent me some adorable 3D bow decorations by Bluesea.

These bows come in a ton of different colours and patterns but I personally decided to go with these with a white background and a pink and black leopard print because I'm a big sucker for leopard prints... I'm pretty sure I've said that before, though.

I made a matching nail art with them, using Essie Mod Squad as my base and NYC City Blackout with white acrylic paint for the leopard print. 

The bows are fairly small and should apply to every nail with ease. The site recommends you to apply them with nail glue. DO NOT apply them with topcoat if you intend to reuse them! I personally used topcoat, having no nail glue, and with removal of the bow I had to be very careful not to ruin it. Keep this in mind if you plan to order them. However, even with just the topcoat it stayed on an entire day before I removed it before going to bed. That's pretty great, in my opinion.

These bows retail for $4.00, which is a very fair price considering that these are intended to be reusable. They come in packages of two, which means you can use them for a cute accent nail on both of your hands. Yay!

Also, don't forget about my coupon code!

When ordering at KKCenterHk you can use the code POLISH-SMOOTHIE at checkout

to receive a 10% discount on your order.

Essence Sparkle Sand Effect - Hey, Nude!

Hey guys!

A while ago I posted about Essence's attempt at a 'rough' polish. I thought it was going to be a textured polish like the Liquid Sands we all know but I was slightly disappointed when I found out that wasn't the case. I've been dying to try out a textured polish but I haven't been able to get my hands on one yet.

Well, Essence recently came with actual textured polishes! I was very excited to try them so I picked them up. They come in three different colours and today I'll be showing you the nude variant.

Essence Hey, Nude! Is the Sparkle Sand Effect in an elegant nude colour. The base is a very light pink with silver shimmer and a few different sizes of silver glitter in it. As you can see, there is some VNL. It didn't bother me on my short nails so it's up to you if you like it or not. 

In the picture I'm wearing three layers, and let me tell you... if you are in a hurry and have to do your nails quickly, this is possibly the WORST polish to pick at that moment.My first attempt at swatching this polish failed horribly because every coat takes ages to dry. I probably waited 15~20 minutes for each coat to dry, and even then it stayed squishy on my nails and I got dents everywhere. :( It may just be this colour though, because I tried one of the other Sparkle Sands and it was absolutely fine.

If you have all the time in the world and don't mind having to wait a long time for your nails to try... this is a very pretty polish to have. I think it looked very elegant on my little nubs. I can't say anything about the wear though, because I took it off after a few hours... very, very disappointing.

Saran wrap and KKCenterHk studs review

Hello everyone! I am finally back. It took some time but, lots of rest and cuticle cream later, my nails seem to be back in shape. I'm not really sure what happened to them but for a while they were VERY brittle, kept breaking and overall looked too terrible for swatches or nail art. It sucked!

To start it off, today I have a simple nail art and a review. KKCenterHk was nice enough to send me two products for review and today I will be showing you the first one: some very cute studs!

I didn't want to use these studs for a plain manicure. Instead I chose to do a subtle one with pastels. I used Essie Lilacism as my base and a layer of Essie Bikini So Teeny to create the pattern with saran wrap. I thought it looked very cute. If you want to know how to do this, just do a quick Google search. It's a very simple technique and there are lots of tutorials to be found.

So, how about the studs? They are pretty tiny, dark coloured studs that I found were very easy in use. I had no problem whatsoever picking them up and placing them on my nails. They are rounded on top but their backs are flat and stay on the nail quite nicely. After applying them to the nail, use a coat of topcoat on top of them and they stay on like cement. They would be perfect for a dark, edgy nail art or manicure!

The studs measure 2mm in diameter and come in packs of 50, and the best thing is that these are reusable. Just take them off, clean them with nail polish remover and use them whenever you like. You can find them here, but I'd suggest also looking at their other studs because they have them in all shapes, colours and sizes! These retail for $4.23 and KKCenterHk offers free worldwide shipping.

And just for my readers, I have a special coupon code.
When ordering at KKCenterHk, use the code POLISH-SMOOTHIE at checkout to receive a 10% discount on your order!

It's my birthday!

Hi everyone! As you can read in the title, today is my birthday. I turned 21 years old, so I am really officially an 'adult' now. :P Which is why today I'll be showing you what I'm wearing on my nails for my birthday mani!

I think I am starting to get the hang of my new camera!

Here's what I did - a simple manicure with a half moon accent. It seems I always grab this particular polish when I want something pink. It's just a lovely shade with an awesome formula. This colour is NYC Perpetual Peony, ofcourse!

To make it even cuter I added some rhinestones I found while shopping a few days ago. Apparently these are meant for application on clothing and other things but they are fine for on nails as well! For the Dutchies that read my blog, these can be found for €1.99 at the Action in a wheel with a bunch of different colours. I also got some studs at the same place, that I will hopefully try out soon.

I love half moons because they look so classy! I'd love to do a similar manicure sometime, but with a lighter, soft pink colour. That's originally what I wanted, but I didn't have the right polish for it.

Anyway, that's it for today. I'll be spending my evening with my family... and cake! Yay, cake. Have a lovely day! :)

Delia Coral Prosilk 411

Has anyone of you heard of the brand Delia before? I know I hadn't heard of it anywhere until my mom brought some of these polishes home for me one day. Last week, I finally decided to try out one of them.

This is Delia Coral Prosilk 411. All three of the colours I have by this brand are matte cremes, and this is the red one. In my pictures it almost looks neon. While it is a very bright red with an orange tint, it's definitely not that! I'm always a bit hesitant with unknown brands because I don't know what to expect from the quality. So, how is it?

Pretty good, actually. I'm wearing two coats for full opacity, and the formula was a bit on the thick side but it wasn't hard to apply. Only minimal cleanup was needed.

This is a really cool colour! I liked the way it looked on my nails. It stayed on for three days without chipping, which I thought was pretty impressive as well.

Since I didn't buy these myself, I don't know where these are normally sold. But if you ever run into them, judging from this colour's quality, I'd say it wouldn't hurt to try it out. Would you guys be interested in seeing the other two colours as well?

Nubs with polka dots

Hello, readers! Things have been a bit quiet from my side because I haven't really felt like posting. This is why:

Yep. As you can see, my nails are short little nubs now. :/ I had a really dumb accident in the kitchen last week and the tip of the nail on my middle finger popped off completely. I had to file them all down. They are a bit longer now, but it sucks!

I thought I would make them look cute to distract myself from how short they are. Polka dots are always cute, right?

For the base colour I used H&M City. This polish actually belongs in a duo but it's a very nice pink crelly so I like to wear it on its own, too. For the dots, I used acrylic paint. I have been trying to use my acrylic paints for nail art, and so far I really like it. I only have a limited selection of colours, but I am thinking of getting more. :D

Essence - Mashed Berries

Hey guys! Today I have a really awesome nail polish to show you that reminds me of summer and smoothies. It was actually part of a collection from last year, but that doesn't make me love it any less now.

This is Essence Mashed Berries, which was obtainable from their Fruity collection from last year. There were three different polishes that looked similar to this one, but this is my favourite. They unfortunately have no names on the bottles, but I do know that this one is named Mashed Berries.

It's a very sweet pink creme with purple glitter in it. Because the glitter is tiny and dark, the polish totally resembles a smoothie. It looks delicious! It's not that noticable in my pictures, but the glitter does sparkle, you just need to be looking at it from the right angle. 

I used three thin coats for full opacity and I had no problems applying it. I'm very happy with this polish. It makes me want to eat my nails. :D

Pastel gradient

Hello everyone. This is going to be a pretty quick post. So I have done multiple (failed) attempts at gradients. I came to the conclusion that I just didn't have the proper sponges for it so I went on eBay and ordered some sponge wedges. The result was my first nice looking gradient!

As you can see, it's not perfect. But I thought it looked super cute anyhow. I used two coats of Essie Blanc as my base colour because I thought it would make the colours pop a bit more, but the white still shines through a bit. Maybe this would be fixed by using the lightest colour as a base instead of white? I suppose that's something to try another time.

I used NYC Lavender Cupcake and Essence That's What I Mint for the colours. I think they go quite well together, and gradients with cremes are usually my favourites.

All in all I'm pretty happy with how these turned out and from a distance, the gradient looked perfect. :D

Essence Floral Grunge - Black To The Roots

Hey everyone! I already showed you Madly Purpled, the matte polish of Essence's Floral Grunge collection, and today I'll be showing you the other polish I got.

This is Black To The Roots. It is called 'The Rough' one of this collection which is why I was very curious about it. With all the hype around textured polishes nowadays I thought that this might be Essence's version of the trend.

And it is. Sort of! Black To The Roots is a dark gray base with gritty silver glitter in it. This is definitely not a textured polish like the Liquid Sand collection for example. But there is texture in it, as you can see in the pictures. The base dries up with a sort of matte, almost rubbery finish, while the glitter leaves a gritty texture. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but it is definitely interesting.

The application was pretty bad. The formula is kind of weird and streaky, making it difficult to paint even coats. I used two coats for full opacity and no top coat to show off the grittiness. I definitely like Madly Purpled a lot more!

What do you think of this polish?

Blue fan brush mani

Hey guys!

So, I have had a set of nail art brushes for a while now and I realized I had never actually used the fan brush that was in it. I was unsure what to do with it until I saw some tutorials popping up. Turns out that you are able to create very cool looking manicures that are simple to do. Perfect for me!

After some fiddling around with colours this is what I came up with. Pretty cool, huh? Personally, I'm very fond of the effects that the fan brush gives. And like I said, it's extremely simple.

What I did was start out with two coats of a simple black creme, in this case Essence Black is Back. I left it alone until it was completely dry which is when I grabbed my fan brush. I made the hairs of the brush slightly wet and seperated them a bit. Then I dipped the tips in Catrice Blue's Brother. And swiped the brush across my nail.

You can kinda experiment with the brush. You can swipe over your nails just once, for example. But for most of my nails I did two strokes: one starting from the left side, to the middle of my nail, and the other from the right. It created this nice effect that looks different on each nail.

I only used one colour this time, but I can see this being very interesting with two colours! What do you think?

Wet 'n Wild - Back Alley Deals

Today's polish is one of my overall personal favourites. This was actually the first one I ever ordered off the internet - I just HAD to have it after seeing swatches from All You Desire a long time ago.

I mean, just look at it, because it screams 'me'. Purple, pink, AND glitter? That's definitely a Tess-polish. I love it. :')

This is Wet 'n Wild Back Alley Deals. An absolutely gorgeous glitter polish. It has a clear base that is packed with very small purple glitter, and slightly larger round pink glitter.

The glitter is very dense and it could be worn on it's own. But if you have this polish, please don't, because it looks even better if layered over a dark creme. Plus, you use less polish, so you can wear it more often. ;) Here I have one coat layered over Revlon Plum Night, a simple dark purple.

It does dry up rather gritty and dull. Even though that works really well for this polish, I prefer to use two layers of topcoat to make it shiny and sparkly. The formula for this polish is great! Even now it's starting to thicken a bit it was very easy to apply, and because the glitter is so dense you generally get an even amount of purple and pink everywhere.

For reference - this is a picture without topcoat. Still very pretty! Sometimes I wear it like this as well.

Essence Floral Grunge - Madly Purpled

 Hey guys! Today I have a nail polish from the Essence Floral Grunge collection. I bought two polishes from this collection, a matte and a 'textured' one. I'll be writing about the matte today.

This is Madly Purpled. It's decribed as 'the matt'. Matt? I've never seen it spelled like that. Maybe it was an intentional mistake? Stuff like that bothers me! :P Anyway, this polish is quite pretty. It's a pretty dark and gray-ish lavender which makes it, in my opinion, a very classy colour. I really liked the way it looked with my skin tone. It also has a nice subtle silver shimmer.

As you can see however, it can't really be classified as a 'true' matte nail polish. I'd say it dries up to more of a suede finish. If you don't like that, you can slap a topcoat on top of it and you'll have a pretty shiny lavender with noticable shimmer. I actually liked it like this.

The formula was good too. I used two coats and I had no problems applying it!

What do you think of this polish? 

Art De Lautrec 04B

Guys, it has happened again. I fell in love with another nail polish.

Today's polish is one by a brand that seems to be fairly unknown! I had heard of the name Art De Lautrec before and I was pretty curious about their nail polishes. So when I found them for sale at a Christmas Fair I visited back in december I got myself this one.

This beauty is 04B (I wish they had nice names!). It has a blackened base that is absolutely packed with gorgeous and very sparkly holo glitter. How pretty is that? I keep looking at my nails! 

I have painted one coat of it over Essence Black Is Back. It's apparently possible to wear it on it's own, but I haven't done that for reasons listed below.

So, I have one problem with this polish. My bottle has a very weird formula. It feels really gloopy and thick even though it's not that hard to apply. It is, however, impossible to paint thin layers with this one which is why I decided to layer it over a black creme. I do think this is just my bottle, so if you ever want to try it out, no worries! I probably just got unlucky. :)

It dries up a bit dull, but one coat of topcoat was enough to make it super sparkly. And despite the thick coat I had to use, it dried up very fast and looks very smooth and shiny!

I have never seen Zoya Storm with my own eyes, but if I look at the swatches of it, 04B looks like it could be a dupe.

What do you think of this polish? And are you familar with Art De Lautrec?

Lavender Stamping and a new layout!

Hey guys! I am back from my little break. I caught a nasty cold so it took a bit longer than I wanted to. I'm still not completely better but I did feel like fiddling around with nail art stuff, AND my blog layout. What do you think? I mainly wanted to change it so I could actually respond to the comments I get. I was starting to feel bad for not being able to interact with you guys properly. I hope you like the new layout. :)

So, I decided to try my hand  at stamping once again, since it had been a while. :D

Okay, my colour and plate choice was a bit random this time, haha. And as you can see, my stamping skills could really use some improvement. But keep in mind this is only about my fifth time doing a full manicure with stamping and that I have a lot to learn!

The base colour is NYC Lavender Cupcake, one of my favourite cremes. Since I don't have any Konad polishes (they have been on my wish list for a while now...) I rummaged through my stash trying to find a decent polish to stamp with. I ended up with Essence Unexpected Galaxy which is actually one of their colour changing nail polishes. I knew it was an opaque polish, though I wasn't sure what it was going to look like after I applied my top coat, haha Fortunately, it wasn't too bad!

I ended up stamping an image from one of my Born Pretty Store plates. This one is from stamping plate m65 and I thought it looked pretty groovy.

So what do you think? How bad of an attempt is this? Also, feel free to share any tips and tricks you might have for me!

Teeez - Gutsy 04

Today I have swatches of a polish by a brand that I am very unfamiliar with. The brand Teeez is sold by several places around here but the price is a bit higher than I'm comfortable with. A long time ago I decided to buy one of their polishes and it turned out to be quite nice.

This is Gutsy 04. It's pretty hard to describe this colour, but I'll give it a shot. I think of this as a dark base with multicoloured shimmer. It seems to have red, copper, and silver, giving this polish a very metallic and 'rusty' look. It's unique in my collection, that's for sure. I personally like it a lot!

The bottle reminds me a lot of Catrice, apart from the cap, which has a snake print on it. Awesome.

The formula was a bit thick, but I'm guessing that's because I've had this polish for quite a long time now. Apart from that I had no problems applying it and it needed two coats for full coverage.

Are you familiar with this brand?

Essence - Miss Universe

Hey everyone! Geez, it's may already. Time is going so fast. Today I'm showing you another nail polish by Essence and I believe this one has been pretty popular recently. I also got it as a gift from my boyfriend, so I thought today would be a good day to post this, since it's his birthday today!

Miss Universe is gorgeous! It has a dark base, full with blue and green shimmer. The blue is much more noticable, however. In the bottle it looks like a duochrome, but don't let that fool you - it really isn't. That doesn't make it any less pretty though... look at that depth!They picked out a good name for this one, because it's like staring into space and seeing pretty tiny stars everywhere.

And the formula? Well, they could have done better. I was surprised at how sheer this polish was, and I was worried when I painted on my first coat. It needed three coats to be opaque and I wasn't a big fan of the formula in combination with the wide brush Essence uses nowadays. Despite that, I love it very much and I am very glad to have it in my stash.

Essie - Escapades with a simple accent

The weather here has been very nice recently! It's finally warming up and I'm really enjoying it. Time to wear bright nail polish! Today I have an awesome bright red by Essie to show you guys.

I love this colour! Escapades is a very pretty red creme that is not quite as bright as the above picture, but it's a great shade for summer that really pops. I chose to wear this colour because I wanted to do something with some nail glitter I got as a gift a few months ago, specifically the hollowed out silver hearts, because I figured it would go well together.

And I think it came out cute! I originally planned to use just one heart, but then I found some smaller pieces hidden in between the heart glitter and I like this much better. The glitter stayed on my nails surprisingly well, though I did add an extra layer of top coat.

I also had no problems applying Escapades. The formula is a bit thin but it's easy to control and I only needed two coats for full opacity. It stayed on my nails for about 4/5 days before it started chipping, which is great. :) All in all, a lovely polish and a nice addition to my stash.