Essie - Leading Lady

So, I still haven't been painting my nails very often! It's not that I don't have the time to, I just don't really feel like it. However, my nails do look much better now - they're not as stained anymore, so that's a plus. :)

Anyway, I do have some pictures to show you from a few weeks back from an amazing polish by my favourite brand - Essie!

This nail polish is Leading Lady by Essie, from their winter collection of this year! If you visit a lot of nail blogs you've probably seen this one a few times already. I know I have! So when I saw it in store, I was really excited. I wanted to use gift vouchers I have to get it, but I wasn't able to use them in the store it was sold, and I couldn't afford it by myself... so then my boyfriend secretly grabbed it and got it for me! I have trained him well- I mean, he's a sweetheart. :D 

However, he told me I had to make a blog post about it, so here it is!

Leading Lady is a polish with a dark red jelly base full of gorgeous red glitter. Despite being so glittery, it has a very easy and smooth application. I needed two coats for full coverage. It dries up rather gritty, however, so to really bring out the sparkle I added a generous coat of topcoat.

The result is really squishy and sparkly nails, and I love it. There's so much depth in this one! I had a hard time choosing which pictures to use, because the polish is just so pretty there weren't any bad pictures, haha.

And here is a picture of it in a different light, to show you just how much glitter it has. I am in love. As for removing it... I'm not sure how difficult it is, as I personaly used my peel off basecoat. But I'm sure it's nothing the foil method can't handle!

Lavender Skies

So this week I have been doing my nails a bit more often! I recently got a Helmer (which I am going to write a little post about soon) and have sorted out my collection which has definitely helped.

Anyway, when I did this manicure I was in the mood for something simple, but I didn't want to wear simply one colour, because that was TOO boring. ;) I always see people do all kinds of accent nails and I think they are super cute and a great solution if you don't want something too plain. So that's what I did!

For this manicure I used a really cute pastel nail polish by NYC. It's called Lavender Cupcake and it's a simple creme. The colour is really pretty and I like how it looks on my nails. It needed two coats and the quality is good. No remarks there.

The silver on my accent finger is Platinum Card, also by NYC. I kinda wish I had a nice silver glitter to add to this, but it looked good on it's own too! And, a while back I ordered some star shaped rhinestones from eBay. I thought they would go well with this manicure so I added some on all the other fingers.

I really liked this manicure! I hope you like it as well. :)

Seven Nation Army

Hey everyone! ... it's been a few weeks, I know. I haven't forgotten about you guys or my blog, but I guess you could say I was taking a little break. I promise I will try to make my posts more consistent, haha. :P

So today I want to show you a manicure I did a while back. It was done for the Reddit nail challenge, which I decided I won't be taking part in every week anymore. I just have not been doing my nails as often, and when I do, I want to do my own thing, and not be limited to that week's theme, or by my horrible art skills. So I'll do a manicure for the themes whenever I feel like it and have an idea I can use.

This week the theme was a manicure inspired by a song. And for me, it wasn't very hard to pick a song to use as my inspiration. I went for 'Seven Nation Army' by The White Stripes. It's an awesome song, that I have liked since I was a lot younger, and it has one of my most favourite music videos ever, which was the main thing that inspired me. I tried to translate the red/white/black shapes to my nails.

Also, I am sorry for the shape my cuticles are in. I ran out of Lemony Flutter and can't afford a new pot yet, and nothing else works well enough for weather like this. 

All the polishes I used for this are by NYC, and I did the manicure as follows:

First, I painted my nails with two coats of I <3 NY, a red creme that I seem to use pretty often for nail art. After this was completely dry I taped off a chevron shape and painted one coat of Platinum Card. I chose silver instead of white because I felt it fit the manicure better. Then, when that was dry as well, I taped off a smaller chevron and used City Blackout for the tips.

I enjoyed making this manicure and I thought it looked really nice on my nails, so I must say this is probably one of my favourites that I have done so far. I hope you like it as well, let me know what you think! 

Reddit Challenge - Week 11: Glitter

I've been looking forward to this week's challenge! I love glitter polish, though I don't have nearly enough, and I wasn't sure what to do for this week. I ended up with something simple, but very pretty and sparkly. You see, I keep seeing gorgeous nails with a nude base, and a glitter gradient at the tips, and I've always wanted to recreate that in my own way. And then I realized I have a very good glitter for that.

This has been my manicure for the past week. I didn't want to take it off because I was very glad with the result, even if it's kind of simple.

I used two coats of Essie Mademoiselle to give my nails a lighter but natural pink, because they're a bit orange tinted from all the nail polish I wear. Once this was dried I simply freehanded the tips and then used a sponge to make a fade effect. The glitter I used is a purple holographic one by Claire's, which doesn't have a name but is extremely pretty.

As a finishing touch I applied one coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust over all my nails, and I was done.

It also didn't chip at all, so I wore this for almost a full week, which does not happen often... mostly because I tend to get bored and change my nail polish before it even gets a chance to chip.

I hope you like it! :D

HEMA 826 - Super cheap holo!

I'm really excited for the polish I'm going to show you guys today! This was a completely unexpected find for me. A few days ago I was doing some gift shopping with my mom when we entered the HEMA to get some skin care products. I noticed they had a bunch of new polishes so ofcourse I went to take a look... wait, what is that? IS THAT A HOLO? Oh my gosh, it is!

Okay, it's subtle. But it's holographic! HEMA 826 is a gorgeous deep berry colour with a very subtle but still noticable scattered holo, and I am in love with it. And please understand my excitement, haha. In the two years I've been a nail polish addict, I've always been in love with them, but I have only found a total of three holographic polishes in drug stores around here. They aren't really that common to me. I'd order them off the internet, but most of the holos I want have ridiculous prices, which I can't afford. I found this one in the HEMA for the cheap price of €2,50.

The holo is more noticable in this picture. I love subtle ones - they are definitely my favourite kind of holo. This is two coats without a top coat. The formula is great, the polish is easy to apply neatly. It's not gloopy or thin, it's just right. I also really enjoyed the brush of this polish. I didn't need any cleanup. :) It dries up fast with a nice shiny finish.

Yep, this polish has made it into my top favourites, and I'm going to be wearing it a lot more often! I feel so classy wearing this on my nails. If you live in Europe and have access to a HEMA anywhere, I definitely recommend you take a look for this polish.