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!