Evanora inspired nails

Have you seen Oz: The Great and Powerful yet? I haven't, but I definitely have to see it sometime. It looks really awesome. Since the movie came out I have seen some manicures inspired by Evanora's 'claw' nails in the movie. I really liked the look and so I decided to recreate them!

The result is a pretty edgy, but awesome manicure. When I was wearing this I kept looking at my nails, because it really felt like I had claws!

As you can see in the screenshot I linked earlier, Evanora doesn't seem to have a base colour on her nails and her nail line is visible. I didn't like that all too much which is why I used a nude base. I used two coats of Essence Cookies & Cream for this with a fast drying top coat. After that was dry, I taped off the sides of my nails to create the claw shape, and went over it with a coat of Essence Black Is Back, a simple black creme.

And, instead of two gold lines on each side of the claws, I decided to go with one gold line in the middle. I used gold striping tape that I got off eBay, but as you can see in the pictures it started curling up just minutes after I applied it, which was quite a shame. I do like the end result, though, and I love seeing all the different variations people are coming up with.

What do you think of this 'claw' look?

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!

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.

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!