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!

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?

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.

Nail Polish Rings

Hello everyone! Today I have something different to show you. If you have been with me for a while you might remember the nail polish earrings I have posted about before. A while after I made that post, I decided to look into rings as well, and I have made quite a few. I took pictures of some of my favourites, which I will be showing in this post!

Also, would a how-to for nail polish jewlery be interesting? When I looked around for tutorials, I couldn't find many helpful ones, so if you're interested in seeing a tutorial by yours truly, let me know!

Anyway, let's start, shall we? Purple is my favourite colour for nail polish, so it's no surprise that my most favourite rings are all purple.

1. This picture does not do it justice, but this ring is SUPER sparkly in real life. I made this one with Claire's Purple Holographic Glitter that does not seem to have a name or number.

2. This ring is made with one of my favourite polishes in the world: Wet n' Wild Back Alley Deals. Guys, it's so pretty. I backed this one with black because the glitter didn't fully cover the back of the cabochon.

3. I don't remember what purple polish I used for this, but I do know I used the Spectraflair Topcoat by Piper Polish to give it a holographic shine. Again, the picture does not do it justice, but it looks amazing!

4. This one was an experiment that just happened to turn out awesome. I stamped NYC Platinum Card on the back of the Cabochon and then backed it up with Catrice Poison Me, Poison you. I love the result.

And now for some blues.

1. Oooh, sparkles! I used Claire's nameless blue glitter backed with black. I wear this one pretty often!

2. I'll be honest... I bought Essence Mr And Mrs Glitter just because I wanted to make a ring with it, since I don't like it on my nails very much. I'm glad I did, because this ring looks awesome. I backed it with black.

3. This ring didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, but I like it nonetheless. This is Essence Glorious Aquarius, backed with NYC East Village.

4. The crackle hype is long over and considered 'lame' by many people nowadays, but it honestly works great for jewelry! This is Barry M's black crackle backed with Essence Choose Me!. I love this combination.

And some other ones, these had to have their pictures taken at an angle to show off how pretty they are.

1. Another crackle! This is Barry M's black crackle again, this time backed with Catrice Genius In A Bottle. My sister thought of this combination of colours and we both have earrings like this. Reminds me of tigers!

2. This was another experiment that turned out nice. I used Catrice Hot Or Not? for the hot pink, Essence Stampy Polish for the white, and Essence Sweet As Candy for the background.

3. This was actually the first ring I have ever made, and I used Kleancolor Chunky Holo Purple backed with black. Very pretty!

4. And ofcourse, this is Essie Leading Lady. It looks amazing enough by itself, so that is the only polish I used for this ring. I probably wear this one most often out of all my rings. :)

I have more, ofcourse, but this post would be much too long if I wanted to show them all. I do hope you enjoyed seeing pictures of them! Nail polish jewelry is so much fun to make and I'll definitely be making more, so expect more posts about this sometime in the future.

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!

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! 

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.

Nino Mont - 142

Hey everyone! How are you all doing? I've been doing quite fine myself. As of late I have been feeling pretty artsy and I have mostly been drawing and trying to give me nails a bit of rest, haha. I have a very nice polish to show today though, one that I'm very excited about!

This polish is by Nino Mont, a brand I had never heard of before. My boyfriend went on a holiday to Spain last month and he was sweet enough to buy me a few nail polishes, and this one is my favourite of the three I got!

The polish doesn't have a name but a number - it's labeled number 142. 142 is very, very pretty. It's a shimmery and deep red or berry colour, and to my surprise, it's even a duochrome! The polish shifts colours from red to orange, and I just love the way it looks on my nails.

See that fade effect? It's subtle but amazing. This polish is amazing. I like it a lot, so much that it might be a new favourite of mine. I know I'll definitely be wearing this one more often!

As for the application, I had no problems with it. The formula is pretty thin but easy to control, and I needed three coats for full coverage. It dried up very shiny and it lasted for a long time too. I wore this one on my nails for five full days before it chipped on one finger, which is pretty amazing for me.

So I guess it's pretty obvious how much I like this polish! It makes me want to go to Spain myself to get even more from Nino Mont. Thankfully this isn't my only one, I have another blue shade that I will be showing sometime as well. :)

Reddit Challenge - Week 6: Games

Hey guys! No, I didn't actually miss a challenge. I did do week 5, but I wasn't happy with the manicure at all. I did post it on Reddit however, so if you can find me there, you can have a looksie at what I did last week.

So I was pretty excited about this week's theme, which is 'Inspired by a game'. I'm not a hardcore gamer but gaming is one of my hobbies and you can often find me playing World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Pokémon games, or random games on my iPhone. I wanted to dedicate a nail art to one of these games, but I went for the most obvious choice for me: Pokémon.

Pokémon has always been one of my favourite things. I got Pokémon Yellow over 10 years ago and never really stopped loving it! I've finished most of the handheld games save for some of the newer ones. I admit, I have been a bit out of the loop, but that doesn't mean I don't like it anymore.

To portray this theme I decided to paint little Pokéballs on my nails. This isn't the most original nail art, but hey, it works. The original plan was to do a different Pokéball on each nail but I don't have the right colours for it. It's something I will definitely do in the future, though.

So here's how I did this: I started out by painting all my nails with two coats of Essie Blanc, a simple white creme. I applied a quick drying topcoat and let it dry for a while before taping half of my nail and adding a coat of NYC I <3 NY, for the upper red half of the Pokéballs. I taped it because I am really, really horrible at freehanding with regular polish brushes, haha. Then I added black lines with my black striper, and after that I used my dotting tools to add the black and white buttons in the middle.

One of my Poochyena figurines wanted to make a little guest appearance. :) I don't usually use props for pictures but I figured it would be cute for this one. Poochyena is one of my favourite Pokémon, by the way.

These nails were pretty simple to do but I think they turned out really cute. I love having little Pokéballs on my nails. I hope you like them too!

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!

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?

Vampy Chevron Nails

Today I'm showing you another tape manicure. I really love to do these just because it's so fun and simple and it's easy to come up with awesome looking results.

So today I decided to do chevrons. I have done these as accent nails here and there but today I wanted to try my hands at a full chevron manicure. And I wanted it to be vampy, so I chose black and red as my colours.

I started by painting the red on my fingers, which is NYC I ♥ NY. Which is a gorgeous red, by the way! I've worn this one pretty often, and so far it's my favourite red I have owned. I also used only one coat for this picture, which is pretty awesome.

After that tried I went ahead and applied the tape to all of my fingers and then add the black. I personally prefer to do it in this order, but you can also start with the black and then add the red later. The black is also by NYC, it's called City Blackout. Again, lovely polish. My favourite black so far.

I really, really like the outcome of these nails! But, sadly, they got ruined about 5 minutes after I was done... I spilled nail polish in my carpet. D'oh! I was so glad I managed to shoot a few pictures before that happened. I'm definitely going to be remaking this manicure, though!

Herôme Take Away 'Chique Red'

Autumn has arrived! I like autum and winter, because it means I get to wear darker, vampy shades. Wearing those in the summer feels a bit odd to me! Today I am showing you a polish I recently bought that I think is going to be one of my autumn favourites.

When I was at my boyfriend's house, we went shopping in a mall and in one of the drug stores I found a box with Herôme's adorably tiny Take Away nail polishes. I took two with me, a beige holo and this pretty red.

It's a brownish shimmery red that flashes to an interesting greenish shade in the bottle, but it's not noticable on the nails. I love the colour so much! It's perfect for this time of the year, so I'll probably be wearing it more.

The polish does not seem to have a name anywhere on the bottle, but after a bit of research I found out Herôme is selling these minis on their website, and this one might simply be named 'Chique Red'. Don't take my word for it, though.

...and then after a day I felt like doing some more stamping. And I think I did a better job this time! I picked out a rose design and stamped it on using NYC Platinum Card (I really love this silver). I really like how it came out.

Doctor Who nail art: Red Daleks

 Like it says on my Blogger profile, I'm a Doctor Who addicted girl. I'm a huge, huge fan of the show and I have watched all the episodes of the new series so far. I'm trying to watch the classics too, but they're pretty difficult to find on the internet. :( Nevertheless it's an awesome show. My family and some of my friends don't  understand my addiction at all and they think I'm completely mad when I try to tell them what Doctor Who is about. I don't blame them though, lol!

Anyway, to celebrate 'Asylum of the Daleks', the newest episode scheduled to air on september 1st, I decided to dedicate a nail art to the Dalek. Even though they do creep me out a little bit, they are my favourite villains in the show, plus my new rhinestones and striping tape were perfect to use for the idea I had.

There are a lot of varieties of Dalek but my personal favourite are the red ones. That is why I made a simplified Dalek on both of my ring finger nails, with their most widely recognised details.

For the base I used NYC I ♥ NY, my favourite red. For the eyepiece and the Daleks' hemispheres I used my rhinestones. The clear rhinestones work really great for the eyepieces, I think they look great! I had a bit of trouble with the black coloured ones, because not all of them were the exact same size and shape. There are supposed to be rows of 4, but obviously my nails are not long enough for that. It doesn't matter though, this still works! I then used two strips of silver striping tape to emulate the 'neck' area that seperates the head from the lower body.

Overall I think this turned out pretty awesome! It was very fun to do. I wanted to do all of my nails but I do plan on wearing this manicure until the new episode airs and I think so many rhinestones on every nail would drive me crazy. :) So for now I will have two mini Daleks to keep me company!

And, ofcourse... how could I resist?

What do you think, did I nail it? And are you as excited for the new episode as I am?

Also check out some other Doctor Who inspired nail art here! :D