Category: Nails

ABC Challenge – C is for China Glaze Caribbean Blue and circle glitter

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Yay!! It’s time for our weekly ABC Challenge again and this week’s letter is C. For that I chose China Glaze Caribbean Blue with circle glitter. Enough C’s there for y’all? LOL Circle glitter awesomeness polish is Stay Behind, Catch a Wave from Elevation polish.

I applied two coats of Caribbean Blue and one coat of Stay Behind, Catch a Wave. The circle glitter lays so flat that I only needed to use Inm Out The Door Super Fast Dry top coat to smooth it out. I’m totally in love with this circle glitter. Such a nice change from all the hex glitter I’ve had on my nails lately. So sparkly and looks like raindrops on your nails. Stunning! Can’t wait to layer this with other colors too.

Stay Behind, Catch a Wave can be bought from Elevation Polish store but it’s sold out at the moment.

 

 

 

Essie Nourish Me – 3 weeks after

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Here I go again with my weekly Essie Nourish Me report. It’s been three weeks and the peeling is almost grown out. This time you can see a tiny bit of peeling on the tips of the nails but since the tips are already weak and thin I decided to not buff those out anymore. I don’t think those are new peels, they are just left over from what I didn’t get off with my last buffing. Looks like I might be able to file them off with the length next week though. I’m hoping that after two or three more weeks my nails are gonna be healthy again and I can start growing a bit of length on these too.

I now have a tear on my index finger nail too. That happened when my hand slipped from a frozen car door handle. Oh well, it’ll grow out too while I’m growing out the peeled parts.

I will continue these weekly reports until the peeling has stopped and my nails are good as new again. After that I’ll still post about the nail growing project and let you know if Nourish Me can help on the nail growing project and keep the tips from peeling and breaking even when I don’t file off the length every week.

 

 

a england – She Walks In Beauty

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And so has the first a england polish now found it’s way to my polish drawer. I saw two absolutely stunning manicures done with She Walks In Beauty and I couldn’t resist buying it anymore. These awesome glitter tips manicures can be found from The Swatchaholic and The Polished Perfectionist blogs. As soon as I realized I had already bought the green manicure’s Grace Green polish (surprisingly found it from a discount bin ;) ) I gave in and clicked She Walks In Beauty on my shopping cart. Now I also have the gorgeous purple Essence polish seen on The Swatchaholic’s photos on it’s way to me along with the three other Snow Jam polishes. (Thanks J ♥ ).

I decided to layer She Walks In Beauty with OPI Did You ‘ear About Van Gogh and instead of the tips I applied the glitter on the nail bed. I loved how subtle and beautiful this combination was. I think you can really see the true beauty and details of this polish better when it’s not applied on the whole nail. This polish has excellent formula and it’s just truly stunning. It’s definitely worth getting if you’re thinking about buying a england polishes :)

 

 

 

Different Dimension – Social Suicide

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At the end of December I ordered two polishes from Different Dimension indie brand. I already showed you the first one Soft Kitty, Warm Kitty and here’s the other one, Social Suicide. This is a clear base polish with a lot of different size and shape black and white glitter in it. Formula is excellent and this applies thin and smooth. You also don’t have to waste time and energy trying to fish the glitter out of the bottle.

I decided to try this on top of yesterday’s China Glaze Def Defying manicure. The clear base makes this a perfect polish for layering. Black and white glitter also go well together with almost any color and it’s easy to control the amount of glitter by how many coats you apply. I really liked the effect this brought on my nails and next I’ll try layering it with pink polish.

On this mani I used one coat of Social Suicide over China Glaze Def Defying and a coat of Inm Out The Door on top of everything.

You can buy Different Dimension polishes from their Etsy store. It only took a bit over a week for my polishes to arrive counting from the date of ordering and I think it’s pretty darn fast since I live in Finland, not US.

 

Bubbles on this photo are caused by my top coat that is on it’s last leg and I have to twist and turn
the bottle to get something out.

 

China Glaze – Def Defying

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I bought two polishes from China Glaze Cirque du Soleil Worlds Away collection and here’s the first of those two, Def Defying. This is lovely yellow-ish lime green creme polish. Two coats was enough for a smooth opaque result and dry time was normal. With Inm Out The Door top coat the finish was just super shiny and perfect. I LOVE THIS!

 

 

Acrylic paint nail art flowers

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It’s been quite a while since I really tried to use my acrylic paints the last time. Now I decided to give them a try and paint some flowers on my nails. It wasn’t a big success but not a total failure either. I really need better nail art brushes though and a lot of practice. Painting is fun though and if I get better at it I could maybe eventually create something that is actually nice. I have a lot of ideas and I can always find more inspiration from the photos and tutorial videos of true nail artists.

For the manicure I used Flormar shade U29 and on my ring finger I also added Flormar U18 with a sponge to bring some depth and darker appearance on that nail. On top of those I added a coat of Wet n Wild Kaleidoscope glitter polish. Acrylic paints are Oumax and I also used those for the little dots I did with a dotting tool. After the acrylic paint dried I added a coat of Inm Out The Door Northern Lights Gold top coat.

I have so little experience with acrylic paints that it was quite time consuming trying to get it right. The good thing about acrylic paints is that you can just use water to wipe to wet paint off if you mess it all up. That’s what I did with the first five tries ;)

 

ABC Challenge – B is for Bermuda Breakaway and Broken Tokens

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It’s Wednesday and time for our weekly ABC Challenge again. Here’s what I came up with for letter B: China Glaze Bermuda Breakaway with Color Club crackle Broken Tokens. I’m not a big fan of crackle polish and I think this is the first time ever for a crackle manicure on this blog.

China Glaze Bermuda Breakaway is a beautiful ink-y blue creme from their Bahama Blues Winter 2008 collection. So I’ve had this polish for over 4 years now and it’s still as good as new. I believe this was two coats and it was fully opaque.

Color Club Broken Tokens is a silver foil crackle polish from their 2011 Fractured collection. Since I’m not a fan I only got this to test it out and cos it looked a lot prettier than many other crackle polishes out there. It’s definitely worth keeping and I might even use it again on some nail art manicures for special effect.

This mani didn’t turn me into a big crackle fan but I still quite like how it turned out. The colors went well together and the crackle polish wasn’t applied too thickly.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Essie Nourish Me – Two weeks after

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It’s time for another Essie Nourish Me week report and it’s still looking good. My nails seem to be getting better,  the tips look less dry and there has been no chipping. I’ve been using this almost daily, at least every other day. So I don’t have experience on how well this works if you only use it e.g. every four days. I only use this as a base coat and always apply two coats before the nail polish.

At this time I’ve been able to buff away 99% of the peeled parts and my nails look nicer again. Of course the tips are still weak and thin but every week I can file off more of the damaged part while new and hopefully healthier nail keeps growing. I’d like to remind that the badly peeled parts of my nails you can see on the “Before” photo haven’t been magically glued back on to my nail plate. I have buffed those away and my tips are now much thinner than usual. It seems that Nourish Me is working and it has stopped the peeling.

Next week we’ll see if there’s any more peeling or is this hydrating base coat really working good enough to keep the peeling away. I’m hoping for the best!

 

 

Cult Nails – Coveted

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Today I have a real treat for all of you green polish lovers out there, Cult Nails Coveted. This is a deep emerald green jelly, with flakes and a lot of very fine shimmer. I kept staring and admiring my nails constantly when I was wearing this. Truly a stunning one!

Formula on this is great, it applies smoothly and two coats is enough for semi-opaque result. As a jelly this is never fully opaque and it’s also the jelly finish that gives this one the amazing glow. Some of the flakes were a bit bigger and could be felt but a top coat smooth down most of those. Dry time was very quick with Inm Out The Door fast dry top coat. I wore this for two days and had no chipping or tip wear issues. This was perfect in every way!

If this was love at first sight for you too I suggest you don’t think about it too long. Coveted is a limited edition polish and can be purchased along with other Cult Nails polishes from their website here.

 

Models Own – Naked Shimmer

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Here’s yet another discount basket find from a local store. This time it’s Models Own Naked Shimmer. As the name hints, this a nude polish with gold shimmer. Unfortunately shimmer isn’t as visible on the nail as it is in the bottle but you can still see it. This neutral toned flesh-y nude is probably suitable for many different skintones. I quite liked this myself, shade is pretty chic and sophisticated!

The formula was a bit on the thick side and this might benefit from a drop or two of polish thinner. In this mani I used two coats of polish but the result could’ve been even better with three thin coats. The smell on this was also quite strong but all five of my new Models Own bottles smell the same so I guess that is normal.

In all this was quite positive first experience with Models Own nail polish and didn’t make me regret the four other shades I bought along with this one ;)