Mix & Match

I'm a huge fan of mix and match manicures. I like to pile up a bunch of nail polishes on my bed and search for nice colour and finish combinations. For this mani I combined three polishes, Iced Latte from Essence, Pixy Stix from Orly (looks more muted irl) and Shimmer Polish - Airriann. Wow, such an amazing glitter mix! I used three coats and it's still in great shape after four days. 

Shimmer Polish is available at Cindy's Etsy shop for $12 a bottle.

Thanks for watching!

*Shimmer Polish - Airriann was sent to me for reviewing purposes.

For more information, check out my Disclosure Policy.

Beetle Inspired Nails

Yes, today's mani is inspired by beetles! First I applied two coats of Orly - Enchanted Forest. I let it dry completely before I added a piece of striping tape in the middle of the nail. Then I carefully brushed two strokes of Ludurana - Admirável on both sides of the nail. I removed the tape, added a layer of top coat and stared at my nails for the rest of the day. ^_^

I also took some underwater shots (learnt this from Goose!). Multichromes look SO good underwater. All those colours. In one polish. I couldn't believe my eyes!

This spectacular multichrome from Ludurana was a gift from Penélope, one of my lovely readers. She sent me an awesome package with Brazilian must-have nail polishes and a great selection of her own handmade glitter polishes. Thanks again dear! You are so generous and sweet. ♥ 

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Flamingo Inspired Nails

Today I'm showing you another bird inspired mani (click here if you missed my peacock nails!). The colours I used for this gradient (Barry M - Peach Melba & Orly - Pixy Stix) reminded me very much of the colouring of a flamingo, so I decided to do some accent nails with feathers. For the feathers I used plate BM-214 and Konad Special Nail Polish in White. I added some sparkly accents on the feathers with Rica from Zoya. I hope you like the end result as much as I do! ^_^

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Iron Studs

How cool are these steel grey stud rhinestones from BornPrettyStore.com? It's nice to wear something different than clear rhinestones! For this mani I applied two coats of Orly - Iron Butterfly on most nails and Essence - Got a Secret on some accent nails. I wanted a complete matte look so I also applied a matte top coat over Got a Secret. Then I added the stud rhinestones. I recommend applying a layer of top coat to seal the studs or you'll lose them within a couple of hours.

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*The product(s) in this post was/were sent to me for reviewing purposes.

For more information, check out my Disclosure Policy.

Indigo Lunar Eclipse

I love snow. But when it starts snowing at the moment I want to photograph my fresh new mani, I hate snow. I wish I had more pictures to show you, this looks so awesome! Recently I finally bought Barry M - Indigo, an insanely gorgeous blurple creme (the colour was hard to capture on camera, it looks much deeper and purplier irl). Indigo applied beautifully, two coats were enough for full opacity. I wanted to add something to it without losing too much of that beautiful colour so I lightly sponged the tips of my nails with Lunar Eclipse from Orly. This is a dreamy combination, I like it very much! Indigo is such a stunner, why haven't I bought it earlier? In my experience Barry M never disappoints!

Thanks for watching and enjoy your weekend!

Guest Post at Ivana Thinks Pink

Please check out my guest post at Ivana Thinks Pink.

Dear Ivana, thanks for this opportunity, it was so much fun to do! :$

Enchanted & Addicted

Blue Addicted from Essence finally found the way to my nails. Isn't it insanely pretty? This is one coat over a forest green creme (Orly - Enchanted Forest). And as you can see I also applied a layer of matte top coat, 'cause I think there's nothing hotter than mattified glitter nails. Blue Addicted could use some thinner, but other than that: great job with this one, Essence! :tup

Thanks for watching!

Ashes & Fire

Yesterday I went to a Ryan Adams concert with my hubby. Even though Ryan had food poisoning (tweet after the show: 'Harmonica part on firecracker = almost puked' :~ ) he managed to give a fantastic show. I enjoyed every minute of it! The name and look of his new album Ashes & Fire inspired me to do this mani. The base colour is Iron Butterfly from Orly and I used Zoya - Rica and Gosh - Rainbow to create 'fiery' tips.

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Berry Fowl Play

Yesterday I covered my nails with Just Berried from Catrice. It's not the first time I'm wearing this berry coloured creme polish; that means I like it a lot! But sometimes you just feel the urge to add something, so this morning I looked through my Helmer for inspiration. And there it was: Fowl Play. Oh and ah! I almost forgot I owned this stunner from Orly. I decided to use it for some accent nails and well, I love how this looks! Can't wait to wear Fowl Play on all nails though. It's a miracle of a polish... :L

Thanks for watching and enjoy the rest of your weekend!

Orly - Meet Me Under The Mistletoe

Today I would like to show you an amazing polish, without a doubt one of the prettiest greens I own: Meet Me Under The Mistletoe from Orly. I wanted to wear green on my nails, because green is the colour for Depression Awareness Month (Scrangie wrote a great post about it, check it out!). I'm struggling with depression (dysthymia, to be precise) for a while now and I think it's a good thing to raise awareness for this awful illness. 

A little more info about this Orly polish: love, love, love it! Those gorgeous little duochrome flakes, I catch myself staring at them all day. I had no application problems, this is three coats, no top coat.

And a little more close up... ♥

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Orly - Androgynie. Let's Get The Holidays Started! ;-)

Today finally feels a bit like summer, I love feeling the warmth of the sun on my skin. Ironically I'm wearing a nail polish from Orly's upcoming holiday collection (Holiday Soiree). A couple of days ago I saw that my sweet blogging friend Miranda already got her hands on two nail polishes from this collection, what a nice surprise! Of course I went on a search and I found them in a Dutch webshop, yay! It was hard to choose, but I ended up buying the one I was most excited about: Androgynie. It looked so spectacular in the bottle I wanted to try it on my nails immediately, summer day or not. 

Androgynie is a black jelly with large multi-coloured hexagons, finer prismatic glitter and really fine gold flecks. A perfect party polish, it's SO pretty! The formula was good, it applied easily and dries fairly quick. It is a bit on the sheer side, so I used three coats (plus top coat). I have to say I was a bit disappointed by the amount of hexagons showing up on the nail, most of them are sticked to the side of the bottle and difficult to get out. I gave the bottle a real good shake, but apparently it wasn't good enough. :/

Thanks for watching!

p.s. the bottle comes with a tiny lace nail file, how cute is that? Useless, but cute. ♥

The Most Special Day Of The Year

August 31st is a very special day for me. Not only are my husband and I celebrating our fourth wedding anniversary today (♥), I'm also celebrating one year of blogging, yay! :party 

I almost can't believe it... This blog, one year old. I guess it's safe to say that I really love doing this! I've been struggling with dysthymia (chronic depression, for more info: try Google!) for years and it turns out the blogging thing is a welcome distraction. I want to thank my lovely readers for visiting my blog and leaving such sweet comments. Without you it wouldn't be half as fun! *muah*

This morning I decided to wear the nail polish I wore exactly one year ago: Orly - Space Cadet. That time I used four coats, so I wanted to see how it looked layered over another polish. This is two coats of Space Cadet over one coat of p2 - Dangerous. It's so blingy, love it.

Oh, and a party ain't a party without delicious noms, right? So go ahead... have a taste! ^_^

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The Cadet Shouts: "Sir! Yes, Sir!"

I'm a little late with my post for today, because I had a busy day: I went rafting with my husband's work. It was a very exciting experience, but I did swallow a lot of water (whew)!

About the nails: I wanted to spice up the military colour Sir! Yes, Sir! from Catrice I showed you yesterday. It's definitely not a boring colour, but after a day of wear this creme polish screamed for a little something something. So I sponged the tips with Space Cadet from Orly, which turned out great! Every time I use Space Cadet I'm amazed by all the colours it shows, wow. 

That's it for today, have a great weekend and.. thanks for watching! :) 

Pig In The Mud - Cake and Nail Art

Of all the cakes I made this is one of my favourites, it's a 'pig(s) in the mud' cake. I found a picture of a pig in the mud cake on the internet a while ago and I immediately wanted to make my own version. Look at those little pigs chillin' in their mud bath, isn't it hilarious? I think it is! I gave this cake to one of my brothers on his birthday, he lol'd. :r

If you know me you could've expected matching nail art, well, here you are. :) The pink nail polish you see on most nails is a new one from Catrice called Miss Piggy Reloaded (again, hilarious), the brown I used is You Don't Know Jacques! from OPI and for some darker pink details I used Orly - Pixy Stix. 

*A quick reminder: today is the last day you can enter my giveaway! The giveaway will close tonight at 11.59 pm CET.*

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Comparison: Color Club - Alias and Orly - Out Of This World

Yesterday I showed you the stunning nail polish Alias from Color Club. When I was taking pictures of it, it reminded me very much of one of the nail polishes from the Cosmic FX Collection from Orly, Out Of This World. So I compared it with Alias, and I also used Space Cadet (also from Orly) on one nail.. just because I can, lol. If you hold the bottles next to each other Alias and OOTW look quite similar, but on the nail I see more differences. Alias contains smaller particles and has a denser look - OOTW looks a little deceiving in the bottle, denser than when it's applied on the nail. Alias is also lighter, has a stronger duochromatic/multichromatic effect and is less pigmented than the Orly one. I used four coats for Alias and three coats for OOTW, no topcoat.

It's obvious that Space Cadet and Alias show an other range of colours, but they both have the same multichromatic look and the density of the particles/glitter is not that different. I love these kind of polishes!

Well.. I hope this was helpful for some of you. :)

Thanks for watching and have a nice weekend!

Sparkly Fruity Forest

Yeah, that title... don't ask. :i Yesterday I showed you Orly - Enchanted Forest and today I have a spiced up version for you. I sponged half the nail with China Glaze - Emerald Sparkle and the nail tip with Ivanka from Zoya. I love the contrast of the creme base and the sparklies on the tip! Then I added a slice of a lemon fimo cane. You know, for funsies. :D I think the fimo is fun to play around with, cute designs and all, but the thing is: I wish I could slice them thinner. It's so bumpy on the nail and that makes me want to peel it off all the time. If you want to try the fimo canes yourself, you can find them at the Born Pretty Store.

Thanks for watching!

*The product(s) in this post was/were sent to me for reviewing purposes. 

For more information, check out my Disclosure Policy.

Orly - Enchanted Forest

I have a lovely green polish for you to look at today, Enchanted Forest. This is one of the polishes from the 'Once Upon A Time' collection Orly released in 2009. The bottles came with cute charms, but I got my bottle without one *cries*. I know, I know.. it's just a charm, right? At least the bottle cap has some silver glitter (fairy dust?) on it. :O Enchanted Forest is a dark green creme. It's slightly dusty and a little bit more blue toned than yellow toned. I must say I like my greens to be more on the blue side, so this one is just fabulous. Love it.

The application was ok. The first coat was awfully streaky, but with two more coats and a topcoat it was perfect.

Thanks for watching! And to all my new followers: welcome! *waves* :D

Orly - Lunar Eclipse (mattified)

sunlight

natural light

I was wondering what Lunar Eclipse (Orly) would look like matte. Well, it looks awesome! The result is so soft and intense... Actually it's more of a suede finish than really matte.

I used the matte topcoat from Diamond Cosmetics. The application was smooth, I used two thin coats. If you want a super-matte result from a topcoat, maybe this isn't the one for you. Luckily there is quite a bunch of matte topcoats available at te moment :)

Thanks for watching! 

Orly - Lunar Eclipse & China Glaze - Grape Pop

When I got my bottle of Lunar Eclipse from the Orly Cosmic FX collection I was so happy with the duochrome I saw in it. In the bottle you can see a really vibrant indigo with blue and pink particles and a purple flash. I read on other nail blogs that the purple didn't show up on the nail that well.. That's often (if not always) the case with duochromes; in the bottle they're so colourful and gorgeous, but when you put it on your nails it's always a little bit disappointing. I can't believe I did it again! ..buying a duochrome polish because it looks sooo nice in the bottle.. xo

Anyway, I was warned about the disappearing purple. So I thought layering Lunar Eclipse on top of a purple could help the purple of LE to come out better. First I applied China Glaze - Grape Pop, then I added two layers of Lunar Eclipse on top of that. The result is stunning!  Most cameras have trouble capturing purple, so has mine. It took me some effort (and a couple of hundred photo's ;)) to get the purple on the pics. In real life it's even more visible! 

Thanks for watching!

Orly - Razzle

Here is the first oldie I found searching through my nail pictures, Orly - Razzle. I loved this colour on my nails, they looked like juicy berries! There are also tiny glitter particles visible, very pretty. Application was great, 2 coats.

After one day of wear I stamped an image on my ringfinger. I used imageplate M74 (great plate!) and Konad Special Polish in White. I also placed small dots of a silver polish in the flowers.

Thanks for watching!