Zoya - Valerie

indoors

sunlight

Yes, there she is: Zoya - Valerie. When I saw a swatch of this one it made my heart beat a little faster. A beautiful and lushious dark plummy purple. And like Sarah, from the same collection (Fire & Ice or Flame, whatever you like.. ^^), it has a lot of foily glitter in it, very sparkly. So mesmerizing in sunlight and also fabulous in low light. The pictures are clickable so you can see the sparkles in all their glory. As I mentioned in a previous post I'm not a big fan of golden/coppery colours. Although there is a lot of copper microglitter visible in the bottle, on the nail it's still there, but not so heavy and only at certain angles. Yay!

Well, it's a true beauty! I'm loving Zoya polishes, not only because of the colours, but the formula is good and their bottles are gorgeous. I applied two coats and a topcoat.

Thanks for watching!

Zoya - Sarah

indoors

Today I painted my nails with Zoya - Sarah. It's one of the polishes from the Winter 2010 Fire and Ice collection (although the collection is renamed as 'Flame' on Zoya's website, don't know what that's about.. :brow , but let's talk about the polish!).

Sarah is a pinkish red packed with foily glitter, very sparkly and hot! In the bottle you can see coppery glitter (second bottle from the left), but the copper didn't show up that heavily on the nail (lucky me... as I'm not a big fan of coppery colours). I wonder how Zoya - Valerie will end up on the nail, that one has even more copper glitter in it, hmm.. we'll see!

from left to right: Valerie, Sarah, Yasmeen & Shawn

The application was nice; Sarah is very pigmented, I needed two coats for full coverage.

Thanks for watching! :h

Comparison: Color Club - Fashion Addict & OPI - DS Diamond

When I was wearing OPI - DS Diamond some time ago it reminded me of another polish. I went searching through my nail polishes and found Color Club - Fashion Addict. So here I have a comparison for you. As you can see they're not the same! Fashion Addict is more lilac and DS Diamond is more mauve-ish. The texture of both polishes is quite similar though, the density of the glitter is the same. Although I couldn't capture the effect of the prismatic glitter that well (no sun :( ), the effect is in both polishes equally strong. Actually I don't know which one I like better, so they both can stay! ;)

Thanks for watching!

Zoya - Shawn

sunlight

Wow, this one just climbed her way into my top ten. I really like the colour; this dark olive green creme is Shawn from Zoya. When I saw the first swatches I loved it, but I didn't order it right away. Can you believe I tortured myself waiting so long before I could hold this beauty in my hands?! lol

Actually, I want to let the pictures do the talking... :d

Application was great, two coats plus topcoat.

flash

Thanks for watching!

Great Brush Shape

A couple of days ago I opened my new nail hardener from Etos (a Dutch drugstore brand) and I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the shape of the brush (pictured on the left)! :e It's rounded! The other brush pictured belongs to Nail Tek Foundation II, look at the difference between them!

Why haven't I seen this brush shape in other nail polishes yet? The rounded shape of the brush makes it so easy to apply nail polish! A perfect result without a clean-up, how great is that?

Or is it just me with my rounded cuticles? ;) If you know more brands with this kind of brush, please share!

Thanks for watching!

Pink Ribbon - Polish Your Pinkie Pink

As you all may know October is the Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Etos (a Dutch drugstore) asked women to polish their little finger nail with a pink polish during this month to raise awareness for this type of cancer. They also brought out some special Pink Ribbon polishes; a part of the proceed goes to the Pink Ribbon foundation. I haven't bought them, beacuse I feel more comfortable donating money directly to the foundation (and I didn't like the polishes that much..).

Anyway, I polished my pinkie pink with Barry M - Shocking Pink. The polish I used on the rest of my nails is Zoya - Kelly. And as you can see I added a ribbon to my ringfinger, which I drew by hand with a little nail art brush and a couple of pink polishes (don't know which ones exactly, as long as it's pink :) ). 

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! 

Eczema Sucks

Hi everyone!

Today I want to share something other than nail stuff with you. Every once in a while (like now) I discover spots of dyshidrotic eczema on the sides of my fingers and around my nails. With this form of eczema small, itchy blisters show up. When these blisters dry up, the skin often cracks and looks and feels really dry. Unfortunately the causes of this type of eczema are still unknown, but many factors may have an influence including seasonal changes (hello fall!), stress or allergies. 

As I don't want to scare you with nasty pics, it may be a couple of days before I can post pictures of my nails again. Luckily I have some oldies to show you! I hope you don't mind. ^_^

Thanks for reading and if you also suffer from a type of eczema, feel free to share!

OPI - DS Diamond

sunlight

Oh hello gorgeous!! :L

This beautiful polish is Diamond from OPI's Designer Series. And it is a diamond! If I could marry a nail polish, this would be the one ;) Application was a dream, 2 coats, no topcoat.

Thanks for watching! 

Purple Gradient Nails

sunlight

Today I was going through my nail polish stash and saw a lot of purples which I've never worn (shame on me! Purple is even one of my favourite colours). So I decided to combine those purples in one manicure. One way of using multiple polishes in one manicure is making a gradient with the sponging technique.

I achieved the result above following the next steps: 

1. paint the entire nail with the polish of your choice (I used China Glaze - Grape Pop), let it dry a little;

2. put a drop of another polish of your choice on a piece of paper (I used Color Club - Wild at Heart);

3. dip a little piece of a sponge (I use a kitchen sponge) in the drop of polish;

4. press the sponge gently on your nail, begin at the nail tip and sponge toward the cuticle. Stop when you covered three quarters of the nail, you want to keep a part of the base colour unsponged;

5. repeat step 2, 3 & 4 with a third polish (I used Zoya - Mimi), stop halfway the nail to keep a part of the first sponged layer visible;

6. repeat step 2, 3 & 4 with a fourth polish (I used Orly - Out Of This World), only cover the tip (one quarter) of your nail; 

And you're done! The result can be a bit bumpy, so cover the nail with a thick layer of topcoat.

*of course you don't have to use so much different polishes, even with two colours you can make a nice gradient manicure, but with more colours the result will be more.. eh.. gradient :O 

Thanks for watching and good luck with the sponging! :h

How To Ruin Your Manicure - Lesson 1 ;)

Why do I always feel the need to ruin a beautiful manicure?! xP 

I thought a little Konad would be nice, well... *note to self: improve the stamping skills first 

Ok ok, I'm exaggerating just a little. ;) 'Cause I love the combination! I used imageplate M69 and China Glaze Millennium for stamping, but I'm going to look for a better silver stamping polish, any ideas?

Thanks for watching!

Essie - Sew Psyched

sunlight

Isn't that a brilliant color? This is Sew Psyched from the Essie Fall Collection 2010. When I saw the first swatches of Sew Psyched I knew that this was a musthave for me... It's a dusty, greyish green with a subtle silver shimmer in it. If you click on the picture you can see that lovely shimmer better. Great polish for fall!

I had some trouble with the application (thick, dries fast resulting in an uneven surface), but the colour made me forget all of that.

Thanks for watching!

Milani - Hi-Tech

sunlight

During my vacation on Corsica the sun shone almost every day, luckily I took a prismatic nail polish with me. This is Milani - Hi-Tech, a beautiful limegreen with prismatic particles. This polish rocked that hard on my nails... my camera couldn't capture it like I wanted. I love-love-love greens and prismatic polishes, so Hi-Tech is definitely a winner!

The formula was somewhat disappointing, though. Hi-Tech is quite sheer and even after three coats I had to put a little extra polish on some nails to cover some bald spots.  

Thanks for watching!

Essie - Wife Goes On

sunlight

Of course I polished the nails of my hands with Essie - Wife Goes On too. Actually I don't have much to say about it... Spectacular colour, easy to apply, two coats. Love it! 

Thanks for watching!

I'm back!

sunlight!

I'm back from Corsica! What a beautiful island, it was a dream vacation.. :d

Of course I made nail pictures which I will post soon, but first I have to unpack. :( On my toenails: Essie - Wife Goes On with some nail stickers, a great beach pedi if I may say.

Thanks for watching!