Golden Oldie Thursday #29: Holographic

So here is the first of my many challenge manis that I just kept postponing.

Yay!! One of my favourite polish finishes was part of the GOT polish challenge!!! Too bad I was holidaying in Sweden and totally forgot to bring an old linear holo polish. I did bring Essie Carnival though so after the initial annoyance I got going with the polishes that I've actually brought.

I decided to use nails inc. hyde park gate as base for this and then glitter topping it all :D

I stamped my index finger with Vivid Lacquer plate 019 - I used a Konad lilac polish that I've had for a long time, but it really didn't give the colour pay off I was hoping for. I ended up finishing it off with a layer of Carnival.

I topped my middle and ring finger with Lynnderella Bibbety Bobbity Boo Blue and then topped it up further with Carnival :D.

And in order for thumb and pinkie to not feel left out I did two layers of Carnival for good measure :D

And an out-of-focus version to underline the holographic glitters:

Stay tuned for more challenges ;).

Golden Oldie Thursday #5: Green

So here is my GOT polish post for this week. One of these greens here is actually one of my very old polishes.

Illamasqua Rampage is from 2009 I think. Back when Raindrops was released, I'd read about the three polishes made by fans of the brand at Scrangie's blog - and she had a promo code, so naturally I bought those plus some others, Rampage among them.

For the leafy pattern on my thumb and pinky I used nails inc. emerald street which I got through a lucky dip at their home page two years ago...thank you my british mules for being helpful back then before the horrendous Royal Mail scandal.

I decided to stamp on top of Rampage and to make it pop I picked out my Nubar Reclaim, my first ever Holo back before I really knew what a holo was. And I got it for real cheap at BeautyBay at a time where they shipped fast and had reasonable prices on them. By the way, I used Moyou Pro Collection no. 02.

Attitude Adjust-mint, which is on my ring finger, was in my first batch of Lynnderellas bought through preorder at Llarowe, it was her first shipment in December 2011.

For some strange reason it decided to chip on me less than a day after I did this manicure - and my Dior gel top coat also shrunk Rampage - that's a first for me!!

Mount Yu is the base for the leafy nail art and is an Elevation polish. It is also a "first batcher" - I purchased it back in November 2012.

Hopefully you enjoyed this and hurry on over and check the other girls and their green fingers ;)

Happy Birthday to the twins

A little personal post today and it will be short as well. Today six years ago my world changed up-side down when I gave birth to my lovely twin girls. And our lives have never been the same.

Their youngest cousin is born three days before them so we have made it a tradition to celebrate all three at the same day, it makes birthday celebrations a little less stressful and hectic. We held their party yesterday and today is more relaxed just the four of us. Right now they are watching Disney's Cinderella for the gazillionth time :D

What I wanted to share as well is the mani I made for their brithday celebration.
Since I had so much to do I decided on a fairly simple one and then make it a bit more festive with some glitter on top.

I don't do red often but I do have a couple for situations like this. Perceval from a-england has become my go-to red, it is stunningly beautiful!!! A-england polishes are always a good choice I still have to come across a dud formula on these, and I have quite the collection. They glide on like butter and are opaque in one coat, this one is no exception.

I've had Lynnderella One Nutty Fruitcake for almost two years and only swatched it on a nail wheel so I thought this was a good opportunity to get this out of the Helmer and show it off. This is one coat so there is good pay-off on this. I got this kind of coverage with very little effort, though I had to dabble a little.

I can see how bad my light is at my nail polish area because I TOTALLY missed the middle finger was that unevenly painted - many apologies :D

Wednesday Polish Picture Spam - on a Thursday ;)

And here are some manis I never got around to blog about. These have some slight colour issues, ie. they are not really colour correct:

a-england Excalibur, two coats. Red yellowy tinge to my fingers.

a-ngland Excalibur w/Lynnderella The Glittering Crowd

Rescue Beauty Lounge MisMas

MisMas is way more purple in real life than this shows you but I hope you'll enjoy it anyway ;) - I think I'll do a reswatch at a later point and see if my light tent can change that.

RBL MisMas w/Lynnderella Bride of Franken

Procrastination

I am trying awfully hard to get my fruit mani done, I cannot decide whether I should do one fruit only, five fruits or one fruit with accent fruit...haha, just made myself laugh. I have my bow mani ready but I'd rather post that together with the fruit mani. So what to do instead? THIS:

 

 

Lynnderella Bride of Franken on top of Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas=Awesomesauce!!


Sorry for the tip wear - got my nails stuck in a couple of film cans at work that day :D


See you all later!!

Challenge Week 10 & 11: Polka Dot Mani and St. Patrick's Day Mani (picture heavy)

So there seem to be a trend forming now: I have very little time to post, so I do two challenges at a time :D. Well it works for me this way at the moment so I won't beat myself up about it more than necessary...

I love doing dots on my nails, it is a very simple design that looks very intricate and as if you used a lot of time on it. It can make a manicure go from good to WOW depending on colour choice, which is something right up my alley, haha.

Recently I did my first polish swap with Sheila from Pointless Café and was lucky enough to get my little hands on the two Dior Spring 2012 colours Waterlily and Forget-Me-Not. They are rose scented, but not heavily so, and I have been able to enjoy the awesomeness of the two colours.

According to some people in the know, Waterlily is a close dupe to Chanel's Jade so if you have been wanting that for a long time you may feel satisfied with this one. I myself don't own Jade so I can't say for certain. I love my Waterlily I think it is ABSOLUTELY stunning. Forget-Me-Not is close in colour to Dior's own Purple Mix, but F-M-N is lighter and less dusty in tone. If any of you feel like it, I'll be happy to do a comparison post...

I had something in mind with the polka dots, but it didn't manifest itself the way I'd pictured it.

The application was a little bit tricky with Waterlily, it is surprisingly thick, but I managed ok with two coats, and it is worth the hassle in my opinion. Forget-Me-Not was a dream to work with in the usual top notch quality of a Dior creme.

Waterlily is almost colour correct in these pictures even though they are taken with flash, please note the awesome shimmer in it:

In my mind's eye it made all sorts of sense to mix small and large dots, but when I got to my middle finger it just looked messy and not at all cute!!

Unfortunately I was not as lucky with Forget-Me-Not, it photographs darker than it really is:

The minute I realised the small dots weren't working, I dropped them, haha.

Then the other hand looked like this:

This looks much more composed and elegant somehow...

I actually have gotten remarks on this mani, a guy at a ticket booth thought it looked very complicated...I hearted him so much in that moment :D

I need to make a light box or flash reflector - I am getting annoyed with heavy shadows and colour incorrect pictures ;)

I was really pleased with this mani since I got a great design out of very little effort, something that looked really good and noticeable. And the colours are to die for!!

For my Week 11 mani, St. Paddy's day, I have chosen two lovely colours in a layering combo. One is a dusty, dark, forest green polish from GOSH's LE collection called Forest Floor and Lynnderella All Hallow's Eve, a "transparent" green base with golden shimmer, green, gold and black hex glitter in different sizes and square gold glitter. At least that is what I have seen so far...

Recently Lynnderella announced All Hallow's Eve will be discontinued which I think is such a shame. This is green gorgeousness in a bottle and really shows off what is so great about her polishes: Deep, complex and filled with an incredible amount of different glitters in all shapes and sizes. Feast your eyes on these relatively okay pictures:

Hopefully you enjoyed watching these pictures, I sure enjoyed doing these swatches.

What do you think about glitters and Lynnderella? And more importantly, what did you do for St. Patricks Day?

Challenge Week 6: Half Moon Mani

So this week's year challenge coinsided with a Danish film prize award celebration which I attended together with my mom - and that meant I wanted to go all-in bling, haha.

But one bad thing happened during the past week: my mobile phone which I have used for a larger part of my pictures, took a deep bow and left. And my new phone is really no good for capturing anything closer than 10 yards away! So I apologise beforehand for the crappy pictures you are about to be subjected to.

I used the following polishes for this:
a-england Escalon
a-england Bridal Veil
Lynnderella Shape Shifter

I used nail guides to get the "moon" shape.

As you can see they are one blurry mess but luckily you can somehow get an idea of where I wanted to go with this. It looked awesome in person but I still need to figure out a way to get the properly rounded "moons" with my nail guides. I think I will try the reinforcer technique next time ;)

Hope you enjoyed this rather blurry version of the 52 week challenge.

Lynnderella Attitude Adjust-mint

I have a little minty gem to show you, one that I have fallen totally in love with: Lynnderella's Attitude Adjust-mint, a lovely pale mint coloured polish filled with shimmer, glitter and happiness.

After seeing swatches on her own blog, I thought I would try to swatch it with some different pastel to medium green colours, just to see how different it would look.

I have used the following colours:

Thumb: No base colour
Index: Revlon Minty
Middle: nails inc Hyde Gate Park
Ring: Jordana Mint Candy
Little: Essie Greenport

One coat base colour, two coats Attitude Adjust-mint.

All pictures here are taken in indirect sunlight:

Pardon my dry cuticles - winter is at full throttle here in Denmark, and my hands suffer dearly.

I had an accident two seconds after applying polish on my thumb, but didn't realise it until too late.

Ooops, had an encounter with a film can earlier, so my index suffered a minor chip.

And clean up obviously wasn't my first priority after applying :D

As with many of Lynnderella polishes it takes some practice before you get the hang of applying them properly. The formula was on the thick side and because of the glitter density it takes patience and good application skills. Though I have been doing my nails for quite some time now, I still find I lack in those departments - but then it is good for me I have some more to practice with.

My husband, the unwittingly enabler

I love my husband very much, never as much as when he decides to make me happy ( even though he obviously don't get this particular obsession of mine) by giving me nail polish gift certificates for birthday and Christmas:

My birthday present arrived the second week of january:

360, Locavore, Orbis Non Suficit, Mismas

And then a couple of days later, my christmas present:

Ozotic 505, Hits Dionisio, Hits Tango, Glitter Gal 10 to Midnight

Lovely Lynnderellas and Glitter Tamer (looking forward to see how good this works, despite the stink)

He shakes his head and smiles wryly but still lends a listening ear to my polish related ramblings...I tell you, that is true love, that is!!