Make your own gold flakes top coat - tutorial

Instead of buying an expensive 18 K gold top coat (like for example OPI The Man with the Golden Gun) you can easily make your nails look like you are wearing one! All you need is a gold polish and some plastic foil.
I've found this great tip on thebeautydepartment.com! The picture belongs to them.

photos/post/graphic design: Kristin Ess

How to do it:
1) First start off with a base colour.
2) To achieve the golden speckles, take a small piece of plastic foil and crinkle it up.
3) While holding most of the crinkled plastic in your hand, paint some of the gold nail polish onto the plastic. Before blotting the plastic on your nail, start by dabbing the crinkled plastic onto a paper towel to remove any excess nail polish.
4) Dab carefully on to your nails. You may have to reapply the gold polish onto the plastic bag every couple of nails.
5) Do a clean up to remove access polish.
6) To seal off the manicure apply your favorite clear top coat.

I have tried this and it's not hard, but as we all know - practise makes perfect ;)

You can also apply this technique with other colours of course. Maybe white on black for a black marble effect?  

Will you try this technique?

Which colours would you choose?

Gold speckled minty green gradient - swatches

This is a fun minty green gradient finished off with OPI's 18 K gold top coat "The Man with the Golden Gun".
The gradient could have been better made, but I really like the finishing touch with the gold flakes :) I think gold goes very well with this minty turquoise green actually! :)
This is also my contribution to our new recurrent Green Wednesday :)

To make the gradient I've used the following polishes: (from left to right)

Ciaté Pepperminty

H&M Bella's Choice

Misa Dirty, Sexy, Money

Did you enjoy my golden minty gradient? ;)

What is your favourite colour to match with gold?

Gina Tricot Holographic Pink - swatches and review

This is the last polish I have to show you from Gina Tricot's Holographic Mini Collection. This is Holographic Pink!

Before I've shown you green, blue and multi and, in my opinion, only the green one is holographic. I think you all have agreed with me too ;) This one is also a shame to call holo!! It's not holo at all! And since I'm not really a pink polish fan I don't really like the colour either to be honest...

But you can't always show high score polishes can you? ;) If you like pink perhaps you like this....? Or? ;)

GOOD TO KNOW ABOUT HOLOGRAPHIC PINK:

Type of polish: Something between shimmer and foil (Label says holo, but I say no ;)).

Colour: A medium pink (with hints towards heather pink) packed with silver shimmer and micro silver glitters.

Opacity: Good! This is two coats.

Drying time: Normal.

Formula: Good! The texture is nice and it stays where you want it to.

Brush: Ok. A bit thin which gives the polish a bit of a streaky look. This could easily have been avoided with a thicker brush.

Shine: Shiny on its own. No top coat in these pictures.

Accurate colour, photo vs IRL: Accurate. A bit more sparkly and glittery IRL. In the daylight picture you can really see all the silver shimmer in this polish.

Grade: 1/5 :/

To me this polish isn't hardly worth the 10 kr (£1 or $1.5) I bought it for on sale... But the whole holo collection was sold as a pack of four so I had no choice since I wanted the others.
Or am I having a bad day...? Perhaps I'd like this polish better another day...? ;)

Are you having a good day? Do you like this polish more than I do...? ;)

H&M Why so Blue - swatches and review

Yey! It's Blue Monday again! :D
I'm joining in with a new blue H&M polish called Why so Blue.
This is a great polish with a great formula and a beautiful blue shade! Enjoy! :)

GOOD TO KNOW ABOUT WHY SO BLUE:

Type of polish: Cream with a slight shimmer effect.

Colour: A dusky dark blue with turquiose and purple shimmer. 

Possible dupe: Mavala Smoky Blue (I will do a comparison of these two soon).

Opacity: Great! This is two coats, but if I hadn't messed up while applying it, one coat would have been enough!! This is a one coater ladies!!! :D

Drying time: Normal. Perhaps even a bit faster since it's a one coater ;)

Formula: Excellent!! Perfect formula and so easy to apply!! It stays exactly where you want it to!

Brush: Good! A bit on the thin side for me ;) but still very easy to work with.

Shine: Shiny on its own so I have no top coat in these pictures.

Accurate colour, photo vs IRL: Quite accurate colourwise. The best picture is the first one.

Grade: 5-/5 :D

I really like this polish!! The formula is great and the colour is such a beautiful dusky shade of blue!! The only downside is that the shimmer is much more visible in the bottle than on the nails... That is the only reason I gave it 5- instead of 5. Maybe the shimmer will be more visible if I'll wear it in the summer... I'll have to get back to you on that! ;)

How do you feel about this polish?

Are you into dusky colours?

Katie Nails inspired by "Horton Hears a Who"

Today's nail art for this Nail Art Sunday is definitely not my best but I want to show them to you anyway because I've really fallen in love with the source of inspiration - Katie from the movie "Horton Hears a Who".

If you are not familiar with this yellow little darling I've included a picture at the bottom. Click on that picture and you will see the most adorable film clip.
Watch it and be prepared to be smile ;) But look at the nails first please ;)

 I've used the following polishes: (from left to right)

Ciaté Big Yellow Taxi

H&M Nerd

China Glaze Life Preserver

Barry M Matte White

Illamasqua Boosh

Rimmel Portobello Pink

Orly Prince Charming

Click on this picture to see a video with Katie!

Have you fallen for Katie too now? ;)

Ciaté Pepperminty - swatches and review

This is my first work free weekend since September!!! Jippie!!! :D So how do I celebrate and make the most out of it...? I'm at home having a very soar throat and cough :( Yay... Anyway, this doesn't stop me from doing my nails and showing them to you! :)

This is a great minty turquoise polish from Ciaté which Goldie has kindly lent to me! :D The formula is great and I don't think I've ever had so many compliment from customers as when I wore this yesterday at work!! :D I guess people are really longing for spring now here in snowy, freezing Sweden :)
Now! Let's eyeball this darling shall we? :)

GOOD TO KNOW ABOUT PEPPERMINTY:

Type of polish: Cream.

Colour: A minty pale green turquiose.

Opacity: Very good! This is two coats.

Drying time: Normal.

Formula: Very good! Very nice formula! It stays where you want it to.

Brush: Excellent! Thick, firm and very easy to work with! I love Ciaté's brushes! :D

Shine: Very shiny on its own. No top coat in these pictures.

Accurate colour, photo vs IRL: Quite accurate. The slightly more greenish picture is the most accurate.

Grade: 4+/5 :)

This is a great spring colour! It's so fresh and crispy that you can almost taste the peppermint in your mouth ;) The formula is great too! And this one actually suits my skintone in my point of view :) If it had been more bright and a one coater I'd have given it 5/5 ;) I'm getting spoiled with those one coaters now ;)

Do you like Pepperminty?

Nubar Absolute - swatches and review

For this Holo Friday I want to show you a holo polish that has been laying untried for years (!?) in my Helmer. This is a light blue polish with a somewhat weaker holo effect but still very pretty :)
This is three coats of Absolute on top of Barry M Blueberry (a light blue cream polish).

GOOD TO KNOW:

Type of polish: Holographic.

Colour: A light blue with a holographic effect.

Collection: Nubar Prism Collection 2010.

Opacity: Hm... This polish is sheer. I cannot sugar coat this for you ;) This is three coats over Barry M's Blueberry. If you apply Absolute over an opaque polish you can apply just one or two coats. I applied three coats to get the maximum holo effect.

Drying time: A bit slower than normal. This could be due to the number of layers applied though ;)

Formula: A bit thin and a tiny bit runny too. Not hard to apply though.

Brush: Good! Not as thick as I like them ;) but ok to work with.

Shine: Very shiny on its own so there is no top coat in these pictures.

Accurate colour, photo vs IRL: Quite accurate colourwise, but the holo effect is a bit more visible IRL even though it's quite a weak holo.

Grade: 3+/5 :)

This is a really low grade for a holo polish since I love holo polishes, but I can't get away from the fact that it is so thin and weakly pigmented...
The base colour is lovely and the holo effect is there but a bit subtle ;)
I might now understand why I left it untried for so long... ;)

How do you like Absolute?

Do you have any other polish from this collection?

New polishes from W7!

I thought you maybe wanted to see my new W7 polishes that I got after a lot of fuss and bad luck ;)
Read about the fuss here if you are interested and haven't read it ;)

W7 Lava Flow

W7 Mosaic

W7 Salt n Pepper

W7 Metallic Neptune

As I have this thing for milky glitterpolishes I like those best but look at the duochrome effect on the last one!!! :D

Due to the problems mentioned above I've got three spare bottles of each glitter polish, so if anyone is interested in doing a swap, send me a private e-mail! ;) 

You don't have to live in Sweden.

Have you tried any polishes from W7?

Broken bottles - think before ordering from this seller!

Today I want to tell you what happened just before Christmas last year when I ordered nail polishes from the U.K based seller fragrancemad.com
 
After seeing some beautiful milkywhite glitter polishes from W7 at Gelic's I ordered nine bottles from fragrancemad.com. After a week or so I got them and collected the parcel at my local post office.

Immediately I understood something was wrong because when I got the parcel in my hands it sounded like there was a rattle snake in it :/ I rushed home and opened it and you can imagine my disappointment when I saw this mess...

One bottle had broken and covered all the others in dried nail polish and glass pieces!!! And it must have happened early because the polish was completely dry.

When packing them they had just lain them in a pile in the bottom of the box and then just added some normal flat plastic on them!?!? There was a gap of merely air almost 10 cm to the top of the box!!! Idiots!!!

I got so angry!! Five of these bottles were supposed to be Christmas presents and it was already the 20th of December?!?! Arrrgghhhh! >:(
You can't give away bottles covered in dried polish and glass pieces!!! :(

So I wrote to fragrancemad.com and after censoring the mail twice (removing all the bad words and name callings ;)), I ended up sending them this:
"I've just received my order from you containing nine W7 nail polish bottles.
I've never seen such poor packing (and I order a lot online) and as a result one of the bottles had broken in thousand pieces and damaged all other bottles!
These nine polishes were supposed to be x-mas presents but I can't possibly give away any of them now! They are covered in nail polish and pieces of sharp glass has stuck on them as the broken bottle polish has dried!I am so disappointed!!
I want nine new bottles according to the order (much better packed!!) and if you want me to return the mess I'd like a returns label.
I have pictures of the damaged goods if you need to see it.
Please advise a.s.a.p."

The day after I received this reply:
"I'm really sorry about this, the woman who packs our orders has obviously done a bad job. I have made a replacement order this morning and it will be posted today. If any of the polishes you received are usable please keep them, or throw them away if not. I'm so sorry for the inconvenience in not being able to give the polishes as Christmas presents, and I hope that the replacements are with you soon. I will post by tracked delivery so they should be faster than the original order. Have a happy Christmas, and once again I'm really sorry for this mistake."

Five days later I received a note that I had a pacel to collect. This time a sign-for-parcel (rek as we say in Swedish ;)). This time the parcel was even bigger, actually ridiculously big for nine polish bottles ;) 
I got it and almost fainted of fury!! The sound from the parcel was like it was a rattle snake in it!!! Aaaarrrgghhh!!!
I ran home and held my breath as I opened it.... The packaging was appallingly bad again but they were not broken... puh... ;)

So I do not recommend this seller but I think they handled it ok during the circumstances (I mean he did say sorry three times ;)) 
So now I've got eight extra bottles of W7 that after cleaning will be as good as new - I hope ;)

Have you had any bad luck like this with broken bottles? 

Isdora Beetle Green - swatches and review

Today it's the first time I'm joining in on Green Wednesday! Yeeey!! :D It's quite a new theme day but since I love green polishes it's not hard for me to join in at all ;) I've actually ordered quite a few new green ones just a couple of days ago! :D I can't wait to get them!!! :D

Anyway, this is an amazing green polish that probably most Swedish bloggers own or have seen quite a few times already ;) but sometimes I need a kick in the bottom before I realize a polish's magnitude ;) This time that kick was provided by Sminkan in form of her beautiful pictures of this polish ;)
Enough rambling ;) here is the beautiful Beetle Green!

 GOOD TO KNOW:

Type of polish: Shimmer.

Colour: A dark almost black green base packed with so much dark green shimmer that it almost looks metallic.

Opacity: Very good! This is two coats. If you do one thick coat you might get away with one coat ;)

Drying time: Normal.

Formula: Very good! Nice texture and easy to work with. Stays where you want it to.

Brush: Excellent! Very thick (it's Isadora's wide brush and it's W I D E ;)), firm and very easy to apply with!

Shine: Very shiny on its own, but I have one coat of Seche Vite in these pictures.

Accurate colour, photo vs IRL: Accurate. What you see is what you get! ;)

Grade: 5++/5 :D

I L O V E this polish! I've got this thing for blackened colours right not, preferably green and blue ones ;) so this is definitely my cup of tea!! One of my favourite teas right now actually!! :)
The colour is wonderful and so is the formula! I just can't believe I didn't get that months ago... I could have bought and worn this ages ago... ;)

How do you like Beetle Green?

Have you also been slow on getting a polish that later 

turned out to be one of your favourites...? ;)

Ciaté Headliner - swatches and review

I had been lemming Headliner for quite some time when it suddenly appeared in my Ciaté advent calendar! :D I think you can guess my excitement!!! ;)
And I wasn't disappointed at all after having applied it! It's even more gorgeous on the nails than in the bottle and it's a one coater! I absolutely love this polish and I can definitely see myself buying this polish in a full bottle size.
Let's look at this beauty shall we?! :)

GOOD TO KNOW:

Type of polish: Cream.

Colour: A dusky turquoise.

Opacity: Excellent! This is one coat! :D

Drying time: Normal.

Formula: Excellent! Perfect texture and very easy to work with. Stays where you want it to.

Brush: Very good! Thick, firm and very easy to apply with! :D

Shine: Very shiny on its own, but I have one coat of Seche Vite in these pictures.

Accurate colour, photo vs IRL: The correct colour is actually something between the blue looking pictures and the green looking picture. It's absolutely gorgeous!! :D

Grade: 5+++/5 :D

This polish is so beautiful and has such great qualities! It has actually won the Kiss and Makeup Award! So it's just not me thinking that! ;)
If you feel that you recognize it I can tell you that this was the polish I used as base for my Sheep Nails :)

Do you fancy Headliner?