Essence Plant the Planet - swatches and review

It's been a while since I did a proper review of a polish so today it's time!
Up for review is a polish I got my hands on through a swop with the wonderful Christine at Polished Marvels. This is Plant the Planet from Essence!

I actually used this polish to be the mankini of my Borat Nails :) but here it is in its own glory! It's an amazing bright lime green polish that makes you smile!

GOOD TO KNOW:

Type of polish: Cream.

Color: A bright lime green leaning towards yellow.

Number of coats: Three.

Formula: Very nice! Easy to control and very self leveling.

Brush: Good! Wide, which I like.

Top Coat: Yes, one coat. 

Color accuracy in pictures: Accurate.

Grade: 4/5

This is such a bright and happy polish! If you are in to lime greens this one is a must!
Being a florist and a plant lover I also like the name! It's perfect for me! The collection name "Guerilla Gardening" is very suitable too since I've been into "Guerilla Floristry". ;)

How do you like Plant the Planet?
Have you ever done any guerilla gardening?

Nordic Cap Nail Polish Haul

I finally found a Nordic Cap water hole at a grocery store nearby! And as you can see I went a little bit crazy and bought almost one of each color that they had... Oups!
But they are ridiculously cheap! 10 SEK each! That is about €1 or £1 or $1.50 each! 11 ml in each polish.

I have already tried out two of them, the white one in my Cherry Nails and the pale pink one in my Ice Cream Nails. Ok formula and brush. Great for nail art! It's a shame the names are so utterly boring though...

Nordic Cap is a Swedish brand and you can get them at large grocery stores like Willy's (this must be a hilarious name for English readers! LOL! In Swedish it's just a name) and at CityGross.

NP13, NP14

NP08, NP20

NP21, NP22

NP15, NP16, NP07

How do you like Nordic Cap?

Which one is your favorite color?

Borat Bathing Suit Nails :)

This is the last theme of the "Step Into Summer" Challenge and it's called "Inspired by a Bathing Suit". I didn't find any fun or beautiful pattern of a "normal" bathing suit so I decided to do something fun instead :) And you sure need a lot of humor to appreciate this manicure ;)

I'm not a Borat fan really. Sometimes he's funny but mostly just embarrassing. Sorry all Borat fans out there ;) However I admire his courage to do all his crazy things and this bathing suit is one of them. It takes a lot of guts to wear this bathing suit in public.

I hope you have enjoyed all my manicures in this challenge! I'll probably do a summary of them soon to refresh your memory ;)

Essence Plant the Planet and Essie Mink Muffs

How do you like my Borat Nails?

What are your opinions on Borat?

Cherry Nails - swatches

One of the themes in the "Step Into Summer" Challenge is "Favorite Summer Fruit" and today I'm doing that one.

My favorite summer fruit is no doubt cherries! So for me there was no question on what to do for this challenge. I hope you like my version of cherry nails!

I am very happy with the result! I like the shape, the glossiness and that they look almost eatable! :)

I used the following polishes for this manicure:
China Glaze Holly-Day, Barry M Red Black and Nordic Cap NP13

Now I have only one more challenge to do before I'm done and that is the one inspired by a bathing suit. But don't worry! I know exactly what to do ;)

How do you like my cherry nails?

What is your favorite summer fruit?

Blog Your Heart Out Award Nomination!

Ages ago I got a "Blog Your Heart Out" nomination from the lovely Red Frog at Red Polish Or Bad Polish. It's high time I collected this award! So sorry for the delay...

This award is very straight forward! Answer five questions and nominate five bloggers with less than 100 followers. This is to help new bloggers to get more followers and when I got the award I had less than 100 followers. So here we go!

The 5 questions to answer:
1. What/who encouraged you to start blogging?
My blog started when my dear friend Goldie got me into nail polishes. At first it was a way for me to show her what I was wearing on my nails.

2. How did you chose what topic(s) to blog about?
Same answer as above really. Instead of sending my friend e-mails or MMS's of what I was wearing on my nails I did a blog post about it :)

3. What is something that most people don't know about you?
I am 25% Finnish so I can be really hot tempered ;) Lol!

4. What three words describe your style?
For my nail style it's: blue, green and in-your-face! Lol! :D

5. What do you like to do when you are not blogging?
I like to hunt for nail polishes, cuddle my cat, sleep, read, bake, watch TV and chat to my friends :)

Here are the 5 gorgeous blogs I'm nominating for this award: 
(At the moment they all have less than 100 followers as the rule say)
Polished Marvels (Switzerland) - so friendly, witty and shows amazing polishes!
Colorful Cupcake Cat (Iceland) - so fun and creative!
Gelic' Nail Art (Sweden) - so incredibly creative and gorgeous nails!
The Beauty Case (Italy) - such a unique style and wonderful polishes!
Polished Prescription (USA) - so positive and creative!

I hope you accept this nomination ladies and I hope you get lots of new followers! I'm so looking forward to read your answers! If you want to can can put the award logo on your blogs! It's optional :) Don't forget to tell the bloggers you are nominating!

Comparison of "Black" Holos

For this Holo Friday I have a comparison of black holos for you! I put black in quotation marks because it's actually one black, one very dark grey and one grey holo that I'm comparing for you. But they are all shades of black anyhow ;)

These are the stars of today's comparison:

From left to right:

Different Dimension - Black Dahlia

Jade - Magia

Dance Legend - #2 Spacecraft

I did two coats of each with no top coat according to the following:

Index finger - Black Dahlia

Middle finger - Magia

Ring finger - Spacecraft

Pinkie - Black Dahlia

As you can see there are different kinds of black base colors, but there is also different kinds of rainbows. Black Dahlia has the weakest and most scattered rainbows whereas Spacecraft has the strongest and the most linear one. Magia has something in between. 

Black Dahlia also has iridescent purple/blue/green glitters in it but those glitters are extremely camera shy.

Spacecraft and Magia have better formulas than Black Dahlia which is a bit on the thick side probably due to the iridescent glitter.

Which one is your favorite and why?

Have you tried any of them yourself?

Ice Cream Nails - swatches

As July is coming to an end soon, it's high time for another challenge from the "Step Into Summer Challenge" by the Hobby Polish Bloggers!
This time the theme is "Ice cream"! Yummy!

I decided to try one of my Barry M Nail Art Pens to do the cream on top of my ice cream cones and it was fairly good. It annoyed me that you could only get very thin lines or very thick lines. Nothing in between. But perhaps it's me who needs to practice more...?

I hope you feel the urge for some ice cream after viewing these! Then I know that I've done a good job! ;)

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

Orly Prince Charming

H&M Nerd

Nordic Cap NP14

Barry M Nail Art Pen in White

How do you like my ice cream nails?

Did they make you feel an urge for ice cream? ;)

Mallorca Nail Polish Haul

My lovely sweet friend Goldie has been to Mallorca and she brought home a whole bunch of gorgeous nail polishes! All from brands not available in Sweden which is even more great fun!!

I was over the moon when she gave me polishes from Kiko, Catrice, Essence and Belle! From the bottom of my heart: Thank you so much Goldie!! I love you! <3

Catrice Petropolitan and Catrice Blue Highway (LE)

Catrice I'm Not A Greenager and Catrice Squeeze Me

Essence Chic Reloaded and Essence I'm the Boss!

Belle Taffy Apple (LE) and Kiko #300 Pearly Malachite Green

Kiko #296 Meadow Green and Kiko #343 Verde Primavera

As you can see Goldie knows exactly what makes my heart beat faster - blue, green and grey! I'm so looking forward to try all of these beauties!
I can't pick a favorite, but if push comes to shove, I'll have to choose the blue shimmer Kiko polish #300, "Pearly Malachite Green".

Did you enjoy this haul?

Which one is your favorite?

3D Textured Star Nails - swatches

Besides the Vintage Challenge I'm also doing the "Step Into Summer Challenge" created by the Hobby Polish Bloggers. Today it's time for the challenge named "3D".

I guess you can interpret 3D in many ways but I chose to interpret it with textured polishes and some fimo stars :)

The purple polish is Blue Bell #2064 from Swedish Depend's Limited Collection "Rough Sparkles". The blue French tips are made with Isadora's Pool Crush. The fimo stars are bought at Top Shop in London.

The stars are attached with one coat of Seche Vite and that gives you a chance to see the textured polishes glossy. They get so glittery!!

How do you like my textured star nails?

This is what the other lovely ladies are doing:

Summary of the Vintage Challenge

What a marvelous week last week was with the Vintage Challenge! I got to know new lovely bloggers and laid my eyes on an array of beautiful vintage polishes!

I'm also very happy to see that quite a lot of other polish lovers looked at all our vintage polishes as well! So far we've had over 5500 views! That's more than I'd ever dreamt of!

Thank you so much all of you that have participated, commented and viewed our vintage posts! And a very special thanks to Christine who has hosted this challenge with me! We had a blast!!

I've made a short summary of what I showed last week. Enjoy them one last time!

OPI Dating a Royal

Zoya Posh

China Glaze Four Leaf Clover

OPI Mad as a Hatter

China Glaze Visit Me in Prism

China Glaze Towel Boy Toy

French Bow Nail Art

Which vintage polish was your favorite?

Vintage Challenge: French Bow Nails - swatches

Today on the last day of this Vintage Challenge I've got a simple but beautiful nail art to show you.

There was no theme for this nail art challenge. The only rule was to use only polishes I've showed you earlier this week. I chose the gorgeous red Zoya Posh and and the stunning plum holo China Glaze Visit Me in Prism.

This type of nail art has different names but I've chosen to call it "French Bows" because if you look at the plum tip it looks like the upper half of a bow :)

I did not use any striping tape or such. I did them by free hand. That's why they look crooked. Lol!

They did turn out a bit X-massy, but I still like the result. Fast and easy if you want to spice up your nails quickly. Maybe I'll do them again for X-mas but with white bows instead of plum ones :)

How do you like my French Bow Nails?

What would you call this type of nail art?

Vintage Challenge: China Glaze Towel Boy Toy - swatches and review

Today it's time for my favorite golden oldie and for me it was fairly obvious what to show you.

Turquoise is my favorite color above all other colors and especially bright turquoise leaning towards blue. This polish tics all those boxes - meet China Glaze's Towel Boy Toy!

Towel Boy Toy is a fusion of neon and shimmer and it was released the summer of 2010 as part of the Poolside Collection.

If you want to know more about this challenge and how to join it click here.

GOOD TO KNOW:

Type of polish: Neon/shimmer.

Color: A turquoise leaning towards blue packed with bright turquoise shimmer.

Number of coats: Three. You can still see a bit of VNL so perhaps you need four coats.

Formula: A nice formula. The first coat is pretty streaky but after that it gets much better. Easy to control.

Brush: Nice brush. No complaints.

Top Coat: Yes. Due to the neon qualities it dries matte so a top coat is a must if you want it shiny.

Color accuracy in pictures: Fairly accurate, perhaps a bit less blue and more turquoise looking live. This polish was extremely hard to capture!! In most pictures it turned out just plain light blue. It drove me crazy for a while!!

Grade: 5++++/5

I love the color of this polish!! To me it's the perfect turquoise! I normally don't like polishes that requires too many coats but this polish is an exception. I'd apply ten coats if I'd have to to wear this beauty!

How do you like Towel Boy Toy?
What is your favorite vintage polish?