MAC Style Clan

So, this is a super weird polish. Do you remember when I chose sally hansen Pumpkin Spice to be the nemesis of my polish year 2011? Well, this one comes close. I snatched it up at the beauty blogger fleamarket last fall, and expected much more from a taupe with copper glitter. Well, I was wrong.

This colour is what a mud-caked army uniform looks like after it has never been washed. The copper glitters don’t really help the whole thing either. All in all, this is Santorum 2.o. I’m not very happy with it…

Above: daylight. Below: artificial light, no flashBelow: flash

 

Fiiiiive minutes, donkey, for five minutes would you not be yourself?

Yeah, that’s what I though of when I heard that this OPI polish was called “Are we there yet?”. When we were children, we annoyed my parents mostly by saying stuff like “I need to pee”, “I’m hungry”, “I’m thirsty”, “I don’t want to sit in the car”, “I’m tired”, “My feet hurt”… well, if you said you don’t know what I’m talking about, I think you’d be a spoof!

Are we there yet? is an orange shimmery polish from the Touring America collection. They are still readily available here in Austria and I have seen them in online stores. I used two coats for full coverage, and I must say that this is not my type of orange. Above: daylight. Below: artificial light, no flash

What kind of oranges do you like?

Duochromes are a nail-addicts best friend

I hope you don’t have the total Models Own Beetlejuice Collection overload – that’s why I decided to wait and post my swatches every now and then. The Beetlejuice polishes are readily avalable from Models Own, and three new ones will be added to the collection soon. So here is Models Own Purple Blue; which is not a colour shifting (duochrome) polish as we know them!

Purple Blueisa colour shifting polish, but it also is a glassfleck. Fascinating, isn’t it? What does it mean, you will ask? Well, I found the application much easier – I only needed two coats, while I used more coats on some of the other Beetlejuice polishes. Some duochromes even have to be layered over black, otherwhise you’ll end up using half the bottle for opacity. Also, because Purple Blue is a glassfleck, you can spot some purple flecks in the blue and some blue flecks in the purple, which is, if you ask me, the aspect that sets this duochrome apart from others.

So, here come the pics (daylight – that’s how the colour shift is the most apparent!):Above: daylight. Below: artificial light, no flashBelow: flash

Have you had enough of the duochromes and/or the Beetlejuice polishes yet? Or can you “deal” with some more?

 

So shiny!

Wow. This polish shows me how time flies! I bought Zoya Tanzy half a year ago, but I only now get around wearing it. That’s depressing… as it is such a sparkly and bright orange!

Tanzy has so many reflecting gold particles in it, that you can barely tell it apart from a foil polish – yet I have seen it described as “glassfleck”. Since this whole polish categorizing is no science, I’ll leave the defining to you. I’m only going to rave about how shiny it is!

I used two coats for full opacity. I didn’t need a topcoat, because Tanzy dried rather quickly on my nails.

It’s so shiny I wanna diiiiiiieeeee! Above: daylight. Below: artificial light, no flash

Confession time: isn’t it super shiny?!

essence Season of the Extremes LE – duo sticks

For those of you who have been lurking around your local drugstore like I, this is nothing new; but for those of you, who were looking for swatches before buying them – here you go!

Sorry about the 3-finger-swatches, but my pinkie had a date with the knife and it didn’t end well… But 3 fingers are enough to show a decent representation of the colours!

Technicalities first: The base colour in each “bright” duo stick is a jelly/sorbet, and all of them dry semi-matte, which is something to get used to. I used 3 coats of each jelly but the blue one (2 coats), and one coat of the topcoat. The “nudes” are cremes (two coats) but for one (read on to know which one!). I also included a small picture of my swatch-sticks where you can see the basecolour, the topcoat alone, and the combination of the two (from front to back).

I made all the pictures in my new lightbox, and the colours are surprisingly accurate! How would have thought… Well, before I bore you to death and rob you of the chance to check out those amazing colours, I better shut up. Just remember, you can click the pictures to see them up close!

There are 3 nude and 3 bright colour combinations (season of the extremes –> get it?). Let’s start with the nudes! Here’s “TEAM NUDE”, a orange/brown mannequin hands kind of colour. The pearly topcoat makes this a bit better, but for me this is an absolute no-go. I have seen it on other girls who can rock this shade, but not me.

MY BEST NUDE FRIENDS AND ME. I don’t get the reference. Can anyone help? This is a brown/taupe shade of nude, with some supersubtle shimmer. The topcoat is a pearly pinkish white. It’s nice but not my favourite combination, or, something I’d reach for regularly.

This, on the other hand, is awesome: JUST THE NUDE OF US. The base colour is close to OPIs Skull and Glossbones, or Did you ‘ear about Van Gogh. I’d call it white clay. The topcoat that comes with it reminds me of the CND topcoats; the density of the sparkle is awesome. Oh, and did I mention that this is blue sparkle?  Love.

Well, that was the nudes – on to the brightes!

First up a candy pink with a slightly orange sparkly topcoat: BRIGHTSMATES. To be fair, they got me with the pink here – the orange I could leave out, but the pink is genius. As in, all the OPI jellies weren’t.

Second: WE ARE ALL BRIGHT. While I want to dispute that sentence with every last fiber in me (do you say it like that in English?!), especially as I was just riding the Metro, and I can promise you that we are not all bright. Anyhow. The green in this is the least jelly-ish, but still somewhat semi-opaque, which is why I don’t dare to call it a green. The colour on my picture below (the left one) is spot on colour accurate. Yes, this is how green it is. I was a little sceptical as to the combination with the purple topcoat. but I actually like the combination!

And lastly, my absolute favourite of the collection: IT’S TWO BRIGHT which reminds me of “Despicable me”, you know, the movie with the little girl running around screaming “It’s so fluffy”?  The polish. That’s why you’re here. Sorry. Well, this is a medium blue,  a jelly, yes, lighter than the famous NOPI jelly, very bright, and pretty awesome. The topcoat that comes with it is yellow, but the yellow doesn’t show up on the nail; instead you see something like golden and pink flakes/sparks (the pink is more apparent I’d say). Pretty awesome, right? I absolutely love it!

So, what do you think? Hey! Don’t run away! They won’t be sold outthatfast, right?!

PS: Do me a favour and check out Annas blog. She wants to hold her first Giveaway soon, and her blog is so sweet, you basically must follow her

Pink Wednesday: OPI Miami Beet

Finally I have a real pink to show again! This Pink Wednesdays choice is Miami Beet from OPI. It’s a colour you can find easily as it is part of their standard collection.

I like the colour; it is a berry colour, with amazing saturation. I used two coats for full opacity. If you want to know, I’d definitely buy this again – it isn’t a unique colour, but it is a wearable one, and one that can fit with a lot of outfits.above: daylight. Below: artificial light, no flash

What do think? Is it a boring or a great colour?

purple, dots & glitter

My dear friend R. and I had a swap planned which went as wrong as a swap can – at least in the first place. Initially, my package never showed up at her place, but then I received it back at my place about three month after I had sent it (you don’t want to know how it looked like…!) . I had to pay the additional sending costs back to me, even though the postman could have delivered it – the package had been to R.s hometown in Canada! Then I sent it again, but the whole thing took forever. I’m glad R. never lost patience! Her package to me took a little over a week. Maybe I’ll open a complaint blog about out postal system soon…

Well, you can imagine how happy I was when I received R.s package. She included a great medium purple polish from Joe Fresh, which is a Canadian (clothing) brand. The nail polish bottles are rather short and stout, with a big white round cap – I like that kind of shape. The colour itself is called “Violet”, and it covers perfectly in two coats. I’m not the most enthusiastic purple lover, but this one is nice. I do prefer the new Catrice purple to it though, because it has more shimmer & depth. You can see it here.

Well, I felt like I needed some kind of overload manicure, so I decided to add dots (I used China Glaze Sci-Fi for the dots), and then I sponged color club Beyond the Mistletoe on my tips. Overload, really. Perfectly for what I felt like at that particular moment!

Above: daylight, Below: artificial light, no flash

Below: flash

What do you think – is it too much? Or do you also have days when you feel like the more the better?

 

All but Antiquated

This is color club Antiquated. I only recently started noticing color club, mainly because I received some in a swap, and the glitters that I got were awesome beyond words.

This polish, however, isn’t a glitter (obviously.), but a metallic/foil polish. It works perfectly for stamping, covers in two coats, shines as if there was no tomorrow and is, as the other colours that were released in the foiled collection, pretty awesome. You can still find this on SaleNail, or, if you live in the U.S., I heard that you could try your luck at “Ross”.

above: daylight. Below: artificial light, no flashBelow: flash

I decided to layer a crackle polish from a local drugstore over it. It is called “dark knight”, is from a brand called b:pretty and retails at BIPA (local drugstore) for only 1,29€. What I like about it is, that the dark blue looks black in some light, and in other light the sparkle in the dark blue really light up. What I don’t like is that the cracks are so small; from my point of view those could have been more visible gaps. Nevertheless it crackles very  nicely, and for that price I really can’t complain!

What do you think about Antiquated and the color club foils? Did you buy any?

I’m guest blogging on FashionPolish!

Check it out here!

light greeeeen, dark greeeeen and purple.

Does anyone have any idea what movie I thought about when I wrote “light greeeen, dark greeen”? You can win extra brownie points if you can come up with it!

Before we get to the nail polish, let me show you a picture of the new brushes you will find in the Catrice polishes. For comparison, I put an OPI Nail Envy brush next to it. The Catrice brush is small, short and more spread out than the OPI brush; also it has a rounded tip, like the sally hansen polishes. If you have thin nails, you’ll have to get used to the new brush!

On to the polish, that’s why you’re here right? I snatched up some new Catrice colours when they were just released. My by far favourite is ACid/DC. I forgot the “/” in the picture below, sorry! It is a lime green, very acidic, and I assume it is a hommage to Illamasqua Radium? I love colours like this, and so does A. -we were both head over heels when we spotted this polish! The application was ok. It is a little too thick and doesn’t level out by itself, but if you apply three thin coats, you’ll get there. I have seldomly seen a lime green that applies easily, so the application wasn’t a surprise.

Totally unlike me, I picked up a medium green polish with a lot of shimmer. It is called King of Greens. That name amuses me a lot! Much better than those essence names.  Sorry, but stuff like that decides between the life and death of a polish – at least in my collection! I don’t know why, but King of Greens looked a little flat on my nails. I do enjoy the colour though. I used three thin coats.

Next I chose a purple. I was perplexed by my bold move to pick a purple, because it doesn’t fall into my hunting scheme – but it looked so pretty in the bottle already, that I couldn’t pass on it. It is called Metallilac, applies smoothly in two coats and has a great shimmer. I was positively surprised by this polish!

As most brands release their Chanel Peridot dupes/wanna-bes, so did Catrice. They named theirs “Genius in this bottle”, not to be confused with Misa “Genie in this bottle”, which is a white/milky pink colour. I used two coats, and I am happy to have bought Peridot, because I still like it better.

And, because I didn’t show you any polishes from the Nymphelia collection, here the only polish that actually was a limited release: Be Pool. Be Pool is a beautiful dark teal. 2 coats.

Did you buy any new Catrices? Or are you planning to get some? Which ones?