How I wore it: Cult Nails Charming

I recently decided to plan a week of wearing only Cult Nails polishes – I just felt like it, because I have quite many, but I have somehow neglected them in the past.

One of the polishes I wanted to wear was Charming, which was part of the Fairy Tale Collection. It’s a medium purple, very glossy and soft. I used three coats, because I still don’t like it if nail polish isn’t opaque. I have tried to wear soft shades and jellies at two coats and sheers and what have you, but I just.don’t.like.it.

I had quite some application issues with other Cult Nails polishes (which is mainly the reason I gave up on wearing them), but Charming worked well. I had not complaints!

The Cult Nails polishes usually shrink terribly on me. It’s not the topcoat (I used their own, and various others), because it doesn’t make any difference which one I use. I found that very unfortunate, because for so many other bloggers, Cult Nails polishes eem to work so well. Charming didn’t shrink too much, so I have hope. Maybe as the polish brand comes from Florida, the polishes work better in sunny weather?

I decided to embrace the purple. You know that is difficult for me, so please be proud! I chose shoes from Voltan, which are super cool and a bit old-fashioned. I think they are pretty awesome, but I can imagine my taste is not for everyone.

The pants are those wollen pants from Banana Republic, which add a couple of kilos, yes, but they are also amazingly comfortable and warm. If I have the choice between loosing a bit of my behind to cold or adding a couple of kilos by keeping me warm, I will choose to wear these pants again. Warmth before beauty!

The blue cardigan is from Montego. I have been wearing it a lot, it is soft and easy to iron, plus it’s navy, which fits so many other clothes of mine. The coolest part of this outfit is definitely the blouse, which has a crooked line of buttons and a high collar that offers you various ways of wearing it. I like it best open. The blouse is from Cora Kemperman, I think this may have been my first piece from her.

To top it all off, I’m wearing dark purple eyeliner from Inglot. The rest of the make-up is invisible thanks to the blinding sunlight… I can’t wait for the sun to be a bit less prude and come out to play a bit more often. I miss my Vitamin D.

spotted!

Due to my need to look respectable, knowledgeable and presentable at work, I go head over heels absurdly crazy on the weekend when I can wear whatever on my nails, because I will only get the weird looks from my friends. Hence, the only logical conclusion is to wear all the neon colors I can think of at once, right?

I started off with two coats of wet’n'wild white creme and then randomly brushed on different colors. I can tell you, it looked very artistic and grown up. I’m now going to name all the polishes I used, so enjoy…Cult Nails Deal with it, China Glaze In the limelight, China Glaze Pool Party, NOPI Lemon-Lime Twist, Milani Hi-Tech, essie funky limelight, Color Club Jingle Jangle, Claires Sandart, and Illamasqua Stance.

Yeah, and then I used OPI Spotted over this. This was fun, but due to the fact that I used so many layers of polish, it didn’t dry very well and later that day I bumped into something and I took this off the day after. But still, every once in a while, I enjoy wearing crazy stuff!

so glittery, so green – deal with it!

In the nail polish world, most questions are black and white, as a counterpart to all the nail polish colors. One of the black and white questions is, are you a Cultie, or are you not. I myself do love some Cult Nails polishes, but I can’t really picture myself as a Cultie of any kind of Cult. I much prefer to say that I am a fan of Cult Nails nailpolishes, and especially this one. deal with it. (pun intended)

I actually ordered this polish from Cult Nails and also received it in a swap from my friend M., who knows my weakness for a pretty green, especially with a golden shimmer. I’m wearing this polish on my toes, constantly, without tipwear, for over a month now (I should change it, I know, but my feet are just so far away…!).

It is, by far, the most amazing green I own.  That’s actually not true. Let me rephrase. It is the most amazing green of this tone of green that I own. Deal with it is almost neon, that’s how vibrant it is. Application wise was this the best Cult Nails polish I have. The first coat is disappointingly sheer, but the second coat reassures you, that this is a great polish.  The shimmer transfers very well from the bottle to the nail, maybe Chanel should take some lessons in polish making from Maria (the owner of Cult Nails)? 

As I wore this on the weekend, I was free to add as many glitters as I felt like. I recently re-discovered my love for glitter gradients, so I decided to go for that.  I just loosely painted over Deal with it, starting from the cuticle area, and dabbing on more glitter closer to the cuticle area, fading out towards the middle of the nail. I used Cult Nails Happy Ending, a shredded glitter (there’s a dupe from ICING, which bled like crazy!), China Glaze Marry a Millionaire (bar glitter) and China Glaze Snowglobe, which is iridiscent glitter, so I put it on last. 

I love the look of it – it reminds me of an overly happy flowerbed on a super green lawn. What do you think?

Iconic half-moon manicure

Juuuust a quick post today. I wanted to show you a manicure I did for a special occasion, but I forgot which one. It wasn’t Christmas or New Year’s, I remember that much… see what to many free days and overly much relaxing time do to us…!
I started off with two coats of Diorling, one of the polishes from the Dior Winter Edition (Grand Bal). Diorling is mostly a golden polish, but it has some lighter golden and copper specks within, and it is a unique gold polish in my collection. Believe me, I have quite some gold polishes – I just love them all too much!

Diorling applied just fine. There’s nothing special to say about that, so one can concentrate on its beauty. If you even remotely like gold, and you have any chance to get this one still, do. Disregard the fact that the bottle looks like a weird mushroom. Disregard that it is surprisingly expensive. Just know that Dior does the best nuances of gold I’ve seen so far.

I wanted to try half-moons for longer now, so I painted them with Cult Nails Iconic, which is a deep red filled with flakes, hence it’s as if it was made to pair with Diorling (ha.ha.ha. on that word-joke btw). On my ring finger I decided to apply some gold glitter from Nicole by OPI, which is a fairly boring yellow gold glitter, but I ought to have at least one such glitter in my collection, and this one applied best. 

All in all I like the - manicure, but free handing it is difficult. I tried it with half a ring sticker, but that didn’t work for me either. I guess practise is the key!

Delicious Annalicious

It’s Wednesday but I have nothing pink for you today…. instead, I present you this beautiful red from Cult Nails: Annalicious. It was released this summer as part of Coco’s Untamed Collection. If you are not familiar with Cult Nails, I would dare to say you don’t know nail polish yet. Maria is the heart and brains of the brand which quickly grew to be one of the most solid and innovative nail polish brands on the market. Some of the colors caused a furor in the nail polish community, for example Unicorn Puke, but generally her nail polishes are awesome. Coco is Maria’s daughter and also a nail polish addict. She created five beautiful polishes, which I’ll show you over the next couple of weeks. If you search for Cult Nails on the search bar on the right, you can see other polishes from the brand that I have reviewed so far.

Annalicious is a medium tomato red packed with golden shimmer. The shimmer isn’t overly present, but adds elegance and originality to the polish. The first coat was rather thin and I expected to need more than two coats for full coverage, but surprisingly, the second coat seals the deal and provides coverage.

I received extraordinarily many compliments for this manicure, which is understandable, because it is such a pretty, fiery red! I wore this with a blue suit for work, which made it stand out even more.
Make sure to order Annalicious quickly, if you like it, because it it a limited shade.

After a day of wearing it alone, I decided to break in my new stamping plates. M. had sent me the new Bundlemonster and the new MASH set, and after two month without my stamping supplies in Paris, I couldn’t wait to stamp again! Once you start, it is difficult to stop, I found out.

I used the BundleMonster plate 307 for this manicure and the golden sally hansen nail polish pen. It was very warm the last couple of days, so I felt like butterflies!

Cult Nails polishes come wrapped in a nail polish burrito, which you can see here on the picture. I find this a fun and creative way of wrapping and it definitely stands out!

So, what do you say?

Hi-tech Stars in a Trance

Some time ago I realized that I haven’t worn Cult Nails In A Trance yet, even though I adore the color and was wishing for it for quite some time.

A mistake I had to rectify, so I immediately put it on! 2 coats of the perfect olive gold polish, and Milani Hi-Tech sponged on the tips (lime green scattered holo!).

I decided that I needed some stars on top of this, so I stamped a star pattern from the DRK-A plate over it using China Glaze 2030. 

I must say I really liked this manicure, although I think I’ll wait until fall to wear it again – it fits better for fall than for summer I think!

Hypnotize Me!

LAST DAY TO ENTER MY GLOSSYBOX/SPARITUAL GIVEAWAY!

Sooooo when I went to Poland I showed you all I got and one of the polishes was this stunningly beautiful blue: INGLOT 992.

Originally I bought it with the thought that I’d send it to a friend but then it was standing there innocently smiling at me, and I couldn’t resist it. 2 coats of this fabulous bright blue with a hint of purple shimmer. It’s a bit of a chameleon, just like my red/pink Inglot, 869, but I have to admit that I love that – a slightly different angle and light changes, and the polish shows a different side of itself.

One picture with flash, to show the purple shimmer better:

Eventually I decided that 992 would be a perfect base for Cult Nails Hypnotize Me, so I put on a layer of Hypnotize Me. I was very, very, content with this combination. And I stamped over my ringfinger with wet’n'wild White Cream and Illamasqua Nomad using the DRK-A plate. Isn’t it pretty??

Will you change my mind?

I think apart from Unicorn Puke I haven’t shown you any of my Cult Nails polishes; this is an error I must rectify. So today I’d like to show you Power Thief.

The base colour of Power Thief is chocolate brown, but it has this amazing silver shimmer in it, which makes is everything but boring. It dried a bit darker on my nail than the colour looked in the bottle, so I have to say that this (lightbox) picture is pretty accurate. What I loved especially about this polish is the shimmer. Without the shimmer it’d look flat, but this way – stunning. And if you look closely, you can see a whole universe of colours! What I didn’t like about it is that it is brown. Me & brown were never really good friends. I hope Power Thief will change that!

You can shop for Cult Nails here. As I felt the need to do something about that much brown on my nails (I know I’m weird!), I decided to stamp over it, so I took out my wet’n'wild French White Creme or whatever it is called, and Konad plate m78, and stamped this somewhat floral design over it. I stamped a different design from the same plate over my thumb; it was a spur of the moment thing…!Sorry for the little wound on my pinkie. This winter wasn’t nice for my cuticles… Anyhow, what to do you think? If I ever wear brown, then Power Thief, that’s for sure. Have you joined the Cult already?

How I wore it: Cult Nails My Kind of Cool Aid

Considering I feel really bad that I haven’t shown my Cult Nails polishes to you yet, you will be flooded with them in the near future!

I received my first Cult Nails polishes in a swap from my friend M., and it has led to a great misfortune: The Great Wallet Emptiness of 2011. On the pisitive side, I can declare myself proud owner of most of the Cult Nail polishes. I did, however, miss Always Winning, and luckily Captivated will be mine soon, so I have pretty much all of the ones I needed. (side note: I’m going to pass on the new collection I think – nudes aren’t for me, after all)

Long Story short, Maria, the creator of Cult Nails, has set a high level of quality, which only few other companies reach (this is my opinion, not a fact, although I’d like to claim Universal Knowledge; I’m no Faust, however….).
I like that Cult Nails adds a special little twist to otherwise boring colours, and if Maria decides to create a Cult polish, it becomes a Cult. Instantly. I’m only saying Unicorn Puke.

So for today, My Kind of Cool Aid, 2 coats. A purple/grey creme polish with a subtle shimmer – very classy!above: daylight, below: artificial light, no flashBelow: flashI have absolutely no idea why this polish gives me such crab/crap hands on pictures. It looks totally awesome and normal on my skintone in regular light. Meh.

I wore My Kind of Cool Aid with a oversized silk dress from Marc Jacobs, which is a bit too large but it was so dirt-cheap I couldn’t pass it up (I love Outlet Centers!), a necklace from Cora Kemperman and a cardigan from Vero Moda.

 

What’s your verdict?
And can you also not pass up stuff that is so cheap, even though it might be a size to large?