Ninja Polish Alexandrite, Eye Candy and Zultanite

 

Hope you all enjoy your (long) weekend! Today I have some Ninja Polish polishes to show you which I have been trying out over various colors other than black.

First up is Alexandrite. Its a fine glittery duochrome nail polish that can be worn alone if you’re willing to waste this beauty on layers, or it can be worn over other colors. The duochrome effect is very strong and evident on this one. It sparkles turquoise to purple, sometimes a bit pink, gold and blue too. I used one coat over MAC Peppermint Patti.

I tried Alexandrite over various other colors, but I like it the best over mint. I also thought it looked cool over a vivid medium blue, such as essence shopping @ portobello road.

With Eye Candy, I had some difficulties finding a good base color. It is a very colorful tiny glitter mix consisting of blue, purple, green, gold/orange, and most probably other colors, but that’s primarily what I see. Unexpectedly, I liked this best over purple (p2 cool plum)….

… and blue (p2 wintry blue). 

 

 I’m a big fan of polishes with a gold-greenish color, so Zultanite looked the most fun to me from the beginning on. It has this unusual color shift from copper to olive but an intense golden glow (it is never, ever, brown.) I love colors like this! I decided to layer it over a similar base color – obviously the color shift is stronger if layered over black, but I think everything looks so alike if layered over black! – but it looks the most “natural” over Revlon Spanish Moss.

 

Did you find any other layering combinations you could share? I’m always interested!

Sunday Spam: essence polishes

Welcome to another edition of Sunday Spam, featuring essence polishes.

EDIT: Something happened here with the text. As I don’t remember the witty comments I made, but I assume it was a hilarious read, let me just tell you what the polishes are called.

Essence Bioho Chic, 2 coats.

essence chic reloaded, 2 coats.

 essence cookie love, 2 coats. (HATED this on me.)

essence cool breeze over date in the moonlight. generic, if you ask me.  1 coat

essence date in the moonlight, 2 coats.

essence glitter on me over that’s what I mint. 1 coat.

essence love’s recipe. 3 coats. WORST FORMULA EVER.

essence pom-berry. 2 coats.    

Sunday Spam: flakies or flakes

I never know which word is better for this kind of polish: flakies or flakes? There are small flakes in the polish, yes, but flakies just sounds cuter. Any opinion on that?

Anyhow, this Sunday I am showing you combinations of flak(i)e polishes. I hope you like them! Let me know your favorite. I’ll tell you mine at the end!

nails inc it girl over Nubar Geisha Blaze. One of the subtler combinations, as the flak(i)es don’t become mutinous and take over the base color. Flak(i)e color: blue.

Fingerpaints flecked over OPI Suzi loves Cowboys (so do I, since I started watching Justifiiiiieed. Howdy dear Mr. Olyphant, whom I don’t understand, but enjoy tremendously to look at!). Flak(i)e color: green to blue.

The famous Nfu-Oh 51 over OPI Suzi&the 7 Düsseldorfs.  Absolutely gorgeous in the bottle, and the bottle itself too, but somehow not my style. Still pretty to look at – it looks different every time. Flak(i)e color: orange to green to blue.

essie shine of the times over Nubar Iris Dust over OPI The color of Minnie. I don’t know if the layering of a duochrome under a flak(i)e polish enhanced the flak(i)e effect, but I think so because THIS IS GORGEOUS! And the flak(i)es are so dense! flak(i)e color: orange to gold to green.

Fingerpaints flashy over the brown creme from the YSL duo 07 (the other is a stunning pistachio that I used here).  flak(i)e color: orange to green.

My favorite is, by far, essie shine of the times. Maybe it’s the combination with Nubar Iris Dust? I don’t know, but this was such a stunning manicure!

Sunday SPAM: Nubar

In my list of most underrated nail polish brands, Nubar ranks no 3.  Number 1 is BB Couture. Number 2 is so underrated, even I forgot. I’m very sad to see a great brand not getting the attention it deserves – Nubar is almost unknown to Austrian nail polishers!

Anyhow. Nubar Iris Dust, a stunnig raspberry to gold duochrome – 1 coat over OPI The color of Minnie. I had the best success layering duochromes over polishes with a similar basecolor. I’m not such a lover of duochromes, especially the green to purple ones, but I do love this, as it is a bit more subtle!

Nubar Geisha Blaze, a blue-toned medium pink. It is very vivid. Quite a stunning color, and executed perfectly. This is two thin coats – the application was easy and flawlessly.

Nubar Honeysuckle seems to be a regular medium candy pink, and it is. So why should you choose this one? The formula is amazing, and it dries so glossy that you don’t even need a topcoat.

Nubar Tea Rose petal is another ‘regular’pink, but it is more blue toned than Honeysuckle. Again, it dries amazingly glossy. I also love this slight hint of a blue shimmer.

Nubar Star Dust is another amazing duochrome. It changes from a warm gold/bronye to a deep shimmery red. I layered this over OPI The color of Minnie, which is basically red (don’t stone me for only saying red…). I love this so much, I have to show you three pictures! This is only one coat.

Pure Street Magic

Today I’ll show you a polish that I thought looked fairly boring in the bottle, but it’s actually one of the most amazing and sparkly things I’ve seen!

I started off with two coats of Make Up Factory 512, a brand you can find at Müller. They are about EUR 10,- so I never bothered to pick up one, because the colors never looked worth it. I found this olive green with a hint of golden shimmer on clearance, so I tried it out. Verdict: It’s alright. If I find some truly great colors, I think they’d be worth the EUR 10,-.

Then my genius self decided to layer Girly Bits Street Magic over it. Oh my, that is amazing, and I don’t even care for duochromes (I’m boring, I know). The green sparkle just won me over in a heartbeat.

I have tried working with color shifting pigments, but I just mix polishes for fun. This one on the other hand shows how much time Pam from Girly Bits must have invested in her polishes, because it’s amazing.

Why is it amazing? The formula is great. The polish is easy to apply, dries quickly and to my beloved glass-like look. 

I used only one coat of Street Magic over Make Up Factory 512, and the results are great. This picture below is my favorite!

 

Sunday Spam: Flakes!

This sunday SPAM is dedicated to flakes, or flakies. I never know which one is right. Anyhow, flakes in polishes that make the nail polishes look etherial and awesome and iridescent. I love looking at them (but to be honest, I don’t like wearing them all too much)!

Mohda Mix Balada – multicolored flakes in a sheer base. Very very awesome, and I prefer them over pink and red (as opposed to black)! The base color is barry M shocking pink.

Even though this is not a duochrome/color shifting flake polish, I think it fits best here: essie As Gold As It Gets. It’s a topcoat, clear base, packed with golden specks or flakes. I used one coat over bb Couture Lazy Bum, which is a brown with shimmer (I’ll show you the base color on it’s own some other time).

Nfu Oh is the brand that started the flake hype. They produce a range of differently colored flakes in slightly tinted bases. This particular one is number 50, blue flakes in a purple base. I used one coat over funky fingers Queen Cupcake. 

Nails Inc. it girl is a very simple and easy to match flake polish; it consists of blue flakes in a sheer base. I layered one coat over Nubar Geisha Blaze (a blue-toned pink).

Nfu Oh (again! told you they know the stuff) 49 over OPI I’m Indi-a Mood for Love. The picture below shows the manicure mattified – flakes mattified look pretty awesome too, I think.

Catrice LE Siberian Call

 

There’s a winter themed Catrice LE, how seasonal… This one is called Siberian Call.

Coral -al -al -al is, guess what, a coral creme polish. It covers in two coats, but that’s about all the good things I can say about it. Sky and Snow is a glass fleck topper, white looking in the bottle, but very sheer and pink tinted on the nail, especially over Coral -al -al -al. I used one coat, and I have the feeling we have seen this before…

My personal favorite out of this collection is The Calm Call, which is a black nail polish interspersed with white/silver glass flecks. I used two coats, and it dries extremely glossy. In my books, this is a must-have.

I’m A Graydreamer is a beige creme polish, very standard these days. It’s one of those colors that are neither beige nor gray, but somewhere in-between. It covered in two coats, and applied okay. Unfortunately, this is not LE-Material I think, as it seems a bit been there, done that.

Rest In The Forest is another topper, with a slightly tinted base. It looks like mostly pink and beige glass flecks, so I layered it over I’m A Graydreamer. One coat. Again, I’m slightly reminded of the Million styles LE.

Rest in the Forest (left) and Sky and Snow over The Calm Call. Sky and Snow is blue and purple duochrome over black, while Rest in the forest looks more sober.  If you hadn’t had the chance to pick up a topcoat like Sky and Snow, this one seems like a reasonable alternative to the already existing ones.

 

Duochrome trip to heaven

Today  I’m showing you a nail polish I had for a longer time. I bought it when it came out but never wore it – it’s one of those that look awesome in the bottle, but I was afraid it’d let me down after the application.

In the end, all the doubts were unnecessary. MAC Ascension (Gareth Pugh LE) was  perfect. I used two coats over some purple I think, but I forgot which one. The duochrome effect on this is so strong, even in my lightbox, it actually annoyed me and diverted me from work! So all you duochrome lovers out there, you’ll love this. It shifts mostly from green to a nice plum purple, but at extremer angles, you can see some gold shimmer too. 

PS: The word “joke”in the title is lame, I know. I have less funny days too…

O.P. why?

When I met Kejal in Mumbai, we did a little swap (actually a big one!), and she gave me this duochrome polish from a brand called O.P.Y. Let me state here and now that I didn’t buy it….

I think it is utterly hilarious, and have since started my own computer brand, called epple. Seriously though, there are some people who don’t even bother to pretend that they didn’t mean to infringe on copyright issues. In any case, I couldn’t ignore what is inside the bottle, because it is super pretty!

The basecolor for this manicure is BB Couture Golf Pro. I have the feeling that BB Couture doesn’t get the attention it’d deserve. Most of their colors are really awesome, and in terms quality, they’re surely on an OPI level (if you ask me.).

Anyhow, I didn’t know how sheer it was going to be, and I didn’t have a nail wheel with me (obviously, I was on vacation!) etc etc, so I layered two coats of this ominous OPY polish over Golf Pro.

This is a bottle of Indian beer, Kingfisher. I thought you might appreciate the information.

Luckily I wore this polish when we were staying at a hotel with a pool! You know how duochrome polishes photograph better under water, so I decided to make a big fool of myself and photograph my hands in water. Most of the other people at the pool thought I was completely out of it.

See how I take the risk of becoming a social pariah just so you can get the best pictures? All for you, guys, all for you.

What makes this polish special is that it changes from a dark green polish to a lavender, at certain angles even to gold. I have never seen a duochrome like this before. Yes, green to purple, been there, done that. But dark green to lavender and gold? It’s for sure new to me.

So, what do you think?

Best Pink Ever at the beach

 

Today I have a special post for you!

If you read what I write and not only look at the pictures, you might have read that I spent my vacation in India. This time I went to a couple of places in Goa. I will not tell you at which beach I made these pictures, because I want it to stay deserted – I can be egoistic sometimes. I prefer to call it ‘being protective’ though.
Back to the polish: This is Best Pink Ever by Nicole by OPI. It is not, just in case you were wondering. I have a slight hunch that this is a marketing strategy.

There is a best in this post though, and it is the beach. I haven’t had a real beach vacation in so long, I was looking forward to it overly much. Real beach vacation equals white sand, luxurious hotel, great sundowns and cocktails. Oh yeah, and the sea of course. Luckily, all that was present (with a little minus on the cocktails – they tried, but failed terribly), so the next vacation I’ll take doesn’t necessarily need to include a beach.

I took only a couple of nail polishes with me, mostly because we were travelling a lot, and I knew I wouldn’t have time to change my nail polish a lot. I picked Best Pink Ever because it is pink, and I love pink, and also because the NOPI bottles, ugly as they are, seem to be quite sturdy.

Best Pink Ever is a slight duochrome (don’t look for it if you have glasses, it is very hidden). It is also a bit sheer, so I ended up using three coats.

When I was taking pictures, most of the people around thought I was crazy. Generally speaking, people take fun vacation fotos of say, the beach, themselves, sand, footprints in the sand, sundown, etc. It is still very uncommon to bring nail polish to the beach and above that, to be so impertinent to even take pictures of said nail polish! Unbelieveable!

I hope I didn’t make you too jealous. If so, you might not want to read my next How I wore it post.