How I wore it: Finger Paints Iconic Orange (for Queensday 2013!)

 

The Dutch celebrate Queensday, or Koninginnedag, every year. If you have never heard about it, you should read up here. It is a fascinating event, which makes no sense to a foreigner who lives in a county without monarchs. Especially, when considering the fact that the Dutch don’t even celebrate the birthday of Queen (now princess) Beatrix, but her mother. And as of this year, the whole thing is going to be called Kingsday (…sounds horrible!), and celebrated 3 days earlier, because the Dutch crowned Beatrixe’s sun to be their king, and he of course wants to celebrate his birthday, and not his grandmother’s.

Anyhow. I enjoy Koninginnedag. Everyone wears orange. Like this one for example:

Finger Paints Iconic Orange. It is so orange, it glows and ruins all your pictures and your retina.

See what I mean? 

An ideal orange for Queensday, where taste is limited and beer is flowing. For good bargains you have to be up early – the whole city of Amsterdam turns into one big fleamarket. Anything you have stored in your attic can be sold. People keep on flowing into the city, bargain hunters leave it again, fully packed. If you want to get the most out of Queensday, you should just let the masses direct where you go and follow the flow.

I was up early, after celebrating Queen’s Night the night before – I did my fair share of bargain hunting, and then we dove into the masses to see what the day had in stock for us.

See all the orange around us? This was around 10:30 a.m.. Can you imagine how packed and orange it was after noon, when all the Queen’s Night celebrators arose from their beds and joined the party? Anyhow, I’m wearing a necklace from Cora Kemperman, blouse from J.Crew and jeans from WE.

   Well, are you now interested to celebrate Queensday?

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!

The Raspberry Taffy Spectrum

Finger Paints Blue Raspberry Taffy had been standing around for such a long time, and finally I felt like wearing this intense medium blue creme. I used two coats, and my camera was a bit freaked out – it’s a bit less dark in reality.

Then I realized that sally hansen Spectrum from their HD line would be a perfect match. I had tried it on it’s own before, but I realized that it was too sheer to wear alone, so I waited. Good that I did, because Blue Raspberry Taffy is an almost perfect underwear! 

It was really difficult to catch the duo chrome effect of Spectrum in my lightbox. I eventually gave up and made a picture in my bathroom sink, because I read somewhere that it shows the duo chrome effect better, and it is true! Click on the pic to enlarge it and see the rainbow effect!

In this picture, the white balance is a bit off, but it shows just how sparkly this manicure was!

 

Flakies in Paradise

I must admit that I had this IsaDora polish for a while now, but I never got around posting pictures on its own, so when I rediscovered my Finger Paints flakie topcoats the other day I knew they were made for each other.

IsaDora  Paradise Green is a green creme polish leaning towards turquoise. I have had immense problems photographing it, so color-wise you must imagine it to be just a teensy tad more blue. I used two coats and did I mention already that I just love the IsaDora brush? It is thick and round and makes the application so easy! If only they’d change their bottle top, I’d be the hugest IsaDora fan!

I picked Finger Paints Flashy to layer over Paradise Green. Flashy is a flakie topcoat with red and orange flakies. It changes color slightly to gold and at extreme angles to green, but the general color is red. I like how it looks as if parts of the green were burning! 1 coat over Paradise Green.

Do you like this combination?

The Wild Thing Ruffian

I’m still not over the ruffians. I don’t wear them all the time, but sometimes I really feel like it and then it has to be colorful – which explains my choice of colors for this Ruffian manicure.

As a base I used ANNY Yellow Cab Flash which is a soft pastel yellow. Application is the same as all pastel yellows (aka pretty shitty, even though I try to deny it for the sake of the pretty yellow), but since I’m wearing it as a ruffian, I didn’t mind too much. I used two coats and waited for it to dry. Meanwhile I decided that I would need to use Pure Ice Wild Thing for the Ruffian because the pastel yellow was too cute and I wanted some edge. One coat of Wild Thing was enough for good coverage!

Afterwards I felt like flakies would look awesome on top of this and therefore I picked up Fingerpaints Motley. The flakies don’t show up too much, so this isn’t super flashy, and I’m happy with the effect.

What do you think? Ruffians: hot or not?

Pure Purple Asylum

Today I have an IsaDora polish for you that I bought on vacation in Poland. It is called Pure Purple, and it is indeed purple. What a surprise.

I really like the brush of the IsaDora polishes; they are thick and have a rounded tip, so the application is super easy.  I don’t know what else I could say about this polish; it’s purple, two coats. I really like the IsaDora polishes in general; their application is easy, the colours are solid, sometimes unique, the quality is realiable. Deciding factors as to what I consider important in a nail polish brand, though at ~10€ a piece they are on the pricier side of nail polishes. 

I felt the need to layer over the purple, and I have never actually layered flakies over purple, so I figured I had to do that. I used Finger Paints Asylum, which is a mix of orange and blue flakes. I usually layer flakies over black or blue or really dark colours. What do you layer them over?

Holland in a week: Part 5

OPI A roll in The Hague. Super bright, super shiny and very, very orange. If you think that it looks bright in my pictures, your eyes will pop out when you see it in real life. Surprisingly, I enjoyed wearing this color a lot. 2 coats, one out of necessity, the other out of joy!

I layered Fingerpaints Sparkle Topcoat over it, to make it less orange and add a nice pink flash to it. Simple, easy way to make a cream polish look like something entirely different.

Today’s second polish is OPI Did you ‘ear about van Gogh? which is a name that really cracks me up. Thought through and fun at the same time! The color reminds me of clay. I really like that shade of greige (beige/grey); I find it so elegant! 2 coats.

What to layer over it? But of course, Barielle Buddha-ful is a perfect match! By itself Buddha-Ful is a sheer milky streaky mess, but one coat over Did you ‘ear about van Gogh? and it looks as gorgeous as it can get. Subtle green flakes over greige? YES, please!

 

What would you have layered over those two awesome cremes?

30 days of untrieds: Days 13 & 14: Fingerpaints

Hello everyone!

I missed yesterdays’ post because I was attending the first Austrian Beauty Blogger Flea Market. It was great fun, and I found some great polishes; even a MAC I have been wanting for ages! Idon’t know if you’re interested in seeing what else I got? Let me know in the comment section!

EDIT: I posted a picture of my loot on my facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/goodlack

Anyhow, today I would like to show you 2 Fingerpaints polishes I received more or less recently!

First up is Did you Ast-her out?, which is a bright coral creme. It was easy to apply and only required 2 thin coats. The drying time was surprisingly fast on this one!

above: daylight, below: artificial light, no flash

I enjoyed wearing this colour; I do have some similar colours though. It is, so to say, my cup of tea!

The other Fingerpaints polish I want to show you is Raspberry Tafetta. It is a dark berry polish, almost burgundy, and also easy to apply. I really like the Fingerpaints caps, as they are comfortable to hold! Raspberry Tafetta is a real autumn polish in my eyes; dark, red, and somehow snuggly looking!

above: daylight, below: artificial light, no flash

 

 

If you want to see what other polish treasures are still sitting in untrieds-bins, have a look at these girls’ blogs:

Alexandria at Je T’aime Lacquer
Alyssa at Always Polished
Amber at The Polished Momma
Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty
Ashley at Follow the Yellow Polish Road
Caitlin at Something Creative
Carly at Lacquered Lover
Caroline at Shadow’s Nail Art
Chelsea at Pretty and Polished
Gwen at Pudgy Nails
Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails
Jacki at Adventures in Acetone
Jamie at Nails Adored
Lindsey at Nailtopia
Natalie at Gems in a Bottle
Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails
Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl
Sarah at Lucky Lacquers
Thalie at Glazed Talons
Taylor at Nailed to the T