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!

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!

How I wore it: OPI Danke-shiny red

Just before the winter really started, we had one day of awesome November sun, and I happened to be wearing OPI Danke-shiny red, which truly is very shiny (and red). 

I received quite an unexpected amount of compliments on this manicure actually. I always assume that everyone has some red nail polish, but apparently I’m wrong. Well, in any case, this is an especially shiny and beautiful red. 

I was wearing some of my regular work clothes, which fit amazingly with this manicure. Lately I discovered that red is a nice color, so I’m wearing it more.The blazer jacket is from WE, skirt from Escada, shirt from H&M, shoes from Accessorize and ring from Primark. It appears that Im a horrible model. I keep on telling the person taking picture randomly what I see and end up with pictures that as if I had some super weird feet. 
The next day I wore deborah lippmann here comes the queen over Danke-shiny red. The DL is a sheer polish packed with differently sized golden flakes. I recently decided that one golden flake topcoat is enough, so I wore this one and essie As Gold As It Gets, but the essie didn’t make the cut. I’m a nail polish snob I guess. The combination if red and gold is wonderful though. I absolutely adore it!

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.

Sunday Spam: Nail Art ‘exercises’

This Sunday I won’t show you a color family or a special brand, no, I’ll show you my stamping and nail art exercises that never made it on the blog as a full post. Some of them are recent, but most of them are long ago so please ignore the variating nail lengths. Hope you’ll enjoy!

[if you want to see more, or stuff more recent, follow me on instagram: @goodlacknail  and/or twitter:.@goodlacknail]

butter LONDON Disco Biscuit (over Dior Lucky) has blue microspecks in the pink jelly base, so I figured, why not point that out and add blue hearts? The Image is from the Red Angel Plate #114, and I have absolutely no clue what I used as a stamping polish. Most probably my beloved sally hansen quick  Color Quick Fast Dry Nail Color Pen in blue. 

Urban Decay Miss T (goooorgeous blue toned pink, shimmery, 2 coats), stamped with the golden sally hansen Color Quick Fast Dry Nail Color Pen (it really is a mouthfull…!). No idea where the image was from, but I do remember the tragic and sudden death of my middle finger nail that led to those super nubs.

Candy Wrapper Nails! Some coral creme polish, topped with Nfu-Oh 049 (the flakies!), and again stamped with the golden sally hansen Color Quick Fast Dry Nail Color Pen and an unknown image from an unknown plate. Very awesome manicure if you ask me.

Not an exact failure but also not a success was the combination of sally hansen be-jewelled and the stamping design. Maybe I shouldn’t have picked black as a stamping color, or I should have picked a more subtle design, but this didn’t last long on me, as I assume you can understand.

In my eyes, p2 Night Out is one of the best dusty dove-colored cremes there are. Hence the crooked gradient with H&M Confetti Kisses, Spoiled Use Protection and Deborah Lippmann Mermaid’s Dream looked awesome too and I wore it until it had almost grown out. We both know I’m exaggerating, but we also know that “long” is relative, no?

This was actually my Christmas manicure last year. For more entertaining pics, click here.

Horrible picture but I still love the combination and idea: Girly Bits Razzle Dazzle, 2 coats, stamped with a Red Angel image (don’t know which plate # anymore, sorry) – the image looks as if it was floating atop a ping sea of glitters. I’ll have to re-create this sometimes!

Same as above, I don’t remember which stamping plate this was, but I loved the subtle image over Chanel Peridot.

Chanel Attraction was not loved as much as I think it should have been loved, mainly because it is a frosty pearl white, and, as you can see, dries streaky – maybe I’m weird sometimes, but I love it despite it being streaky and frosty. Somehow this made me want to experiment with dots, so I used ANNY Ocean Blue, sally hansen teal-y fast and Funky Fingers Blue Raspberry Taffy and this is what came out. A dot gradient? Shall we call it that?

Feedback, critics, comments and adoration are very welcome. Leave me a comment! If you want to comment sarcastically, please identify the sarcasm clearly, e.g. like this *sarcasm*. *sarcasm*  Internet and sarcasm seem to be arch enemies!

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?

Water and Sun

 

 

I have recently fallen in love again with my old jelly polishes, and I can’t stop wearing them. On my way around town the other day I even invested in two of the American Apparel Sheers, and the Dutch store HEMA has a small line of ‘Water’polishes, which are super sheer jellies, and they are absolutely perfect for jelly sandwiches.

Anyhow, I absolutely love this jelly from Nicole by OPI, In your hands. I don’t know about any other NOPI jellies, but the formula and look of this one is great. I used three coats and it looks so squishy and awesome! 

I decided that In your hands was the perfect base for Inglot 204, which is a clear polish charged up with blue flakes. It works so perfectly together with the dark blue jelly, I am in love!

The first picture I made is full frontal with flash, so you can see the flakes – the second one is in daylight, which is a much better way to see the flakes, but you can’t tell how dense they are. And I used only one coat!

Obviously I had to mattify this manicure, and I think it still looks great! It reminds me when I was a child and I swam in this super deep and dark lake where we were vacationing, and I dove and then turned to look up towards the sun. So pretty!

Are you into jellies or over them? How about flakies?

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?

A happy summer rainbow

Before I forget: Have you entered one of my Giveaways yet? My Giveaway extravaganza is still open for another 5 days, and you can win absurdly much, thanks to some awesome nail polish makers who gifted some of the prizes. Oh and you can click any of the underlined words, as there are 7 Giveaways, and each link will take you to one of them.

Some time ago I received a couple of swap packages from my dear swap buddies, and as I had all the nail polishes standing on my table waiting to be swatched on nail wheels, I realized that I had put them in sort of a rainbow order. I decided that it would be best to just wear them that way too, so today I’ll show you a rainbow manicure (I don’t want to call it ombre manicure, because the colours vary from yellow to pink – ombre manicures imho are manicures that show different shades of one colour, not many colours).

I used (from thumb to pinkie) wet’nwild Lavender Pearlescent, wet’n'wild Lavender Creme, wet’n'wild Dreamy Poppy, Sally Hansen Rockabilly and wet’n'wild The Wonder Yellows. 2 coats of each – and prepare for some picture spam, because I liked this manicure so much, I couldn’t narrow down the number of pics to post!

I felt that after a day, this needed some flakies. I have this bottle of orange flakies standing around forever and a day – I bought it from a fellow blogger at the beauty blogger fleamarket last fall, and haven’t gotten around trying it out. The brand is called NOUBA and the polish has the number 455. I found NOUBA polishes at Douglas in Cracow (Krakow), Poland, and they cost ~10€ which I find quite pricey for such a small bottle! Anyhow, I layered 455 over my existing rainbow manicure. The flakies are very dense, so I needed only one coat. I like how the flakie polich adds a somewhat glossy coat to the whole thing and makes everything a bit more sparkly. Nevertheless, I think I will pass it on. I have too many flakie polishes as it is.

If you have any comments on the pictures, let me know. I feel that I have found the right settings for my camera and lightbox, but if you have something (constructive) to add, I’m more than happy to hear your opinions and/or professional advice!