How I wore it: Illamasqua Hemlock

Just a heads up: Not only are my Giveaways still in the running, but there is another one over at Macs in the City. Giveaway Heaven, huh?

There are a couple of polishes that I really, really want, for example Illamasqua Boo and Illamasqua Hiss. Illamasqua Hemlock was one of them, until M. sent it to me. I’m so happy that it is even better in reality than in my imagination!

This is, I think, 2 coats of Hemlock by itself.

The color is absolutely unique, it’s a very subtle elegant beige/nude polish, but what makes it so exceptional is the intense (lime) green shimmer. I don’t know how Illamasqua did it, but Hemlock reflects both subtle elegance and toxic edgyness to me. Pretty cool, to sum it up.

I decided to pair Hemlock with my favorite dress of all times, a simple black Uniqlo dress (thank you again J.!), tights with dots from H&M (ripped to shreds after one day, will never buy them again!) and a creme white blazer-ish jacket from Zara.

The jacket is alright, I never understood peoples’ obsession with Zara stuff. I never found something there that was of good quality, and most of their stuff is cut in a way that doesn’t correspond with my body shape. Nevertheless, in some weak moment I decided I need a jacket like this, and as it was on sale, not much was lost. I haven’t worn it much, I must admit. What do you think? Any ideas on how to wear it?

Last, but not least, this is a gradient I made with Hemlock as a base, and a corresponding green polish (totally forgot which one).

How I wore it: color club beyond

I’ve had it with this weather! And I’ve had it to complain about it! Why can’t I have nothing to complain about?

Anyhow. The weather explains the lack of me wearing holographic nailpolish, not that I wear it everyday, but it is fun to wear it in the sun. T. borrowed me her color club in beyond, which is an awesome charcoal (the closest a holo can get to black?) holographic polish.

Well, we have to make do with what we can! The above picture was taken out in daylight, but no direct sun. It’s still pretty awesome. Below I have some pictures for you that I took in the lightbox, with flash.

I must admit, this polish is awesome, and great fun to wear. I do love the look of black/dark grey holos! Just when I was trying to fix my hair (my hair-do usually dissolves randomly at the most unfortunate moments), the sun came out. So what does a good blogger do? Pretend this is a picture of my hair-do. I followed this tutorial [none] from this awesome person [no-one]. (and that is visible!)

The most beautiful thing is though, that the plants don’t all care if it is spring or winter. This bush in the background decided it was time to bloom, and so it did.

I’m wearing a pullover I bought last year (2011, not 2012), from WE, and I thought I would just wear it every now and then, because not exactly my style, but it is warm. Well, I’ve worn it every other week, and I like it more and more. The jeans are from WE too. I’m fairly certain I’m wearing some kind of t-shirt underneath, but as you don’t see it, it doesn’t matter that I forgot which one. Same goes for underwear and socks, in case you ever wondered.

These shoes were a sort-of-gift. I bought J. gloves, and he bought me shoes. It’s a bit more fun than as if I had bought myself shoes, and he would have bought himself gloves. It’s the little things. They are from Unisa (available at Humanic as far as I know, and most probably in a lot of other stores), 3 or 4 seasons back at least. In terms of make-up, the only “new” exciting think I’m wearing here is my lipgloss from Illamasqua in Belladonna. I’ve had it for a longer time, and I love it to bits. It stays on rather long, and it’s not sticky!

How I Wore It: Illamasqua Charisma

Assoon as the sun comes out, one realizes that there are people living in Vienna. It seems that everyone just hybernates and stays inside during the cold days, and at the first sunray people insist that they must have a seating place outside to have their coffee. To be honest, I am one of them. Not only do I insist to sit outside, I also insist on not wearing socks!

On one of those rare sunny (still) winter days, I decided to finally wear Illamasqua Charisma.

Charisma (shown here is two coats) is a red/pink shimmer polish. It is very shiny and glossy, but it doesn’t have gold shimmer (I have enough red polishes with golden shimmer, I can tell you!), but this pink leaning shimmer.

I absolutely adore this shade, and just like most Illamasqua polishes it is unique. If I wasn’t currently angry at Illamasqua because their customer service was unable to cope with all the customer requests during the Royal Mail  crisis, I’d say many more beautiful things about Charisma. I hope that it cought up with Illamasqua eventually (nomen est omen after all), and they will apologize to all of their customers. Currently I don’t think I will order from them soon again, because a over-two-month wait for a package is just too long (plus you should have seen the state in which it arrived…!). 

Well, I enjoyed wearing Charisma nevertheless. I matched the polish to my clothes, again, and chose a pair of pants from Christian Berg (sold at Peek & Cloppenburg), blouse from WE and a fluffy red cardigan from H&M. The pewter colored loafers are from asos.

It was such a nice day out, so sunny, and just look at that blue sky! What you see there in the back is the side of our parliament.

Are you like me, first sign of sun you run out and enjoy it? Or do you live somewhere where there’s plenty of sun all year round?

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!

Sunday Spam: random stamping

Are you guys enjoying your Sunday? I hope you have some time to relax and enjoy yourselves.

I posted previews of most of these manicures on my Instagram. You can follow me there, I’m – surprise, surprise – goodlacknail. I love interacting on Instagram!

Today I’m showing you random stamping manicures I wore lately. Here I started off with two coats of China Glaze Traffic Jam. I wanted to try the stamping quality of China Glaze Mistletoe Me. Mistletoe Me was sent to me by my dear swap friend M., but it broke, and I was sad. Somehow, B. got her hands on it, and gifted it to me – how thoughtful is that?! I absolutely love dark foils that are so full of color. It also works very well for stamping, but due to the fact that the colors are so very close, it’s a subtle tone in tone stamping. As usual, I completely forgot which plate I used. The pattern looks like triangles, I guess that’s a rather common stamping pattern?

Here I tried gold over light yellow. The base color is Illamasqua Load, and I stamped an image from a Bundle Monster plate, no 312. I liked that it looked a bit like porcelain, but I wasn’t too fond of this. Somehow it reminded me of faded royal wallpaper.

Well, this was a great idea I think, but something didn’t work in the execution process. The base color is Manhatten Green Chai, which is a mint green polish interspersed with micro glitters in white, red and darker green. I figured that red stamping would look cool over it (you know, red glitters in this polish – red stamping over it, matchy-matchy, etc). Nails Inc Villiers Street theoretically works for stamping (such a gorgeous gleaming red!), but I guess I didn’t have a steady-hand day? Or I shouldn’t have picked this rose image from the DRK-A plate? I don’t know. 

Mostly I stamp if I want to spice up a manicure I already wore for a day and got tired of. This was also the case when I wore OPI French Quarter for your thoughts, so I decided to try the stamping quality of GOSH Silver. Result: it works, but it’s not my favorite. It somehow looks as if it doesn’t fully transfer the image onto the nail – that’s because GOSH Silver is not a real metallic, but more of a foily metallic polish, meaning it has particles in there, that don’t transfer 100%.  I think I used an image from the DRK-A plate, but I can’t say for sure.

I saw this on so many blogs, but I still can’t figure out if I like it or not: The houndstooth pattern. Here I tried it in white (wet’n'wild) over OPI Nein!Nein!Nein!OK fine!, the image is from the DRK-A plate. 

Last, and least, a bit of a fail. This is Zoya Luna, stamped with Topshop Mercury Miasma. Luna is not a good stamping base, as it is a light grey packed with silver glitter, and that just doesn’t look very good with the stamping design on top.

How I wore it: Neon Gradient

This is the closest I’ll come to a tutorial I think. I’m not very good at explaining how I do my nails, and whenever I try nail art, I just give it a go and if it works, good, if not, I’ll a)start over b)give up and just wear one colour.

So when I saw thetutorial for gradients on the Nailasaurus, you know, the one everyone knows about,  I decided I have to try. I have more or less mastered the art of sponging, which works for gradients too, but it works best with glitters.

Anyhow, I received some awesome neons and I couldn’t wait to wear them all, so I decided to actually wear them all at once. So this manicure consists of only a few neons, really, namely (from thumb to pinkie):

Sinful Colors – Irish Green
Illamasqua – Rare
China Glaze – Flip Flop Fantasy
China Glaze – Pool Party
Sinful Colors – Dream On
SpaRitual – Knowledge is Power.

I use an old CD cover to put on the polish for the gradient. It looks like this:

Pre-cleanup, this is what you’ll get:

More clean up…

I hope you got the joke! Anyhow, clean-up was annoying. I put a coat of white polish underneath the neon, to make sure it’d not take 389547423671 coats to reach opacity, and therefore cleanup was meh. It was like choosing between the devil and the deep blue sea – VNL or messy clean-up….

I wore it for two days, so you’ll get two pictures of how I wore this eye-searing neon gradient. The medium blue dress is from H&M and the darkblue one is from Mango.

And this is neon me waving goodbye for today!

Glossybox Mai und SpaRitual Gewinnspiel!

As every month ends, the Glossybox arrives at my doorstep, filled with surprises. This month the Glossybox was put together in the sign of “Goldrush”- don’t ask me what they mean by it, as there was nothing golden in the box, only a lotion for men, as father’s day is coming up – maybe they mean you should find an older guy to pay for all your stuff by handing him an anti-aging lotion???

The terms and conditions of the Glossybox can be found here.

Lately, there are some extras in the boxes, that technically one shouldn’t account for, but seriously, if it’s in the box, it belongs to it and counts, if you ask me. The blush above was considered an additional favor from Glossybox, just so I mentioned for completion’s sake. In March, I mentioned that Illamasqua would be a perfect fit for a Glossybox because it is still considered a niche label, and guess what, there’s an Illamasqua lipgloss in this box! I don’t have the arrogance to say that it was all my doing and fierce lobbying, but it makes me happy that maybe someone reads my blog…

First up: Water. Yes, you read right. There is a bottle of water in this box. The aluminum bottle suggests that the creators of this brand of water decided not to pick plastic because of the high costs of production and the bad influence on the environment, and forgot to think about the fact that aluminum is barely better. Next time pick glass… and make sure people recycle! Anyhow, this is Beautywater Q10,  taste: grapefruit. I hate water with taste other than those: beer, wine, coffee, regular water. Sorry, but I’m picky! I had some other people take a sip and it wasn’t an instant hit with either of them. Smells appealing, tastes yucky.

BM Beauty Blusher and SpaRitual nail polish in Heliotrope. The mineral blusher comes in this tiny box, it’s a sample of course, but I’m not very good with mineral makeup that comes in tiny packaging, so I didn’t try it. The nail polish however I tried, and I like the quality, as always with SpaRituals, but it is not original size! It is a mini, and yes, SpaRitual sells minis, and they are ‘original’ MINI size. Original size means the large one. Anyhow, Heliotrope is a medium purple creme, dries fairly quick, and reacquires two coats. Made me think that someone isn’t reading my blog after all, because it’s purple. Have you ever heard me rave about a purple creme? I dare you…

Illamasqua lipgloss in Femme. I love Illamasqua nail polishes, I love their eye-products, their lipstick in ‘welt’ is my favorite lipstick ever, I own two other intense lip glosses (belladonna and I totally forgot) and I love them and wear them a lot. If you don’t have one, you need one. 

Zoeva is a brand I’ve heard about; mainly that their brushes are supposed to be awesome, and now I find a eye crayon in this box. The color didn’t appeal to me at first, but it looks nice in combination with my regular eyeshadow colors (grey, blue, black, turquoise mainly). Also, it has amazing longevity and it clings to your eyes like ivy to a house wall – hence I’m giving it the grade A++++, one + for stay power, one + for surprising me, one + for the easy application and one + for a rather affordable price.

That was it from this month’s Glossybox, and now onto the important stuff! You can win one of 3 gift sets from SpaRitual on my blog!

The terms & conditions are fairly simple: You have to be a public follower of my blog either through Facebook or bloglovin. You have to be a resident of the European Union (no oversea territories). You have to leave me a valid email address in the form, otherwise I can’t contact you. If you don’t respond within 48 hours, I’ll draw another winner.

Fairly simple, isn’t it? Enjoy!

The Giveaway has now ended.

The Glossybox was sent to me for review from the company for free. The SpaRitual polishes for the raffle were given to me at free disposal.

Illamasqua Nomad and his friends

I’m guessing you’ve all seen Nomad, one of the two new Illamasqua nail polishes. As mint and pistachio greens are super hip this summer, I couldn’t pass on Nomad. Also, whenever Illamasqua releases their new colours, I have huge fights with my bank account until he (yes, he.) gives in, and I can order at least one! This time it turned out to be Nomad. The other colour, Stance, didn’t excite me too much because it’s purple.

So when I received Nomad, I thought, hey, I have to have at least one dupe for that, considering these greens are my weakness (as well as lime greens and pink, but I thought I wouldn’t mention that here). And so I dug through my stash and came up with these:

Illamasqua Nomad – Trind CC 140 – p2 jetset – essence in the jungle (which is a ‘pedicure’ colour… whatever.)

So, I was utterly wrong. I do not have a single dupe for Illamasqua Nomad. All of those4 are two coats; from left (index) to right (pinkie): Illamasqua Nomad,Trind CC 140 – p2 jetset – essence in the jungle. The one coming closest is essence in the jungle, but Nomad is much more vibrant and looks somewhat happier. I guess a polish-non-professional, or PNP, wouldn’t mind the small colour difference and instead opt for the cheaper variante (aka the essence polish). I however consider myself difficult to please – women, huh?! – and I love the Illamasqua bottles and formula, so I’m sticking with Nomad.

above: daylight. Below: artificial light, no flash.below: flash (here you can really see the difference!)

I can’t leave stuff alone, so I layered Coastal Scents “Tweedia” over my comparison manicure (which I actually wore for a day, because I liked the different greens together). I don’t really know what to think about it though. Alone, Tweedia is a bit boring, and over those greens… it somehow takes wawy the livelyness of the green and hangs over it fog-like. Maybe I should have layered it over something else. What do you think?

How I wore it: The Ruffian in grey and neon yellow

The Ruffian. For quite some time I didn’t know how to do it. What technique to use. How to be precise. Luckily, Laurie told me what to do exactly, and I mastered my first Ruffian! I lovelovelove the combination of grey and neon yellow.

Obviously, I’m going to show you way too many pictures, because I was so proud of myself. I used Illamasqua Rare as a base, and two coats of China Glaze Pelikan Gray over Rare.

above: daylight. Below: flash

And this is how I wore it: proudly. No, sorry for my dumb joke, I wore it with a dress from COS, which I bought at their store in Amsterdam last winter! I love it very dearly, and have since ordered successfully from their online store. The earrings are from Barbara Reisch, which is one of my favourite jewellery designers!

Have you ordered from /heard of COS before? What do you think about Ruffian manicures? And don’t you also just love the combination of neon colours with grey??

Catrice LE Revoltaire

Good Monday Morning everyone!

Today is actually a rather special day, as it marks the one-year existance of my blog. I had a whole celebration thing planned, but my new banner isn’t finished and my Giveaway things haven’t arrived on time either. For now, all I can do is pat myself on the shoulder and wish my blog a very happy birthday!

So until I manage to get things done, let me entertain you with the Catrice LE Revoltaire.

First up are the lipsticks. The LE came with no less than 3 matte lipsticks, and I can’t say no to a matte lipstick… a weakness of  mine. Color Bomb, Nude Alarm and Bloody Red are the names of these lipsticks. So far I wore Color Bomb (the coral one twice, and I must say I really like it. It stays on for a couple of hours with me, which is better than any other drugstore lipstick I tried so far.

Also, there were two eyeshadow quads in this LE.  They are called Toxic Combination and Explosive Combination. I totally fell for the packaging, so here you go:

 And so you can understand why I bought those eyeshadows even though I wouldn’t need them, you’ll have to wait until all the other things arrived and we can happily celebrate my one-year-blogging anniversary.

Now, let’s see the polishes!

Color Bomb is a jelly-ish polish somewhere between tomato red and pink. It is opaque in two coats, and looks very squishy. Think essence Bright Alert or essence Brightsmates. 

Mission Lilac is similar to essence Little Miss Bright. Squishy purple. Opaque in two coats.

Then there is a beautiful yellow-gold, Color of Honor, which is opaque in three coats. It’s a bit streaky, but that’s ok I think. It looked much better on the nail than it looked in the bottle; a colour I enjoyed wearing!

Innocent Toxin is another pea-green from the house of cosnova. Catrice ACid/DC comes pretty darn close. 2 coats – the shimmer in the bottle barely translates to the nail, which is a pity. And last but not least, we have the most exciting colour from this LE – at least in my opinion. It is called Attracting Camouflage, a – and I’m quoting Illamasqua here – pearlescent ash ocre colour. Why am I quoting the description of Illamasqua Bacterium when it comes to a Catrice polish? Well, because they’re dupes. First though: Attracting Camouflage, 3 coats. 

And now, Illamasqua Bacterium vs. Catrice Attracting Camouflage. Can you tell which one is which? (Pinkie&Ring finger: Bacterium, Middle finger&Index finger: Attracting Camouflage)

Could you have told them apart??

What do you think of the Revoltaire LE? Are you also sometimes falling for nicely packed things, even though you don’t really need them?