Sunday Spam: OPI pink & red

Well, I hope you’re enjoying your sunday! Meanwhile I am working on emptying my swatch folders, so I’m showing you a couple of pink and red OPI/NOPI/SOPI polishes today.

OPI I’m all ears, from the Minnie Mouse Collection (LOVE Minnie and Mickey!) over Jessica Strawberry Fields. I had no patience to apply multiple coats of this beautiful but sheer raspberry red glassfleck. Beautiful, but not unique, I think.

NOPI Great Minds Pink Alike, a coral Creme with glassfleck-y shimmer. Love the idea, and that it covers perfectly in 2 coats, but the coral looks stripper-y on me.

OPI Aphrodite’s pink Nightie is really old (in polish years). It is part of the Greek Isles (?) collection from 2004. It is frosty and pink, and no-one likes colors like this anymore, but I love it. I am weird sometimes and it has been on more than one occasion, that people told me that my taste was interesting. 2 coats.

OPI Charged up Cherry is extremely difficult to capture. My lightbox, skintone and the fact that this is almost neon, do not do it any good. It looks washed out in my pictures – somehow unsatisfying. I will try to show you in an How I wore it post soon. 2 coats.

OPI If you moust, you moust – I love this flawless pink, and the application is great. Perfect bubblegum pink – the only downside is that it doesn’t really suit me. I was really sad when I realized that! I kept it anyway. 2 coats.

OPI Pompeii Purple is one of those pinks I wear over and over. It dries just the slightest bit streaky, and needs three coats, but it glows! It has this blue shimmer over a very vibrant pink, but it’s not too much and doesn’t look too girly. One of my favorite summer pinks!

OPI Schnapps out of it. I don’t know if you  have heard this before, but I hate hate hate medium brown nailpolish (and clothes). This one has a somewhat orange-pink tint, but it’s definitely mostly brown. The silver shimmer can’t safe it for me. Good thing is that the application is easy and it needs 2 coats. Nevertheless, in my eyes, horrible color. Also, it is pretty useless to tell someone to snap out of something when drinking schnapps. I tried and failed.

OPI The color of Minnie. This is a wonderful, wonderful strawberry red, with intense silver shimmer, application is a dream, and it just looks amazing. Eternal love. 2 coats.

How I wore it: OPI My boyfriend scales walls and Big Ruby Nail Tattoo

Well, this week it was all sunny and warm and it smelled like spring, so obviously next week it will be cold and snowy again. In mental preparation, I have a snowy How I wore it post for you today.

I received OPI My boyfriend scales walls in a swap from M., and I had anticipated the arrival of this polish a lot. What I thought it would be: a basically self applying, self-leveling, awesome looking, all around great white-ish nail polish. Well. It is really pretty, but I think most of its beauty stems from it being the perfectbase for nail art (at which I am not very skilled).
So what does one do when one wants to do what one can’t? One outsources. In this particular case, I just ordered some Big Ruby tattoos, something I wanted to try out for longer already. I have no liking towards cute little animals or zippers on my nails, so I opted for the only version of those tattoos that would do: zig-zag and stripes.

I picked a white and blue zig-zag pattern that looked great with the off-white, slightly greyish base of My boyfriend scales walls. I got my set of big Ruby nail tatoos at Le Doux Nuage,  a very nice online shop that ships to Austria. Just fyi: it says on the instructions of the nail tattoos that one should apply two coats of top coat. I didn’t, and it came off rather quickly, so next time I will.

And, as I’m all into matching colors, I decided to match my outfit to the design. I picked a scarf from Esprit, a shirt from WE, cardigan from Montego (at Peek & Cloppenburg) and pants that my friend B. bought for me. I bought the boots ages ago and have no idea where I got them from.

 Make-up wise I tried to try something new. I used the usual Inglot concealer, eyebrow powder, foundation, but I tried my new MAC creme blusher in Restores Dazzle! from the Cook Shop LE. I had problems with it in the beginning, but with help from fellow beauties, I figured I’d just need to use the right brush. The mascara is my regular Chanel mascara. The lipstick is a matte liptsitck from NARS, called Valparaiso. It looks awesome if you ask me.

Now I want to know – would you like me to post my regular beauty products, or are you just fine with me telling you I used “the usual”?

Sunday Spam More Glitter!

 

 

Wishing you a fine Sunday from behind my computer. Hope you all have time to relax before the week starts again!

Today I’m showing you some glitter combinations I wore, tried out and swatched.

First up is Jessica Hot Hot Hot (over butter LONDON Trout Pout). I wanted Hot Hot Hot to be a covering glitter, but what you see below is already two coats. It is pretty and all, but I was hoping for something different.

essie a cut above (over Catrice Have a good day) is hands down my favorite pink glitter. What I like about it is the variety of sizes, but the unity in color. And the glitter payoff is wonderful – this is one coat.

H&M has been stepping up their game when it comes to nail polish. I’m wearing Purple Sprinkles (over Chanel Frenzy), which is a mix of purple glitters and holographic bar glitter. It isn’t a very dense glitter, but it works for a “pimp my office manicure” emergency. Plus, if you like purple, you’ll most probably like it anyhow.

Well, unfortunately, after I put on Purple Sprinkles, I somehow got caught somewhere and ripped a piece of skin from my cuticle. It was very painful, and I didn’t dare to change my manicure, so I just added a coat of nails inc soho street. Sorry about the picture, but I so absolutely adored soho street over Chanel Frenzy, I couldn’t pass on showing you this. And in case you were wondering, this is one coat!

Another H&M polish, Confetti Time, which I liked. It’s a mix of pink, blue and gold glitters, in different sizes (over Chanel Malice). Cute, and I can see this to be worn in many combinations.

This is a tricky combination: The base color is nails inc disco lane (total light box fail, trying to photograph the holographic glitter in there!) and I lazily painted on a silver/holographic glitter from SpaRitual called Illumination and butter LONDON Lovely Jubbly (the pink). Not my best combination.

I have a thing for multicolored glitters too, so I adored OPI Rainbow Connection (Nicka K NY138, hands down one of the best greens I own!). Nothing wrong with a little easter manicure, is there?

And the last one for today is China Glaze Marry A Millionaire on the tips (over OPI DS temptation). I totally love this glitter, and I’m so not over bar glitter yet, especially the smaller kind. 

How I wore it: OPI Stay The Night

This particular How I Wore It post is made possible by M., who decided that I must try the Liquid Sand polishes from OPI, even though I was very unenthusiastic about them at first. Now I decided that I like the texture, so I am crossing my fingers that the Zoya textured polishes will find their way to me.

I showed you The Impossible here, today I’m following up with Stay the Night.

I used 3 thin coats of Stay the night – I was a bit cautios when applying it and opted for thin coats, to increase the drying time (which is humbug, if you add two more layers, but it’s a psychological thing).

To be honest, this polish was exactly what I felt for with my tiny winter nails. I hate how the cold weather ruins my nails and dries out my hands. Very frustrating!

I decided to match the colors to my outfit, so I picked a black pair of pants (H&M I believe), a red t-shirt (also H&M) and a big black cardigan with a hood from Oysho. The scarf is from FabIndia and the bracelet is from NewOne. 

I love how I never look dumb on pictures.

I wanted to add a picture of Stay the Night from within the lightbox. The polish looks less dry and more saturated inside than outside, in daylight. The glitters shine through in both settings, but the color changes a bit I think.

How would you have paired Stay the Night?

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!

How I wore it: OPI The Impossible

Upon reader request, I decided to order The impossible, one of the liquid sand polishes from the Mariah Carey OPI collection. Yeah, sometimes I do that for my readers

I was very much on the fence about these polishes. Would I like them. Would they be horrible to remove. Would they just look ridiculous. Would I hate the texture. Well, I figured no better way to find out than to try, and here I am, wearing 3 coats of The Impossible. 

Actually, the texture isn’t that bad. It’s not as if you’re wearing sand paper on your nails, it’s more like rough wallpaper. The dry time was less than I expected too – I am very biased against polish I can’t just top off with SV, because I had bad experience with ManGlaze Mayo, and that just made me too sad.

The color of The Impossible is the only one I found appealing so far, even though now I am pondering if I should maybe try the black-and-red one too… I decided to take this polish for coffee. So on a fine Saturday, The Impossible and I went for an afternoon of proper Viennese coffee.

It was very, very cold that day – minus 11 degrees! The scarf I’m wearing is one of these things I would have never bought for myself, but as it was bought by dear J., I didn’t have to think about it. It is actually one of those pieces that I love and wear a lot – especially when it is this cold! It is from Uniqlo.

The cardigan (yes, I took off my jacket in the cold! for you!) is from H&M, my first red piece, and I love it. The pants are from WE, the boots are from Oysho. What you see on my lips is a metallic red lipstick (what do you call those lip products that come in the same pans as eyeshadows? They aren’t sticks technically!), that I recently re-discovered and absolutely adore. Blush, foundation and eyebrow thingy are also from Inglot (I’m a faithful customer once I find something I like), mascara from Chanel. In this last picture you can see how vivid the color of The Impossible is. I was smitten by it – what do I care about the texture, if something looks as if it glows from the inside. So, all in all, I can say that buying this particular polish was a good choice. Also, the chipping only started after a day, so that was later than I expected. I’ll have to think about the other polishes from this line now…

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!

How I wore it: OPI DS Mystery

Look who’s going to work! Your favorite blogger (and if I’m not, please don’t tell me.)!

I had to cut down my nails a bit again, so I decided to wear something dark. And I hadn’t worn OPI DS Mystery in such a long time, it was screaming for attention. I finally gave in, even though I was told that this is not the way to properly raise your children nail polish bottles.

Enough of me blabbing, this is OPI DS Mystery. 2 coats of it, to be precise. DS Mystery is a dark jelly polish filled with gold/copper flakes. I have read that some people find the base to look purple, but mine looks dark blue. I assume this is one of the polishes that look a bit different according to your skin tone.

It was a bit early when those pics were taken, but due to the fact that it is winter, I can’t take pictures when I come home from work, because it gets dark right after lunch (that is what I feel like at least). I’m super happy with my make-up, because it makes me look 150%more awake than I actually am. 

Make-up: I’m wearing the same as always, more or less: foundation from Inglot, eyebrow  thingy also from Inglot (it’s an eyeshadow that I use for my brows), blush also from Inglot. My mascara is from Chanel (it’s pretty awesome), and the lipstick is YSL Rouge pour Couture 41. 

And, what am I wearing? Winter work clothes. The blazer is from Stefanel, the scarf from pieces, the dress is my favorite dress from Uniqlo, that J. brought me from one of her shopping trips to London – and it fits perfecty -, the belt is from GAP and the shoes I have no idea. Considering how I usually shop, they are from some outlet shopping thing.

Well, I hope you still like my how I wore it posts, because they are the worst to do in winter! I feel like I’m cooling down to the inside temperature of my fridge in seconds, so you better appreciate my self-sacrifices

 

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.

Knockwurst Babes

(excuse the absolutely weird title, but my other option was Knockwurst Toyland, and that sounded so dirty.)

The other day I was wearing OPI My very first Knockwurst, which looks a bit like meat spread, if you ask me. I like to wear it every once in a while, because it is really simple and clean-looking. Somehow I thought I showed you this already, but I haven’t… I did wear this surprisingly often since I got it. 2 coats.

When I came home from work that day, my ILNP order arrived. I bought Babes in Toyland (and some other stuff, but that’s for later!), which I immediately had to put on my tips! You can buy ILNP here and follow on facebook. Babes in Toyland is a multi-glitter topcoat, that I absolutely loved. It consists of gold, pink, green, teal and purple glitters in different sizes and shapes. I used one coat.

For work, I decided that the sparkle was a bit too much, so I decided to make a jelly sandwich out of it. I picked OPI You callin’ me a lyre?, which is a super sheer jelly in a neutral pink (not that the color matters when it’s so sheer!). It is perfect for sandwiches! 

I used two coats over Babes in Toyland, and I love the outcome! Don’t you?