How I wore it: all green

The few sunny days this winter have to be made use of! Mostly I take walks and enjoy the sun, but other times I wear holographic nail polish.

This particular sunny day, I was fed up by neutral colors and decided to wear as much green nail polish as I could.  So I put on sally hansen gentle blossom (thumb) color club Holiday Splendor over KIKO 391 (index finger), sonoma nail art mustard fields over KIKO297 (on middle finger), Nubar Reclaim (ring finger) and again KIKO 297 (pinkie).

Unfortunately, it was very windy, so the outfit-picture-taking process was a bit more difficult than usual.

As I wore all this green on my nails, I decided to opt for something tuquoise and then blue so I’d be ombre as a whole. My oants are from Uniqlo, t-shirt is Uniqlo too, the jacket (a gift from my aunt) is from Montego, which is sold at Peek&Cloppenburg, and the absolutely humongeous out of proportion 100% non recycled plastic ring is from H&M. The scarf was a gift from E and is from Cora Kemperman, my favorite Dutch designer next to Viktor & Rolf whom I can’t afford.

I loved this manicure a lot. I usually like everything to be in order, hence not every nail something else, but it was great to have this on for a fun Sunday!

Sunday Spam: Gliiiiiitters!

Well, finally I have a Sunday SPAM Post for you again! This Sunday’s theme is G.L.I.T.T.E.R. Isn’t that awesome? Let me know in the comments which one you like best!  PS: all the people who celebrate Christmas: Aren’t you excited? I sure am!! One more night!

Sation Summer Night Sparkle over barry M bright pink. It looks like little air bubbles in an aquarium. 1 coat.

Sally Hansen  Into the spotlight over Finger Paints Grape Gumball. Into the spotlight is medium sized holographic bar glitter in a clear base. I used one coat.

Sinful Colors Call me later over funky fingers mrs mint. Call me later is a mix ov super tiny green and gold glitters and larger round green ones. One coat.

Sinful Colors Green Ocean, also over funky fingers Mrs. Mint. This is a iridiscent glitter, on the verge of looking like a flakie. Very ocean-like! 1 coat.

sally hansen Rockstar Pink over SOPI Iris I was thinner (still funny!) – this would probably cover in 2-3 coats, but I decided to layer it. It’s a mix of magenta, blue and gold glitter, but the magenta glitters prevail. 1 coat.

OPI I Lily love you over OPI Houston we have a purple. I Lily love you is a mix of iridiscent glitter shreds  and smaller round glitters in a sheer, pink tinted base. If you didn’t realise yet, I like iridiscent glitters. More than a grown woman probably should, but who am I to judge. 1 coat.

Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter over OPI If you moust you moust – same principle, iridiscent glitter in a pink base – the glitters are smaller though, and the pink base leans towards neon pink! I tried to apply it without a base color, but that would take way too many coats.

Sation Glints and Glam over Revlon Sugar Glaze. Glints and Glam is a mix of differently sized holographic glitters in a milky pink base. I don’t like how thick this can look, so I try to layer glitters in milky bases over similar colors. I used only one coat.

This was your Sunday Spam – what would you like to be spammed with next week?

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!

 

Pink Wednesday: Subtle Stamping

Today I have just a simple manicure for you. I felt like a pure, simple manicure inbetween strong colors, so I opted for Orly Kiss the Bride, which is a very whitened pastel pink creme. I used three coats, as I had some issues with it – it didn’t want to level out properly.

On my ringfinger I applied two coats of ManGlaze Mayo, which is a white matte polish with awesome shimmer. The shimmer is most visible if one applies topcoat, but I wanted to wear it matte. It’s a bit chalky, but worth it!

I decided that this was perfect for some stamping, so I used the sally hansen quick dry nail art many more words to describe this simple nail polish pen in metallic pink and an image from the DRK-A plate. On the ringfinger I used the silver pen. Photographing this was somewhat extremely difficult, as the stamping image reflected the light too much. I have since changed my camera settings on my path to the perfect light settings – I might have to recreate this manicure, because I love how soft and sweet it looks, and then I’ll try making better pics.

Man Hunt with a Laser

China Glaze Manhunt - one of those polishes I can’t recapitulate why they were on my wishlist. It’s a medium blue cobalt creme polish, one of those I adore to look at, but I will never really wear. I love blue, don’t get me wrong, just not so much on my fingernails. I love wearing blue on my toenails, but there are only so many blues I can wear on my toes… Well, as I already had it, I decided to wear it at least once. I used two coats, and I must say the formula is superb. It dries quickly, covers in two coats and levels out smoothly. 

Of course I couldn’t leave it at that, and I decided to layer Sally Hansen HD Laser over it. Laser is a rather sheer polish by itself, so it needed a base color. The color shift in Laser is gorgeous – from blue to purple and at awkward angles even to green.

I snapped two pictures of the polish underwater. I don’t remember who had this great idea, but if you know, will you drop me a link in the comments? It’s a genius idea, that’s for sure. I mean, check out the awesome duochromity (new word alert!)!!

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!

Red glitters Comparison

I haven’t gotten over glitters, and I assume I never really will. There are periods when I wear less of it, but despite the removal issue, I am still very fond of glitters, especially the glitter polishes that consist of small glitters and can therefore be worn alone. Hence it is not surprising that I have a generous amount of polishes that look similar, and I went on a dupe hunt for you.

I have never shown you Revlon Glitz and Glam before – it is a dark red jelly leaning towards pink filled with silver glitters. I used three coats of it for the swatches below.

 

I have two polishes that I thought would be similar, but well, judge for yourselves – I don’t think they are very much alike.
Sally Hansen Lady Luck on my middle finger and index finger is a dark red jelly like the one from Revlon, but there’s no silver glitter. Instead, is is filled with glitter the same base as the jelly and sparser holographic glitters.
Nicole by OPI Sensational Scarlet – on my pinkie and ring finger – has a differently colored base even, it is more of a ripe tomato red color, hence “scarlet”, and it is filled with red and iridescent glitters. No dupes here, I’d say! I used three coats for both polishes. 

Which glitters do you like best?

A quick trip to Innsbruck

Most of you will know about the upcoming Germany collection from OPI for this fall. At this point I feel the need to tell you that I hate the names and luckily for me, the colors aren’t that exciting, so I can happily skip this collection (let’s see how long before I stray from my set path…).

Germany collection set aside, there once was an around the world collection from OPI if I’m not mistaken – it was way before I knew that OPI didn’t only mean grandfather in German – and it included a hideous color called Innsbruck Bronze. I am calling it hideous because it is everything you know I  don’t love: brown, but not chocolate, no, more dulled out, almost nude-ish, streaky, thin, outrageous dry time. But it’s Innsbruck Bronze, and even though I am not from there, I had to have it. 

Since this color is fairly old, it’s not 3-free and it stinks accordingly. The polish itself is too thin, so it runs wherever (you’d need a Dutch dam to stop it!). I used three coats, and the streaks disappear mostly when the polish dries. Drying, btw, takes forever, despite Seche Vite. On my ring finger, I’m wearing two coats of OPI Sparkle-icious. Even though I don’t like colors such as Innsbruck Bronze, I can justify it in two ways: A decent work color like this is good to have, and maybe my taste will change as my birthdays come and go: and, it’s an Austrian polish, and I’m skipping on Germany.

I soon stamped over it with Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Ruby Rush and Teal-y fast (I mixed the two polishes a bit on the stamping plate, just like you would when making a gradient). One’s gotta love these Insta-Dry polishes for stamping!!

 

What do you think about this manicure and Innsbruck Bronze?

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!

Grandmother Pink & Sparkle

Today I have a Sally Hansen polish for you. Obviously we don’t have the same range of Sally Hansen polishes here in Austria – you can be very happy to find one or two occasionally; it’s as if they are delivered to various shops by accident. Also, the Sally Hansen nail treatments are substantially more expensive here. Which explains why I’m always very happy to get them in swaps!

Today I have Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Ballet Rouge for you. It’s a dusty pink creme, which needed only 2 coats for full coverage. Below is a picture of it in daylight; the colour reminds me a little of my grandmother.flash:

I decided that this needs a little sparkle, so I grabbed my OPI Excuse Moi! bottle from the Muppets Collection and gave it a spin (=1 coat). This is what it looks like in daylight (and below with flash):

What do you think? Do you also love Sally Hansen polishes??