How I wore it: China Glaze Love’s a beach

Get ready for some eye-searing uber-neonity! Today I am showing you one of the polishes I absolutely adore, but can’t look at too long: China Glaze Love’s a Beach.

What you see here (do look away every couple of seconds, for your retina’s sake), is a super pink neon shimmer polish.

It applies well, is neon, is pink, has shimmer. What more do I want? A matching lipstick. Oh, wait, I have one: Bobby Brown Neon Pink.

I also have sunglasses, just so you know.  And a matching ring with neon pink and neon yellow glass stones (from Pieces or something like it). Check out how that pink pops in the shadow! Amazing!

And of course, I have pink Converse, and this slightly big pink cashmere pullover (from Nice Connection, well, whatever, I didn’t choose their brand name). 

The pants are, as most of mine seem to be, from WE. So, either  I make a lot of advertising for WE, or I keep on wearing the same pants. You can pick

And last, but definitely not least, here’s a piece of very useful information for those of you that like stamping! The essence polishes of their color changing line are amazing for stamping. Thank you M. for telling me, I tried them all: they all stamp amazingly. And they do slightly change their color if you add topcoat! (all of the 4 available polishes stamped over Love’s a Beach, no topcoat added).

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.

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.

How I wore it: essie Head Mistress

I have a bit of an unanswered love relationship with essie: I usually want the colors to work on me, but either the color turns out to be flat out boring or dupable, or the quality turns me off. Somehow, essie and I have had a bit of a dry spell in the past.

Luckily for me, I received essie Head Mistress in the mail a few weeks ago – well, it wasn’t love at first sight, but since we’re somewhat of an old couple sleeping in seperate bed rooms, it wasn’t expected, really. I decided to wear Head Mistress (2 coats) for work (you know, red and all, easy, etc.) and I enjoyed wearing it surprisingly much! So much actually, that I decided to keep it – I had already planned to let it sleep in the other bedroom, but we’re friends turned lovers, so it’s got to stay.

Well. I had the genius idea to stamp over it – less genius was my choice of stamping polish. I tried Catrice Wild Wild Westside from the Upper Wild Side LE - it works, but not too good over red. I’ll call this the mother of all subtle stamping.

And this is How I Wore It – I wasn’t wearing jeans to work, in case you wondered, but I went to meet friends later, so I quickly changed. The jeans are from WE, which is my favourite store to buy jeans. They always fit!

The t-shirt is also from WE. It’s made from Chiffon in the front and has all these little dove shapes on. I hate doves (flying rats, really), but I pretend those are other birds.

The cardigan is from UNIQLO, the ring is from Disneyland and the shoes are from Monsoon. The lipstick I’m wearing is from Inglot. If you’re interested to know which number, leave me a comment, and I’ll check!

Here is was waiting for J to get the camera settings ready. I would’ve looked a bit nicer if I knew my pic was being taken!

essie Head Mistress was sent to me by the PR team of  L’óreal Austria for free to review. All other products were bought by me or received in a swap.

Piano Nails

Sometimes, but just sometimes, I feel the need to try something weird.

I had these stamping plates for sometime now, the MASH plates, and on one of them is this piano-print. So the other day, I wanted to wear Orly Au Champagne (the white), and it refused to behave, so I had dents in the nails of my ringfinger and my pointer.

I wasn’t ready to paint them in Au Champagne again, so I blindly grabbed into my “to swatch” box, and out came OPI Nein! Nein! Nein! Ok, fine!.  I will talk about the name of this polish in a later post. I actually cringed when I just wrote that.

And because the color combinaton fitted, I picked up my MASH plate #44, and stamped this piano design over it, alternating in black and white (I used wet’n'wild black and white creme for the stamping design).

I think the design would work much better if I had a straight nail shape and not an oval/rounded one, but it was fun for a day. What do you 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!

Leaves in Germany

I have already told you how I feel towards the OPI Germany Collection: Most of the colors are awesome, but all the names are embarrassing. Which is not really surprising, especially if you take a look at earlier collections with names such as “Miso happy for this color” which can be interpreted as almost hostile towards foreigners (making fun of a Japanese accent). I assume that none of this was meant to be this way, but the names are, in my opinion, borderline.

Luckily the names don’t magically imprint on the nails, so I resorted to people just telling it was a polish from the current OPI collection that I was wearing. Doesn’t work on the blog, so let me introduce you to German-icure by OPI, a shade from, surprise, OPI.

The shade is perfect for fall and winter. It’s a dark red leaning towards brown, with a metallic, uber-shiny look to it.

The formula was very good too, I used two coats and the polish dried quicker than usual for OPIs. Even though I am still resisting everything that looks brown, I enjoyed wearing this shade.

As it is such a good fall shade, it needed some leaves on top. Hence I reached for my MASH plate #44, which has a very appealing stamping design, which could also pass for an ear (you know, from cereal, not the thing left and right of your head).  That would also be appropriate for fall, so I didn’t feel the need to settle if it was an ear or a leave design.

For the stamping I reached for the sally hansen pens with the paragraph-long name again, this time in gold. I adore how this turned out. How about you?

Beige and Blue

Just a quick stamping manicure for today. As a base color I chose Urban Decay Fame. As I have to wear work appropriate colors most of these days, I figured this would be a good choice. I did indeed like Fame, but then I’m also a bit sad to have such normal nails. Some days I just love bright colors, but due to my work, I have to stay normal elegant.

Anyhow, Fame is a beige polish, I think it’s a cousin twice removed from the nude family, with a bit of shimmer. It looks as if it would be very streaky, but it dries to a smooth surface with almost no streaks visible. The only thing that bothered me a bit was that the bottle is so tiny, you can really see how much polish one uses for a full manicure.

After work, I decided to stamp over it. I used a bright blue Konad stamping color, which I bought at a fleamarket, and I have no idea what it is called. It works perfectly for stamping! I used image ____ from the MASH plate NO____. Impatient me added topcoat too quickly, so I have a bit of smearing, but as I wore this only for the evening, it didn’t matter too much.

Let me know what you think!

Delicious Annalicious

It’s Wednesday but I have nothing pink for you today…. instead, I present you this beautiful red from Cult Nails: Annalicious. It was released this summer as part of Coco’s Untamed Collection. If you are not familiar with Cult Nails, I would dare to say you don’t know nail polish yet. Maria is the heart and brains of the brand which quickly grew to be one of the most solid and innovative nail polish brands on the market. Some of the colors caused a furor in the nail polish community, for example Unicorn Puke, but generally her nail polishes are awesome. Coco is Maria’s daughter and also a nail polish addict. She created five beautiful polishes, which I’ll show you over the next couple of weeks. If you search for Cult Nails on the search bar on the right, you can see other polishes from the brand that I have reviewed so far.

Annalicious is a medium tomato red packed with golden shimmer. The shimmer isn’t overly present, but adds elegance and originality to the polish. The first coat was rather thin and I expected to need more than two coats for full coverage, but surprisingly, the second coat seals the deal and provides coverage.

I received extraordinarily many compliments for this manicure, which is understandable, because it is such a pretty, fiery red! I wore this with a blue suit for work, which made it stand out even more.
Make sure to order Annalicious quickly, if you like it, because it it a limited shade.

After a day of wearing it alone, I decided to break in my new stamping plates. M. had sent me the new Bundlemonster and the new MASH set, and after two month without my stamping supplies in Paris, I couldn’t wait to stamp again! Once you start, it is difficult to stop, I found out.

I used the BundleMonster plate 307 for this manicure and the golden sally hansen nail polish pen. It was very warm the last couple of days, so I felt like butterflies!

Cult Nails polishes come wrapped in a nail polish burrito, which you can see here on the picture. I find this a fun and creative way of wrapping and it definitely stands out!

So, what do you say?

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?