Essie - After School Boy Blazer (For The Twill Of It Collection, Fall 2013)

I'm into Essie polishes lately.....things like that just happen sometimes :-)
Ever since I use Good To Go top coat on all Essie polishes I have the feeling they last a lot longer on the nails (without chpping or major tippwear) then when I used Poshé top coat. AND I have the feeling that the formula is rather nice lately >or is that just me?<

Today I painted my nails with the dark, preppy and chique After School Boy Blazer. The formula was heavenly, it glided on my nails like butter!
It is a perfect dark navy creme, it has a touch of purple in there somewhere which keeps it from getting a greenish tinge so many other navy blues get.

Essie - After School Boy Blazer

It is a lovely, lovely colour, perfect for fall!

Zoya - Stevie (PixieDust Collection summer 2013)

Ahhh, it is liquid sand/pixiedust day today!
I love these textures because they are easy to work with, no top coat required and they dry very fast >happy<
At first glance I thought that Stevie would be a cold colour and would perhaps not compliment my skintone: I was wrong! Stevie seems to morph and flatters my skin tone instead of creating lobster fingers >happy<

I used a basecoat and two coats of Stevie to get this result:

Zoya - Stevie, PixieDust

I love the colour, it could be this is one of my favorite texture polishes I tried so far! PixieDust wears very well: just do not get into cleaning loads of tiny stones for your fish (without latex gloves), by shoveling your hands through them....it wears your polish down pretty quickly :-)

Rescue Beauty Lounge - NailsandNoms (The Bloggers' Collection 2.0)

I have been dancing around the RBL polishes for a year now I guess! And after seeing swatches of Fire Queen and the orange sherbet NailsandNoms I took the plunge.
Expectations were very high.
In this year of dancing around the tree I read a lot about mythical RBL; how fabulous and creative Ji is, the fenomenal consistency of the polishes, the intellectual inspirations behind her collections, the inaccessible vlounge, the price etc. So, yes, expectations were very high indeed!
When my package arrived, I couldn't wait to see the little bottles in person, they were way smaller then they were in my minds eye, but beautiful in shape and the colours were jummy.

NailsandNoms was the one I picked to try on first. It is a lovely sherbet orange, it has the same translucency as sherbet ice. The shimmer is electric blue and hot pink and it is not shy, you can see it in every light. This overload of shimmer is very top coat hungry as well! I did my normal one coat of Poshé and it did not get to the glossiness it normally gets. BUT this RBL does NOT love Poshé: it pulled back from the edges almost 1mm, it was bizarre, I have never seen a polish react this heavily on a top coat!

Then the consistency of N&N, I can say nothing more then that it was horrible >sorry<
It was very thick and it did not level out at all. Within one streak it got all sherbet like (very appropriate..) going in again with the brush meant lumbs, streaks and bold spots. I tried thin coats, thick coats and thinner to no avail!

This is what three coats of struggle look like:

Rescue Beauty Lounge - NailsandNoms

My camera does not like shimmer....and the sun was on holiday as well!
I love the colour, I love the shimmer, I hate the formula. It was a bit of a tough introduction to RBL.
Next week I am going to try Fire Queen and I hope with all of my being that she will love me better!

OPI - This Gown Needs A Crown (Miss Universe Collection autumn 2013) together with OPI - Fiercely Fiona (Shrek Forever After Collection sring 2010)

The moment I saw the Miss Universe Collection, I needed all three polishes! First up is This Gown Needs A Crown, it's a satin finish laquer and it does not need a topcoat. It has indeed a velvety feel to it. A few days ago I was wondering how I should discribe the colour....it is silver but softer and it has something extra, but what was it? I was on my bike during this train of thoughts and my bike just happens to have a brushed aluminum steering wheel. When I saw my nails next to the aluminum, >click<  there it was: TGNAC looks and feels like brushed aluminum!

Very cool!

I did not want to combine TGNAC with one of the other polishes from the collection, that was just too obvious. I wanted something light and fresh and happy, so I choose Fiercely Fiona. The fresh lemon yellow combines perfectly with the soft silver and I wore this combination for almost a week!
In Fiercely Fiona I found the yellow I was looking for for a long, long time. Most yellows are way too sunflower yellow (too much orange), my ideal yellow needs a dash of green and a hint of dirty....enter Fiercely Fiona.

This mani was three coats of TGNAC and four of FF, it was very, very thin but easy manageable and perfecly opaque after four coats....

OPI - This Gown Needs A Crown and OPI - Fiercely Fiona

And look: there is even a cute little crown with rhinestones attached to the cap!

Essie - Pink About It (Pink About It, Breast Cancer Awareness Collection) 2013

A bit out of my confort zone is this baby pink by Essie. Pink About It is one of the two polishes that make the Pink About it Breast Cancer Awareness Collection of this year.
PAI is discribed as a blossom pink with holographic glimmer...the blossom pink part is the nail on the head but the holographic glimmer...is just not there! No holographic particles anywhere in this polish.

So that was a bit of a bummer (I ordered the polish via internet so I had not seen it before hand).

It has glimmer, somewhere, you can see it when the stars are aligned just right en then when the sun does not hit it directly, you will see a tiny twinkle.

In the bottle it is there and you can determine that it consists of two colours: fuchia and gold.
I had to apply four coats to get a nice opaque and non-streaky nail....so that got me over the threshold of applying more then two coats of polish ;-)

Although it is non holographic with almost non excisting glimmer and streaky, the colour was kind of flattering on me and I wore it for four days and really enjoyed it!

Essie - Pink About It

Still those dry hands and cuticles....I know, I know >sigh<

OPI - Make Him Mine (Mariah Carey Christmas Collection 2013) Liquid Sand

It's time for a Liquid Sand again, I love these texture polishes! They are very easy to apply, pretty easy to remove, they dry fast and look and feel gorgeous!
I choose Make Him Mine from the Christmas Collection: it is a rosy silver/beige very neutral yet very festive. After wearing this one for a couple of days my conclusion was that this would be a great polish to wear in between Christmas and New Year.

OPI - Make Him Mine, Liquid Sand

OPI - A Butterfly Moment with OPI - Make Him Mine, Liquid Sand

The colour reminded me of an other Mariah polish from the previous collection: A Butterfly Moment. I put them next to each other....well it is the same tone perhaps ABM is a tiny bit lighter in the base colour then MHM but the glitter in MHM is very, very close to ABM!

Love this colour, it is only too bad that there are so many similar and bland colours in this Mariah Carey Collection!

Pretty & Polished - Blood Clot or my take on Halloween!

Here in The Netherlands, Halloween is not very big business...some children will go and try to "scare" some shop holders in the street, but it is nothing big.
I had the sudden urge to wear something bloody on my finger tips so I reached to a friend from last year: Pretty & Polished Blood Clot. I stalked it for weeks because it was sold out every time...and when I finaly purchased it..Halloween was over!
I love this polish, it sounds gruesome "Bloot Clot" but it looks quite charming I would say!
It is a syrupy cherry red (or blood red if you prefer) with two sizes of shiny hex glitters. There is some fishing acquired for the big hexes and with that you tend to add a blob of syrup on the nail as well. This gives it that extra clotted appearence.

This was three layers and some extra blobs:

Pretty&Polished - Blood Clot

I tried my hardest to get it photographed right...it just wouldn't. The polish is so shiny that it messed with the focus of the camera. The colour of the third and the fifth shot is the closest to the truth, it has just a hint more brown in it (more blood, less cherry). Do NOT look at my cuticles they are horrid...and it isn't even winter yet!

Happy Halloween!!!