Essie - Fiji & LA Girl Glitter Addict - Uninhibited

In principle I like pale pinks, I just find them a bit too stark and girly on my nails most of the time. Then I thought of this simple black glitter topper by LA Girl: Uninhibited. I tried the combination and fell in love: it is perfection! The black glitter make the pale pink a bit less sweet and girly and adds just the perfect amount of funk to the colour. Uninhibited is a simple glitter topper: black hexes in two sizes (tiny and a bit less tiny) in a transparent base.

Essie - Fiji & LA Girl Glitter Addict - Uninhibited

Orly - Mirrorball (Sparkle Collection, Holiday 2014) and China Glaze - Party Hearty (2010)

A bit christmassy, but beautiful non the less!
Orly Mirrorball with a lick of Party Hearty in between.

Both polish are a charm to work with, Mirrorball is opaque in three coats and Party Hearty is a topper that gives a nice amount of glitter with just one coat. I love that Mirrorball has a fine silver holo base with some small holo glitter thrown in the mix for extra fun.

Orly - Mirrorball & China Glaze - Party Hearty

Party Hearty is from the China Glaze "Tis The Season To Be Naughty And Nice Holiday 2010 Collection.
Orly Mirrorball is also from a Holiday Collection and is one of the best Orly polishes they gave out in the last years I think......!

Comparison Essie - Take it Outside, Chinchilly & Berlin There Done That + bonus mani

Essie Take it Outside is by no means a extremely unique colour (lovely but not unique), so I needed to compare it with the greige polishes I have in my possession: Essie Chinchilly and (a favourite) OPI Berlin There Done That. I thought I would have more close calls....but they were all too brown.
The two Essie's are definitely family: TIO is a lighter version of Chinchilly. BTDT is a touch more brown and is again a step darker then Chinchilly.

Essie Take it Outside, Chinchilly & OPI Berlin There Done That

In my search for family and friends of Take it Outside I found Elevation Polish Aguja St. Exupery to be a very handsome friend. It is a light holo topper with a dusting of old gold and steel grey flakes and it is from the Patagonia Collection 2014. The flakes make the polish interesting in the shade and the holo does it's trick in the sun! Because of the combination of old gold and steel gray flakes it matches the greige of Take it Outside perfectly.

Elevation Polish - Aguja St. Exupery

Still very work appropriate but with a nice twist. Formula was outstanding: just one coat with an even flake distribution.

Aguja St. Exupery (the name keeps reminding me of the writer of the famous book "Le Petit Prince", Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. That is not without reason as Wikipedia explanes: "The Aguja Saint Exupery is a mountain spear ('aguja') located near the Cerro Chaltén in the Los Glaciares National Park in Patagonia, Argentina. The mountain is named in memory of Antoine de Saint Exupéry, the French writer and aviator who was director of the Aeroposta Argentina airline and pioneered postal flights in the Patagonia region between 1929 and 1931.") is still available at Elevation Polish.

Formula: 5/5

Durability: 4/5

Shine:4/5

Colour: 5/5

Overall: 5/5

Cirque - Ophelia (The Dark Horse Collection) & Cirque - Au (Objet d'Art Collection)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

That to start with. I hope you all had a very happy and safe New Years Eve and I wish you loads of happiness, health and all you need in 2015!

On to the nail polish. What to wear on New Years Eve?
It needed to be blue (why does it need to be blue? I honestly don't know!), but not just any kind of blue...it needed to be some sort of light metallic blue and I needed glitter. After looking through my drawers of polish I finally decided that it was going to be Cirque Ophelia, a light hyacinth blue glitter in various sizes. Two coats of this gave me the blue metallic hue I envisioned but I missed the little extra, the champagne of the evening so to say. Then I remembered Cirque Au, the 23K topper, and that did the trick!

Cirque - Ophelia & Cirque - Au

I like the result: it's fresh, airy and it reminds me of bubbles in champagne and bursts of firework!
This was 2 thin layers of Essence Peal Off base coat, 2 layers of Ophelia, 1 layer Au and two layers of top coat.

As a last note: thank you all for your support, interest and kind words the last year! It is so nice to see that people from all over the world read my tiny little blog: I hope you keep liking it the coming year :-) 

>2015 x thanks!<

Essie - Pink Happy (Breast Cancer Awareness 2014)

Today I'm wearing Pink Happy from this years Breast Cancer Awareness collection. It is the darkest colour of the three. Essie describes it as follows: "laughter is the best medicine and the happy energy of this bright fuchsia berry is sure to put a smile on your face."
It is a fuchsia berry with lots of blue undertones and with my skin that just does not transfer as happy it looks more like granny on me. In the pictures it looks kind of OK, but in real life it pulled darker and less cheery.
This was two layers, but be slow and don't sweep to much with the brush or you will get bald spots!

Essie - Pink Happy

I decided to topcoat the lot: it was chipping fairly quickly and I thought that a layer of twinkles would save the day;......it did not........ >hmph<

Nicole by OPI - Best Pink Ever

The chips were gone, but the blue was even more enhanced and there was a silver sheen that didn't do the colour any favours. No Nicole's Best Pink Ever did not save the day for me today.
I swatched it over black on a nail wheel and that was gorgeous so there is still hope voor The Best Pink Ever! Now I need to figure out what to put over Pink Happy to make it truly happy for me....

China Glaze - Fang-Tastic (Monsters Ball Halloween Collection 2013)

Glitterrrrrrrrrr!
For some time now I had the urge to wear a glitter topper on its own.....so you can see nude nails in between the floating glitters. Weird, I know.
I choose China Glaze Fang-Tastic for the job; it's that not so halloweenish Halloween glitter from last years collection (Monsters Ball). It has blue, green and fuchsia glitter in it and some bigger blue hexes as well. Although it is more Christmas then Halloween I like the combination it's nice and very, very bling at three coats!

China Glaze - Fang-Tastic

I used peel off base coat from Essence (love this stuff: too bad they don't have it in the collection anymore), three coats of Fang-Tastic, an extra layer of top coat (Essence Gel Look) and to top it all off China Glaze Fast Forward. It stayed put for days on end!

China Glaze - Choo Choo Choose You (All Aboard Collection, autumn 2014) with Sally Hanssen - Pink-Grape Fruit (430)

The must have of the China Glaze All Aboard autumn collection: Choo-Choo Choose You!
The hardest part is to describe the colour: it is sort of greyed out lilac blue with a healthy dose of bronze coloured shimmer that shifts to green and in extreme angles to pink.
To emphasize the pink (that really is very elusive) I added one coat of Sally Hansen Pink-Grape Fruit.

China Glaze - Choo-Choo Choose You & Sally Hansen - Pink-Grape Fruit

Choo-Choo Choose You is quite sheer: you need a good two coats (preferably three) to get it opaque and it has the tendency to pull a bit away from the nail edge (so tippwear comes quick and easy, as you can see). I think this has something to do with the base being fairly transparent and the shimmer floating around in it: disliking the edge of the nail.......
I am going to try this one out with a creme base underneath and see how that translates (without the Sally Hansen, because that does not do it any favours I think)!
I like Choo-Choo Choose you very much, it's murky and strange, autumn like and interesting; it deserves being the must have of the collection (of the entire year perhaps?!).