NOTW: Million Dollar Green

I thought this is a very spring like nail look. It definitely reminds me of sunrays hitting the green grass of a park. So perfect for this time of year. My nails have been pretty banged up lately. I cannot seem to let them grow out and they break like there is not tomorrow. I do have to say that my being busy led me to not have much proper time for nail care, so I hope that as of right now I can take care of them again so will become longer and healthier again. Anywho: without further ado I present to you this weeks nail look.

Doesn’t this just make you happy straight away! I’m so glad the sun came out and I felt inspired. Products used:

- Etos Nail Strengthener in very strong as base coat

- OPI Green-which Village

- Catrice Million Styles Top Coat in Million Dollar Baby

- INM Out the Door Fast Drying Top Coat

Here are some more pictures and a close up!

 

What are you wearing on your nails today?

NOTW: Sparkly Nude

Neutral nails. I wrote about my favorite nude nail polishes a little over a week ago and today I’m bringing you a neutral nail look with a bit more oomph. It’s not an entirely original idea. I sort of stole it from Dutch beautyblogger VeraCamilla. You can see her version by clicking here. What she did was take a sparkly topcoat and instead of putting it over a bright or dark color, she paired it with a nude color underneath it. I thought that was ingenious. This is my version.

The finished look! Me likes. I like how it comes together and this multi glitter top coat which veers towards red in the bottle has so many sides to it that I can’t stop looking at my nails.

Products used:

• ETOS extra strong nail hardener (base coat)
• OPI Tickle My France-Y (main color)
• Essence Nail Art Special Effect Top Coat in Copper’ize Me! (sparkly top coat)
• INM Out the Door Super Fast Drying Top Coat (top coat)

The top coat by INM is new. My Seche Vite had become too goopy to use, so I decided to try another one. I bought the INM Out the Door Top Coat at the Miss Lipgloss webshop. So far, I’m liking it. Might do a review of it after a few tries.

What are you wearing on your nails right now?

NOTW: Pastels for Easter

Just a quick little post as I’m busy with some social activities these days. I visited my parents for an Easter brunch yesterday and today I will be hitting up some friends for a birthday so I don’t have much time. This is the nail look I put together for a fun spring/ Easter look. Hope you enjoy! Oh and eh: Happy (belated) Easter!

On my nails:

thumb: H&M Peppermint Fusion

index: Catrice Let’s Mauve On

middle: Catrice Biscuits & Cupcakes (LE)

ring: Catrice Apropos Apricot

pinky: China Glaze Lemon Fizz

Top coat used: Seche Vite

Base coat: Etos Extra Strong Nail Hardener

NOTW: Frosty Ocean

I of course had to us my new Catrice & Essence polishes on my nails as quickly as I could. So when I was doing my nails before heading to my parents for my mom’s birthday I came up with this quick and easy nail look.

On my nails:

• Essence Walk on Air as a base color
• Catrice Million Styles Top Coat in Return of the Space Cowboys (middle finger & pinky)
• Catrice Million Styles Top Coat in Have an Ice Day (index & ring finger)

I wanted to try these two especially as the swatches over black didn’t make them look all that impressive. I think that Have an Ice Day is done much more justice over this creamy blue color. It even allowed my camera to sort of pick up on the multicolored specks of glitter in the polish.

Return of the Space Cowboys is still not looking all that great, unless I look at it in direct sunlight. I think this will look better over a lighter grey or blue color. I will most likely try that next. Unfortunately my camera had a hard time picking up this color and the only thing that popped up was this blurry picture, but this gives you the idea.

As you can see the glitters have a bit of a greenish sheen to it apart from blue. What my camera fails to capture and which I find rather hard to see in real life too, is the fact that there is also purple in this top coat. You can see it in the bottle, but it doesn’t really transfer onto your nails. I hope that over a different base color the purple will show up.

What are you wearing on your nails this week?

NOTW: Coral Ocean

It’s been a while since I did any nails of the week, so I thought it was time to do something new. This time I was feeling like doing something colorful with a beautiful bright coral color and a bright teal.

Left hand

Right hand

As you can see I alternated my hands and added some dots on my ringfinger which painted a different color than the rest of the nails. My right hand looks kind of beat up, but that’s because my nails on that hand are very brittle and chip easily.

The nail polish I used:

- Etos nail harderner (base coat)

- Essence nail art twins color twins in Bella

- Diamond Cosmetics in Warm Coral

- Seche Vite fast drying top coat.

What do you think?

NOTW: New Catrice polishes

The other day German budget make up brand Catrice revamped their collection with some new products. My favorite Catrice product must be their nail polishes. So when I found out about the new colors they were releasing I decided to have a look and see whether anything would be worth picking up. Unfortunately there are quite a few repromote/ rereleased polishes that I already have. That is why only three of the polishes caught my attention and I’ve swatched two of them for you.

The first one I would like to show you is this great shimmery dark teal color: Be Pool. Technically this isn’t even in their new collection as it’s not permanent. This color is a limited edition that comes with Catrice’s current limited Nymphelia collection. This is a great color in my opinion. It is just the right mixture of green and blue and I love how it is this dark shade. I haven’t seen many shades like this.

This color has been added to the permanent collection AND it is brand new too. It is called Welcome to Rosywood and it is a a dark creamy rose color void of shimmer. It has a hint of brown to it and thus makes a great dark neutral color with my skin tone.

Another thing Catrice did is change the brush to apply the nail polish with. It is mostly wider so you can cover more of your nail in one go. Since my nails aren’t big to begin with, it’s not the most ideal brush for me, but I managed to put it on without too many problems after all. I do have to be careful when putting it on though.

I really like both colors but I think the teal color is my favorite. I have one other polish that I will most likely show later this week.

On a personal note: London is fun! I will make sure there’s a post on my first day tomorrow. How have you been?

NOTW: Strictly Cookies & Cream

This week I wanted to try something clean and simple. I love Ciaté’s Cookies & Cream nail polish as it’s a great neutral shade. I decided to pair it with a stripe of Ciaté’s Strictly legal as I thought the dark purple with subtle golden glitter would be a good contract with the creamy beige of the other color. This is how it turned out:

Ciaté Cookies & Cream with one stripe of Ciaté Strictly Legal

I love the clean look of the beige overall color. The purple gives it a bit more oomph so I think it compliments the other color nicely. Only thing I’m not too happy about are some of the stripes. Some of them became a bit too chunky (like you can see on my index finger here) so the stripy thing definitely needs some more practice. I also nicked to nails before they had completely dried so I also had to redo two of my nails. Other than that I’m actually quite pleased with how this turned out.

Any opinions?

NOTW: A little bit of this…

… and a little bit of that. Finally my nails have started to grow out again so I think I can do some fun nail creations again some time soon. As for right now, my nails are covered in 5 different colors. I simply couldn’t choose and didn’t think any of these colors special enough to wear by themselves. All I did know I wanted to do was wear some Catrice nail polish. I have tons of their colors as they are cheap and fun, but I feel like I’m not using them enough. So I went with these 5 pastel/ light colors to balance out the gloominess outside.

What I’m wearing:

Catrice: Biscuits & Cupcakes, Let’s Mauve On, I Scream Peach, Sold Out Forever, Clay-ton My Hero.

Like I said: light pastel-like colors apart from the bright peach tone.

I actually think that I may subconsciously be picking out my nail color according to my mood. I was wearing mostly dark colors the past few weeks, when I also felt tired and under the weather. Now, I feel as light as a fairy and overall good. I seem to have more energy and life to me than a few weeks ago, so that has me think: is that why I suddenly decided to go with brighter colors? Who knows! It might just be!

How do you pick out your nail color?

NOTW: Pink & Sunshine

I have been so lazy regarding my nails lately. First it was because they all started breaking on me. It was as if my nails had suddenly become more brittle than usual. The problem: my new nail polish remover. And now, I’m just too lazy to look into cute nail designs and what not. So I’ve been wearing one color mostly. I find most colors too boring to wear on its own, but there are a few colors which are so insanely pretty that pairing them with another one pretty much equals sacrilege. China Glaze’s Strawberry Fields is one of those colors.

China Glaze Strawberry Fields

This really is a summery color: hot pink with subtle golden shimmer. I couldn’t find anything in my nail polish stash that would remotely match or compliment this and since it did match my dress, I felt it would be alright. And it couldn’t have been more apt than for yesterday’s weather. The sun was out shining and the color was a perfect match to that. Unfortunately, with light still being scarce this time of year, my camera wasn’t able to pick up all the prettiness, but you catch the drift don’t you?

Which nail color can’t you pair with anything else?

NOTW: Vampire Black

This week I spent on the couch watching True Blood Season 4 for the most part. I was feeling under the weather and I had yet to watch the latest season and lo and behold what I picked up when I sat to do my nails? Yep two black polishes that in hind-see are very much vampire inspired be it unconsciously.

No flash

With flash

I’ve used two nail polishes to create this look:

Ciaté Twilight (black with gold glitter)

Eyeko Vampira Polish for Gothic Nails (black with red glitter)

Excuse the smudges on my index & pinky. Today was not a good day for polishing my nails. It’s a thing for me: whenever I apply a really dark nail polish it turns out a right old mess. I love both colors though as at first glance it looks like you’re wearing black polish, but when you look more closely you actually see the tiny specks of glitter which makes these polishes just that much more special.

What do you think of these polishes?