Texture Week - Essence Me & My Lover

Well, this is one of the first sand-like polishes I tried (because I didn't want to spend money on OPI and not liking the textured trend at all) and it was quite a horrible miss for me. The polish itself is rather pretty, but after putting it on, it started to dry, which takes a long time on me. Thankfully it only needed two coats. To me this colour combined with texture just doesn't work :(

This polish looks great with a top coat, a kind of pink-red jelly with pink, yellow and gold irregular-shaped glitter.

Catrice Marilyn & Me

Hey there! Long time, no posts. I somehow have fallen off the blogging wagon for a little bit. I can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that in a few weeks time I will be in France.

Since I'm still in the holiday mood, I decided to show you a rather festive polish - Catrice 550 Marilym & Me. It is a great polish, a red shimmery jelly with a little bit of red glitter thrown in the mix. It only needs two coats, dries quickly and looks like strawberries :)

Essie Poor Lil Rich Girl

I'm up to my ears in studying, but there is always some time for a little nail polish! Essie Poor Lil Rich Girl is an amazing, amazing cranberry red jelly. It is also the kind of jelly I like, the kind you can build up. Here I'm wearing three coats, and the colour is deep and dark and close to the bottle shade. You can probably get away with two coats, but the colour will be really different, vibrant red. After coming across a couple of amazing Essie polishes, like this one and Bobbing For Baubles, I really want to get them for my own stash (they belong to my friend). They are that amazing!

Flormar Neons

Neons are everywhere this summer. Yet, somehow I cannot get fully on board with this tren. So I'm really happy that I had an opportunity to try a couple of neons, to see what I thought and whether I liked them.
Well, these are two neons from a Turkish company, they are marked #14, the green one and #12, the red/pink one.
These had a fantastic formula, I used two coats for the green one and just one coat for the red one. They dried really quickly and were very shiny.
To be honest, I'm not sold on the green polish. It is a bright highlighter-green in colour. It is certainly a fun colour, but I don't particulary like how it looks with my skin tone.





I prefer this colour to the green one, much more so. It is gorgeous, you can see red, pink, coral and even a hint of orange in it in different light. I'm not sure I would call it neon, though it is very bright. The fact that this intensity is achieved with just one coat doesn't hurt either :)

China Glaze Moulin Rouge

This is a perfect Valentine's Day nail polish, I think. It's red and sparkly, full of iridescent glitter. Moulin Rouge is a red equivalent of Meteor Shower and Preppy Pink. This was two coats, it dries slightly bumpy, but nothing that a few coats of top coat cannot cure. For some reason this polish reminds me of summer strawberries.

Essence #47 Red-y To Go

I've finally put up a Christmas tree! But unfortunately there is still no snow, at least no snow that would stay on the ground for more than 10 minutes. For me the Christmas or New Year celebrations are not complete without snow. These days it's just very, very murky around here.
So I use all the cheering up I can get in the form of bright and girly nail polish. At the moment I'm wearing Essence Red-y To Go. It's not exactly red, it has a lot of pink in it as well as an occasional hint of orange to it. The formula is really rather nice as well, it is opaque in two thin coats, or one thicker coat.

Nail Tek Marooned, and naked nails ahead

This week has been too long and exhausting, so nice to sleep in on a Saturday! It's just after 3 p.m. yet it looks like dusk already. This is actually one of the polishes my parents got me for my birthday earlier this month. My dad was especially against my ever growing nail polish obsession to begin with, but I guess after my mum joined the dark side, he just gave up.
I've only tried Nail Tek base coat before, and did not really like it, so this was the first coloured polish I tried, and I actually rather like it. It must be the colour. I know it is not that original and can probably find dozens that look the same, but it's dark, it's red, it only needs 2 coats, it dries quickly on me and I like it. One thing that I don't particularly like it the shape and size of the bottle. It's taller and thinner than for example Orly or China Glaze and it's not that comfortable to use, but I suppose it is just a matter of getting used to it. The shape of the bottle also means that the brush is long (just to compare the cap and the brush is the same length as the entire height of OPI bottle).


I was asked to show my nails without polish a few times now. So now seemed like a good time. They are not that yellow and not too short. After breaking a few nails, I filed them off completely, shorter than they've ever been. Below they are after about two and a half weeks, not too bad.

YSL La Laque 40 Extreme Purple

Hey everyone! Happy autumn! I'm stuck at university all day today. Who would have thought that the most interesting lectures this semester would be philosophy!
I realized that I never posted the swatches of YSL polishes that my dad brought for me from London months ago. I did swatch them right away, but my hard disk drive died during the summer taking all my photos with it.
So I've finally redone the swatches. Here is YSL #40 called Extreme Purple. Hmm... I don't see it. It's neither extreme, nor purple, not one bit. It is kind of reddish brown creme polish. I applied 2 coats indoors and it looked perfectly fine and even, but when I went in the sun to photograph it uneven patches became visible. I added one more coat and here we are! It's a nice polish, I think I like it. It lasts about 3 days on me. I especially like the packaging on this one. I'm a sucker for nail polish bottles with a square footprint. The polish is a bit on the pricy side. I think it was 13 GBP for 10 ml duty free.

China Glaze Ruby Pumps

Today is my mum's birthday, so I am wearing this pretty polish. Ruby Pumps have been a lemming for me for a long, long time, but my local shop was out of stock for an eternity. But eventually it became mine :)
I was actually surprised that it looks a lot like Orly Star Spangled. I'll have to do a comparisson later. This was two coats I think. This polish took forever to dry. I waited for ages for each coat to dry, and even after that it ended up rather smudged. So a bit of a fail there. It also dries kind of dull, so it needs a few coats of top coat. Later I've asked the shop whether it was just mine that dried very slowly, but was told that all the ones they have dry at this snail pace. Hmm.
Perhaps it is just me, but I think that it photographs much nicer than it looks in real life.

American Apparel Poppy

This polish has been a lemming of mine for a while. But as it is usually the case there is no American Apparel store for thousands of miles around. Poppy is a beautiful red with a hint of coral. But the nicest thing about the polish is the formula, it's on the thick side but it means that this needs only one coat! It goes on smoothly and lasts for about 3 days.

OPI From A To Zurich

I've been walking around this polish for some time, not sure whether to get it or not. I mean how many berry red polishes does one person need?! But I guess it is always possible to find a justification for purchasing more. On me this polish looks kind of dusty raspberry red, a kind of very nice alternative to super bright red. I like the texture and that it dries fast and looks good with two coats on.

OPI Bastille My Heart

Hey guys! Today I have for you a really gorgeous polish. Bastille My Heart is a deep red polish with lovely red-pink shimmer in it. As the name implies it is from the France collection from a while back, though I only bought it a month or two ago. It kind of looks like berries on the nails which I really like. The formula was also really nice, this is two coats. I like the fact that the shimmer is noticeable only in artificial light and in the sun, the rest of the time it is just a simple, pretty red.