The Nail Nerd

Hope you all are doing great, I know some of you have wondered where I had gone to and things have been really hectic lately and doing my nails have felt like a chore rather than something fun and enjoyable. But things are starting to slow down I think, and hopefully nails and blogging will feel fun again :)

Today I have a blue(?) beauty for you guys, looks more lilac in my eyes but her name is Beth's Blue and she comes from Models Own. Maybe Beth is color blind? Or maybe I am, judge for yourselves!

I'm almost embarrased to post this picture, look at my cuticles they're in dire need of some TLC but this colour was great and I had to show it to the world. It's a gorgeous and light colour, very wearable. The best thing about this polish though, it was a one coater and the formula was great, thick but still easy to work with.

I've gotten loads of new polishes while I was MIA which I will show to you soon, it's too much for me to photograph and post in one day. Please bear with me!

I wore this beauty for 3 days and I didn't want to take it off! This colour made me truly happy, it's so bright, pretty and cheerful, LOVE IT!

H&M Bella's Choice

This is a super pretty and bright turquoise creme, it's leaning a tiny bit more to the green side than I managed to capture on camera but still pretty close to reality. The application was pretty bad, it was streaky, the brush bristles were kind of hard but after 3 coats and a thick coat of Poshé it looked smooth and even. This colour is totally worth it though, I already feel like wearing it again cause it made me so happy. That's all I had for you today! :)

Today I have a lovely blue-green duo chrome for you guys, Rodeo Fanatic by China Glaze. I bought this bottle AGES ago but I haven't worn it and I don't know why. Once I had applied it I just LOVED the colour!

This is a blue shimmer with a slight green duochrome, I tried to capture it in the picture but I don't know if I was all that successful. The purple flash you see in the bottle is just not there in reality, not on the nail nor in the bottle. This colour makes me think of scarabs, I wish I owned a real scarab coloured duochrome polish, but this is the closest I get with whats in my collection. It applied like a dream, took 2 coats for it to be opaque and it wasn't as runny as blue shimmers tend to be. I took the picture pre-cleanup but I can tell you that clean up also was easier than normal for a blue polish, no smurf fingers!

As you might have noticed the rate of my posting have dropped lately and it's cause of multiple reasons. Some personal reasons but also I'm working on a new blog/website, as I'm planning on moving to my own domain sometime in the near future. There's only so many hours in a day and I try my best to get the everyday things done, work on the new site and still do my nails and blog here. Just bear with me and hopefully I'll get back to my normal posting once the new website is up and running.

Siw is the first Make Up Store polish I ever bought, I've picked up a couple more after painting this on. This is the best holo in my collection, there's no contest. It doesn't look like much in the bottle but I decided to give it a chance anyway. Painted it on, still nothing. Waited a few minutes until it was fully dried and was shocked. Super mega holo goodness! Like superhero holo! These pictures don't do it justice, and I guess the holo extraordinaire freaked my camera out so it didn't pick up much of the base colour, which is a icy blue.

Make Up Store Siw
Overcast daylight

Make Up Store Siw
Flash on lowest setting (mimics sunlight or lamplight)

This is three coats with base and top coat, application wasn't exactly anything to rave about. As you can see I still have some bald spots on my ring and pinky, the only trick to apply this is to have plenty of polish on the brush and work FAST. Never do more than 3 strokes on the nail then let it dry properly before next coat. I didn't have enough patience and got bald spots anyway, but thankfully you can't really see them in person cause of all the holoness going on. Another con is the price, at $16 a bottle I didnt't exactly go shopping crazy even though they had many colours I found pretty. Is it worth the price? For the holo's I'd say yes but I'm a real holo lover and I'm always on the look out for new ones. But for the rest of the collection I'd expect them to apply themselves for $16, you can probably find a much cheaper dupe or atleast a good enough substitute. I did pick up one creme to see what the formula is like, will it apply itself or not? I have yet to find out!

As many others I jumped on the 50% off offer from Models Own, and I picked up 6 bottles. Wanted many more but had to limit myself :P I recieved them yesterday, and here they are:

I loved all these 3 colours, not much else to say about them. Pretty pretty pretty! I only wish the glitter in Emerald City was a bit more dense, tried them on a swatch wheel and I lost count on the coats I had to use to make it opaque.

L to R: Beth's Blue, Lemon Sherbet and Fuzzy Peach

Beth's Blue isn't really blue at all in my eyes, more lilac or maybe a pastel lavender, I'm happy though cause it's exactly how I had hoped it would be. Lemon Sherbet is as bright as in the picture, it's fantastic! Come on spring and summer, I want to wear this baby! Fuzzy Peach was alot darker and brighter than I had hoped, not sure if I like it at all at the moment. Had hoped for a more soft pastel'y peach colour, still need to try it on and see how it looks against my skin tone. Worst come to worst I'll just mix in a bunch of white to lighten it up.

After seeing swatches of some of these over at Plane Beauty I'm bummed I didn't pick up Purple Grey instead of Fuzzy Peach. I was looking at it when I was placing my order, I should have googled for swatches before deciding against it! Maybe next time, cause I'm sure I'll be wanting to shop for more Models Own!

This beauty had been sitting in my untrieds for way too long! Haven't really been in a glitter mood, but decided to wear this one anyway and I'm glad I did! It's gorgeous!

China Glaze Dorothy Who?

China Glaze Dorothy Who?
Blurry to show the glitter

China Glaze Dorothy Who? bottle

This is a blue jelly'ish base packed full with blue and silver glitter. Absolutely gorgeous, no pictures do this polish justice. It took 3 coats to get it opaque which isn't bad at all compared to other glitters I own. I could rave about how pretty this is for hours, but other than that there isn't much to say about it. If you like blue glitters you NEED this!

Here they are, what you've all been waiting for! Or even if you didn't, here's swatches of the half of the Sweet collection that I recived.

L to R: Gumdrop, Cotton Candy and Lollipop
This is half of the Sweet collection - available April 2010

Orly Gumdrop

Gumdrop is a turquoise pastel creme. I had expected this to be more mint green for some reason, the promo text says turquoise though and that's exactly what it is. It's really flattering on me and I can definitely see myself wearing this alot later this spring. It took 2 coats for it to be opaque and I had no application issues what so ever, the formula was smooth and easy to work with.

Orly Cotton Candy

This baby was a surprise! As I've said before this wasn't really appealing to me. Never had a thing for light pinks and this one looked like a pig pink in the bottle, the colour a cartoon pig would have, but with a slight peachy tone. My skintone brought out all that peachy goodness though, to my delight. It really is peachy, or like a pastel coral on me. It's a great spring and summer colour. Really want to wear this on my toes. This one was a bit streaky and stringy and it took 3 coats and topcoat for it to be opaque and even.

Orly Lollipop

This was a colour I thought I would love but I didn't, I like it but I don't love it. It is a pretty purple pastel, but it made my hands look super pale, like I'm undead or something. I have a golden undertone, that shows in the picture but in reality it made my skintone look grey and pale. I will give it another chance when I've developed a little tan, or atleast got more colour on my skin from not being freezing all the time! On the good side it was almost opaque in one coat, had I put a little more polish on the brush to cover my whole nail I would have stopped at that. But I didn't and got some streaks so I needed a 2nd coat to even it out.


*Products courtesy of Laforce + Stevens

Wanted something brighter today and went with this pretty electric blue colour with holographic glitter from glitter Gal. I wouldn't call this a real holographic polish as the glitter isn't as dense as in China Glaze's OMG collection for example, but it's pretty none the less and the blue colour makes me happy!

Glitter Gal 3D Electric Blue

Glitter Gal 3D Electric Blue with flash

Glitter Gal 3D Electric Blue bottle

This polish looks on the nail as it does in the bottle in the bottom picture, the holographic glitter is much more visible than I was able to capture in the pictures of my nails, the electric blue colour is accurate though. It went on smoothly and was almost opaque in one coat, had a few spots that weren't so I did two coats to even it out. This polish is really fun, bright and pretty and the Glitter Gal formula is very good. I'm really taking a liking to their polishes, even though I've only worn 2 so far, when my budget allows it I need to buy a few more I think!

I just can't stop looking at my nails! As you know I recieved some Nfu-Oh's recently in a swap with Kirsten, but I hadn't tried them out on my nails yet. Experimented some on fake nail tips to figure out nice combinations for layering, this was one of them. But it's just so much better on the nails, check it!

Nfu-Oh #52 over Essie Midnight Cami

Nfu-Oh #52 over Essie Midnight Cami with flash

The happy couple! L to R: Essie Midnight Cami and Nfu-Oh #52

This is 2 coats of Essie Midnight Cami with one coat of Nfu-Oh #52. It's absolutely stunning, it's like a flakey duochrome. It shifts between blue and green depending on the lighting and I think I've seen some purple flash by a few times, and it has shimmer and flakies. All that mashed up in to one manicure is just awesome overload! The top picture shows how it looks in daylight, can really see the green and blue flakies pop on the blue bottom. The flash picture is how it looks right now in lamp light, it's just packed with green shimmer, looks like an emerald green shimmer fest! I keep moving my hands around to see how it changes in different lights, the pictures just don't do this manicure justice. It's impossible to capture everything that is going on with this polish, I need a friggin' video blog or something! As for application, the Essie is an Essie, never had any problems with them. It might have been a tiny bit runny but that seems to be common with dark blue colours and I'm always a little extra careful when applying them, it took 2 coats to get opaque. I had expected the Nfu-Oh to be more sheer but one coat was enough to get that shimmer and flakie madness going on. I need to try this beauty on it's own, it's real base colour is purple so it can't be anything else than fabulous! I definitely need to get my hands on a few more Nfu-Oh's when my budget allows it.

Happy hump day everyone!

Hi guys!
Hope you all had a great christmas! I'm still wearing my birthday manicure. There's been alot of glitter gradations on blogs lately, the ones that start by the cuticles. Think they're so pretty and got really inspired by those but decided to try something different. I did Konad stars instead of glitter, there are a few things I would have done different if I'd do it again, but I was still happy with how it turned out.

I used the "star cluster" pattern from the m3 plate, but did one star at a time to get bigger ones at the top and then smaller ones towards the tip.

Used Viva la Diva #74 as the base and China Glaze Sci-Fi for the stars. These Khrome polishes are great for Konad!

I just broke a nail, like 2 minutes ago, trying to cut a tag off a pair of jeans I bought today. Completely missed it and cut into my thumb nail instead. It's not completely off so I'm not sure if I should try and fix it with a wrap or just file them all down. Love the lenght of my nails at the moment, they're my perfect comfort lenght but hate uneven nails and not a big fan of wraps. I'll have to think about it :(

As usual on thursdays it's ninja nails! Today she's showing us China Glaze Calypso Blue, a pretty dark blue creme. Sorry about the quality of the pictures, I didn't bring my lightbox with me so we made a makeshift one with a kitchen lamp and a single sheet of white paper. The pictures turned out decent considering!

This is pretty color accurate, it is a dark dark blue but not so dark it looks black in any lighting.

This color was very pigmented, used 2 coats for the pictures. It was a little bit runny which made application tricky which is sad cause blue polishes are always hard to clean up. The color seem to want to get stuck in your skin and give you smurf fingers. It is a perfect dark blue color, really dark but not black as some dark cremes tend to look, especially in low light. This wont be mistaken for black in any light setting though. Awesome!

Look at this pretty that I found in the mailbox today!

China Glaze - Dorothy Who?

It's stunning in the bottle, this is what I hoped Drinking my Blues Away would be. Though I love that color too, just the way it is!

Can't wait to wear this! I just had blue nails though so think I'm going to pick something else, but I cant decide what...

I just downloaded that "The Hat" program, gonna add all my untrieds and let it randomly pick what color I should wear. I'm the most indecisive person ever... or maybe I just own too many polishes? Nah, I'm going with indecisive!

Today I'm going to a family dinner at my grandparents. My birthday is coming up and unfortunately they wont be in town for that so they wanted to invite everyone for dinner to pre-celebrate me a little. I wanted to pretty'fie my nails and decided to do some nail art on the gorgeous blue from yesterday.

For this I started with taping the parts of my nail I wanted to keep plain blue, added some Konad snow flakes then filled in the empty areas with dots using a dotting tool. Took the tape off, added bullions and rhinestones. Top coat and it's done! Easy!

Today I'm wearing a really gorgeous blue, Punk from L.A. Girls Rock Star collection. It has blue and purple micro glitters and a slight purple duochrome that shows more in the bottle than on the nail. It was a hard color to capture, so I'll just have to post many pictures!

This is definitely one of my favourite blues, wish the duochrome was more visible tho. It took 3 thin'ish coats to get it opaque. The formula is kind of runny so normal/thick coats was out of the question, I'd have polish pooling all around my cuticles. It lasted thru 2 days at work with only a little bit of tipwear and thats very good in my book.