The Nail Nerd

Hi guys!
The Orly colours will have to wait until the weekend when I'll have more daylight hours to swatch on. Today I'm wearing a polish from the Viva la Diva collection I'm giving away here. Of course I had to pick the only colour not in the contest, but #5 is a very close relative to this one. I wanted to add some Konad and it took 5 (yes, five!) tries to get the little bow straight, don't know what was up with me when I was trying to do this. Didn't clean up the old stamps enough either so after adding topcoat I saw the whole nail had a thin coat of silver shimmer. It would look nice, if it was on all nails!

Viva la Diva Fall 2008 #4

Viva la Diva Fall 2008 #4 Bottle

I've said it before but it's worth saying again, I really like this collection! The colours are nice and dusty, wearable almost all year around and they are opaque in one to two coats, I did 2 coats for this manicure. This purple is super pretty, I would call it a dusty grape. It's slightly more dusty than it shows in the picture, looks closer to the bottle picture. I was pretty uninspired with the Konad, but I really wanted some decoration so I used China Glaze Sci-Fi and m56 on the ring fingers and finished off by placing a little rhinestone in the center of the bow. That's all I had today, have a nice thursday everyone!

Viva la Diva is a Swedish drugstore brand. A brand I didn't care much for until recently, always thought Swedish drugstore brands were expensive for drugstore brands :P But Viva la Diva's quality is surprisingly good and they have a wide range of colors and finishes. This specific collection came out for Fall 2008, but I didn't pick them up until recently. It's discontinued but one store in town still had a few bottles left! Woo! They're more expensive than most brands you can find at e-tailers but cheaper than buying those name brands at the stores here. Nail polishes and make-up is generally expensive in Sweden, so I guess these are "cheap" considering.
This collection consist of 6 colors, conviniently named 1 through 6. I did some quick one finger swatches, and why am I showing you this now you might ask? You'll find out in my next post! ;)

Viva la Diva Fall 2008 #1

Viva la Diva Fall 2008 #2

Viva la Diva Fall 2008 #3

Viva la Diva Fall 2008 #4

Viva la Diva Fall 2008 #5

Viva la Diva Fall 2008 #6

Dusty, tan, nude colour. Another one of my favourites. It gets a grey tone in some lights, it's really pretty if you like nudes. Bet this is gorgeous as a base for some Konad. Very work appropriate but still not boring. This was a bit more chunky than the rest of the colors as you can tell in my picture, maybe it's just my bottle, gonna add some thinner to it before I use it next time. I'm sure a topcoat would even it out, but I did all the swatches without and didn't want to do this one different. Used 2 coats but 1 would be enough if you're careful while applying.

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 :(