Zoya Caitlin + CND Amethyst Sparkle

Hi there!

Todays polish I was about to swap. Why? Well, I didn´t really love the color and it is a creme, which I´m also not fond about. But I decided it needed a second chance before it would leave my house.

Zoya Caitlin is a blue based grey and applies very well, plus it is opaque in 2 coats. I used 2 coats of CND Amethyst Sparkle to get out of its boring zone. And that really helped! Amethyst Sparkle is a very nice pink sparkle. Not my favorite CND, but still.
I really like CND effects and I should really use them more often. The only downside is that I always have trouble catching CND effects on camera. So that´s why I only have 1 picture for you today. I hope you don´t mind.

And still I´m not sure if I should keep Caitlin. I like her, but only as a base color for layering. I would never wear this on its own.

Thanks for watching!!

Don´t forget to enter my giveaway

My first gradient mani in spired by ALU

Goodmorning ladies!

I actually have Butter London Stroppy in my stash for quite a long time. Since I really had no idea what to do with it (it´s soooo sheer), it ended up in my blog sale. Recently I found this gorgeous mani over at All Lacquered UP and decided to take Stroppy out of my blog sale and swaplist.

First, here´s my inspiration: ALU

Well now, I don´t own all the colors she used. So instead of CND Urban Oasis with Teal Sparkle I used Essence Trust In Fashion and CND Jade Sparkle.

Here´s what I did:
First base coat (Zoya), then 1 coat of Trust in Fashion (which was very fast drying) and 1 coat of Jade Sparkle. Then I applied Poshe so it could dry quickly. About half an hour later I started with Stroppy. First coat at 3/4 of the nail, second coat at 5/8, third coat at 1/2, fifth coat at the tips and forth coat somewhere between third and fifth :P (I hope you all understand what I mean, haha). And finished with another coat of Poshe.

 day light

day light

lamp light

lamp light

lamp light

close up thumb

sun light

Yay, my very first gradient and I think it´s awesome! You can see gold, and pink, and blue sparkles through the green and purple. Wow!

Unfortunately I did have shrinkage the next day, which you can see in the sun pic. At least you can see some green there, haha.

Do you like it? Is this something you´ll try too?

Catrice Hip Queens Wear Blue Jeans + CND Sapphire Sparkle

Hello ladies!

So I found out part of the Catrice collection will just not be available soon anymore. Since I´ve been looking at Hip Queens Wear Blue Jeans for ages and still couldn´t decide wether I need it or not, I thought this was the time to buy it.
Hip Queens is a dusty blue creme with blue glitter. Well, the glitter isn´t all that visible unfortunately. Maybe because the formula is pretty thick, or just because it wasn´t meant to show, the hidden shimmer effect again (I DON`T like that effect).

Well, here are 2 pics of Hip Queens Wear Blue Jeans (2 coats)

If you enlarge the picture you will be able to see a very little bit of blue glitter.

But since I don´t like hidden shimmer I decided to layer CND Sapphire Sparkle on top. Which was way cooler than I thought! It´s a duochrome shimmer, yay!!

A lot better! You see how it shifts from blue to purple? Really beautiful! CND effects are great, you can spice up every single polish you own.

I´ve read about new collections from Catrice and Essence with some nice duochromes, but haven´t seen them here yet at all. Hopefully they´ll get here soon, I´m really curious to see them for myself :-)

Thanks for watching!

CND Crimson Sparkle

Goodmorning!

Something simple today. You all know the CND effects, but they always seem to be used as a layering polish. Why not use it on its own? Ok, it doesn't give a lot of color, haha, but some days I don't mind.

So here we have CND Crimson Sparkle, 2 coats, over my bare nails (which are a little orange...)

I think this is nice for a change and it is work appropriate.

Have a great day!

GIVEAWAY

BB Couture Widow Maker

Hi ladies!

Today I´m showing you the polish that was missing in my order from overallbeauty.com. Kim imediately sent this too and so I´m able to show it to you now. Widow Maker is a soft grey with a golden shimmer. While applying, the golden shimmer was very visible and I was really like WOW! But when it dried and I put topcoat on, the shimmer was almost gone. No idea if it was the topcoat or that´s just what this polish does when it dries, but that was a bit of a disappointment.

Here are the pictures of 2 coats of BB Couture Widow Maker.

The first is artificial light, second in daylight.

Of course I couldn´t stand it that the golden shimmer was gone, but of course there´s an easy solution for that: CND Gold Sparkle.

And here is the result.

Yes, that´s a bit better, but I´m still not sure about this color...

What do you think of it?

Thanks for watching!

Lavender Lynx + CND Gold Sparkle

Hello!

A few days ago I showed you China Glaze Lavender Lynx. Nice, but not awesome. It really needed something extra. Since I picked CND Gold Sparkle from the "swapkoffer" I decided to try it on top of Lavender Lynx. Very nice!

Just to explain what a swapkoffer is. Koffer is the dutch word for suitcase. So with a few ladies from a dutch nail board we have a huge suitcase filled with lots of polishes. You can take some out and put some back in. The suitcase travels all over the country. It´s really awesome!!

Back to business. Pictures of Lavender Lynx + CND Gold Sparkle

Do you like the CND effects? I really want a lot more of them. They can really spice up a manicure.

Have a wonderful sunday!

CND Ice Blue Shimmer over OPI Funky Dunkey

Hi!

Just a shortie today.
I was going through my spreadsheet and found out I still hadn´t used CND Ice Blue Shimmer. How could that be? So of course it had to be used right away. Still no idea what to combine it with, the only thing I knew was that it had to be a creme. Since I don´t have a lot of cremes (maybe 12 or so) the choice wasn´t that hard. I decided to go for OPI Funky Dunkey. Love that color!

Here are the pictures

I like the result, hope you like it too!

Tomorrow I've got something very special for you, so make sure you don't miss it.

Paradoxal with something extra

Hi ladies!

As promissed I´m showing you my solution to the hidden purple shimmer of Chanel Paradoxal. I can´t stand it when a shimmer hardly shows up. A few weeks ago I ordered two of the CND effects. One of them is Violet Shimmer. I thought it would be a nice extra for Paradoxal.

That´s better, don´t you think? At least now can actually see the purple shimmer. I think it´s a success.

That´s it for today. Hope you´ll all have a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by and till tomorrow!

Miranda

Comparison OPI ds Magic, Orly Lunar Eclipse, Sally Hansen Laser and also some CND effects

Hi all!

Today I´ve got a comparison for you. I like doing that, since I´ll get a better look of the dupes I´ve got in my stash. Yesterday I received OPI ds Magic and I noticed it looks a lot like Orly Lunar Eclipse. And when I went through my stash, I saw another one that is quite similar, Sally Hansen Laser. All three look very duochrome-y in the bottle, but couldn´t find that on the nail. A slight flash to purple every once in a while only. Application was good for all three, but opacity wise there was a big difference. The colors are not exactly the same, but the difference is small.
I also got 2 CND effect polishes yesterday, Violet Shimmer and Ice Blue Shimmer, which I also wanted to try. These are very nice! They spice up your mani very much. I put them over OPI yoga-ta get this blue because that matched with the rest of the nails in the comparison, haha.

Thumb: OPI yoga-ta get this blue + CND violet shimmer (1 coat each)
Index: OPI yoga-ta get this blue + CND ice blue shimmer (1 coat each)
Middle: OPI ds Magic (2 coats)
Ring: Orly lunar eclipse (3 coats)
Pink: Sally Hansen laser (4 coats)

In these pictures you can´t see it, but there are slight differences in the colors, with DS Magic being the darkest and sparkliest and Laser being the lightest. I think I like Magic the most. But all together they are very similar and I can definitely say you only need one of them.



And do you like the CND effects? I really think they are lovely! And you can put them over almost anything!


Enjoy the rest of your sunday! And thanks for stopping by!