White!

Hello ladies!

I thought I'd show you something else for a change. How about a white? I've never done a white mani before. But just plain white is boring in my opinion, so it needed some sparkles.

Do you also have trouble finding an opaque white nail polish? I did, so I decided to get OPI Alpine Snow Matte. At least it dries fast. The whites I tried before this needed way too long to dry and they also needed at least 3 coats to be opaque and were very runny. Well, Apline Snow Matte is not runny and dries fast. Needs 2 coats to be opaque, but you can see the brush strokes very clearly. So still not really a winner.
Since I planned some glitter on top, it was not a big deal. 

I layered China Glaze Polar Ice on top, 2 coats. And applied some Seche Vite, because that's the best topcoat to make a gritty manicure smooth. 

After this I waited for the sun to get decent pictures. And waited. And waited. And waited. Of course no sun. So eventhough the effect is pretty nice, you can hardly see in it the pictures unfortunately.

First picture in daylight, second is blurry in an attempt to show you the sparkles... and third in artificial light.

Polar Ice is a holographic glitter in a clear base. It's actually similar to Fairy Dust only with larger glitter.

I'll try this mani again when there's more sun. For now, sorry...

Have a great sunday!

Sally Hansen Grape Going

Hello!

Are you all enjoying your weekend?

Like the one I posted yesterday, this is a polish I swatched for the purple week. But after I applied it, I found out it wasn´t much of a purple. I mostly saw blue. So it didn´t fit into the purple theme.

Since I have already quite a lot of blues with a purple flash and purples with a blue flash, I decided to put this one up for a swap. If you´re interested you can email me.
I do have to warn you though, the Instant Dry polishes from Sally Hansen have a very strange brush. Some people love them, but I´m not one of them. It´s just a very strange flat brush with round edges. I forgot to take pictures of that, sorry.

Here it is, 3 coats:

It´s absolutely not ugly!! I really can´t say that. I do like it! But just have to much that look alike but with nicer brushes.

Enjoy your weekend and I hope to see you back here tomorrow for another lovely polish.

Miranda

Claire´s mood polish Calm/Wild

Hello!

Today I´m showing you a polish I swatched for the purple week. But I forgot to post it, haha.

This is Claire´s Calm/Wild which is a mood polish. The mood changing stuff didn´t really show up on my nails. I don´t know, maybe my nails are too short or something. Or my hands are always cold. Which is actually true.

I used 2 coats + topcoat, since the mood polishes dry matte, which I don´t like. This has a sort of glitter in it, which no other mood polish from Claire´s has. I like that little extra!

First picture was taken in daylight, the other in artificial light. The color you see in the second picture is the color you usually see when that part of the nails gets warm.

In these pics you can actually see how fast my nails grow. Comparing these pictures to the ones I posted yesterday, you can see a huge difference, while there´s like 10 days between them. The nails on my right hand grow even faster.

Do you like the mood polishes? Which one is your favorite?

Take care,
Miranda

Massini/Studio M Drama Queen over Orly Pixie Dust

Hi ladies!

Two days ago I showed you Orly Pixie Dust. After work I wanted to spice it up a little and used one coat of Massini/Studio M Drama Queen over it. Massini is from the same company as Color Club and they have a lot of the same colors. I´m not totally sure, but I think this is one of them.

Drama Queen is a clear base packed with silver and red glitter. It´s kind of a Christmas color. But I like it!!

Here are the pics.

This would be fine on its own as well. I think it will be opaque in 2 or 3 coats.

Do you own any of the Massini/Studio M nail polishes? I´ve got 4 of them and love them. My favorite is Purple Medallion, but the others are pretty awesome as well.

That´s all for now. Hope you liked it!

Accessorize Illusion nail polish: they are coming!!

Hi you all!

It was about a week and a half ago that Lacquerized blogged about the pretty polishes from the Accessorize Illusion line. I just couldn't believe my eyes! These are awesome, great, gorgeous, beautiful. Well, that's what they look like in the bottle. So of course I started hunting them. But very soon I found out the webshop doesn't ship to the Netherlands and the Accessorize stores overhere don't sell them. But I needed to get them, no matter what. So the hunting continued. I emailed a few ladies on MUA and I was lucky to find someone that wanted to order them for me. Thank you so much Alison!

She's now waiting for the last one to arrive and then she will ship them to me. Hopefully I will get them next week and I promiss to swatch them as soon as I can.

But for now I wanted to give you a little preview of the pretties I asked for.

Top row from left to right: Aztec, Bronze, Electric Blue, Mermaid
Bottom row from left to right: Pink Spice, Purple Dream, Purple Passion, Ruby Sparkle

Some of them might be dupes for other polishes that have been released recently. Electric Blue seems a dupe for Orly Lunar Eclipse, OPI ds Magic and Sally Hansen Laser. Mermaid looks kind of like OPI Catch Me In Your Net, Orly Halleys Comet, Zoya Charla and Essence Choose Me. And Pink Spice looks like MAC Bad Fairy. But for now I can only guess since I don't have them yet.

These are actually not the only 8 in this collection, there's more. So check out their website www.accessorize.com . They do ship to quite a lot of countries: US, UK, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Republic of Ireland, Slovak Republic and Switzerland.

Are you as blown away by these pretty bottles as I am?? Or aren't you that impressed?

Update: I just got an email that they are shipped this afternoon. That means I might be able to swatch them for you tuesday.

Sally Hansen nail prism Amber Ruby

Good morning!

Yesterday I received another swap. This time it was from Margaret from MUA. I was actually planning to put on OPI Movin´ Out, but since there was a Sally Hansen nail prism in the package, I decided to do that one.

First I put on a layer of Zoya Raven which is said to be a dupe for Chanel Black Satin. It´s a very shiny black creme and opaque in one coat. I do still prefer Nubar Noir over Zoya Raven, but it is pretty good!

After this I used one coat of Sally Hansen Amber Ruby. It´s gorgeous! Duochrome and flashes magenta, red, orange, gold and yellow. All kinds of colors I don´t even like, hahaha, but blended together in a duochrome it´s lovely!

Warning: lots of pictures ahead!

Yes, lots of pictures, but I think a good duochrome deserves that. It does remind me a lot of Ozotic 502 which I´ve shown you a few months ago.
I think you could wear this on its own as well, so without a base color. Unlike the other nail prism I have, this isn´t all to sheer.

Do you have any of the Sally Hansen nail prisms? It´s a shame they don´t make them anymore. I have 2 of them right now and another 3 on the way. And I would still love to get Turquoise Opal, which is really hard to find.

Thanks for watching!

Orly Pixie Dust

Hello!

How are you all doing? My weekend started today and since my daugther is free from school this week it really feels like weekend.

I´d like to show you a polish I´ve used before but had not shown to you yet. It´s a light grey color leaning a bit to pale blue. And it has a tiny silver shimmer. Another advantage is that I can wear it to work. It´s not an amazing color, but I like it very much.

So here are the pictures of Orly Pixie Dust. It is sheer, so I used 3 coats for full opacity.
Please don´t mind the cuticles, I forgot to moisture before taking pictures and after I got home from work it was already too dark to shoot new pictures.

Do you like grey polish? I think they are suitable for just about anything.

Thanks for stopping by and till tomorrow!

Winners giveaway

Good afternoon!

Well, the giveaway is closed and I used random.org to find the 2 winners.

Really random I have to say, haha. One is national, the other international. One had just 1 entry, the other had 4.

The winners have been notified by email already.

Winner of prize 1: Maaike

Winner of prize 2: Maryya

Congratulations ladies!

I´d like to thank all of the ladies that entered. And if you weren´t lucky this time, you might be next time.

Nubar Knight´s Armor

Goodmorning ladies!

A new day, a new week, and no purple, well, at least not today :P

The one I´m showing you today is a recent NOTD. It was still untried, but I love it! Every time I see a black polish with some color of glitter in it, I just need to have it. At least, that´s what I used to think. But I don´t know what it is, but they almost always look boring on me. Take for instance Lubu Heels by China Glaze. Gorgeous when you see it in a close up, but as soon as it´s further than 20cm away from your eyes, you can hardly see the nice red glitter at all. Then it just looks like plain black. So in the end I swapped all my black with colored glitters. Except for the one I´m showing you today. And guess what, it didn´t disappoint me at all!

This is Nubar Knight´s Armor. It has lots of silver glitter in its black base. And the glitter keeps blinging even from a distance.

I used 2 coats and topcoat.

Isn´t this awesome? I certainly think so!


Thanks for stopping by!

Giveaway is closed

Just a short message to let you know my giveaway is closed now. I will announce the winners as soon as possible.

Thank you all for entering! I still can´t believe over 70 new ladies are following me now since the start of the giveaway.

I´m already planning a new giveaway. And it´s going to be awesome! So make sure you´ll keep following me.

Day 7: my favorite polish ever!

Hello!

Today is the last day of my giveaway: http://miranniesnails.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-special-date-and-just-50.html (ends at midnight, well, dutch midnight...)
And it´s also the last day of my purple week. This doesn´t mean I´ll never show you a purple again, but not every day anymore. I´m even going to try to do a whole week without purple :P

Well, because it´s the last day, I´m showing you my all time favorite. It´s purple, it has flakies, the flakies are duochrome, what else could a girl want?
You probably guessed by now which one I´m talking about: Nfu Oh 51.
It does need 3 coats to be opaque. But in this case I really don´t care.

 

Gorgeous! Awesome! Beautiful! I couldn´t really capture the duochrome in the flakies well, but you get the point. They flash green, orange, yellow and pink.


So I hope you enjoyed my very first theme week. For me it´s been fun! I hope you liked it too. If anyone of you has an idea for another theme week, just email me or leave a comment.

Day 6: two dark purples

Hello!

Day 6 already. Although I showed you 2 dark purple Zoya´s 2 days ago, I do have more dark purples for you. As you might have figured out by now, purple is my favorite color. And especially dark purples. Besides the ones I´ve been showing you this week, I have like another 30 of them. Maybe it´s a bit too much, hahaha. But I love each and everyone of them. And they are all different. I have sorted out my dupes already, so no dupes now anymore.

First up is Bloom Josephine. In my pictures you can hardly tell it´s purple... but it actually is. It´s a blue-based purple and you mostly see blue in my pictures :S. It went on pretty smooth and it needed 2 coats.

1st 2 pics in artificial light to show you some purple, third pic in daylight

Next up is China Glaze Let´s Groove. It leans more towards a red-purple than the Bloom, but still is blue-based. Does that make any sense? It is less blue than the pictures show though. Pretty smooth! And opaque in 1 coat.

both taken in daylight

Well, that´s it for today.

You´ll probably get tired of me by now, but I just wanted to remind you of the giveaway: http://miranniesnails.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-special-date-and-just-50.html

Day 5: the holo one

Hello ladies!

Yay!! I've reached 100 followers. Thank you all so much!

Are you getting tired yet of purple? :P I never seem to get tired of purple, hahaha.
Today I´m going to a wedding and wearing my favorite polish, which will be the great finale of this purple week on sunday, so make sure you´ll be here to see it.


And what´s a week of purples without a purple holo? So today I´m showing you Color Club Wild at Heart. It´s a dark purple holo. Not a really in your face holo, but I like it! I needed only 1 coat for opacity. I think this one is quite good for stamping as well, I might try that someday.

Since I was in the mood for konad as well, I used China Glaze 2030 to stamp stripes on my nails.

This is the result:

What´s wrong with my cuticles? I used my cuticle remover a few days ago and they looked fine, but now it´s horror all over again. I hate that! And I apologize... I mean, no one really likes to look at dry cuticles. Well, please pretend you don´t see the cuticles and look at the pretty nail polish.

Since I did my nails at night, here´s the picture in artificial light of Color Club Wild at Heart on its own.

You see, cuticles are not that bad. No idea what happened after I got up the next morning that they turned into horror. I do moisturize a lot...
Are you into holos? And do you have a favorite? I really can´t decide on my favorite holo, but this one is different from all the other ones I own.

The giveaway is almost ending, so hurry up if you still want to enter: http://miranniesnails.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-special-date-and-just-50.html

Day 4: two pretty Zoya´s

Goodmorning to you all!

This is day 4 already of my purple week. I think it´s kind of cool doing a theme week, I might do it more often.

Today I´d like to show you 2 Zoya polishes. One of them is from the new Fire&Ice collection and I´ve heard it might be close to another purple Zoya. I´m talking about Valerie and Yasmeen. After swatching them I can say they really don´t look alike. They are both purple, but that´s about it.

First up is Zoya Valerie. Smooth and opaque in just 1 coat. What else do you need? And it´s very sparkly and it´s gorgeous. It has a red-purple base with some kind of red shimmer/glitter.

all pictures taken in daylight.

And next up is Yasmeen. I actually had this for a long time, but I gave it up for a swap for a polish I really really wanted. My thought was that I could always order this again, while the one I swapped it for, was very difficult for me to get. So when I ordered some new Zoya´s on eBay a few weeks ago, I decided to take Yasmeen back.

It´s smooth and a gorgeous dark purple. Not much to say about it. It needed 2 coats.

both taken in daylight, first picture is most color accurate

Which of these 2 is your favorite? I think I prefer Valerie, although Yasmeen is very pretty as well.

Thanks for stopping by. Hope to see you back here for the rest of the theme week as well.

Miranda

Still open: http://miranniesnails.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-special-date-and-just-50.html

Day 3: matte/suede + duochrome

Hi ladies!

Let me start by saying WELCOME to all my new followers. Already over 50 new followers in the last 10 days, that´s just so great!

Today is day 3. Of course I can´t do a purple week without a duochrome and a matte polish.

The first one I´m showing is Zoya Savita. I just recently got this and it´s a beautiful shade of purple. Dries fast like all matte/suede polishes. I used 2 coats. Two pictures without topcoat and two with topcoat. Zoya´s are very smooth in their application, this was no exception.

First 3 in daylight, last one in artificial light. It´s not as blue as shown in the first few pictures.

The second one from today is Zoya Ki, which is a darker version of Nubar Purple Beach. This is 2 coats. Somehow I had a lot of trouble to get steady shots of this one. Hopefully you do get the point of this one. It flashes from purple to green.

all of them were taken in daylight.

Well, that´s it for today. Hope you liked it!

Don´t forget to enter: http://miranniesnails.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-special-date-and-just-50.html

Day 2: purple glitters

Goodmorning!

This is day 2. I have a lot of purple glitters and had not used a lot of them yet.

First up is Nina Ultra Pro Purple X-ing. A very nice medium blue-based purple. It has quite a lot of holographic glitter. This went on pretty smooth, no complaints. And needed 2 coats for full opacity.

1st in daylight, 2nd in artificial light. Its true color is between the first and second picture.

Next up is China Glaze Electric Lilac. It´s like the name says, Electric Lilac :P, lilac jelly with holographic glitter. This one is really chunky and application wasn´t smooth at all. I did want to show you this without any base color, but I think this would be better as a layer polish over a lilac cream polish like Nubar Lavender. I do like the color though.
3 coats for full coverage.

1st in artificial light, 2nd in daylight. This is a lot less blue actually.

The third one I´m showing you is H&M Hello Kitty Cool Summer. More of a red-based purple with pink, blue and silver microglitter. Application was a lot better than I expected, not bad at all! 2 coats for opacity.

both taken in daylight, pretty color accurate.

The fourth one is one that doesn´t really belong in this theme week. Its name is Sally Hansen Purple Fiesta, that´s why I took it out of the helmer, but in my opinion it´s more brownish or something than purple. Maybe you can call it eggplant purple. Application was ok, but not more than that. The glitter does seem to disappear in the polish. A bit chunky too. Do like it though. I used 2 coats.

1st in daylight, 2nd in artificial light.

I think I like the first one the most. What´s your favorite of these 4?

Tomorrow day 3. Hope you´ll be back to see that as well.

Take care,

Miranda

Giveaway ending 24th of octobre: http://miranniesnails.blogspot.com/2010/10/giveaway-special-date-and-just-50.html