Fans for Life

This is Make Up Store Vera. Lovely peach shimmer with a pink flash, but oh so very sheer on the nail. This is five(!) layers, which took their time, but were all in all quite quick drying.

 In this slightly darker pic you can see the lovely pink flash which is so prominent in the bottle. This polish would have been sooo unique if only it wasn't so, well, faded on the nail.

"If there's something strange on your nails, who ya gonna call?"No, not Ghostbusters, but your stamping plates.

This stamping to make my day is made with OPI We'll Always Have Paris Suede and BM 215. The pattern reminds me of hand-held fans - thus the title of this post. I also added some triangular or fan-shaped glittery pieces from Viva la Nails (won from a giveaway) and of course a topcoat. Just in case you are wondering, in my hand I have a jar of chili powder - I now there's just HILI visible in the pic.

For once I happened to take a pic where my cuticles don't look like they're from a horror movie. Could I call this "progress"? The glitter pieces look like they don't last long, but they did, believe it or not, and with topcoat only. Nice!

Skull - no crossbones

This is a mani I did for my good old friend T, who on the previous day said she wanted "a red polish" on her nails. I invited her to browse through my stash and see if there was a red for her. (Somehow I find this funny - crooked sense of humour?)

First I painted two coats of Essie Escapades (Not 100% sure about the name, see my haul post here). On the top of it went two coats of T's primary choice Sinful Colors Red Diamond. I thought it would be too sheer by itself to cover her nail line, which it propably would have been. I love many Sinful Colours polishes in the bottle and in layering, but many of them are too sheer on their own. Maybe I'm just spoiled with OPI opaqueness, which I've been enjoying lately.

Red Diamond is a really nice glass flecked strawberry red. I think this first pic is the most colour accurate - click it to see the shimmer. The skull was stamped from BM211 with Konad black special polish.

T has strong, long natural nails I adore. The slightly square shape suits her perfectly. Hope I'll get to do her nails soon again (yes, this is an invitation).

I feel the glitter pieces I added really give the skull some character. WHUH?! he says to the horsey - a knight from an old chess set.

Giveaway at Konadlicious

Carli from Konadlicious is holding a great giveaway of Sigma makeup brushes. One lucky gal will win the awesome 12 brushes kit in the colour of her choice. (I promise it will not be an easy choice...) Go and participate here! While you're at it, check out her awesome vintage outfits too.

Aqua cue

The colour scheme that inspired me was once again from Abby of Lovely in Lacquer. See the post and her great blog here! I think it's one great idea to use colour cues from interior design, art or whatever as the source for manicure ideas. Abby even picks the suitable polishes for us and encourages to share ideas how to use them. I didn't use any of the polishes she thought of, mainly because I didn't have so many of them :) I think I was able to add up to her polish list the missing dark teal (Rimmel Sky High) and dark gold (OPI bling dynasty). I just wish I'd been able to create the wonderful brushed effect the colours in the cue pic had, but I just ran out of ideas. Could have freehanded something with a brush I guess..

This is two coats of Rimmel 60 Seconds Sky High with 2-3 coats of NfuOh 39. I almost chose Cnia Glaze For Audrey as the base, but the slight grey hue in it made me choose Sky High. I wanted the brightest base possible for this Nfu baby. See how it shines!

Stamping is made with Konad white special polish and fauxnad m66. You can see in the close-ups how my Konad white is screaming for thinner. The dots are China Glaze Ahoy!, OPI Bling Dynasty and We'll Always Have Paris Suede. All topped off with NfuOh Ultra Shine topcoat, which is a joy to use with stamping. It's not as shiny, though, as I like my topcoats. Maybe I'll try some other topcoat on the top of it next time.

Gargantuan Haul

I just "happened" to travel to Estonia (the trip was planned for two months ago) and "happened" to pop in a salon where they sell NfuOh polishes (had to drive a quarter of an hour with a map to get there). This trip was a good excuse to get my hands to some other polishes too..

 

 These are Essies, which were on sale at 5 euros each. I just grabbed them and stopped to look at their names at home. But what the heck?! Some bottles didn't have a label at all, just a big, ugly barcode tag in the bottom. Could these be from a set which was then separated in the shop? Are they allowed to do that? At least it was reeelly annoying trying to look up the possible names and collections for these polishes.

I think what I've got here is some polishes from the summer 2008 collection. At least the one on the left could be Movers & Shakers, and I'm pretty sure that third one from the left is Escapades. If I look at this particular collection, the second one from the left could just be Secret Stash.

On some bottles I was able to either find the original label underneath the barcode or read the name of the polish on the reverse side of the barcode tag. So the grey-blue shimmer far right is Fair Game from the 2011 Resort Collection. The second from the right is Burma Ruby which as far as I can tell is not a part of any specific collection (earlier dupe of Wrapped in Rubies?) and the third on from the right is Café Forgot from the 2005 Summer in the City collection.

I felt I bought the whole Opal range from NfuOh, but this doesn't look so bad. I left the red ones on the shelf, because I didn't really see the depth of other polishes in them, or the yumminess of Ruby Pumps. I also feel that a vivid pink or fuchsia flakie is missingfrom the line.

 I just had to take some close-ups. These are numbers 38 and 39, from left to right. (Names! Why don't they have names?)

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 And here are the 49, 44, 50 and 51.

These are Wild and Crazy Twinkle Beat, Super Star and Sand Turtle. Somehow they seem quite alike  in this pic, but you should see them in action!

I had to pay the regular price for these babies, but they are worth it: OPI Teenage Dream, DS Classic and DS Coronation

 Some cheapo Sinful Colors from a sale (left to right): Treasure Island, All About You, Red Diamond, Serena and Chloe, Courtney Orange, Cloud 9, 24/7, Cream Pink, Summer Peach,

I don't really get why I wanted to take a pic of these neons by themselves. Maybe I just want to get another chance to assure you how striking neons they really are, even if it doesn't show in the photo.

Depend crackles were on sale at 1,50 euros each, but I decided only to get the pastels this time. These don't have any names on the bottles, but I remember seeing some on the display - very obvious ones like "Light Pink" or "Dark Pink".

The Konad stall was having it's own sale, though the reduced range was very limited. At least I got to buy the legendary m59 and two green stamping polishes.

I had thought to catch only the Stranger Tides from OPI's Pirates collection, but couldn't resist this minis collection with the price that's near one full-sized bottle. If I fall in love with Stranger Tides after trying it out I can still buy it and have tested four colours (almost) for the price of two.

These I classified as "care products", so they're really not nail polishes, so I don't have to count them in my grand total, right? Right. This is NfuOh Ultra Shine topcoat which is my very first topper I can use with stamping without any care or caution. It simply didn't smear the black Konad special polish, not even when I played with fire (not literally) and really brushed the top coat on. The Manhattan Cuticle remover has proved to be nothing special in a one-time test.

I'll never have time to swatch them all, so if there's something that interests you, just leave a comment and I'll be your loyal servant. 

Like a Virgin

My mother, a total nail art virgin, finally agreed to be used as my nail art guinea pig. She went as far as to let me stamp the tiniest blue butterflies into her ring fingers. Way to go!

This is two coats of Essie My Way. On the ring finger I added a coat of Wild and Crazy Superstar (W142). It's an awesome blue-green duochrome glitter, but unfortunately not very visible in these pics. The butterfly is from fauxnad m66 and stamped with Gemey Bleu Nuit. I also sneaked in a "big" deep blue glitter into the center of the butterfly.

This was the first time I did stamping on someone else's nails. I was surprised how hard it was to get the pattern where I wanted. I definitely need some practice! Got to find more victims...

While I was at it, I stamped on my own nails (see the earlier post) the zebra print from m57 with black Konad special polish. I tried hard to imagine it was a tiger print, but couldn't really go with it. Next time I'll try painting my tiger stripes freehand, if someone doesn't tip me on a grrr-eat pattern on a plate.

Oh, by the way, the thingy I'm holding in these photos is a rosemade of wire and coloured stockings. I just noticed it doesn't look much like it in these pics...

Orange? No, it's a lime.

These polishes are from my biggest-ever haul, reaching up to over 100 euros and 20 polishes. I'll write a separate post soon, I'm so excited about all the new shiny colours I just can't keep my hands off them.

I've had a craving for orange polishes lately, wonder why. China Glaze Orange Marmalade didn't quite satisfy me, so I grabbed a few Sinful Colors oranges and couldn't resist the beautiful NfuOh 44.

This is two coats of Sinful Colors Courtney Orange topped with at least three thickish coats of NfuOh 44. On its own Courtney Orange is a vibrant, deep orange shimmer. On the nail it would propably need at least three coats to cover up VNL in long nails.  Even with all the flakie goodness on the top I still feel like I could have used some more cover up.

These pics were the inspiration for the oh-so-funny topic of this post.

As you can see, there are still some bald patches, worst ones in the ring finger. Luckily they're not so visible IRL, I just noticed them myself when I looked at these pics.

 

Just look how well these colours go together! And take your time to adore the flakies in Nfu. The golden undertones/duochrome (it's obvious I don't know how to call it) really transfers beautifully to the nail.

Vintage Red and Pink

I couldn't help trying out the half moon mani in red and pink. This reminds me of 40's / 50's shoes or handbags with the odd but effective colour combo. Check out also the Finnish designer Minna Parikka and her awesome vintage inspired collections.

 The upper pic is in direct sunlight, the lower in the shade.

Flowery fabric on the background is my latest vintage haul from Humana store - a light and floating cowl-necked dress with loads of lovely, knee-length skirt.

Polishes used were Models Own Peach Puff and Revlon's Revlon Red. I originally tried Revlon's Pink Nude for the base, but it was too sheer. I'm still hunting a perfect opaque nude creme polish, please let me know if you have found one.