GOT Polish: Purple

I did my golden oldies purple manicure to honor the greatest purple polish on the surface of earth: Zoya Aurora! 

It's special for me, because bought this on a trip to Chicago - where I landed a day late being at first stranded to the Netherlands, and had a room booked in a 12-bed dorm at a hostel.... Oh, those sleepless nights... But it paid off when I could haul both Storm and Aurora released in the same collection!

You may disagree, but I just love the holo glitter on this, the application, the opacity.... all of it!

The base in this manicure is two coats of Astor Pop Color 141.
Over it I used China Glaze Crackle Luminous Lavender - plus some tape and Zoya Aurora - the awesomest purple polish there is..

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TPC: Flashy Green & Blue

As you might have noticed, I was away last week, but as a compensation I've got an awesome feature coming up this week... just wait and see...

 Meanwhile, here are my first Green, blue and purple Tri polish challenge nails:

 The green polish I'm also holding in these pics is Kiko 441 from the Digital LE.

After the first coat I was disappointed, but after three coats I was happy I purchased this holo glitter beauty. It's so flashyyyy..... And it has actually got bar glitter! How awesome is that?!

To meet the challenge, I sponged the tips with China Glaze Water you Waiting For, plus added some

stamping with Konad black from BM305 (flashes) and Pueen 09 (peacock feathers)

I hope I had caught the holo sparkle in the Kiko polish better... But I loved these so that I wore them all last week in Jerez de la Frontera – and I was thinking of you, my dearest readers :)

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GOT Polish: As Orange as it Gets

This weeks Golden Oldies challenge was orange - and this manicure is about as orange as a manicure can get..

 This mani started with two coats of OPI Y'all Come Back Ya Hear and stamping with Konad white and BM308.

I then proceeded to do my first stamping sandwich by adding:
some more Y'all
some more stamping
a final coat of Y'all
... and a coat of Seche Vite.

I love how squishy it looks! I would like to drink anything that tastes like this looks!

 Let's see the orange artwork of the other participants!

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TPC: Tweedy

So here comes my last Tri Polish challenge manicure with February colours brown, pink and gray. In this respect the mani is a bit funny - you'll see...

The inspiration for this came from the amazing blog The manicurator.
Please look up her version! My own looks like it's done by a two-year old, in comparison...

Base three coats China Glaze Digital Dawn (I got this in a goodie bag in a meeting).
I added those tweedy lines with Color Club Beyond and Wild & Mild Diamond Roosevelt Avenue mixed with Gosh Silver.

The accent fingers feature stamping with:
Gosh Silver + DRK-A (mini houdstooth) Beyond + BM316 (lines in the left ring finger)
beyond + BM322 (large houndstooth in the right ring finger)

The funny thing with this manicure is, that I'm not really sure which colour is which - regarding the challenge. Which is the grey? Which is the extra black or the silver? Is the base really brown or pink?
Keep guessing, while browsing the wonderful work of other participants!

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GOT Polish: Textured Chevron

This Golden Oldies Thursday aka GOT Polish manicure features something old, something new, nothing borrowed but a lot of blue. And it's published on Saturday...oops...

 Today's oldies are from Orly Magnetic FX collection from 2012.

Actually I didn't ever realize these were magnetic polishes - I bought them from clearance in NYC as I had to rush to cathc a train to Baltimore, and they didn't have any tags or magnets on. Sadly, they had stayed in the untrieds since.

The base colours in this manicure were Orly Force Field (the purple one) and Opposites Attract (the blue one).

As a brand, I feel that Orly is underrated. They've released some trustworthy baseline polishes and some really extraordinary collections like the Mineral effects (Stone Cold and its mates) or the Birds of a Feather (featuring Fowl Play). Someone just said in facebook their bottles are ugly, but at least the handle enables a very good grip.

Chevron print was done with Kiko 454 (the purple one) and 457 (the blue one). These are their textured Sugar Mat polishes, which I bought this year in a set on sale. If you like texture, you will love these!

I begun to do the chevron with ordinary craft tape, but that didn't really work out after the first stripe.
I mean where was I supposed to put more tape? Maybe I should invest in some real striping tape...

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TPC: Spun Sugar and Dots

Here comes -at last- the Tri polish Tuesday manicure from last week. This has been a crazy week!

The base here is Barielle Make it a Latte – the only clearly brown polish I've got with me.

First I added some spun sugar with Barielle The Pink of Fashion. The polish worked extremely well for this technique - and it's a pink - so a total winner for spun sugar!

I also did a couple spins with OPI Skull and Glossbones - and used the two polishes for double dots. All the pics are without top coat - although I did add some later on for wearability..

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GOT Polish: Sweet Heart

When these were new, I scored nearly all of the Golden Rose Jolly Jewels polishes from a local beauty store. I went through a lot to gather them all, and up to this date, I haven't even used the all. Shame on me! But they are pretty on the bottle, too!

This one was a perfect match for a Valentine's day manicure - and for a Color Club oldie!

I started with two coats of Color Club Wing Fling, and then painted on two (relatively easy) coats of Golden Rose Jolly Jewels 108. I just loved the bling and the jelliness - in fact everything about this polish!

Above is Wing Fling on its own. It's one of my old favourites, and I like the whole collection - but just why are these so sheer!! Just why!?! Otherwise I would use these all the time!

To make the sweetness even sweeter, I added a heart on my ring finger and some stripes on the middle finger with Sally Hansen Complete I Pink I Can, using sticker label and striping tape.

Don't forget to see what the other GOT polish participants are up to on this sweet holiday!

An InLinkz Link-up

TPC: Reverse Leopard

Usually, your leopard mani has light/coloured dots, and black/dark contours or circles around them. Ever wondered, how it would look the other way round? 

Well, here you got it, my second Tri Polish Challenge manicure for February!

Base here is Barielle Make It a Latte (the colour of this is nothing like latte, by the way...)

I added random dabs with Color Club Hot Like Lava, as I had to include a pink.

Then I painted the contours using fine nail art brush with Orly Boho Bonnet mixed with white and Essence Nail art twins Romeo, which is a dark silver polish.

I simply can't decide if this was a good or a bad idea. You tell me!!

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GOT Polish: Springtime Flowers

Is it a bit early for springtime flowers? Well, I don't care!
This is my green mani for the GOT polish challenge

The base polish here Essence Fruity LE "Kiwi". I had to paint four coats, but the result was really nice with the glitters peeking through the polish.

The ring finger is the accent finger again, with Essie Navigate Her and sponging with Color Club The Lime Starts Here.

And then I added rhinestones to a flower shape. What a cutesy-flowery style! Although I could have used a thinner topcoat... ahem...

 On other fingers I added stamping with Konad white and DRK-A, and then some yellow dots with Orly Spark.

The pics didn't turn out too well – lobster hands, bubbling top coat, cuticles in bad shape and all that... But I really loved this manicure! I'll have to give this style another go soon, maybe even with more murky colour palette or jewel tones... Hmmm...

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TPC: Grayscale Water Marble

Another water marble for the Tri-polish challenge this year – wow, I've been adventurous :)

I've actually found out, that I like water marbling! Who would have thought that after my first disastrous attempts?! I see water marbling as THE legitimate reason to just sit an entire hour by my desk and "do nothing", maybe browse a few nail blogs, maybe shop some nail stuff, but doing nothing productive.

The  February colours are gray, brown and pink, and only brown is missing here... Luckily this is allowed in the challenge rules!

I started out with a white base, and used Wild&Mild Rockefeller Center, Models Own Mushroom, NYX Girls Perfect Gray (giveaway score) and China Glaze White on White for marbling.

On the accent finger I added a touch of pink: Essence Multidimension Most Wanted.

This is maybe not the best water marble I've made, but I spent a lot of my precious time doing it, so I'm going to like it! Ever felt the same??

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Flormar Satin Mattes - And Stamping!!

I'm usually not impulsive in nail polish hauling and blogging. Rather, I tend to enjoy all the planning, googling for swatches, making spreadheets... you know the game...

But just last weekend, something snapped. I went into a Flormar store, found a full display of their new Satin Matte polishes, bought four, came home, painted them all on my nails, tried stamping with them, took pics and now I'm writing this post - and publishing it on one go!!! Awesome, and soooo weird!!

Anyhow, onto the polish... These four satin mattes are really good in opacity - these are all two coats, and persons with less free edge might get away with one coat.

 They also dry really fast - I mean fast as in "they'll dry on the brush if you're not quick enough".

 They look satin-y without top coat, and still great with the top coat on.

The yellow might honestly be the best yellow polish I've ever seen. And I've tried out a few...

The colours pictured here are GS11 (Canary), GS13 (Orchid), GS15 (Cobalt) and GS05 (Chili). I love how they finally gave names to the polishes!! Thank you, Flormar, for listening my endless rants...

And, that is definitely not all. They are also ok for stamping. Especially the purple and orange gave great results – but I did manage to stamp even with the yellow.

The stamping patterns are all from DRK-A plate.

I left at the store many original colours, like a murky olive shimmer, and many consumer-friendly colours like a blingy pink. I might have to go back and haul them, too...

---By the way, here's also my right hand I stamped at random, didn't do a proper cleanup and bumped somewhere. Sorry about that! I just thought I'd like to show you all the colour combos I made...