Dance Legend: Candy Flakes - Tinsel, Lollypop, Bite Tonight, Final Fantasy

Another Dance Legend post! I'm gonna show you all four polishes in one post this time. I received four shades from the Candy Flakes collection which has six shades altogether and each bottle is sold for 9$. The formula was alright and I didn't use any top or base coat. I swatched all of them over a darker color as well. My favorite is Tinsel, I'd even wear this one without a darker base because it looks really special! You can buy Dance Legend in their online shop or in their partner shops, shipping is 10$ or free if you buy more than ten polishes.

Tinsel

2 coats

Tinsel

1 coat over black

Bite Tonight

1 coat

Bite Tonight

1 coat over black

Lollypop

2 coats

Lollypop

1 coat over Essie - Bachelorette Bash

Final Fantasy

2 coats

Final Fantasy

1 coat over Essie - Bahama Mama

Dance Legend - Wow Prism Reviews

Dance Legend: Wow Prism - #26 Bullet For My Valentine

Today's Dance Legend polish from their Wow Prism collection is #26 called Bullet For My Valentine. #26 is a beautiful scattered holo in a dark wine red with pink, red and silver holographic particles. This one needs two coats for a perfect finish and the formula is again a bit more fluid, but it still dries quite fast. I didn't use any base or top coat. I'm sorry that I don't have sunny pictures to show you the holographic effect! You can buy Dance Legend in their online shop or in their partner shops, shipping is 10$ or free if you buy more than ten polishes. Click here for the review on #15 Quiet Riot. 

Roy Lichtenstein Pop Art Nails - MoYou London Pro Collection #10

I was a bit disappointed about the size of my MoYou London plates from the Pro Collection #10 because they are really small for my thumb nails (my fault though, I didn't read the description!). So I thought the best way to use these images would be a skittle manicure, so that I could design every nail in a different way. Roy Lichtenstein / Pop Art is a great way of doing skittle nails, since everything is colorful anyway. I prepared some nail polish decals using three of the stamping images and then colored them with acrylic paint. On my thumb and pinky nails I made a simple polka dot design with Flormar - 400 and Essie - Really Red. I'm not too happy with both of the speech bubbles because my black polish (H&M - Manhunter) really isn't the best choice for stamping. I guess I'm once again on the hunt for a new opaque black! On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

Peppermint Nails - Merry Christmas!

I have one more Christmas design for you! Ever since I saw the Peppermint Nails video from HelloMaphie I decided to do something similar before Christmas is over. I love her combination with mint, so I combined two kind of peppermint swirls in one design. My base color is Flormar - 400 and all of the lines are painted with Essie nail polish. I used Really Red, Lovie Dovie, Mint Candy Apple and Mojito Madness. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss.

Merry Christmas and thank you for everything!

Zara Scarf inspired Plaid/Tartan Nails

There's quite a hype going on these days about the double-sided plaid scarf from Zara and even if my favorite plaid colors are blue & green, I decided to take it as an inspiration for some nail art. I used Sally Hansen - Perfectly Poppy and Flormar - 400 as my base colors and painted the pattern with acrylic paint and a nail art brush. I'm not too happy with the black & white tartan, but I didn't really know how to achieve the perfect look. (Also, I'm really out of practice!) On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

Manhattan - Rouge là là: Cheeky Cherry, Bad Burgundy & Pleasure Plum

The second limited edition from Manhattan which is in stores since the beginning of December is called Rouge là là. This collection consists of five beautiful red and berry shades plus gold and silver nail art glitter. 11ml of nail polish are sold for €4.09 and one little jar of 4.6g glitter is sold for €2.49. I received three shades to review and the golden glitter, which I won't include in today's review though. I used two coats of each polish with no base or top coat and they all have a beautiful formula. You can see that Bad Burgundy isn't completely opaque with two coats, so this one might need three. The others look good to me with just two coats. I love the idea of a color inspired collection and I think Rouge là là includes a great choice of colors. And I think the names are lovely as well! 

Manhattan - Cheeky Cherry

Manhattan - Bad Burgundy

Manhattan - Pleasure Plum

OPI Mariah Carey Christmas Collection 2013: In My Santa Suit, My Favorite Ornament & Pure 18K White Gold & Silver Top Coat

I got some really cool press samples from OPI's new Christmas Collection and decided to review them for today. The Christmas Collection 2013 will launch tomorrow, the 28th of October in Switzerland and each nail polish is sold for CHF 23.90, except for the Pure 18K Top Coat which is sold for CHF 49.90. There are 19 polishes alltogether and their names are inspired by Mariah Carey. The collection includes 10 regular finishes, 8 liquid sand polishes and the super fancy White Gold & Silver Top Coat. To state the obvious: the price for the top coat is hilarious, considering you can easily DIY (as seen at Demelza's World last week). But since I had the opportunity to try it, I was of course very curious! In addition to the top coat I got a liquid sand and a regular polish. Alright, let's do this! 

OPI - In My Santa Suit

This generously pigmented red is worth staying on the "nice" list. 

Indeed, nice list it is! It's a pretty metallic, shimmery red with a perfect formula. I used two coats without base and top coat. I think this could also be nice as a stamping polish, I will have to try that!

Natural light

Lightbox

OPI - Pure 18K White Gold & Silver Top Coat

The Top Coat consists of real white gold and silver leaves in a clear base and yes I do absoutely love it! I added it over In My Santa Suit and I think it looks adorable. OPI recommends to add this over darker colors, but I think it would look great over any color, even maybe on top of a beautiful mint? The bottle is really cool as well and besides the price I have nothing to complain about.

*drum roll* 

OPI - My Favorite Ornament

Make this champagne glitter your new personal favorite.

I love how they read my mind. THIS ONE! I'm so in love! It's like Essie - Beyond Cozy in textured. I used two coats and nothing else and decided that this will be my favorite holiday polish from now on. For good. Love it.

OPI Swiss

OPI Swiss on Facebook

I bet this post gave you Christmas feelings. A little? 

Have a beautiful Sunday <3 

Essie: Sleek Sticks - "So Haute!"

I received six of the Essie Sleek Sticks Nail Appliques as part of my prize as an Essie Girl a few months ago. I never really got around to trying them and I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to like them. My experience with nail stickers (not including water decals or real nail polish decals!) isn't the best and I prefer real nail polish. But I decided to try my favorite design called "So Haute!", which is a textured red with small golden dots. It looks really elegant and it is definitely a design I would want to wear. Since these are (probably) made for people who don't have a lot of time and want to have beautiful nails for a long time, I wanted to wear them for some time to get a good opinion. They're advertised to last up to 10 days. So what I have for you today are pictures right after the application, pictures after one day and pictures after two days. 

First off: To my surprise the application was super easy. Against my expectations, they were quite flexible and I could easily fit them on my nails with almost no wrinkles at all. The part that keeps me from using stickers is filing off the excess. This just goes against all my principles of doing nail art, because it will most definitely leave you with what looks like tip wear and a ripped design. For what it's worth, this can be overlooked if you use a matching nail polish to cover the tips of your nails. That's what I did and this is how they looked super cool for about one day. After that time, the stickers started to tear and they got caught in my hair and everywhere all of the time. So on the second day I decided to use top coat, even if I read that this was going to ruin the design (on blogs, not as an advice from Essie!). Well, it did really look worse with top coat, the textured effect disappeared and weird wrinkles appeared all over the design. The picture from Day 2 is with one coat of Essie - Let It Shine. Removal was really easy and the nails were in no way damaged. 

So this is a lovely idea for a short special event. But which event is so special that you want to spend CHF ~20 /~10 € on nail stickers? And if it is that special, wouldn't it be cooler to have your own design, which will last more than just a day and is way cheaper? 

New, right after application

After 1 day

After 2 days, with top coat (Essie - Let It Shine)

Autumn Leaves - Stamping Sandwich

Today I'm copycatting a design that I fell in love with last week! I saw this beautiful stamping sandwich manicure on the Facebook page of Vivid Lacquer and Angela (the artist) just started a blog this week because of this specifique design! Her blog is called SaltyStyle Nails and she is planning to do a tutorial on these nails soon. This is my first ever stamping sandwich and although I've seen and liked them, I have never done one myself. I wasn't really aware of the awesomeness of jelly nail polish up until now, but I feel like this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship :) Since the only kind of orange jelly nail polish that I own is Essie - Clambake, this one had to serve as my jelly sandwich color. For the stamping I used the Bundlemonster plate BM05 and Essence - Bienvenido a Miami, Essie - Fishnet Stockings and Essie - Lady Godiva. Clambake wasn't really sheer enough, so my yellow leaves aren't showing very clear. But I feel like it still works, it is just a bit more gentle. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer and I'm probably going to try a matte top coat before I take it off, I'm curious about the result! 

Original design: SaltyStyle Nails

Also, if you're in the mood for some beautiful sadness:
Eva Cassidy - Autumn Leaves

Sally Hansen - Designer Collection Part 1: Night Watch, New Wave Blue, Perfectly Poppy

Sally Hansen sent me their new Designer collection inspired by Tracy Reese, Rodarte & Prabal Gurung. I didn't want to simply swatch these colors but rather combine them in a nail art design. For a first part I chose a blue & red toned water marble. I used a dark navy called Night Watch (Prabal Gurung inspired), a beautiful turquoise called New Wave Blue (Tracy Reese) and a classic red called Perfectly Poppy (Tracy Reese). I swatched them with two coats each on one nail and the formula is smooth and fast drying. These are my first Sally Hansen polishes so I wasn't familiar with any of their products. I didn't like the brush a lot, it's rather chunky and looked a bit 'deformed', I prefer the long round brushes. For the water marble I used a white base to make the colors pop. These are pretty good for water marbling by the way! On top is one coat of BTGN Top Sealer. Part 2 with three more colors will follow soon! This collection will be available in September for 8.99 Euro per 14.7 ml.  

Part 2: Coat Of Arms, Loden Green, Stocking Nude

Cheeky Jumbo Plate 1 - Viva Mexico!

It's been a while! The last few days I was wearing plain black nails on a camping site here in Switzerland and I really started to miss nail art or changing my nail polish for that matter. Good thing something awesome arrived in the mail today! I ordered the Cheeky Jumbo Plate 1 Viva Mexico three weeks ago and I love it so much! I haven't done stamping designs for a while now and I'm actually not that big of a fan of this technique (because I suck at it, ha!), but I just had to have this particular plate. If you are a longtime reader, you might know why ;) Of course I couldn't decide which design to use first, because basically all of the full designs are gorgeous! So I chose four colors and five different full designs. The colors used are: Essie - Maximillian Strasse Her & p2 - Night Out and Anny - Latina & Anny - Soul Sister. On top as always is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer.