Some New Swatches - NY Lover, Boho Look and Leather Effect Bordeaux

Hi! :D

You might remember my January-February haul post. You already saw my Sally Hansen Satin Glam swatches and the swatches of the polishes I got as a gift from Miriam. Today I'll be showing you some more swatches of that haul. This post has been lurking in my unpublished folder for a while now, so it's glad to finally come out!

I'm going to show you Catrice Earnie & Birdy, Maybelline NY Lover, L'Oreal Boho Look and 2B Leather Effect Bordeaux. 

Monochrome & Textured Leopard Print

Hi everyone!

I'm really into black and white nail art lately so today's post is also about a black and white design!
I had actually planned do to something with acrylic paints but that was a total fail, so I quickly did some leopard print because that is my go-to design when all else fails and it's super late at night.

For this quick design I used: 

Alpine Snow - OPI

Frosted Purple - Gosh

Black acrylic paint

Although the name of the Frosted Sand polish is Frosted Purple, it doesn't really look purple at all. You can sometimes notice a purpleness in the polish, but it's not very obvious and if the name of the polish didn't have the word "purple" in it, I wouldn't have noticed this purpleness at all I think.

 You know how leopard print goes: three coats of Alpine Snow, make the spots with a dotting tool and then do the black outlines with a small brush.

I did the black outlines with acrylic paint because I wanted to try that out a bit - I just bought a set of 12 colours, just a cheap set so they're not very good paints but I just wanted to try acrylic paint out.

It is true that it's so much easier to work with than with polish! Now, my black polish I normally use for leopard print is a bit old, I'm halfway through the bottle so it's a bit gloopy, which I notice a lot when using it. I had no problems when using acrylic paint, it went a lot smoother than with my black polish.

I also put on a shiny topcoat afterwards because I wanted to see how the Froster Sand polish would look then. There's not a very noticeably difference, the grey looks a bit darker and glossier but that's about it:

What is your go-to design when all else fails? :)

Thanks for reading!

Opi's Magazine Cover Mouse

Hi everyone!

Just a quick swatch today of the gorgeous Magazine Cover Mouse by OPI. Which is a red polish, so great for a simple Valentine's Day manicure as well ;)

This is, as you can see, a liquid sand polish and
was limited edition - it was part of the Couture De Minnie collection in 2013.

This polish applies very good, it's a bit gritty with the first coat but the second coat evens everything out.

It also lasts for quite long on my nails without tip wear - about 3 days.

This is a textured polish and it dries matte with shiny sparkles in it. You are not supposed to use a topcoat since this effect would then vanish.

However, I applied a top coat to see what it would look like - my nails are like Christmas tree decorations!

Pictures of Magazine Cover Mouse with shiny topcoat are shown below:

In my pictures it seems like the polish (with topcoat) has a very gritty texture, but in real life it really doesn't look so gritty - my camera just decided to add some extra texture here... Maybe it's the artificial lighting I'm using, I don't know.

So, that's it! A quick post for today :)

Do you have any of the Couture De Minnie polishes? I only have this one - it was my first textured polish - and I'm really happy with it :)

Thanks for reading!

Houndstooth!

Hi everyone!

Today I have a houndstooth design for you. Houndstooth is one of my favourite prints ever - possible even my favourite!
I'm not yet so skilled as to make perfect houndstooth print, I never manage to get the white to look houndstoothy as well, if you know what I mean.  But I think they look pretty decent, no? :)

For this design I used:
FM1 - D'Orleac
Black on Black - Sinful Colours
DS Pewter - Opi (Raw Granite)

I started by painting my two middle nails with two coats of white.
Then I used a small brush to create the houndstooth pattern with black polish.

I always start by painting all the squares onto my nails. When I'm satisfied with the squares, I make the little triangle shapes on all of them (on the picture below, those shapes are at the bottom/left side of the squares).

After that, I add the two straight lines (in the picture below those are at the top/right side of the squares).

Then I used Opi's textured polish DS Pewter on my other nails, and added a topcoat to make it shiny since it's normally a matte polish with sparkles in it
(I have some swatches of this polish here, but it's from when I first started with this blog so they aren't the best swatches ever. Or even the sharpest pictures ever. But I guess you have to start somewhere right haha)

I did this design on both of my hands, here's a picture to prove it:

I know only my right hand is in focus here, but you can see that I did the design on both hands so that's good enough :)

What do you think of houndstooth print? I always love it, I think it looks so classy but special at the same time - the only downside is that it's a bit difficult to make. But it was worth it in my opinion!

Thanks for reading!

Review Sally Hansen Fuzzy Coat

Sally Hansen's Fuzzy Coat! I am really excited about this polish , it just looks so fun and different from any other polishes I own. It's a sheer polish with tiny black and white bits in, and surprisingly enough it has very good coverage.

About a week ago I saw this polish in the store, and I was really curious about the effect so I bought it. They had a few different colours, but since I didn't really know how the polish would look I opted for the safe choice with black and white. This is my first Sally Hansen polish by the way - up until now, I hadn't found a store nearby that sells them.

So, my opinion about this polish:
Simply put: I love it. It looks very different, I think at actually looks as if I put nail stickers on my nails, because the effect is so special. I only bought nr. 800, Tweedy, so I don't know if the other colours will look as nicely on your nails as this one. 

The application went alright, at first it was a bit of a struggle to find the right way to get good coverage with this polish, but once I got used to it, it went smoothly. The only thing is that you can't put too much polish on your nails in one time, since it doesn't dry so good then. On my one hand, I had 3 thick layers of the polish because I wanted good coverage, but it took ages for it to dry, and if I bumped into something with my hand the polish would shift a little or even peel off where the layers were too thick, so I had to correct this in the evening. 
On my other hand, however, I did 3 thin layers and had no problems whatsoever. And the coverage was also really good, so you actually don't need very thick layers with this polish - something which I was quite surprised about, but also very pleased with :)

The polish has a bit of a matte finish: if you would like it to be very shiny, you should put a topcoat on. I tried the polish both with a glossy topcoat and with an extra matte topcoat, as you can see here:

I looked up some reviews about this polish, and there were really only two opinions about this polish: you either love it, or you hate it. Most people who hated it complained about how hard it was to get the polish off (a lot harder than glitter polish, apparently), so that'll be an adventure for me this evening!

The one downside (apart from maybe the removal) is that the bits of black and white sort of stick up a bit from your nail sometimes, so the surface of your nail isn't that smooth. But honestly, this didn't bother me at all. The tip of my nails also weren't smooth, because the black and white bits sticked out there as well. At first this annoyed me so much - for me, my nails really have to be very smooth at the tips, otherwise I just go crazy - but I eventually got used to it, thankfully.

So, what do you think about this polish? Does anyone maybe own the other colours? :)
Thanks for reading!

OPI's Raw Granite

A few weeks ago, I won two new OPI Raw Granite polishes: DS lapis (blue) and DS pewter (grey). I tried out the DS pewter first. It’s a really pretty grey colour. The polish is like the liquid sand polishes: matte, but with a lot of sparkles in it. 

I tried on the polish first without a top coat,

but then I wanted to see what it would look like if it were totally shiny, so I added a topcoat. My left hand is with glossy topcoat, my right hand without:

The difference between the two is not shockingly clear, but you can see a difference nonetheless: the colour with topcoat is a bit darker, and of course more shiny! I like this polish the best with a shiny topcoat, mostly because of the richer, deeper colour. To me, it looks a bit like a pretty dark night sky with bright stars in it.