kiko - Pearly Red & Fall Stamping

Hello Lovelies!

Happy Friday my lovely readers! I hope you are well and had a good start into the new season. I am feeling much better today too and am almost back to normal. So today I want to show you a manicure I created last friday and wore until Wednesday. I usually don't wear my manis that long, but this one was so pretty and I didn't feel like playing around with polish anyway. I guess another reason that it lastet this long is that I was too weak to use my hands for anything else than reading or handeling the remote controle... :-)

But before I go into details to the finished manicure let me take you there step by step and show you swatches of my base colour first. This is kiko - Pearly Red (492).

Pearly Red is not really a red polish. In my opinion it is a wonderful and intense orange (leaning towards vermilion) crelly polish, with lots of micro flakies in it. I find it quite hard to describe, but as you can see it is very sparkly and shiny. The colour is perfect for fall.

The formula of Pearly Red is fantastic. The first coat is quite transparent, but with the second coat it is opaque. The polish applies smoothly and spreads evenly. There was hardly any clean up to do.

I then used a make-up sponge to apply kiko - Vino Perlato (493) to the tips of my nails and create a gradient with it.

Vino Perlato is very similar to Pearly Red only in a deep red tone. This colour is amazing and I have to show it to you another time by itself.

To get an even finish I applied a layer of Seche Vite over my gradient.

I then used a black stamping polish and the heart design from the plate shown above to stamp on all of my nails. I tried to place the center of the design randomly across my nails to give the design a more natural look. The hearts remind me a bit of leaves.

To finish this manicure I applied another layer of top coat to my nails and added a small clear rhinestone to the center of my stamping. 

I love this look. The gradient and the design go so well together and the clear rhinestones add a little brightness to the manicure. After taking the pictures I did add another coat of Seche Vite to seal in my stones too.

I wish you a very happy weekend and hope you like my fall design. Do you like the colours for this season?

You may also like:

• Autumnal Gradient
• BPS Holo #12
• Sashimi Ship

p2 - Color Victim - be my guy

Hello Sweeties!

Please excuse that todays post is going to be a bit shorter. I caught a cold and had a fever last night and so I am not feeling too good this morning. Today I want to share with you a real beauty from p2. This is be my guy (333) from their Color Victim line.

I love those polishes so much! The 8mL bottles are sold for €1,55 and always come in seasonal colours. They have great formulas. In fact I never came across one with a bad formula.

Be my guy is a dark sapphire blue leaning towards navy blue creme polish with silver microglitter in it. Now that I look at it in the pictures I think it would make a greate base colour for a galaxy manicure. It already remings me of a nightsky full of twinkling stars.

The formula is once more excellent and didn't require any cleanup. With two coats be my guy was perfectly opaque and they both applied evenly. And look how sparkly it is in direct sunlight! I am so glad I bought this polish in my Berlin haul!

As an accent I layered over Revlon - Holographic Pearls on my ringfinger and thumb.

How do you like this blue polish?

You may also like:

• Watermelon Manicure
• Glitter Gradient on Black Swan
• 296 & Flower Accent

trend IT UP - Double Volume & Shine 050

Hello Lovelies!

How was your weekend? I hope you had a good one. Today I want to share with you a polish I bought in Berlin. This is trend IT UP Double Volume & Shine - 050. (I also did a little nail art on it so scrol down all the way! ;-D)

050 is a light salmon creme polish with a peachy untertone and a beautiful subtle shimmer that is best visible in direct sunlight, under a flash or any other direct lighting. See the little sparkles in the upper corner of the bottle?

I have tried polishes from the Holo Dimension line of this new brand, but this was my first from the Double Volume & Shine line. I really love this colour and I think it is perfect for autumn, but I am not sure I will ever use it again. This polish stinks! I have smelt a lot of nailpolish and even some with a very "heavy" odour, but this one tops it all. It doesn't have the typical polish smell. It is somehow sweet and tangy - the most repellent stench I've ever smelt in a polish.

The formula is okay. It is a bit on the thinner side, but not too runny. You have to be careful though with the amount of polish you put on your brush. The brush is quite thick and dense and also has some kind of reservoir at the top, where a drop of polish gets cought and runs down the brush when you apply it to your nail. You have to press that out first of your cuticles will be flooded.

I used three coats of 050 to get full coverage.It does take quite some time to dry so I had some trouble with my final coat. It was a bit streaky at the edges. The polish dries to a very glossy finish. But that was to be expected due to the name of the line - Double Volume & Shine. However I wouldn't say thet this polish was extra voluminous. At least not more than any other polish that needs three coats to be opaque.

I then stamped on a purple flower design using Double Volume & Shine 270 and the plate below (B87). (I have to use that Hello Kitty design someday!)

I was not quite happy with how that turned out and the polish was smelly even after it dried. I knew I'd take it off immediately so I decided to try out something different and layered one coat of kiko - Pearly Red (492) over it to add some colour and sparkle.

I didn't do a great job painting the colour on evenly but I still like the result very much with the design shining through the sparkly polish. 

How do you like todays manicure? Have you ever dealt with a polish that had an unbearable smell?

You may also like:

• Summer Flowers
• Tulips Accent
• Sunset Gradient

Revlon - Holographic Pearls

Hello Lovelies!

Happy Friday! We made it through the week! Today I want to show you Revlon - Holographic Pearls (765) that I finally got after searching for it for ages!

Ever since I saw pictures of it online I knew I had to have it. I went into the city and looked everywhere, but couldn't find a single bottle of Revlon polish. Then I looked online. Maybe I could order it via Amazon. That would have been possible, but I wasn't willing to pay €40.- plus shipping for one bottle of nailpolish. When we went to Berlin on vacation I was looking in every store that sold nailpolish and couldn't find anything. Finally a nice sales assistant told me that Revlon is no longer selling in Germany, because of some distribution problems. Wow, had I known that earlier on... Well, I still would have visited all those stores I guess! :-D (check out my Berlin Haul).

A few weeks back my future sister in law went on a business trip to the USA and I asked her if she could maybe get me a bottle of Holographic Pearls. And guess what - SHE DID! She even bought me two bottles!

And finally I can show you swatches of this beauty. I have already used it is an accent in my Aloha shirt manicure, but here are some more details for you. Holographic pearls is a glitter top coat with a transforming effect. It has a clear base packed with tiny iridescent glitter particles that shimmer in all the colours of the rainbow. One layer is enough to cover your entire nail with glitter and make it look stunning.

For this manicure I started to paint my nails in black and white. I then added one layer of Holographic Pearls to my black ringfinger and two layers to my white middle finger. Look how gorgeous the sparkle in the sun!

On my pinkie and indexfinger I added some polkadots and filled them on with the glitter too. I really love the glitter density in this topper. You only need a very small amount of polish to get great results.

On my thumb I decided to stamp on two red roses with my Born Pretty Store stamping polish to add just a hint of colour. I forgot to write down wich plate I used, but I think that's not the most important thing here.

You may have guessed it: I LOVE THIS POLISH! It is so pretty and I reached for it so often ever since I got it.

How do you like this sparkling glitter? Do you own it too?

You may also like:

• Leadlight Flowers
• Sheer Tints Gradient
• Gradient on Black Swan

Leadlight Flowers - Stained Glass

Hello Sweeties!

Today I want to show you a manicure I've been wanting to do for a while now. I've seen so many gorgeous designs online and finally got to trying out the Leadlight or Stained Glass technique myself. Previously that had fallen through because I didn't find a proper stamping motive to use, but now I am quite happy with my choice.

I started this manicure with a layer of Wet 'n Wild Protective Basecoat and one coat of claire's - Cloud. I then applied two coats of flormar - Holographic Silver (395). Let me show you some swatches of that beauty before heading to the manicure.

Holographic Silver is a fantastic glitter polish packed with lots and lots of iridescent microglitter. It reminds me of china glaze - Fairy Dust, just more dense. As you can see it is almost opaque in two layers. I Bet it would look amazing over a dark blue or black too!

In my opionion the name is a bit misleading. It is not really a holographic glitter, but an iridescent one. Even though it shimmers beautifully in all the colours of the rainbow it is still missing the real holo effect. Nevertheless it is insanely gorgeous. Look at all the sparkles:

I purchased a set of twelve stampingplates online a while back. You've seen me using some of them before. I really don't know what brand it is so I can only show it too ou and tell you I've used number 10 for this manicure.

With black stamping polish I transferred the flower design in the lower left corner to all of my nails. Look how you can still see all the lovely glitter!

Once that was dry I started filling in the design with various jelly polishes. I've used most of the OPI sheer tints and some homemade jellies in green, orange and red (wich appears quite pink). I then sealed it in with Seche Vite.

In the pictures you can see, that the orange jelly I mixed was a bit milky and stained my black polish a little, but in real life that was only minimal and hardly visible. It also was a lot sparklier than it appears in the pictures. I had trouble looking away from my nails. In the brurry parts of my last picture you can get a glimpse of it (Pointer).

I am so happy I finally tried this technique. It is so simple yet elegant and super effective and doesn't take hours of prep time. I am a little bit disappointed with the pictures though and my poor choice of orange polish to mix my jelly ( I think I've used Maybelline - Couture Orange.). I bet I have better ones in my stock! I'll know better next time...

How do you like this manicure? Have you ever used the leadlight technique?

You may also like:

• Pansies over Purple Gradient
• Watch Me Walking
• French Zebra Tips