Who killed my sister? Who killed the Witch of the East? Was it you?

Today's blog title brought to you by the Wizard of Oz, simply because this colour reminded me of the ruby slippers in the film. I saw big 'SALE' signs at 'Mooi', and because it's seemingly impossible to stick to "I'll stop buying nail polish for a while" I went in to see if I could find anything nice.

I found this polish, Herôme W.I.C's 'London' in the discount.. bowl and decided it looked good. Now, this was actually a case of being fooled by store lights. It looked like a deeper red - closer to crimson - and rather unlike the flashy, ruby red it actually is.

Wicked witch! (I know, I know - the slippers are silver in the book.. just humour me.)

So, I was temporarily disappointed - brighter reds just aren't my cup of tea - but decided to put it on anyway. Turns out it was a lucky accident - the colour grew on me rather quickly. In certain lights it has orange undertones, making it a nice warm colour. Quite a bit of shimmer that really makes it pop - this is a polish people will notice.
Applied like a charm. Smooth as butter, very pleasant. Great formula. I used three coats, but it should probably give you sufficient coverage with two generously applied ones.
Definitely a good buy. Yay, bargains!

Artificial light, bottle, flash.

Hues of Blues.

Another non-current picture.
The blue consist of various layers; it was intended to be 'Bogota' bij Herôme's W.I.C. collection, but I found it to be so sheer I had to layer it. Underneath is an almost pastel cyan blue polish by Manhattan with Bogota on top, and I believe I tried a light blue polish from Essence in there somewhere.

The blue crackle is Miss Sporty, which crackled into much smaller pieces than I'd have liked. My other experience with crackle polishes lies with OPI's black shatter, which when applied with a relatively thick coat, crackles into nice big chunks, as I'm sure you know. I couldn't seem to replicate that kind of crackle with this blue.
But of course, this is a budget polish, and for the money I paid (€1.99 - no money at all) I can't say I'm disappointed. It's a nice shade of blue with an application I otherwise find acceptable. Having said that, Miss Sporty's black crackle crackles (what an overuse of the word!) just fine.

Koh - Orchid

Another day, another polish.
Granted, 'tis not the one I have on right now, that's still Pear Icecream.
I did mention it before, though, in A Study in Pink. Basically, I wore this colour as a base to 'lighten' the nail, which I imagine is all it's good for (and subsequently, hope that's what it was meant to do, because there's no way you could get it opaque enough to do anything else!)

To the point - Koh's 'Orchid', this light nude polish would be a great one to give your nail a clean, fresh looking base for a french manicure.

Not a very long post, I do apologise.
But sometimes you just don't need that many words to make your point clear :).

I'll pear the disappointment.

Artificial light,
Flash.

(I'll bear it.. I'll pear it..? Get it? Puns. I warned you.)

The first of my blog posts that's going to be rather negative, I'm afraid.  I suppose there are two sides to every coin!

I thought the H&M 'Say No To Racism' polish set was an adorable collection of cute colours (despite the unoriginal names), and I especially looked forward to trying out 'Pear Icecream'.
Well, now I have.. and what an incredible let down it was.

Whereas I do absolutely love the colour (a pale minty green creme - that, by the way, in no way resembles actual pears) the formula was miserable. After 3 coats the colour of the nail still shone through in many places and the application was streaky. The brush left a few little black hairs (grrr!) behind in the polish and it seemed to scratch the layers underneath rather than neatly apply over it. I applied a fourth coat, and I'm still not entirely happy with the coverage, but decided to leave it at that. It's hardly going to improve much now.

At this point I'm unable to vouch for the other 3 polishes in the set, but as I bought it mainly to get my hands on 'Pear Icecream', I'm left a bit disillusioned.

Natural light.

Starry Night.

 

Older nail art again. Done in April 2011, for a school assignment! Getting points for polishing nails, isn't that just living the dream? I study Art & Design, and at some point we were given the assignment to recreate a famous painting/work of art (that wasn't the Mona Lisa) in an 'unusual medium'. I chose to do van Gogh's 'Starry Night' in my favourite material.  The teacher seemed to quite like it, and she'd never had someone do nail art for her class.

Polishes used; see labels

If anybody is interested, I still have pictures of how I did this pretty much step by step.

Crystal Matte.

Oh, ho, ho. See what I did there. I'm so punny.

Hema's matte top coat thrown over Essence Crystalliced '01 - It's a Snow-Woman's World' with some white stripes. The effect is a bit lost in the picture, sadly. But by the time I get home there's no more daylight to be found to take pictures in.

Artificial light.

Abominable Snowwoman

Natural light

Don't let the title of this post mislead you, because there's nothing abominable about this polish. I just enjoy puns quite a lot. Prepare for more in the future.
The polish is of course my very recently acquired Essence Crystalliced '01 - It's a Snow-Woman's World'.
The colour hovers somewhere between a pale lilac and gray and I find it very nice to look at. No shimmer or sparkles in this one, just a straight up opaque colour very suitable for the winter.
This is 4 coats. I felt it was still to sheer at 3 to stop there.

Furthermore, each coat had to be applied a little thickly, or else the brush left annoying scratches; that was a bit of a turn off.
However it is an easily problem to compensate for, so if you like this polish, it's no reason to leave it standing in the store for such a small problem.



Artificial light - Flash

A Study in Pink

 

 
I love BBC's Sherlock series (and Sherlock Holmes in general), and I'm both looking forward to and dreading 'The Reichenbach Fall', which airs tonight.
Taking a step back to its first episode, we go to 'A Study in Pink', on which this is based. The poor 'suicide' victim (dressed entirely in pinks) scratches 'Rache' into a wooden floor with her final strength. And thus, I have scratched out 'Rache' into my nail polish. 

 

The pink is 151, L'Oreal Resist & Shine Titanium. I'm not actually a great fan of pink, so I'd never worn this colour before (it was given to me) and honestly didn't think I ever would. Good thing, too, since I think pink makes me so obviously pale, and not in a nice-contrast-y way.
Despite my personal preferences in terms of colour, the formula of this polish is excellent. It provides great coverage (here one thicker and one thinner coat applied in rapid succession, because I had to scratch in it) and dries fairly quickly. So, not my colour, but a great polish in and of itself.
No top coat is applied or it'd lose that scratched out quality, and underneath is Koh Orchid, which lightens the nail, to have the letters stand out more.

Bow-tied & Crystalliced

 Dear picture, why did you refuse turn out not-blurry?

Guess who went shopping? If you guessed me, you'd be right. If you guessed you and you have been shopping too, I hope you got some nice things on your trip as well.

I actually went to pick out new frames for my glasses, but with all the discount on Catrice at Kruidvat I couldn't resist making a quick stop there, since my local Kruidvat doesn't carry the brand at all for some reason (very frustrating)!
Unfortunately I found the amount of Catrice and Essence products carried at the Leiden Kruidvat to be incredibly disappointing.
How I long to be in Rotterdam again, where rows and rows of polishes stretch out before your very eyes! (That may have been hyperbole.) But alas, with my 9-to-5 days I don't get the chance to stop off there anymore, and I'm too lazy to go there on my Saturdays. C'est la vie.

Still, I picked up these. I know these aren't actually leaving the Catrice collection like some of the others, but I don't have a very big amount of Catrice polishes to being with, so I took these babies (650 - It's Rambo No. 5 & 600 - After Eight) home with me.
And of course the Essence Crystalliced '01 It's a Snow-Woman's World'. Quite an interesting colour. The little snowflakes on the handle of the brush are also adorable. Very subtle (so much so that they barely show up in my picture). Can't wait to try it!

I also picked up a little bowtie. I am a Doctor Who fan, after all. (And a fan of plaid.)

I wear bow ties now. Bow ties are cool.

Where is the Party?

You know it, you've read about it, you might even own it. Essence's duochrome 'Where is the Party?' is definitely a nice one to look at - from every angle.
My favourite aspect of it is that the main 'duo' is green and purple, a colour combination I really love. There's also hints of gray and blue in the right kind of light. A very interesting colour, indeed.
I don't have too much to say about it, to be honest! It's simply the colour I had on prior to Midnight Blue and had reasonable pictures of.

Natural light in both.

Shol'va!

  Natural light, sadly a bad quality cellphone picture.

An oldie but a goodie? Done March 2011.
I'm a big science-fiction fan, as a result it'll come as no surprise Stargate SG-1 is among the shows I like. So this nail art is rather clearly based on everyone's favourite Jaffa, Teal'c!
Not the world's neatest mani but hey, I still like it. Even if my pinky-nail was oh so short!

The gold is a YSL polish that applies like a dream. It covers well, isn't streaky, has a very nice shimmer and it's just marvelous in any aspect. If gold was more my colour, this would undoubtedly be one of my favourite polishes because it applies so well (I prefer its silver counterpart!)
The brown is a polish from Hema's own brand, which is very cheap and reliable. You'll rarely be disappointed by a Hema polish. Not really visible in the picture, but in real life it has a rather interesting pinkish shimmer to it. That's actually the reason I picked it up in the first place. It's subtle, but nice.

 

Horrible lighting which is unfortunately the best I can do at the moment.

"I think I've got a problem."

Have you ever had that moment?

Where you look at something in your life and you have this sudden realisation that.. maybe, you've got a problem?
Now, every now and then I photograph my collection of nail polish. Just for my personal record keeping, really. I like to see how things progress.
Well, when I looked at the latest picture of my collection (taken December last year, so it's fairly recent) I had that moment. "Wow, I kind of have a lot of nail polish. Maybe I should ease up on it a little."
I'll grant you, it's not the world's biggest assembly of nail polish, but it sure as heck ain't tiny, either!
(Also, now, 9 days into the new year, I've caved and bought a cheap bottle of nail polish. "I'll use it for a marble, really!" So much for easing up!)

Since this is still a new blog, I thought showing my collection might make things more interesting. 

Behold -

 

What I'm saving when the apocalypse comes.

Has the moment of your collection apparently taking on a life of its own happened to you yet? 

How did you deal with it?

Koh - Midnight Blue

I suppose the only way to get this show on the road is by actually posting, so here we go!

I figured I'd just start with what I have on my nails right now, as I'm trying to get through both my untried polishes and a bunch of new ones my aunt had given me.
This is Midnight Blue (130) by Koh, (top picture with 3 coats applied, no top coat, natural light).
As is often the case with glittery polishes, it did have a sheerness to it, and in the future I'll probably use another blue polish as a base. However, 3 coats is definitely decent enough coverage with this polish, so depending on how seriously opaque you want your nails, you may just be content with 2-3 coats.
Pretty much always the case with Koh is that the application is nice, without hiccups and pretty much exactly what you need a nail polish to be.

Flash - Natural light comparison

So, what are your thoughts on this polish?

Howdy, all!

 Heya!
Nakaya is the name, I'm 19 and like you - or, most likely like you if you're visiting this blog - I am into nail polish.
Now, the world of putting your nails online isn't new to me. I've had a deviantART account for my nail art up since October 2010, and I've had a Tumblr for my nails since December of that same year.
However, deviantART is the place I reserve for just that - things I truly consider nail art, and on Tumblr I don't feel very inclined to go on and on about the application of a polish or whatever. Just chucking in a picture and posting, basically.

So, a blog it is.
Predominantly inspired by my lovely friend Shani, and in secondary fashion by Nailside, because I fell in love with that blog.
Hopefully this will get me actively back into the world of nail-blogging :)