Elderberry (not so) Matte

Though it might be the season to be jolly, it is absolutely not so for nail photography. At best, natural light is bleak and grey, at worst, there's none whatsoever when the clouds are dark and the rain is pouring. But before I start waxing poetic even further, I'll get to the nail polish, shall I?

It's a Pieces polish by the name of 'Elderberry Matte', and though I suppose the Elderberry part is all well and good, I don't feel like the finish of this one is all that matte. (Say that five times fast!) Since it's not that matte and unfortunately a little on the streaky side, it definitely needed a topcoat to try and even it out a bit.
Alas, as lighting conditions were not working out in my favour, the photo with top coat turned out somewhat on the grainy side. Streakiness aside, the colour both applied and lasted well.

Frankfurt.

Now that I'm wearing it, I can't believe I let this stunning blue be an untried for so long. It has such a deep richness and vibrancy to it, somehow. It's Herôme W.I.C.'s 'Frankfurt 120'. I can fairly safely say it has instantly become my favourite dark blue.

Still, lovely as it is on its own I wanted to add a little something extra. This little design is from Konad plate m15 and the colour is actually a nail art striper by Max called 'Grey Galaxy'. As you can probably see by the slightly awkward placement, I'm out of practice with stamping. This was the second attempt. Yikes.

1.2.3.

A simple, thick striped tape mani. This one was inspired by another piece of clothing somebody on television wore, but no matter how much I try to rack my brain I cannot remember what it was. The unknown gentleman on screen was wearing a cardigan striped grey, light blue and dark blue. I wanted to give it a little twist and make it less visually grim by going with an off-pink shade instead.

Colours used; Catrice, 'C05 - Nautica', Koh, unknown colour, Koh, 'No Worries (217)'.

Autumn.

Of all the seasons, autumn is the one with the best PR. With pictures of leaves in beautiful colours, cozy sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes, it's enough to make you actually look forward to it.
And then it arrives.. and it's rain, wind and cold all day, every day. No thank you!

That said, I still felt like doing some nails suited to the season. In retrospect, I think I should have used either a darker brown or a lighter shade of red to have it look best, but I'm still satisfied with the result the way it was.

Polishes used are the following -
Dior, '413 Grège'
Dior, '943 Rouge Garconne'
Chanel, '697 Terrana'
Herome WIC, 'Utreg 173'
Herome WIC, 'Zagora 150'
P.S., white.

Dutchess.

The tape strips I had cut off for a previous nail art were way too long and thus unwieldy and I had cut them in half. Leaving me with a bunch of tape.

I had two recently acquired polishes - a silver Depend polish numbered 'Nr. 206' that my aunt bought me in Spain, and a Wet 'n Wild polish from the Fergie collection called 'Dutchess' that I picked up at the local tourist market.

It didn't take a genius to figure that Dutchess is more of an effect polish and wouldn't work for me on its own.

And so we have arrived at this nail art.

The Depend polish is a nice, metallic silver and I'm glad to have it in my collection as I use that sort of thing especially as a nail art base all the time.

I'm not too big on Dutchess - in my opinion it looks nicer in the bottle than it does on the nail.
I liked the look of the purple glitters (again, in the bottle) but they don't really stand out in the shades of blue, which is a shame.

Bright.

Here again is the Depend polish brought to me from Spain.
The moment I got it I really liked the image in the packaging, it's fun and vibrant and reminds me of paisley print.
And I do love me some paisley print. It's probably a good thing I don't run a fashion blog.

The polish itself isn't relevant to this post, but I wanted to try and recreate something similar to the background picture as an accent nail, so I did!

Base colours: white is a nameless polish from Primark's P.S. brand, minty green is OPI's 'That's Hula-rious'.

Detail colours: Herôme W.I.C.'s 'Dakar 107', Koh's 'Coral (185)', 'No Worries (217)' and an unknown polish from the same brand.

P.S., That's Hula-rious!

Here we've got a white polish from Primark's P.S. brand, I couldn't find a discernible name on the bottle anywhere and OPI'S 'That's Hula-rious!', a super cute mint shade.
What's interesting to me here is that Primark's polish, a budget one at its mere €1.50 and the OPI, retailing in the Netherlands around €14.95, have very similar issues.

My search for a good (and affordable) white nail polish is never ending and I'll be blunt in saying that the brush on this one is absolutely shit. It's a flat brush which I initially thought a positive, but the bristles are all over the place and make it hard to apply an even coat without scratching the one beneath it. It needed three frustrating coats to cover to a point where I was content with it. Despite that, I do really like the formula on this one. It's the only white in my collection so far that actually looks more like nail polish than white out. Decidedly a good thing, that. Until I find something with both a decent formula and a decent brush, I'm still going to consider this one a win.

The brush on 'That's Hu-larious!' has misbehaving bristles as well and similarly makes it a challenge to get a nice opaque coverage going. In its defense I will say that this particular shade of minty green is 100% my favourite of all minty polishes I've encountered so far. It's just so sweet and bright and fresh that I'll keep using it despite the non-ideal brush situation.