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