Nivea Berry Gloss & Nfu-Oh 51

 Nivea - Berry Gloss, 2 coats

In the bottle, Berry Gloss looks like a heavily red tinted purple, but on the nail it translates as a mixture between reddish purple and burgundy (see second image). It's a super glossy and squishy jelly and would have required at least three coats to eliminate VNL, but since I was going to layer 51 over it I only did two. The polish sort of puddled near the very tips which is apparent in the pics. The brush was splayed and the bristles hard thus I had to leave a larger gap than usual to avoid cuticle flooding.

Nivea - Berry Gloss & Nfu-Oh - 51, 2 + 2 coats

Fat nails! Chunkytown! :p Nfu-Oh 51 is an incredibly beautiful lacquer but I bet it looks a hundred times better in the summer when there's an abundance of sunlight.

Eveline 489 & nail art stickers

Eveline - 489 & nail art stickers, 2 coats

Eveline 489 is one hot magenta with super fine fuschia shimmer. The first picture is the most accurate one, this cutie glows! The nail stickers are by Fing'rs and I almost think they're made for babies' nails as they're so darn tiny! That seems to go for all others Fing'rs brand stickers I've seen - either that or my nail beds are huge!

Girly polkadot funky French with fimo fruit slices

H&M Kitty Princess, Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme, fimo fruit slices and rhinestones

It's almost 4 AM but I can't go to sleep, first I have to share this super cute mani I finished last night! Also, my right hand makes its debut in the blog! ;D I started with two coats of yet another new lacquer from H&M called Kitty Princess. H&M have featured some very cool polishes in their licensed Hello Kitty line this year and their Xmas collection includes three new shades - Kitty Princess (a sweet & delicate pale pink with glass fleck), Kitty Queen (flashy raspberry with fine silver flecks) and a silver foil which I didn't even pick up from the display and thus didn't catch its name. Anyways, I then painted the French tips with Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme and added polkadots with a dotter and a random white creme. I waited until the tips were dry (I could have used a quick dry top coat but I wasn't in a hurry) and then started placing the fimo slices. Finally I added a few randomly placed silver-coloured rhinestones and topped the whole thing with a generous dollop of SH Insta-Dri top coat. Kawaii! ♥

Nubar Peacock Feathers & Seche Vite FAIL

 Nubar - Peacock Feathers, 3 coats

I hate Seche Vite. Look how it shrank and pulled the lacquer underneath with it? I'm done with SV, I gave it a fair chance (and another... and another... and...) it's only good for pedicures. The Nubar wasn't that hot either, the formula was watery and the polish flooded my cuticles. The bristles were unusually hard (for a Nubar brush) and somewhat splayed. Still, it's a very pretty colour. I don't know it the newer bottles suffer from the awful formula, mine is at least 1½ years old - any info on how the newer batches are?

Etude House BL504 & Nfu-Oh 54

Etude House - BL504, 2 coats

BL504 is yet another colour hard to describe - is it blue? Indigo? Blurple? It doesn't look quite as saturated as this IRL, the creme base has a little bit of smokey hue in it. The glass flecks in this one are iridescent, changing from blue to very pinkish purple.

Etude House - BL504 & Nfu-Oh 54, 2 + 1 coats

I love the scaly mermaid effect that Nfu-Ohs give but boy do they make my nails look chunky! ("Do my nails look fat to you?" *lol*)

Shaken Not Stirred franken

Franken - Shaken Not Stirred, 2 coats

Ohmegosh, SUN!!! For whole three hours, it's photo taking time! So, I've been eyeing China Glaze's discontinued Shaken Not Stirred for what seems like years. I recently came across a bunch of discounted Eveline brand lacquers, and since they were so cheap at 1€ apiece I decided to grab a couple of extra ones to use in frankens. For the base colour I used Eveline 421, a light purple that leans pink (and which is nearly identical to Essie's Splash Of Grenadine) and then I added whatever glass flecked polishes I had, more specifically Misa Honeybunch (semi sheer white base), Sally Hansen Diamonds (clear base) and Depend 105 (super densely packed with glass flecks, simply made for frankening purposes). Photos of the original polish can be seen at Crystal Polish, Polish Me Happy and Polish Mayhem - I think my version is a tad more pink but I've managed to satisfy my craving for the moment.

OPI Let Me Entertain You vs. Lumene Soul Shaker

OPI - Let Me Entertain You, 2 coats

Let Me Entertain You is a wonderfully vivid magenta with duochrome foil particles and glass flecks in a jelly base. I dislike wearing classic reds because they make me feel like a two dolla hooker, but flashy magentas like this one are a-ok in my book. Figure it out. *eh*

OPI - Let Me Entertain You (index, ring) & Lumene - Soul Shaker (middle, pinkie, zoom), 2 + 3 coats

Soul Shaker is one of the five nail polishes from Lumene's current Punk Princess Trend Collection; the rest are a plain black, a pink and a grey creme plus what looked to me like a dupe for Hard Candy Mr. Wrong. In the bottle Let Me Entertain You and Soul Shaker appear to be something like 99,9% dupes, but Soul Shaker is a tad lighter and needs 3 coats to eliminate VNL. The Natural Code line lacquer bottles are ridiculously tiny at 4,5ml and cost around 4€, but if you're a Finn and can't bring yourself to hand over 16€ for a bottle of OPI (I've got two words for you: Trans Design) then go and grab youself a bottle of Soul Shaker.

Etude House PP904

Etude House - PP904, 2 coats

Here's another one of my new Etude House lacquers. This one's an odd little birdie who does not know if she's taupe, mauve, brown or purple. The creme base lands somewhere between muddy taupe and purple, and the colour of the shimmer changes from golden orange to a greenish tint depending on the angle. These Etude House lacquers practically apply themselves, and although the formula is just a little bit on the thick side there was absolutely no bubbling. It was really foggy and bleak outside today so I'm not really satisfied with these photos... but the middle one is the most colour accurate.

Essie Demure Vixen & nail art stickers

 

 Essie - Demure Vixen, 2 coats

Oh Demure Vixen, you shot straight into my top 20! A taupe/mauve creme with hidden pink shimmer, this little nymphet is by far my favourite Essie lacquer. It's a universally appropriate colour for any occasion without being in the slightest boring.

It could be that the top coat I used (Sally Hansen Insta-Dri) affected the colour - I did this mani with Demure Vixen last night, and this morning as I checked my nails I noticed that the colour had changed from taupe to very saturated mauve and my nails don't match the colour of the bottle anymore... hmm. The pictures taken with flash accentuate the taupe, but the upmost image is probably the most accurate representation of how this polish looks on me. o.O

 Essie - Demure Vixen, 2 coats & nail art stickers

The super cute flower decals were bought from Seppälä, a Finnish clothing store chain. These were much easier to apply than the french tip ones I wore two weeks ago, and I hadn't noticed the nice foil detailing until I put them on.

Funny Korean nail polish bottle!

"Our rial polish provides high quality pkibless.with eoxcellent colours and brightness,with an effect of kong lasting,easily stuch on your anger ortoe nails,with our product you shape whatever colours you like."

Etude House BL009

Etude House - BL009, 2 coats

Ah, it's good to be back home - especially when you've got half a dozen packages waiting for you at the post office! I received a bunch of Etude House lacquers from Hong Kong and among them was this little beauty, known only by her code name BL009. *cue James Bond music* The abundant green shimmer is super sparkly and the base colour lands somewhere between dark, inky blue and teal. I had to trim a few stray hairs off the brush but otherwise application was a breeze.