My top 10 of 2012: nail art

Hey everyone! Let me start with wishing you all a Merry Christmas! I hope you will have a wonderful time :)

Today I have my nail art top 10 for you, which wasn't easy to pick at all! And just when I thought I was done, I realized that 2 of them which I was absolutely sure of, weren't from 2012 but from last year around this time, oops >.< But here's my final top 10, again in random order:

Definitely one of my favorites, really loving those kinda color combos :)

I had 1 spot left for this post and I just couldn't choose between the few I selected, so I asked my boyfriend to pick one from those. This was what he chose :) If it wasn't so messy, I'd marble a lot more!

Black on nude, will have to do more like this sometime cause I really like how that turned out!

I never imagined some of my manis would be shared and liked as much as they are, and this was one of those! I've seen people wondering how this was done, and just to clarify, this isn't done with a crackle polish or nail stickers, it's sponged with the black stamped on top. With a bit of practice anyone can make a mani like this one :)

Loving the colors and print combo, which reminds me, I need to get a backup from Heavy Metallilac. That polish almost made it to my top 10 of polish as well, it's gorgeous!

This was done with a nail application that I made, and it makes me think of Easter eggs! Perhaps that's why I like it so much, mmmm chocolate eggs, haha.

I often enjoy mattifying my manis, but this was one of the manis I loved a lot more with a shiny top coat!

Here's one of my "I want to use more smaller images" manis, and even though I think it really does look nice, I keep going back to full nail images, lol.

Another one that I did with smaller stamped images, this time on a Saran sponged base.

Dotted gradient, it took some time but it's so easy, and it's one of my favorites from this list!


You haven't seen any Christmas manis from me, because last couple of weeks I've been busy with houses, and I found one! So hopefully at the end of next month I'll be blogging from my new house ^^ Needless to say, it's gonna be a hectic month! Not looking forward to all the packing/arranging/painting/moving etc., but I can't wait to be in my new house :) I started packing a bit yesterday and even though I've moved this year already, I'm still surprised with the amount of stuff I hoard, lol!
I considered scheduling posts, but honestly, my head isn't with polish atm. And especially not right now, my cat Bindi is at the vet and will get surgery this morning to remove a tumor, poor thing was so scared :( So my Christmas will be a bit different this year, with short (and atm even naked) nails, fosterkitten Salla who's going nuts with all the boxes and my poor Bindi who needs to recover. Ah well, those Christmas glitter polishes will still work fine next year as well :P
Anyway, I'm not sure if I'll be posting again before New Year's, but if not, I wish you all a great evening and an amazing new year!! ♥

Thanks for stopping by & take care :)

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My top 10 of 2012: polishes

We're getting closer to the end of the year and I thought it would be fun to do 2 top 10 posts, one with polishes and one with nail art, and here's the first! 2012 did make me think "haven't we seen this before?" fairly often, but there are plenty of gorgeous and unique polishes as well, and picking just 10 wasn't easy at all! Some of my favorites didn't come out this year though, and loads of them aren't in my stash even, so that made the sorting a bit easier already :)
Sorting them made me look back at the nice changes to standard assortments (especially from Essence and Catrice), some great collections (like the A England The Legend collection, it felt like everyone was excited about it and loving it) and sparkly Indie glitters (this year had so many new Indie brands!). And now I'm clueless what to put on my nails, I saw so much that I want to wear again =D

So here we have it, in random order, my top 10:

The year started great with The Legend collection I mentionned above as well, and of course A England Dragon is in this top 10 :)

China Glaze's Deviantly Daring was an easy pick, a duochrome stamping polish? Double win ^^

Max Factor came out with Fantasy Fire, a polish that everyone tried to get their hands on! I haven't posted swatches of this bottled awesomeness on it's own yet, here I showed it layered over an Essence polish. This was one of the polishes that I felt I have to try again soon, and now that it's available here as well, I won't have to worry about wasting any of it on failed layerings, lol.

OPI My Very First Knockwurst is a polish that I haven't even shown on itself yet, oops! So you'll have to look through the glitters and stamping I'm afraid :)
I recently got it and it might look a bit bland in this list, but I'm loving it. It makes an excellent base for purple/pink/brown/silver colors (and perhaps some more even). It's one of those colors that seems to adjust to whatever you use with it, for example using a purple makes the purple show more in MVFK, as you can see here as well.

Of course I haven't forgotten about another A England polish that everyone seems to love (me included), Saint George! I don't have decent sunlight swatches of it, but the right image shows the magic of this polish better. And it gets bonus points because it works for stamping as well :)

One of the Indie brands that I got to try out was JENsations, and I fell in love with her Rainbow Sprinkles. It's a bright yet softer looking glitter, because it lacks harder looking black or silver pieces, if that makes sense.
On a sidenote, both purples that I used as base here are from the China Glaze ElectroPop collection, which is one of my favorite collections from 2012 because they all make such great bases for nail art ♥

China Glaze I'm Not Lion was an unexpected favorite, with or without top coat, it works either way and I didn't think I'd love this one as much as I do. Glittery holo goodness!

I'm not sure why I'm loving this one as much as I do, I'm usually not so into the vampy colors, but W.I.C. by Herôme Jaïpur could very well be my favorite vampy polish :)

Yeah yeah, I know I'm cheating here, but it's cheating with holos so I think you'll forgive me =) Honestly now, how could I choose between these 4! Depend's Holographic collection had some real beauties and original colors in it, but I'm in the mood for blue/green/teal so these were the ones that I couldn't leave out. These are Denim Blue, Ocean Blue, Ocean Green and Laurel Green.

And last but not least, I fell in love with Orly Miss Conduct straight away! If you love OPI DS Extravaganza, have a look at this one as well, they're no dupes and both stunning.


Now you saw my favorites, and if you feel like sharing, I'd love to hear what yours are as well!
Thanks for looking and take care :)

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Walk on the green side

I was in the mood for some stamping, but then the corner of my indexfingernail broke off - again :/ So I decided to file my nails down, but that made a lot of images too big for my nails! Luckily my nails grow fairly fast, and for now I went with an image with stripes, can't go wrong with those I think :) The stamping is pretty subtle (of course it's more obvious when blown up like on my photos), but the green stripes pop out a little bit more in real life. Mattifying it would've probably helped, but I decided not to do that for a change, I enjoyed the shiny shimmer too much!

Essence Walk On The Wild Side with Konad green and MASH plate 38.

Ahh look at that pretty shimmer! You can see swatches of the polish without stamping here.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Alice Had A Vision - Again

Hi all :) I walked to my family earlier through the snow and right now I'm warming up with a cup of tea (and giving my eyes some rest, snow and bright sun is always a nice combo, haha). Kitten Salla wants some attention after I'm done with my tea, so just a quick post with some swatches today!

Essence Alice Had A Vision - Again is a very dark polish, but it's far from black. I'd say this is a dark blurple base packed with mainly purple flecked shimmer, but I see teal, blue and some other colors as well. This polish does have a brush that feels the same as the new Catrice brush which I dislike (considering the 2 brands are owned by the same company it could very well be the exact same brush), but when I looked at my nails I quickly forgot that :) AHAVA is from the "The Twilight Saga Breaking Down Part 2" collection, and over here it's still in stores at the moment. The polishes were all gone in my local stores, but if you're lucky, you might still be able to get it.

Essence Alice Had A Vision - Again.

I hope you're enjoying the snow as well if you have any, and that you'll have a great weekend!

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Stamping and a cat house

Hey everyone :) Today I did some stamping again, which was a while ago now! And I ended up with a plate that wasn't all that handy, the fine image somehow had a bit rough edges or some? So everytime I cleaned it, it got tiny bits of my cotton pad stuck in the image, quite annoying! I got impatient with all the cleaning in between and that didn't help of course, so the stamping isn't as crisp as I'd like. But with an image like this it doesn't show so well anyway and I'm liking the result :) And I'm loving OPI's MVFK more and more, it goes so well with so many colors!

OPI My Very First Knockwurst with China Glaze Joy and BM plate 316.

The above photos were made with my new lamp, not in a lightbox but just with the lamp standing a bit higher on my desk. So far I'm very happy with it! I just need to remember to not look at it when it's on, that thing is BRIGHT, lol! It's a lamp from Megaman, Energy Saving Helix in the color 4000k cool white, 1550 lumen. So if you're looking for a lamp, those numbers might help. Although the color depends a bit on the brand I think, but you'll want 4000k and up, below that is too warm (yellow) as far is I know.

If you follow me on Instagram you might've already seen this, but I wanted to share it here as well. My boyfriend got an early Christmas pressie for my cats, so sweet of him! ♥ I was looking for something to put in the garden for my cats, because especially Dewey loves being in the garden, even when it rains. He often sits below a plant or a chair then, but especially his paws and butt still get wet then, and now he has a little house for those days. (My cats spoiled? You don't say =D) There's a part of me that thinks I'm nuts for loving this thing as much as I do, lol. But isn't it adorable? *squeee!*

There's some candy in the bottom area on the photo and I bound the door like that so they'll understand there's a door there (yeah, at times they're not too clever!). The little thermal blanket will go in the house later on when I put it outside.

Dewdew approves, it's handy to look outside from it as well :P I bound the door up with some garbage bag closing strips, and Dew loves those things. I don't think it'll take long before he'll get it loose!

/Crazy cat lady over and out. The photos were taken with my phone, in case you wonder :)

Thanks for stopping by!

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Collage of the Month: November

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I Love Nail Polish Winter collection - Review

Ready for some winter/holiday glitters? Then read on, because I received some great ones that'll surely put you in the mood for the season! :) The polishes that I'm talking about are from the Winter collection from I Love Nail Polish.

Normally I just post swatches, but I wanted to show you the packaging of these polishes as well. Does this packaging make you think of an Indie brand? No right? I think it looks great!

Brabra from ILNP really gave a lot of attention to the packaging of these polishes! It's always nice to have polishes delivered to your door, but these felt even more as a pressie. It's not necessary of course, but when you want to spoil yourself, this just adds to it, don't you think? :)

Every polish even has a matching label at the bottom, how cute is that!

But enough about the packaging now, because it's the polish that matters, so let's have a look at them! I swatched all the polishes on 2 different basecolors, to give you a better idea of how they look. My swatches are with 1 medium thick layer of glitter and a layer of top coat.

Once Upon A Starry Night

Once Upon A Starry Night

Different sizes and shapes of silver, blue, white and holographic glitters. It applied easy, no dabbing needed to get this coverage, but this polish has little stars in it and those I did need to fish out a bit. I thought those stars looked cute in the bottle but would maybe be a bit too much on my nails, but next time I'd add some more of those!

China Glaze Little Drummer Boy on index/middle and A England Galahad on ring/pink.

Once Upon A Starry Night

Christmas In Bordeaux

Christmas In Bordeaux

This polish mainly has gold, green and red glitters in different shapes, and there are some very fine holographic glitters in it as well. This one had a tiny bit of piling on the tips if I wasn't a bit more careful with the application, but nothing special. I used a less thick coat of this one compared to the others.

Essence Black Is Back on index/middle and China Glaze 2030 on ring/pink.

Christmas In Bordeaux

Babes In Toyland

Babes In Toyland

Gold, pink, teal, green and blue glitters, again in different shapes and sizes. Very colorful and layered over black I think it makes an excellent New Year's Eve mani! Easy application.

Essence Black Is Back on index/middle and China Glaze Dance baby on ring/pink.

Babes In Toyland

Ginger Spice Latte

Ginger Spice Latte

A finer mix of gold and copper glitters. Festive, warm and elegant, and as you can see, packed with glitters! It applied even and easy.

Essence A Piece Of Forever on index/middle and Essence Black Is Back on ring/pink.

Ginger Spice Latte

Something About Merry

Something About Merry

Green, light green, white and red, bottled Christmas with some snowflakes on top! The bigger glitters piled slightly, but with a gentle application it wasn't a problem at all.

China Glaze Jolly Holly on index/middle and China Glaze Red Satin on ring/pink.

Something About Merry

Up To Snow Good

Up To Snow Good

Different shades and shapes of teal and white glitter, and some tiny holographic ones as well. And yes, slightly different photos of this one, the sun went away and I tested my new lamp with this polish. Need to mess with my camera a bit more, but I think it'll do =) Anyway, back to the polish. These polishes are all packed with glitter and this one was no exception, in fact, it was almost a bit too packed for my liking, haha.

China Glaze Electric Beat on index/middle and China Glaze Kinetic Candy on ring/pink.

Up To Snow Good

And just because I think glitters always look so nice in the bottle, some bottleshots of these glitters :)

As I said above, these are packed with glitter and with all the different shapes I expected having to dab them on to get an even coverage, but that wasn't needed. Bonus points for the rubber cap which I liked a lot! I think it's a great collection, not only for this season :)

These polishes cost $10 for 12ml and you can buy them in the I Love Nail Polish Etsy Store. You can also follow ILNP on the matching blog.


The product(s) in this post was/were send to me for review. For more information, please have a look at my Disclosure Policy.

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China Glaze Tranzitions - Preview

COLOR + TOP COAT = ENDLESS CREATIVITY

China Glaze® Introduces Tranzitions Color Changing Collection

Los Angeles, CA – (November 2012): There’s nail art and then there’s China Glaze® nail couture.  Reverse French manicure, half moons, ombre, basket weave, dots or racing stripes: nail designs are intricate and multi-colored.  China Glaze® introduces a new way to get multi-color, unique nail art with fewer bottles of polish with the new color-changing Tranzitions collection!

China Glaze® Tranzitions’ revolutionary new nail lacquer reacts when a clear top coat is applied, changing the color from one shade to another for a stunning effect.  Wear any of the six beautiful, color-shifting shades alone, or allow your creativity to run wild and create intricate nail designs by applying a top coat all over or strategically.  Try different looks using nail art brushes, free-hand designs or nail guides.  Because each shade changes color, you get two lacquers in one, creating an entirely new look with just one swipe.

The China Glaze® Tranzitions collection features six shades, though with the color transition, you get 12 unique shades including:

(image clickable for an enlargement)

·         Split Perso-NAIL-ity – Dusty pink shifts to fuchsia

·         Duplicityy – Mint green shifts to vibrant teal

·         Modify Me – Periwinkle blue shifts to indigo blue

·         Altered Reality – Teal blue shifts to turquoise

·         Metallic Metamorphosis – Silvery grey shifts to bluish-charcoal grey

·         Shape Shifter – Smokey violet shifts to dark purple

How It Works:

Step 1: Apply a base coat.

Step 2: Apply two coats of China Glaze® Tranzitions shade of choice.  Allow to completely dry.

Step 3: Lastly, apply one coat of clear top coat such as China Glaze® Fast Forward and watch the color change right before your eyes.

For more nail design ideas, click here to view the China Glaze® Tranzitions video.

The China Glaze® Tranzitions collection will be available in January 2013 at fine salons and beauty supply stores.

China Glaze is free of DBP, toluene, and added formaldehyde, and is never tested on animals.

China Glaze nail lacquers are available through salons and professional beauty supply stores nationwide. For more information, please visit www.chinaglaze.com or follow China Glaze on Facebook (@ChinaGlaze), Twitter (@ChinaGlazeOfficial) and Pinterest (pinterest.com/chinaglaze).

China Glaze® is a division of American International Industries.

About American International Industries

For 42 years, AII has been the leading manufacturer and worldwide distributor of innovative, quality beauty and skin care products for men and women.  Our product lines include Andrea, Ardell, Body Drench, Bye Bye Blemish, Checi, China Glaze, Clean + Easy, Clubman/Pinaud, Duo, European Secrets, EzFlow, Fright Night, Gena, GiGi, Gypsy Lash, IBD, It’s So Easy, Jeris-Lustray, LASH BeLONG, Nail Tek, No Tweeze/Micro Tweeze, 'N Rage, Poshe, Prolinc, RAW, Seche, SuperNail, Surgi-Care, Waterworks, Winning Nails, Woltra, Woody’s, and Youthair. For more information, visit our website: www.aiibeauty.com.

What do you think of these? I have a few polishes that work the same and I've never used them the way they're ment (only for stamping), because I always wear top coat. Having said that, these actually did get my interest, because on the images it looks like the bottom row might be more matte! If that's the case it would make them a lot more attractive to me, and then adding top coat could really create a nice matte/shiny effect in different colors as well :)

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Instagram compilation #3

Hi guys! It's been a while and still no polish in this post, oops! It's just one of those periods where I have a lot on my mind and polishing has a lower priority. But as usual, I'll be back :) In fact, I did some swatching today and those polishes should be up on my blog tomorrow or this weekend. Thanks for sticking with me! ♥ Because I did want to post something today, I made another IG compilation.

1) Dewey often joins me in bed in the evening, then he gets all cuddly and adorable, aww!
2) Tried baking bread, ahh the smell of freshly baked bread. And they tasted nice too :)
3) I made a baby rattle toy (crochet), here it wasn't finished yet, I added another ring to it in pink. That became a pressie for my newborn niece! Big congrats again to my sister and her husband ♥ (and with becoming an aunt I instantly felt a lot older, lol!)
4) Polished painting in the making. Still isn't finished though!
5) A Swedish drink that I miss, love that stuff!
6) Gotta love cat paws, here foster kitty Salla shows hers.
7) Slacky Sue, but nothing new there!
8) Zwarte pieten! Went shopping the other day but didn't know Sinterklaas was in our town that day, so the whole city was filled with these.
9) The polishes that I swatched today, sparkly and original!

1) Adorable Sue :)
2) Salla in her cage in the quarantine of the shelter before she came home with me. She's still here, waiting for a new owner!
3) Turns out my phone makes pretty decent close-ups! That was a photo of this mani.
4) One of my all time favorites, nommm.
5) Getting more than 2k followers on IG, woah!
6) Looking at my snoozing cats always relaxes me :)
7) Finally got a new lamp for photos, haven't tested it properly yet (only for some quick photos today) but so far it looks good!
8) Bindi on top of the couch. A normal spot for my other 2, but seeing her there was so nice, a while ago she wouldn't have dared to go lie in the middle of the room like that! She's about 10 1/2 years old now and still improving ♥
9) So many wheels and I still know from almost all of them what polish it is, haha. I'm sure that sounds familiar to some of you =) And yet at times I have no idea what to use, feels like what I want to wear isn't in my stash then, bleh!

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