Thứ Bảy, 31 tháng 5, 2014

Collage of the Month: March - April - May

Thứ Sáu, 30 tháng 5, 2014

Stamped and studded

Evening! Here's a quick post with a mani from the vault. Black base, silver stamp (with an image that I might just never ever use again, what a horrible image to get straight on all nails!) and some studs on the accentnail.

Essence Black Is Back stamped with China Glaze Millennium and Konad m65, studs from BPS

Essence Black Is Back stamped with China Glaze Millennium and Konad m65, studs from BPS.

Essence Black Is Back stamped with China Glaze Millennium and Konad m65, studs from BPS

And here's a little kitten update: the other day I asked for positive thoughts for the kitten with the blue ribbon, Tristram, or as Lilo called him "little no-can-poop". Still giggling about that one! I'll spare you the details but he's doing much better, and you guys were very kind, thank you for that! But now I'd like to ask for positive thoughts again, this time for another kitten. Little guy Perceval (I'm sure it's clear where the inspiration from the names came from :)) isn't doing so well :( He was a bit wobbly on his legs from the start, but they all were (so cute how tiny kittens move around and can already fall over from just shaking their heads too enthusiastic, lol!), so I didn't notice it too much. But last few days they really took a big jump forward, which is awesome to see of course, but it also pointed out that his wobbly backlegs are much worse, and it feels like it has gotten worse over the last few days as well.
I filmed it, and the vet and shelterstaff thought of something neurological straight away, and right now there's not much we can do besides support him with specific vitamins and just hope for the best. The vet explained a little about what it could be, and chance is that he'll grow over it and will end up just fine, it should start to improve in the coming weeks. But the vet also warned me that it could possibly be a symptom of other things, and that it could quickly take a turn for the worse. There's a few more little things about him that could mean nothing at all, or could mean more, and needless to say, I'm worried like mad about him now :/ Just wanted to share a bit, I hope my next post will have a positive update on this cutie!

Have a fabulous weekend and thanks for stopping by! ♥

Thứ Năm, 29 tháng 5, 2014

Catrice Holomania from the Luxury Lacquers LE

Morning all, a while ago I posted the preview of the Catrice Luxury Lacquers, and I was really looking forward to getting my hands on a bunch of those! But unfortunately the girl in the store had no idea what I was on about, and kept claiming there was nothing coming up, bladibla, and after checking for them a bunch of times I gave up for a while. Maybe I was unlucky and my store wouldn't get them?
But the other day I was there for something else, and of course I had another look for them. They didn't have the display (wonder if they ever had it there, the other store didn't for sure), but they did have a for sale rack which had some of those polishes, yay! After some serious discussion with my inner hoarder I decided to not buy every single one I could find, but just go for the ones that really sparked my interest :D I came home with 6 polishes, and a few more from other brands, oops! ^^
They still had all 4 of the Holomania polishes from the LE, but I only got 3 of them. Yes, I actually left the silver one, I love how that looks but I have several silver holos and find myself pretty much never wearing them! The other ones I didn't doubt about for a single second, and here they are :)

My swatches are with Make Up Store Aqua Fix as basecoat, 2 coats of polish, no top coat. These polishes applied great, but the holo effect was quite camera shy. They're no crazy in-your-face holo to begin with, but the effect is more obvious than my pics show.

Catrice ApHolo7

Catrice ApHolo7.

Catrice ApHolo7

The somewhat blurry pic below shows the effect a bit better, very happy with this lovely light blue!

Catrice ApHolo7


Catrice Plum Me Up Scotty

Catrice Plum Me Up Scotty.

Catrice Plum Me Up Scotty

This one was the hardest to capture, I tried in sunlight, lamplight, daylight... You'll just have to trust me that it's more holo :) It's a pale lavender holo, not my favorite color of these 3 but a nice one nevertheless!

Catrice Plum Me Up Scotty


Catrice Holo In One

Catrice Holo In One.

Catrice Holo In One

I loved this sea green color from the very first coat! I think it's the least holo of these 3, but I don't mind that, I really enjoyed this on my nails ♥

Catrice Holo In One


The other 3 polishes that I took home are from the Sand'sation part of the Luxury Lacquers Limited Edition, there were a few more I would've loved to see irl, but at least I got 3 of them now and they're great too. I really like this LE, and that I got them on for sale prices made them even better, haha!

Did you get any from the Luxury Lacquers, and what do you think of these? Thanks for looking and take care ♥

Thứ Ba, 27 tháng 5, 2014

Berry decals

Heyhey :) First things first, fosterkittens! I have sooo much pics already but haven't gotten to sorting them, feeding and caring for those 4 eats up a lot of time! But they're doing great, except the smallest one, he hasn't had any bowel movement yet and it's taking too long :( I have to help them by massaging (normally their mum would do so) but it's not working with him, so he's got some meds now to help with that. Hope it'll help very quickly and I can be all yay about that, haha, else he'll have to go to the vet I'm afraid. Until I get to sorting pics, I did post a few on my Instagram already, so I'll just be lazy and post those here now too:)

Here are all 4 of them, 3 came with a different ribbon around their neck to keep them apart, lol! They're starting to show more personality now, which helps, but if I don't see the ribbons I still end up mistaking one for another at times. Their age is estimated, and according to that, they were exactly 1 month old yesterday! :)


Here's a closer pic of one that I took when I just got them, the rest went to sleep in the basket straight away, while he was sitting in the front looking around a bit. They still have the blue eyes, wonder what color they'll end up with!


And here's the smallest one which I'm a bit worried about now. Please send some positive thoughts to this little guy! :)


But enough of those oh so adorable bundles of joy for now, I have to feed them soon again, so back to nails! =) When BornPrettyStore mailed me the items I've been showing recently, they also added some decals, so I ended up doing a quick mani with one of the sets.

Essence Very Berry with BPS decals.

Essence Very Berry with BPS decals.

Essence Very Berry with BPS decals.

The polish color is most accurate on the first pic, but the 2nd shows the purple of the decals better. Really enjoyed the look of these little flowers on my nails! :)




 Above you see the sets that I received, but I don't see myself using the blue sheets as quickly, so I figured to show them here as well. For my mani I only picked the purple flowers, but there are enough decals on the sheet to apply 2 to each nail.

If you're not sure how using water decals works, here's how I applied them and here's where you can find the decals over at BPS! These flower decals cost $2.86, but as always, you can use coupon code ABJ61 for 10% off.


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

Thứ Sáu, 23 tháng 5, 2014

Sea bubbles!

Goood afternoon! I'm glad I have some manis ready to post, because the shelter contacted me this morning and I'll be getting new fosterkittens today! It'll be the first ones of the year for me, and they're younger than what I usually foster. But this year they already had a lot of really young, motherless kittens :( The shelter uses crisis fosterhomes for those, they take care of them until they're at least old enough to eat on their own, then move to new fosterhomes if needed. But the crisis homes are full already, so the kittens that I'll be getting are from one of the crisis homes and are now around 3-4 weeks old. They still need to be bottle fed but luckily not around the clock anymore! Of course I'll be showing them here sometime soon, and I'll do my best to update my fosterkitten blog as well. But for now you'll just have to do with pics of my nails instead of adorable fuzzies! :D

OPI What's With The Cattitude? sponged with A England Galahad, China Glaze Aquadelic and Essence Chuck, stamped with Konad White and MASH plate 43.

OPI What's With The Cattitude? sponged with A England Galahad, China Glaze Aquadelic and Essence Chuck, stamped with Konad White and MASH plate 43.

OPI What's With The Cattitude? sponged with A England Galahad, China Glaze Aquadelic and Essence Chuck, stamped with Konad White and MASH plate 43.

This was one of those manis that turned out how I had in mind, and then some! I loved it straight away, hope you'll like it too! :) It was easy as well, I started with the light blue base, then sponged on the darkest blue, followed by the other 2 colors, all overlapping a bit. Stamping, top coat, done!

OPI What's With The Cattitude? sponged with A England Galahad, China Glaze Aquadelic and Essence Chuck, stamped with Konad White and MASH plate 43.

Thanks for looking and have a wonderful weekend ♥

Thứ Năm, 22 tháng 5, 2014

Simply studded

Hi all! Today's mani turned out a bit different than what I had in mind, I planned on a finer black line and having the studs more to the side of my nails, but oh well, happens! My background is a bit different as well, Sue insisted on being all cuddly on my lap while I was taking pics :)

Catrice Put Lavender On Agenda with China Glaze Bump In The Night and BPS studs.

Catrice Put Lavender On Agenda with China Glaze Bump In The Night and BPS studs.

Catrice Put Lavender On Agenda with China Glaze Bump In The Night and BPS studs.

I guess I don't need to explain why I have cathair on my fingers, haha! They weren't as obvious irl, I noticed them afterwards on the pics, oops :) I didn't make a cute cat pic to go with this post, I tried but Sue was throwing herself at me so I ended up with a bunch of blurry moving photos :D

Catrice Put Lavender On Agenda with China Glaze Bump In The Night and BPS studs.

Anyway, here's some more info about the studs that I used! I chose the 2mm black studs from BPS, but when I received them, I realized they were the same as the ones I had in a wheel of studs that I bought a while ago, also from BornPrettyStore.



I think it's nice that they offer so much studded variation, if you love a specific type of studs, go for a bag full of them, but if you rather have all kinds of studs, they have a bunch of mixed wheels in different colors, sizes and shapes as well. You can find their full range of studs here!

On the left you can see the studs up close, they're a bit hollow but that isn't an issue at all. I just placed them on my wet top coat and they stuck perfect!

The studs shown here can be found here. They cost $4,84 for the bag shown above, and you'll get 10% off with code ABJ61.


Thanks for stopping by and have a lovely day :)




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

Thứ Ba, 20 tháng 5, 2014

Messy Mansion and Lily Anna plates!

Morning! Messy Mansion recently released 5 new plates and Lily Anna also added a new one to the collection. I hadn't tried these brands before (I only drooled over their images), so I felt very lucky when a package from Messy Mansion landed on my doormat, allll the way from the other side of the world! :D I already showed you an image from one of them in my previous post, and here's a mani with a softer result:

W.I.C. By Herôme Örebro with Catrice Be Pool and Lily Anna 09.

Let's look at the plates! I received 3 of the new MM plates and the LA plate, they all come in a plastic cover and the front has a protective blue cover as well. There's nothing on the back of the plates, but they weren't sharp either.


Lily Anna 09 (you can click the image for an enlargement).
You can find the Lily Anna plates here, they're $10 each. I'm sure it doesn't come as a surprise that this is totally my kind of plate, loving such images! :)

Lily Anna 09

Messy Mansion plates MM33, MM37 & MM38.
Check out the whole MM series here! They're $7 each. Aren't these totally unique? Not only the plates are bigger than your average plates (please note, I don't have a real platefolder but these did not fit in my cardfolder!), look at the size of some of these images, they're huge as well! A perfect brand for girls with longer nails :)

Messy Mansion MM33

This was the plate I used for my previous mani, aren't those rockets cute? I think it's great how the MM plates that I received all have a specific subject, if you're into something, you won't end up with images of something else that you might never use!

Messy Mansion MM37

Arrr! They be some great pirate-y images for yer stash, aye! ... Yeah... I'm sorry, I couldn't resist! :D If you're into pirates, this plate is so perfect for you, it has it all!

Messy Mansion MM38

Owlllllll! (Thanks to zefrank I can't say owl anymore) Look at the size of that bottom image, woah! I like how this plate offers adorable owls in various styles, from cute to more realistic :)


W.I.C. By Herôme Örebro with Catrice Be Pool and Lily Anna 09.

W.I.C. By Herôme Örebro with Catrice Be Pool and Lily Anna 09.

W.I.C. By Herôme Örebro with Catrice Be Pool and Lily Anna 09.

The quality of these plates is great, I got nice, clean transfers on the images that I tried so far, and I don't expect anything else from the other images :) And here are these plates added to my comparison, but as you could see above, the full nail images vary a lot in size! So it's really the average of them, not all images on the plates are as big as shown here.


Thanks for looking and take care! :)


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

Chủ Nhật, 18 tháng 5, 2014

Constellations on my nails!

Howdy all! Lets see how this blogging thing worked again =) I'll post a little update on the bottom, but this is a nail blog of course, so let's start with that! I recently received some great plates from Messy Mansion, and I'll post more about those soon, but here's a mani done with one of them already :)

Essence Black Is Back sponged with Catrice Times Square At Midnight, Catrice En Vogue, Essence glitter top coat, Smitten Polish Radiantly Royal, 2True no.2 and a nameless 2B polish, then stamped with Konad White and Messy Mansion plate MM33.

Essence Black Is Back sponged with Catrice Times Square At Midnight, Catrice En Vogue, Essence glitter top coat, Smitten Polish Radiantly Royal, 2True no.2 and a nameless 2B polish, then stamped with Konad White and Messy Mansion plate MM33.

Essence Black Is Back sponged with Catrice Times Square At Midnight, Catrice En Vogue, Essence glitter top coat, Smitten Polish Radiantly Royal, 2True no.2 and a nameless 2B polish, then stamped with Konad White and Messy Mansion plate MM33.

It doesn't show as well on my pics, but it looked so sparkly irl, couldn't stop looking at different angles! ♥ I started with a black base and I wanted the image to be the main thing here, so I sponged some spots with a dark blue and a dark purple shimmer, then sponged more spots with a subtle silver glitter, a blue glitter, a silver glitter with purple shimmer, and a blue/green/yellow fine glitter.
I've never done galaxy nails before, but for the real galaxy nails I'd use brighter polishes and sponge a little less subtle, this mani got me eager to try that sometime :)

Essence Black Is Back sponged with Catrice Times Square At Midnight, Catrice En Vogue, Essence glitter top coat, Smitten Polish Radiantly Royal, 2True no.2 and a nameless 2B polish, then stamped with Konad White and Messy Mansion plate MM33.

Essence Black Is Back sponged with Catrice Times Square At Midnight, Catrice En Vogue, Essence glitter top coat, Smitten Polish Radiantly Royal, 2True no.2 and a nameless 2B polish, then stamped with Konad White and Messy Mansion plate MM33.


These are the sponges I used to create little spots, they're from BornPrettyStore and work great for any kind of sponged mani! I used the pointy side of a sponge for the spots, for gradient nails I'd use the bottom part. And I'd just cut off the used part, so these sponges will last for a while :)

They cost $0,99 for 3 of them, and you can find them here! Don't forget to use coupon code ABJ61 for 10% off!


Thanks for looking! :)

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

Personal update below:

Right, so here's a little update as to why I haven't been as active lately (and have less active periods here and there). The last 6 months or so have been pretty weird, and even though I find it scary to share a bit, my blog is almost 4 years now (next month! :)) and I'd like to open up a bit here.

When I was 18 I had some quick tests and within a day I got a diagnose, but because of who ordered those tests, we never really doubted the diagnose or questionned how the tests were done. But throughout the years I started questioning things more and more, I kept encountering issues that weren't part of what I was supposed to have, and things from that diagnose didn't match with me anymore, but getting tested again scared me big time. Last year I read a bit about a form of autism, and I found myself crying because it was all so very familiar. So I finally took the step, and got tested again. This time they were much more intense, my family got involved in the tests as well, and it took a lot more testing, questions, forms to answer, etc.
The result was that my old diagnose wasn't correct and instead I have PDD-NOS, which is one of the Autism Spectrum Disorders. A lot of things fell into place, and are still falling into place, not just for me but also for my family, all the way back to when I was very young. At the same time, I had to get used to the new diagnose, and learn what's a part of that, and what's a part of me. I also felt that that old diagnose, which I had for 13 years, was kind of hopeless, and now all of a sudden I have possibilities, things that can be improved, worked on, ... My future has brightened up a lot, which is awesome but well weird at the same time! :)
So I'm very happy with the new (and how I feel it, finally correct) diagnose -as far as you can be happy about a diagnose of course :P- but it also took me a lot of "what if I got the right one from the start, what would my life look like now"-thinking. That's going better now, but still a thought that pops up at times.

Besides that, I also had to say goodbye to my dear Bindi not long after the diagnose, you guys have been such a great support back then which I'm still very thankful for! I still miss Bindi so much, and saying goodbye to her had a big impact on my life. Add some trips to Sweden, having to do some big things in the house, and that I wanted to wear polish that I felt like (instead of thinking, I already posted this, lets not wear it) and maybe you can understand a bit why blogging was at a low spot in my life for a while! I think it will be more often, it's one of the first things that I'm less active with when it's not going as well with me or when I have other things on my mind, which has happened in the past as well. Ah well, now you know :)