Swatch: Lucky 13 Lacquer - Who Is That Mysterious Lady?

Hi all!

Last week I had mostly bare nails, except for the days I wore the beautiful lady I'll be showing you today. You must all know by now that Lucky 13 Lacquer is one of my favourite indie brands. It's probably partly because of all the fandom inspired polishes, I am a geek, and because L13L's creator Kyoti is such a sweetheart. Today's lovely is exclusively available from Lucky 13 Lacquer's stockist Mei Mei's Signatures. There are 3 exclusive polishes in total in the Mystical Woodland collection and the green one is on my wish list as well. Unfortunately only the glitter topper is available at the moment, perhaps if you nudge Mei Mei she will restock the others soon.

First of all, I have to tell you these photos are colour corrected. My camera made it too violet. So I fiddled around with the saturation to get them closer to how the polish actually looks. This is an old rose pink filled with hex glitters in silver, brown and green. It's also laced with a gorgeous gold shimmer. I'm wearing two coats with one coat of HK Girl. This polish dries pretty smooth (not glitter hungry at all).

Even though I'm not a pink polish girl, I do have some clothing with rose pink, because that colour suits me well. Sometimes I like to colour coordinate my outfit to my polish (or the other way around), which is why I decided to buy this polish anyway. I enjoyed wearing this beauty, because this colour is soothing to me.

Did any of you manage to pick up this polish (or any of the Mystical Woodland trio)? Would you if it is restocked? Let me know!

Simples - Week 5 - Basic Dots

Hi all!

Although I am a bit late (week 5 was past week) I'm still showing you my basic dots mani. You can find a tutorial post by The Crumpet here. Because simple can be lovely too!

Today's pretties:

• Cien - 27 Deep Turquoise
• L.A. Colors - NP444 Treasure Island

Cien nail polish is a brand from Lidl, yes, the supermarket. It was only € 1,99 and I do like my teals even if they name them deep turquoise instead of teal. This polish was a bit thick to apply, but looks fine in 2 coats. It has a lovely blue shimmer as you can see below.

Of course I had to add dots... I went through my swatch sticks to find a complementary polish and settled on this one. A bit of glitter makes a simple dotticure look quite fancy.

Even though it's simple, I like how this turned out. I'm really loving these two polishes together as well! Has any of you ever bought nail polish from Lidl (or any other supermarket)?

Bliss Kiss Pure Nail Oil 3 Day Challenge & review

My instagram photo of the prize I won

Hi all!

As those of you reading along on Facebook or Instagram might know, I won a Bliss Kiss Pure Nail Oil pen in a Flash Friday giveaway held by Simple Nail Art Tips (creator of the nail oil). She has those giveaways on Facebook 3 times a week (Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays), although she's got a much bigger giveaway going on right now to celebrate her 10000 Facebook likes. At the time my pen arrived (within a week after sending it off!) I still had my slightly longer nails. Unfortunately I already had a tear in the side wall of my middle finger nail, I encircled it in the photo below.

Besides the tear, you can see I also had some dryness going on. Especially on my index finger I always have some dry spots along the side of my finger. I try to apply nail oil regularly, but I haven't been very good at keeping it up. The products I have been using were a cheap Kruidvat nail oil and Glisten & Glow Glis-tics cuticle oil in Summer Sorbet scent. I once got the Glis-tics for free with an order I did for the G&G HK Girl top coat with Mei Mei's Signatures. She added one to five orders randomly during the introduction of that brand to her shop. I don't like the Summer Sorbet scent at all, it smells extremely sweet and heavy. It's just too much for my liking. Mind you, one of my coworkers adores the scent, so it's just a matter of personal preference.

After my Bliss Kiss Pure Nail Oil arrived I went ahead and chopped all my nails down to nubs. Quite drastic, but fixing the tear wouldn't work for me and it was in such a delicate spot I'd rather chop it down myself than having the tear get worse. I decided to go ahead with the 3 day challenge right away, which means I applied this oil for 3 days whenever I could on naked nails and let it soak in well. You can already see the change after the first application! Goodbye dryness!

The Bliss Kiss Pure Nail Oil comes in a pen with bristles to apply the oil. You twist the bottom of the pen to push the oil towards the bristles. It applies easily and the bristles are very soft. This oil is primarily jojoba oil and it is a thin oil, it does not feel thick like pure olive oil feels. It gets absorbed quickly which is always a plus for me. And the scent... this comes in fragrance free and the Crisp scent. I'm not a person to like a lot of scents, picking a perfume is an ordeal for me as I don't like most perfumes at all (I wear Hugo Boss - Deep Red if you're curious). Some perfumes are so overpowering it makes me sick. Crisp is a scent made in heaven. I am not kidding, but I keep smelling my nails... they smell so delicious! Crisp is a blend of lemon zest, pink grapefruit, pomegranate and vanilla. To me it does not smell citruslike at all, my nose picks up the vanilla most. Not pure vanilla, but it does smell fresh and warm if that makes sense. I adore it!

After those 3 days of wearing nothing on my nails besides this oil, I did apply nail polish again. I tried to use the oil frequently to keep my cuticles moisturised. I've been using this for over a week now and I plan on using it for a long time to come. I just hope my pen doesn't run out before my refill order arrives!

If you've been wanting to try this nail oil, in just a few days the semi-annual sale starts! The sale lasts from July 1st to 7th, the next sale will be in January next year. Seems like a good time to pick up a starter set if you ask me! Don't forget to visit bit.ly/PureNailOil and get some goodness of your own, your nails will thank you for it, I promise!

Golden Oldie Thursday - Free Choice

Hi all!

Another catch-up post. Last week's GOT theme was a free choice. Seeing as it's been over a year since my first indie polish order at Mei Mei's Signatures, I thought it would be nice to feature one of the polishes I bought then: Jindie Nails Princess Breath. Still gorgeous and the polish has not thickened or anything at all. I looked in my stash for a complementary polish to go with it and ended up with a very old Miss Helen polish. No clue how long I've had this, just that it hasn't been worn much. I did add some newer polishes, but those are just to enhance the oldies, promise.

From left to right:

• Miss Helen - 119
• Jindie Nails - Princess Breath
• Nail Pattern Boldness - Glitter Food
• Mundo de Uñas - 24 Aqua
• Glisten & Glow - HK Girl top coat

And I also used PUEEN 70.

I am wearing 3 coats of the fuchsia shimmery polish on my thumb, index finger and middle finger. On the last two I stamped with the aqua stamping polish, not my best work. My ring finger and little finger are rocking Princess Breath, 3 coats. This polish is quite hungry so I fed it with some Glitter Food to smooth it and then added top coat for shine.

Besides needing 3 coats, this is a lovely polish with shimmer and micro flecks.

Strange to see it's been over a year since my first indie purchase, which means my blogiversary is coming soon as well...

Check the other Golden Oldies down in the InLinkz!

Nail Art Ideas Linkup - June - Matte

Hi all!

Sorry for the silence, but I just lacked the energy to edit the photos for this post. I did this many over a week ago, before the big chop and my 3-day Bliss Kiss Pure Nail Oil challenge (which meant I had naked nails for a few days! I'll write up a proper post on that soon). I do not have many matte polishes, although obviously with a matte top coat any polish can be turned into one. The polishes I used for today's mani are actually proper matte polishes. I got them for my birthday months ago, it's a Spanish brand I believe, but they're for sale in different places over here. And they sure are pretty!

Today's matte lovelies:

• Yes Love - Matte - 5
• Yes Love - Matte - 2
• Yes Love - Matte - 10

I haven't spotted any names on the bottles nor found any while searching online.

I started with the silver base, two easy coats. On my index finger I did a purple and coral waterfall mani à la The Nailasaurus. A simple leopard for my middle and ring finger, and finally my stitched border nails on the thumb and little finger. It's been a while since I did one *winks*. No top coat to preserve the regular effect of these polishes.

For my thumb close up I am showing you the cinderella thumb... of course I dented my left hand one before taking a photo. But, just look at the gorgeous shimmer! Isn't it pretty?

And the cinderella hand, I just mixed up the patterns a bit. I've said this before, but I really like wearing skittlettes like this.

I've got one more mani to show you from before my big chop, and then it'll be back to nubbins! Do you like these mix and match mani's? Have you tried Yes Love before?

Want more matte goodness? Do check the others!

Tri Polish Tuesdays - June - Leaves and flowers

Hi all!

Today's mani is one I absolutely adored and wore for several days until I had to remove it (I can't stand chipped nails). It's reminiscent of some patterns I have collected on Pinterest, though no specific one inspired me for this mani.

Today's beauties:

• OPI - Don't Bossa Nova Me Around
• China Glaze - Petal To The Metal
• China Glaze - For Audrey
• W7 - 28 Black

My base is two coats of OPI's Don't Bossa Nova Me Around, fast becoming my favourite nude polish. With a small nail art brush I added the leaves with For Audrey and the flowers with Petal to the Metal. I added black dots and stripes as accents also with the brush. Top coat and done. I did this on both hands, though I must admit my Cinderella hand did not look this good.

As you can see I'm not perfect with a brush, but for this pattern that's not very important. I adore using these colours together.

I hope you like these as much as I do!

More mani's in the Inlinkz collection down below!

FingerFood's Theme Buffet - Cartoon/Comic

Hi all!

Today I have lazy nail art for you... extremely lazy. But to compensate, I do have more photos and awesome Transformers! Yes, you read that right, for this week's Cartoon/Comic theme I did Transformers. For me that's quite obvious, the hubby is a collector (4 IKEA Detolf cabinets full so far) and I have a couple as well. I did watch the Transformers cartoons when I was young myself, but I can't name them like hubby can. Anyway, I also used a 'transforming' ultra-chrome polish!

Today's polishes:

•  I Love Nail Polish - Birefringence
• Glisten & Glow HK Girl top coat

I am wearing 3 coats of Birefringence on it's own, no black base. It's very hard to photograph, and the colour goes from teal to blue to purple to wine-red to gold. In most angles it's teal to purple. To try and capture the different colours you'll see some odd hand poses. For my "nail art" I simply added some stickers on my nails. Hubby recently bought some to redo the stickers/decals on some of his old Transformers and got this small sheet with the white logos on a clear background in several sizes. It was quite easy to apply and stuck to my nail pretty nicely. I did add top coat to seal it in. On my ring finger is the Decepticon logo, the evil ones and on my thumb I have the Autobot logo.

Meet Spittor, my cool blue frog, he's from the original Beast Wars (released in 1997). This poisonous Decepticon can spit his poison quite some distance. This one sits near my computer monitor. I have all my Transformers in their animal mode, because the bot mode is not as interesting to me. I only have some animal ones (mostly insects).

This is Dinobot Slash, an Autobot (goodie) and he's from the 2014 Transformers: Age of Extinction movie. Slash is not mine, he lives on hubby's desk (until it finds a spot in a cabinet). I must say these newer ones are all with great detail and colours and some rubbery pieces (like the yellow spikes on his back and his tail). And they're dino's.

I hope I didn't bore you with my blabbing about toys. Tuesday I'll have some proper nail art for you again!

More cartoon or comic based mani's below!