Essence Access

Teal beauty, this is only one coat, fabulous! In the second picture I attempted nail art, epic fail, also the picture isn't helping at all, still I just love these two colors together. Zoya Rihanna is the maroon shimmer

Contest Winner!

Here we go, I have received exactly 100 entries, a nice round number. Thank you all very much for entering and leaving your lovely comments!

The winning number is 38!

Helen of Helen& Sheenie's nice things

Congratulations!

I used the random number generator to get the number, but forgot to lock it, there is no number to see, sorry about that!

Christmas

I was really hoping for the sun to show you this, but there is no sun. I deliberately blurred the image a little bit, to make it look as I see it with my eyes, the glitter is very tiny and the reflection is the main feature here. Very simple mix, one clear nail polish, pour some of it out into an empty jar to make room for the glitter. The green and red glitter is very small in size, 1 teaspoon each, add some balls and finished. This is very dense, 2 coats but almost 1 coat is opaque, which is what I wanted.



1 teaspoon each of the red and green glitter



The finished product



Close-up

Konad this week with KOH Brilliant Purple

KOH and Chanel together a nice combination, the advantage of Chanel is that almost all the colors, certainly the dark colors are so thick that they are ideal for stamping with konad. I tried Konad special polish Cool Red first, but Chanel Dragon is more red, more pigmented.




Konad image plate m65

KOH Brilliant Purple

This is a really nice color, but the more I look at it the more I think this color is awfully close to Essie Bermuda Shorts, unfortunately I am not at home at the moment to give a comparison shot, hopefully tomorrow. The difference between essie and this, if they are in fact dupes, is that brilliant purple is a cross between a cream and a jelly formula, essie bermuda shorts is a neon, it dries to a matte finish. The opacity is amazing the first coat is almost opaque and looks like a jelly, but with the second coat it looks more of a cream finish. Love this color and formula very much easy to use and a beautiful finish. Sorry I messed the applications up a little, it turns out that high relative humidity 51% is the culprit behind this week's polish troubles, every single one I applied in this apartment has bubbles, sorry OPI it's my fault!

Update: Compared the purples in my drawers and this is in fact a unique color, two recent colors came to mind, RBL Mismas and essie bermuda shorts, but they are not even close. KOH Brilliant Purple stands alone

The KOH colors, there are 26 in Nagele & Strubel, where I bought mine, KOH Cosmetics International has online shopping. Just discovered that the markup is a lot, 23 Euro in the shop, the online shop is 14.95, still not cheap but more reasonable than the 23.



KOH lineup part I



KOH lineup part II



Products used from left to right:

Diorlisse ridge filling base coat, KOH Brilliant Purple (2 coats), Seche Vite top coat

Estee Lauder Black Wine

Estee Lauder nail polish is not featured often in nail polish blogs, I have only a few colors. Last time I went shopping there were only three colors available. A shame if you ask me, the quality is on par with Chanel et al, but it's slightly less expensive. Black Wine is a dark red with a tiny bit of silver metallic glitter, the glitter is so small in size, maybe dust would be a more accurate way of describing it. There is not enough of "silver dust" in the polish to show up on the nails, I looked with a magnifying glass and then I could see some, I know that doesn't count. The formula is a well pigmented creme, 2 coats in the picture below. Application is very nice the brush is shorter and slightly wider than the average, it is very precise. The color just falls short of being a true vampy color, 1 coat would give you bottle color, with the second coat it is a dark red but not quite as dark as Chanel Rouge Noir or Essie Wicked.

KOH Rain Forest

This is a new brand for me, I had only one product from this company for quite a while now, the acetone free nail polish remover. It is a very good remover, the only issue I have with it is the very strong perfume. I also have the hand cream and the cuticle treatment, I am testing these at the moment, unfortunately the hand cream has the same over powering perfume as the nail polish remover, which I come to dislike for this reason, but out of all the acetone free removers this one is still the best. I honestly wonder what is in these products because they smell a lot worse than the acetone based removers.

Onto the colors, recently a lot more colors became available I think about 30 colors in total. Picked up this one and two more, the quality is very good. Rain forest is really a one coater it is so pigmented and there is a lot of golden shimmer. I really like green, the kind with more blue in it, this color is yellow in tone and I am not crazy about it. It is an olive kind of green, or to be completely blunt this could be a contender for the true color of a toad. The pricing is unfortunate, believe or not the same price as Chanel! Chanel is a prestige brand with an enormous luxury product lineup, you really pay for the name and the image, but KOH?

OPI Espresso Your Style

The color reminds me of rich praline, although praline does not have golden shimmer in it. OPI and I do not like each other much, we do not seem to get along well. This is not the first time that I have drying issues. Applied the color last night, while watching a movie and waited 20 minutes between coats. The second coat went on well, seemed to be dry to the touch before I decided to experiment with the top coat from the Konad Princess range and that's when it all went downhill. The top coat is too thick, so thick in fact that it doesn't let the evaporation process to finish, even after waiting 20 minutes, it still bubbles up. That's one problem, with OPI it also softened up the polish or OPI never dried in the first place. 3 hours after application I went to sleep and woke up with sheet marks everywhere the next morning. To top it all off, I also decided to experiment with hand and cuticle creams. Applied a new brand to test on my left hand and the usual combo of solar oil and L'Occitane hand cream on the right hand. Other than bubbles and sheet marks the left hand had another problem, the hand cream completely mattified the polish. What sort of nasty chemical disaster took place on my nails is a mystery, but there you have it, particular personal chemistry and using different products together sometimes does not work out.

Blue and White Konad

Summer dress or Wallpaper? Maybe this would be perfect for a nice warm summer day. Summer or not I like these two colors together very bright and cheery. Finally found a good white base, Maybelline Forever Strong, this one does not have a name on it, a very opaque streak free shiny white creme. On my index finger it is two coats the rest had not quite 3, just brushed over some sparse patches. I dried the white with Orly in a snap top coat and started stamping after about 10 minutes, other than the index finger, managed to wrinkle the base color. Usually stamp with konad the day after I wear a color, if using the konad straight away I recommend 30 minutes drying time between the base color and the stamping. To get a crisp image with a strong color I press the stamper quite hard and if the base is not bone dry the result will be a smudged or wrinkled manicure. The princess konad top coat is awesome, if you wait for the base colors to dry. There are bubbles on some fingers maybe if I did not use another top coat to dry the base before stamping, anyway I will keep testing it and report back when I know for sure!




Maybelline Forever strong white base



Products used from left to right:

Diorlisse ridge filling base coat, Maybelline forever strong (2 1/2 coats), Konad polish medium blue, Konad Princess Top Coat



Fauxnad image plate H28

Konad this week with Dior Nude Chic

Lace over a nude base, this is a double stamped konad. Used the m71 "lace" image plate. First the fishnet design then the flowers on top. Konad Princess polish top coat, this is my first time, first impression: very good. The top coat is the same thick consistency as Seche Vite and very shiny, did not drag or dissolve the stamped image, but I waited a good 10 minutes before I applied the top coat. On a side note, the black polish from konad is like tar, gives extremely crisp images but cleaning it up or trying to clean it off the fingers is gruesome.



Products used from left to right:

Diorlisse ridge filling base coat, Dior Nude Chic (2 coats), Konad stamping polish Black, Konad top coat, Konad image plate m71 not shown

Duplicity Giveaway- Ended

These are the duplicates I found in my collection, some are older colors like all of the CND and the Chanel. Anyone can enter, please leave a comment below to enter the contest! Good Luck!

The nail polish to win from left to right:

Dior Sugar Cane, OPI DS Extravagance, Chanel Magnolia Rose, S-He No. 464, CND Pulse, CND Antiquity, CND Glowing, Nfu-Oh No. 54



S-he No. 464 a dark purple creme is the base color under the green opalescent Nfu-OH (#54). It's upside down, because I can't get my hand around this largish bottle. This is a sheer base, but the green glitter flakes are transference flakes, the color changes from different angles, this one travels from light green to dark green to cobalt blue.

Dior Sugar Cane, this is almost the same sparkly effect color as the recent Rose Boreale, except Boreale has additional tiny metallic glitter as well. I layered this color over CND Pink Daffodil a pastel pink creme. Sugar cane is completely sheer.

OPI Designer Series Extravagance, a beautiful dark fuchsia with real diamond dust shimmer.



Chanel Magnolia Rose is a pastel pink creme with a little silver shimmer



CND Antiquity, medium brown metallic shimmer

S-He No. 464, the fantastic drugstore brand, this color is opaque in 1 coat, here I used two coats.

CND Pulse, I used a pastel pink creme base, to show off the base color a little more. Fuchsia jelly base with pink and multicolored slightly holographic glitter.


CND Glowing, sorry I left this one last, because this is a fugly color, but if layered over a dark color, in this example over the S-He purple than the color becomes something much prettier! This is a transparent orange frost.

Artdeco Noblesse Holiday Collection

Glittering fuchsia as with the other colors in this collection, the glitters are very small and smooth. They all have very small size holographic glitter as well as sparkling mica in them. The bottles do show the holographic flash a little bit but not the nails. These, all three of them, belong to the "lit within" category. Applied three coats. No. 280



An extremely sparkly silver foil nail polish with pink shimmer. When I applied the first coat, I was amazed, it is so unbelievably glittery. I decided to go on and apply 3 coats, thinking the more the better, in this case I think one or two coats would have been better, because the third coat just made the coverage opaque and too dense. The individual tiny glitters cannot be seen any more. The glitter is extremely small and smooth and the pink shimmer is noticeable, giving the color a bronze or beige appearance. In the promo image, this and the other two colors appear holographic, they are indeed holographic but only in the bottle, the images have not been photo shopped. The holographic glitter is in the bottle, but not enough to show up on the nails. Nevertheless, a fabulous color for the Holiday season. No.285



This one is my favorite, simply because I adore purple. No. 275



The bottles together, nowhere near the promo image but the slight holo flash is there

Dior Rose Boreale

This is an effect or glitter nail polish, I think it looks better with a darker color underneath. It is very sheer but the sparkle is amazing. A transparent base with red and blue shimmer and a very small size blue, silver and green glitter. Layered over blue or a black base the effect is a purple sparkling shimmer. I used only one coat of the dark blue color and one coat of boreale. It can also be layered over a sheer nude a pale pink and white color for a more subtle effect. In the first picture, it is layered over a nude base, and not terribly interesting, but in the second picture the true colors can really be appreciated. Of course, it is also perfect with purple silver, the second color in this year end release, maybe it was intended?


Dior Rose Boreale over 2 coats of Diorlisse base coat



Layered on top of Chanel Blue Satin



Products used from left to right:

Dirolisse ridge filling base coat, Chanel Blue satin (1 coat), Dior Rose Boreale 9 (1 coat)

Dior Purple Silver Konad

Nothing escapes the konad stamping, I am well and truly addicted to it!



Konad m73 image plate

Chanel Spring 2010 nail colors, Particuliere, Tendresse, Inattendu

source: British Beauty Blogger


Chanel Particuliere 2 coats


Chanel Inattendu 2 coats


Chanel Tendresse 2 coats

Dior Silver Purple and Lemon Balm Comparison Courtesy of Vampy Varnish

For some reason, I thought that these two recent Dior colors were very similar, as you can see, they are not even in the same ball park. The finish is the same, but the color is rather different. Silver Purple, as the name suggests, is purple, but a warmer kind of purple. I think, this is what you would get, if you added red to a silver or platinum shimmer color. Metallic shimmer, perfect formula, there are no brush marks, dries very quickly. Kelly from Vampy Varnish, was kind enough to let me use her image, Dior Lemon Balm.




Lemon Balm




Products used from left to right:

Diorlisse ridge filling base coat, Dior Silver Purple (2 coats), Seche Vite top coat

2 konad designs by E

CND Hot pop Blue with konad special polish yellow using the fauxnad plate H27 design. Her idea was to match the manicure color to the turquoise jeans she was wearing. It did not match the jeans but turned out a beautiful blue green design, If you look close it is blue but from a little distance away it looks green. E hasn't had time to do Konad since school began, Middle School is very hard and there is an awful lot of homework. We received the first semester grade reports and I am very proud and happy to report that she is a straight A (O.K. B in German) student. As before, it is all her design, she chooses the colors and even takes the pictures!



Products used from left to right:

Essie first base base coat, CND Hot POP Blue, Essie Matte about you, fauxnad plate H27, Konad special polish yellow, Seche Vite top coat.



CHG OMG collection L8R G8R or Later Gator and Konad princess polish purple.



Products used from left to right:

China Glaze L8R G8R, Fauxnad plate H17 and Konad Princess polish in purple