Just checkin'

...in. Yeah, let's have some re-instas, while we're waiting for the final results of the Swedish elections.

Smitten Polish A Wedding Dress That Isn't Bright Turquoise

OPI Black Spotted over Int'l Crime Caper

CND Vinylux Steel Gaze

Essence Blue Cara Ciao

H&M Jungle Me


And speaking of H&M, I don't know about you, but the new 5 ml bottle pisses me off. Yes, they lowered the price, but not as much as they lowered the contents. Pfft! Don't piss off lacquerheads, we're proud people.

Rererererererereinstas

Yeah, you know the drill by now - I have been posting on Instagram, but not on the blog, so here are my saved up instas. Check 'em out.

Deborah Lippmann Forget You

Wet'n'Wild Shield and China Glaze Ingrid

My Xmas mani! Believe it or not. OPI 4 In The Morning, Darling Diva Polish Spank Me Harder, OPI Love, Angel, Music, Baby, plus rhinestone candle thingy.

Gina Tricot Alexis

A-England Her Rose Adagio



I'm working crazy hard to win the elections coming up here in Sweden September 14th - will I ever get a break? If I can find the time to redo my nails once a week, it will be a fucking miracle. Stay tuned. (I love you still.)

Didn't die

Hiya! Just so you'll know I didn't die on you, here are som re-instas.

From OPI Brazil: Where Did Suzi's Man-go? and Kiss Me I'm Brazilian.

Some Depend Mirage, probably 2055 Bronzy Breeze. very nice gold (!) foil.

Rimmel Torrid

Orly Androgynie

a-england Encore Margot

And if you wonder why I'm silent: I got too much to do. I rarely have any decent time off, that I don't use for absolutely nothing. I got a new temporary job, doing my political and union stuff, and on top of that I'm a single mom at somewhere around 95 % of the time. But I'll be better. I promise. At least I'm happy.

Int'l Women's Day reinsta statement nails

Guess what... Since I'm lazy, I'm starting a new series of instagram reposts, so that all of you get a chance to see all the grainy iphone camera pics of what I've been wearing lately. Well, over the course of the last three or so months, as it turns out.

 I still have about 8 minutes, Central European time, to show you some decent feminist statement manicures during one of the most important days of the year - International Women's Day. Check it out.

Feminist warrior manicure with camouflage, leopard spots, and of course the Venus sign.

Olympic games versus Pride, french skittles.

Feminist fire!

Red and white camouflage, leopard spots (yes, again), and V.

And the manicure I actually wore today (and still am wearing): pink and red with red and coral leopard spots, and some neon studs.

Hope you're celebrating accordingly!

Re-insta the weekend away

Yep, another re-instagrammed post - I told you I have kept painting my nails despite not blogging!

Butter London Two Fingered Salute.

Filtered photo of A-England Rose Bower - the phone camera couldn't capture the true glow of this red.

Color Club Cloud Nine.

Darling Diva Polish Bitchcraft (over black for added depth) - totally amazeballs holo with multichrome glitter which I wasn't bitchcrafty enough to catch on photo.


Have a great weekend!

Re-insta OPI

Let's have yet another bulk of manicures that only ended up on instagram... This time all OPI.

OPI All I Want For Christmas (is OPI), with black and OPI All Sparkly and Gold leopard spots (there were some on the thumbs as well). Both OPI shades from the Mariah Carey holiday collection.

More leopard spots: OPI In the Cable Car-Pool Lane with OPI Goldeneye, black, and own mix of coral pink spots.

OPI Oy - Another Polish Joke! with OPI Black Spotted.

OPI Oy - Another Polish Joke! on its own.

Strawberry meringue water marble as requested by the boyfriend. ("Can you please pick my nail color?" -"Do those meringues with pink strokes in 'em." -*...*) The marbling was hell and I'll never do it again. Colors used  were OPI My Vampire is Buff, I Theodora You and Don't Touch My Tutu!.

Sorta skittles with dotted details, with OPI colors Goldeneye, Suzi's Hungary Again! and OPI... Eurso Euro.

And the well known sh*it disaster OPI It's All San Andreas's Fault. But actually it's way better looking when it's completely dry and not on photo. I think I wore it for three days!


Stay tuned for more of my terrible insta photos!

Emotions

Guess who's back! Not only me, but also OPI, with their coming Christmas release in collaboration with Mariah Carey (yes, again!). As expected, the shades of this collection are rather conservative, but a few are a bit more daring, like my first pick: Emotions.

A variety of sloppy photos, of which the last one is shot with my iPhone when the manicure was still fresh (the rest are shot the next morning). The sharpness isn't the best, but I'm pretty sure you can tell what's going on here, and that is a fully black Liquid Sand. Black (slightly jellyish) base, with two sizes of black glitters. And the larger, or less small, glitters actually do glitter. Unfortunately that is not very obvious here, but you'll just have to trust me on this. I've worn this for three days now and it has held up remarkably well for a Liquid Sand - mostly they tend to chip in no time. This was two and a half coats - I reinforced the tips a little after the second coat because they were a bit see-through. Beware though: as always with Liquid Sand polishes, try to keep the coats as thin as possible (I know that's difficult considering the texture), or the "sandiness" will be somewhat drowned in base.

This polish is sooo coooool, and if you tend to agree with me, I think this is the one you should get. I'll post some of the other shades soonish as well, but I think there will be very few surprises. On the other hand, if you're a fan of the classics, there may be some niceties to look forward to.

Fabulous Foujan

I can't think of a more inspirational reason to pick up the slumbering blogging habit again than posting this. My friend Foujan was over today for some sisterly care, which of course had to include doing nails. Foujan is an intensely colorful woman with serious attitude, and much like yours truly, she wants it ALL and she wants it NOW. So we sorta went all in, to fit the mood, the lady, and the cause.

Foujan can wear colors I can only dream of looking good in, and in this case we went for a warm and spicy thing with a golden twist. The base is comprised of four different shimmers in irregular squares, being the brown Espresso Your Style, coral I Eat Maine-ly Lobster, and warm golden foil Goldeneye respectively from OPI, and the warm red Bend Over Backwards from China Glaze. The color quilt was coated with OPI Black Spotted, and all topped off with OPI The Man with the Golden Gun 18K gold glitter flakes. And let's say a certain symbol was added by freehand to one of the middle finger nails "for fucks sake".

Getting nails done surely is one of the greatest guilty pleasures of sisterhood, and we had a lot of fun in the process. 

Peasant style dots

In time for the weekend, may I tempt you with yet another dotticure?

As usual when I'm involved, the execution is rather sloppy, but from a distance this was a very pretty color splash. The base is two coats of the well pigmented black with holo shimmer A-England Bidal Veil, and the dots are made from three colors from China Glaze's Summer Neons collection of last year:  I'm With the Lifeguard, Sunkissed, and Flirty Tankini. Using neons over a black base surely makes the dotticure pop.

Are you still feeling dotticures?

I'm With the Lifeguard, Sunkissed, and Flirty Tankini were purchased with own funds.

Bridal Veil was sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
allmoge -noun I peasant population, II art style
A friend dubbed this manicure allmoge style.

Feminist daze

A couple of weeks ago, on March 8th, we celebrated International Women's Day worldwide. While this is done differently in different countries and cultures, Swedish feminists use it as a day of protesting. You may think this is weird, considering that Sweden has been regarded as one of the most equal countries on the planet, but more equal does not mean it is in fact equal. Even more worrisome is that Sweden is getting more inequal again. So on our day, we arrange marches, discussion events, and yes, parties too. Personally, I participated in a discussion panel held in a club, with an audience of about 200 fellow feminists - female and male. This is the manicure I wore for the occasion.

Creme and glitter Homa! Depicted is of course my left hand, the right hand is reversed.

Do you remember the circa 2008 claw grip NOTD pose? Still helpful for displaying thumbnails.

For this bright and tempting manicure I used Red Lights Ahead... Where? from OPI's Holland collection as the creme base, and the glitter is Pretty & Polished Diner Daze, which has black and white hexagons of different sizes in a red jelly base. I haven't tried the latter alone, but it could be built up to a translucent red by itself. Me, I like the more sparse glitter look and preferred it as a topping glitter here.

Did you celebrate International Women's Day?

Red Lights Ahead... Where? was sent for review,

Diner Daze was purchased with own funds.

Swedish word of the day:
matställe -noun diner
I have actually been dreaming of having my own for ages.

A Golden Black Mirage

It took me a while (obviously), but here is one of the requested swatches from Depend's Mirage collection. Not terribly sharp in photo quality, here is 2052 Golden Black.

Two coats of delisciousness. Very well pigmented, very nice large golden flecks in perfectly black base.

Still, will you be getting this at 39 SEK?

This product was sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
svärtad -adjective blackened
This golden hue is.

Shadow Puppets

Let's take a look at a spanking new high contrast glitter polish from Darling Diva Polish! This is Shadow Puppets.

Three coats. A polish with very few colors, but it has a lot going on when it comes to shapes. There are smaller black hexagons, ginormous black hexes, large round black glitters, black hearts and black stars. Add to that a sprinkling of silver micro glitter and a few smaller silver hexes, along with a smooth and streak-free white, jellyish base and you have Shadow Puppets. It may be too much for some (including me), but at least it's a lot of fun.

What really impressed me with this one was the formula of the white base. It's better than some big brands I've tried lately (yes, I'm looking at you, Suzi). And I mean a lot better. In these photos, you can clearly see that this wasn't one of those troublesome whites, and the only thing that could slightly mess up the application is if you take too long to move around glitters - I wouldn't recommend that.

This product was sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
skuggspel -noun shadow puppetry
Hands are enough.

Depend Mirage

Over the last year or so, Depend have been releasing collections other than the usual spring and fall ones. Specialty collections such as magnetics, holographics, and now, ...shimmers. Let's take a quick look at Mirage.

Front to back: 2051 Shattered Silver, 2050 Shimmering Sand, 2049 Fairy White.

Front to back: 2052 Golden Black, 2053 Treasury Gold, 2054 Glistening Green.

Front to back: 2055 Bronzy Breeze, 2056 Razzle Rose, 2057 Beaming Berry.

Front to back: 2058 Sheer Violet, 2059 Starry Blue, 2060 Twinkling Silver.


First impression of this collection is that it is a rather nice one, and some shades are actually very alluring, in a weird, delicate way. However, is the 60 % increase in price really necessary here? This limited edition collection is already in stores, and here in Sweden they go for a affordable but less tempting 39 SEK (~6 USD) - remember, Depend polishes always come in 5 ml bottles.

If you'd like swatches of any in particular, just give me a holler in the comments.

These products were sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
hägring -noun mirage
Watch out for dehydration!