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!

OPI Muppets Most Wanted quickie

Time for another new collection, and it's the annual soft shades collection from OPI, called Muppets Most Wanted. The last couple of years, the soft shades collection haven't been as soft as they used to be, and this year is no exception.

Eight shades, of which three are classic soft shades, two are more or less duochrome definite not-softs, and three topping glitters:

Clockwise from top left: Miss Piggy's Big number (blue metallic with the tiniest shift), I Love Applause (pastel pink creme), Int'l Crime Caper (sheer white with pink flash and light blue flecks), Chillin' Like A Villain (peach pastel creme), Gaining Mole-mentum (pink and gold glitter shards), Let's Do Anything We Want! (white and pink glitters with small and large white square glitter), Muppets World Tour (white and gold glitter, silver micro glitter, with larger magenta, blue and champagne pink hex glitters), Kermit Me To Speak (purple to golden green duochrome shimmer).

Believe it or not, the first one to get tried out was Int'l Crime Caper, because it's interesting enough for a sheer. Below is three coats:

It's a shitty photo, but imagine the pink flash stronger, and the blue flecks a little more vivid and reflective. There's still visible nail line enough to scare those of you who dread it, for which I'd suggest some undies. I'd say this is the nicest conservative sheer I have, so don't miss out on it if you're into that kind of thing.

Quick note on the duochrome Kermit Me To Speak: personally I own more than a handful of polishes with this pigment, from OPI's very own catalogue Amethyst Abyss comes to mind, so if you have that (chances getting smaller for each day since it's ooold), or perhaps Nubar Purple Beach, maybe your need for this one isn't as huge as you'd first think. Though, perhaps Kermit Me To Speak is a tad less green and run more between purple and gold, predominantly. If you'd like a comparison, let me know and I could probably manage.

New collection quickie: Depend Rough Sweet

For those of you who aren't yet tired of texture polishes, or pastel polishes for that matter, Depend releases a twelve piece collection of such shades, called Rough Sweet.

Though disputable whether all of these colors are really pastels, they are kind of soft in tone. At least the ones I tried quick stick swatches of. Here are my picks from the collection, clockwise from top:

2100 Sweet Candy (lilac with very subtle pearlescent shimmer), 2098 Sweet Mint (pale minty green), 2097 Sweet Jelly (spring green with small iridescent glitters), 2094 Sweet Sour (pale yellow with small iridescent glitters), 2095 Sweet Bubble (pale, cool pink), and 2093 Sweet Sugar (white with very subtle pearlescent shimmer).

Three from this collection have the little iridescent glitters to keep them interesting, and apart from the above two, it's also present in a caramel colored shade that I would probably never wear even at gunpoint. Except for these, all have some sort of shimmer that isn't really apparent because of the texture. They're soft and sweet, but not necessarily interesting in themselves.

As usual when Depend releases specialty collections, these come with a bigger price tag than the standard spring and fall collections. At SEK 39:-, these 5 ml per bottle have a high unit price. But if you're really into this sorta thing...

Classic made modern

One may always sport a french manicure, but honestly, most of us polish nerds find them a bit boring, right? Still, I made one while I was wearing a pink polish. But there are pinks, and then, there are pinks... And whites that are a bit more than just whites.

Yeah, I had this neon pink gel polish base (cheap ebay find), so I added the Bond Girl OPI, white liquid sand Solitaire. Neon pink with fuzzy french tips? Yes please. It was kind of hot, actually.

Let Them Eat Mayday!

Happy Mayday! Let's celebrate our international workers' holiday in a revolutionary manner, with Let Them Eat... What? from Hare Polish.

Two coats, full of revolutionary rococo splendour. White base with white, pink, gold and of course red glitters, in various shapes and sizes.

Ain't it grand? I'm picturing the red being bodily fluid stains from decapitated royalty, perhaps spattered onto their pretty, rich dresses. Not speaking for the creator Nikole of course, but to me this is the most chic revolution romanticism that can be bought in a bottle. And certainly a nice option to the mandatory classic red manicures appropriate for the occasion.

Now dress accordingly and hit the streets!

This product was purchased with own funds.

Swedish word of the day:
arbetare -noun worker
Are you one?

OPI The Bond Girls - bottles and quick swatches

By now we're all familiar with the gritty Liquid Sand finish which supposedly is the big thing this year. From OPI, we've already got four in the Mariah Carey collection, and one in the Oz the Great and Powerful soft shades collection, and to fully exhaust the concept, we're given six new shades for summer, called The Bond Girls collection.

Clockwise from bottom left: Solitaire, Pussy Galore, and Tiffany Case.

Clockwise from top left: Jinx, Vesper, and Honey Ryder.

Pussy Galore, pink with pink glitters; Solitaire, white with silver glitters; and Tiffany Case, blue with silver glitters.

Vesper, vampy plum with black and purple glitters; Honey Ryder, gold with gold ans silver glitters; and last Jinx, coral with gold glitters.


I wasn't expecting much from an entire collection of Liquid Sand polishes, but these are actually way better than the promotional images would make one believe. Perhaps the selecion of colors isn't the most brave, which is always sort of expected from OPI, but they are fairly well executed. Pussy Galore and Tiffany Case doesn't strike me as particularily interesting, but at least Pussy Galore is a baby pink with a little more attitude than we're used to. Honey Ryder doesn't make me tingle either, but it's a gold, and will solely for that reason be welcomed by many.

Jinx is actually very nice, although I can't really see myself wearing it. My photos don't make the glitzyness of it look anywhere near reality. The shades I'm certain I will be wearing at one point or another, is Solitaire, and of course Vesper. Solitaire is crisp in several senses, and as long as it doesn't catch a lot of dirt, which will inevitably show, it will look like your nails are covered in snow. Vesper is the outstanding one in my personal opinion. She doesn't look like much in the bottle, only very dark, but once dried, all the different aspects show up. Considering that my previous favourite among the Liquid Sands were the lava-like Stay the Night, I dare say the vampy ones are OPI's forte in this genre.

The formulas vary a bit in thickness, possibly due to pigments used. Vesper was the most thin, but I'll forgive her that. All swatches above are three coats, but some only need two.

As the names are once again, just like those of the Skyfall collection, classic Bond names, I have no problem with them. I sincerely hope OPI will back off the terrible sense of humor and pick some more less inventive names in the future.

The Bond Girls will be available in Swedish stores in May, so US girls may be able to find them in April already.

Will you be picking any of these up, or are you tired of the sandy finish?

These products were sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
Bondbrud -noun Bond girl [litterally: Bond bride]
That's what we call them.

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!

OPI Oz - the Great and Powerful

It's the Soft Shades time of year again! This year, OPI gives us a truly mixed collection, called Oz - the Great and Powerful, after the movie that goes by the same name and will premiere on the International Women's Day on March 8th.

Clockwise from top right: I Theodora You, Don't Burst My Bubble, and Glints of Glinda.

Clockwise from bottom left: When Monkeys Fly!, Lights of Emerald City, and Which is Witch?.

Don't Burst My Bubble, three coats. Very pale, slightly warm toned pastel pink crelly.

Glints of Glinda, three coats. Peach leaning beige pastel jelly.

I Theodora You, three coats. Slightly translucent light bubblegum pink creme.

Lights of Emerald City, one coat over Don't Burst My Bubble. Larger white square glitter mixed with smaller iridescent squares in the red to gold to green spectrum, in transparent base.

When Monkeys Fly!, one coat over Glints of Glinda. Small and medium hexagonal, holographic silver glitters, and large gold hexes in transparent base.

Which is Witch?, one coat over I Theodora You. Micro and medium sized holographic silver hex glitter along with smaller holographic silver strings in transparent base.


In this collection you will also find a Liquid Sand polish in an antique golden bronzy shade, called What Wizardry is This?.

Topping last year's fantastic Soft Shades collection New York City Ballet of course wasn't an easy task for the OPI peeps, but to at least attempt it, they gathered a diverse bunch of lacquers in all sorts of finishes, where the three mandatory Soft Shades pastels have been accompanied by equally many glitters. The latter seem to have been made after glancing at what the independent brands have done lately. That means that these glitters are more brave than OPI ever dared to be before, and that the concept for the Soft Shades collection of the last couple of years, with one topper polish to accompany the pastels have already been overthrown. If you take the Liquid Sand polish into account, a supposedly new and daring finish of a color which isn't a classic Soft Shade in itself, the typical pastels are in minority. I applaud OPI for going outside their ladylike comfort zone, but was it really all that successful..?

Let's skip discussion of the pastel shades - they're pastels, nothing spectacular either in color or finish - and move straight to the glitter portion of the collection. I'm just going to get this overwith: When Monkeys Fly! is a disaster. While OPI really tried with the large hexes and all, they failed. The gold hexagons are a curly mess, which is very obvious in the photos above. Let's hope for a correction of this in future batches, but the batch my bottle is from had to endure being mixed with a glitter that obviously hasn't been tested for use in solvents over time. Try again, and try harder, OPI! And after this massive failure, I am happy to say I was happy to see OPI had made a glitter with iridescent particles. And squares! I love that. One may argue that most iridescent glitters look weird over lighter shades, and that perhaps the particle distribution is a little uneven and sometimes too abundant, but here OPI gets an A+ for effort. Which is Witch? is the one that will probably sell insanely well, especially in these times of string glitter deification - and come on, all the glitters in this baby are holographic! No tween can resist that. Perhaps their mothers can't either.

Worth mentioning à propos the pastels, is that the reason why we loved last year's New York City Ballet so much, which was the fantastic jelly finishes, is mostly gone this year. Don't Burst My Bubble has the classic annoying pastel formula with streakiness and patchiness and overall application hell, Glints of Glinda is the one that is the most jelly like, but it doesn't quite reach to the same translucency standards as the Ballets, and surprisingly, due to a breezy (for a pastel, that is...) application and not too shabby pink color, I Theodora You brings home the winner trophy in this round.

Oh, and I didn't hate the names! No, until I have seen the movie, I will stay indifferent towards them. Except when it comes to I Theodora You, because despite not having a clue who Theodora is, that is the cutest name Suzi has come up with in a long, long time. I Theodora it.

These products were sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
mäktig -adjective powerful
A pastel seldom is.

Don't eat soap!

Breaking a long silence by bringing you a bar of soap! Or at least a polish with a name containing the word soap, in particular another piece of the Darling Diva Polish Holiday 2012 collection called Soap... Poisoning. These photos were shot some weeks ago, but I didn't get around to editing and posting them until today. Check it out.

So... Did I ever tell you about my love for the so called disco glitters? Apparently that's what these heavenly, iridescent pieces of glory are referred to as. This is one coat of the translucent soapy white jelly glitter, over two coats of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu!.

In low light and a perfect angle, it gives me just as much pleasure as any of the iridescent glitters I love, but applicaton was problematic for me. I initially tried Soap... Poisoning alone, but it got very thick and streaky and messy so I had to take it off and retry it as a topping glitter. I told Carrie, the main person behind Darling Diva Polish, about my troubles, and she found my information useful in tweaking the formula. Of course this means I haven't tried the reformulated Soap... Poisoning, but it should be vastly improved. It may still require some skills to apply neatly, though.

If you're up for the challenge, perhaps due to a love for iridescence as great as mine, you can find this snow blizzard Christmas white in the Darling Diva Etsy shop.

Soap... Poisoning was sent for review.
Don't Touch My Tutu! was purchased with own funds.

Swedish word of the day:
tvål -noun soap
Being clean is the shit.

My hands - so happy

Okay, that is technically a lie, since my work requires vast amounts of hand sanitizer to be used (along with just as vast amounts of soap), but after a little TLC and above all a nice manicure, my hands actually are.

Sometimes my hands are happy in Happy Hands nail polish - I have shown you a Halloween themed Happy Hands shade already - and here are two manicures that made me look at my hands with love.

Afternoon Thunderstorms. This is two coats. Rich in black glitter, this grey also has the extra sprinkling of fine gold shimmer to make it a little more unique. Gives nails a very badass speckled look. Application was typical to dense glitters - you gotta pretend you're buttering a slice of bread. Coverage and drying time were both awesome.

Motherboy. Here in a sandwich with OPI Don't Touch My Tutu! Two coats of the OPI, one coat of Motherboy (which has a transparent base), and then another coat of the OPI. This is such a nice way to play it girly. When I first saw a picture of Motherboy, it was one of those times when my heart skipped a beat and my jaw dropped. Perhaps not the typical alizarine like colors, but this mix of glitters did something to me. Maybe it was the subconscious knowledge of endless sandwiching possibilities, maybe it was that I considered this glitter so uniquely refreshing, maybe I'm just getting soft and learning to embrace pastels. No matter what, this is a fun polish. My bottle of Motherboy was a little harder to apply, but not to the extent of bad results, obviously. I had to poke and move around the glitters a little, and sometimes they get stuck together since the base is just so packed with them. Any effort is worth it in this case though, I promise you that.

Happy Hands polishes are available on Etsy. Kristi, the proprietor, will restock, and relaunch her colors in new bottles, on Saturday (October 27th). They will be $10 each, but if you hurry, you have until then to get a bunch of her polishes in the old bottle for $8 each.

All products were purchased with own funds.

Swedish word of the day:
eftermiddag -noun afternoon
Sometimes come with thunderstorms.

Depend on..?

And now something entirely different. As I mentioned in my previous post, Swedish fall is now fullblown and dark and rotten. So to be able to swatch anything at all, I had to completeloy turn myself around and do flash lit swatch photos, in the evening, at my kitchen table. Also I'm holding bottles - very rare. What is it I'm going to show you? Some of the previously quick swatched Depend colors for fall. I picked out the ones that had me the most intrigued. Behold.

324. Ultramarine sorta blue creme. Lovely shade. This is two so called generous coats, but to be safe, three thinner coats would be better. Please excuse the small smudge on the pinky nail.

325. Green base with blue shimmer. Another lovely shade. This was two or three coats - I have sadly forgotten.

326. Teal green creme. Also needs three coats. Perhaps not very unique, but a nice shade of teal.

331. Very sheer blue jelly with blue and purple small glitters. Not really sparkly at all, mostly weird. Even in the dim kitchen lamp light you can tell this is the kind of jelly that makes your nail line look gross, but if you're into that, and weird blue jellies, perhaps three to four coats of this is what you want.

334. Off-white jellyish creme with pink and unidentifiable (are they white? silver?) small glitters that adds texture and a speckled look more than actual glitz. This was two good coats. While 331 may be perceived as a huge failure, 334 certainly has its qualities, in that it's a bit unconventional despite its feminine, classic colors. This is like crushed candy cane in a bottle, or like Swedish polkagrisar. Sadly, this is a very gritty polish, and that's why I'm hoping a smaller or independent brand will make a more eventful polkagris polish - perhaps for Christmas?

I have already provided you with my thoughts on the collection these are part of, but as these have now been swatched on actual nails, I may add that I'm still a bit disappointed in the pigmentation of these. Depend have a previous track record of great coverage, which is always preferable when keeping in mind that they come in 5 ml mini bottles, but the cremes of this collection needed more coating than I'm used to from Depend. I hope this problem won't persist in future collections.

That aside, some of these are really nice if you're into the less conventional colors.

These products were sent for reviewing purposes by the manufacturer.

Swedish word of the day:
godis -noun candy
Could use some.