Push and Shove

Welcome to my new attempt at regular updates! 

Today I'm wearing OPI Push and Shove, and although every damn ridge is showing, it's shiny and nice. Of course not that revolutionary though, to those of us who've owned Maybelline Mirror Image for quite a few years. 

I don't believe I'll ever go back to swatching, but while I'm at it with the instas, let's just post what the heck. 

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.)

Little neon studs for summer

I'm still alive! Yes, once again I feel compelled to let you know that by stating the obvious. 

Summer should mean lots of time to do one's nails, but, as it turns out, it's just too darn hot and humid. So I'm just gonna go ahead and leave these old sucktastic photos of manis with neon studs in 'em. 

Here in modest amounts on a nude - CND Vinylux Powder My Nose.

And here in random distributions over a hot pink - OPI Hey Baby.

Honestly, I've made better looking manicures with studs after these, but these were my first attempts. They're fairly easy to use, so I don't mind putting them on every now and then. Personally, I'm partial to the square studs, but the round ones are nice too.

These in particular are from Born Pretty Store, and were sent to me for review.

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.

OPI Sheer Tints

I love jellies and sheer colored polishes for layering. Remember the Sorbet part of the Texas collection? The colors weren't all that daring, but they became staples for many fans of so called sandwiches, layered manicures with glitter somewhere in the middle.

Now OPI has given us Sheer Tints, and yes, they're sheer. They are colored topcoats, resembling the finish that some of us refer to as water, but thicker in consistency, and they only hint the pigmentation in one coat.  They build up though, and below you can see how they develop from coats one to four.

The shades are a bit more diverse than those of the Sorbet collection, with the teal I Can Teal You Like Me, and the yellow toned I'm Never Amberrassed as the slightly less conventional addition to the purple Don't Violet Me Down, and the pink Be Magentale With Me.

The latter got tried out in the manicure below.

This is If You Moust, You Moust fom the Minnie Mouse collection of 2012, and Crown Me Already! from Miss Universe 2011, with Be Magentale With Me over the pink, in a center-linear gradient. I initially tried the same design over the glitter, but couldn't get it even enough to look good. It worked better for me applied over the creme, but it could just have been my own lack of patience.

Here's a closeup of one of my thumbs, that shows the gradient more.

The downside to these, in my opinion, is that the consistency is too thick, even for a topcoat. In the formula I received, bubbles easily occur (which is fairly obvious judging from my sticks a couple of photos up from here). However, this can of course be fixed with some thinner, once there's space enough in the bottle.

I have some playing left to do here, but overall I like polishes like these.

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.

Warm Me Up please

Here's a quickie one and another from the OPI Mariah Carey holiday collection: Warm Me Up.

I didn't like this at first in the bottle, it looked like it was going to be frosty - but then I needed that cool toned dark chocolate color. And as long as you handle the brush carefully, it ends up nice, and no, it isn't frosty. It reminded me of the Misa classic Earthward, but while that one really was frosty, this is like an improved version, needed now in a time when all nail peeps, me included, are way more sensitive to even the slightest hint of frostiness.

I really liked this one, because cool toned browns aren't that common, after all.

Turquoise leopard

Let's have a dose of nailart, shall we? I'm still trying to get the leopard pattern right, and here I tried it on a turquoise skittlette.

The base color here is Sephora Full Moon Party, and the added glitter on index and pinky is one from Gabrini. So is also the dots in the leopard pattern, but it looked odd and not contrasting enough on top of the Sephora, so I dotted some OPI Goldeneye underneath it.

All in all rather nice despite my continuing clumsiness with the brush, adding the black bits. I'll have to get better with that...

All Sparkly and Advent

Let's take a step back to the present: today is of course the first of Advent, and before we bring out the summer polishes, maybe we should sit back end enjoy the holidays. I haven't shown you very much of the Mariah Carey holiday collection from OPI, but here's one I truly enjoyed - slightly different. All Sparkly And Gold.

Hmm, yeah, it was a rather dark day that one, and yes, my All Sparkly And Gold manicure may look a bit different compared to other ones you've seen, 'cause I just skipped the topcoat. It surely is meant to be worn glossy, but I soon found that without topcoat it's much like any good textured polish. And it still sparkles! At least just as much as any other texture finish. And I quite liked it this way. Antique gold glitter texture... Very nice.

OPI Brazil in dots

So the new OPI collections landed in Swedish press hands the other day, and who am I to keep myself from wearing them? I have already tried out a bunch from the Brazil spring and summer collection, by doing the little dotted skitlettes I love wearing so much. As per usual, light has now partially escaped Sweden, and shooting in low autumnal lighting conditions isn't exactly favorable, but better than nothing, right?

Let's first look at the manicure I'm wearing today. I have I Just Can't Cope-acabana and Live, Love, Carnaval on.

I Just Can't Cope-acabana is a taxi cab yellow creme, and Live, Love, Carnaval is a reddish coral creme - my camera hates red hues and here it looks more orange than it is in reality.


And here's a monstrosity of topcoat bleeding: Red Hot Rio, Don't Bossa Nova Me Around and Taupe-less Beach.

Red Hot Rio is a warm red jelly-ish creme - this is three coats. Don't Bossa Nova Me Around is a beige-pink creme, slightly chalky. OPI describes it as a nude, but I can't really see who this is going to look nude-ish on. Taupe-less Beach is ...well, a taupe creme. And yes, the Re Hot Rio dots bled lots when topcoating, like reds tend to do. It looked better in reality though, just not very macro photogenique.

There, five colors from the Brazil collection in two photos. And now for some quick notes on the collection as a whole, despite not being presented in this post. There's mainly one reason for my choices of usage, namely that this collection is like many OPI collections have been recently: a bunch of colors that match together, but just aren't that interesting separately. I did the same with the Euro Centrale collection, though the colors in that one were a wee bit better individually. There are little color groups that match very nicely like this, using dots that blend them, but I would probably die from boredom if I wore for example Taupe-less Beach by itself. Mostly because there's nothing really new about them. And, only one shade in this collection is a shimmer, the rest are cremes. Taupe cremes, brown cremes, yellow, coral, orange... Summer staples mixed with subdued basic colors. But nothing revolutionary.

This aside, I'll probably use most. So stay tuned for more.

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.

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!

Visions of Love

This year's holiday collection from OPI is Mariah Carey themed, and has a good amount of classic colors. I for one can never get too many red cremes, though they may not be the most fascinating or inventive. Collecting them is a habit, using them is essential. Here's one of the holiday ones, called Visions of Love.

I believe this was two coats, perhaps a bit patchy looking in the sun due to slight jellieness, but let me assure you it's very dark in lower light. It is a very warm one, bordering on brownish, but it is in fact red. Very hot, like all red vampies, of course.

If you feel like you can't get enough of red cremes either, perhaps you should pick it up.

Re-insta revisited

Updates are scarce, I know that, but let me apologize for my otherwise hectic life by letting you know that manicures aren't nearly as scarce - I've posted most of them on instagram. So let's have a few sucktastic cell phone pictures, shall we?

Misa Grey Matters, mattified with Essie Matte About You topcoat.

Revlon Mistletoe with added Essie As Gold As it Gets gradient.

Orly Ignite, with Essie Matte About You.

A-England Lancelot and OPI In My Santa Suit. Reversed order on the other hand.

Nicole by OPI Just Busta Mauve.

...and again. Truly spectacular, that one.


I have more stuff like this. So many manicures never eneded up being shot with a decent camera, but rather snapshot with what seems to constantly be in my hand: my phone. Though I have like four months worth of real manicure photos waiting in the pipline, so hold on to your hats.

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.