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.

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...

A rose for anyone who wants it

Only so that you don't think I've died: here's A-England Briar Rose.

Sweden is dark and wintery. Not a lot of opportunities to use the camera (if you're a chronic lightbox antagonist). Not to mention life is keeping me busy, and stress is an every day reality - but that doesn't mean I'm not happy. I am. And I will return.

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-re-re-insta!

These are the last ones - promise. Well, at least for now...

Finger Paints Twisted over Orly Glow.

Depend 387. Love this finish!

Kill it with fire, pt II: China Glaze Bend Over Backwards with the orange-yellow-green flakie gradient over (I've forgotten which one of all those I used this particular time).

Smitten Polish Electric Lime. Best (neon) green holo ever.

Last days of summer: Essie Boom Boom Room.

Beware of continuations to this type of posts in the future.

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!