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.

The best of 2012

This time of year calls for summaries. First, I'll summarize my favourite polishes worn in the past year - that I have [decent] photos of! I may have liked some that I never got around to photographing, but let's not dwell on that, and take a look at the twelve prettiest manicures I did in 2012.

Lilacquer Jimi Thing (over Color Club In the Limelight)

Color Club Port-Folio

Finger Paints Plum Startled

Happy Hands Motherboy (here sandwiched with OPI Don't Touch My Tutu!)

OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Girly Bits Shift Happens (over Jessica Divine Pine)

Pahlish Still Alive

Darling Diva Polish Carrie (over China Glaze Reggae to Riches)

Rimmel Hard Edged

L'Oréal Rebel Blue

Revlon Smoldering

Skin Food Cucumber


I enjoyed wearing all of these. Now, let's move on to next year and see what that brings.

Smelly grapes

Long time no write. I'm so deep into this Swedish fall shit that inspiration is almost gone. I'd rather just watch Battlestar Galactica and eat chocolate than struggle with an impossible lighting situation and trying to edit crappy photos, but here's a manicure I'm actually wearing right now, that I'm sooo in love with. Check out Revlon Grape Fizz!

This last photo is weirdly lit, but I decided to publish it anyway. It has a mixture of daylight and tungsten lightbulb lightning that for some reason brings out the duochrome depth in a desirable, yet crappy, way. All these photos were shot with my DSLR, because trying with the compact is no use when polishes contain that magenta element. (Conversion from RAW format to JPG causes loss of magenta too, but less than straight shooting directly to a JPG file.)

This is two coats of the rather sheer but glassfleck packed Grape Fizz, over equally many coats of Essence Rock It, Baby!, which turned out to have duochrome properties as well (but I took no photos of it alone because it was late at night). Grape Fizz is one or two years old, but ebay is your friend, and I was lucky to find it very cheap there. Oh, and it's scented. Not that I favorize polishes that are, but it's worth mentioning, if you're prone to feelings of nausea.

Sometimes I forget how much I love purple nail polish, but then I wear it and I fall in love all over again. I can't take this off because it's just too pretty and the wear has been fantastic - I'll give OPI Bond Aid and my new topcoat the credit for this. This particular topcoat is called Hong Kong Girl, but I want to test drive it a little more thoroughly before I can fully recommend it. But the surface is still flawless after almost 48 hours, which is good for someone who does more household work than she'd like.

Grape Fizz was purchased with own funds.
Rock It, Baby! was a personal gift.

Swedish word of the day:
vindruva -noun grape
Actually used to grow in Sweden too, about 1000 years ago...

Smoldering and posing

We're all suckers for Scrangie's photos, and after she showed Revlon's Smoldering a while back, I of course had to get it. I far from regret this, as it's a fantastic duochrome foil that just screams me, unlike most of the shades I've shown you recently. I do love my greyed gunmetal silvery foils, and I do love my duochromes. This isn't the strongest duochrome in history, but definitely enough bang for my bucks at least. Unfortunately, I didn't do a very good job capturing it in my photos.

But the shift you can sense is lovely, isn't it? From a direct angle it has an aqua flash, sort of, and then it shifts into a vilolet pink. If I recall correctly, I did three coats - it is a little too close to being annoyingly sheer, but it's worth it, at least to me.

Now a few more photos that aren't good shots of this polish, but I thought they would be fun to show you, and ask: do you do this?!

Weird poses. When I look at my polished nails during times when I'm more happy with my nails and manicure, I just lay around on my couch and do ... poses. And watch my nails. Do you do that too?

Swedish word of the day:
posera -verb pose
So hard to avoid doing sometimes.

Starry Air

Back to nail polish. This one has been seen quite a lot - but did you expect to see it on the claws of the alizarine? A pale, powdery, pastel pink with massive silver glitter. Yeah, you know, every ow and then, I fall headlessly for a pink. In fact, last month when I received my salary, this was the only polish I felt like buying at all: Revlon's already famous Starry Pink.






Sorry, couldn't help myself with the last photo. Three coats. Goes on a bit streaky, but it's manageable. I would never have made it with only two coats, though. Do you see the top photo? The little gleam of Swedish fall sun? That's pretty much all we get this time of year.

Then I thought of another pastel glitter polish I fell for, for similar reasons. One of those few exceptions I make for these colors. I thought: what if I combine the two..? Said and done. I added Deborah Lippmann's Glitter in the Air on top. Two coats.

I actually did the layering during the day, but forgot to take photos of it, so flash was the only decent light I had access to when the idea of picking up the camera finally occured to me. Nevertheless, rather pretty. But dense. So many coats of pastel pigments. Like nail shields.

Swedish word of the day:
pastell -noun pastel
Just put the emphasis on the last syllable instead.

China girl - a stamping n00b's journey

I got another opportunity to try out a nailart item from the Born Pretty Store, free of choice - the lovely woman I've been in contact with offered me to pick something more expensive, but I already had my eyes and heart set at a specific stamping plate: the Chinese motifs of m66. What else would you expect from someone who grew up in the land of minimalism?

This is identical to the Konad m66 plate, but I'm fairly certain that this one is what is usually referred to as a fauxnad plate. I couldn't care less, since this one works well.

This is what I used:

Image plate, rubber stamp, and plastic card (instead of razor scraper - not always a good idea to use those, I have been told). Of course my card is red and indicates certain cultural preferences.

Now, one of the reasons I wanted to try this plate out, is that I have to date been scared shit of trying large stamping images. Do you remember my first attempt? I did smaller images then, afraid I would just ruin everything if I tried anything larger. But the m66 is perfect that way, it contains both larger and smaller images, so I thought that if I suck badly enough to be unable to do the larger ones, I can just surrender to the smaller.

No matter what, I was eager to try this time. First, I did a sloppy attempt at my existing manicure, the Kleancolor I showed you yesterday - Fashionista.

Rather cute, I used another Kleancolor for the stamping, Military Green. I like it, but I'm still no van Gogh when it comes to this method...

Though, do check out the little Chinese peasant (?) I fell in love with - I placed her (?) on my pinky nail:

Unfortunately I managed to chop off her legs. Sorry sweetie!

Next, I wanted to try another Chinese style thingy I had wanted to since I saw it done by the fantastic Solveig at Nailin' It! - Chinese china.



Not terribly well executed - I'm not a stamping goddess like Solveig - this one gave me a terrible headache. First: stamping on a fresh manicure is time consuming. Second: stamping on a fresh white manicure is even more time consuming. Third: stamping on a white manicure just isn't very forgiving when it comes to mistakes. I don't know how many times I had to redo some of the nails, which is the reason why I've used two different white shades for a base here. I wanted to do all nails with the Essie I had picked out, Marshmallow, but it took forever to dry and I was impatient and ruined both the index and the stamping-wise difficult pinky. I redid those in one of the typical Color Club Halloween mini whites, which was a lot more stark white than the squishy Marshmallow. I used China Glaze Calypso Blue for the stamping.

What can I say? I suck at this. Look at the pinky! It's terrible. Not only does it remind me of the stapings of a wellknown blogger who succeeds with her stampings in only about 5 % of the photos I've seen, but also, that particular nail is so soft and getting the entire image on is almost impossible!

Well, I'm not known for giving up that fast, so I tried another idea I had for the true Chinese feeling - the more sultry kind: gold on red.



Still no Vermeer when it comes to the stamping technique. This one looks decent in reality, but not so much in these photos. I used the matte Revlon Ruby Ribbon as a base, and stamped with a warm (unnamed) gold from Sonia Kashuk I once got in a sweet giveaway from Kelly at Vampy Varnish. I have very few gold polishes and this one was actually the most opaque - or least sheer.

This is the most true to what it looks like in the today cloudy Stockholm area:

Notice the little butterfly?

However, I could of course not leave out the other cute images on this plate, so I did a couple of them on my very secretive thumb nails:

Water lily, arbitrarily stamped...

And look! Once again my favourite, the little Chinese peasant. This time with feet almost intact!

This was fun. I think I'll use this plate again. Also, I think I'll be getting more plates. I know I suck, but you know what they say: practice makes perfect.

I want to squeeze in so many youtube videos for pun in this post, but I won't, so I'll just post links if you're really interested in the mental soundtrack during my work:

T'Pau - China in your hand - how many of you were born when this was a hit?
David Bowie - China girl - too obvious.
Opeth - Porcelain Heart - for those of you who are like me.

I have also constantly been thinking of the China Palace, a fun lustschloss near the royal palace of Drottningholm, outside Stockholm. It was originally a gift from king Adolf Fredrik to his queen Lovisa Ulrika, at her birthday in 1753.


Please note that there is a 10 % off coupon from the Born Pretty Store in the sidebar to the right, if you would want to try these images at a more than fair cost.

Do you know what would really disappoint me now? If someone told me the images on this plate are actually Japanese.

Swedish expression of the day:
övning ger färdighet practice makes perfect
I really hope so.

Finally Royal

You never imagined the Feline turning all royalist, did you? Nah, not gonna happen. But from time to time, very nice polishes with such references are released. As in this case, Revlon's Royal.


These photos are not entirely accurate. Like so many vividly colored jellies tend to, the camera turned this one way more transparent than it really is. It is deeper, and even though the nail line is clearly visible, it's a dark polish in reality. This is two coats, except on the middle nail where three coats are shown. Much difference? Same here, in reality: no. Though it looks like I have a pile of shit underneath my nails, I swear, I don't! I blame it all on the limitations of photography.

It's incredibly luscious. If you haven't yet grabbed a bottle, you should. If you can find one.

Swedish word of the night:
kunglig -adjective royal
No thanks.

Greenish gold comparison

You wanted the best, you got the best! The hottest nail polish color in the world- golden greeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeens...!

Sorry about that. But let's get down to business. Here is my current stash of greenish golds, or golden greens, but actually, more greenish golds in this case. I have narrowed the color selection down, and now they are all in the same group. That means no greens with heavy gold shimmer. Only greenish gold shimmers! The contestants:


Maybellines- Khaki Fringe and Golden Khaki.

Much beloved OPIs- Greenwich Green and At Your Quebec & Call.

And the miscs- China Glaze Cat's Eye, Ciaté Golden Globe, and Revlon Street Wear Burnt.

First, let's see the mandatory one coat shot!

You can already tell there is going to be an opacity problem here. Therefore, I applied four coats of most, except the Ciaté and the Revlon.

Fully painted, in flash:


Fully painted in daylight:


...and in sun:


The darlings are:
16. China Glaze Cat's Eye
17. Maybelline Khaki Fringe
18. OPI Greenwich Green
1. Maybelline Golden Khaki
2. Revlon Streetwear Burnt
3. OPI At Your Quebec & Call
4. Ciaté Golden Globe

Golden Khaki is a truly weird color. The base is a greyish green-brown sorta weird... thing. It was still sheer at four coats. The China Glaze is also very sheer, but that could be due to old age- it is very thin and runny, hardly thicker than water. The Revlon and the Ciaté on the other hand, were both pretty good already at two coats. But I did three just to be almost consistent. And I know, the Streetwear is a bit of an oddball in this bunch, it is actually a green with gold shimmer, but it was close, so I let it in!

My absolute favourite is At Your Quebec & Call. Actually, it could be my favourite OPI of all time, too. I have a very needy relationship with this polish, I treasure it like it was my second daughter! The Ciaté is very dupish, though, so if you have trouble finding the OPI, you can always get the Ciaté instead- or if you're just to lazy to paint the four coats and would rather settle for two.

Needless to say, I have a deep and eternal love for shades like these. I am always on the hunt for more. This is a color I do not hesitate to get from ebay, and on this treacherous site I finally hunted down both the Maybellines, OPI Greenwich Green, and the Revlon Streetwear.

Swedish word of the evening:
älskling -noun darling
Because these are.