X&D Crackle white crackle polish from Everbella

Sweet Florence from Everbella was so kind to send me this white crackle polish and red basecolor for me to try! Everbella also provided the metal nail tips for my giveaway, they are really great!
The crackle polish comes in 30 different colors and can be bought Here. Here is also the color chart:

Playful green and Lemon look rad!

Over to my review. I must admit I've been kinda fed up with crackle polishes, even though I haven't tried that many of 'em. However I had never tried a white one, and I had a image in my head that it would look rad over a deep red. To my delight the basecolor provided was just the right red!
Together they make a great pair! I get the feeling of christmas, candy canes and zombies(haha)!

The red polish was very thick and pretty hard to put on nicely, but with a little cleanup it turned out smooth. I waited pretty long before putting on the white, but as you can see from the photo the red wasn't completely dry. But guess what? I don't think that was a problem at all! When it blended a little together the crackle turned a little pink, and that was cool!

The formulas on most crackles are thick and so was this. The brush was a little upcooperation , but nothing I couldn't handle. It crackled very well! Some big cracks and some smaller, just the way I like it!
If you want to achieve that the crackles goes in different directions you can paint different directions. Here I've done one normal upwards, one sideways and two diagonally. Cool huh? 

All in all I'm happy with the crackle. Even though I don't wear it a lot anymore there are tons of cool nail art to make with crackles. See some crackle designs Here and Here.

# Do you think this crackle looks cool?
# Are you still fond of crackles?
                                                     * This product was sent to me for review*

Catrice - I wear my sunglasses at night

Another new Catrice polish today. This one is called I wear my sunglasses at night, and I must say I love name! It's really cool, and I think the name fits the color.
Almost black, but with both green and purple glitter in it. The color isn't that visible, but still not invisible. I wish it would show more though. In the sun it glitters really great!

The formula was thick and kinda hard to work with. I needed a bunch of cleanup after doing my nails. Two coats in the photos.

I imagine that I could have made the glitter stronger by adding a coat of a clearbased glitter. This isn't a polish i wouldn't have been able to make myself either by layering or with a franken. So if you have a black and some clearbased glitter I wouldn't bother buying it actually. I imagine China Glaze Fairy dust would look cool with it.
# Do you like this polish?

Cathrine Arley # 800

This is the second holo I'm showing of the Cathrine Arleys.
It's a sweet berry red color that looks deep in some lights and lighter in others. The holo is subtle, but still very visible. As I've said before, I like the more subtle holos since that makes the polish fancy, but not overwhelming. The shine to this is amazing! I didn't use a top coat, but just look at that shine in the shade photos below:

Shad

Sun

Formula was good. 2 coats for opacy and no problems applying. I didn't need aqua fix base either.

Shade

Sun

I drew some lines to make it a little more fancy:

I'm digging these Arley holos and can't wait to try out the rest!
# What do you think?

One year anniversary giveaway!!(Widget is fixed)

My blog is celebrating one year on March 4. and in that occasion I'm having a giveaway! Yeey.
Some of the prizes has been sponsored.

The prizes are:
Lush Snow Fairy shower gel. It's shimmering pink and very fruity smelling!
Isadora - Pink Bite and All city Brown crackles
Viva la Diva - A brown # 125, a gray with silver glitter #123 and a nail hardener with vitamins A+E
Noel Vanilla bean scented Pocketbac. Very handy when traveling or just a day out in the city!
Golden Nail Pre-decorated nail tips. Metallic blue fake nails, 50 nails. Very fancy!

To enter there you just have to leave your email, nothing more! But if you'd like some extra entries there are bunch of other things to do, so just see the Rafflecopter form and fill it in!


a Rafflecopter giveaway


Giveaway ends on March 12. and is open internationally!

Inspired by an Animal Sunday - Free as a bird

There were no animal post last Sunday, so I kinda wanted to make something kick ass. But I was so tired this morning that I didn't feel like going crazy with colors and stuff. It turned out to be these birds flying away from an open cage.

This is a image I've seen many places before, especially in tattoos, and I've always adored it. The basecolor is a pale blue from Urban Outfitters.

The birds were actually harder to create than it looks. When trying not to have any details and only the outlining things turn out to be harder to make if you ask me! Some of them only look like black bloobs of nothing... Oh well!

# What do you think?

Cathrine Arley #801 Holographic

I bought 6 shades of the Chatrine Arley holos and this will be the first I show you. It's called 801 and is yellow holo. In the bottle the polish looks a lot more greenish yellow and a solid yellow and I got kinda disappointing when I realized it wasn't green at all.
It's a banana yellow holo, and I'm not a big fan of banana yellow...

Shade

The holo effect isn't extremely strong, but good enough. I like those subtle holos a lot actually, since I feel that the holo effect can be overwhelming. That doesn't mean the holo isn't showing, it's still a rainbow of color in the sunlight.

Sunlight

Shade and sunlight

The formula on this was very good. I didn't need Aqua fix basecoat and it didn't dry all matte and weird as some holos do. I used two coats to get it opaque and it went on very easy. The brush on the other hand was a nightmare. The hairs were sticking out in all directions and none were the same length so I gave it a trim, that made it a lot better.

Direct sunlight

Shade

All in all I'm very pleased even though the color is banana yellow and not more green. My very first yellow holo. I will be showing the other Cathrine Arleys as soon as I've gotten them swatched  and will make a post with one picture of each color to gather them all together!
# Do you have any yellow holos?
# What do you think of Cathrine Arley?

Haul from Beautycosmetic

I recently got my package from http://beautycosmetic.biz/. I had ordered 6 Cathrine Alrey holos and three from Catrice. These are both new brands for me so this is exciting!

The Arley numbers are on the photo, the Catrices are called Purpleized, I wear my sunglasses at night and In the bronx( already a swatch of on the blog)
I actually wanted to order a bunch of other Arleys, but most of them were actually sold out... Sucks, but that only means I have to order more another time!

As you can see from the photo #677 had leaked in the package, but it wasn't dried out or anything so nothing to bad.

The C A are $2.00 and the Catrice are $4.24, so pretty cheap if you ask me!

Nicole by OPI - Iceberg Lotus

Iceberg Lotus is from last years spring collection from NiO. When I saw the bottle picture I knew I had to have it, even though I had never seen any swatches. Nothing could prepare me for the awesomeness this polish actually is. The strange thing is that I have barely seen any swatches of this on the internet. Is it a lost pearl that lacquer fanatics never found out about? I don't know. Here's my swatch of it at least!
This is a picture heavy post, so I added a jump after the first picture

Week 8 - Corset Mani

Here is finally Week 8 of the one year challenge. And this weeks theme is Corset nails. Cool! I've never tried it before, but seen some really great results! I took inspiration from this corset:

Making the colors red and black instead of white. I get a really vampireish feeling from the result:

Using Essence - Red-y to go, Mac - Obey me and black and white with a thin nail art brush this was created. I didn't get the lines as thin as I wanted to, but am still pretty pleased with how it turned out.

This was fun! I think I have to make more black, red and white designs. Their so classy! I'm of to a wine and nail evening, maybe I'll show some pictures if I make anything cool on my friends nails! See ya!

# Do you like my corsets?

# Do you like making red, white and black designs?

Catrice - In the bronx

This is one of my new polishes from Catrice. This is a new brand to me, so I was excited to test the quality on the polish.
Bronze colors isn't something I would normally wear, at least not until now. I dig this color! Just the right shade between copper and gold wit a great metallic finish. No brush strokes in the finish either!

The formula was pretty good, two coats for opacy and nothing more to say really! The color is slighty duochrome to red/cobber. And even though it doesn't show much it gives it a really fancy look.

I have two more colors from Catrice to show you that I got in the mail the other day. There will come a full post with the the goodies I got! And the giveaway is also coming soon, oh so excited!
Well I'm very happy with my first try at a Catrice polish!
# Do you like Bronzes?

Red and Cobber gradient

I've gotten a great love for gradients and experimenting with colors so todays nails also turned out to be gradients!
Using Catrince - In the bronx as a base and China Glaze - Ruby Pumps over I created this:

Very simple, but still very pretty and eye catching!

I'm back from my vacation now so I'll be back to posting more regularly than I have the last couple of days.

# Do you like this gradient?
# Do you have any ideas for gradient colors I can combine?

OPI DS - Sapphire

My third and last of the OPI DSs for you guys today! See Elegance and Vintage by pressing the names. 

Sapphire was different than the two others in formula. A lot sheerer and not as opque. By the first coat it looked so thin that I thought I would need at least four. Thankfully I only needed three! Since it's so sheer by one coat, but still holo I'm gonna try to use it as a holo top coat! Looking forward to that.

The holo effect it gorgeous in direct sunlight! 

Shade

In the bottle this looks very blue. On the nail it's another story. In the shade it looks more like a pinkish gray. Almost a duochrome. In the sun however it's clear that the color is blue, but it's still not very bright. I like the toned down color on it. It means that even though it's a holo it's not to fancy or flashy. 

Here's a comparison pic of the old and new brushes of OPI, read more about it in Elegance. 

Sapphire is a very special holographic polish. It's both toned down and flashy! Looking forward to try it as a holo top coat!

# Do you like Sapphire?

# What's your favorite holo polish?

China Glaze - Blue Island Iced Tea

This has been on my wishlist for such a long time and finally it's mine! I don't know why I fell so in love with Blue island, I'm not normally a fan of blue. But something about it  really spoke to me, and after I actually got it, I'm even more in love!

So this is a blue glitterish polish. The glitters are really tiny, but so packed that it makes a full base. Even though it's a glitter polish it doesn't really look like it and it isn't terrible to remove afterwards(that's a big win in my mind at least!). 

The formula was a little sloppy and sheer so I used three coats to get it opaque. Since it already dries semimatte I chose to top it with China Glaze matte magic top coat and that really made it even more wonderful! The finish looks a little weird with a shiny top coat, but with the matte it all comes together! 

I think I love it so much because it isn't entirely blue. It's a little silver too, something with the glitter makes it that way. Very nice! So happy to finally have it in my collection!

# What do you think of this color? 

OPI ds - Elegance

Elegance is my new pink holo from OPI. It's such a cutie. I got some photos in actual sunlight when swatching this and then the great holo effect came out. The holo isn't crazy strong, not like MUS - Britta, but that doesn't matter!

Sun

Shade

I know that holos are supposed to be seen in the sun, but I can't stop loving how they look in the shade! Is that weird? Oh well, it looks great both in the sun and in the shade! Formula was really good, two coats for opacity and I didn't need aque fix basecoat. The pink is a little darker than my other holo Milani - Digital and it doesn't need "underwear" to be opaque. This is definitely one of my fav. pink holos!

Sun

Shade

The brush on these older OPIs is a little different from the new ones. It's a little softer and more narrow, I prefer the new one. Here's a comparison pic:

If you wanna see, here is my swatch of DS Vintage. 

# Do you like Elegance?

# What's your favorite Holographic polish?

Zoya - Marley

*I'm going away on winter holiday tomorrow, but I have bunch of posts scheduled including the OPI DSs. There won't be any Inspired by and Animal Sunday though. Hope you guys have a great week!* 

I bought this along with some other polish from a girl at the Norwegian nail polish forum . My first Zoya actually. Even though I've been craving for a Zoya, and totally adore everything with the brand, from colors to philosophy, I've never gotten around to actually buying one!

Well here's Marley! She's a pale lavender creme with a very very slight shimmer. Totally invisible in the photos, and just barely visible irl. 

This was so smooth and nice to put on! One of the those butter formulas that we all love. I didn't have any problems getting it even and opaque in two coats and hardly needed any clean up! That's great!

Zoya is cruelty-free, vegan and big 5-free. That really sounds good in my ears! And there are some great Zoya colors out there I need to get my hands on soon!

# What do you think of Zoya?

# Do you like Marley?

OPI - Dress to Empress

From OPIs 2005 Japanese collection. This is a coraly red with some really nice shimmer to it. The shimmer goes from pink till something that almost looks like glassflecks. Really pretty.
It's kinda sheer to begin with and would work well as a layering polish, but I got it opaque in three coats so that wasn't to bad.

Closeup

This is such a great summercolor. It reminds me of Cajun Shrimp only the Shrimp is a creme. I also have Gal meets Gal-Veston that is basically the same color only in a jelly. So the same color in three different finishes is cool!
The formula was a little sloppy, as I said it was thin.
To sport that it was valentines when I was wearing it I painted a little heart with wings on the ring finger.

#What do you think of Dress to Empress?
# Do you like corals?