Make Up Store ~ Charmaine

Make Up Store ~ Charmaine  

Teal with a vague scattered holo

I don’t buy Make Up Store polishes very often. I think they are really good quality but they are also a bit on the pricey side. But when I laid my eyes on Charmaine I just knew I had to buy her. She’s a scattered holo that isn’tt very prominent. Make Up Store calls her a shimmer, which I don’t think she is. But she’s pretty nonetheless! And she’s opaque – a true one coater!

The formula is great. The polish glides on like butter and the brush leaves no bald spots or brush strokes. It’s a fantastic polish!

Here’s one coat – no top coat:

And from another angle:

Isn’t it just gorgeous!? Looking in the rear view mirror I should have kept it like this. But there’s something about one coloured nails that just doesn’t appeal to me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s okay on others. I just can’t leave it like that.

I was indecisive though – what to do with it? So I took Gosh Holograpic Hero, and sponged it on the tips. I don’t know why I did that. The sun wasn’t out, so I should have known that I couldn’t pull out a rainbow pic for you girls.

Here’s how it looked anyway, still no top coat:

I think it’s a bit boring. So I added glittah! :D I dapped on one coat of Kleancolor’s “Afternoon Picnic”, and then topped it all with one coat of Poshé top coat. And here’s the final result:

I’m not at all happy with this, but life’s like that sometimes. It’s not the first time I feel a Kleancolor glitter has let me down. Please tell me what you think of this, and be honest with me. :)

Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 9/10
Buy again: Yes

Summer Challenge Day 6: Violet

Summer Challenge Day 6: Violet

I had actually been looking forward to violet, because purple is my favourite colour nail polish. Then I realized that violet and purple aren’t the same colours… Damn!

So I thought I’d make this mani a little bit festive. I wanted to try out Kleancolor’s “Sparkle Purple”, which is a clear base with violet and purple glitters. I decided to layer it over another polish, since I could see it would take quite a lot of layers to make it opaque, and Kleancolor isn’t exactly known for making quick dry polishes!

So I applied two coats of Hot Makeup’s “Purple Rain Drops”. I thought it was a metallic kind of polish, but it turned out to be a jelly. Ugh! Anyway – it was “only underwear”, so I thought it would be alright.

Two coats, no top coat:

Then for the glitter. I applied two coats of “Sparkle Purple” and waited what seemed like forever. I even applied a couple of drops of Essence “Nail Art express dry drops”, but little did it help. After an hour it still wasn’t dry. Ah well.

Here is two coats of “Sparkle Purple” over two coats of “Purple Rain Drops”.

I am so disappointed over this mani, and I hate being disappointed over glitters. But it’s so not what I had in mind.

So please be gentle when you comment!

You should check out these other Danish girls’ blogs to see what they came up with for violet nails:

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel - for black and white nails!

Wet n Wild Rock Solid ~ Timeless Red

Wet n Wild Rock Solid ~ Timeless Red

Burgundy red with shimmer

We’re usually only able to buy the boring Wet n Wild polishes here, almost never the cool glitters and stuff. And it’s also the first time I’ve seen “Rock Solid” in the supermarkets. Alice Snow bought this one for me, knowing that I like reds and shimmers, and this is both.

Formula is a bit on the weird side. After the first coat I though that this would need about 4-5 coats to reach full opacity, but the second coat pretty much sorted out all the bald spots.

Here’s what it looks like with two coats, and no top coat:

If I was going to wear it on its own I would probably have applied a third coat, just to enhance the depth of it. But I knew I wanted to put glitter on it, so I stopped after two coats.

The glitter I chose is Kleancolor’s “Party Fever”, which is a clear base packed with tiny red glitters and larger turquoise, magenta and silver hexagons. The formula is thick and I needed to push the glitter around on the nails a bit to spread it out. Drying time is alo on the slow side, but I forgive the polish since it’s so pretty.

Here’s one coat over the Wet n Wild, plus a layer of Poshé top coat:

I quite like it – but what do you think?

Opacity: 6/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 6.5/10
Buy again: No

Make Up Store ~ Vanja

Make Up Store ~ Vanja

Deep, vampy purple with red undertones

This is my only Make Up Store nail polish. They are pretty expensive here – about US$22 for a bottle, which is a bit more than I’m usually willing to pay. But there was a small sale going on in my local mall a couple of months ago, which meant I could buy this polish half price. Count me in! I love sales :D

The formula was good, neither too runny nor too thick, and application was easy, even though I made a big mess. I was the only one to blame for that though, the polish was totally innocent! ;) It took two coats to reach opacity, which is great. I didn’t apply a top coat.

Here’s your pic:

It looks pretty good, don’t you think?

Next thing up was to apply a little something extra. You should know me by now – that’s the way I work.

Kleancolor has made a range of holo top coats. The Chunky Holo Purple looked interesting enough to suit Vanja. It’s a clear purple base with extremely holographic glitter. It was nice’n easy to apply, and then whenever I moved my fingers it was like a little rainbow kept turning up - red, orange, yellow and green! It’s amazing.

Here’s one coat of Chunky Holo Purple over Vanja and a layer of Seche Vite top coat:

I’m very pleasantly surprised over this mani. What do you think?

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 9/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes 

Kleancolor ~ Sparkling Grapes

Kleancolor ~ Sparkling Grapes

Magenta/pink loaded with shimmer

Here’s another one of my Kleancolors. I’m always curious when I try a new one, because I never know whether to expect a fantastic formula or a poor one.

This one happened to be great. The polish glided on easily and had a pretty good coverage. It was almost a one coater, but I gave it two, to even out irregularities. Drying time between the coats is a killer, like it often is with Kleancolor polishes, so I had to put on my patient face, even though patience isn’t one of my strongest assets. :D

Here are two coats – no top coat yet:

What’s with the name, anyway? I’ve never seen a grape in a colour like this!

I stamped on it, using a no name polish from Bornprettystore called “Suzy skis in the Pyrenees”, which is a deep, velvety purple with a suede finish. I wonder where they get their names? Anyway, the polish is thick and pretty opaque, and therefore good for stamping. The stamping plate is called H22. I applied one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

Here’s the result:

It’s more subtle in real life than it appears on the picture, but I quite like it.

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 7.5/10
Buy again: Yes

Sally Hansen ~ Laser

Sally Hansen ~ Laser
Very shimmery duochrome,  shifting from blue to purple


Sally Hansen make some pretty polishes. Too bad we can only buy the boring ones here in Denmark. And thank god for blog sales, so we can get our hands on the pretty ones after all.

This polish looks very promising. The blue in the bottle is stunning, and shifts beautifully to purple when you twist and turn the bottle a bit. It’s so shiny and shimmering. I believe all the shimmer comes from tiny, tiny glass flecks. 

The formula was a bit on the thin side, but not so much that it was  annoyingly  runny. I think I could have gotten away with two coats, but I gave it three anyway, to see this polish’s full potential. And I was definitely not disappointed – it’s just as pretty on the nails as it is in the bottle. Here it is – three coats, no top coat:

I tried to photograph it from both the purple and the blue angle, but even though the sun was actually out for once, I didn’t manage to catch the purple side, no matter how much I twisted and turned my fingers. I could easily see it, I just couldn’t photograph it. So you’ll have to take my word for it, and just look at the blue side of it. :)

I decided to add a bit of bling. I used Kleancolor’s “Twinkly Love”, which is a pinkish clear base with various coloured  holographic hearts. I fished up two hearts for each nail, and pushed them into the desired position. Then I added a thick layer of Seche Vite top coat, and the mani was done:

I really like it. It shiny, shimmering and fun. What do you think?
(I actually got to photograph the purple side of it here!!)

Opacity: 7/10
Colour, prettiness: 9/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

KleanColor ~ Bite Me

KleanColor ~ Bite Me
A deep red, very shimmery polish with micro glitters


Here's another polish that surprised me positively. Like I mentioned in my previous post, you never know quite what to expect from KleanColor, and that means (sorry to say) that I sometimes expect the worst.

"Bite me" was a pleasant surprise - both with the formula and the coverage. The formula is a thick jelly - I wouldn't have been able to make the brush drip even if I had wanted to. The coverage was absolutely fantastic.

Here's one coat - no top coat:

No streaks or bald spots at all! I was amazed.

It reminds me a lot of the other various brands of red glittery shimmery polishes that are out right now, but it's refreshing that it's not called something with ruby red slippers/pumps! Who wears red slippers anyway? I mean - Doc Martens...yeah, maybe! :D

There is one bad thing about this polish though, and that's the time it takes for it to dry. I waited for more than 20 minutes, and it was still more than tacky, so I decided to give it a generous coat of Seche Vite top coat and that helped!

Despite the time-to-dry, this is still a winner in my book! 

Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 10/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 8/10
Buy again: Yes

Kleancolor ~ Blue eyed girl

Kleancolor ~ Blue eyed girl

Dark blue jelly with blue glitter and hexagons

Kleancolor make a lot of pretty polishes, no doubt about that. But there’s one thing that puzzles me, and that’s how different the formulas are from one polish to the other. Some of them are a dream to work with, and others are just living hell.

Blue eyed girl is such a polish (the living hell variety). It’s very difficult to apply, both because the jelly is so thick but also because the hexagons are curly instead of flat. That means that you have to manoeuvre the brush around to spread them evenly onto your nail. It is pretty opaque though, I only needed two coats to reach the desired opaqueness.

Here’s two coats, and one coat of Poshé top coat.

I really like the extraordinary depth in this polish. It’s rather bumpy though…

However, pretty as it is, this polish dries *very, very* slowly; in fact so slow that I decided to use my China Glaze “Fast Freeze Quick Dry”, which I bought by mistake and hardly ever use. It’s amazing stuff, though - it really does dry all the layers of polish, as if by magic. My mani certainly wouldn’t have survived the evening without that!

Later that evening I applied an extra layer of top coat, to smooth out the surface completely. I quite like it, but it’s tricky to work with.

Beware though! This took two people half an hour to get off my nails again. It took two times the foil method, and then we ended up scraping the rest of the hexagons off. *faint* 

Opacity: 7/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 7/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 7/10
Buy again: No

MISA ~ Hot people like you

MISA ~ Hot people like you

A neon pink crème

and

Klean Color ~ My Valentine

A clear jelly with purple glitter and larger multicoloured hexagons

MISA ought to be a bigger and more well known brand than they appear to be, in my opinion. They make a good product.

I haven’t tried a MISA that didn’t apply smoothly, and “Hot people like you” is no exception. Here’s two coats:

I had already decided to apply some glitter to it, and I went with Klean Color’s “My Valentine”, mostly because of the purple glitter in it, which I though would go very well with the neon pink.

I was wrong though: 

The glitter actually disturbed the scene, and made it look messy to me. I was not pleased with the result at all.

To the rescue with a crackle – I added a coat of Burst Crackle’s “Violet Flame”. I like it a little bit better, but it’s definitely not a manicure I’ll do again. :D

Bear with me, please. I promise that my next mani will be better! :D

MISA ~ Hot people like you

Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 10/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 9/10
Buy again: Yes

Klean Color ~ My Valentine

Opacity: 2/10
Colour, prettiness: 6/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 4/10
Overall: 4.5/10
Buy again: No

HOT Makeup ~ Petrol Blue

HOT Makeup ~ Petrol Blue

A petrel blue crème

and

Klean Color ~ City never sleeps

A clear jelly packed with teal glitter and larger pink and gold hexagons

HOT Makeup is a very cheap brand here, not very common, but sometimes available in the larger supermarkets. They usually have a lot of (to me) uninteresting colours, but I fell for this petrel blue (and yes, it’s called Petrol Blue).. I thought it was a great colour, and if the formula wasn’t much good, I imagined I might be able to use it for stamping.

I wanted to test it out, so I applied one coat, and it covered perfectly, and I mean *perfectly*. The appropriate word here is ‘impressed’. The formula is a bit on the thick side, but it was *so* easy to work with and covered the nail without streaks or bald spots.

Here is one coat. One!

Had I wanted to stamp on it, I might have added a second coat, just to smooth out the surface perfectly, but I had other plans for this baby: Klean Color’s “City never sleeps”. 

This glitter is in a very thick jelly, which I imagine will be on the tricky side to work with after a little while as the polish get older. But for a fresh bottle of polish it was great. The glitter spread out evenly without any problems whatsoever.

The only con is that it leaves the surface very bumpy, so it needed two generous coats of Poshé top coat to even it out nicely.

I’m pleased with this. Very pleased indeed.

HOT Makeup ~ Petrol Blue

Opacity: 10/10
Colour, prettiness: 7/10
Durability: 10/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 9.25/10
Buy again: Yes

Klean Color ~ City never sleeps

Opacity: 2/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 10/10
Value for money: 8/10
Overall: 7/10
Buy again: Yes

Klean Color ~ Holo Chrome

Klean Color ~ Holo Chrome

Blue-ish purple packed with multi colored holographic glitter

There are polishes that look great in the bottle and not so great on the nails. It’s not very often the other way around. Klean Color’s Holo Chrome is an exception to that rule. It looks pretty ordinary in the bottle, but applied onto the nails, it’s simply “wow”!

Applying was easy. The formula is quite thick and jelly-ish, so I was impressed even after the first coat. Drying time between the coats was pretty average with this lacquer, so I applied two more coats. I think I would have been able to get away with two, but some polishes just deserve the best conditions, you know?

Here it is, with a layer of Poshé top coat:

I don’t know what it is with purples, but they are sooo hard to capture on photographs. They almost always turn out looking more blue than they actually are. Hmfr.

I corrected the colours so it shows the true colour of the polish. It made my fingers a weird colour! :D

Anyway – I simply love this nail polish. It’s pretty, shiny, glittery, eye catching.

Everything I like.

Opacity: 8/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 8/10
Value for money: 10/10
Overall: 8.5/10
Buy again: Yes

China Glaze ~ Ring in the Red

China Glaze ~ Ring in the Red

A Christmas red with micro and medium sized red glitter

“Ring in the Red” is from China Glaze’s 2011 “Let it Snow” holiday collection. And let me say it right away: If there is such a thing as a true Christmas glitter polish, this is it! It’s beautiful, shiny, attention drawing!

Applying it was easy, no streaks or spots whatsoever, and the glitter was easy to brush on evenly. The only bad thing I have to say about this polish is that it’s a pain cleaning up the cuticles! The glitter is sooo hard to get rid of, so I can’t even imagine what it will be like to remove it again. I already consider using the foil method.

Anyway, here it is in all it’s glory. Three coats of Red in the Ring, with no top coat.

 

I stamped on the nails shortly after. This is a design from Bundle Monster’s BM02. I am definitely not a stamping “professional” – meaning I’m fairly new at stamping. But seriously – I was surprised over just how big a difference there is between the Konad and Bundle Monster products. I found it quite hard to make the Bundle Monster stamps crisp and clear, compared to Konad’s plates. Bundle Monster smudged, even when I tried to limit the amount of polish on the plate. Definitely a lesser product, in my opinion.

Anyway, I stamped with black and white Konad polish, and here it is, with a coat of KleanColor 230 Chunky Holo Fuschia over it, and the KleanColor certainly improved the look.

I quite like it. Especially the thumbs with two different coloured lip prints.

China Glaze ~ Ring in the Red

Opacity: 9/10
Colour, prettiness: 9/10
Durability: 9/10
Value for money: 9/10
Overall: 9/10
Buy again: Yes

Orly ~ Hawaiian Punch

Orly ~ Hawaiian Punch

A Bright Pink with a subtle blue shine to it

I really like Orly's nail polishes, and Hawaiian Punch is no exception. It's bright pink, almost magenta, and the blue-ish shimmer makes it interesting, in my opinion. The formula is a bit to the runny side, but it's very easy to apply anyway. I had no streaks or bald spots whatsoever. 

It took longer for the first coat to dry than I expected, and the second coat dried rather quickly. That's unusual. I would have expected it to be the other way around. Anyway - I forgot to take a picture before I went on to the stamping... it's because I was watching a movie while the polish was drying. :)

Anyway - I stamped on little pussycats from Konad's M83. I used a very dark burgundy stamping polish, also from Konad. That turned out almost black, for some reason. Here it is with a layer of Seche Vite.

After that I decided to try and add some shine and holo effect to it, so I applied a coat of KleanColor number 230, "Chunky Holo Fuschia" over it. It's a sheer pink base with holographic glitter added to it. You can pretty much add it to whatever colour you want, because the base is so sheer.

As you can see the cats are still visible, but the nail polish has a beautiful holographic shine to it. Really nice.

KleanColor doesn't work as a top coat for me though. It stays "sticky" for a very long time, as if it wouldn't dry properly. I gave it a  generous coat of Seche Vite to solve that little problem. An hour later when I moved some heavy stuff in the basement the nail polish got all wrinkly and ugly, apparently because the polish wasn't dry after all. Big thumbs down for that!

Orly ~ Hawaiian Punch
Opacity: 9/10
Colour, prettiness: 8/10
Durability: 6/10
Value for money: 7/10
Overall: 7.5/10
Buy again: No