Sally Hansen ~ Save the Date, with striped glitter gradient

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength ~ Save the Date

Deep burgundy with a beautiful shimmer

My local drugstore had a 2 for 1 Sally Hansen offer recently, and since they only had one cuticle cream left, I decided that the other thing should be this pretty nail polish. I swear that this vampy polish winked at me and tricked me into buying her!

So – the formula was good, and the polish glided on effortlessly. It took two coats to make it look really pretty. Drying time was pretty average, but I was watching a movie while I did my nails, so I didn’t mind. I watched “Jack and the Beanstalk – the real story”, in case anyone’s interested!

Here’s a pic of it in my lightbox: 

And there’s a bonus pic for you today, because the sun was actually out! And behold! This polish looks amazing in the sun:

I’m seriously impressed! I guess that’s why it took me a little while to figure out what to do with it. I ended up deciding for a glitter gradient over striping tape. I’ve done that before, and I really like the way it looks, so I thought why not!

I placed striping tape on my nails, three on each, except for on the ring finger, which got four. And then I made my glitter gradient with a WIP polish from Urban Outfitters called “Tinkerbell”. It’s a pink glitter with a dash of green and yellow glitter in it. I finished my mani with a layer of Catrice Quick Dry & High Shine top coat. 

On this pic, you can see some of the green glitter I mentioned before on my accent nail.

And here are the two pretties posing for the camera:

I’m so glad that the Sally Hansen is as pretty on the nails as it is in the bottle, and I still think that all the work with the striping tape is worth the effort.

What do you think of glitter gradients made over striping tape? Have you tried it yourself?

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

Alix Avien ~ 400 with stars

Alix Avien ~ 400

Pale blue crème

W.I.P. by Urban Outfitters ~ Twinkle  

Clear base with glitter and pink and blue stars

Here’s just a short post for you today, featuring another polish from my friend Aylin from Posh Nail Art.

Alix Avien #400 is a pale blue, almost lavender crème. The formula was good, and it took two coats to get it opaque. I’m glad that this polish is self levelling, because I wasn’t that good applying it today :D

Here’s how two coats and no top coat looks like:

I stamped on three of the fingers with a no name polish called “Suzi skis in the Pyrenees” and used stamping plate DRK-A. I stamped purple stars. On the other fingers I applied a coat of a W.I.P. polish called “Twinkle”. That’s a clear base with glitter and blue and pink stars in it.

I had to fish a lot to get the stars out. There are lots of them in the polish, but it was as if they didn’t want to stick to the brush. So it took quite a while to get two little stars on each nail, but I managed!

After that struggle I applied a layer of Poshé top coat, and my mani was done:

Here are the polishes I used:

As you can see, the “Suzi skis in the Pyrenees” isn’t an OPI. It’s a cheap Chinese copy of it – it’s so cheap that they didn’t even bother to find out what the OPI bottle looks like :D

What do you think guys and girls? Do you like stars as much as I do? :)

W.I.P. by Urban Outfitters ~ Galaxy

W.I.P. by Urban Outfitters ~ Galaxy  

Dark burgundy/purple/golden shimmery multichrome

When I started this mani, I wasn’t quite sure what it would end out like. I think that was a mistake, but I’ll get back to that.

The formula is OK, and applies pretty easily. It’s one of these polishes where the first coat looks like a mess, and it makes you sure that you need at least five more coats to make it look good. But the second coat is very forgiving, and smooths out all the bald and uneven spots.

Here’s two coats, no top coat:

It’s a very shimmery polish, and the multichrome is definitely not shy:

 And here’s where I should have stopped, but no! I wanted to stamp on it, and I chose a full nail design stamp and did two nails with white stamping polish. It looked absolutely horrible, so I didn’t take a pic of that. Instead I picked a glitter, because “if everything else fails, use glitter!” I chose NYX Girl’s “Spot Light”, which is a clear base with silver glitter and larger holographic hexagons.

I applied one coat over Galaxy, and here’s what I chose to be my final mani:

I was so unhappy with this, that I removed it right after having taken this pic. I prefer wearing my manis at least a day, so I thought it was a shame, but I don’t want to go around hating my mani for an entire day, LOL!

This was my first W.I.P. polish by the way. I have two more to show you later :)

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