Showing posts with label Me. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Me. Show all posts

Sunday, December 25, 2016

I got a rainbow for Christmas!

I just couldn't believe my eyes when I opened up one of my Christmas presents. It was a box and in the box was a rainbow! No kidding! There were eight packages in the box, each individually wrapped and marked with a different colour bow. 

Each colour of the bow represented a colour of the rainbow. 

I saved the bows:


I was very excited to open the packages! 

Here's what was inside:

Green 



A Hemp lip balm from Body Shop. It's the best lip balm I have ever tried. It keeps my lips moist every single winter; it never fails. 

Yellow 



A home made body scrub with brazil nut oil and lemon. It smells divine!  


Orange  
 


The cutest tiger ever! I adore tigers! 

 Red 
 


Max Factor Lipfinity lip colour. The colour is called Passionate and it's beautiful. This is one of my favourite lip colours. It literally stays on all day, and the moisturizer (to the right) ensures that your lips don't get dry. A great product. 

Pink
 
 


Heart shaped candle lights. I only photographed half of the candle lights. Aren't they cute?


Purple



Max Factor False Lash Effect mascara. This is my favourite mascara of all times and I have tried a lot!

Blue



An amazing scarf. It was too big to be in the lightbox so you just got to take my word for it. I love it! 

White


Technically not a colour of the rainbow :D 
A hand cream and a lip butter from Body Shop, both scented with vanilla. Yum yum, it smells so good. 

What did you get for Christmas? Were there any rainbows in your packages? ♥

Thursday, December 24, 2015

I'm a Christmas Winner!

Merry Christmas everybody! 

Today is the day we celebrate Christmas here. I'm having my family over and we'll be eating Christmas dinner together and after that there'll be handed out presents. Oh how I love presents!! 

And speaking of presents: I was so lucky to win Maria's giveaway recently, and guess what! The prize arrived yesterday! It definitely felt like an extra Christmas present right there ^_^

"What was it?", you might ask yourselves. I won a €50 voucher for DesigGlassware by Mont Bleu. Amazing, right? They sell nail files, nail clippers and pretty jewelry with Swarovski crystals. It took a long time for me to pick the prize! 

Here's what I picked:

A set of three glass nail files; small, medium and large. I can't wait to try them.




 A nail clipper with swarowski crystals. And yes, I do clip my nails before I file them.



A Ring  called "Aurora Boreale", that changes colours like crazy. It's beautiful!


Thank you so much to Maria for hosting the giveaway and to Mont Bleu for the beautiful prize. 


Merry Christmas to you all. I hope you're having a great time whereever you are ♥

Wednesday, December 2, 2015

Webshops are stealing blogger pictures!!!



Webshops are stealing my pictures!

I am really angry! It has come to my attention that at least two shops have been stealing some of my nail pictures!

Rainbow Connection stole my picture of a store exclusive from Cupcake Polish.


Ella Ann Cosmetics stole some of my Glittering Elements pictures.



I have contacted both shops to hear if they are interested in cooperating with me. Ella Ann Cosmetics said yes at first, but when Kristen realized that I don’t live in the US, she suddenly wrote that she isn't "taking on new international swatchers due to cost". Fact is that I actually offered to pay for the postage, so there wouldn't be any extra cost for her!
Rainbow Connection (Anette) decided to not answer my emails at all.

Honestly: Where are the moral and business sensibilities?

Stealing pictures is extremely bad style. I can’t recommend anyone to support shops that don’t have the decency to at least ask for permission before they use other people’s pictures (that they haven’t paid for and obviously have no intention of paying for). They didn’t even try to remove my logo. Oh, the arrogance!

This post stays up until the shops have paid for the pictures they used. Removing them isn’t enough: My pictures have been used for a long period of time, without my knowledge or permission, for advertising their polishes. That's stealing and I hate people who steal!

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Indie makers and their businesses


How do you see the indie makers? As friends that happen to make nail polish, or as business women (and men)?

There’s something I have been wanting to get off my chest for a while, and today is that day.


The nail polish world has been growing really fast over the past few years, and I mean really fast. The demand for more interesting and/or alternative finishes, colours and combinations got so high, that some girls decided to take things into their own hands and make their own polish.

The indie market grew (and is still growing) ridiculously fast. And why shouldn’t it? Every girl with an eye for colours and a good imagination and the cash to buy the necessary supplies can mix their own pretty polishes – and why not sell them to other enthusiasts? I’m right there with you so far.


To me though, this whole indie scene is business. Yes, I do know the first names of the makers of some indies, and yes, I do chat with a couple of them occasionally. But - when it comes to throwing money over the counter, then it changes from being online friends to also being a business relationship for me.

I expect professionalism, I expect good customer service and I expect communication from any business I deal with. Those are the buzz words for me.

I won’t mention any names or brands today, but let me give you a few examples of very recent not so good experiences:

1.   Bad communication
So, I ordered six polishes from a shop on Etsy. I got the message: ”Thanks for your purchase! Your item(s) will ship in 2-5 business days.” (It’s an automatic response, no actual persons were involved sending it).

After 6 business days I contacted the shop again (yes, I am like that!). I asked them when they expected to ship my polishes. This message was left completely unanswered, but my polishes were marked as shipped the following day. So, were they actually waiting for me to write again before sending my goods, or what? To me it is highly unprofessional to not bother answering your emails. It only takes a minute to write that the polishes are now shipped and sorry for the delay. That’s just sloppy and arrogant.



2.   Bad Customer Service
There is a brand that makes some polishes I really like. I live in Europe, and that means that postage usually is pretty expensive. It’s nobody’s fault but the postal service’s, but there are ways to get around that. 

I wrote a message to this particular shop owner and asked if I could combine the shipping on two smaller orders. The answer was NO. I asked the shop owner a couple of other questions about restocks, and ordering with another Danish friend to keep postage down, but every question was answered with a resounding NO. 


I think that some of the smaller shops really need to be flexible and work with their customers, instead of seeing them as a pain that asks stupid and annoying questions. All the NOs I got from this shop owner has made me stop buying her polishes at all, and I even consider selling off all the ones I’ve got. Yes, I am like that. There it is again - arrogant, no business sense, and no respect for customers or their money, obviously. Well, no more of my money is going her way, so it’s a resounding NO right back from me.



3.   Unprofessional behaviour
Delays are unprofessional, period. 
Yes, I know that things that we can't control occasionally happen. But when it happens again, and again, and again, then there’s something going on that should not be going on. 

When that order is paid for, the shop owner must do everything in their power to get things out ASAP. Guess what, it’s the law.
I don’t want to hear tedious excuses and long explanations. I’ve passed my money over your counter, and I want value for that money. Now please. Yes, I am like that! You’re a businesswoman/man – get a grip, run your business properly. Or I stop buying your stuff and move on, plenty more out there like you wanting my money and willing to step up for it.



I know this sound a bit harsh, but seriously, we wouldn’t accept the same behaviour from a non-indie maker. We accept it in the polish world because it’s more personal, because we know the girls, and possibly because we feel that a little bit of their current popularity rubs off on us. That is not how it should be. They want us to buy their stuff, don’t forget that. They make polish, and anyone can actually do that if they have a mind to. If you want to make it AND sell it, do it properly, don’t take your customers too much for granted. Fashion moves on extremely quickly don’t forget, and customer loyalty is a very easy thing to fuck up. Tomorrow you’re history if you’re not careful.

How do y’all feel about this? Please let me know in the comments below. Is it okay for these businesses to leave messages unanswered? Do you continue shopping in shops that are sending out your goods way too late and make excuses every time? How about the ones who make no effort to help you in your efforts to spend money with them, doing quite the opposite in fact?

Or - do you support the good indie makers out there who value your business, want you to wear their product and who are willing to go a few extra yards for their customers? Do you offer them your customer loyalty? I know I do, because I am like that!

Thank you for your attention.

Tuesday, May 5, 2015

I am a winner!

I participated in a giveaway on Ann-Sofie's blog Colour it recently, and I was so lucky to actually win! I was thrilled, and even more thrilled when the package showed up. It was a mix of polishes and beauty products, and I'm always curious to try out something new. 

Let me show you what I won.

Three polishes:

Nicole by OPI: One Less Lonely Glitter, Isadora: Beetle Green, Uslu Airlines: XMS (?)

Glitters are always welcome in my stash. I already own Beetle Green and I love it! The deep red from Uslu Airlines is called probably called XMS, I'm not quite sure. It's a new brand to me :) 

Over to the lotions:

LdB bodylotion & Bliss FatGirlSlim skin firming cream

The LdB smells really nice! 
 
I got stuff for the hair: 


Michael Van Clarke: Life extending hair care & Moroccan Oil treatment

My boyfriend found it hilariously funny that I got a cream called "3 more inches" :D Never mind him: my hair is looking forward to trying both of them. 

And last but not least:  CC cream and vitamins:

Biotherm: CC crema & My Vitamins: Lemon flavoured tablets

There was also an eyeliner in the package, but I forgot to photograph it! Doh @ self!

Thank you so much Ann-Sofie, I am really pleased that I won this lovely package! ♥

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Polish separation



Polish separation
- just for fun

Most of us bloggers own more polish than we are ever going to use. That means that many bottles of polish sit unnoticed in drawers/boxes/wherever for longer periods of time.

When I go through my stash once in a while, I often find polishes that have separated. The suspension base hasn’t been able to keep the ingredients suspended. It happens for both indies and industrial brands.

I thought it would be fun to take you on a little separation tour. I’m going to show you a number of polishes, and I’m going to show what they look like separated and after I gave them a good shake.

First one up is from China Glaze: Mrs. Claus. It’s a red base with red glitter. The glitter has sunken quite a lot – this bottle is brand new. But as you can see on the right of the picture: A good shake, rattle and roll makes it all good again.


Here’s a Catrice polish: Mermaiday Mayday. This one has been laying on its side, so the glitter sticks to one of the sides only. It took quite a lot of shaking to get the glitter spread out more evenly.


Another China Glaze makes it to the list: Split Perso-Nail-Ity from the Tranzitions collection – you know those polishes that change colour when you apply the topcoat. I must admit that I was quite surprised to the how big a difference in colour there is between top and bottom here. It’s as if the dark colour completely disappears when I shake the polish up.


NailNation 3000 has also got a polish on the list: Mischievous. The separation isn’t bad, but I think it looks quite funny because the colour is so different.


Darling Diva’s Cotton Candy Hangover, which is a LE Facebook group custom, does the same thing. I think it looks quite weird before the shake up.


KBShimmer’s It’s Razz-ical separates into neon colours. I was like: Wow, that’s orange when I looked into my drawer. Imagine my surprise when I saw it was this beautiful deep magenta!


The brand Perfect makes mini holographics. I believe this one is number 1, but it isn’t marked, so I’m not sure. All of the polishes in this collection separates like crazy. It takes as least ten minutes of vigorously shaking before it all comes back together again, but the holos are cheap and gorgeous.


El Corazón from Russia has got this polish on the list: 423/40. It looks silver on the picture on the left, but check out all the magenta/purple pigment in the bottom of the bottle! I actually had to stir this one up with a toothpick in order to make it look relatively normal again. It has already separated again as I write this.


The last ones on the list for now are two white polishes. Meet my backup bottle of my to go white stamping polish from Sally Hansen: Whirlwind White, and Milani’s White on the Spot. I think it’s crazy that they contain that much yellow!! They do shake up really easy and it doesn’t affect them at all.


Some people has told me that I’m not supposed to shake my polishes: I’m supposed to roll them, otherwise I might get little bubbles in my mani. That’s complete and utter bollocks, bro! A load of cobblers. Twaddle and nonsense. I’ve always given my polishes a damn good shake, and I’ve only encountered bubbles once. That was in a small, humid hotel room on a vacation, and I’m sure the humidity and the temperature had more to do with the bubbles than any method of polish agitation that I was employing.

Anyway – that was it. It was fun making this post, so I hope you enjoyed it.

Saturday, December 27, 2014

Honest advertising?


Dear polish-makers, dear bloggers,

I’ve wanted to get this off my chest for quite a while now, and today is the day.

It’s a well known fact that indie-makers and bloggers go together hand in hand. The indie-makers make pretty polishes and us bloggers display them on our blogs. Sometimes we get the polishes for free in return for a review, most of the time we buy them ourselves. Fact is that our blogs are a huge display of pretties, just wanting their ten minutes of fame.

There’s nothing wrong with that.

What really bugs me is that so few want to show the true colours of the polishes, so to speak. Many are the times where I’ve fallen in love with a polish on a blog, bought it, only to find out that it doesn’t at all look like the pictures I’ve just seen on my monitor. Photoshop and similar enhancers, ladies, are not really your friends, but sneaky tricksters who want to blow your cover and show you up as a visual teller of untruths. Then people who read your blogs stop liking you so much, and treat what you say, and show, with a well earned measure of distrust and disbelief. Catch me once, sure, go ahead - but you won’t do it twice. Credibility is fairly hard to achieve, so easy to lose.

It’s not just enhancing of colours and changing of colour depth and god knows what else tricks some girls use to make the polish prettier. It’s also the fact that so many girls chose not to show what a polish looks like in natural lighting. Everybody knows that a holo looks great in the sun and I obviously want to see that too. But I spend way more time indoors than I do in the sun, so I want at least one picture of what the polish looks like in indoor environment. Is that too much to ask?

I saw a beautiful polish in a Facebook group. It looked fantastic, and the holo flame was adorable. I asked if anybody had a photo of it in lower lights and the girls snorted! Why would I want to see that? There were already beautiful pictures of the polish! And there were. I bought the polish, and it looks adorable in the sunshine. It doesn’t look good on me at all in lower lights, it turns out that it’s not my colour. What a waste of $11 plus postage!

So: Dear indie-makers, dear bloggers. Please don’t let your egos come in the way. Please show us what the polishes really look like, not how they should look in your head. That would be honest advertising!

Thanks for taking the time to read this ♥

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

OPI Peanut Collection for Autumn 2014



OPI Peanut Collection for Autumn 2014

So OPI is coming out with a Halloween collection based on the Charles Schulz comic characters from the cartoon strip Peanuts.

Here’s what the set of four polishes looks like:



The set contains of two crèmes: A yellow called "Good Grief", inspired by Charlie Brown’s yellow sweater and a black called "WHO ARE YOU CALLING BOSSY?!?", inspired by Lucy’s black hair. There are also two glitters: "Where’s my Blanket", obviously inspired by Linus, it’s a black and orange glitter, and "To Be or Not to Beagle", inspired by Snoopy himself – it’s a multicoloured mix of hexes and glitters.

It shall not be a secret that I’m not going to buy this set. I am not into crème polishes, and both the glitter mixes contain bar glitters, which I’m not a fan of either.

So what can I give you if I can’t give you swatches? I can give you my take on what a Peanuts collection should really look like!

Here’s the gang:


The first polish would be based on Sally, Charlie Brown’s little sister. The polish would be pink, like her shirt, and it would be containing a splash of two sizes matte black glitter.

The second polish would be based on Charlie Brown. It would be yellow alright, but it would be packed with silvery shimmer, so the polish would almost look like a foil.

The Third one up would be based on Linus, who Sally has a huge crush on. This polish would be red with orange flakies and holo shimmer.

Polish number six is based on Lucy, who is the girl who always pulls the ball away before Charlie Brown gets to kick it. Her polish is blue like her dress, and is extremely holographic, also in low lights. It also contains blue flecks which is slightly darker than the base colour.

As a bonus I’ve got a polish number five, Snoopy’s polish. He is the star in my book, so he obviously needs his own polish. The polish would be a holographic shimmer topper with a red to purple colour shift.


Unfortunately I am not a polish creator, so these polishes only exist in my imagination. But I wish…

So – have you got suggestions to what I should call my little collection of five Peanut polishes? Please don’t hesitate to share in the comments below.

Friday, March 21, 2014

Birthday Giveaway

Hi girls,

I am the kind of girl that loves birthdays. I love other people's birthdays in general and of course my own birthday in particular!

So today is a fantastic day for me:  It's my birthday!

I have decided to celebrate it with a birthday giveaway, yay!!


I've gotten my hands on four textured polishes from Catrice's LE collection Luxury Lacquers!

Catrice Sand'sation: Sandhopper, PLUMbeach, It's a PINKini World, Waikiki Peach

I haven't tried the polishes myself, but seriously: They look amazing. 
One lucky girl will win all four of them!

The rules are simple:
- You must be a follower of this blog, and new members are welcome

- Enter the Rafflecopter below
- Do not tick the "I'm a regular commenter" if you're not
- If you cheat I will disqualify you
- The giveaway is open internationally

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Good luck, girls! ♥ 

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Hand Photo models


Hand Photo models

I’ve been thinking about something that I need to get off my chest. I touched on the subject in my post here, but as I read some of the comments that people have made there, I just knew that I had to make another post about it.

When I browse some of the Facebook groups I’m in, I can see that some girls are really harsh to each other.

It’s been a while since there was a “clean up or die”-campaign – thank god that stopped pretty fast, because that was really way off base! I mean – so what if there are girls who don’t clean up their cuticles perfectly? If you don’t like the way they look, then you don’t actually have to visit that blog! Probably no one will notice you’re not there. And I can also see that it isn’t as “popular” to have short nails as it is to have them long. I don’t understand that! Short or long, it doesn’t really matter, as long as you’re happy with them yourself. It makes me sad to see some girls putting themselves down because they can’t grow long nails. Learn to love what you have – because that shows!
Some of my beloved Color Clubs
And here’s another thing! It’s as if the hysteria from the beauty magazines has spread to the nail world. We aren’t allowed to have a hang nail, a broken edge of a nail, ridges where we bend our fingers, lines, wrinkles or spots. It seems that we’re striving for the impossibly perfect nails and hands here, but what the hell for? To prove you don’t actually have a life outside of painting your nails?

Vanity is one thing, sure - but the other thing is: It apparently makes you more popular if your fingers and hands look as if they’re taken out of a Photoshop-heaven fashion magazine. So – blogging isn’t just for fun and for sharing a fantastic hobby anymore, all of a sudden it’s also a competition between bloggers: Who gets the most followers, the most comments, the most hits per day? What a load.

I follow quite a lot of nail blogs. I have favourites, of course I do – I guess we all have. The girls I follow have very different hands and nails. Their age is between teenager and almost pensioner. They have long nails, short nails, small nails, wide nails, dry cuticles, and some of them don’t clean up around the fingernails. What? OMG! For Shame! Such inferior women! Some of them have hangnails and some of them have only just started practising doing nail art. Do you remember what it was like the first time you did nail art? If so, then you know what I mean. 
Some of my beloved China Glazes

I follow all these different girls, and I do that for these reasons only: They all share the love for pretty polishes, and they all have a heart. If we forget the heart, then none of all this matters. Then it becomes just something we do automatically to stroke our own ego and (perhaps) achieve a brief and shallow popularity because of the way our fingers look, probably achieved with photoshop anyway. I mean – get real! Nice-looking is fantastic, but if it’s a case of ‘pretty cover, nothing of interest inside’, what’s the point? Know what I mean? It is silly, really!