As tradition requires...

As expectable, I'm in a hurry, so you'll  have to wait until tomorrow for my best of 2011 post, but as for tonight, I'm wishing you a very nice New Year's Eve, and may 2012 bring you everything you deserve!

Comme il fallait s'y attendre, je suis à la bourre, donc vous verrez demain ma liste des meilleurs vernis de 2011, mais pour ce soir, je vous souhaite un très bon réveillon du Nouvel An et que 2012 vous apporte tout ce que vous méritez!

Glittery NYE - Part II

And now for the second part. I apologize in advance for the dreadful cuticles and the glitter bits all over my fingers on some pictures, but I swatched all six polishes for both parts at the same time yesterday when the sun was out, so you can easily imagine what an ordeal it was for my poor fingers! But no worries, they got all pampered afterwards (which reminds me that I have to tell you about my new nailcare products and routine).

So, on with glitters, and this time with "international brands", since I'm showing you Color Club, China Glaze and Zoya. First is Color Club with a polish that is among my favourites for 2011, the fantastic Sugar Plum Fairy from the Beyond the Mistletoe Collection. First, it's called after a fairy, second, it's mauve, third, it's glitter, and fourth, it's holographic = total win!

The only downside of this polish is that it's a complete nightmare to photograph if you try to do it justice. So the following pictures show no more than 10% of its beauty. If even Scrangie can't do it justice, who am I to try? It's a top-coat eater though, so my advice is, as usual, wait before you apply the top-coat and be ready to put at least two coats, leaving some time between them. You see Sugar Plum Fairy in two coats, so it covers well.

Second glitter for this post is China Glaze CG in the City, from the Fall 2011 Metro Collection. It's the only polish of that collection that I bought, I really like its "not quite dark" colour, perfect for fall. At first sight, it seems to be a "normal" grey glitter, but you'll see on some pics that it has gold and purple glitter in the mix, and in real life, the effect is more purple than grey. Remember, all pics are clickable to be seen big. This is also two coats, with top-coat, so good application and good opacity.

Finally, let's finish this glittery end of year with a polish that you already saw in a comparison but never got its own presentation, Zoya Luna, from the Zoya Glitters Collection. Luna is a very surprising polish, because its base isn't clear, as you would expect for a silver glitter, but milky white and this gives it some kind of muted look. It's easier to wear and less blindingly bright that most silver glitter polishes. It also has great coverage, I went for two coats out of habit, but I think that with careful application, one could be enough!

I'm not yet saying goodbye to this year since I hope to have the time for my "best of 2011" post, and if I don't, I shall take five minutes to post my best wishes tomorrow!

Glittery NYE - Part I

Hi again! I've decided to finish reviewing all my glitter polishes before the year is over, because feisty times require feisty polishes. I hope to have the time to make a "favourite polishes of 2011" post before Sunday too! I broke down my remaining glitters in two part, the first three colours being more addressed to French girls since they are from (afaik) local brands, and the other three being international brands.

So today I'm showing you two polishes from Debby and one from LM Cosmetic.

First we have Debby Colorplay 38. When I got OPI Servin' Up Sparkle from the UK Glam Slam set, I was a bit disappointed: the mix of small and very large hexagonal glitter was quite hard to work with, so I rapidly sent it to another home. But I was still looking for a silver holographic 'top-coat' and it's quite natural that I picked this one (especially at 5,9 euros, buy one get one for 1 euro...). I don't have much more to say about it, it's nice and easy to work with, I guess it could be build up since what you see below is two coats and the coverage is already quite nice, but I have China Glaze Nova if I want to turn my nails into holo disco balls, so I clearly keep this one for layering. The holo effect is really good but as often, it's not with flash (last picture) that it appears most.

So if you read well, you know that I bought another Debby Colorplay polish for one euro after picking up  number 38. My choice ended up being number 153, a beautiful raspberry jelly with small and medium hex holo glitter. This one is a bit thicker than 38, due to the hex glitter, but still, it's quite nice to work with and cover wells at two coats. I will probably wear it for NYE since I just bought a lovely raspberry-coloured woollen dress.

Finally, I'm ending this first "end of year, end of glitters" post with a brand you already know well, LM Cosmetic, and the beautiful Cephee, n°28 from the Constellation Collection. It's a very interesting mix of very small gold, copper and purple glitter that gives it a super soft yet feisty look. You can see some VNL on the pics, but in real life, it's opaque in two coats.

See you later for more glitter!!

Friends' Friday - A Glitter-Nailed Girl with Cherry Red Cheeks

I originally intended to skip the Friends' Friday this week because I have tons of things I want to show you before the year is over, but the lovely Marie posted a plea on Facebook to reach 100 fans before Sunday, so I decided to help her. I discovered Marie's blog a short while ago, through the French Hellocotton network, and it was an instant crush. Firstly because Marie has the kind of hands that make me dream, with long slender fingers and long nail-plates, and we both love girly polishes and glitter. But it's really when I discovered first her jewel shop Cherry's Shop, and then her general blog Cherry Red Cheeks that I completely fell for her world, imagination and creations. I can only encourage you to wander there and get enchanted just as I was.

Since it was a "spur of the moment" post, I looked quickly on Marie's blog to find a polish or nail-art I could present, and the first I found was Nfu Oh 51. It's not really representative of her, but I really lack time to do better, and since she has two blogs, nothing stops me from doing another post another time ;).

So, Nfu Oh 51 is a purple jelly polish with multicoloured flakies which works better layered over a dark base. If you layer it over black, you won't see much difference between 51 and the clear Nfu Oh 38, so I layered it over a-england Elaine and started to shoot like mad to show you the many aspects of that beauty!

NOTD - Alice's Peacock

Soo, back to nails today, with what is actually my manicure of the day, a very festive combo to bring some colour and glitter in those grey days. This morning, I was in the mood for some blue, so I took Orly Sweet Peacock, and after wearing it alone for a couple of hours, I realise the base colour was the same as that of OPI Absolutely Alice, so I decided to pair the two and add just a line of golden liner to match the golden shimmer in Absolutely Alice. The second photo, in shaded light, is the one that shows the best the brightness of this manicure, it's quite in tone with the end-of-year festivities!

As you can see, my nails have been shortened again, the middle finger was a casualty of the snowball fight I had with my brother on Christmas day, but with my pinkie catching up, I should soon have all my nails at the same length!

Back from Winter Wonderland!

Hi everyone! Just a quick note to tell you that I'm back after some days in Alsace (on the French-German border) where I spent Christmas with my family. I'll have proper pictures in two weeks when I get my camera back from my Mum but I can already tell you that it was magical.

I don't feel that Christmas is over yet since Minnie and I will have our own Christmas evening and presents on NYE: she's on nightwatch on the 30th so we decided to have a quiet NYE, just going to the movies and having a nice dinner afterwards. I was never very keen on NYE parties so I'm really happy about this arrangement! I'll wait to have all my gifts before showing you :)

I'll get back to regular posts on tomorrow, but for today, I have my Xmas hands to show you! (sorry for the tiny pic, I can't have it any larger)

Christmas manicure 6 - Gingerbread mani

And finally, here's my last Christmas manicure. What would Christmas be without gingerbread men and women? I love gingerbread and if you remember this post, you know how much I love Gingerbread men. So it was only natural for me to try this manicure. I have a gingerbread man design on one of the latest Bundle Monster stamping plates, but it turned to be too small. So having no fear, I took out my dotting tool and much hated white liner and tried free-handing gingerbread men and women on my nails. 

The French mani and design was done with Nubar Chocolate Coffee Bean. I have to say I'm quite proud of the result! If only I had not ruined it all by being in a hurry and smeared the design a bit with my top-coat :(. But this time, I fully admit my fault... One of my resolutions for 2012 is to be more careful with my nail-arts, so that I can finally be fully satisfied!

This time I'm done with Christmas nail-arts, so I'm wishing you all a very nice Christmas Eve and day, see you on Monday when I'm back!

Christmas manicure 5 - Candy Cane nails

It's Christmas tonight, it's Christmas tonight!!! I'm not home right now, nor at my parents', my Christmas this year is very special, I'll tell you about it when I'm back, but I'm expecting a very magic time!

I didn't want to stay on the "holly fingers" failure, and I really, really like the principle of a feisty French manicure with a Christmas design under, so I tried a couple of other variations. Today it's red and candy canes. Once again, I wouldn't say my nail-art is perfect, I do have to buy good brushes and a new white polish, but I liked the result very much, it's really, really cute! 

I'm sorry about the poor quality of the pics, I finished this manicure late in the evening and took pictures while I had time. 

So the red is China Glaze Ruby Pumps, and then I drew the canes with a white (thick and goopy) liner and did the stripes with Ruby Pumps and a dotting tool.

I still have one variation to show you, I'll publish it later today in case you guys need more inspiration for the big day.

Christmas manicure 4 - Holly Fingers and an epic fail...

It's Christmas tonight!!!!

 

Humility is the path to wisdom and so it auto-derision. So today, I'm gonna show you how nail-art can sometimes be a catastrophy when I'm in command. Two years ago, I saw this nail-art on Tenshi's blog, and it's actually what made me crave for China Glaze's Emerald Sparkle.

So this year, when I wanted to try my hands at some Christmas nail-art, I immediately thought of it. Of course, my nails are nowhere near as long and as beautiful as Tenshi's, but they've grown a bit and I thought I could pull it off. I had forgotten that 1-I'm kinda crap at nail-art but most importantly 2-I don't have the right material. So this is the horror that came out of my endeavour. It might just have been "average" with the holly-leaves being too big, blurry and thick, but then, there was the top-coat catastrophy. I started with my little finger and the design bled. So I waited another ten minutes and tried the ring finger, same story. I waited another ten minutes for the rest, and it still bled, so I gave up, took pics and removed everything.

If you want to copy the idea, feel free, I just hope you'll have better luck than me...

Friends' Friday - Svetlana the Ice-Queen with Frosty Fingers

On Friends' Friday, I either give the pen to a nail-art loving friend who doesn't have a blog, or presenting a blog that I love.

Hello again

I hope you are all well, getting into festive holiday mood and expecting loads of presents. You know, I’m not really getting all worked up for this holiday yet, because Orthodox Christmas is later (7^th January), but I do like to see snow this time of year. I love that I live in the area where seasons are changing, but lately the weather is a bit funky, and you know what… I want my snow in December.

So here’s a bit of “Calling out for snow” nail art, it’s only my first try, so don’t mind a bit of messiness. I’m calling this one “Frosty”.

I used black nail polish as a base (“Golden Rose” 287), applied 2 coats. It’s actually my second favorite black nail polish. On the tip of a nail I sponged up white (“Gabrini” 302) nail polish. When it all dried up I used “Miss Sporty” Top Coat for a glossy finish.

That’s it from me, I’m wishing you all a Merry Christmas, hope you all get nice presents. Cheers!