Cirque vous emmène en voyage dans une bien jolie caravane...

 Bonjour les filles! Je reviens gentiment après la semaine dernière qui fut très mouvementée et le week-end qui fut génial mais épuisant. J'avoue, j'ai un peu de mal, beaucoup de travail, et des ongles pas en super forme dernièrement, donc ça va pas être simple!
Aujourd'hui, je vais vous parler un peu de ma copine Bab. Vous l'avez déjà aperçue sur ce blog vu qu'elle m'envoie de temps en temps les photos de ses manucures (c'est une super pro du stamping, bien meilleure que moi!), et c'est LA super copine chez qui je dors quand je vais à Paris, elle me traite tellement comme une princesse que ça joue beaucoup dans le fait que j'aille à Paris si souvent! Les soirées chez Bab, c'est série sur grand écran en se faisant des manucures avec des litres de thé, que demander de plus?

Mais en plus, Bab, régulièrement quand je viens chez elle, me dit "oh, tiens, j'ai acheté ce vernis, je l'aime pas, tu  le veux?" (en général je réponds oui, ça ne doit pas vous surprendre). La dernière fois, elle m'a fait le coup avec le Planet Caravan de Cirque, et là, je n'ai pas répondu oui, j'ai répondu un truc du genre "gah". Encore un immense merci à toi ma Bab, t'es la meilleure!!

Une base marron/violette remplie de micro-paillettes violettes, dorées et même un peu vertes. Application facile, il est opaque en deux couches et vraiment très très beau...

 

 

 

Et une fois que j'ai été à la maison, je me suis dit "mais, t'as pas un peu des vernis qui ressemblent?", et j'ai sorti le Tease-y Does It d'OPI (sur l'index) et le Valérie de Zoya sur l'annulaire (je précise quand même que mon Valérie de Zoya a été un peu modifié: je trouvais que les paillettes ne se voyaient pas assez alors après l'avoir utilisé quelques fois, j'ai rajouté du vernis transparent. Vous pouvez aussi le patiner pour avoir cet effet, comme Pshiiit l'explique ici). 

 

Rien à voir, n'est-ce pas?

OPI Burlesque - The Shimmers

I'm sorting out through my draft folder so that I can catch up with my nails' current length and all the new pretty polishes I want to show you. So today I'm presenting the second part of my Burlesque polishes, the shimmers. This is a very pic-heavy post, so be ready!!

First we have Let Me Entertain You, that I already published in comparison with Meep-Meep-Meep and Zoya Allegra. And just like before, no  matter how I do it, it shows red on my recent pictures :(.

So to show you what this polish really looks like, I took out some old pictures from my pre-blog vault, both on its own and with a funky french done with Sally Hansen Pink Rockstar. I have to take out those mittens again, they are so pretty!!

Next we have Teas-y Does It, a fantastic smokey purple/plum packed with multi-coloured glitter. I took many pictures of that pretty because the shimmer is quite hard to catch.

In direct sunlight, you mostly see the brown tones and the golden shimmer.

In indirect light, you see the orange-yellow shimmer, and in the bottle, you can see the smokey effect right at the bottom.

Here the shimmer becomes red and the base colour is leaning towards violet.

And finally with the flash you see the magenta shimmer and the smokey plum colour.

Last star I picked up from the Burlesque collection was The Show Must Go On. Once thought to be a dupe from MAC's Bad Fairy, it's clearly brighter in the pink base and more orange in the shimmer. Sorry for the last blurry pic, it's the best one I could pick up that showed the magenta base.

OPI Burlesque Glitters + comparisons

Are you bored of glitter yet? I hope not, because it's not quite over!! Today you have three for the price of one, as I'm showing you three polishes from OPI's Christmas collection in 2010, Burlesque. When I first saw promo pics from the Muppets collection, I thought it might take the place of my favourite OPI Collection, de-throning the Burlesque collection. But Burlesque is still on top, I have 7 out of 12 polishes in this collection (and only 6 from the Muppets, with two I'm not completely a fan of, Meep-Meep-Meep & Pepe's Purple Passion), with two having back-up bottles. 

You've already seen Sparkle-icious, aka Mardi Gras in a bottle, and I have three others, the purple one, Show it and Glow it, the blue, Simmer and Shimmer and the gold, Bring on the Bling. The Burlesque glitters were all made on the same pattern: fine coloured glitter with silver and some multicoloured particles. They apply easily and are opaque in two to three coats.

As you can see, even if the main colour really shows, you can see multicoloured particles that add a beautiful dimension. Since I love glitters, you might guess I have comparison material.

First for the blue Simmer and Shimmer, with the famous Absolutely Alice from the Alice in Wonderland collection. AA is a magical polish that I will show on its own, because it's really worth it. While Simmer & Shimmer's base colour is pale blue, Absolutely Alice is resolutely turquoise, with only a touch of gold.

I had compared Bring on the Bling with Sparkle-icious in my previous post, and here it is with Color Club Gingerbread.

Gingerbread's base colour is lighter, and while Bring on the Bling can offer good coverage in two coats, it's not quite enough for the CC polish. Both have other colours in their mix, but Bring on the Bling has multicoloured non-shifting colours while Gingerbread has holo glitter, which makes it more versatile.

Friends' Friday - Alizarine Claws with OPI Meep-Meep-Meep

As I'm still trying to catch up with everything I have to show you, I'm gonna shamelessly find a way to make my FF post AND post a new polish. I'm almost not ashamed :p.

So, today I'm presenting you Alizarine Claws, from the Swedelicious Feline. First awesome thing about her is that she's Swedish (yeah for Northern countries!), second is that she changed my blogger's life by making tutorial on camera settings that enabled me to take better pictures, and third is that she uses a pen to clean her nails up after manicures, and I do that too in spite of everyone saying they use a brush. Joking aside, she makes awesome pictures and teaches us Swedish words, and while her blog is quite a recent discovery for me, it was an instant crush.

Just like many English-speaking bloggers, Feline doesn't do much nail-art so I chose a polish to present her, OPI Meep-Meep-Meep. First because it does give alizarine claws, or sort of, and second because this polish showed me what a lovely lady she was: when she presented the Muppets Collection on her blog, I sent her an email asking how MMM compared to Let Me Entertain You from the Burlesque collection. Feline's blog being quite popular, I really didn't expect her to answer my request right away, but she did, how nice is that?

So here is Meep-Meep-Meep in two coats without top-coat:

On the picture below, you will see that MMM suffers from the same defect as Pepe's Purple Passion (is it because both polishes have thrice the same initials??? is there a code there?): the shimmer is made of some small plastic particles that gives it an uneven finish.

In spite of Feline's super comparison job, I decided to do one as well, adding Zoya Alegra to the other two. Alegra and Let Me Entertain You are absolute dupes, and the main difference with MMM is that the latter is not as glossy. In the bottle, MMM seems to have gold particles but they don't translate on the nail. So if you like this kind of color and finish, I can only advice you to go for Alegra or Let Me Entertain You.

If I don't tell you which is which, it's impossible to tell! Alegra is on my pointer, MMM on my middle finger and LMEY on the ring.

OPI Sparkle-Icious + comparison Bring on the Bling

When I decided to cut my nail shorts after the huge break on my thumb (speaking of which, I've almost reached 1mm, so in a week I should be able to start taking pics again), I decided to swatch some polishes before taking out the file, and I went for Colette's policy of "going out with a bling" and I took another beauty from OPI's Burlesque collection, Sparkle-Icious. It's just as mad as Mad as a Hatter, but with golden undertones instead of silver. This polish is carnival in a bottle, and I'm not the only to think so, as you can see here. You see Sparkle-icious in two coats over one coat of gold polish. 

There's another golden glitter in the Burlesque collection, Bring on the Bling, but it's a tiny bit less crazy, the other colours are more in the same spectrum, there's some pale green and orange.