Adorned Nail: KOH Cloudy

KOH Elements is the third special collection to be released by the brand this year. This first polish that I'm wearing here has been christened KOH Cloudy. To be honest, it doesn't look terribly cloudy to me. If anything, it's pristine white and quietly sparkly.

With its glass flecks, it pretty much belongs in the same family as several polishes from the Sexy collection - KOH Pleasure (yellow), KOH Sensual (mint green) and KOH Tease (coral). This jelly applied effortlessly and I have three coats on here. I did very thin coats on the little finger, which explains for the visible nail line.

As I'm not big on white nail polishes, I desperately felt the need to embellish my nails with some stamping. I used this right-angled leafy design on the B21 plate from Chez Delaney and a cobalt blue KONAD stamping polish.

The result: something like a Delft Blue painting of a vine.

Cloudy was kindly provided by KOH Cosmetics.


Here is the whole KOH Elements collection in a row:

L-R:
KOH Cloudy
KOH Leaf
KOH Fire
KOH Earth
KOH Mediterranean Sea
KOH Heavenly

Next Elements polish: KOH Heavenly

Adorned Nails: Essence Applause, Applause

I'm taking a short break from blue nail polishes. It's Chinese New Year today and of course, no Chinese New Year is complete without the auspicious colour red.

I've got just the perfect red to welcome the Year of the Dragon. I've deliberately kept this polish for this ocassion: Applause, Applause from the Essence Circus Circus collection. You might remember the pink crème/glitter duo (stick) called Essence Cotton Candy. Well, Applause, Applause is its red counterpart.

The red crème applied beautifully, almost like jelly. I did two coats.

And then, you have the glitter half. I didn't want to do the same thing as before (with Cotton Candy) - blanketing the entire crème with the glitter polish. I gave it red glitter French tips instead. I freehanded it by pulling the brush from one side of the nail to the other.

But I'm not done yet.

I need some gold on this to complete the look. I used this Chinese-like lattice design from the Chez Delaney plate T05 and stamped it at the crème/glitter border with a gold polish from the PUPA Crackle Nail Art Kit.

To everyone ushering in the Year of the Dragon, Happy Chinese New Year!

Adorned Nails: KOH Bohemian Chic

More KOH! There'll be quite a few posts on KOH this week as I go through the KOH Vintage Jeans collection.

KOH Bohemian Chic is the third one to be featured. Just like the previous two, KOH Rock Chick and KOH Romantic Flair, this one's a crème as well. The formula is nice and creamy, and it went on smoothly. As usual, I did two coats.

Bohemian Chic is a slate blue, sometimes I think it looks more grey than blue.

I wanted to add some simple nail art to this. I took out KOH Matt which I haven't used for quite a while and applied a thick band on the nail tips (I just painted it in one or two sure strokes across the nail).

Initially, I thought of leaving it at that - thick, matt French tips - but I felt that it was missing something.

So, I chose this stamping design from the Chez Delaney plate B100 and stamped it in line with the border of the matt tips using the baby blue of Romantic Flair. Do note though that this baby blue is not meant as a stamping polish, so don't expect the stamped design to appear bright and vivid on the nails.

The final result is a somewhat subtle nail design on matt French tips. You know that I like subtlety.

This polish was kindly provided by KOH Cosmetics.

Previous Vintage Jeans polish: KOH Romantic Flair
Next Vintage Jeans polish: KOH Casual Blue

Don't forget to check out my ongoing KOH Giveaway featuring the classic, KOH Red, and the newbie, KOH Woodstock Green.

Adorned Nails: Essence Into The Dark

I know, I know. It's Vampire's Love overkill this week. Bear with me. I'm almost done. This is the second last one.

Essence Into The Dark is a dark denim blue with silver micro glitters. It looks darker on the nails than in the bottle and that's probably due to the silver micro glitters floating more conspicuously in the bottle.

I've got the usual two coats on here.

Of course, a dark blue polish calls for some silver stamping! They always go well together. I used this design from the Chez Delaney plate B101 and the silver Essence Nail Art Stampy Polish which I bought months back but have never used.

This polish is featured in my ongoing giveaway. Try your luck!

The other three Essence Vampire's Love polishes featured:
Gold Old Buffy
Hunt Me If You Can
The Dawn Is Broken

Adorned Nails: HEMA Nailpolish No. 10

You've heard of HEMA before. It's a Dutch departmental store chain that offers budget-friendly products. The quality isn't that bad either.

In the shade

I've had this green polish for weeks but it just got pushed further and further to the back of the line. Blame it on Catrice? This green polish with the grand name of No. 10 (sorry, no memorable name here) was very appropriately a summer release. The vivid green so perks me up every time I look at it! I have two coats on. The nail line is visible in some of these photos due to the strong sunshine.

I think it looks amazing in the sun.

I haven't done any nail art stamping for a while. I just realised that the last one was almost six months ago with the cherry blossoms on the KONAD M66 plate. I felt like doing some stamping on this green polish. I chose this stalk of thorny, edgy flower from the Chez Delaney B101 plate.

I thought this was a good opportunity to try some bi-colour stamping. I'd wanted to try this for a long time ever since I saw it in a KONAD video last year, when I was still pretty new with stamping.

Other than the green base polish, I used:

• Red polish - Alessandro Stiletto Nail Polish No. 21
• Black stamping polish - KONAD
• Burnt orange polish - Catrice Rusty But Sexy
• Chez Delaney Plate B101
• Dotting tool - Essence (a simple toothpick would also do)

I'm sure many of you already know how to do bi-colour stamping. For the benefit of those who don't, the following is all you need to know.

Apply the two polishes on the respective areas and then scrape off the polishes parallel to the polish strokes so that the two colours don't get mixed. Stamp as usual. Then use the dotting tool to apply dots to the centre of the flowers. Apply a top coat, if you wish.

This was how it turned out.

I hope you like it.

Adorned Nails: Arcancil Bleu Demoniak

Don't be fooled by the name. This is really just a blue crème nail polish. It's a blue so dark you'd think it's black. I know some of you think it's way too foreboding and perhaps lacking in character, but oh, I love Bleu Demoniak. I'm convinced now that I was born with a dark soul.

Application was problem-free and I did two coats here. If you're not too convinced that it's a blue, here's evidence that it is. Thank you, sun.

Right, a nail polish this broody and with a name like that definitely deserves a foreboding stamping design. I found it in Fauxnad plate T04 from Chez Delaney. I have loved this dragon design ever since I first set my eyes on it. I think Bleu Demoniak provides a great backdrop for it. The silver polish used for the stamping is an old discontinued polish from Catrice called Silver Moon (I've used it for stamping several times before).

I didn't want to have too many dragons on my nails, so I placed it only on the ring fingers. On the other nails, I stamped only the 'wing' part of the dragon, just for design's sake.

Less than a week more to go to enter the Arcancil Nail Polish Giveaway! Check it out here.

Christmas Greetings

How do you like my very simple Christmas manicure? I don't know how to draw Santa freehand.......wait, let's rephrase that. I don't know how to draw. Period. Of all the stamping images I've got, this is the only one that comes close to looking Christmasy (it's from Chez Delaney's H28 plate). I'd like to think of it as a reindeer, a reindeer galloping somewhere in Lapland.

It's tempting, but let's leave the nail polish for another day. Right now, I'd like to wish all my readers and friends peace and joy this Christmas.

Have a blessed and Merry Christmas! Prettige Kerstdagen!

Adorned Nails: Etos Longlasting Nailpolish No. 23

It's not quite gold and it's not quite mud.

Frankly, I don't think this is a colour that easily catches your eye at the makeup counter. I don't know how many times I'd stood at the Etos makeup counter and missed this bottle of polish! For those who do not yet know, Etos is a Dutch drugstore chain. However, as fate would have it, I did spot this muddy shade one day. I was quite struck by how quaint it looked.

I've been thinking about this for a long time. It suddenly dawned on me (while doing my grocery shopping) that Etos Longlasting Nailpolish No. 23 is like the colour of the brown-green skin of the green kiwifruit, not hairy but shimmery! Most peculiar indeed. I like that.

This polish applied without problems. I did two coats and it was already opaque. Is it as hardy as the name suggests? Well, it is my second day with the polish today and considering that I haven't at all been dainty with my fingers doing chores, I haven't seen any chipping yet. There is no top coat, by the way.

As for stamping, I'm taking a break from images of flora (read: temporarily bored with them). I chose this image from the Fauxnad plate T05, a Chinese-like lattice design. Aaah, you'd think it's just a simple straight line. I already know I can't draw. Apparently, I can't stamp a straight line either! [sheepish grin]

I used a yellow KONAD stamping polish. The image stamped is not that obvious, but it's just right for those who prefer subtle nail art. I like that too.

This Etos polish is in Prize Package 2 (Dark) of the KOH and Co. Giveaway. Try your luck at winning it!

Adorned Nails: SpaRitual Epicurean

Rich, broody, vampy. That’s SpaRitual Epicurean for you.

Red wine, burgundy, ordinary. Ahh, that’s also quite true.

Epicurean has a shimmer finish. While I do see its general shimmer, the individual shimmer particles that give it an inner glow aren’t so easy to discern. Unless, of course, you viewed it with flash. It’s ordinary because well, it’s no special burgundy, but still, I think it’s beautiful. I’ve always had a soft spot for burgundies.

Just like all other SpaRitual nail polishes that I’ve tried, Epicurean went on beautifully – no streaks, no fuss. Just two coats. Lovely.

I thought I’d do a bottle comparison (sorry, ladies, I’m simply too lazy to do a comparison on my nails) showing the difference in the shades of three SpaRitual colours.

L-R:
Drop Dead Gorgeous is daring, a fuschia with shimmer .
Epicurean is vampy, a burgundy with shimmer.
I Feel The Earth Move is somber, a crème blackish maroon-brown.

I thought I’d spice things up a bit with some stamping. Epicurean.....doesn’t that also mean lavish, luxurious? I must seem audacious for calling Epicurean ordinary (oops, another oxymoron!), but never mind. I’ve paired it up with a gold nail polish from SpaRitual, appropriately named Gold Digger. For the image, I’ve used the only full-nail image I’ve got, one of a viney plant. It’s from a Fauxnad plate, H28.

Well! I think Epicurean looks most suitably epicurean now!