A simple holiday mani

A very simple one, since I'm still not feeling 100%. I just layered one coat of Twinkle Lights (China Glaze) over BeYu 306, that I'm already wearing for a couple of days now. I planned to do a very cool holiday gradient, but now I just don't feel like doing my nails at all.

I wish you all happy holidays!

My Awesome Beauty Competition mani

Hei everyone! How are you doing on this very hot day? I'm doing my nails ATM and I remembered I wanted to mention Sophie's competition early enough for you to participate too (in case you haven't yet). Well, you still have today and tomorrow until 10 am. And that is enough time, btw! Here's the deal. In case any of you don't know Sophie: she owns My Awesome Beauty blog.  A beautiful blog with a beautiful author, her blog is versatile, fun and holds incredible photographs. I do recommend you visit it! Nail wise she does awesome designs with great colour combinations. I always wanted to recreate them, but you know how I am with time and my nail art ... until the competition started. You have to recreate one of the two patterns, but with your own ideas. I got hooked immediately and searched for inspiration. That's how I finally discovered that the designs are actually very user-friendly and that they don't take much time, so they're in my nail art book now! 

In short: my inspiration was the Eye of Sauron, that's why it is in the background of the pictures. Beyu 209 with Essie flakies on top represent the lava of Mount Doom, the gold is for the One Ring and the orange Finger Paint seemed a better combination than the predictable red or yellow for the eye. So I mixed them in an orange colour. ;)  I played with the pictures a bit before I sent them, here you'll see them separated.

Really wonky position of my fingers, Finger Paints bottles are not nice for holding. 

I liked the result, I didn't get tired of this mani until it looked to tired so I basically had to remove it. It's a bit blingy, but I wanted that. And yes, it's another geek inspiration for me, but frankly when you walk into my room, Tolkien is pretty much the first thing you notice. That and nail polish. So they're bound to come together every once in a while. And btw, yes, that's an actual poster of the Eye, my BF thought I photoshoped it, I didn't. :P 

Enter the competition! You have enough time and the prizes are wonderful! Good luck to all of you and Sophie, thanks for the chance!

Thank you for reading!

BeYu 209

Yeah, you're gonna hate me for this one, won't you? You've seen it a million times, but now it's my turn to show it to you! I'm incredibly lucky when it comes to getting nail polish. Even when I completely give up on it or don't even consider trying to get it, a very nice girl contacts me, saying she can sent it to me in a swap. An offer I couldn't refuse was made and so now I have this beauty. So utterly gorgeous. I did a bunch of photos for ya, I couldn't decide which one to post, so I'm posting more of them. After I finished with taking pictures I sat down on the couch, basking in the sun, realising this baby looks ah-mazing in direct sunlight, so I made quick video of the sparkle play too. Hope you like it!

 A very wonky picture to show you the subtle multichrome effect.

Direct sunlight. It's on fire!

And the video, direct sunlight.

I layered BeYu 209 over Revlon Royal, it seems like most bloggers advise this combo. I've shown you Royal before, but those pictures turned out pretty horrible. I didn't do much better this time either, but still better than before. You know it anyway, it's utterly gorgeous blue jelly. Get it!

Two coats of Revlon Royal, two coats of BeYu 209 and it was love. Layering it over blue even satisfies my wish for Max Factor Fantasy Fire. :)

Do you have this BeYu? Are you on the 'unicorn pee' waggon?

Thank you for reading!

Red comparison week - 2nd day: dark wine/blood reds: 4

Hey people! How are you doing? I'm great, just discovered perfect crackle combination, woohoo! Depend rocks, it's official. Now, you may be thinking blood and wine red are a bit far off for a comparison. And you're right. They are. But, as it happens, these 4 bottles got me thinking they're all wine reds. Nope! Come to think of it, I'll probably need to use half of them with my blood reds also. I have this feeling those two mix when you look at the bottles. We'll see. I'm glad I have half ot these already done, because I'm running out of time like crazy! So lets go to the pictures. Please excuse my cuticle state, I'm not happy with it at all. Oh, and about poor application with Essence - I blame the brush, thankyouverymuch. ;)

I don't think these came out in collections at all, except Thirsty! of course, being a part of last years Essence LE Eclipse Twilight Saga Collection.

When it comes to B3F question, I can only tell you what you already know - RBL does not contain any of the harmful ingredients, and as for the others only what I can smell - they all smell like good ol' ancient bottle of polish - RBL, on other hand has one of my favourite smells of polish. It acutally smells like paint. I'm a bit surprised by the bad smell of other three, as BeYu is an expensive brand, but I couldn't find any info online (or official site of BeYu, for that matter).

Brush: I love Rescue Beauty Lounge brush. I never have a problem with them although Atame was a bit uneven. When it comes to both Essence, you can already see by my application I really dislike the brush. This comparison was actually my first try of Multi Dimension Essence line and the Eclipse one. I've already read about Multi Dimension bad brush, so I kinda expected it. It wasn't the worst I tried though. BeYu - nothing to complain about.

Coats: With the exception of Late At Night all needed 3 coats, LAN 2. They are nicely pigmented, just really uneven. I think Thirsty! could use the fourth one, since it's still a bit uneven. Since three coats are due to uneveness of my application, not pigmentation, you can count on 2 with smaller nails or indeed a better application. Especially Atame is gorgeously pigmented, like most of RBL.

Dupability: Oh yes! Two on two, baby! The much wanted Thirsty! from Eclipse collection is a dupe of an old Essence Late At Night - I can't see it on their page anymore, so it's possible that it's already discontinued too. 

RBL Atame has a dupe in BeYu 306. Funny thing is, I compared BeYu more than a year ago with few other reds ... it was a beginning of my swatching career and the pictures are so awful, I won't show them to you, but I can 100% guarantee that BeYu 306 is a 100% dupe of ArtDeco 42 (too old to be a B3F) and Jessica Midday Rendezvous (B3F). So a chain: RBL Atame = BeYu 306 = ArtDeco 42 = Jessica Midday Rendezvous. I'm not sure how much that helps, since they're all pretty expensive though ... hope it does! 

I'm sure one or the other will show up in other comparisons too, as I mixed them wrongly. If you have any comparison requests, let me know! I love both the colours, so I'm really glad I have one of each. :)

Do you have any of the four, or rather, 6, with all the added dupes? :) 

Thank you for reading!

Nfu Oh 49 (over O.P.I. DS Tapestery + accent mani)

Hey guys! I have no idea how to form a title for this one, as I do have layering with Nfu Oh, accent mani and then also black crackle over one nail. :) So it's a lot of variation. I saw new promo pics on nail blogsphere today of new Zoya collections. Have you seen it? Doesn't it look awesome? Mattes and the two summer collections. I really love Zoyas uniqueness when it comes to their colours, they refuse to follow other brands. They look pretty awesome. I totally want green and blue matte! Which reminds me I still need to get red, black, silver and purple one. Lol. Wow! Good luck with that, eh? Maybe I'll do major matte haul when the new ones come out. U, also promo pics from Orly look good! Pin Up and Happy Go Lucky are the collections, I think. I like the green and purple glitter most, we'll see how the swatches will turn out. :) But to todays mani!

 Up and below I did quick shots of combination with p2 black crackle, just to see how it works out. And I really love it! I'll probably do a full one like this soon. Mind you, this was taken after 4 days of wearing! I'm noticing tip wear is down to a minimum with Nfu Oh base coat, usually I had this kind of tip wear after a day or two.

Ok, so, this was 1 coat of Nfu Oh Base Coat, 2 coats of O.P.I. DS Tapestery, one coat of Nfu Oh 49 and then SV. On my ring finger insted of Tapestery BeYu 306.

When I first applied it, I thought I made a mistake, as 49 and Tapestery are pretty close. But I really started to love it after a while. I wore it for 5 days, so yeah, you could say I pretty much loved the combination. :) It looks awesome on direct sunlight, since Tapestery is a holo varnish, and flakies really explode on the sunlight. I think all in all it's a good combination, I loved it especially as a base for crackle. But the one I really must do as a full mani is with BeYu 306 or any other kind of dark red. Flakies really come alive on dark base. 

I think that's just a bout it. Any other questions? And ideas for a combination? Thoughts on new Zoya and Orly collections? :) 

Thank you for reading!