Delicious duochrome - layering with Nfu-oh 51 and Revlon Royal

Coming back to kickass duochromes - Nfu-oh 51. A purple jelly base with iridescent purple to green to gold flakies and a scattered pigment of the same nature. This polish colorshifts like nobody's business and it's great! I've shown it here before, but this time... I can show you the full range!

It's layered over Revlon Royal. 

Let's start with this:

Looks purple, right?

Wait a minute

You can see the gold in this

Oooh there it goes!

Nothing better than wearing a few colors at once, eh?

Nubar - Indigo Illusion

Oh my god... this is the strangest polish

Today is an especially picture-heavy update. Click read more to see the rest of the post/photos.

Essence - Chic Reloaded

I gotta admit - Essence has to be one of my favorite new polish brands I've started to find about drugstores. Not only do they start their short lineup with glitters, a pink and peachy nude, basic cremes and nice glitter, but also two duochromes!

I've had the pleasure of wearing Where's The Party? before and it's awesome! Since it did not disappoint, I went and got Chic Reloaded.

It's a much darker duochrome with a charcoal base, turqoise to purple duochrome shift and some scattered green glitters. The formula is a bit watery, but it works well with the big brush Essence uses. Dried nice and fast, wore strong for 3 days with no chipping and major tipwear. I'm extremely happy with this polish, especially since it only cost two dollars!

The color shift was notoriously difficult to capture - it is more evident in the bottle, but is still strong on the nail.

Where's the purple? Apparently doesn't show up with flash, but I hope this shows the texture of the polish well.

Color Club - Twiggie and bunny

Here is something I don't normally post about - greens! This is my favorite green this year, a perfectly bright, creamy, playful green. The creme is a bit thin, but evens out nicely after 3 coats. Thinner formula helps it glide along longer nails easier, but it isn't so liquid that it floods cuticles. If anything. Twiggie makes me happy. Maybe it's the way the color looks on my skin tone or now many compliments it gets - Twiggie is a wonderful find for me this summer and I'm happy I found it. 

Do you have a favorite green?

ELF Mint Cream and Daiso shimmer

ELF Mint cream is something I've had for a long time but have not tried, simply because I didn't feel like a green for a while. This has the thick, 1-2 coat formula ELF cremes have; dries fast and chips easy. However, for 2$ it isn't a problem for me, the formula is worth it alone. Seems like this is making my skin look very red, but it looked nice in person nevertheless! To spice it up, I'm wearing a shimmer polish from Daiso, its a transparent-white polish chock full of blue-to-green shifting shimmer. Over cremes, it creates a nice and subtle shimmer, which I have come to like a while lot. 

If you're looking for a shimmery effects polish like the one from Daiso, I've found them to be an almost-alternative to CND Effects polishes. However, CND effects creates dense, full-on color changing shimmer and Daiso polishes create a very subtle, sparse shimmer, while still remaining slightly duochrome. 

Holographic and Duochrome mish-mash experiment

*drool* Rainbows!

I saw the Ozotic mish-mash polished swatched at Nailderella and I was inspired to try something similar on my own. For the base, I used OPI Just Spotted the Lizard from the Spiderman collection and HITS Hefesto holographic topcoat.It didn't turn out as holographic as I hoped, but I could have always done more coats of Hefesto. I want to keep experimenting with this and different duochromes to see which will have the strongest effect! 

Duochromes are probably my favourite finish of them all... I love them more than any polishes. What is your favourite duochrome polish of all time?

OPI - Just Spotted the Lizard! Spiderman 2012 Collection

Check dat color shift!

**I am giving away a brand new bottle of this polish for my 400 follower giveaway!**

OPI Just Spotted the Lizard is a lovely green-gold duochrome with flashes of teal and blue. I'd say this is the crown jewel of the Spiderman 2012 collection, as other fail to impress me (maybe except Number One Nemesis). I'm so happy OPI is doing more duochromes and I hope they keep at it.

The formula starts a bit thin but builds nicely in 3 coats. The finish is metallic, but it's very forgiving with brushstrokes. It dries relatively well, doesn't feel chunky or runny and wear great! I wore this for 3 days before removing it, it was still good as new!

As always, the bottle looks so much more amazing due to the thick glass, but I still love this polish. I saw a few comparisons before and it looks like an exact dupe for Chanel Peridot! That makes me feel even better.

What's your favorite duochrome? 

Feather nails

I've been wanting to give feather nails a try, so I picked up a nice bag of craft feathers and went to town!

I used ELF Mint Cream as a base, 2 blue and 2 green feathers. I applied the base colour and while it was still wet, applied feathers on top and pushed them down a bit with my finger. After it "set", I added a topcoat and then cut away the rest of the feather and filed down the edges to be smooth. After that, I applied another layer of topcoat, masking the texture and giving it a glassy look.

I did not file the edges smooth enough, so it ended up being a bit of a hassle wearing these nails. Other than that, they turned out really pretty! I need to try it with some peacock feathers and other colours... mm.
Actually, I just very recently got Mint Cream from ELF online and it's so cute. It's almost too green for me, but thankfully there's enough blue to balance it out. Here it is by itself:

Mmm, minty! Has anyone else tried doing feather nails here?

OPI - I Have a Herring Problem - Holland 2012

OPI - I Have a Herring Problem is the polish I've been looking forward to the most in the OPI Holland 2012 spring collection! It was a tie betwee I Don't Give a Rotterdam!  and Herring Problem, but Herring won because of the name. Read on for more pics of this baby!

Nicki Minaj - OPI Fly

OPI Fly is a lovely turquoise creme, it's a bit darker in person and a little bit dustier.

The application is nearly perfect, 2 coats and it's solid. Dries fast and glossy. I really liked the way it looked on my hands, even though I am not usually a fan of greenish colours at all.This was blue enough to please me and look fantastic on my skin! This is easily my favourite out of the Nicki Minaj minis, it's the star of the show!

OPI Nicki Minaj Minis swatches

Want to win a set of Nicki Minaj minis?
Visit my Giveaway! (until March 26 2012)

As I promised, here are real swatches of the Nicki Minaj minis box shown here.

I found Fly (turquoise) to have the best formula and application, two coats and it was solid, dried wonderfully! Pink Friday was not as opaque as I thought. It was thick but still showed streaks. Took 3 coats and dried slowly. Did it on 'Em (green) was the wateriest of the 3, but dried very fast and I didn't mind it. It took 3 coats as well. Save Me, the pretty bar glitter, was a little chunky but I sort of liked the bright lime colour. It looks absolutely fantastic in person though, much more than it does in the photos. If you're a fan of rainbows and glitter, this one is a winner. 

In regards to the upcoming giveaway, I'm still trying to set it up in terms of forms and etc. I want to use Google Forms, but unsure how to get it all together. If anything. I should be able to figure it out soon.  Does anyone have any tips?

OPI - Nicki Minaj collection minis

How pretty is that packaging? So shiny.

Ahh yes...the new Nicki Minaj Collection.

I really wanted Metallic 4 Life though, but wherever I go, it's all gone...all sold out. So to sate my hunger, I have bought a box of OPI minis for the first time. Notice how the box says Metallic 4 Life when in the bottle it's clearly Save Me? I have no idea what the heck but that is one pretty box. 

Essie Turquoise and Caicos and Nfu-oh 40

Essie Turquoise and Caicos has been something I've looked at and put back multiple times before and finally decided to pick it up a while back. I layered it with my new flakies, Nfu-oh 40, a blue to green and purple color shift.

TaC is a minty fresh light green creme, applies a bit streaky at the start but evens out very nice in 3 coats. It dries smooth and does not chip easily.  TaC is more blue-leaning than other minty greens I've encountered, so the green-ness did not clash with my skintone, no lobster hands! This is a plus. It's very airy and fresh, definitely a spring color for me.

When I layered it with nfu-oh 40, the flakies took a very green quality with a blue flash. This also has added a lot of green to the polish color itself, but it wasn't too drastic. Overall, I do like the combo and will be trying these flakies over other polish as well!

Video game nails Kirby, Sonic, Megaman and Mario mushrooms!

hurf durf left hand

This is what I spent my Saturday doing...absolutely nothing AND video game nails! Also my left hand is looking ridiculously wonky but the nail shape fits much better. I did this with dotting tools, and some help from brush shapes (thank YOU SH- whirlwind white for your round brush). I've been meaning to do video game nails forever, but I was lacking a yellow since I'm still away from most of my stash... Had to make do with the cremes I acquired in the last month. Also had to pick and choose characters I can do based on what color I got (sorry Pacman and Pikachu ), but I think it turned out decent! I'm hoping to do some Pokemon manis once I get my stash back...hmm...what else?

China Glaze - L8R G8R linear holo

This is another polish I picked up at my last dusty, from the China Glaze OMG collection... L8R G8R!

It's a lime green linear holo...so beautiful. The holographic particles are so fine and small, it's basically a seamless rainbow effect. And the best part is that I found basically a FULL bottle! I went a little nuts with the pictures but they still don't capture its beauty perfectly, which is really too bad. I've never seen anything like it before, especially on the thumbs. Wow! Enjoy the multitude of pics~

L'Oreal - Owl's Night and nfu-oh 38

L'Oreal Owl's Night is something I picked up on a whim, I really loved the way it looked in the bottle! A beautiful deep olive, chock full of slightly greenish golden shimmer...at least that's what it seemed like. On the nail, shimmer is much more subdued and it comes out looking more brown than olive. If you look closer, it's still that mysterious olive base with gold shimmer. Application is okay, nothing notable. Takes 2 coats to fully show up, but I used 3 for max opacity. It dries a little gritty, but a topcoat helps a great deal. I did not like the way it looked at first but then it grew on me a little bit. It's a very sophisticated color, subtle and neutral yet still edgy and dark. 

check dat color shift!

I decided to layer some flakies over it as well (nfu-oh 38) to give it a bit of flair. I find that the flakies work VERY well on this polish, since it gives way to the orange color a lot more than green. The combo reminds me of fallen leaves... very autumn-y!

Missha HGR01 and Konad

Missha HGR01 is one of my favourite duochromes, even if I don't  really like green. This polish is cool toned green to blue, with hints of gold. This polish hits close to home, since it reminds me of my favourite insect - the green beetle (Cetonia Aurata). It's a two-coater and smells like roses! The topcoat diminishes the smell or it goes away after a day or so, but I find it super nice and girly. Formula is great. Not thick but still opaque, its extremely finely milled metallic shimmer is beautiful. It does not show streaks and doesn't chip very easily. The brush is HUGE but it helps cover the entire nail, which is useful for longer nails. The big cap is a little hard to hold but I didn't mind too much. HGR01 is somewhat similar to Chanel Peridot, but it's more green-blue as opposed to green-yellow duochrome Peridot has.

Absolutely beautiful color, it's even better in person...My most favourite green!

Sexy bomb s62 Korean polish and comparison

S62 is a seawater blue-green base with lots of blue foil shimmer. Applies smoothly, it's a bit watery but that makes the really wide brush work, since it keeps flowing down the brush and you don't have to dip it in the bottle for the next nail. This is also sort of a foil, like many Sexy Bombs are. In the bottle, it shines purple on the edges a little, but on the nail it's a shimmering mermaid blue and I love it!

I also have Wet 'n Wild Teal of fortune in my stash and they look quite similar in the bottle. I did tape swatches and turns out WnW is much more green and has glass fleck, where Sexy Bomb has metallic shimmer.

Sexy Bomb s66

S66 is much more of a foil than the other Sexy Bombs. It's a green base with a LOT of light green shimmer.

On on the nail, it's a salad-green foil, very reflective and fresh! I've never seen a foil like this myself, so it was a welcome surprise.  Most of the color is the foil shimmer, so application was good, but a little patchy due to larger particles. There is a TINY flash of light gold in this color, as seen on the pinky and more so in the bottle. Since this is a true foil, taking it off was a bit of a pain but I still love foils :D

Overall, I like this salad foil. It isn't a bright color but I like using it as a base for nail art.