Bundle Monster CYO contest winner!

Since I wrote last time, I've had a bit of good news.

In March Bundle Monster had a competition for this year's Create your own plates, so I did some designs. I ended up sending 5 drawings - 4 of dinosaurs and a paper plane. 

As it turned out 3 of them were picked! As far as I could see, the fourth dinosaur could either have been tweaked or it is an entirely new design - but three of them I am sure are my mine. It is pretty awesome.

They just announced on Facebook that they sent out all the prices - so in a few weeks, they'll be in my hands. I'm looking so much forward to it!

Update

Aaw, man, I've gotten really bad at this - I keep forgetting the blog.

I started a profile on Instagram some time ago, so I have actually just switched to using that. I just feel like it takes a lot less time than having to edit the pictures on the computer and writing stuff as well.

But I'm still painting, and I've gotten tons of plates, so I think I might just make some posts on them in the future :)

London haul!

I've just been on a vacation to London. I went with my boyfriend and we had a great time. We saw lots of things and my boyfriend was so sweet to go with me to all kinds of different places to find nail polish. I'm amazed he wasn't sick of me at the end of the week.

We went to something like 7 different Boots to find Sinful Colors - I really wanted some! After the 4th we found out they were on clearance and that's when I bought 8 lacquers. They were only 69 pence a lacquer - I couldn't resist that!

We ended up going back another 2 times to buy more, since we didn't find any in other Boots stores. I was pretty sad about that. I love Sinful Colors, so I had hoped to find a lot more than I did. I ended up with 15 different ones.

We went to a lot of other places, but I only found polishes I wanted in KIKO and Superdrugs. We also went to Illamasqua, Selfridges, Poundland and TK Maxx, but either the polishes were nowhere to be seen or waay to expensive.

In KIKO I only bought 2 polishes, one cupcake polish that was on sale and one regular prices one.

In Superdrugs I found a big display with Nicole by OPI, but they were 9 pounds, so that wasn't really a steal. My boyfriend saw one he really liked, so I bought that one. Then I found one from Barry M, one from Bourjois and finally one from MUA.

Amazing nailmail!

YEEESSSSSS! I got my Zoyas the other day! And they are just as pretty as I had hoped they would be.

I got 12 all in all, and I have not worn a single one of them yet, but they are absolutely beautiful!

Here they are with names. Might be a little hard to read, but I tried my best. And I just noticed that they are in a different order down here. Oops.

Zoya haul

From left to right they are:  London, Godiva, Arabella, Dahlia, Nyx, Cosmo, Lux, Monet, Rue, Harley, Dream and Payton.


I am looking SO much forward to using them. Yayy!

Speckled Eggs and a horrible mess

About a month ago I got the three Models Own polishes I'd been wanting ever since seeing them for the first time. I was so happy! I got two of them on Boots since the last one was sold out, and then I got the last one from Asos when they first started selling them there. Here they are - All are pretty pastels with black glitters in two sizes.

Models Own - Swan, Dove and Duck

When I lined them up to take photos, I noticed the crooked lids. Swan and Dove both have crooked lids which I found odd. I tried to screw them off and on a couple of times, but nothing worked, so I guess that's just how they are made.

Here is a plain manicure with Duck which I wore about 4 or 5 days - It still looks great and I had no problems with chipping. Here are 3 coats with a layer of Poshé. It had a really long drying time even with top coat. I could still see tiny dents after 2 hours. They would even out, but I had to be careful so it wouldn't smudge. That was really disappointing. And then the application was a mess! I've written a bit about it after the mani picture.
 

I actually started with Swan. When I put it on one night, I was sick and home alone, so I was just laying on the couch watching Netflix. I took my time and let the polish dry before doing anything. After having washed my hands, I of course dried them. This is what happened:

I had let them dry for 3 hours and they seemed fine, but they just weren't dry underneath it all. Man, I was mad. I had been fighting with a bad formula and horrible application, so I was mad that I had wasted so much time on this, when most of the nails were ruined.

About the horrible formula, here is what the polish looked like after the second coat. It started being stringey and goopey, which gave a horrible application. It was so thick and almost impossible to put on. I thought it was just Swan that was horrible, so when I tried Duck the next day, I was really dissapointed. And that's when I decided to take a couple of photos of it.

It's a bit hard to see in this photo, but there is a tiny string hanging from the brush. And look at the bottle neck - it looks horrible! I might be a little slow putting on the polish, but I've never tried this before. And it had never been used before!

Here is just a final photo of the same problem. Here the stringey "effect" is very obvious, and the goopey neck is also very easy to see here. I have kind of given up on these for now. Also I think they are very Eastery, so I'll probably just put in the drawer to shame them till next year.

Stash increased by 500 %

I started my "real" journey into the polish world a little over a year ago, and my stash has increased A LOT since then. Some time ago I found an old picture from when I had just gotten my first batch of swatch sticks.
It looks like this:

Here are the polishes I had back then. It is from the 28th of March 2013. That was all I used back then - Mostly black - Gosh Nero - which I had a couple of bottles of just to make sure I didn't run out. I think I had used up 3 or 4 of them back then - which says a lot, since I've not used up a single one of my other polishes yet.
I had "a lot" of pinks, because I tried to find the perfect neon pink. I never found it, but I did get my hands on Essie Pink Parka, which I found to be really horrible. It was the reason for me to ban Essie from then on. I have opened up to a few of them since, but only because they were on sale and so many people swear on them.

And this was also before I knew of anything called top or base coat. And my nails would constantly break back then. I have a nail that is permanently damaged and therefore a brittle, which was always short. For years I had tried to make it grow to look nice just as the other nails but to no avail. So most of the time I would just be mad at that one nail and let all the others be long, because they could!



It all started when I saw this one polish from OPI. I was in love and HAD to find it somewhere. I searched all over and apparently it had been discontinued. I eventually found it on eBay, where I bought it. It is no. 9 on the picture - Teenage Dream. I still love it and have bought myself a backup since it has increased a lot in price since then

Next I found RedditLaqueristas on Reddit, which drew me into this deep black hole of neverending lemmings. And this is where it has brought me a year later - on the 28th of March 2014:

Oops! And now I am also obsessed with stamping plates - I'm pretty sure, I'll go broke some day.

Second bird mani

Since I wasn't really happy with my last mani with the birds, I tried again a week or so after.

I wanted to do a sky in the background, so I used a light blue and a white to make a gradient. Both were from Sinful Colors, the blue Morning Star and the white Snow White. They applied great - I love Morning Star, but it is starting to get a bit thick, so I'll probably thin it out the next time I use it.

I used almost the same motives as the last time to do the mani.

Here is my left hand:

I think it turned out much better than the last one, and I was actually pretty proud of this one. My boyfriend thought it was really cool, which was nice. Usually he doesn't really pay attention to my nails - he thinks it is a bit silly to use so much time only to change it 3-4 days later.