Favorite polishes 2013

I can't believe it's the last day of 2013 today. I wanted to post my favorite polishes for this year somewhere in December, but I didn't expect it to be the very last day... this month just got away from me.

I added quite a few polishes to my stash this year, but I also gave a lot away. I enjoyed so many polishes, but I did manage to pick my top 10 for this year ( I could have picked 50 easily, but I kept it at 10 otherwise this post would have been endless...).

These are in no particular order, I love them all!

OPI My favorite Ornament. I only bought this polish in December, but I wore it 4 times that month and I'm in love! I added this to my shopping cart because I had room for 1 more and I wanted a glittery golden polish for the holidays and this looked nice. When it arrived I fell in love! It's just so gorgeous! Stay tuned for tomorrows post for a full review of this polish.

Essie Butler Please. I just can't get enough of this gorgeous blue and this is the only polish in my stash that I own a back up of.

China Glaze Surfin' for Boys. I wore this polish so much during the summer, it even beats Flip Flop Fantasy in my book! The shimmer in this polish is what makes it stunning.

Deborah Lippmann Lady sings the Blues. I chose this polish, but I love them all. 2013 was the year Deborah Lippmann finally became available in store here and I took full advantage! Her glitter polishes are fenomenal!

Dollish Polish 1,2 Freddy's coming for you! The Dollish Polish Halloween collection was fantastic! I love them all! I think this might be my favorite, but I haven't worn them all, so this might change.

Chanel Taboo. My first high end polish and I was sold. The formula is perfect, it didn't chip and the color... oh, the color... Big winner for me!

China Glaze Pelican Grey. Such a simple, sophisticated polish. Perfect for those times you want something subdued, but the slight shimmer makes it absolutely beautifull. My bottle is half empty allready.

OPI Ink Suede. I love the suede finish and I wish OPI would bring these back.

OPI Solitaire. I'm not the biggest fan of the textured trend, but I do love this one and I have to admit, because they dry so fast, I do reach for them a lot on those days I don't have a lot of time to paint my nails. And come on... I couldn't do a favorites of 2013 without including a liquid sand!

Dior Minuit. Just look at it... the color, the bottle, the formula... I love everything about it!

That's it for this year, all my favorite polishes in one post.
Have a great New Years and I wish you lot's of health, love, happiness and of course polish for 2014!

X

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Mani Monday's: New Years

I can't believe this is the last Mani Monday post for this year! It has gone so fast. I hope you all had a great Christmas and are looking forward to a nice New Years Eve and a fabulous 2014!

For my last mani, I decided to try and paint some fireworks on my nails. Sounds easy and it actually was. But that's only  because I kept it simple. Just 2 colors (besides my black base), but I like it nonetheless.

As I'm typing this post, I can allready here the fireworks. It sounds like New Years allready!

What are your plans?

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#XMASNORULES: Santa

I can't believe this is the last day of our little #XMASNORULES challenge. I had so much fun with all the different mani's and enjoyed seeing all of yours. The theme for this last day is, of course, Santa. I had so many ideas, all of them way to hard for me to do, so I opted for a relatively easy, but fun many.

I painted all my nails red, except my ringfinger and added a nice layer of snow and some snowflakes. On my ringfinger, I started with a green base and added Santa himself :D
I really like how he turned out. His eyes are a little bigger than I wanted, but that gives him kind of a hippy look, or am I the only one who sees the John Lennon glasses?

This might be my favorite of all my nail art attempts, it's just so fun and festive and I love my little Santa. I had an absolute blast and can't wait for next years challenge!

What was your favorite #XMASNORULES mani?

Happy Holidays!
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China Glaze Glittering Garland

Only one day 'till Christmas! I can't wait! I'm spending it with family and friends, eating great food, sharing a drink and enjoying eachothers company. I've been rocking holiday colors all month (with a few exceptions here and there) and today I have an instant favorite for you. This is by no means a new polish, but it is to me. I only picked it up a couple of weeks ago, but I've wanted it for a long time.

China Glaze Glittering Garland was part of the Holiday 2011 Let is Snow collection and it was a limited addition shade. It is still available on sites like ebay, but be sure to have a good look around, because I've seen it listed for $ 20.

It's a gorgeous deep green polish with a green, almost golden looking micro glitter running through it. The glitter gives it a lot of depth and makes it the perfect holiday green.

The formula was amazing! Opaque in almost 1 coat, but I did 2 for the swatches. It dried really fast and flowed easily on the nail. I absolutely love it! I have a great love affair with green polish and this has made it to the top of my list as soon as I put it on my nails.

What's your favorite holiday green polish?
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Mani Monday's: Red and Green

Happy Monday everybody! This weeks theme is Red and Green. I already did a red and green mani for my #XMASNORULES challenge and because I was a little busy the last few days, I almost did a repeat of that mani. But that felt like cheating and taking the easy way out, so I did do a whole new red and green mani.

I started with a red base and, to keep the Christmas theme going, added a green wreath with some gold ornaments and a nice gold bow. I think it ended up being a fun Christmas Red and Green mani.

We have a great group of Mani Monday's girls, if you'd like to join us, you're more than welcome! Please check out our Facebook page for all the information.

Did you do a red and green mani? I'd love to see your creation!

X

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#XMASNORULES: Candy Canes and Gifts

I'm doing a little catch up today. I've been so busy, I didn't have time to create even the simplest art for our challenge, so I decided to do 2 in 1 today. Candy Canes and Gifts... what a great combination!

I tried an intricate design at first, but after bumping my nails, messing up because of shaking hands and just a complete lack of skill, I gave up and just stayed in my comfort zone: fun, colorful and simple by alternating the canes and gifts.

I love candy canes, I always have the pepermint ones in my Christmas tree and no matter how many I hang, they all somehow dissapear before New Years Eve... I think my cats eat them.

What's at the top of your Christmas Wishlist this year?

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Kiko Sugar Mat 451 Apricot

Do you all know those t-shirts that say "My best friend went to *fill in appropriate destination here* and all she brought me is this stupid t-shir"? Well, I wanted to name this blogpost "My best friend went to Italy and all she brought me were these 21 Kiko polishes!" Yes, that's right, 21 polishes! I have the best friends :D

Today I have the first of those polishes for you. I decided to start with the one I actually like the least, to safe the best for last... kind of...
Kiko Sugar Mat 451 Apricot is a textured polish that has, like the name says the color of apricots. I'm not quite sure if Apricot is the name of this polish, because on the bottle they just have numbers, but this was part of a Sugar mat set and this name is on the box.

Sugar mat is the Kiko textures line and they have several colors. This is a peachy pinky salmon color (I know, bad description, but it's the best I can do for this color), with a hot pink shimmer.

It looks really nice in the bottle, but I was afraid it would make me look dead and unfortunately, I was right. The shimmer does translate on to the nail, but not as strong as in the bottle. I'm not the biggest texture fan, but this seems to be a bit finer than the OPI Liquid Sands and I think I just might like these better.

The formula was nice, this is 2 coats on my nails, but I should have done a 3rd. Last night it looked opaque, but in daylight, I can still see some bald spots, althoug it is less noticable in person than in my pictures. It dried really fast, like most textures and because of the shimmer, it sparkles on the nail. This is a nice neutral color, appropriate for every occasion, even job interviews. I like that they include a neutral sugar mat in the set and I do like the color, it just doesn't like me back.

Have you tried Kiko polishes and what do you think?

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Deborah Lippmann Rolling in the Deep

I've been developing a real fondness for Deborah Lippmann polishes. Her glitters are some of the best I've ever tried and I've tried a lot! When I first saw this polish, I thought it was absolutely stunning and I had to have it! Of course, I couldn't find it anywhere here and had to wait about 3 months before I was able to pick it up. When I finally had it in my hands, it was even more beautiful than I had imagined.

Deborah Lippmann Rolling in the Deep is a gorgeous deep navy blue cream polish with a little silver glitter here and there. It is part of the Jewel Heist collection and was released in the fall of this year.

The formula is absolutely perfect! It glides on the nail, dries really fast and is almost opaque in 1 coat. I love it! The only thing I was a little dissapointed about, is that the silver glitter is not that noticable on the nail. It basically looks like a navy cream. I do see the glitter in direct sunlight, but in indoor lighting it's nowhere to be found.

Overall I do love this polish, but if you asked me if you absolutely need this high end polish I would have to say no, you don't. I think you can find several gorgeous navy blues for a more reasonable price to be honest. But when the light hits the nail just right and the glitter shows, it is a stunner and you can't beat this formula.

What's your favorite navy polish?

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Orly Angel Eyes

When I was trying to decide which polish to show for yesterdays theme, I almost picked this polish, but with it being the Holiday season, I had to go with Party Hearty.

Orly Angel Eyes is a lightly blue tinted base packed with blue small glitter and larger holo hex glitter that came out with the Naughty and Nice Holiday collection in 2012.

The formula is perfect, it gives enough coverage in one coat but as the base is not that opaque, I would recommend layering it over an opaque color. For this mani, I used China Glaze Splish Splash. This polish has to be one of the hardest to capture in a picture! My poor camera freaked out because this sparkles so much and all my swatches turned out a little blurry.

This dries shiny on its own, but I always add a fast drying topcoat, to make it extra shiny and smooth out the finish, although this wasn't too bad. I love this, it always makes me smile. It looks like a blue disco ball on my nails, perfect for the holidays!

What's your favorite glitter polish?

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Mani Monday's: Sparkles - China Glaze Party Hearty

Happy Monday everybody! Today's theme is Sparkles and to me, that can only mean one thing: glitter, glitter and just a little bit more glitter! With it being the holiday season and my recent purchase I only had one option for this week: China Glaze Party Hearty.

I have been on the hunt for this polish for so long, but wasn't able to find it, as it was a limited edition, part of the Holiday Collection 2010. A few weeks ago, one of my favorite webshops Enchantra posted a picture of this polish on their facebook page and they let me know it was still available in their shop! So I didn't hesitate and ordered it.

Party Hearty has large hex red glitter, smaller hex green glitter and silver and gold micro glitter in a clear base. It literally looks like Christmas threw up on my nails, absolutely gorgeous!

I layered it over a white polish to get the full effect of all the glitter. This is 2 coats and I actually think you could get it to be opaque on its own in 3 - 4 coats because it's so dense. I'm allready thinking of all the Christmas mani's I can create using this polish and this might be my favorite Christmas polish!

It was really hard to capture this polish in a picture and it's so much more sparkly in real live, but I did my best. I think I might need to invest in a better camera...

What's your favorite Christmas polish (or mani)?

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#XMASNORULES: Elves

Today's XMASNORULES theme is a fun one: elves!
I had so many ideas, but decided to keep it simple. When I saw this design on Youtube, I was sold! It was just so fun and colorful. I saw this design quite a few times, but I watched TotallyCoolNails video.

I think this turned out really well! What a relieve, after my previous disaster with nail art.

Are you joining our #XMASNORULES Christmas Mani Challenge?

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Essie Iconic Shades Gift Set

If you are just like me, you always have problems coming up with gifts this time of year. The big ones are usually easy enough, but those smaller ones always bite me in the you know what.
This year, Essie solved this problem and came out with a nice little set, perfect for all polish loving girls (and guys, if they like polish, why not?!) 

This beautiful set contains 5 mini polishes, all Essie best sellers and retails for $ 15,- so perfect as a stocking stuffer or under the tree. I love every single shade in this collection and I think Essie did a great job of making this a nice and versatile set.

Ballet Slippers, Chinchilly, Turquois&Caicos, Forever Yummy and Wicked

What's your favorite Essie color?

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Pahlish The Great Pumpkin Duo

Today I have an indie brand for you that is new to my stash. I did hear about this brand a while ago and really wanted some of her gorgeous polishes and a few weeks ago, I finally picked up a few. If you follow me on Instagram (@darkntwistynails) you will have seen my haul picture.

Pahlish The Great Pumpin Duo is a set of 2 polishes. The first is Most Sincere Pumpkin Patch, a complex dark jelly base with a lot of multicolored shimmers. I can see gold, olive, pink and copper shimmers in there.

The second polish, Bag of Rocks, is a clear based topper, filled with different shades of olive green glitter in all shapes and sizes.

The formula for Pumpkin Patch was ok, a little thicker than I'm used to, but easy to handle. It was opaque in 2 coats and dried really fast. I love this polish, the shimmer makes this such a unique polish. I wasn't able to really capture it in my swatch pictures, but just look at this bottle shot, you definitely see this shimmer on the nail!

The formula for Bag of Rocks was absolutely perfect! It glides on the nail and to get this opacity, I used to very thin coats. Normally I would need at least 2 coats of top coat to get this kind of chunky glitter to feel smooth, but I only needed 1 coat for this. Now it feels smooth as glass, not even the almost smooth but I can stil feel the chunks kinda smooth I'm used to with a chunky glitter. This polish really impressed me!

I love these 2 polishes together! I think they compliment eachother really nicely, but you can totally wear Pumpkin Patch on its own.

I love this duo and can't wait to try my other Pahlish polishes! Are you familiar with this indie brand and, if so, what are your favorites?

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