piCture pOlish Illusionist

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After trying my first Picture Polish, I was hooked and had to have more. When I first saw the new LE collection, I wanted them all! Unfortunately I was too late and missed out on Aurora (fingers crossed for the restock!), but I did manage to get my hands on this very pretty polish!

Picture Polish Illusionist is a gorgeous polish that shifts from green to blue to purple and has what looks to be a scattering of micro glitter in it. This is meant as a topcoat over a dark color, I used it over black, but I think it would also look stunning over a dark blue.


The formula was pretty much perfect! I only needed 1 coat over black, it flowed on the nail and dried fast and super shiny! I just can't get over this polish! It's absolutely stunning and the shift is so strong and gorgeous. I tried to get all the colors in my pictures, so get ready for a pic heavy post!






I'm in love! It looks different in every light, but always stunning.
Did you get your hands on any of the LE polishes?

X

Spring Fling Tag!

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Finally, Friday is here! I'm so ready for the weekend, especially because it's suppost to be really nice spring weather and I'm planning a little picknick with my husband for his birthday. I'm totally getting in the Spring mood and I thought this tag was the perfect thing to do right now.

The Spring Fling Tag is created by Holly (misshollyberries) and Hannah (beautychats) on YouTube, but I've seen my friend Lu do this on her blog. I thought that was a great idea and decided I classified as "everybody who wants to do this", so let's get started with the questions!

1. What eye palette do you/will you use most this spring?

I just got the Urban Decay Naked 3 palette from my lovely friends for my birthday so I will be using that a lot. The colors are really nice and perfect for spring.
When I want a pop of color, I think I'll be reaching for my Sleek Garde of Eden palette. I love a green eye look and these shadows are really nice and fresh. I did a full review on this palette, check it out here.


2. What blush in your collection is a spring must-have? What about lipstick?

I've only recently started loving blush, so I don't own a ton of them, but I did pick up a spring blush last week, Dior Coral Cruising and am planning to give that a good go this Spring. It's a coral matte blush and I absolutely love it!


I tend to be a little boring when it comes to my lipsticks, but for this spring, I'm trying to branch out of my red and berry comfort zone. I picked up a purple lipstick and have been rocking that a lot actually and I absolutely love the Bourjois Rouge Edition Velvet lipsticks. The formula is fantastic, they have some really nice colors and they stay all day. My favorite is the hot pink one, Ole Flamingo!

 
3. What nail polishes do you love to wear in the Spring?

I think the better question would be what polishes I don't love during Spring. I tend to rock every kind of polish, no matter the season, but in Spring I do like the brighter, colorful polishes. But I didn't name my blog DarknTwisty for no reason, I love my vampy colors all year long.



4. What is your signature spring scent?

I don't have a signature scent, I tend to rotate a lot of the time. When I finish a perfume, I go sniff a bunch of different ones and buy the one that smells the nicest to me. My most recent purchase is Elie Saab Le Parfum Intense and I love that one. I also received a sample of the L'eau Couture and I'm thinking about picking that one up too, because it's a little fresher and just more appropriate for Spring.


5. What is on your spring break agenda?

This question makes me a little sad... I just turned 35, so my spring break days are long gone and I'm feeling a little old right now...

6. What trends are you looking forward to the most? Fashion, Makeup, Nail Polish, etc.

I don't do fashion, not in a big way anyway. I hate shopping for clothes. I can't deal with all the stores, constantly having to change into another outfit, things not fitting properly... nope... not a fan! But make up and nail polish is a whole nother story! I LOVE it and tend to go a little crazy if I let myself. I can't wait to see what the new trends will be this year, bring it on!

7. Do you have a spring skincare must-have?

I don't have a specific spring skincare product, I tend to use the same things year round, but I do have a new skincare love that I actually picked up because of Holly: Origins Checks and Balances frothy face wash. Oh my... this made such a difference for me. My skin never looked better!


8. What is spring like where you live?

Spring is tricky over here. It's never the same. One year it's pooring with rain all season, another year it's snowing and freezing and this year it's really bright and sunny so far. Give me sun every year though!

9. Florals: gotta have em or make them stop?

I love florals, but in moderation. My favorite floral is a dress that has a big floral pattern. It's actually my favorite spring and summer dress because it's so colorful. But I don't like the grandma florals, if you know what I mean. That's just a bit to much for me.

10. Favorite thing/activity to do in the spring?

I love sitting outside, with friends, having a barbeque and sipping a chilled glass of white wine. Nothing relaxes me more.

That's it for this tag, all the questions answered!
Feel free to do this tag, I'm not going to tag specific people, but if you decide to do it, I'd love to read your answers!

Have a great weekend,
X

#SPRINGNORULES: Rain

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Another #SPRINGNORULES day! I'm really loving all of the mani's and I'm feeling so inspired because of al the creative people joining in. Today's theme is Rain and I knew exactly what I wanted to do! Lucy's Stash did a great tutorial with one stroke rain drops and I absolutely loved it, so I knew that was what I wanted to do for today's theme. I gave it a go and well... not a success... rather a big fat fail! So bad, I ended up with just a blue mess on my nail, not even worthy of a picture. So I took it off and had to accept the fact that my nail art skills are still very limited.

Back to the drawing board for me and I decided to do a much simpler mani, with rain poring down my nails. I used all China Glaze polishes for this mani, Pelican Gray for the base, Splish Splash for the rain and Fairy Dust to give the rain a little sparkle.




I like the end result. Simple, fun and with a little sparkle. I can actually pull this mani off, even at work. My boss seems to really enjoy my nail art, especially the big fat failures, lol.

Did you do a Rain mani? If so, I'd love to see your creation, so feel free to link it in the comments.

X




Kiko 448 Cobalt Blue

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I love blue nail polish, next to red, it's my favorite color to wear. So it may come as no surprise that my favorite out of the Kiko sets that my friend brought me from Italy is the bright blue satin polish.

Kiko 448 Cobalt Blue is a blue cream with a subtle shimmer in it. It's incredibly bright and vibrant, not a color if you don't like your polish to be noticed.


The formula was really nice, it flows on the nail easily and is opaque in 2 coats. It dries fast and incredibly shiny, my swatches are without topcoat. This does tend to stain your nails though, so a base coat is an absolute must!




When I first got this, it reminded me a lot of my favorite blue polish, Essie Butler Please. They are very similar in color, with only the slightest difference, But this one has a shimmer, where as Butler is a straight up cream.


I'm very happy to have both, but they are close enough that you don't need to buy one if you own the other.
What's your favorite blue polish?

X

#SPRINGNORULES: Pastel

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Today's #SPRINGNORULES theme is one that I had a particular problem with: Pastel.
I love pastels, but I only love them in the bottle. They just don't look good on me. They don't suit my skintone (or my personality apparently, at least, that's what my friends claim, lol).

But I wasn't about to skip one of the theme's for this challenge, so I got out my pastel polishes (yes, I do have quite a few) and I tried to made them work for me. The end result was... well... extremely fun and pretty to be honest. I absolutely love this mani and I'm currently wearing this in a toned down for work version, with just the pink ruffian on all my nails.



I think this ruffian skittles pastel mani looks just gorgeous. Every spring I see people rocking pastel mani's but I was never able to wear any of the lovely colors, but by putting a color underneath that does suit me, I finally found a way to wear all those pretty pastels, without looking like I'm about to audition for The Walking Dead and I'm over the moon about it!


I love all the combinations in this mani, but the pink one might be my favorite. Or the purple... oh, I love them all! For those of you who want to know, I used the following polishes:
  • Thumb: Essie Butler Please and Essie Lapiz of Luxury
  • Pointer: Essie Naughty Nautical and Essie Mint Candy Apple
  • Middle: China Glaze Creative Fantasy and Essie Lilacism
  • Ring: OPI Dim Sum Plum and OPI Mod about you
  • Pinky: China Glaze Happy go Lucky and China Glaze Lemon Fizz
What's your favorite combination and do you rock the pastels in spring?

X

If you want to join our little challenge, here is the chart!

OPI Love.Angel.Music.Baby

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Ever since OPI came out with My favorite Ornament, I've been obsessed with white gold polish. I absolutely love the Zoya Pixie Dust version and Ornament might be my favorite polish of 2013! So when I saw OPI included a gold satin polish in their Gwen Stefani collaboration collection, I had to have it!

OPI Love.Angel.Music.Baby is, like I said, a light gold polish with a satin finish. It reminds me of a bubbly glass of champagne! I have to be honest, to me, the satin finish is just a matte finish. I really don't see a difference, if you do, please explain it to me, because I'd love to know!

 
The formula was spot on. It flows on the nail, dries really fast and is opaque in almost 1 coat, but I like it better with 2. As I said, this has a satin finish, so it dries matte, but because of the shimmer in it and the color, it doesn't look matte.



I love this color, it's absolutely stunning and the matte finish makes it even more beautiful, but I'm not loving it on my skin tone unfortunately. I was hoping this would look just as good as Ornament, but it's a little too yellow for me. Such a shame, because I do like this polish. I think I might play around with it a bit, to see if I can get it to work for me. I think it would look great paired with 4 in the morning.


What's your favorite gold polish and do you prefer yellow or white gold on your nails?

X

China Glaze Petal to the Metal

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We've been having some great spring weather the past couple of weeks and this has put me in the mood for those bright, cheery spring colors. Winter has skipped us completely this year and yesterday temperatures rose to a lovely (but a little windy) 20 degrees Celsius. So out came my neons!

China Glaze Petal to the Metal is a dusty pink coral pastel neon. I know that doesn't make any sense, but that's the best way to describe this polish. In the bottle it looks like just a dusty pink cream and I didn't find it really interesting, I was even a little disappointed when it arrived.

 
I didn't feel like putting this on my nails at all, but I gave a friend of mine a choice and included this polish. Of course she picked the one I didn't actually wanted on my nails, but I gave her a choice, so on my nails it went.



My first reaction was WOW! It's so much brighter on the nail than it looked in the bottle, this is not a boring dusty pink, it's a dusty pink neon! I love it! The formula... well.... it's kinda crap, but manageable. A little streaky, a little patchy, but opaque in 2 - 3 thin coats and it dries extremely fast. Because it is a neon, it dries a little matte, but nothing a shiny top coat can't fix and the end product is more than stunning! It reminded me a little of that cult favorite Flip Flop Fantasy, but this is a bit more pink and a bit more pastel. I like this better to be honest.


I just can't get over how much I love every polish of the City Flourish collection this polish is part of. When I saw the first promotion pictutes, I was afraid China Glaze was giving us yet another pastel collection, but nothing could be further from the truth! They gave us pastel neons! Each and every one is totally unique and I love them all!

Have you tried any of the City Flourish polishes and which one is your favorite?

X
 

#SPRINGNORULES: Spring Dotticure

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I love a nice dotticure, it's an easy way to spice up any mani and everybody can do it. All you need is a couple of polishes and a dotting tool (or toothpick, bobby pin, something like that) and off you go! Today happens to be the second day of our little Spring Thaw No Rules Nail Art Challenge and wouldn't you know... the theme is Spring Dotticure!

 
I think OPI Live.Love.Carnaval is perfect for spring (and this dotticure). It's a bright coral cream that is part of the Brazil collection. I didn't originally get this when I ordered my polishes from this collection, but after seeing swatches and hearing people talk about it, I caved and picked it up. And boy, am I glad I did!

 
 
It's so bright, it's almost a neon. The formula was really nice too, easy to paint on the nail, opaque in 2 coats and it dried fast.
 
I wanted to keep my dotticure simple, but fun, so it didn't overpower the beauty of Live.Love.Carnaval and what better polishes to use than the other 2 I have from the Brazil collection, AmazON... AmazOFF and I just can't Cope-Acabana! I opted for just an accent nail, with a white base and dot... dot... dot... ready! Easy as pie with a fun, festive and colorful result. I love it! I actually wore this on my birthday.
 


 
Do you rock the dotticure and are you joining our No Rules Challenge?
 
X

piCture pOlish Imperial

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A few days ago, I was talking to a friend about which polish to get and I mentioned that I rarely wear purple polish, but if I do, I always love it. So the next day, as I took off my polish, I decided to give purple another go. This polish jumped out at me and had to be the one to go on my nails.

piCture pOlish Imperial is a bright, vibrant purple base with a scattered holo, blue micro glass flecks and small gold hex glitters.


This shade is a collaboration shade, made with The Swatchaholic, if you want to read how she came up with this shade, you can read her story here.
The formula is really nice,  it's super opaque, only 2 coats needed and it flows on the nail with ease. Because of the neon quality of this polish, it does dry to a semi matte finish, so in order to get it to shine, you need a glossy top coat. I have to say, I don't really see the holographic in this polish, but I don't miss it, not at all!


 
I absolutely love this shade! It's so vibrant and rich, if you love purple polish, you need this! (Yes, Marianne, I'm talking to you!) The only thing I don't love about this polish, is the fact that it is nearly impossible to photograph correctly! It took me about a hundred tries to get these photo's and they are still not quite right. These are a little on the bright side, but they do come really close!

 
This is the first Picture Polish I've ever tried and I understand why people rave about this brand. I love it and have already purchased just a few more.

What's your favorite Picture Polish?

X

Dollish Polish Expecto Patronum

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Sometimes you don't know you need a polish until you own it and paint it on your nails for the first time. Today I have such a polish for you. A friend of mine hunted this down like a mad woman, but I thought it wasn't the color for me. Boy, was I wrong!

Dollish Polish Expecto Patronum is a white crelly polish with a crapton of teal glitter in it. I can't put it any better than Dollish Polish did on their website, so I'm not going to try, but I can tell you it's stunning! This is what Dollish says about this highly coveted polish:

This charm is a spell that evokes a partially-tangible, positive energy force known as a Patronus. This famous spell from the book/movie "Harry Potter & The Prisoner of Azakaban" which allows Harry to fend off Dementors with an ethereal glowing white shield of energy when used.

This is a milky white crelly polish with a hint of Mint Green, has iridescent flakies and varying size Teal Green holographic glitters for a magically enchanting manicure worthy of Hogwarts!


White is not the best color on me, but I loved the name and it had to be added to my stash. Because it's just so gorgeous in the bottle, this ended up on my nails quite quickly and to my surprise I loved it! It is a little pale for my skin tone, but I don't care! Just look at it! You do need 2 - 3 coats to get it opaque, but the formula is nice enough that this isn't a big problem. It flows on the nail easily and it dries really fast. This is 2 coats, but I could have done a third.



If you love white, teal or glitter you need this! If you're a Harry Potter fan you need this! If you love polish, you need this! Basically, everybody needs this!

Dollish Polish is available on her site and you can also get it from Llarowe.

What's your favorite Dollish Polish?

X




#SPRINGNORULES: Green

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First things first: Happy Sint Patricks Day everybody!

May you have food and raiment,
a soft pillow for your head.
May you be forty years in heaven
before the devil knows you’re dead

I've been a bad little blogger... the past couple of weeks, I haven't been blogging as much as I would have liked and the worst thing is, I don't even have a good excuse! Life just got away from me, with sunny days, my birthday last week and just plain no time to paint my nails, let alone write a blogpost about it. But no more! Today is the first day of a new nail art challenge some of my friends and I set up on Instagram.


Yes, that's right, No Rules, so no excuse not to participate! You can do as many days as you want or just a couple and if you're nail art challenged like me, get creative with color, stickers, water decals, just have fun with it!

For today, the theme is Green, perfect for St. Paddy's Day :D
I had some fun with it and created little leprechauns on my nails and I added a good luck shamrock, just because I could! I love this mani, but it's nowhere near perfect. Next time, I'll try to paint the little buckles a little higher on the nail and I've found I'm not the best at drawing heart shapes... but who cares? It's a no rules challenge, so no need to be perfect!



Will you join the fun? If so, please use #SPRINGNORULES to show your mani on instagram and if you blog about it, please leave a link in the comments, I'd love to see all your creations!

X

Ciate Regatta

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I don't know how many times I walked past the Ciate stand, looked at this polish and put it back because in the bottle it looked a little boring to me. Just another blue with silver running through it. Not my color, too... metallic...

But luckily enough a friend of mine had naked nails a couple of months ago and she slapped this on. In the bottle it might look like just another polish, but on the nail... so so gorgeous!

Ciate Regatta is described by Ciate as a strong dreamy deep blue with and irredescent shimmer to deliver the perfect underwater party look. Perfect for making an impact with your favourite classic dress. Make colour pop and attitude bold. Well... that's a lot of words to describe a denim blue polish, lol.


The formula is what makes this polish amazing! It's a 1 coater! It glides on the nail with ease, dries really fast and almost a little matte, but not quite. It reminds me of the OPI Suede finish, but a little more glossy. Of course I did 2 coats, because I just can't help myself!



I love this and because you can totally get away with just 1 coat, it's perfect for those times you need a pop of color on your nails, but don't have enough time to do multiple coats.

Maybe I should just try out all the Ciate polishes, because this is the second one I bought that I originally passed on because it didn't look like much in the bottle.


Have you tried any Ciate polishes, if so, which would you recommend?

X