Loaded Lacquer Tornado in a trailer park

I was in the mood for an over the top, hysterical, it hurts my eyes, but it's so pretty kind of glitter. I had a browse through my stash and this just jumped out at me! I don't think I own anything quite as hysterical (in a very good way) as this!

Loaded Lacquer Tornado in a trailer park is a clear based polish, packed with every single shape, size and color glitter you can imagine. It's got circles, hearts, squares, triangles, butterflies, bars... you name it, it's in there!

Why is this so jampacked with every imaginable glitter you ask? Well, that's because Heather (the owner and creator of Loaded Lacquer) throws all the left over glitter from all of her polishes in this mix. So every time she releases a new polish, new glitter is added to the Tornado mix, which means you could potentially buy this polish over and over again and get a different polish every time.

The formula is really nice for such a packed polish. The glitter comes out easily, but if you want every single shape on your nail, you might need to do a tiny bit of fishing. I personally just paint 1 -2 coats and see what I end up with. It dries really fast and shiny, but adding a top coat to smooth it out is a very good idea.

If you love a nice, over the top glitter, you'll absolutely love this polish! If not, well... my advise would be to stay far far away from this one :D

 

Loaded Lacquer is available on the website, check out the restock page to see when this polish will be available again.

Are you a glitter lover like me or do you prefer more subtle polishes?

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My top 10 Holiday mani's

'Tis the season!
Today I'm going to share with you, my all time favorite mani's to wear around the Holidays. I was originally going to do a top 10 polishes, but I just couldn't narrow it down to just 10 polishes and I really wanted to give you options for every type of mani I like to wear, so I decided on 10 mani's in stead.

This is in no particular order, I don't like any type of mani better than the other, it all depends on my mood what mani I'll go for. This is going to be a picture heavy post, so I'll stop blabbering and get on with it!

As I'm know for loving a nice red mani, let's get the red categories (yes, plural) out of the way!

10: Red cream

I red a good book, Phat Santa, Vermillion and All I want for christmas... is OPI

I think a nice, festive red cream is a must around the Holidays! You can go for bright, vampy, dark, sultry... what ever you like, but I tend to gravitate towards a true red, with blue undertones or a warm red cream.

9: Red with a golden shimmer

Smitten with mittens, Girl Friday and Vegas

I love the way golden shimmer warms up a red mani. I wear these polishes all year round, but I can't imagine the Holidays without at least a couple of red and golden mani's.

8: Red glitter

Ruby Pumps, Chyna and Cuts like a knife

What's a Holiday without some glitter? These are my all time favorites! I wear them on their own, if possible, layer them over an opaque base or do a jelly sandwich with them.


7: Holiday glitters

Party hardy, Seven levels of the Candy Cane forest and Holly back girl

Need I say more? Gorgeous jam packed glitters, that look like Christmas threw up in a bottle! I love them and can't get enough! The KBShimmer is a new addition to my collection and I will be doing a full review on it later this week.


6: Green 

Winter Holly, Live and let die, Holiday Splendor and Veruschka

I love a green mani as it reminds me of a Christmas tree. I wear these on their own or paired with one of the other polishes in this post.

5: White

Angel with a leadfoot, It's all about the glam and Solitaire

A white mani always looks so crisp and clean. Perfect to balans all the craziness of the rest of my mani's during this time of year. I love OPI's My boyfriend scales walls too, but I actually don't own a bottle at the moment, as I've gone through my entire bottle. Yup, used it up completely, untill there wasn't a single drop left. I am planning on picking up a second bottle soon, that's how much I love it.


4: Gold

My favorite ornament, Tomoko and Rocky

I'm not the biggest fan of metallic polishes, so gold (and silver, my next categorie) aren't my favorite colors to wear on my nails, but around the holidays, I love them in nail art or as an accent nail. Ornament and Tomoko pretty much stay on my nails for the entire month, I have a little obsession with these 2 polishes. They're basically the same, only Tomoko is a texture and Ornament is a micro glitter.


3: Silver

Do the Snowbot, Cha-Ching and Icicle

Like I said, I only love silver around the Holidays and only in nail art or as an accent nail. Except for Cha-Ching, I do love that one and have worn it on several occasions before, as an accent nail.


2: Black and red

Vampire Coven, Fright Night, Ants in m pants and Lubu heels

I have a problem when it comes to black jelly bases with red glitter... I own them in every single brand and every single size of glitter. If I see a new one, I can't help myself, I have to pick it up! They just look so... sexy on the nail, perfect for this time of year!

And finally, my last categorie!
1: Blue and white

Pacific blue, ..., Butler please, The outer edge and Fallen

I love a bright blue cream base, paired with a white gitter. It reminds me of snow on a clear skied day and I always hope for that kind of weather on Christmas Day, but sadly, it almost never happens...
So I just have it on my nails :D

What's your favorite kind of mani to wear around the Holidays?

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Glitter Lambs Skunk has style

I was wearing a lovely, bright polish during the weekend, but as the weather decided to change and give me grey skies, rain, wind and all that fun stuff, I felt like my mani needed to be updated just a little. I felt a dark glitter would do the trick and I pulled this one out.

Glitter Lambs Skunk has style is a clear based polish, filled with black and silver hex glitter in al sizes, black dots and black stars and a sprinkling of tiny silver hex glitter.

The formula was nice, I only had to do the tiniest bit of fishing for the star glitter, if you'd call it fishing at all. I just dunked my brush in the bottle and had a look where the stars were on my brush so I could place it on the nail. I did 2 coats and it dried fast. I would recommend using a good top coat to smooth it out and make it really shiny.

I really love the combination of the bright, sunshiny yellow with the black and silver. I think this is the perfect combination for those days you get it all: sunshine, clouds, thunder, rain and wind.

As my base, I'm wearing OPI I just can't Cope-Acabana, one of my favorite yellows because of the great formula. I think this glitter topper would look great with any base though and by switching up the base color, this polish can be worn all year long. I love it!

Glitter Lambs is an indie polish brand, made by the lovely Jamie and can be bought on her Etsy site.
Are you familiar with this gorgeous brand and, if so, what's your favorite Glitter Lamb?

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Glitter Lambs Blue Cotton Candy

I've been following Glitter Lambs for a while now on Instagram and besides just being a wonderful person, Jamie makes amazing polishes! As soon as I saw the first swatch of this polish, I knew it would be on my nails one day and today it finally happened!

Glitter Lambs Blue Cotton Candy is a glitter topper packed with light blue donut glitter, teal dots, and tiny blue hex glitter in different sizes in a clear base. This is my first polish with donut glitter (round glitter with a hole in the middle) and I love it, it's so unique and fun.

The formula was just perfect, all the glitters came out with no effort at all, even the donut glitter behaved like a dream. I did place them a little bit on my nail, just to make sure they were spread out, but I didn't have to fish for them. This polish dried fast, but I would recommend using a good top coat to smooth it out as it does feel a little bumpy because of all the glitter. I used a coat of HK Girl.

As my base, I went with a Sally Hansen Pacific Blue and China Glaze Snow as an accent, 2 coats each. I absolutely love this mani. The donut glitter really is unique and I think this polish goes really well with the intense color of Pacific Blue.

Are you familiar with Glitter Lambs? If not, I'd suggest you go over to her Etsy site and check her out!
I can't wait to try more of these gorgeous glitter polishes!

X

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Pretty & Polished Barefoot in Dixie

A while ago, I saw that Pretty & Polished had a 30% off code on their Facebook page and since I had been eyeing a few of their polishes for a while, I took full advantage! Yesterday, my polishes finally arrived and as soon as I openend my package, I knew I wanted this on my nails!

Pretty & Polished Barefoot in Dixie is one of those weird color combination polishes. You either love it, or you hate it. This polish has a medium toned green milky cream base and is packed with green, purple, and pink small and medium sized hex glitter.

The formula is really nice. It glides on easily, needing only the tiniest bit of glitter placement. Just pushing a couple of glitters to a more open space on the nail was enough. I did 3 thin coats for full opacity, but if you do slightly thicker coats or have less of a free edge to your nail, you can totally get away with just 2 coats. It dried really fast and reasonably shiny, but you do need a good top coat to smooth it out.

Isn't that pretty? I immediately fell in love when I saw this on the P&P site, but it's even more stunning in real life. I happen to be a big fan of these types of polishes and I LOVE this one, it's totally unique to my collection.

This color is perfect for Spring and Summer, it reminds me a lot of fresh cut grass and that happens to be one of my favorite things in Spring, it just smells so nice.
Pretty & Polished is available on their website and on Etsy.

Do you like weird color/glitter combinations or are you more of a traditional polish kind of girl (or boy)?

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Loaded Lacquer Paradise Overdose and Dashboard Dancing

I love my glitter polishes and I have to say, when it comes to glitter, nobody does it better than Loaded Lacquer! All polishes are very dense with glitter and very easy to paint, no need to fish around like a mad woman to get 1 piece of chunky glitter on my nails, these come out willingly!

So when Heather released her new Hula collection, I knew I had to have a few of them and today I have two to show you.

Paradise Overdose is a black base with a ton of neon purple, hot pink and bright blue micro flakies.

I know this polish has a black base, but because of the flakies it looks more like a navy blue on the nail than black. I love it, but had a hard time capturing the beauty of this in a picture. I did manage to get an ok one of my nail wheel:

Dashboard Dancing is a clear based glitter, with holographic turquoise hex, holographic sky blue hex, holographic magenta hex  and metallic purple hex in multiple sizes (according to the Loaded Lacquer site).

The formula for Dashboard Dancing was really nice, the glitter came out easily and I didn't need to dab (much) to get an even coverage. It's jam packed with glitter and although this is meant to be a topper, I'm actually wearing it on its own and got it opaque in just 2 easy coats.
The formula for Paradise Overdose was a little trickier. It's a little on the thick side, nothing I couldn't manage, but next time I'll add just a few drops of thinner. This was opaque in just 2 coats too.

I love them separately, but I LOVE them together. They just seem to make eachother sparkle even more. I can't get enough of Loaded Lacquer and can't wait for the jiggles to be back in stock so I can give those a try. Loaded Lacquer is available here.

What's your favorite glitter brand?

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piCture pOlish Imperial

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?

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Loaded Lacquer Cuts like a knife

One of my favorite things to do is browse around Instagram, looking for polish brands new to me. I just can't get enough of all the gorgeous (and sometimes not so gorgeous, come on people... clean up your cuticles!) swatches. I was doing just that, when my friend Jaime (The Polished Butterfly) showed a stunning macro shot of a glitter polish by Loaded Lacquer. I couldn't believe my eyes when I read she applied just 1 coat and immediatley went over to the site to check them out.

You can imagine my dissapointment when I saw this brand didn't ship to me. This didn't stop me from drooling over the polishes though and I kept an eye out for any updates and lo and behold: a few weeks later my little country was included in the countries she shipped to!

I didn't hesitate and ordered some gorgeous polishes. They finally arrived yesterday and I had to put one of them on right away!

Loaded Lacquer Cuts like a knife is a gorgeous red glitter topcoat. It has every single shade of red in every single shape you can imagine. Holographic red hex, metallic red hex, matte crimson red hex, fiery holo red hex, diamonds and dots. It's part of the Valentine's Duo, but you can also get both polish individually. I'm a little bummed I didn't get the other one, Foolish Hearts.

Don't you just love that label! It's so sparkly and pretty.
The formula is spectacular! This is designed to be a glitter topper, but you get so much coverage in just 1 coat, as shown on my nails in these pictures, I think you could totally get an opaque finish in about 3 coats.

I choose to paint it over a black base this time, but on my nail wheel I layered it over OPI's AmazON... AmazOFF and oh boy, perfect for Christmas! I think you can pretty much top any color with this polish and it would look stunning!

If you haven't noticed, I love everything about this polish! I've never seen a chunky glitter that is so easy to apply. No fishing around for the larger glitter, no need to dab, this polish is hassle free!

I got a few for myself and a couple for a friend and I'm going to have a really hard time actually giving the polishes to her, because they are just so gorgeous. I now she will love them as much as I do and get a lot of use out of them, but I might have to get those for myself too.

Loaded Lacquer is made by Heather and is available on her website.

Were you familiar with this brand and what's your favorite indie glitter?

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Mani Monday's: Chinese New Year

Happy Monday everybody! Did you have a good weekend? I didn't do anything special, went to the gym, had diner with  my husband and finally watched Catching Fire. I just can't wait for the last 2 instalments of The Hunger Games!

When I saw today's theme, I automatically thought about the gorgeous, colorfull paper dragons you see everywhere on Chinese New Year. I really wanted to paint one of those on my nails, but I also instantly knew that was going to be a problem with my limited skills. So, on to YouTube I went!

I found a tutorial for a dragon that still looked quite complicated, but I wanted to give it a go anyway. I have to say, I ended up not hating my result and I'm actually quite proud of my little dragen! Am I 100% happy and is my dragon perfect? No, absolutely not, but for a free hand dragon, I think he's looking quite good!

I decided to add a little glitter for the cherry blossom instead of painting on all the leaves, because glitter makes every mani better and, let's face it, I wasn't going to be able to paint all those tiny leaves without messing up completely.

What do you think of when you think of Chinese New Year?

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Glitter placement with Orly Embrace

I'm not a pink nails kind of girl, not the sweet and cute pink nails anyway. I do rock a neon pink quite often in spring and summer, but I can't pull of a sweet, cute soft baby pink. It just doesn't suit my personality or my skintone. But every once in a while, I find myself craving a cute pink nail... So I decided to give in to my craving, but do a cute, girly pink polish DarknTwisty style!

I started of with China Glaze Man Hunt  on all fingers, except my ringfingers. On my ringfingers, I did 2 coats of Orly Embrace on its own. I then added a little accent to my blue nails in the form of a glitter placement. It didn't turn out as neat and tidy as I'd hoped, but I like it and will definitely give this placement thing another go.

Embrace is part of the Pretty in Pink Breast Cancer Awereness 2012 collection and the bottle comes with a pink ribbon charm. It's a chunky pink glitter in a clear base and it's meant to be used as a topper. I decided to use it on its own and it was actually opaque in 3 coats, so not too bad. The glitter did want to curl a little, so a good layerof top coat to smooth it out is a must!

Not to bad for my first time, but I could definitely do with a bit of practice.
Have you ever tried a glitter placement and if so, what is your favorite polish to use?

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