OPI Nice Stems Collection Summer 2011 - Swatches and Review

OPI has a beautiful small summer collection for us. The main color is pink and it is not at all boring. I have it at home for a week and wore all the colors as a full mani and I can tell you that I love them all. Have a look:

PLAY THE PEONIES

This is a very light, almost white, pink with shimmer. A great work-safe color. Three coats on the pictures.

PLAY THE PEONIES with I LILY LOVE YOU

I added one coat of I Lily Love you. This is my favourite combination. I love the way these two look together! Look at the detail, so much beautiful glitter, sparkle and flakies!

COME TO POPPY

Come To Poppy is a coral pink with shimmer. Again I used three coats, but two would be ok too. Anything coral is great for summer.

COME TO POPPY with I LILY LOVE YOU

Again I used one coat. I Lily Love You is very easy to use, the glitter and flakies stay on the brush well, so you can use only one coat for a nice effect.

BE A DAHLIA WON´T YOU

I love fuchsia pinks. OPI makes beautiful ones and I think I have to make a comparison for you. This was three coats again. It shines like crazy.

BE A DAHLIA WON´T YOU with I LILY LOVE YOU

Again one coat, I love this combination. It is so much fun, just right for summer.

 If you like pink like I do, this collection is a must. The colors are very pretty and the formula and application was great on all of them. If I would have to choose at least one polish, it would definitely be I Lily Love You...it is the star of the collection and really is so much fun. I think my pictures do not do it any justice, you have to see for yourself :)

So tell me, what do you think?

* the product(s) in this post were sent to me by the manufacturer or their PR company

Illamasqua Medium Pencils in Whiplash, Debonair and Paint - Swatches and Review

I received three Medium Pencils from Illamasqua to try out. I don´t use eye pencils much because my skin around my eyes is sensitive and I don´t like those dry and hard pencils. So I was a bit scared to try these out. Silly me :) how could I even think Illamasqua would make something bad. These pencils are soft, very pigmented and you don´t have to push hard to get the color on your skin. Here are pictures and swatches of the three colors I have:

WHIPLASH

DEBONAIR

PAINT

Debonair is my favourite! I have it at home for about two weeks now and I love to play with it. I want to show you a very simple and quick look that I wore yesterday. I used the Illamasqua Medium Pencil in Debonair and then blended it out a bit with an eyeshadow brush.

And because this a nail polish blog most of the time, I have for you a picture of what I am wearing today. I used Illamasqua Purity on the whole nail, the tips are made with Illamasqua Gamma (of course my favourite orange of all time) and then some black stamping. I like the contrast between the softness of Purity and the craziness in Gamma :)

* the product(s) in this post were sent to me by the manufacturer or their PR company

OPI Espresso Your Style versus OPI Tease-y Does It

I showed you OPI Espresso Your Style (EYS) a few days ago and it was nice to read that a lot of you really liked the shade. I also got a request to compare it with OPI Tease-y Does It (TDI) so here it is. I love both of these, both are two coats. As you can see TDI is slightly darker and more bronze/purple. Talking about TDI, don´t forget that it is very close to Nubar Raspberry Truffle, showed you here.

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Metals 2011 Collection - Swatches and Review

Crackling / shattering polishes are a big thing this year and it looks like they will be in the upcoming months too. China Glaze already released one collection of cracking polishes (my review is here) and now we have a second coming up. This time it is metallic. I swatched all of these on a black creme. I know it is not very original but you will get an idea of how the shades looks best. All the swatches are without the final top coat which you should not forget about.

PLATINUM PIECES

Is a silver metallic. I like it over the black and I can´t wait to try it over a blue or a turquoise. This worked really well.

TARNISHED GOLD

As the name says it is a gold crackle :) Same as before, this worked well too.

CRACKED MEDAILLON

Great shade for summer and I think it will look really well over a lot of polishes.

HAUTE METAL

Is a soft pink. I think this would work better over a lighter base color than the black. This will be great for a girly cracked manicure.

LATTICED LILAC

Ok, this was a big fail of mine. I don´t know what I did wrong. Looks like I will have to work on my application :(

OXIDIZED AQUA

I think this is my favourite polish from the collection. It worked great and I really like the color.

These crackles are a bit different from the ones I tried so far. They are sheer but once they start to crackle, they get opaque. Maybe I should apply a thicker coat to make them crackle more. I will for sure play with these a bit more and show you some more interesting color combinations than over the boring black :)

Overall a nice and unexpected collection but for this summer I am in love with another collection from China Glaze and that is Island Escape!

* the product(s) in this post were sent to me by the manufacturer or their PR company

A little comparison for my sister

Funny how different people have different nail polish taste. Even two sisters :) I love darker colors, neons and glitters...my sister loves pastels, lighter shades and cremes. I lend her these polishes and then she returns them after months. Here is a comparison of her three favourite polishes in the last months. I made this comparison and then they will go back to her, I don´t wear shades like this so I am glad someone will love these. Her favourites are: Illamasqua Purity (P), Essie Van D´Go (VDG) and Orly Cotton Candy (CC)...they are all from the category of pink peach cremes which look flattering on tanned hands. What do you think?

Misa Mermaid Dreams versus China Glaze Blue Iguana

You want to get yourself a nice vibrant blue for summer but you still don´t know which one to choose? Well maybe this post will help. Both of these polishes are from this year´s summer collections. I already did one comparison with China Glaze Blue Iguana (BI) here. I still have one more polish I wanted to compare it to and that is Misa Mermaid Dreams (MD). As you can see from the picture, they might look similar in the bottle but on the nail the difference is evident. I used three coats for both of them but while Misa has full coverage, China Glaze still has visible nail line. For me the winner is obvious, it is Misa Mermaid Dreams...one of the best polishes from all the summer collections for me :)

OPI Espresso Your Style

One quick post for today. An older polish from OPI but still so beautiful. I love the depth it has, it has great pigmentation. Two coats on the pictures. I think this is a perfect bronze/brown for summer! Don´t you think?

Zoya Sunshine Collection Summer 2011 - Swatches and Review

Sunshine is the name of the second Zoya collection for this summer. The polishes really do shine! I think they are great for summer and the collection surprised me. I liked it more than I thought I would and I found an unexpected new love here :) Read on to see the whole collection:

REVA

Reva is a rich berry with golden sparkle. It is very well pigmented and had great formula. Only two coats and it is fully opaque.

KIMMY

The shade is a orange red. It is like fire! Normally I am not a very big fan of orange polishes but lately I like to wear them. Kimmy will be soon my full mani and I can´t wait :) Two coats on the pictures.

APPLE

If I was to wear a green in summer, I think I would wear Zoya Apple. The sparkle makes it more wearable for me than green cremes. This time I needed three coats.

TANZY

When you wear Tanzy you will for sure get noticed! Golden orange that is full of sparkle. Three coats.

RICA

And here is my big love of the collection. I already showed it to you. It is my full mani for this weekend and I already got a lot of compliments. I had a neon pink on my toes and I added a coat of Rica. Guess what? It looked amazing! I think that all the polishes from this collection could be fun even for layering. Rica needs three coats but they are so worth it!

FAYE

The last polish is Faye which turned out to be my second favourite. I am sure I don´t have a color like this and I like the amount of golden sparkle it has!

I had this collection at home for two weeks before I swatched it! How stupid of me. I didn't know how much I was missing. For me it is definitely the better of the two summer collections from Zoya. The polishes look much better on the nail than they do in the bottle which is always nice.

I never had problems with the formula on Zoya polishes and this is no exception. The application was flawless. I think the polishes dried a little slower than I am used to with Zoya but nothing major. Overall I am very nicely surprised by the collection and I am sorry for underestimating it.

What about you? Which ones do you like?

* the product(s) in this post were sent to me by the manufacturer or their PR company