Just checkin'

...in. Yeah, let's have some re-instas, while we're waiting for the final results of the Swedish elections.

Smitten Polish A Wedding Dress That Isn't Bright Turquoise

OPI Black Spotted over Int'l Crime Caper

CND Vinylux Steel Gaze

Essence Blue Cara Ciao

H&M Jungle Me


And speaking of H&M, I don't know about you, but the new 5 ml bottle pisses me off. Yes, they lowered the price, but not as much as they lowered the contents. Pfft! Don't piss off lacquerheads, we're proud people.

Jupiter Aurora

This amazing stuff has been lying around for way too long, but here it finally is: the glorious glitter that is Coco Allure Jupiter Aurora.

Completely amazeballs. Other words fail me when I look back at this. Except maybe that it was painted over black and I do believe it was two coats of glitter. I have to pull this one out again sometime soon.

I got this from Sweden's very own nail polish webshop Edgy Polish. Visit and browse - international shipping!

Bohemian Rhapsody

Still got lots in the vault - but not that much time to write! But before it starts getting ridiculous, here is one truly spectacular shade of Darling Diva polish: Bohemian Rhapsody. From the Queen themed collection, of course. Shown over black.

Holo and multichrome. Everything a girl needs! I wish I had managed a better shot of the straight angle colors in the shade, but sadly, no sun often equals way too blurry. I hope you'll like it anyway.

Re-insta the weekend away

Yep, another re-instagrammed post - I told you I have kept painting my nails despite not blogging!

Butter London Two Fingered Salute.

Filtered photo of A-England Rose Bower - the phone camera couldn't capture the true glow of this red.

Color Club Cloud Nine.

Darling Diva Polish Bitchcraft (over black for added depth) - totally amazeballs holo with multichrome glitter which I wasn't bitchcrafty enough to catch on photo.


Have a great weekend!

Re-insta revisited

Updates are scarce, I know that, but let me apologize for my otherwise hectic life by letting you know that manicures aren't nearly as scarce - I've posted most of them on instagram. So let's have a few sucktastic cell phone pictures, shall we?

Misa Grey Matters, mattified with Essie Matte About You topcoat.

Revlon Mistletoe with added Essie As Gold As it Gets gradient.

Orly Ignite, with Essie Matte About You.

A-England Lancelot and OPI In My Santa Suit. Reversed order on the other hand.

Nicole by OPI Just Busta Mauve.

...and again. Truly spectacular, that one.


I have more stuff like this. So many manicures never eneded up being shot with a decent camera, but rather snapshot with what seems to constantly be in my hand: my phone. Though I have like four months worth of real manicure photos waiting in the pipline, so hold on to your hats.

Persephone's pomegranate

It's been a while since I last had a pomegranate, but one whose consumption of said fruit is notorious, is Persephone. Here interpreted by Darling Diva Polish.

The base is actually slightly pomegranate colored, but since I wasn't in the mood for building the polish on its own, I layered it over a medium red, which is a bit obvious if one examines the area close to the cuticles in these photos. However, it was a wicked combination, with the aqua blue to violet pink duochrome on top.

This shade is still available in the Darling Diva Etsy shop, go check it out.

Depend's better half

This is not a post on the marital status of a Swedish nail care company, but simply one showing off about half of their summer collection in the form of skittles. Yes, I felt like skittles, for almost several minutes after this manicure was finished.

Did you miss my trademark sideshots? Only my compact camera can manage them.

This instagram picture is actually the fiercest one.

Did you miss the entire nail community's claw pose of the later part of this century's first decade?

So, to sum this up, and to make my point: like so often, Depend uses a recurring finish throughout a large bulk of the collection, and for summer, that is duochrome glassfleck shimmer, woohoo! There are five colored jelly polishes with the afore mentioned finish, as seen in the above photos, and to help all us crazy duochrome ho bitches out there, 1/12 of the collection is a clear layering polish with the same shimmer. Technically, it's multichrome, but mostly visible is the blue to pink range. One may argue, though, that the direct angle color is more aqua, and then moves all the way to golden, via blue, purple, pink and copper. But you'll have to be very forgiving, or very nerdy, to find all that. And most of all, some of the spectrum is buried in the colored bases.

Do these make me a happy alizarine? Of course they do. And unlike all of Depend's specialty collections as of late, these are all regular collection colors, so they retail for the standard price of 25 SEK.

For data purposes, the shades shown above are, from thumb to pinky: 372, 368, 361, 366, and 367. The number of the layering shimmer is 363 - surely you could just snatch that one instead of all the above ones, though I have to say I like the base colors of these also. Very summery, except perhaps for the grey 372, which would perhaps be more fitting on a rainy day (also, the formula of this particular one was a bit icky).

If you're wondering about the rest of the collection, because yes, there are six more polishes, they aren't as exciting and probably won't make it onto photos in the near future. Among others, there is a re-release of a terrible white frost with utter streakiness (no. 38), that I can not for the life of me figure why the Depend peeps would bring back. Then, there are cremes in the spectrum of berry, orange-red, coral, yellow and a sorta 60's semi-pastel green, but less appealing than it sounds. You'll probably be able to find those elsewhere.

These products were sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
sommarregn -noun summer rain
Not that bad after all.

High on pretty Hope

Let's have one of the classic brands, shall we? There were a few from Orly's spring collection Hope and Freedom Fest that looked intriguing, and after seeing swatches I ultimately decided I needed only one of them, and that was High on Hope.

I wish I had gotten better photos of it, because this is a real beauty. This is three coats of this midnight blue filled with multichrome pink to gold and every shade in between foil sorta shimmer particles. How is that not a winning concept? You're right, this is win in its purest form.

Needless to say, I loved this shade. I wore it for several days, which is very generous for being me. If you still haven't snatched it, you should.

This product was purchased with own funds.

Swedish word of the day:
hopp -noun I hope II jump
Swedish is fun like that.

Awe of the Moon

I'm sure most of you have heard about Rainbow Honey polishes by now, and perhaps even tried one or two. But for me, this is the first. Full of night sky, this is Mare of the Moon.

Two effortless coats of Mare of the Moon over an existing dark blue manicure (saved for a later day). Blue base with blue to pink duochrome shimmer, two sizes of holographic hexagon glitters - and moons! Moons... Moooooons.

Personally I'm sometimes hesitant towards shaped glitter, but I love moons. And this is a perfect night sky, or perhaps dusky sky, with the little purple-pink haze left there by the last few sunbeams crossing the horizon. The hex glitters are sparse enough for my liking - after all, I live near the capital of Sweden, and rather close to its international airport, so my idea of a night sky is one heavily diluted by light pollution.



Today also marks the grand opening for Sweden's own webshop for independent and otherwise slightly unobtainable polishes, and it's called Edgy Polish. It's run by a nice lady called Katarina, and she also kindly provided me with the above polish for review. Edgy Polish stocks a wide range of brands, such as my favourites Darling Diva Polish and A-England, along with Glitter Gal, Pahlish, Smitten Polish, and much much more. During the entire weekend they offer 10 % off all purchases, and yes, they do ship internationally. Domestic orders over 350 SEK ship for free!

This product was sent for review.

Swedish word of the day:
mardröm -noun mare
Way too recurrent.

Norway on a cloudy day

Some polishes are just better in theory. Or at least not properly executed ideas. One of H&M's newer colors, Norwegian Sky, surely is one of them.

Three, viciously painful coats. In fact, this polish was painful in so many aspects. Application, cleanup, and then as a photographic object. And then there was the removal process... Terrible. The thick, messy base covers pretty much all of the gorgeous shimmer, which you'll be able to see no sooner than while doing the infuriating cleanup, or when you finally want to take it off and all that hidden, gorgeous, duochrome shimmer sticks to your nail despite endless acetone and cotton friction cleaning. Had the shimmer been visible in these photos, you would have seen the blue direct angle shift, and the pink that is barely there in the extreme angle second picture. Can you see it?!

While the base is very pigmented and covers the shimmer all too well, it's indredibly chalky and streaky and ...gahh. When I applied the third layer, I thinned my bottle contents a bit (a "bit" being something like 15 drops of thinner), to see if the shimmer could surface more if I was able to apply the product more thinly. While it actually did, it sorta gets lost on top of the base color being so close in tone. Well, since I had worked so damn hard to get the polish on, I actually kept it for at least a couple of days. By the second day I was still not friends with my experience, so I topped it all off with Essie As Gold as it Gets, which certainly buried Norwegian Sky's own shimmer for good. It actually looked kind of nice, but guess what? I couldn't get a decent photo of that either. Now I want to kill this polish.

But most of all, I just want someone to execute this idea a million times better than this. It has got to be possible, don't you think?

Well, let me show you the best photo from this shoot, in my own opinion:

The Stöj - always where it happens. Hi readers!

Nothing gets my writing skills going like a healthy dose of anger and frustration.

This product was purchased with own funds.

Swedish name of the day:
Norge Norway
Certainly deserves better than this.

The Night Before next day

How about a lovely purple shimmer? Night Before from Rimmel is just that.

Did I do three coats? Possibly, probably, most likely. In the bottle, this shimmer is slightly multichrome, but it's unfortunately not apparent on the nail. But what the heck, it's still a superb purple shimmer, so let's just leave it at that. If there was ever a disappointment, it was only very small. While the gold to green properties are hard to see (especialy the latter), the pink is still in nice contrast with the blurple base. I'm very fond of that type of purple.

In fact, I never seem to get tired of darker, purple shimmers. They are, in most cases, mesmerizing and classy. While swatching my entire collection of polishes (more on that another day), I came to realize that purple shimmers is by far the largest color group in it. And still I am buying more.

What is your relation to purple shimmers?

This product was acquired through swapping.

Swedish expression of the day:
kvällen innan the night before
Every day has one.

The best of the best in 2012

Just like last year, I'm giving you the best of the best from the past year, meaning the manicures I put some extra thought and effort into. Apparently I wasn't anywhere near as successfully creative compared to last year, but here the selected ones are anyway.

Seamlessly spotted - Black creme base, Girly Bits Into the Night, and finally OPI Black Spotted. A patchy, less uniform space manicure. I love space manicures. See the full post here.

The Homa manicure - combining two colors and finishes in 3 + 2 on one hand and then reversed on the other. This was my first and most successful combination, consisting of OPI I Brake for Manicures and Sally Hansen Purple Gala. Although somewhat creative and fun, this was not my idea, but blatantly stolen from ...Yeah, who invented the Homa anyway? See the full post here.

Rainforest - a layered manicure where the glitter is not on top, but in between a creme base and a sheer duochrome shimmer. This is China Glaze Starboard, LA Girl Glitter Addict Purge, and the duochrome top is Ozotic 503 Rainforest. See the full post here.


Which one of these is your favourite?

The best of 2012

This time of year calls for summaries. First, I'll summarize my favourite polishes worn in the past year - that I have [decent] photos of! I may have liked some that I never got around to photographing, but let's not dwell on that, and take a look at the twelve prettiest manicures I did in 2012.

Lilacquer Jimi Thing (over Color Club In the Limelight)

Color Club Port-Folio

Finger Paints Plum Startled

Happy Hands Motherboy (here sandwiched with OPI Don't Touch My Tutu!)

OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service

Girly Bits Shift Happens (over Jessica Divine Pine)

Pahlish Still Alive

Darling Diva Polish Carrie (over China Glaze Reggae to Riches)

Rimmel Hard Edged

L'Oréal Rebel Blue

Revlon Smoldering

Skin Food Cucumber


I enjoyed wearing all of these. Now, let's move on to next year and see what that brings.