CucumPear's Onyx Phalanx

A Glossybox Ranty Rant

2012-03-02T22:29:00.001+01:00

The following applies only to the Austrian glossybox, I do not have any information about other countries. After dithering over whether to post this or not for quite a while I decided that I should do so. It’s a disgrace and that needs to be said.
There is some swearing in the following paragraphs and since I usually keep this blog fairly clean I guess a warning is appropriate. Consider yourselves warned.

I was going to do a double-glossybox review this month because I skipped the January edition during my prolonged funk, but I will no longer review them or any following boxes. Yesterday (March 1st 2012) I received a newsletter - as did, presumably, every customer - stating that as of this month new customers would not pay € 10 + 1.99 p&p, instead they get to pay € 14 + 3,95 p&p.
Supposedly because postage and packaging materials are more expensive now, which I sort of can accept, but the point where I cry bullshit is the reasoning that the ‘magazine’ on their website is being expanded and that is oh so expensive.
Seriously? It’s a blog and you have about two posts per month so far. And I highly doubt that your customers are all that interested in having more of that.

I could live with them increasing the price a little, but from € 12 to 18? That’s a 50% price increase after just three months.
Pardon my Klatchian, but I feel the need to say fuck you.

So in conclusion: CAVEAT EMPTOR! I won’t tell you whether you should subscribe; that’s your decision. I felt that € 12 were acceptable, 18 not so much. But I need not worry, because all previous subscribers will still pay the old price. That makes it all perfectly fine, doesn’t it?

Nail Fail - Ra-n-ma

2012-02-25T23:41:00.001+01:00

It’s probably not healthy to love Ranma 1/2 as much as I do, especially since it’s so very exasperating most of the time. Nobody in that manga has any common sense, half the main characters are truly horrible people, and those who aren’t can’t seem to assign blame where it’s due.
Still, the whole thing is beyond amusing and I just love both the manga and the anime. Highly recommended, though I advise you to research whether your chosen translation/dub is cut or censored. The original is full of booooobies (mostly boy-in-girl-shape ones, though, so that’s all right? :-D).

So I tried to paint some of the characters onto my nails using acrylic paint and failed miserably. The only one that came out semi-right is P-chan (Ryoga is such an infuriating dude), i.e. the weird black piglet on my right ring finger. Not even Genma in panda-form looks right and I got the ears totally wrong. How depressing. I might do an “inspired by” mani rather than straight depiction at a later point, maybe that’ll work out better.

I put the comment system poll into the sidebar, since hardly anyone has done with the clickin’. If you haven’t voted yet, please do so.
Also, I haven’t answered comments in a while and will try to catch up soon. I suck at communication, I know.
Hope y’all are having a lovely weekend.

What I’ve Been Doing With My Time

2012-02-22T20:56:00.001+01:00

I find it easy to find diversions; I read a lot, I cook every day, and I enjoy fibre arts. Sadly, the last one doesn’t mesh well with nail polish. ^_^

Anyway the following image should clear up what exactly I’ve been up to for part of my time away from my blog. (In between feeling rather poorly. Bleh.)

Secondly, a poll about comments (which will hopefully work, the preview doesn’t). I’m told that many people won’t use Intense Debate or Disqus, so I’m considering switching back to Blogger’s own comment system. Also, ID doesn’t work with the mobile layout, which really bugs me, ‘cause all comments published there are invisible on the normal pages.
The major downside to switching is that I can’t import ID comments, so they’d languish in an unusable export file.

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Coming up soon: a horrible, awful nail art fail.

Swatches - essence Circus Circus TE

2012-02-01T02:55:00.001+01:00

Late, but there you go. One of essence’s ‘old’ trend editions. Technically it was out in December (in Germany, we get ‘em later at Austrian DM stores), but my local DM had an almost full display a bit over a week ago.

I’m a bit ambivalent about the format. For someone who keeps all their cosmetics in a single bag the double-ended bottles will be practical and useful. My setup, however, is not really all that suited to something that I can’t store upright in a drawer. Also each colour is just 4 ml (.13 fl. oz). The double-endedness makes for a heavy ‘cap’ while painting. A snap mechanism to separate the two colours and mix ‘em up (for travel or whatever) would have been great.
Overall I had no issues with any of these or their plain round brushes. The crèmes are smooth and even and the glitters fairly dense. No bubbling, dragging, anything. So I’ll just talk about colour below.

Since the polishes are meant to be layered - ‘colour³ nail polish’ - that’s how I swatched them. All swatches were applied as follows:

index finger: 2 coats of the crème/metallic
middle finger: 2 coats of the crème/metallic with 1 coat of the glitter
ring finger: 2 coats of the glitter

01 my sparkling acrobat

The plain black crème is very pigmented, almost a one-coater.
The other side is a clear base with fine and square chunky yellowy golden glitter.

02 don’t feed the tiger

This is the only set without a crème base colour, instead we have a metallic gold. It’s sparkly, but not quite a foil. This is definitely a two-coater and shows faint brush marks.
On the other side we have fine golden and chunky square black glitter in a clear base.

03 applause, applause

Though I’m not usually a red polish kinda gal, I do like classic reds and this is one. It’s a simple red crème, slightly on the warm side. If you’re nails are very smooth and you take some care applying this you can get away with one coat.
Once again we have a clear base with fine and chunky square glitter, the red looks a bit mismatched in the bottle, but works nicely when layered.

04 cotton candy

The slightly mauve-y, yet bright pink crème was what drew me towards these polishes, I don’t have enough pinks these days. This, too hovers between a one-coater and a two-coater.
Now let’s all gasp, for this glitter is a bit different than the others! *gasp* The base is pinkish and it’s just fine, bright pink glitter. Like applause applause, this looks a bit odd in the bottle, but quite pretty on the nail.

I love layering and see the appeal of these sets (and in case you haven’t seen the upcoming new core line releases yet, there’s a bunch of of colour³ polishes in the near future), but the base colours are a bit too generic. Who doesn’t have them yet? The upcoming ones look a bit more interesting, thankfully. Also, the chunky square glitter is not really my cup of tea. I have this issue with visibly square or rectangular glitter. Bar/string glitter gives me metaphorical hives. Ew.

But as for these particular polishes: they’re good quality and definitely worth a look if you like glitter and basic colours.

NotD - Is It 2012 Already?

2012-01-12T01:12:00.001+01:00

Huh, it’s the new year already. How did that happen?
I don’t even know why I have been reluctant to post recently, I’m not that sick, nor feeling that down. *shrugs*
I’m feeling lazy still, so here’s a quick post without preview or products list. On New Year’s Eve I wore a pretty purple mani with iridescent glitter near the tips.

LOOK by BIPA 105 mystic is, if I remember correctly, from a previous LE of very dark shimmering jewel-toned polishes. This rich warm purple is densely packed with pinkish shimmer particles and well-pigmented. Two coats are opaque.
I found this polish fairly easy to apply. It’s a little thick and I had more to clean up than usual, but it levelled well and was only a little streaky at first. I’ve seen better formulae, but I didn’t have significant issues. The brush is round and pretty decent.
In my opinion the gorgeous colour is worth the little extra effort.

Here’s mystic in two coats with top coat, you can barely make out that it’s purple:

Then I added a little sparkle with China Glaze Snow Globe (I hope the current re-release is formulated a little differently, mine is horribly thick and no matter which thinner I use it just thickens again within days).

Since Christmas I haven’t changed my polish much, so I’m only a couple of posts behind with blogging. Frightening, isn’t it?

Nail Quickie - Christmas Eve

2011-12-26T01:59:00.001+01:00

I was in such a hurry on Christmas Eve and of course I ended up running out of time and having to apply my polish as quickly as possible. So I decided to do an opaque French with a layer of a pink holo top coat. It’s a redux, actually, though last time a did a little flower on the ring finger rather than the square rhinestone accent.

And that’s it for today. I hope y’all had a nice Christmas/holidays/weekend.

Nail Quickie - More Krampus Than Christmas

2011-12-22T03:17:00.001+01:00

Well, that title probably isn’t all that clear to non-Austrians (and folks from nearby regions). Basically, it’s a quasi-demonic figure that accompanies Saint Nicholas and punishes as he rewards. Hmmm, goat-like features, kinda nasty, I wonder why the Catholic church doesn’t like those traditions. Anyway, while I doubt that there’s a solid tradition about colours, I have observed a tendency to wear red and black for Krampus-themed celebrations.
Though the whole Krampus and St. Nick thing happened a couple of weeks ago (Dec. 5th and 6th), my mani brought it up.

This is what I used:

China Glaze Nail Strengthener & Growth Formula
essence btgn base sealer
Catrice Ultimate Nail Lacquer 550 Marilyn & Me
s-he cracking top coat 002 (black)
essence btgn top coat
Seche Vite

As usual I started by applying my base colour: four coats of Marilyn & Me over one coat of each base and sealed it with Seche Vite.

Marilyn & Me is a rich, shimmering and glittering red, The first coat looks pinkish, but at full opacity it’s a tad deeper and nicely balanced. I don’t love it as much as my favourite sparkly red, but it is a gorgeous colour. Like many glittery polishes it isn’t all that pigmented, you’ll need four to five coats for full opacity.
Other than the relative sheerness I found this polish quite lovely. It applied smoothly and evenly, without any streaks past the first coat. If you like sheer polish you could wear Marilyn & Me in two coats. The formula is on the runny side, but the particles don’t seem to settle so far, as they’re quite fine. I really like the not too wide flat brush, it’s precise and suited to narrow pinkie nails.

This is Marilyn & Me in two coats without top coat:

And here’s Marilyn & Me in four coats with Seche Vite:

When the base was mostly dry I applied a coat of s-he cracking top coat and when that had set I added some top sealer and Seche Vite.
s-he was very late coming into the crackle polish game, but if you still want to pick up a black or white crackle (I think that’s the only colours they have), they work just fine.

I like the occasional crackle mani, but generally prefer more interesting combos, for a sort of seasonal mani this colour combination is lovely, though. Not that I’m much about Christmassy nails.
Do you do the green and red thing these days?

NotD - Late Monkey-Picked Tea

2011-12-18T04:41:00.001+01:00

I’ve been wearing today’s mani for a while now and am rather surprised at how well it’s holding on. This is another holiday-themed one: December 14th was Monkey Day, the 15th Tea Day.

Here’s what I used for this mani (there’s something wonky about this photo o.O):

China Glaze Nail Strengthener & Growth Formula
essence btgn base sealer
OPI French Quarter For Your Thoughts (miniature from the current Glossybox)
acrylic paint
essence btgn top sealer
Seche Vite

I started by applying one coat of each base, three of French Quarter For Your Thoughts and sealed it with Seche Vite.

French Quarter For Your Thoughts is a mushroomy taupe crème. I had hoped that this may turn out more of a dirty grey on the nail, but sadly it really isn’t grey or greenish enough for me to like. Not a colour that I would choose for myself. Interestingly the swatches looked more greyish when I viewed them in the browser. There’s a distinct brownish tone, though, more like it looks on the ‘products used’ shot. The opacity is average, three coats were needed for perfect coverage.
The formula is excellent, were it not for the very average brush and cramp-inducing cap the coats would probably have been even enough to make the third coat unnecessary. I found this polish to be very shiny and it levelled very well.
If taupes are your thing you may like French Quarter For Your Thoughts a lot, though I recommend always getting full-sized OPI polishes (so far only Orly has miniatures I really like). Personally, I didn’t like it. I just find taupe, greige, nude, and beige nail polish very unflattering.

This is French Quarter For Your Thoughts in two coats without top coat:

And here’s French Quarter For Your Thoughts in three coats with Seche Vite:

Though I did not like this colour, I found it quite appropriate for Tea Day. The shade does resemble a cup of tea with the barest hint of milk (never cream! Philistines!), which *gasp* I find rather unsightly.
So I used acrylic paint to add a row of kind of messy leaves along the tip of each nail, except for the left ring finger nail. That one got a grumpy-looking generic monkey. And can you blame him? He’s been bloody picking tea all day, the poor bugger.
After letting the acrylic paint dry for a few minutes I added a coat of top sealer and then one of Seche Vite for more durability.

I don’t really love this manicure. I liked the idea, but the execution could be far better.
Also: Happy International Migrants Day! I can’t think of how to nailify that one.

Mini Review - Glossybox Austria

2011-12-14T22:04:00.001+01:00

After some pondering I decided to go ahead and write this in English. After all, at least some of the products are available to y’all.
And before I go into the details I feel I need to give you a heads up: not everyone likes the concept of sample-boxes. Yes, samples are meant to be free. Well, with purchase. If you frequently go to the same store, are a sweet-tempered customer and don’t go in the busiest of hours you may get samples just because. But most stores give a specified number of samples from a very limited range of products and they are always tiny. The point of the sample-boxes is to distribute more generous sizes and I think that makes sense. I won’t buy a moisturiser after trying it for three days or so, my skin can be a bitch. It’s even worse for bodylotion and shampoo, which usually come in single-use sachets.
If you must tell me how this is all a scam, please feel free to do so, but don’t expect me to agree.

And now: to the actual reviewin’:

Recently I received an email informing me that from now on, the Glossybox would be available in Austria, too. I considered for a while and then decided that I easily spend the same amount of money on stuff I don’t like and that I could just funnel some of those funds into that direction. (In case that wasn’t clear enough: I paid for this box.)
I call this a mini review, because I’m not going to wait until I’ve properly tested the skincare and such, ‘cause then I won’t ever remember to write this up. I also don’t know if I’ll make this a regular feature, if half the Austrian beauty blogs do reviews I’ll probably stop since they’re bound to do a better job. :-D

Here’s what I got in a pretty red and green Christmas edition box:

01 Maria Galland Hydra Lift Yeux 100: This is described as a light eye gel-cream. At 5 ml the sample is pretty big for an eye cream, especially as the full size contains 15 ml (at € 45.00 o.O Eeep. So technically that alone is worth more than we pay for the box plus shipping.)
The pump-dispenser is weirdly elongated, but I have to give it to whoever designed the bottle: it’s quite pleasing to the eye and I found it very easy to get the correct amount of product on the first try. My very sensitive peepers didn’t complain at all and my skin feels moisturised without being sticky.
I usually steer away from anything other than pure gels because creams just sit on my skin and never get absorbed, Hydra Lift Yeux seems to work well for me so far. Depending on how long this sample lasts might consider getting the full size, but I find the price rather high.
Also, I keep getting thinking of Herakles lifting the hydra with his eyes. Weird? Moi?

02 Paul Mitchell Awapuhi Shampoo: I like this shampoo. It lathers nicely, even though I trained myself to use the proper (i.e. very small) amount of product a long time ago. The scent is very neutral, my hair feels soft and isn’t straight and limp, which is what usually happens when I use something hydrating. I wouldn’t say I’ve seen more volume, but I never encountered shampoo that can do that to my meagre wisps of hair.
At € 16.25 per 300 ml I can’t see myself repurchasing this. I do have cheaper shampoo that works perfectly fine for me.

03 Babor Glossy Liplite 01: I’ve owned lipgloss with a mirror and LEDs before and I find that needlessly gimmicky (and I do like a nice gimmick in general). How often have you thought ‘oh noes, I have to reapply my gloss and it’s just too dark to do so?’
The gloss is full-sized (7 ml), but I’m not too impressed. The colour looks like a pretty shimmery coral-pink in the tube, but is a basic shimmery pink on my lips. It lasts a few hours and is just a little sticky. I find it way overpriced at € 16.50 and have seen the same quality for a fraction of the price.
I definitely won’t get a second tube. It’ll take me forever to get through this anyway and while it’s a useable gloss it just doesn’t stand out.
Mirela has a pretty swatch!

04 OPI French Quarter for Your Thoughts: My first reaction was ‘yay, polish,’ followed by ‘meh, miniature’ and ‘ick, mushroom.’ It’s nice to see some OPI in this box, but the colour is not my cup of tea and I’m generally not impressed by OPI’s minis. The caps are uncomfortable to hold and the brush just sucks. I’ll withhold the final judgement until I’ve properly swatched the polish (soon on this here blog), though, as Scrangie’s swatch looks quite greyish. From the description card it seems that they also sent out bottles of Honk if You Love OPI, which would have been infinitely preferable to me.
I obviously won’t be buying French Quarter for Your Thoughts in full size (.5 fl. oz, which is slightly under the supposed 15 ml), especially at € 16.00. Way overpriced in my opinion.

05 Biotherm Bodylotion Lait Corporel: This one I like again. I love the fresh citrusy scent and how easily it sinks into the skin. It certainly outperforms some of the creams and lotions I’ve tried over the years and my skin is beautifully hydrated, bit like I said about the shampoo above: I have products that work as well at less than € 27.50 per 400 ml.
If you have horribly dry skin, though, this might be amazing for you (but make sure you get a trial size first).

Even though I’m happy with the products I got in my first Glossybox, the only thing I may possibly get in full size, depending on how far it goes, is the eye gel. And I kind of doubt even that, because The Body Shop’s Elderflower Eye Gel works perfectly fine for me so far.
I do think that this box was worth the € 10 (just under 12 with shipping), we’ll see if the following kits are as nice.
Have you ordered any of this kind of boxes? If not, which ones would you like to try most? I’d just love to get a Whimseybox. Crafty samples FTW (of course it’s US only :-( ).

Swatches - LOOK by BIPA Special Effect LE

2011-12-10T04:16:00.001+01:00

Most of the limited editions that I checked out at the drugstores recently were pretty much a yawn (I did get three set of Catrice’s Vegas lashes, though). So coming across the LOOK by BIPA Special Effect polishes was rather refreshing.
This collection is polish only, ten lovely colours ranging from simple shimmers to duochromes, from holo* to chrome.

* European brands have a bad record when it comes to promising holos and delivering duochromes. Upon reflection I find that a bit unfair. There’s no real definition of what polish may be called holo, just what the lacquer-lovin’ community tends to call thus. I feel that the confusion stems from the fact that over the past decades the most ubiquitous items that were referred to as holograms/holographic were those silly card that show a couple different images as you tilt them. How is it surprising that polish companies would call a polish that shows a couple different colours holographic?
Yes, I do think they should have checked what terminology their customers may expect, but they definitely don’t deserve the hate.

You will note that as usual I don’t comment on wear time and such. If you’re reasonably familiar with nail polish you should know that these depend on one’s body chemistry and which base and top coat you use.
All polishes from this collection come with a slightly short round brush that I don’t dislike. It’s not especially great, but I can’t complain. They’re not super-cheap at € 1,99 per 5 ml bottle.

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.1 metallic pearl

This is a metallic silver, quite similar to China Glaze Millennium. I’m impressed, if you have a nice even base metallic pearl will be fine in one coat, my nails are eternally wonky so I used two.
There are no more brush marks that any other chrome, if you’re in the market for a basic silver this is a lovely choice.

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.2 metallic diamonds

I love me good silver foil, this is nice and sparkly. Chances are you already have one, but if you don’t this is very nice indeed. Technically you’d need three coats for an opaque layer, but it looks opaque in two.
metallic diamonds applies smoothly and evenly. Highly recommended.

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.3 metallic hologram

I have no idea how to describe this, the base is kind of burgundy-goldeny, packed with shifting greenish sparkle. Holy awesomesauce. I just with this was more opaque, so I put some silver foil on the index finger nail to see what that might look like. Two coats over the foil look amazing, three without are still sheer.
If not for the lacking opacity I’d be perfectly happy. But it is lovely and applies great.

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.4 metallic matt

Now this is what many Austrians will be looking for. The silver holo. It’s not insanely striking, I don’t have any of the China Glaze OMG polishes, but those seem to be a lot more vibrant. There is a distinct holo effect though and metallic matt is very opaque, one coat can be worn by itself. I applied two again for the same reason I stated above. Sadly the holo doesn’t want to come out and play with my camera.
I can only say: smooooth. The formula is great. Though I wonder where they got the ‘matt’ from, this polish may not be high-gloss, but it definitely isn’t matte. (Whoops, forgot not to put my unpainted thumb on the cap.)

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.5 purple-green

The fist duochrome of this lot is, as the name suggests, muted green to pinkish-purple. The shift isn’t too strong, but I always have trouble finding the appropriate lighting to photograph duochromes. This is quite sheer, I applied three coats and unless seen at a certain angle where the shimmer hides the sheerness it looks pretty opaque.
The formula is quite nice.

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.6 metallic violet

Nummy, this bright shimmery purple shifts gently to a bronzy shade. The opacity is quite good, two coats work beautifully.
Again, I had no trouble applying this colour.

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.7 metallic blue

This shade doesn’t shift, it’s just a gorgeous intense blue shimmer with just a touch of violet. Three thin coats are fully opaque.
This too applies easily, just with a few brush marks that one can always expect from a shimmery polish.

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.8 green changer

This and the following two shades are a bit more grainy than metallic violet for example. It’s a metallic golden green that in the bottle shows an almost peacock range of colours that I just can’t see on the nail. The colour is gorgeous, but the duochrome effect is too weak. Two coats are opaque.
green changer is smooth and even, no troubles with applying this.

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.9 gold changer

The main colour of this polish is a brassy gold, shifting through green to blue, but again this is apparent only in the bottle. On the nail I can make out the green, but no blue at all. This, too, is opaque in two coats.
It applies exactly like green changer, no trouble at all.

LOOK by BIPA Special Effect Nr.10 bronze changer

bronze changer is a bronze-blue duochrome, the blue does make it onto the nail, though it’s hard to capture. This is a lovely two-coater and I wouldn’t mind having an eyeshadow like that.
Application is same as above.

Overall I’m really impressed by the quality of these polishes, most are really opaque and quite wearable in one coat if one doesn’t mind a bit of sheerness.
metallic hologram is sheer, but it’s beauty make up for that and purple-green has been done before numerous time, but I love the pinkish sparkle. I’d say purple-green is the closest to a dud in this LE. All other polishes are beautiful, even though the duochromes are a bit weak in their shiftiness. ;-)
If you can find the collection I recommend getting at least a couple of colours. I was especially intrigues by metallic hologram and bronze changer, neither of which resembles anything I own. The first couple of silvers are basic, but good staples to have.
I suggest hurrying if you feel you must have these polishes, especially if you want the holo and duochromes. My guess is that those will go insanely fast.
Will you pick up some colours? Which ones would you get if you could?

NotD - Layered Hexawesomeness

2011-12-07T01:43:00.001+01:00

A while ago I showed you this horrible mess, and now I’ve actually managed to use two of the hexagonal glitters in a way I adore.

Here’s what I used for this mani:

China Glaze Nail Strengthener & Growth Formula
essence btgn base sealer
Color Club Gossip Column
essence colour&go 78 blue addicted
unnamed claire’s polish with fine blue and hexagonal lilac glitter
Seche Vite

I started with one coat of each base coat, then two of Gossip Column and one of Seche Vite.

Gossip Column is an amazing blue-ish teal crème. This was instant love for me, it’s utterly flattering and contrasts so nicely with my skintone. Add to that the fact that it’s opaque in two coats (three if you apply the thinnest coats possible) and it’s a perfect polish for me.
The application was smooth and easy, Gossip Column spread and levelled beautifully. I’m trying to find some flaw, but even the round brush was perfectly useable.
If you didn’t get this polish back when it first appeared, go and get it now. It’s amazing.

This is Gossip Column in two coats with Seche Vite (I had to photoshop this, as my camera turned it into a muted blue):

I ran out of time the night I applied Gossip Column, so I wore it plain for a day and managed to bend the corners of a couple of nails. The extra thickness of the added nail art and extra layer of Seche Vite usually prevents that from happening. Since I didn’t want to completely redo the mani I just added some base coat to the chips and cracks, added another layer of Gossip Column and then layered one coat of blue addiction and one of the claire’s polish. Another coat of Seche Vite to seal the polish and the mani was finished.

That blue addiction would look great over a deeper blue or teal base was obvious, but even though I suspected that the lilac glitter would good on to I was unprepared for the astonishingly harmonic contrast going on there. I did consider also using the gold hex glitter, but gladly skipped it. After the lilac the mani just felt complete.
Do you love hexagonal glitter just as much as I do?

Colour Me Baffled

2011-12-05T22:39:00.001+01:00

Warning! This post contains my face with very little make-up (and barely-there brows, since I was too lazy to emphasise them properly *sadface*), If you’re afraid of double-chins and moles on noses, go no further.

The point here: I’ve had a long, unsatisfying relationship with my hair. Like many women I haven’t ever had a good cut (other than “just trim the very ends, no layers” in my longer-haired phases). My hair went from awesome big curls (toddler) to dead straight (kindergarten), then there was a phase of having it cut short enough for the texture to be unnoticeable. When I let it grow out again it was pretty wavy, but over the last decade or so it slowly got straighter again (so it’s a gentle wave now, I suppose).

For the past five years or so I’ve been cutting my own hair, since I refuse to pay ridiculous amounts of money for a cut I don’t like. There’ve been ups and downs, but my current asymmetric cut is pretty neat, if I say so myself (though I do need a trim, especially the short side).
Generally I wash my hair not long before going to bed, because sleeping on damp hair can enhance the waviness.

So cut to today.
I washed my face, looked up into the mirror and went “Whu? *blink* *snort* This is… awesome!” My hair was completely flat on the short side (which it always is), but the other side was doing this amazing messy almost-curl thing. Sis was walking past a minute later and I couldn’t but tell her to come look at my Jekyll and Hyde hair, which led to her insisting I take photos and y’know a photo ain’t worth anything unless someone you’ve never met gets to snicker about it, too.

So here’s the short side (pardon the random debris in the background):

And the messy thing (no styling products were used, I didn’t even use any treatments or conditioners):

Super happy with the layered glitter I have on my nails right now, so expect to see that soon. And yes, I really need to sort through my stacks of 90s VHS tapes soon, I haven’t watched any in years and they take up so much space.
I’m feeling nosy! What’s your hair like? Has it changed a lot over the years?

NotD - Spiky Olivey Thing

2011-12-03T23:33:00.001+01:00

I really haven’t liked a lot of what I’ve been doing recently. And though I sometimes consider just posting the swatches without the failed nail art, that’s not how I roll, really.
So here you go: a not terribly nice mani with odd messy spikes in olive green and grey.

This is what I used for this mani:

China Glaze Nail Strengthener & Growth Formula
essence btgn base sealer
Bourjois 10 days #23
OPI Suzi Skis in the Pyrenees
Spooky Nails black nail art liner (not on the photo, ‘cause my brain is leaky)
Rimmel 60 seconds 805 Grey Matter
color club Artsy Crafty
essence colour&go 68 high spirits
essence btgn top sealer
Seche Vite

First thing was, obviously, applying the base colour, Bourjois #23 in two coats over my base coats and sealing it with Seche Vite.

#23 is a muted military green/khaki polish with very subtle silver shimmer. This colour is a lovely autumnal neutral and will flatter a wide range of skintones. And since it’s a two-coater, there’s not a lot of effort involved.
I also have no complaints whatsoever about the formula, considering its pigmentation #23 is slightly runny, but not prone to pooling. The first coat was a tad streaky, but all the unevenness vanished upon applying the second coat. I’ve already talked about the angled brush in depth, but after using it before I found it surprisingly easy to use. This time I actually didn’t do any clean-up on purpose to show you how neat the brush can be if you take a couple of minutes to get used to it.

Here’s Bourjois 10 days #23 in two coats with Seche Vite:

I then used all coloured polishes and a couple of nail art brushed to paint on some messy spikes. Too bad they weren’t really meant to be messy. Then I added loads of top coat to even out the surface and seal the nails.

By the way, don’t expect to see any new Bourjois polishes. I still have one in my untrieds, but after that I probably won’t get any more since Bourjois won’t be available at BIPA any more. I snagged some backup foundations, of course, since I very much enjoyed using them for a few years now.
So if you happen to pass by a BIPA, grab some stuff at 50% off!
How do you feel about Bourjois? Will/would you miss it? Or is it completely unavailable where you live?

NotD - Evolution Kills

2011-11-24T23:32:00.001+01:00

Happy Evolution Day (I just made it)!
And to celebrate this day ~~stole my design from~~ was inspired by Questionable Content (actually, this design is an extension of an in-comic shirt, check out the merchandise section to see what I copied). Go and read!

Here’s what I used today:

China Glaze Nail Strengthener & Growth Formula
essence btgn base sealer
China Glaze Liquid Leather
acrylic paint
essence btgn top sealer
Seche Vite

First I applied one coat of each base, three of Liquid Leather and sealed it with Seche Vite.

Liquid Leather is one of my favourite blacks, a brown-based jelly with an amazing sheen. The rather low pigmentation is pretty much standard for jellies, three coats will give you that perfect squishiness, you’ll need at least four to get utter opacity.
I find this polish to be a little finicky, it’s a bit streaky and I haven’t been able to make thin coats work. But even though I loaded the brush with polish it didn’t pool. I usually like China Glaze’s round brushes a lot, but my bottle of Liquid Leather has a wonky one, but it’s still usable with a little more care.

This is Liquid Leather in two coats without top coat:

And this is Liquid Leather in three coats with Seche Vite:

After the base colour was dry I added my design with acrylic paint, covered it with top sealer and sealed it with more Seche Vite. Pardon the bad clean-up on the right hand, please. *is an idiot’

Yeah, if you didn’t know that I’m extremely right-handed you can see it now, the nails I painted with my left hand are a mess. D-: But I’m so happy with how the other hand looks.
In unrelated news: I’m doing some serious cleaning, sorting and such right now, which led to the discovery that (a) I have way too much stuff and (b) one of my walls was damp at some point. I totally need that, right?

Also, Happy Thanksgiving to my US readers, now go eat loads of turkey!

Swatch - China Glaze Blue Sparrow

2011-11-21T01:26:00.001+01:00

Blue Sparrow, how I don’t know how to feel about you…

I was sort of disappointed when I applied Blue Sparrow. I remember seeing a gorgeous swatch somewhere, but for me it just looked pretty with odd speckles. I wanted glorious glitter, bright blue, amazing transformation when seen in daylight (though there was no full-on sun the days I wore it, maybe I can still hope). Nope. It’s nice, but almost a dud for me. The lowish opacity didn’t particularly surprise me, ‘cause glitters tend to be like that. Four coats are fine, five if you’re obsessed with opacity.
The application was pretty standard, I had no real trouble. The formula is a bit thin and runny, so take care to prevent pooling/flooding your cuticles.Blue Sparrow was free of streaks in two coats, so if you want a sheer wash that works very nicely. So application-wise I’d have to call this polish unremarkable. As I’ve said so often: China Glaze polishes always have a good round brush.

Here’s Blue Sparrow in two coats without top coat (pardon the funky ring finger nail, that patch wasn’t playing nicely):

And here’s Blue Sparrow in four coats with Seche Vite:

This is an older swatch, so don’t be surprised if my nails look different in the post. Nubbins everywhere (my tears finally grew out far enough and chopping the nails off left me with but one patch).
Also I was whistling randomly today and suddenly had a huh moment when I had somehow ended up whistling Mambo Italiano. Very Odd.

How are y’all? And if you have Blue Sparrow, what are your thoughts?

Nail Quickie - This Looked Better In My Head

2011-11-13T22:16:00.001+01:00

Oh dear, sometimes stuff just doesn’t work the way I imagined it. And today’s experiment sucked badly. I didn’t even bother to clean up the edges, ‘cause I knew I’d remove it right away. o.O

There you go. Faaaaaaiiiiil. Good thing y’all don’t expect me to do pretty things all the time.

NotD - A Matte Deep Blue? Who’d Have Thunk?

2011-11-10T06:05:00.001+01:00

*taps screen* Anyone out there? Good.
I’m trying to ease back into blogging, I got out of the habit of typing as my coats of polish dry and it’s really hard to get back into it. As I mentioned before I haven’t done a lot of crazy nails recently, today’s not different.
I finally remembered to pick up a bottle of essence’s soft touch top coat, and I happened to also get this amazing blue…

ArtDeco Ceramic Nail Lacquer 123 is a divine deep blue, slightly inky and muted. Just my cup of tea, right? It’s not blackened at all, by the way. And it’s a two-coater, they’re not that rare any more, but it’s always nice to find an effortless one.
Actually, if there hadn’t been a bit of streakiness, this polish would have worked in one coat, but I always prefer two effortless coats to one finicky coat. They take about the same time to apply and you can watch a movie or something as you paint. Other than the first streaky coat: perfection. 123 has just the right viscosity, levels nicely, it just works. The Ceramic line tends to do that.
So: highly recommended. Especially if you like to wear seasonal colours you’ll love this for winter.

This is ArtDeco Ceramic Nail Lacquer 123 in two coats with top coat:

I adore dark polishes with matte top coat, so I just tried out the soft touch top coat over 123. It doesn’t quite like the soft touch finish from the black & white trend edition, but it certainly is pretty. I definitely have to do a proper side-by-side comparison with essence matt top coat. They seem to be different, but I can’t be certain until I see them next to each other on a real nail.

So here’s ArtDeco Ceramic Nail Lacquer 123 in two coats with essence nail art special effect! topper 07 soft touch:

Are you reaching for wintery colours already?

shuffles around awkwardly

2011-11-04T10:39:00.001+01:00

Despite the content of my last tweet, I have not sunk into a drunken stupor.
I’m feeling the urge to apologise for my absence, but I don’t really want to since it’s not like I’m obligated to post on a specific schedule. However I will explain briefly without making silly excuses. The fact that I’ve been slipping from cold into cold for well over a month is not a good reason, I get that every year. o.O

Though I haven’t made it a recurring topic on this blog I haven’t made it a secret that I suffer from depression and social anxiety. And while I usually don’t react too strongly to seasons, this autumn my issues banded together, gathered a variety of blunt instruments (and in some cases nail-studded clubs), and smacked me quite firmly with them.

I have been utterly uninspired to do anything more interesting than a plain colour and couldn’t be arsed to actually write up something about them. I have some cute Halloween-themed stickers that would have taken just a few minutes to post about, but nope. Not possible.

Today I’m feeling a bit better and hopefully this will start a bit of a trend for me. And I can only hope that this will mean I’ll feel inspired to post again.
And while some of you might think this is odd, I shall disable comments on this post since nice, supportive comments will make me bawl and I’ve done enough of that already.

NotD - Gilded Neon Without Mole

2011-10-23T06:03:00.001+02:00

Lots of holidays these days. I may have snickered when I found out about Mole Day, especially when I found the NMDF website (it looks a bit unintentionally ironic, no?). Since I don’t think I can pull off anything truly mole-y I thought I’d just mention it for the nerdy silliness. Mole Day is celebrated on October 23 between 6:02 AM and 6:02 PM (the whole 6.02x10^23 thing) and in my time zone starts right this minute.
For this mani I found the basic combination of neon and glitter quite easily, it took a lot longer to figure out if I could do some subtle embellishment to take the mani a step away from just layering. Surprisingly my camera didn’t die of neonness this time, but it turned the polish way more green than it is.

Here’s what I used today:

China Glaze Nail Strengthener & Growth Formula
Astor Protection 3 Base Coat
Maybelline Colorama 51 French White
ArtDeco Ceramic Nail Lacquer 542
LOOK by BIPA nail tattoo liner 11 gold
essence colour&go 67 make it golden
Seche Vite

You know how this goes by now, right? I did my usual neon application tonight: one coat of each base coat, two of French White and some Seche Vite. After that was mostly dry I added two coats of 542 and more Seche Vite.

542 is a gorgeous, brilliant neon yellow, which gains a faint greenish hue the more it’s built up. Unlike most neons this didn’t dry to a matte finish. Like most neons this won’t build up to full opacity easily, two coats over an opaque white base are perfect.
I probably could have rocked this in one coat over white, because it was incredibly free of streaks. I chose to apply two for an even more intense colour. The formula was just amazing, not even China Glaze’s are that smooth. And for a mini 542 had an excellent brush, round and a bit short, but very supple.
I’ve had that for a while and grabbed it from a separate display, so I don’t know if it’s still available, but if you see it: highly recommended.

This is Ceramic Nail Lacquer 542 in two coats over a white base with Seche Vite:

I wanted to do something odd tonight, so I chose to make it a funky french with white and golden glitter.
First I applied a wavy white tip…

… and added some detailing with the golden liner.

This was followed up with a coat of make it golden and some Seche Vite.

BTW I did some bitching on twitter until I figured out that Avira Antivirus 2012 somehow doesn’t interact well with Blogger’s sidebars. If you have that wonky issue where all the elements from the right sidebars show up underneath the posts you may have to fiddle with the settings.

Wait a sec. I have gold, i.e. Au, neon, i.e. Ne, and nail polish is pure chemistry. I figure that counts as the chemistry connection. (And feel free to send me a mole of gold. Though I want to write mol every time. Curse you, English!)
How would you have done a mole-inspired design?

NotD - An Apple A Day

2011-10-21T04:57:00.001+02:00

I had a completely different post planned, but a glance at my calendar made me change direction completely. Why? Because today, October 21st, is Apple Day.

This is what I used tonight:

China Glaze Nail Strengthener & Growth Formula
Astor Protection 3 Base Coat
China Glaze Hot Apple
Orly Green Apple (it’s more yellowy than it looks here)
acrylic paint
some random top coat
Seche Vite

I started by applying one coat of each base, three coats of Hot Apple on nine nails and Green Apple on the accent nail. Then I sealed the polish with Seche Vite.

Though I’m not much of a red polish kind of girl, Hot Apple has a special place in my heart. It was one of the products I got with my first US polish order. It’s one of those crèmes I can’t describe in other words than creamy, the fairly high white content that always makes reds a little pinkish. Hot Apple is mostly red, though, and thus not as opaque as some creamy reds. It definitely requires four coats for full opacity, three will yield an almost fully opaque result unless you look at them from just the right angle.
But if you don’t mind a bit of VNL, I found Hot Apple to be extremely even, so it definitely is wearable in two coats. It applied free of any streaks and levelled beautifully. The only issue I have with this is that if you dip the (usual round and decent) brush in and wipe one side, as I usually do, there’s a bit too little polish on the brush. Strange.

Here’s Hot Apple in two coats without top coat:

And here’s Hot Apple in three coats with Seche Vite:

After the base colours were dry I used acrylic paint to add just a single dark red apple to the accent nail and sealed it with more top coat, first a coat of some random generic TC as to have a wet base to add more Seche Vite to.

So have an apple or at least something apple-y (pie counts ^_~) today, folks! I might just whip up some tasty fruity oaty ~~bar~~ muesli, since it’s almost breakfast time.

The Flakies Project - Part Two

2011-10-18T01:41:00.001+02:00

So the project continues, this time I have three blues as base colours and as expected, the darkest looks amazing and on the lightest the flakies barely show up. So much so that my camera refused to focus properly. (Yeah, I shamelessly blame my trusty Canon.)

For the line-up of flakies, their descriptions, and to see them swatched without coloured bases please visit the first post of my Flakies Project.

on essence fall for me:

on Catrice Blue Cara Ciao:

on essence midnight rocker:

Even though it’s obvious that light colours make for underwhelming bases, I’ll still keep swatching one per colour family for completeness’ sake. They are pretty enough and the flakies do show up, they just don’t stand out that much and they photograph very poorly. So don’t let the rather meh photos discourage you if you’re thinking about layering flakies over your classic French manicure or something.

The Flakies Project - Part One

2011-10-12T01:10:00.001+02:00

I promised to do skittle swatches of my flakies (not that I have many) and this is how it will work:
Until I’m happy with the combinations I’ve covered I will post as frequently as I can, applying the same base colour on each nail and different flakies on each finger. Since I currently own a mere half-dozen flakies, I’ve decided to break them up into two sets per base colour, leaving the pinkie in just the chosen base colour and applying three flakies one the other nails (let’s pretend that I don’t have thumbs right now).
All base colours will be crème or jelly polishes as mixing in shimmers and glitters might be confusing; I want all glitteriness to come from the flakies themselves. I’ve got a whole bunch of colours to use as my potential bases, but only a few have truly been chosen. So feel free to request something, be it a specific polish or a general colour, I’ll do my best to include it (or something similar if I don’t own the one you named).

When viewing the following images, please remember that swatching any kind of glitter is a pain in the tush and there will be random flakies on the skin. I spent hours swatching for just these few images, you can easily see how hard it was on my skin. In some photos the lighting and skin tone will look odd, but y’know: it’s the polish that counts.
As always, click on any image to get to its Flickr page and view it there however big you want.

The flakies are Golden Rose Scale Effect 04, 05, 06, 08, 10, and Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure.

04 - clear base, flakies flash mostly cool green to golden green with the odd red or blue one
05 - yellow base, flakies flash golden green to orange-gold
06 - blue base (looks more intense in the bottle than on the nail), flakies flash blue (with just a hint of purple) to warm green, a few red flakies
08 - clear base, flakies flash orange-red most strongly, but there’s blue, pink, green, and yellow
10 - pink base, flakies flash orange-red with hints of magenta
Hidden Treasure - clear base, flakies are slightly smaller and flash golden orange

on essence white hype:

on Rimmel 60 seconds 805 Grey Matter:

on essence black out:

So, yeah. Don’t judge flakies by the bottle. Some look very different in the bottle, but almost identical on the nail. For others, the opposite is true.
As a general rule, the bases are very sheer, Golden Rose 10 is the exception here (it will probably look quite odd over greens or yellows). If you order online, google proper swatches first; if you’re at the store, tilt and enjoy. Mostly, the strongest colour is the only thing that really shows up.

I originally planned to do this daily for a week, but I don’t think my cuticles or nails could handle that, so I’ll mix the comparisons between regular NotDs. So far I haven’t decided on how I’ll group the other base colours, maybe I’ll do them by colour, maybe split by pasel/brights/darks. We’ll see.
And as I said before: feel free to request. I might completely forget one absolutely vital shade or another.

Swatches - essence urban messages

2011-10-09T02:19:00.001+02:00

Here we go, another post featuring the polishes from an essence trend edition.

As so often in recent TEs, there are five colours in urban messages. All of them are very shimmery - or rather microglittery - and come in 10 ml (.33 fl. oz.) bottles with round, flexible brushes, which I find quite nice. Each polish required three coats, though with careful application (and depending on the thickness of the coats) nightline might get away with two coats.
The formula wasn’t completely consistent, some polishes were patchy or streaky. But all were even (or mostly even) in two coats and I found none of them difficult to apply.

essence urban messages 01 street styler

Oh, street styler, how pretty you are! This is the only polish with differently sized glitter in the dusty teal-ish blue base. There are fine sky blue and bigger silver particles. The overall effect is pleasantly weird.
Though street styler was patchy at first, it eventually evened out. Not a real problem.

This is street styler in two coats without top coat:

And this is street styler in three coats with top coat:

essence urban messages 02 skyscraper

skyscraper is a bit odd and I’m kind of ambivalent about it. The combination of extremely fine blue-green microglitter in a putty-coloured base is unexpected and surprising. I wouldn’t normally even wear this weird putty thing, but the sneaky colour intrigues me.
This one was ever so slightly runny, yet almost free of streaks and it levelled very well. I have no complaints about skyscraper’s formula.

Here is skyscraper in two coats without top coat:

And here is skyscraper in three coats with top coat:

essence urban messages 03 it peace

I keep surprising myself when I remember that I own a few bottles of creamy pinkish red polishes like this. Except that it peace also has the strange juxtaposition of blue/purple/magenta microglitter.
Though the first coat was very streaky, the second was almost perfectly even. Otherwise, it peace applied nicely.

This is it peace in two coats without top coat:

And here is it peace in three coats with top coat:

essence urban messages 04 nightline

The first coat frightened me a little. The base just looked like a sheer black, but upon applying the second coat nightline just turned almost perfectly opaque. You can barely tell that the base is black, the blue microglitter - with just a hint of purple and magenta - made it look like a blackened blue.
This, too, was very streaky at first, but it was practically perfect after the second coat.

Here is nightline in two coats without top coat:

And this is nightline in three coats with top coat:

essence urban messages 05 wall of fame

I had to edit the photos of wall of fame quite a bit, because it looked close to neon on each and every one. The base is a not quite pastel, ever so slightly dirty/greenish yellow, the microglitter is golden and barely leans toward green and orange. Overall this is the most monochromatic colour in this collection.
wall of fame was a tad streaky, but all in all the formula was good and I had no issues.

This is wall of fame in two coats without top coat:

And this is wall of fame in three coats with top coat:

Though I like all colours, the ones that were must-haves for me were street styler and especially nightline. I highly recommend taking at Gejba’s swatches at parokeets, she really captured the shimmer which doesn’t properly show up in my swatches. I blame the lack of sun in my flat. I can see the glitter, but the camera just wouldn’t pick it up for most colours.
Send me money and I’ll buy a new flat with lots of sun (not that that would help much with this kind of weather). I’d probably die of sun-shock, though, ‘cause I’ve never had much in the way of natural light. ^_^

Which of these colours do you find most intriguing?

NotD - Sprinkled Pink

2011-10-07T04:04:00.001+02:00

I’ve been into multicoloured manis a lot recently (could you tell?). But I still like to have the base colour show through. Curvy line to the rescue!

Here’s what I used today:

China Glaze Nail Strengthener & Growth Formula
essence base sealer
essence colour&go 08 ultimate pink
LOOK by BIPA nail tattoo liner 3 black (I’m a dope, so this isn’t on the photo)
a bunch of coloured polishes
essence top sealer
Seche Vite

After applying both base coats I added three coats of ultimate pink and sealed it with Seche Vite (which I finally thinned, the last dregs from the big refill bottle were so gloopy).

ultimate pink is your basic bright pink crème, not all that special, but a great staple to have. It dries a bit darker than it looks in the bottle, but the cap is amazingly accurate. The opacity is average; two coats still leave VNL, three are perfectly opaque unless you apply extremely thin coats.
I found the formula easy to work with, smooth and even, it levelled amazingly. ultimate pink also dries to a very shiny finish, which is great for top coat-haters. Y’all know that I love the flat and not too wide brush used for essence’s colour&go line.
If you own a few bottles of pink you may already own a very similar shade, but it is gorgeous and easy to apply. So yeah, I can definitely recommend this polish.

Here’s ultimate pink in two coats without top coat (see how shiny it is all by itself):

And here’s ultimate pink in three coats with Seche Vite (they really matched the colour of the cap perfectly, didn’t they?):

Today I’ll show you the main steps again.
After the base was dry I roughly sketched out the to-be-multicoloured area with the black liner. No need to be too precise, the black will be redone at the end. Just try not to get any into the area that is supposed to remain pink.
If you do mess up: I hope you waited for your top coat to dry, because then you should be able to carefully use a brush and acetone/polish remover to remove the polish. The top coat you’ll add later will disguise the resulting scuffed/dissolved surface.

Then the dotting started. I used quite a few crème polishes for this and layered them as random them as possible.
Depending on the amount of time (and patience) you have you can make the dots any size you want. Big spots take less to apply, but will take longer to dry if you don’t like quick-drying top coat. Starting with a coarsely splotched layer with smaller dots on top could be a good compromise.
If you’re really out of time: acrylic paint. It’s utterly easy to work with and dries immediately.

Keep layering.

Once I was happy with the dots I reapplied the black line separating the pink from the multicoloured part. I then added essence top sealer to give the following coat of Seche Vite an even base. Though the pink should still have been safe to add the SV to without adverse reactions.

Have I done this before? Either I did or I saw this somewhere else, but I really can’t remember right now. It feels very familiar.

Swatch - China Glaze Concrete Catwalk & more Flakiness

2011-10-05T00:01:00.001+02:00

I should probably declare October to be Flakies Month, but that would inevitable make me not want to swatch all the flakies. Anyway, don’t be surprised if you see loads of flakies in the near future.

China Glaze Concrete Catwalk

Concrete Catwalk is a deep grey crème. It’s always hard do say if a grey is truly neutral, the lighting can easily play tricks on you, but to me it does look quite stark. However it has an innate creaminess which softens it a bit. Two coats are perfectly opaque.
This polish has a perfect formula, it’s slightly on the thicker side, yet applies smoothly and mostly evenly. The first coat had a few bare spots, but it was utter perfection upon applying the second coat. As always: China Glaze’s round brush is nice, but not great.

Here’s Concrete Catwalk in two coats with top coat (which on all photos was super-reflecty. Boo):

This time I used Golden Rose Scale Effect 04 to add some flakiness to the grey:

Now as for swatching the flakies: I’ll definitely do some kind of skittle swatch. Would you prefer to see the same base on each finger with different flakies or differently coloured bases with the same flaky polish layered over them?

CucumPear's Onyx Phalanx

A Glossybox Ranty Rant

Nail Fail - Ra-n-ma

What I’ve Been Doing With My Time

Swatches - essence Circus Circus TE

NotD - Is It 2012 Already?

Nail Quickie - Christmas Eve

Nail Quickie - More Krampus Than Christmas

NotD - Late Monkey-Picked Tea

Mini Review - Glossybox Austria

Swatches - LOOK by BIPA Special Effect LE

NotD - Layered Hexawesomeness

Colour Me Baffled

NotD - Spiky Olivey Thing

NotD - Evolution Kills

Swatch - China Glaze Blue Sparrow

Nail Quickie - This Looked Better In My Head

NotD - A Matte Deep Blue? Who’d Have Thunk?

*shuffles around awkwardly*

NotD - Gilded Neon Without Mole

NotD - An Apple A Day

The Flakies Project - Part Two

The Flakies Project - Part One

Swatches - essence urban messages

NotD - Sprinkled Pink

Swatch - China Glaze Concrete Catwalk & more Flakiness

shuffles around awkwardly