Manhattan - 71s, swatch

The first polish I bought in Germany and also my first try with this brand; Manhattan. I like the bottle design and from what I've experienced the polish, formula and application is good. The most boring part is the name; 71S. 71S is a light and gray toned minty shade, slightly more to the the blue side than green. Hopefully green enough for Green Wednesday ;) The formula is crelly and the polish if filled with tiny glitters in red, purple, yellow and green. As with all crelly+glitter-combos you get this jelly-sandwich-effect which I really like. Below is 3 coats :P What do you think?

Bought at Kaufland (german grocery store) for for 1,75 euro (think I got the wrong price though, seen that the price I payed is for the smaller size bottles)

El Corazon - 423/106 Souvenir Eggs, swatch

Today I'm showing the first polish I tried from the Russian swap I did with Lakobotan. It ended up being El Corazon - 423/106 Souvenir Eggs which is a minty green polish with crelly tendencies filled with small black hexes and middle sized prismatic silver glitter. I'm pretty sure I ended up with 3 coats and the polish dried normal with SV. I like the color and glitter combo and feel comfortable in the polish. 

And I hope you haven't missed that this week is green to show awareness for depression, with Vacker&Underbar as host. I was looking through a Swedish reliable site (sjukvårdsrådgivningen) and they claim that little under 50% of all women and about 25% of all men will have/has/have had some form of depression during their life. Somehow I can't help my self to question that some. Maybe there is a difference between sexes but not that big? Women are "known" to be more emotional in general but I think a part of it might be that men might be even less open to talking about their feelings than many women. Or what do you think?
 

An InLinkz Link-up

Mint chip ice cream nail art

When I wore Smitten Polish - Mint Chip I decided to make some nail art to it. Now afterwards I liked it better without the text and rhinestones but at least it was fun writing on the nails. I should make some other nail art with text, that could be cool :)

Polishes used:
Smitten Polish - Mint Chip
Sure Promise (black)
Blue tear drop rhinestones

Smitten Polish - Pink Goes Good With Green, swatch

This is the last day of my theme week with Smitten Polish and through out the week I've had great company by Sminkan who's also showed Smitten Polish all week! :D It feels a bit sad to end the theme week but it wont be the last time I'm showing SP, I've got a bunch of them on it's way home to me. :)

Today I'm showing Pink Goes Good With Green, however I'm not content with the image quality or lack of sun, this polish is far more beautiful than it shows here.

I haven't done any notes about this but from what I remember I used three coats. This polish is a crelly and the color is as you can see mint green going towards green and the shade is going a bit towards gray.

The glitter combination is really cool, I see light green semi matte squares and hexagons in an nuance slightly greener than the base color of the polish. There's also matte pink hexagon glitter and shiny purple/magenta hexagon glitter in two sizes in a slightly smaller size than the pink. There's also some micro glitter in the same pink and green color.

With flash.

Later to day I'll participate in Lelack's Nail Art Sunday, believe me, I haven't forgotten. ;)

Smitten Polish - Butter Mint, swatch

For this lovely Saturday I'm showing Butter Mint in my Smitten Polish theme week.

I must confess that I at first was a bit hesitant against this color when I got my bottle and saved it for last. Why, you might ask, it's mint? Mint is a fun expression, this mint is very bright and goes towards green, like a bright almost pastel teal. This photo above is the most color accurate accourding to my screen. And when I look at my photos I can't understand why I ever was hesitant, it looks absolutely gorgeous! :)

Same as the other in this collection it's crelly and has three sizes of matte black hexagons.

For this I used three coats and as you can see there's some VNL (as the others too), but I really don't find it bothersome at all.

I bought my my Smitten Polish at her Etsy shop but this one seems to be out of stock for the moment. May I guess it has been a popular shade? :)

Smitten Polish - Mint Chip, swatch

Can I ever get enough of minty shades on my nails? The answer is no. And let's call it mint green and I'll qualify for Vacker&Underbar's Green Wednesday!

As you might have noticed it's Smitten Polish week here and today I'm showing Mint Chip which is a minty and milky polish with dark brown colored matte hexagon glitter. They're almost lookin black but if you look close they're indeed brown. This polish also got round shiny small red glitter in it too.

On the nails it looks a bit like a jelly sandwich and that's something I really like with the crellys with glitter. The red glitter some time sparks and some time not creating a cool effect.

I needed three thin coats for this and I needed top coat to even out the surface of the polish since the formula was a bit uneven. But I always apply top coat so that wasn't a problem. Maybe two thicker coats
could do the trick too.

Above you'll see the red glitter sparkles most clear.

This polish is inspired by mint chip ice cream and I really think it lives up to its inspiration, I actually went and bought mint ice cream with chocolate ripple the same day I wore this! Jummy nails and jummy ice cream. I love this polish! :D

And as usual, maybe Sminkan has a Smitten Polish down her sleeve today too? If not I'd go and check out the label Smitten Polish of all the Smitten Polishes she's shown previously. :)

What did you think about this polish? :)

Dotted gradient in mint, teal blue and mint green

I showed you a swatch of Pistacchio yesterday and today I figured it would be nice to show the nail art I did with it. I had in mind to show the color compared to other colors, like a comparison in a nail art. I've also tried doing this concept before, that the dots disappears into the gradient but that time the result wasn't what I expected. I think the result was better this time.

The base is of cause Pistacchio and I've then made a gradient in teal blue and mint green alternating nails over the tip.

Afterwards I just made dots in the Pistacchio shade to make them blend in. And then SV on top to make everything blend in better.

I like how the different colors emphasize each other and how the color of Pistacchio is compared to teal blue and mint green. I think that Pistacchio is more to the green than to the blue, but just by little.

Polishes used:
HM - Mint Madness
Kleancolor -Pastel Teal
Isadora - Pistacchio

I also wanted to see how it would look like in matte (I figured that if I didn't like the matte look I could just put a shiny top coat on instead) but this is what happened. The polish cracked. I guess it could have something to do with that I first had the base color, the had made the gradient/nail art and then one coat of SV. When I figured it was dry I added Madly Matte from Kleancolor and matte polishes are fast drying too so I guess the combination of SV and Madly Matte made it look like this. Sad to do all this work and then being forced to remove the whole thing.

So, what did you think about the nail art? Have the matte issue happened to you some time too?

Isadora - Pistacchio swatch

Hi! Time to show my prize from Honi's giveaway, namely Isadora - Pistacchio. And yes, there are two "c" in the name, for from what I know there's only one "c" in English and Swedish so I don't understand why Isadora uses two? Any body who know or should we assume that they just can't spell? Or is there some sort of underlying Pinocchio word joke? Anyhow, let's look at the polish!

I used two coats for this and I LOVED the wide brush, fits my nails perfectly. If all brushes where like that I could stop doing clean ups like forever. Well, maybe the formula had something to do with it too, which was great too. Plus points for Isadora. :)

I think I've captured the color accurate according to my screen at least. I've tried capturing the polish in different lights so you'll get the idea of what it looks like. Again the name, Pistacchio usually signifies the color of pistachio or at least how it looks like in pastries but the polish doesn't look like that. It's too blue, too minty for that, a dark toned mint color is what it is. BUT I think I know why they might have named it like that, when capturing the polish I used flash on some shots (not included in this post because they where so not color accurate) and then the color appeared pistachio like! So maybe the one naming the polish only got a flash photo to look at?!

There's a lot of things I like with this polish, both the formula, the brush and the color that I think works all year round. What I don't like is the price which Isadora retails for in store which is 69SEK (~7,8euro/~£6,7/~$10,2) for 6ML. If they where cheaper I'd definitely would have had more of them.

My price from Honi's giveaway!

I don't think I've announced that I won Honi's giveaway for some weeks ago. (I'm so happy, thank you!) The price was a polish from Isadora called Pistacchio (try spelling that without looking at the picture ;)).

It's a minty pastel and I can't wait to try it out. It feels like a great spring polish even though I quite don't understand the name of it but things looking minty can't always be called mint I guess. But sure, if Isadora would be in need of a person who's coming up new polish names I would gladly except! I would be awesome with names being as creative as I am! haha :)

HM Mint Madness Tribal nail art

This is my first tribal nail art which has been trendy in the nail art community for awhile now. I've feared them for a while because they have looked hard to make, but on the other hand I've got a patience of steel so I figured I try it out. I've seen combinations with some light teal that I've really liked so I thought that Mint Madness which I bought awhile ago would be excellent!

Left hand

Right hand

Left hand

Right hand

As you can see my left and right hand are made differently. At first I was thinking about having some nails bare just in green but then I went on with all of them.

I started with 2 coats of Mint Madness over the whole nail and then 1 coat of Kleancolor - White over the places I wanted to. I then used Jordana Pop Art - Black making the lines.

As you can see I've included two sets of pictures to describe the color of Mint Madness, I guess that it's something in between the two leaning towards the upper pictures in color. What I want to say with this is that I don't find the color to be minty, more like pear ice cream in the color if that made sense to anyone. :)

Polishes used:
HM Nail Polish - Mint Madness
Kleancolor - White
Jordana Pop Art - Black

Have you tried out some tribal print nail art?

Pastel green + dark green crackle

We have all seen it several times and my pictures are a bit crappy but I just wanna say that I like it. :) I'm talking about China Glaze - Re-fresh Mint.

And the color pastel green. Anyone who have something that they associate this color with? When I see this color, some key words pop out, and that is: spring time, mint flavored things, hospital scrubs and mould. Not in the same time though.

And the "nail art" to go along.. Isadora Graffiti - Subway Green.

The few times I come around and make crackle manicures I've noticed that I often want to use the same color for base and crackle (just different nuances). I guess I imagine that it will look better like that.