NOTD: Catrice Dirty Berry with gold tape design

Hello my dear readers,

today I have a little nail art for you! I was wearing Catrice Dirty Berry already for a few days and it started to show tipwear. And what do you do with such a mani you don't want to take off yet? You put a tape design on it! And that's what I did:

The facts:
Base: Essie Protein Base coat
Color: Catrice Dirty Berry, two coats
Tape Design: China Glaze Midnight Kisses, one coat
Rhinestones from BornPrettyStore
Top: Essence Better than Gel Nails Top Sealer

Sorry for my pink-ish skin, I wear a raspberry colored top today, which apparently reflected to my fingers... Dirty Berry is a beautiful blue-toned purple (I don't see berry, haha), which is a bit muted and has fine holo shimmer running through it. I love it! It was one of the shades I always picked out the shelf, only to put it back before checking out. Now I have it, and I'm glad I do! Here is a second pic, taken with flash, to show you the holo beauty:

Aah. Awesome. And for reference, a pic with Dirty Berry on its own:

German word of the Day: Him|bee|re, die (f): raspberry. Omnomnom I looove raspberry jelly/cake/whatever... And the color is pretty, too :)

This is a test - Zoya Zuza

Hello dear readers,

after losing my camera, I had to find other ways to show you my manicures and nail art and stuff. One of my options is my new smartphone, a Samsung Galaxy Note. Today I took some sunlight pictures of my current NOTD, namely Zoya Zuza, and I wanted to show you the results:

Facts:
Base: Essie Protein Base Coat
Color: Zoya Zuza, two buttery, smooth and pigmented coats <3
Top: Essence Better Then Gel Nails Top Sealer

I'm really astounded by the quality the built-in camera delivers! What do you guys think, is this enough to showcase nail polish? Please give me some feedback on this!

Zuza is my absolute favourite of the bunch of colors in the Surf Collection and totally up my alley. It's base is a teal color with a massive amount of silver shimmer and a pinch of gold, pink and light blue shimmer thrown in. All these add to the complexity and depth of this nail polish.To showcase the true color of this beauty better, I have a second picture for you that has been color corrected and which has been taken at an angle, to show the base color better (hence the matte look)

Speaking of matte: I bet this would be utterly gorgeous with a matte top coat!
In the last days, the weather has been beautiful here and I am lucky enough to live a ten minutes walk away from a park. I loove to be there!

German Word of the Day: But|ter|blu|me, die (f): Buttercup, see picture above ;)

I'm off to see the Champions league final now. Have a nice evening/afternoon/ whatever it is where you are when you are reading this!

Nails and lilacs

Hello dear readers,

here is a quick mani post to compensate the lack of nails lately:
After the tutorial by Sammy, gradient nails are popping up everywhere. I was inspired, too, so I did this little pastel gradient with pink and light blue:

Facts:
Base: Nubar Foundation Base Coat
Color: Essie Pop Art Pink, 2 coats
Sponging/Gradient: Essie Pop Art Pink and P2 Charming
Top: Essence Better than Gel Nails Top Sealer

This photo was taken in full-on sunlight, which totally washed out my pink base color and made it look like my "mannequin-hands" shade, which it is not in the shade. This is the only picture that I took, I planned on a shade picture, but before I got around doing it, my cam broke. I'm still in love with this picture. Who doesn't love lilacs?

German word of the day: Flie|der, der (m): lilac. I love the scent of lilacs! As a young girl, I even made my own lilac "perfume" with the flowers and water. Sadly, it became stinky by the third day. But till then, I really enjoyed having home-made perfume!

Happy Tuesday y'all and see you!

My cam is dead... UPDATE

I have had it for a bit less then a year, and now the zoom lens won't move anymore :((
Fortunately, it has still a warranty, so I can have it repaired at the store I bought it. Until I have it back again I will try to catch up on tags and post some manis from the vault. I hope you're OK with it :)

Take care!

Update: I have been to the store today, and they claim it's user error (read: my fault) and that I would have to pay more then the original price of the camera to get it repaired. I'm really angry at them because I did nothing with it, I didn't drop it, I didn't take it to a beach etc. I was always eager to keep my little cam safe :(
Well, so I owned this cam less then a year. And because I did my driver's license recently, I have absolutely no money to buy a new one (the license cost me over 2 000€). We will see how it goes with the built-in camera of my smartphone (Samsung Galaxy Note) or if someone can lend me a camera.
I have not given up yet.

Swatch request: Zoya Carly

Hello my dear readers,

here is part two of the requested Zoya colors: Carly!

The facts:
Base: Some clear polish by P2
Color: Zoya Carly, two coats (one is almost enough!)
Top: Essence Better than Gel Nails Top Sealer (yes, I'm testing a new Top Coat. Would you want a review?)

I was very lucky because the sun wanted to come out this time. Carly is great indoors, but it shows its true beauty best in sunlight. I highly encourage you to enlarge this picture! Carly is a stunning purple with red undertones, literally packed with magenta, purple and a bit of light blue shimmer. For once, my camera was able to pick a purple up and stay true to color, yay! (I did not alternate anything in this pic other then cropping and watermarking). The formula of this was perfect, it painted almost itself on and dried fairly quickly. Zoya did a great and unexpected color for their Surf Collection, while managing to do a summery purple!

Bonus pic:

Sadly, the other day I crashed my right index finger into a wall (no, I won't tell how I managed this ;) )and the next day the nail had a huge chip, so back to nubs it is! But I'm not too sad, they will grow back.

German word of the day: Na|gel|fei|le, die (w): nail file, also emery board. *sad face*
I hope you have a great start of the week! Remember, weekend is only five days away!
See you,
Sophie

Swatch request: Zoya Meg

Hello dear readers,

I hope you had a great week! Finally I found some time to take photos and while my pasta is boiling, I will show you Zoya Meg from the Surf collection!

Facts:
Base: Some cheap-o "All-in-one" Clear polish from P2
Color: Zoya Meg, two coats
Top: None

Meg is a beautiful green that walks the line between apple and lime green. It has a metallic finish and covers completely in two thin coats. I'd really like to love it, but I think I can't pull it off because of its strong yellow undertones clashing with my pink-ish skin.
But it is a great summer color and it has the fabulos formula Zoya is famous for. Perhaps I can wear it when I'm more tan.

I hope you enjoyed this little swatch! What is your favourite summer meal?

German Word of the Day: Ra|sen|mä|her, der (m): lawn mower. A sound I hear quite often these days. Spring has sprung!

Twin post: Jewel nails

Hello and good morning dear readers,

at the beginning of the week I had a little conversation with Ivana and Theodora on twitter, where Ivana showed this manicure and stated that it stole her heart. Theo and I felt inspired and so we decided to have a little twin post with recreations of this elegant look.

The facts:
Base: Essie Protein Base Coat
Color: China Glaze Emerald Sparkle, 2 coats
Matte finish: P2 Matte Victim Top Coat (don't buy it. It's bad. REALLY bad.)
Gold accent: China Glaze Midnight Kisses, applied with medium paint brush.
Top Coat: None.

I am sure that most of you discovered already this strange "texture" on my nails. They aren't completely smooth as normal. This wasn't intended, so let me start a little rant here.
I did this yesterday evening before the Champions-League match Madrid vs. Bayern München started. The match itself took 210 minutes, because after the regular 90 minutes there was a tie, after the additional 30 minutes there were no new goals, so the match was continued with the penalty shoot-out. (And Bayern won, yay!) During the match, I did absolutely nothing with my hands. The manicure was still intact as I went to bed.
The next morning, my nails looked as I had participated in a wrestling fight. There were scatches on all nails, the "matte effect" had gone from satiny yesterday evening to barely there in the morning.
The colors I was using are both fairly quickly drying. How in the world could this topcoat be that messed up? *note to self: need to get the Essie matte TC*
/rant

Other then the matte, I'm really into this look! I think it looks like emerals embedded in gold, and the matte keeps it from looking too much like a Christmas or St Paddy's mani. I will definitely do this again!

If you haven't already, I highly recommend to go over to Theodoras lovely blog and have a look at her interpretation of the Jewel Mani!

As always, thanks for reading and see you soon!