This is the box I picked up from the post office:

This is the content:

Seriously?

Happy StarCraft 2 day, anyway.

China Glaze Grape Pop and CND Copper Shimmer.

Orly Gumdrop with Konad disk m51 and violet pearl special polish.

Going to see Kick-Ass in the cinema is an opportunity to make themed nails, and honestly, I’m not going to let a chance for super hero nails pass me by.

Left to right:
Kick-Ass: 1:1 mix of Orly Wandering Vine and Blue Collar, China Glaze Happy Go Lucky
Big Daddy: China Glaze Liquid Leather, Happy Go Lucky
Red Mist: China Glaze China Rouge, Liquid Leather
Hit-Girl: China Glaze Grape Pop, Konad disk m64 + violet pearl special polish, Color Club Vintage Couture

I have been searching high and low to find a replacement for OPI Bubble Bath, without much luck. Am I really setting my expectations too high in wanting an opaque soft pink polish? It certainly appears so. For all the pinks offerings in the nail polish world, the pickings are slim.There are a million shades to choose from, but not the shade I want. And when you start filtering by opacity, there’s not a lot of choice at all.

In the end, I settled on something “close enough”: Vintage Couture by Color Club.

I had never tried Color Club’s polishes before, but I had heard many good things about the brand. The bottle was cheap, so it’s a good a time as any to give it a try.

I’m not immediately impressed. Vintage Couture is chalky and streaky, and while it goes opaque in two coats, it certainly does not go smooth. The brush is an interesting experience in itself—it’s harder and springier than any other brush I’ve used, and wiping off excess polish meant splattering polish all over!

I won’t lay the blame squarely on Vintage Couture. My base coat was being all kinds of wonky, and bad chemistry may have exacerbated the problem. A thick layer of top coat did a lot to smooth it all out, and while it’s far from perfect, it’s good enough to pass casual inspection. I also added one coat of CND Copper Shimmer to add some visual interest.

It’s a lovely day! Nice spring weather outside, lots of sun, birds chirping, and snow at thigh height!

The sun being out for once was the deciding factor in this manicure. I have several Del Sol polishes, and while I love the concept of colour-changing polishes, I haven’t had the chance to see them in action.

Del Sol polishes are sheer, and I since wasn’t planning on covering up the polish with a full nail pattern, so I decided to try my hand at a french manicure.

I started out with a milky ridge-filling basecoat to smooth out my nails’ natural colour. I then free-handed the tips using China Glaze White Out, and painted the whole nail with two coats of Del Sol Peek A Boo. This is the sheerest Del Sol in my collection; you can barely see it on the nails.

Conclusion: Free-handing french tips is not easy for an inexperienced hand, but not nearly as difficult as I thought it would be.

As the polish was drying, I noticed I had managed to trap a small black hair in the polish on my index finger, and decided to stamp a single rose on it to cover it up. I also stamped a butterfly on my middle finger, since the polish was too sheer to hide the blue stains left behind from Blue candy.

The final result, in artificial light:

And the final result, in sunlight:

The colour change is spectacular, especially when you can watch it happen. It only takes a few seconds for the nails to turn from seemingly nude to a very noticeable pink. The downside here is that the polish is on the streaky side, but you won’t know until you see it in the sun, making a manicure you thought perfect into a sad, uneven mess.

Personally, I don’t think the white tips look very good under this polish in its pink state, so I may have to experiment with other colours in the future.

Today, we celebrate the norwegian constitution, signed in 1814, declaring Norway an independent nation after suffering swedish and danish rule for some 400-odd years. To observe the holiday, I put together a spring manicure inspired by the colours of the norwegian flag.

The base is China Glaze White Out, and the flowers made with China Glaze China Rogue and Essie Mesmerize.

A new batch of Konad disks including m79 arrived at last, so I immediately did the most obvious manicure possible.

The base here is Barry M Turquoise, a cheap polish that is nice and bright, and opaque in two coats. However, dries slowly without help, and is anything but chip proof. Combined with Seche Vite you also get very noticable tip drag.

For the pattern, I mixed white and silver special polish. This was a completely useless exercise, as it just looks white anyway. It also made it more difficult to work with, as it was drying in a mixing bowl instead of being kept safe in a bottle.

The Konad disk used is, of course, m79.

Despite not being a big fan of shimmer polishes, I picked up a bottle of a dark, shimmery Depend on a whim. I found myself pleasantly surprised by its appearance on the nails; so dark as to almost be black, with a subtle blue or possibly purple undertone, and silvery shimmer adding visual interest.

Two coats of Depend 104. Done. I had several tries of adding nail art to this, but could find nothing that improved it. In the end it got a single strip of rhinestones, giving it a bit of a black tie affair look.

The rhinestones were acquired quickly and cheaply from naildkaka, an ebay seller I can highly recommend.

I have seven bottles of Del Sol polishes—eight if you count duplicates—and I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t like this brand. The colours are uninspired, they’re sheer, the finish is an ugly sort-of frosted look that shows every brush stroke.

But they change colour! It gets me every time!

A sucker for a good gimmick, I am.

Indoors:

Outside, in the shade:

Outside, in the sun:

This is two coats of Del Sol Reckless. I considered layering it over white, and regret that I didn’t. A visible nail line does my nails no favours.

The zebra stripes were added using Konad image disk m57 and China Glaze Liquid Leather. China Glaze generally works well for stamping, but apart from metallics, they are not nearly as opaque and vivid as the Konad special polishes.