Happy Halloween & Orly Rock The World

Happy Halloween!

I am wishing all of you a happy Halloween and lots of fun trick or treating! Over here in Germany we don't celebrate Halloween as people in the US do, but still I like everything related to it - spooky decorations, costumes, Candy Corn.... Well, tomorrow is All Saints' Day over here so I am going to have a day off. I don't have any plans for tonight or tomorrow but I think I will relax a bit.

As I already mentioned in my last post I couldn't find the time to do a Halloween manicure this year. Still I would like to show you a polish I have worn recently and which is one of my favorites for this Fall. Today I have for you Rock The World from Orly's Mineral FX collection. I already showed you Roccoco-A-Go-Go here. And just like Roccoco-A-go-Go I am completely in love with Rock The World! I know it is a bit similar to OPI's It's My Year or Zoya's Faye, but I don't mind since I don't own one of those two. Here is a bottleshot taken in plain sunlight. I left all the images large and if you click them, you can see the texture of the polish.

My lightbox is finally here!

Happy Sunday everyone!

Hope you're having a great weekend so far and are preparing for Halloween :) I don't have any plans since we Germans don't celebrate Halloween as people do in the US but it's getting more and more popular here. And I love the special sweets and all the decoration stuff related to it. Sadly My Polish Stash lacked the Halloween theme this year. I had so many ideas for spooky manicures in my head but I simply couldn't find the time to carry them out. I will keep them in mind for next year though :)

With this post I just wanted to update my readers on my progress in building a lightbox. And what can I say? I am not that talented when it comes to arts and crafts so I ended up buying one on Amazon... And here it is:

It's a Hama 40x40x40cm foldable lightbox. Along with it I bought two 35W daylight bulbs with a color temperature of 5500K. I might be getting a third one to light the box from the top as well, but so far those two bulbs work fine for me!

I wanted to have such a lightbox since the darker seasons are coming up and then I won't be able to swatch during daylight - or only at the weekend. So now I am able to swatch whenever I want to. I still have some swatches and NOTDs that I took in sun and daylight but my future pics will be taken with this lightbox. I am curious what those will look like then.

What about you, do you like pictures that were taken in lightboxes or under artificial lighting? Do you even use lightboxes yourself? Let me know!

That's it for now. Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

- Sabine

Enter Gems in a Bottle's first giveaway!

Hi guys,

only recently I stumbled upon a blog called Gems In A Bottle. Natalie is pretty new to nail polish blogging but her manicures are stunning! I just love watching her beautiful nails and reading her posts.

Now she put up her first Giveaway for reaching 50 followers and you can win polishes from China Glaze's Let It Snow! collection.

So be sure to check out her blogger blog and/or her Tumblr - not only for the freebies but because of her nail art skills ;)

Thanks Natalie and keep up the wonderful work!

- Sabine

NOTD: Owl Design Gone Bad - Wearing Cute Dots Instead

Good evening!

Time for some Fall nail art :) Well, initially I had planned to do some Owl design which I saw in a tutorial from Cutepolish on YouTube. You find her tutorial here. BUT, it turned out that I am not too skilled at free hand nail art and my owls always looked kinda weird and spooky... After the third trial I decided to rather go to bed and try again another day. So I simply added some dots to the base color. I don't want to call it Polka Dots since they're not as regular and pretty large. Still I like this more random arrangement of dots and in my eyes the colors go well together.

Well, let me first show you a picture of my Owls Gone Bad Dots Instead manicure.

I've been tagged: Liebster Blog Award

Hello!

Can't believe it, my blog has been awarded its first award :) Ingie from LimitedAddictionNails nominated me for a "Liebster Blog Award"!  This award is given to new and upcoming bloggers who usually have less than 200 followers. I am so happy Ingie thought of me, thanks girl!

So now it is my turn to give this award to five other bloggers. Be sure to check out those five amazing nail polish blogs:

Ms StrongNails

Polishically Uncorrect

Gems in a bottle 

Lila Matrix 

The Nail Polish Project

And don't forget to head over to LimitedAddictionNails ;)

- Sabine

Dancing On Concrete Catwalk

Happy Sunday evening!

Today I have just a quick post for you as I've been kinda busy this weekend.

Nonetheless I just had to show you this layering manicure I did last week. First I wore China Glaze Concrete Catwalk from this year's Metro Fall collection. Pigmentation of this was awesome, I only needed one medium coat for full coverage. Concrete Catwalk is a dark grey with a creme finish.. what else can I say? After wearing this for a day I got kinda bored (don't get me wrong, I liked the color, I just felt it needed a special "kick") and needed a change without having to redo the complete manicure. So I chose the Essence Dance topcoat from their recent Re-Mix Your Style limited edition. I applied two coats over Concrete Catwalk.

Here are the two leading polishes.

Click "Read more" for the full manicure.

Essence Color & Go Fall shades - Swatches and Review Part II

Good afternoon,

how is everybody doing? I hope you're fine and enjoying your week so far!

Today I have for you the second part of the swatches of the new Color & Go polishes for Fall from Essence. The first part can be found here. This post focuses on the blues, black and glitters. For swatches of Time For Romance click here and for Hard to Resist here. 

This time I am showing you (from left to right) Galactic Black, Blue Addicted, In Style, Gleam In Blue and Make It Golden.

Essence Color & Go Fall shades - Swatches And Review Part I

Heya everyone!

Today I can finally show you the swatches of some of the new Essence Color & Go nail polishes for Fall this year. They came out a while ago, I think in the beginning of September if I remember right. I first saw some stock photos of the bottles on their homepage and they looked promising so I couldn't help but get a lot of those. I picked up ten of the new shades. As I am not into pink and brown polish so much, I left those in the store. You can see the full range of colors on Essence's webpage.

Today I am going to show you the more earthy kind of colors while the blues, black and glitters will be presented in a second post that's coming up soon! I already reviewed Hard to Resist here and Time for Romance here. So today we have (from left to right) Princess Prunella, Be optimistic, High Spirits, Rich & Pretty and Frozen Queen. All these shades have a shimmery finish, which was another reason for getting them as I already have many creme finish polishes for Fall.

Continue reading for swatches of the single polishes!

Come And See My Polish Stash

Happy Monday everyone!

Since this blog is entitled My Polish Stash I think it finally is time to show you some pictures from my stash! I am still working on a spreadsheet of my collection but this might take a little while.

Until then, let me kindly introduce to you Alex - the cabinet where I store my nail polishes and everything nails! Most bloggers and nail polish lovers I know love to store their bottles in a cabinet called Helmer but I found this one goes better with the other furniture of the room (by the way, Alex is also available at Ikea :) ).

NOTD: Orly Roccoco A-Go-Go - The purple red gold glass flecked chameleon

Hello there,

I hope you are enjoying your weekend so far! I do - well, at least kind of. Yesterday we went over to friends to order some pizza and watch a DVD. Today I am feeling dizzy and my stomach feels weird - maybe I shouldn't have eaten that pizza with broccoli, doner and Hollandaise sauce (sounds strange, I know, but tastes good ;) ). 

So I am spending this Sunday on the couch showing you my current manicure which is Orly's Roccoco A-Go-Go from the Mineral FX Fall collection 2011. This one is a nice deep purple with a red and golden duochrome effect that's already pretty obvious in the bottle. Here is a bottle shot taken in bright sunlight.

 

Before you hit the 'Read more' button I have to warn you that this is a picture heavy post as this polish kept changing its color at different angles and lightings :) Enjoy!

Illamasqua Eclipse & Kleancolor Chunky Holo Black

Good evening and happy Friday!

Another week is done. Time is really passing way too quickly these days, I have so much work my day could have 48 hours. Not that I'd like to work that much, I also enjoy the weekends as those mean time for posting and other fun stuff :)

Today I wished my new iPhone would be in the mail as it got shipped yesterday. Wasn't the case so I am expecting it tomorrow. Thanks again to my former co-worker who turned me into an Apple fangirl *waves*

The manicure I have for you today was another layering experiment. A while back I ordered some of the Chunky Holos by Kleancolor (see my BeautyJoint haul here). All these polishes have a sheer base and I would not wear them solo. When I placed my order at Illamasqua for their Theatre Of The Nameless polishes I also put Eclipse in the basked. I decided this one would go well with Chunky Holo Black.

Love me some duochrome - Nubar Stardust

Good evening!

How are you all doing today? I am feeling a bit dizzy today and feel like a cold is sneaking up on me. A few of my co-workers have been sick lately so if I catch a cold I know who to blame :) 

Have you read my last post about my eBay hunt for OPI's Mad As A Hatter? By now I am also a proud owner of Absolutely Alice, the other glitter from the Alice In Wonderland collection. Again I got it in a private auction on eBay for 8,80€, which is around $12. Seems like no one was bidding against me or people didn't know how hard to find this polish is. The seller published several pictures and they looked genuine to me. OK, it can be hard to tell from pictures but I still hope it will be the real deal when I get it.

Today I have a duochrome nail polish for you. It is Nubar Stardust and was one of my first Nubar polishes I got. I love this brand for its duochrome finishes! But go and see for yourself.

OPI Mad As A Hatter - Fake or not?!

Hello,

I hope you're all having a great weekend so far! I myself am enjoying the rest of this Sunday on the couch with a hot cup of tea while it's cold, rainy and stormy outside...

Today I have a different kind of post for you. It's not a manicure but I need your help with something. Recently I bought a bottle of OPI's hard to find polish Mad As A Hatter from their Alice in Wonderland collection. I got it in a private auction for little money - only 5€ or $6,70. Seems like no one but me was interested in it or they didn't know how much this polish is worth. When I finally held it in my hands I wasn't sure if this is the original polish or a fake one. I heard that for MAAH and Absolutely Alice, the other HTF glitter polish from this collection, there are some very decent fakes around. I read some posts from several blogs and also makeupalley.com but still I am not sure about my bottle of MAAH since I don't have an original version I could compare it to. So here are some pictures and I would really appreciate your opinion! 

NfuOh64 - I'm in holo heaven!

Thank God it's Friday and hello everyone!

Working part of this week is done, weekend is finally here. So I made it through the first week of work after my vacation and I've finally adjusted to every day routine again...

Secondly I have to say RIP to Steve Jobs. Remeber how I mentioned I am an Apple fan girl and looking forward to a new phone... and only 2 days after announcing the iPhone 4S he passed away. It's kinda sad to see so many brilliant people leave way too early. Of course I didn't know Steve Jobs but I appreciate what he did and without him technology wouldn't be what it is now. OK, I'm being pathetic again.

On to more happy things in life! Today I have for you one of my favourite holographic nail polishes - NfuOh 64. This beauty is a pale violet base color stuffed with lots of tiny holo particles. This one has a strong linear holographic effect even indoors and under artificial light. A bottle shot was not doing this polish any justice since there's no holo effect at all so I omited it today. OK, to be honest I just forgot to prepare a bottle shot this time. I wanted to make all my posts identical with a bottle shot before the "Read more" button and the manicure pics after it as I've done with the last three or four posts. Next post will have a bottle shot again :)

BeYu 209 over Essie Velvet Voyeur

Good evening everyone!

I am back at work. Today was the first day after my three week vacation and to be honest I wasn’t really productive as I have to get used to lab work again. So I just did some office work. I couldn’t even use my computer because I recently bought a new notebook and in order to use it in the lab I need to get it registered first. Of course our network administrator is on holiday until the end of this week.

Oh and today is finally the day where Apple will show us the new or modified iPhone :D I can’t lie, I am an iPhone fan girl and can’t wait to see the new one (as mine is still a 3G).

The manicure I have for you today is a vampy dark red one with brilliant shimmer.

Summer Farewell - China Glaze 108 Degrees

Happy Monday everybody!

There it is, October which means Summer is over and Fall is knocking on the door. This weekend I removed all the withered Summer flowers from our balcony and carried the barbecue down to the basement.

But Fall also means dark vampy nail polish shades, yay :) I got so many Fall/Winter collections I need to try so it's about time to say goodbye to all the bright Summer shades. I still have one more manicure I would like to share with you, though. I wore this while I was on vacation in Spain two weeks ago and until then this polish had been an untried. I am talking about China Glaze's 108 Degrees from the Island Escape collection, my favorite Summer collection so far. Here is a bottle shot of this beautiful bright pink.