The colourful world of… Beige

The other day I received my wonderful haul from Overall Beauty. Like so many others, I took very good advantage of their grate sale of BB Couture Nail Polish. If you’re not yet a subscriber to Overall Beauty’s mail list I strongly recommend that you run over there and subscribe pronto! The sale was exlusive to subscribers and offered BTGO, plus a top coat free of charge. As I have come to understand, such offers are not unusual in the U.S. but for us Europeans this is a great treat indeed!
Just look at all these gorgeous colours!
So, which of all the beautiful colours does this fun loving, colour crazy blogger choose to be the first to adorn her nails?





Yeah, you guessed it, the very beige Santa Monica Sands!
(might be because work starts again after vacation, and I’m in a new work place, and maybe want to wait a week or two before I give the new boss a brain hemorrhage.
Again, I might just be a coward…)

Santa Monica Sands is a very special polish. It looks like it fits snugly into the cathegory of BBB (Band-aidButBetter) but when you look closely, there is a subtle microglitter in the polish, and the glitter is multicoloured! I wonder if the sand in Santa Monica really looks like this, I might have to go there to find out.. J

The application was not without issues, it is a little thick and not very easy to get even. The microglitter makes I dry with a sand papery feel, I topped it with my complimentary Rock Hard top coat, but still it wasn’t completely smooth to the touch. Next time, I might try it with my trusted Seche Vite which gives a thick coat. This is not, however, something anybody but yourself will notice, and if you are not like me, obsessed with running your fingers over your polish to feel its smoothness, you’ll do fine without a top coat.

The notd was 3 coats and a topcoat. It is enough with two for coverage, but I had to use three to even it out. Just after applying it I was not very happy with the result, but this thing grows on you! I like it more and more, trying to spy out the microglitter in the sun or in strong artificial light. Yeah, this might be a winner after all!

Hard Candy Bottle Bonanza

Finally last evening, the sun decided to show its face for a few minutes here in the rainforest. I grabbed my polishes and ran outside to try and show them to you at their best appearence. I didn't have time for many pics before the sky clouded over again, but here they are:

Pic 1 and 2:

Erogenous, Glitch, Pulp, Flash, Cosmic, Skimpy, Sky, Hick, Liquid, Peep Show, Vinyl, Mirage

Pic 3 and 4:

Love Child, Tantrum, Angel, Pixie, Dork, Luscious, Normal, Pussy Kat, Jailbait, Static, Sky, Fuzz, Girlie, Pea Soup, Frigid, Stop, Trailer Trash, Ghetto Girl, Blast From The Past, Icky

And finally the cute mini bottles in pic 5:

Platinum, Trance, Galaxy, Moody, Love, Fiend, Space Boy

Iwish you all a lovely evenening!

My One Week Manicure

I am desperately waiting for the sun to come out so I can show You my HC bottles in all their glory, but, weather is not cooperating.

Instead I think I will tell you the way I do my basic manicure. No nail blog could be complete without a description of the basics, could it? Besides, I really enjoy reading about other womens way of getting the most out of their manis, I have gotten so many good advice from fellow bloggers.

So, here goes. I usually have a very limited time to spend on my nails during the week. I work long hours, and have a family of husband and two small girls as well (although, if I'm honest, in my family it's more a rule than exception that my husband tends to mine and the girls needs than the other way around).

The solution for keeping up with my polish interest anyway has been to find a way to get the mani to last during the work week. I have been quite successful with that and want to share what works for me.

Rule number one. Start shaping your nails before taking off the old polish. If there is one piece of advice that has helped me more than anything else, that is it! It is so much easier to get an even and flattering form for of your nails if it's polished up already. With a naked nail I get distracted by the form of the nail bed, cracks and creases, all bad things which will not show anyway after you're finished with your mani. Ever since I started using glass files, I can't think of using anything else, they're simply the best!

When happy with the shape, I take off the old polish. I tried several removers, some better than others, but now I only use pure aceton without oil. I find it takes of any polish much more quickly than removers, and since I always use som kind of nail and hand cream, the drying of the nail isn't a problem.

Next is, if needed, the cuticle remover. This is a product to use with respect as it might damage the base of your nail if left on too long. I wait a couple of minutes (as stated in instructions, it's different for different brands). I then use the plastic orange stick to gently push the cuticles down. If there is any dead debris stuck on the nail, I very carefully remove it with the metal cuticle tool. This thing is sharp, so easy does it, if you slip it will leave you with bleeding cuticles.

Now, here comes the good news. I found a holy grail product for the cuticles! It is called
Cuticle Eraser by CND, but what it actually is, is a cuticle balm with a light peeling effect, The peeling based of Alpha Hydroxy Acid. Since I started using this a couple of times a week, I only have to do the tricky cuticle removing procedure maybe once a month! This is by all comparisons the very best nail product I own!

After shaping, polish removal and eventual cuticle removal I scrub down my hands with a nail brush and a mild soap, as to get any residue of the procucts off my nails. Let dry a little, and massage in the Cuticle Eraser treatment. No more washing after that, the treatment will help moistering those dry nails for you.

Now comes my little secret for the one week mani. I use a cuticle balm and nail balm made by a company called Trind. I think they're based in the Netherlands and their products are readily availible here in Sweden but I very seldom hear people talking about using them even here. So, instead of trying to get the nail plate as clean as possible before I put my polish on, I actually use 3 different products on my nails before the basecoat!

This works wonders for me, almost every polish, expensive high end of market stuff as well as cheap drug store polish, lasts a full week of work. Work which includes washing my hands about 20 times a day minimum, and putting disinfecting alcohol all over my hands and arms maybe double that amount. Sometimes, I get slight tip wear or a little ship after a couple of days, but I can usually fix this with a fresh coat of paint and a new layer of top coat.

I can't promise it will work for You, but this is the way of PolishPig!

It's Raining! (and I can tell you, it's not men)

So much for my plan of getting all my glittering Hard Candy polishes out in the sun for a photo session.

Hard rain all day, and it's been so dark outside it feels like a perpetual dusk.

To brighen things up a little bit, here is a very girlie notd from the archives. To stick with my recent htf theme, it is Hard Candy Jailbait.

I'm in a Trance!

Just to celebrate the Hard Candy return, todays manicure is Trance. I only have miniature bottles of this awesome polish, but I do have a few so I don't think I'll ever run out of it.

This colour is way out of my comfort zone. Usually I wear much lighter colours because I'm constantly trying to get away with wearing polish in a "no polish work environment".

This week however, I'm on vacation, so I had no excuse not stepping out of my frame..

Lovely and scary!

This is 3 coats + top coat. The first coat looked a streaky mess but after three coats it evened out pretty good. The application is not super professional, partly blaming me and partly my hopeless ridge-filler. I'll bring you a few pictures in the last natural light. If the sun is out tomorrow and the polish hasn't chipped, I'll try to get some more.

I'm also planning on showing all of my HC bottles, if the weather admits it.

The Fine Art of Hoarding

The happy news that Hard Candy is reappearing gave me some food for thought. I looked in my trusted Helmer and counted my HC polishes and I came up with some 30+. A year ago I did not even know the brand existed.
What is it that makes certain individuals so proned to collecting things? Is it some genetic residue from the time when only she survived, who had collected enough nuts and roots and knew how to store them in a cunning way?

I suspect that is at least part of the answer. Myself, I'm not happy unless I'm on the hunt for something. The objects of my lemmings have shifted over the years.
I have a big book collection, quite a lot of strange adventure games and more miniature pigs than I care to mention ;-)

And nowadays, I'm feeding my Helmer a little something almost every day, and it brings me pleasure every time.

Ghetto Girl

I recently spied in one of my favourite blogs (ALU) that Hard Candy is planning a return on the (american) market.

Ever since I found out about this discontinued brand it has been one of my favourite "hunting objects" on e-bay. I love both the colour range and the tounge-in-cheek names. Today I did not have the time to do a proper manicure so I bring one from the vault.

Here is HC Ghetto Girl, wonderful to apply, quite opaque in two thin coats and a little bit smug "catch-me-if-you-can" douchrome!

Weekend Haul

Often, when friday night comes around, there are a few padded envelopes and parcels stacked around my computer. During the week, I'm pressed for time and can't always take the time needed to enjoy my latest bargains. It's not anything to complain about though, because it's not a bad beginning of the weekend, unwrapping a few polishes, usually oohing and aahing when the last evening light hit the bottles.

This weekend I found I'd been exceptionally lucky. Behold the Beauties:

On a private note..

Only a fast update tonight. I spent the day basking in the attention of my eldest uncle, my dead fathers oldest brother. I have not seen him in over 10 years but he looked, moved and sounded so much like my father it was eerie! I loved meeting him again but it woke up a longing I thought I had buried some time ago..

On a much happier note he and my cousin (ie his daugther) met my children for the first time. All in all, a very happy gathering of kinship.

This is the manicure I'm currently wearing:

Misa Sun Kissed, 3 layers and top coat. A little tricky to get even and nice, but well worth the effort. Duochrome Lavender/Gold, beauty!!

De första stapplande stegen..

Jag kunde inte hålla mig längre, nu vill jag också försöka mig på det här bloggandet. Det finns så mycket vackra saker att säga om nagellack att mina ord kanske också får plats i bloggosfären. Det här blir en blogg som får växa fram gradvis, jag vill inte känna några krav på att uppdatera ofta utan när jag känner för det. Kanske växer intresset med tiden, precis som mitt lackintresse har växt från ingenting till ett glädjefullt samlande som jag ägnar ganska många timmar åt på bara två år.

Jag börjar med den allra första notd:n jag någonsin fotograferade. Jag hade ingen egen kamera då utan lånade makens, och inte visste jag hur man skulle göra för att ta närbilder heller. Men manikyren tog alldeles andan ur mig och bara krävde att bli fotograferad!

Depend 134 med Nubar Martini över. Bliss!

English:

I can't put this off any longer, I have to start my own blog after all. I don't want this to be a project that just stresses me out, so this will be a blog that grows when it wants to, in its own time and by its own rules. Much like my interest for nail polish which has grown from just about nothing two years ago, to a fountain of joy I spend both some time and money on now.

Anyway, this is the first unsteady steps of a toddler blog, and I will start with the first manicure I ever photographed. Almost two years ago I didn't own a camera so I borrowed my husbands. I had no idea as how to take a macro picture, but I had just put on a manicure that demanded to be photographed, so I had no choice. This is Depend 134 with Nubar Martini Glitter on top. Pure Bliss!