[NOTD] - Million Styles Topcoats

It's going to be very quiet here for a while. My work placement unfortunately leaves me no time to do lots of nail-related stuff - at least not while there is light to make good pictures ;) Which is probably just as well, because my cuticles and nails are in sore need of some pampering that doesn't involve daily application of polish remover!

I did find a little time for a nice mani last week, using two of the new Catrice effect topcoats from the Million Styles limited collection. I only got these two, Godfather of Pearl and Return of Space Cowboys, the others seemed somewhat boring...

Left: Godfather of Pearl
Right: Return of Space Cowboys.

When I first tried them, I was extremely disappointed: despite the completely different look in the bottle, they seemed to be very similar when applied over a dark base. They both contain the same duochrome teal-purple shimmer in a transparent base: Pearl's is milky and almost clear and Space Cowboys' is a murky dark grey. At a closer look there are some differences. Apart from the duochrome, Godfather of Pearl also contains lots of silver microglitter and it has more of a in-your-face, shiny! sparkly! glitter effect whereas Return of Space Cowboys is more subtle. Also, Pearl can be used over light colours. Space Cowboys' dark base creates an unpleasant dirty effect when used over anything lighter than the base itself. I'd also say that the duochrome effect is more pronounced in Pearl.

A few words about quality: the topcoats are a bit runny, but still manageable and the mani lasted for three days with no chips before I took it off. It takes some effort to remove the stuff, but whichever method you use on glitter will work just fine on these. You don't necessarily need a glossy topcoat, but I dare say most of us use a quick drying one anyway.

I already posted some mishappen swatches in my last Saturday Swatches post and today I want to show a mani with which I tried to showcase the two topcoats' similarities and differences. I used H&M Sweet Blue Dreams, an indigo / purple one coater as a base:

1 Coat of H&M Sweet Blue Dreams

I then applied two coats of the two topcoats on alternating fingers.

Index & ring finger: 1 Coat of H&M Sweet Blue Dreams + 2 coats of Catrice's Godfather of Pearl
Middle & little finger: 1 Coat of H&M Sweet Blue Dreams + 2 Coats of Catrice's Return of Space Cowboys

And here is my right hand, with only one coat of the Catrice polishes. It was very hard to capture, but the difference is that the base colour is shining through much more and the differences between the toppers are somewhat less pronounced.

Aaaand, more after the jump. Beware of gratuitous picspam \0/

Saturday Swatches

Has it really been a week? Here comes the 2nd instalment of Saturday Swatches.

Catrice Million Styles Limited Edition - Godfather of Pearl. One coat over blue, purple & black.

Catrice Million Styles LE - Return of Space Cowboys. One coat over blue, purple & black.

P2 - Just need style! Two coats with TC. What are those cuticles? OMG.

Every Saturday, I'm posting manis, swatches and other assorted nail-related pictures taken during the week that didn't make it into a post of their own. If there's some polish here you're particularly interested in, drop me a line and I'll write a more detailed blog entry about it.

Catrice - Genius in the Bottle Review

I bought this polish because I saw so many swatches of it and got curious. After all, what's a polish collection without at least one Peridot Dupe? I did not actually expect to like it, gold is normally really not my colour... as it is, I ended up absolutely loving it and couldn't stop staring at my nails. Even my Mum, who normally only rolls her eyes at my recent polish obsession complimented it.

So here it is: the latest drugstore attempt at a dupe* for Peridot: Genius in the Bottle by Catrice.
All pictures taken in daylight, the last two in broad sunlight.

This is three coats. The base gold colour is quite dark and warm, but it's not as overpowering as I expected it and the green really is visible pretty much all the time, unless you put your nails right in front of a light source, and it offsets the warm gold quite well.

* For comparisons with Chanel's polish and two other similar ones see this great post by the Swatchaholic!

Price & availability: 2,49 € everywhere that sells Catrice polishes. I got mine either at IhrPlatz or Karstadt, I don't remember which.

Formula & application: Catrice updated their brush and unlike some other bloggers, I didn't have any problems with the new flat, wide brush. I was able to apply the (very nice) formula cleanly and precisely on all nails. What I did have problems with, was the width of the bottle neck, funnily enough. It hasn't been changed to suit the new brush and every time I dipped that in, I smeared polish all over the rim of the bottle. And we all know how annoying dirty polish bottles rims are... But that's a minor quibble. On the whole, the formula is great and the polish is opaque in two coats. I felt three made the result more striking, but really, that was probably just my imagination. There were some brush strokes, but not too pronounced.

Wear & tear:  lasted about three days with only some little tipwear. I think it could have lasted longer, but I put a matte coat over it (gorgeous results, btw, highly recommend trying that!) and I think that was just too many layers and I was able to pull it off the nail after a few hours.

In the end, I'm very pleased with having bought it and had I just a wee bit more money, I'd be very tempted by the real thing, aka Péridot. The cooler gold tone would probably suit me even better. As it is... I'm not yet so far gone that I'm willing to put 23 € on the table for a nail polish. Yet...

I am however, rather temped by two Artdeco polishes from the new Magic Shine collection. (Preview + some swatches on Dani's blog) that seem to hail from the same colour family. I actually found them in Kaufhof today but I had already paid and didn't feel like going back to the checkout.

Shopping mania

I went out on two small shopping forays in the last two days and, apart from a present for my Mum and a new vanity mirror (with a height adjustable frame, yay! No more ingenious contraptions to raise the mirror to my eye level. Why did I wait so long to get it?) for myself, somehow a bunch of nail products ended up my shopping basket. No idea how it happened, really.

***

Ich war gestern und heute recht spontan und planlos einkauf und, Wunder über Wunder, es landeten einige Nagelsachen in meinem Körbchen. Neben einem Geschenk für meine Mutter und einem höhenverstellbaren Schminkspiegel (wieso hab ich mir das Ding nicht früher gekauft? Was hab ich mich mit meinem alten Teil ohne hohen Standfuß abgemüht...).

Das kam mit:

Kiko - 250 Hot Pink
Kiko - 270 Sparkle Touch Aqua Sequins
Kiko - 233 Sparkle Touch Beige Glitter

Essence special effect topper - 01 it's purplicious
Essence Vampire's Love LE - Gold Old Buffy
P2 - 052 goodnight kiss

Catrice - 470 Snow Motion!
Catrice - 120 Plum Play With Me
Catrice - 660 I'm A Star...

The three Kiko polishes are supposedly they are being discontinued. They've been in the discounted part of the display for months - looks like Kiko isn't in any hurrry to get rid of them.

As for Catrice, I wanted to get look at all the colours slotted to be discontinued in February before the aisle is picked clean and in the end I choose these three. The white only because I simply didn't have a pure white creme yet.

***

Die drei Kikolacke sind schon seit Ewigkeiten reduziert, sollen wohl das Sortiment verlassen, allerdings scheint Kiko sich dabei etwas Zeit zu lassen.

Die Catricelacke habe ich vor allem in Hinblick auf die baldige Sortimentumstellung gekauft. Habe mir alle gehenden Lacke raus geschrieben und heute in der Stadt ausgiebig angeschaut. Bei den meisten kann ich auch verstehen warum sie gehen. Habe am Ende nur drei genommen, Snow Motion! auch nur, weil sich sonst kein reines Weiß mit Cremefinish habe und es schon öfter vermisst hatte.