For the past few years, there has been an explosion of different nail polish finishes. Companies keep coming out with new, innovative twist be it sand, matte, leather, magnetic, gel... we have it all. Believe it or not, I haven't tried a whole lot of them. Of course, I couldn't avoid the matte craze when it was the cool new thing on the market a few years ago, but being disappointed with the result, the numerous releases to follow just didn't particularly excite me. Apart from the cracking nail polish. Oh, those were the days! 

When I first saw this Latex Matt number from Essence, I thought it was just another matte nail polish with a fancy new name, but I might have been wrong. It does seem matte when you first start applying it, but once it dries, it definitely doesn't look like a regular matte nail polish. I wouldn't necessarily say it looks like latex, but it sure looks like my shiny black faux leather jacket from Primark. And guess what? I like it. It doesn't accentuate my nail ridges and looks kinda chic. I just wish it wouldn't start chipping after a day. 

How are you feeling about the effect nail polishes? Which ones have you tried and loved? Or hated for that matter. I would love to hear your thoughts! 

Do you remember me talking about the new nail polishes from Essence's The Pastels range a few weeks ago? Today I have two more bottled goodies to show you! They belong to the other recent range of theirs called The Nudes. 

Unlike The Pastels nail polishes, which are matte, these have a creamy, glossy finish - my fave! '07 Hope for Love' is a darker pink shade. It applies like a dream, requires two coats and has an average staying power. The only problem is that it doesn't look best with my skintone, so I might be passing this one on to someone else. 

'05 Pure Soul', on the other hand, is here to stay. A light pink nude with a suble, barely visible irridescent shimmer will definitely be repacing my beloved Essie Fiji, which I have sadly just ran out of. Thankfully, there was no streakiness going on when I was applyin it, but it did require two to three coats. You should also know that it is not completely opaque. Even after three coats, my nail tips were still slightly visible, but since it is a classy, almost french mani type of a nude shade, it personally doesn't bother me. Have you tried any of The Nudes yourself? Are there any other shades I should check out?

I think it's safe to say spring finally arrived to London and I have no complaints whatsoever. There's no such thing as too much sunshine. Am I right, ladies? But you know what else I love about spring? The fact that pastel shades are everywhere. Unfortunatelly, all my cute pastel spring clothes had to stay back home when I moved to London thanks to zero luggage space, but I did manage to squeeze in a few pastel nail polishes. The ones I'll be talking about today aren't the ones that I brought with me, but they are pastel! 

Essence recently came out with quite a few new nail polish shades, and I got lucky enough to try some out. Today I have two nail polishes from 'The Pastels' range to share with you - 'So Lucky', which is the green one, and a lovely peachy shade called 'I'm So Fluffy'. Both of them have a very unique, shimmery matte finish, which requires three coats for full opacity. As most matte nail polishes, they dry super quickly and have an average, a few days long staying power. I myself am more of a creamy, glossy kind of gal, but if you're looking to add a few unique matte shades to your collection, these are definitely the ones to check out. Or you can just throw a glossy top coat over them and voila! Now, where's my Seche Vite?

Let me finally introduce you to the nail polish I've been wearing for literally one month straight. Not because I would be so obsessed with the colour - although I do really like it - but because I always forgot to take photos of my mani before the nail polish started chipping off. I would love to blame it on the polish, but unfortunatelly it was just me and my forgetfullness. Or laziness. However, last weekend I finally managed to take some photos, which means I can finally share my thoughts on it! It's been time.

Nails Inc.'s Marylebone Mews came as a freebie in December's Glamour UK Magazine, and I couldn't have been more excited about it. When I moved to England, there was only a certain amount of nail polishes I was able to take with me and a light taupe shade unfortunatelly didn't come with me. Why, I have no idea, since this is one of my favourite shades and a very wearable one as well. Anyway, the shade was not the only exciting part for me. I've never tried Nails Inc. nail polishes before and you know how I am when it comes to testing out new products...Much excitment! 

This particular polish definitely impressed me and left me wanting more. It applies evenly, requires two coats, lasts without chipping for a few days and is just a lovely all-arounder. The only thing I'm missing is a big fat brush. It's normal sized, which most people don't have a problem with and neither do I, but I always prefer the likes of Essie, Essence and Sally Hansen. 

So, who's tried Nails Inc. before? What do you think about their nail polishes? Should I check out any particular shades next time I have some money laying around?

In my book, no Christmas is complete without a festive shade on my nails. I only have two requirements: red and glitter. The nail polish I've been wearing this season combines both in one bottle. And guess what? The quality doesn't disappoint either. 

'Rhubarb and Custard' is the first Models Own polish I've tried and also the first scented nail polish that touched the surface of my nails. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. If you're a fan of sparkle yourself, but don't enjoy the dreadful process of removing chunky glitter from your nails, this might be the nail polish you've been looking for. With its almost jelly-like consistency, it nicely distributes tiny slivery glitters between the red base and makes your nails look festive in a nice, subtle way, without making you pull out your hair once it's time for the shade to say goodbye.

The formula requires standard two coats for opacity, leaves no streaks behind and makes sure your nails are chip-free for at least a couple of days. As for the scent goes, the polish truly does smell like the sour candy you can see on the cap. And while I have to admit that I don't see much point in scented nail polish, I still think it's kind of cool. In case you're wondering, the scent lingered on my nails for two days, even when I applied my Seche Vite top coat over it. 

What are your thoughts on scented nail polish? Yay or nay? Have you tried any yourself? I don't think I'll be the first in line once new scented releases come out, but I'll definitely be picking up some more Models Own nail polishes, scented or not. 

My friend and a fellow blogger Laura put up a photo of an awesome minimalistic manicure on her Instagram a few days ago, and I fell in love with it right away. As you do, a few hours later, I was already copying her. For the base, I used Orly's 'Kiss the Bride', a nail polish I've been wearing all summer long. It's usually reserved for my toes, but recently I've been wearing it on my fingernails as well, since all my nails broke and it seems like nude is the only shade that looks ok on me right now. It actually reminds me a lot of Essie's Fiji, which is similar in colour and consistency. You need two to three coats to get it completely opaque and it also lasts for a decent amount of time before it starts chipping. The only thing that annoys me is the brush, because it's on the thinner side. I prefer the likes of Essie, Sally Hansen and Essence. Speaking of Essence, the black nail polish I used to make the dots is called 'Black is Back'. How are you feeling about this mani?

I have a love hate relationship with neon nail polish shades. I love them, but they don't love me back. Most of them just don't go with my skintone, so I've been trying to find a way to wear them anyways, and I think I found it in the form of a 'neon splash' manicure. I just love how fun it looks as well! If you're interested in how I achieved the look, check out the video below.  

Today I'm reviewing another Makeup Revolution product that has some great potential, but fails miserably. 'Never Enough' nail polish is of an amazing quality considering it only costs one pound. The consistency is just right, it's opaque after two coats, dries extremely quickly and stays chip-less for about two to three days. But there's one huge problem. The brush. It is terrible. It's so rough that it leaves stripes on your nails when you're applying the polish, and let me tell you, it doesn't look good. It really is such a shame, because otherwise, the nail polish would have been wonderful. Have you tried any Makeup Revolution nail polishes yourself? Did you have a similar experience?

Hi there! Do you still remember me? I've been a bit MIA from the blogging/youtube world for the past few weeks, but fear not, I'm back. I'm back with a NOTD post that I haven't posted in what it seems like ages. I've recently been gravitating towards the same old shades or have not been wearing nail polish at all - I know, shocker! - so NOTD posts had to take a backseat. However, my sister's recent purchase broke my streak. China Glaze's Too Yacht to Handle caught my attention right away (turquoise, *cough cough*). The shade is stunning and perfect for the summer time, but keep in mind that the above photograph is misleading. My camera failed to capture the right undertone, so I suggest you to check out this photo I posted on my Instagram for the true representation. Think less bright and light. Ok, you all know about how much I love the colour, but what about the formula? I have to admit, I'm not the biggest fan. It goes on a little sheer and streaky. Seche Vite's Dry Fast Top Coat manages to conceal most mistakes, but I still find a few streaks peeking from the bottom. And the fact that China Glaze nail polishes don't have the biggest brush is not helping the situation. Oh well, what can I say. Essie, Essence and Sally Hansen spoiled the heck out of me, haha. I still love the shade, though. :)

I've been rummaging through my sister's nail polish collection the other day in hopes of discovering some new gems, and China Glaze's Sugar High turned out to be exactly what I'd been looking for. Fun, bright shade perfect for the warmer months ahead of us. In the bottle, it looks a little bit lighter and softer, but when you put it one the nails, the shade turns into a hot pink goodness with a bit of a coral undertone. This nail polish must be one of the oldest in my sister's collection, because there's hardly any of it left, but it still performs perfectly. I applied two coats for an even opaque cream finish, and chipping doesn't seem to be a problem either. Me likey. Do you have any similar shades in your collection?

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I'm still picking my nail wear from the blue spectrum, but this time, I went for a shade that is more me. Turquoise is a colour that I wear most often on my nails, however, I've never owned such a deep shade before. My other ones are either pastel or bright. Well, technically speaking, this isn't even my nail polish. I brought it back from California as a present for my sister, but the truth is, we share our nail polishes, so I consider it mine as well, tehe. 

Essie is always spot on with the consistency of their nail polishes and 'Naughty Nautical' is no exception. It is not to thin and not too thick, it applies evenly, requires two coats for full opacity and stays chip free for almost a week. A+ for the quality! The shade itself is fabulous as well. Not only does it look exactly the same on the nails as it does in the bottle, but it also has a twist to it. Tiny little silver glitters! I myself am a big fan of the cream finish and am always sceptical about shimmer when it comes to nail polishes, but this shade won me over completely. It just looks right. Especially when the light hits it! It kind of reminds me of the glittering turquoise sea... Ahh, who wants to take me to the Maldives?

For a person who is convinced that blue nail polish doesn't suit her, I have far too many of them. A few months ago, I went through the so called blue period. Whenever I saw a blue nail polish shade, it landed in my shopping cart. But when it actually came to me wearing them, well, let's just say that it never happened. There were always other shades that won me over, so my blues have been patiently sitting on the shelf, waiting for me to start feeling sorry for them. About a month ago, it finally happened. I put them in line and started wearing them, one by one. Unfortunatelly, I'm still not feeling most of the shades - pastels are of course an exception - but if we overlook my 'blue nail polish doesn't suit me' idea, they are far too pretty on their own to not share them with you. I'm sure at least some of them will catch your attention. 

The first 'blue' I have to show to you is Essence's 'If I Were a Boy'. I took the advantage of today's sunny weather and snapped some photos of it outside with my new camera. Yay for spring! Anyway, back to the nail polish. I have to say, I was very impressed with the formula. I only needed one thick coat to get it opaque, but I ended up putting on two. Why did I think that was necessary? I have no idea. I guess I did it out of habit. Luckily, the mani looked good even with two coats. There was no streakiness in sight, even though the application might seem a bit wonky when you take a close look at the photo. I swear, it's not this nail polish's fault. Blame it on the crappy old top coat I've splattered on top. I regretted the deision right away, but at that point, it was too late to fix the mess... 

Since I don't know what else to say about this nail polish other than it's great, I shall end this post here. Let me know how you like the shade and if you feel a bit weird wearing certain nail polish colours on your nails as well. Oh, and one more thing! Would you mabye be interested in me doing a blog sale? I'll be moving all my make-up into another room in about a month (more on that later), and I thought that this would be the perfect opportunity for me to go through my beauty stash and give the products that don't get the love that they deserve from me a new home. 

I first saw this nail polish on Maja's blog, and it was love at first sight. I'm usually not attracted to purple shades, but for some reason, Warm & Toasty Turtleneck caught my attention. Maybe it's because the shade is sort of muted and has a taupy undertone? I don't know. There's definitely a twist to it and I like it. I don't think I need to mention how awesome the formula is, because we all know by now how OBSESSED I am with Essie. But just in case you don't have a clue what I'm talking about, I'll quickly sum it up. The formula is awesome. Oh, you want a more detailed description? Ok, it isn't streaky, becomes opaque with two coats and stays on for ages. I've had mine on for five days and there's not a single chip in sight. Gotta love Essie!

P.S. The ring is from my online shop Destination Pretty. You can get it here. :)

This new year's eve, I went for a rather unusual color combination on my nails. I decided to pair up Catrice's How I Matt Your Mother, which is a dark muted blue shade with a gray or even purple undertone, and a rose gold glitter explosion called Kitch Me If You Can. They look beautiful together, but I don't think the gorgeousess translates very well on camera. Anyway, I Matt Your Mother is actually a nail polish with a metallic finish, but since I did put  another nail polish over it, it lost the metallic effect. Of course, I forgot to take photos beforehand, so if you still want to see how it looks like by itself, I can put up another NOTD post next time I'll be wearing it. And now a few words about Kitch Me If You Can. I'm obviously going through a bit of a rose gold glitter phase ever since I started my love affair with Rosie Lee, but this nail polish doesn't only contain rose gold glitters. There are also tons of little multi-colored (holographic?) glitters that I think are a great addition to the polish, because they nicely fill out the blank spaces. So, how are we liking the combo? :)

A few months ago, my sister started obsessing over while nail polish and soon enough the obsession reached me as well. The only problem I had is that all the white nail polishes I'd tried were crap. They were streaky and never seemed to dry, so my manicures always became one big mess. When a few weeks ago, I was standing before the nail polish rack in the drugstore with my 50% off Essie coupon in my hands, deciding which shades to take home with me, Essie's Blanc was the obvious choice. Being a huge Essie fan, I only hoped that their white nail polish will live up to my expectations. And luckily, it has! It is not streaky, dries fast and lasts for a very long time on my nails. You still have to be a little bit careful with the application, because if you put on layers that are too thick, it will get smudged and the application won't be perfectly even. I apply either three thin coats or one thin and one a little bit thicker coat to get it perfect. 

I've been wearing Blanc all the time for the past two weeks, but I wanted to make my nails look a little bit more festive this weekend, now that Christmas is almost here, so I picked up Catrice's Million Dollar Baby and applied it over the white nail polish. I think the manicure looks super cute! You really can't go wrong with glitters during this time of the year, right? I'm not sure if it's noticable in the photo, but Million Dollar Baby actually contains two types of glitters - very tiny gold ones and some bigger silver chunks. I find it very convenient, as the silver as well as gold jewellery go very nice with it. 

P.S. You can get the ring that I'm wearing here at Destination Pretty, my very own online store. It's currenty 10% off! :)

A few days ago, I finally managed to try out Essence's 'Let It Snow!' snowflake topper from their 'Happy Holidays' collection. This was one of the products I became most excited about at the Essence event I attended a few months ago, but after seeing a bunch of negative reviews, I somehow lost interest in trying it out as soon as possible. 

The nail polish looks super pretty and Christmassy in the bottle, just like a snow globe, but I have to agree with other bloggers who say that the application is not the most enjoying. You can still achieve a nice look with all those tiny multi-colored glitters and white flakes, but it takes you ages, because you literally have to scoop out every single flake and place them on your nails one by one. So, yeah, I don't know whether I'll be wearing this topper a lot, but I definitely know that I'll keep looking at it a lot, haha. I mean, c'mon, isn't it the cutest?!

P.S. The nail polish I've used as a base is '347' from Kiko. I've reviewed it here, and here you can see me wearing it with the world's most amazing gold leaf topper. I'm obsessed with that combo!

Ohh, one more thing! I'll soon be revealing my secret project, but while you are waiting for my announcement, I thought we could play a little game. Leave me a comment down below letting me know what you think my secret project is, and if you guess it, you might be the winner of a secret surprise package. :)

Last week I got some 50% off coupons for Essie product from our drugstore in the mail, so of course I had to take an advantage of the opportunity to go pick up some pretty bottled colours! Essie is by far my favourite nail polish brand, so I always have tons of their shades on my wishlist, but unfortunatelly, our local drugstore didn't have any of the shades I wanted to get. I didn't want to waste the coupon, though, so I decided to pick up a few others instead. The one you can see above is one of them. It's called 'For the Twill of It', and I think it came out as a part of this year's fall collection. I am not really a fan of a metallic finish when it comes to my nails, but since this was one of the very few unique colours on the stand, I just decided to go for it. The shade really is lovely and different, but let's just say that I think I'll stick to my usual cream finish from now on. Even though Essie nail polishes tend to last up to a week on my nails, this one is no different than any other metallic nail polish I've tried so far. It started chipping in only two days, and I also don't like how it accentuates my nail ridges. What do you think about this shade? Yay or nay? Are you loving the metallic nail polishes or are you on my team? :D

Last weekend I dug out one of my favorite fall/winter nail polishes, Essie's 'Bahama Mama', and stole my sister's precious 'Rosie Lee' by Butter London to create the mani you can see below. I think it's safe to say that the Christmas nails season is now officially open at my house! 

This is one of the three nail polishes that I got from my super lovely reader called Nina, who visited me last weekend to help me practise doing make-up. The fact that she came all the way from Ljubljana, our capital, to my hometown just to meet me still baffles me, but I am really glad that she came over, because she is one of the nicest people I have ever met. Seriously. Nina, if you're reading this, you're the best! ;)

As I have said, she brought me three ridiculously pretty nail polishes and let me just say, she definitely knows my taste, because the shades that she picked out for me are spot on! The first one that caught my attention is this nail polish from Yes Love called 'Speckled'. My heart skipped a beat when I saw it, because it reminds me so much of the Illamasqua specked nail polishes that have been on my I-want-them-but-I'm-never-going-to-buy-them-because-they're-too-freakin'-expensive wishlist since they first came out. I mean, I'm pretty sure I can declare this shade as a dupe for 'Mottle'. The Yes Love one lasted about two days on my nails and I needed three coats to get it opaque, so I'm guessing the quality of the two is not comparable - it better not be for the price you're paying for the Illamasqua one - but at least it looks almost the same, which is totally enough for me. What do you think, could this be a dupe? Do you have any Illamasqua or Yes Love nail polishes? What do you think about them?

Girls, I think I found a dupe for China Glaze's Sweet Hook nail polish that I featured in my last wishlist. I don't have the China Glaze one, so I can't say this for sure, but Essence's Hello Marshmallow! looks pretty similar to me. Hello Marshmallow is a really pretty lilac shade with a pink undertone, which is sadly not really visible in the photos, but it definitely is in real life. In the bottle, I can notice a bunch of blue and pink tiny little glitters, but they are not visible when you put the nail polish on your nails. Also, in these photos, the nail polish looks very similar to Essie's St Lucia Lilac that I blogged about here, but when you compare them side by side, they look quite different. The Essie one is a lot more muted and has a grayish undertone, while the Essence one is more pinky and vibrant.