Sally Hansen Salon Effects - Kitty Kitty

While I was taking an unexpected week long blogging break, I happened to take a break from polishing my nails too. Of course I didn't keep my nails bare. I put on one of the new Sally Hansen Salon Effects that I picked up while I was on vacation in the US.

 

I used the leopard print one called Kitty Kitty. Overall, they were pretty easy to put on. They applied just like Incoco strips that I have used in the past. The one problem I had with this was that there wasn't much difference in the sizing. I had to modify a few of them to get them to fit correctly, especially on my little fingers.

Above is one of the ones I needed to modify. The best way I found was to just gently puncture around the edges with my thumbs and in some cases with the cuticle pusher. Then I used a really pointed pair of tweezers to pull it off my skin.

Here is the finish product after about 30 minute application time. A bit rough around the edges, but not too shabby.

Day 5

Let's skip ahead to day 5 now. They are not looking to bad at this point. A bit of tip wear which I know in my case is from poor application. I had a hard time getting a clean cut and file of the sticker when applying it. So some bits of it ripped off after wearing them for a few days. I also had some cracking you will notice.

In these pictures you can really see the tip wear and the noticeable cracking. Ignore the one green finger that was an oops from dyeing Easter eggs.

Day 8

At this point there are a lot of growth and gap. But the tip wear is about the same as it was on day 5.

Day 9

This was the last day I wore them. At this point the gap was too much to handle any longer and my one thumb was pretty torn up. But for 9 days where they don't look too terrible.

Overall Thoughts

I enjoyed them. I'm not that great at nail art and I know that there are other people who have problems with nail art too. This makes a great alternative. They are a bit expensive for a product that you can only use once.

One of the great things about choosing the leopard print ones are that they have a base color close to neutral, so when you have tip wear or small chips it was harder to notice.

Anyone else tried these yet or something similar from a different brand? I have a bunch of Incoco ones to try out and I also have two packs of the Essence version.

MNY - 661 & China Glaze - Cracked Concrete

Tuesday is a great holiday in Switzerland. The stores finally start opening up after the Easter break. Which means that all the Easter candy is 1/2 off! I went out specifically to hunt for some Lindt Chocolate Bunnies. I was also naughty and got some goodies from the MNY display

Check out how big that chocolate bunny is!

So the new polish I want to show off is MNY 661. It's a bright bright blue with an icy blue-silver shimmer. I used three coats for this manicure.

The application from MNY is pretty decent for the price. These are about $4 a piece. If you're not aware MNY is a branch of Maybelline that is geared towards teens and preteens.

After wearing this for the most of the day I wanted to add a bit of crackle to it. I think the weather today in Zurich was an inspiration for this. It switched back and forth between bright blue skies to gray. So I pulled out one of the China Glaze Crackle Glazes.

I popped one coat of Cracked Concrete to create this look. The first few times I tried the Crackle Glazes I was a bit unsure how I liked them. They are a bit more finicky than other crackles I've tried, but eventually I got the application down on this. You really need to make a thick coat to get the big cracks.

I like how the blue peaks through the grey! Any of you have good crackle combination's you like?

American Apparel - Poppy and Colorama - Sonic Sunset

Eek, I was a bit stressed for the last week. I was sick with a nasty cold, went on a special tour of a mountain, had my 22 birthday!, house guests, and then Easter all in the last week. I've also been really homesick but I've thankfully gotten over that a bit now. :)

So today I have a polish that was requested by Hermetic back in January when I was looking for a bit of inspiration. I am also featuring another polish that quite a few people wanted to see too!

American Apparel Poppy is a really pretty and bright orange red polish. A creme that applies beautifully in two coats. Once you get used to the long brush it applies very easily.

Now here comes the part where I put magical flakes over Poppy. Maybe about 6 years ago Maybelline had a polish line called Colorama that was introduced to the US. It was pretty affordable and had a wide range of colors. They also had a few different types of effect top coats. Today I'm going to show off #27 Sonic Sunset.

I used two coats of Sonic Sunset over Poppy. Sonic Sunset has various sized of orange, gold flakes. It's just gorgeous, especially over a bright orange.

I tried to get as many angles as I could of this. I even did a bit of super macro too! You click on course to see a bigger picture. Isn't it gorgeous?

I remember the displays for this back when they were first introduced. Nowadays, if you search a bit you can find them in packs at the Dollar Store or Big Lots. I found this one in a set of three at Big Lots for $2.

Alix Avien - 187 Jelly Blue w/ Silver Glitter

Today I have a special polish for you. I won this in a giveaway put on by My Little Vanities. Alix Avien is a polish from a Turkish company.

187 is a cerulean blue jelly with bits of silver glitter. It applied really nicely in three coats. It's so squishy too! I'm going to have to cut this a bit short now. I've been sick the past few days and thought I was better yesterday. Then I woke up this morning, even sicker than before. Been a bit behind on blogging and wanted to get this up before I pass out for the rest of the weekend.

Really great close up.

A little lighter than Essie Starry Starry Night but it's close enough and I think prettier that I don't feel the need to want Essie SSN anymore. What do you think?

Essence - I Like and Forget-Me-Not

I have two new polishes to show you from the limited edition collection from essence called Blossoms ect... There are 5 different pastel spring colors all of them look gorgeous.

I Like is a light turquoise green-blue polish. It's a very pretty polish with a bit of turquoise shimmer too. It's not very noticeable in the pictures, but it's there. This polish applied in two coats very smoothly. I had no problems with it being patchy which is common in lighter color polishes.

Here's a shot in the shade. It looks a lot more blue in the shade.

Forget-Me-Not is a cornflower blue shade with ice blue shimmer. Applied wonderful again like the first polish in two coats. The first two pictures are full sun.

Here's a shot of Forget-Me-Not in the shade too.

Overall, I'm a big fan of this collection so far. I have the yellow from this collection too, that I'll wear soon. I'm also going to look for the other two polishes sometime this week. Bravo Essence for putting out a nice spring pastel collection.

Something Different: Sechseläuten & the Böögg Burning

This is something a little different, but I wanted to share an interesting Zurich Tradition. I do have a polish post that I will write up for a little later tonight.

Sechseläuten is a spring holiday in Zurich. It goes back to the medieval times where guildhalls across the city would celebrate the vernal equinox, which would allow free time in daylight hours after the work day. Sechseläuten in Swiss German means the 6 o'clock ringing of the bells marking the change to summer working hours.

On Sunday we watched the Children's Parade. A wide age range of children walked in a parade in different period outfits. It was really interesting to see all the different outfits of the times.

Today there was another parade of the 26 guilds in their historic dress costumes. I worked a little late so I only saw a bit of the parade as I walked towards Bellevue.

The highlight of the day was watching the Böögg burning. A snowman (Böögg) representing the winter is stuffed with fireworks and placed on the large wood pyre. In English Böögg means bogey and is meant to be a masked figure that scares children a la the Bogeyman. The parade of the guilds ends at where the Böögg is placed. Those mounted on horses, then circle around the Böögg. At 6pm the bottom of the pyre is lit. Now everyone waits to see how long it takes for the head of the Böögg to blow up. Depending on how long it takes will determine the weather of the coming summer.

Just lit

Starting to burn.

Think his head is gone by this point.

And he's gone.

Took 10 minutes and 56 seconds for his head to blow up. So I'm looking forward to great summer weather in Zurich. :P