Happy Birthday, Achtung Baby!

Hello lovelies! You're all hopefully having a lovely Saturday while I'm at work! ;) Today's mani is the last in my Achtung Baby series, because today this baby turns 20! Happy Birthday to my favourite album! (I'm totally taking it as a sign that our birthdays are so close to each other :P)

This is the mani that started it all. I wanted to do something special for an Achtung Baby anniversary event in Vienna and figured I could try to do nail art inspired by the artwork of the album. This was by far the most complicated mani of my little project (and not only because all I had to work with were a dotting tool and the brush of a white striper polish that I kept dipping into different polishes and wiping down...).

I'm warning you, there's a bit of a picspam ahead. I really loved how this mani came out; I wish I could have worn it longer!

Not much to say about this one, I guess. As you can see I simply chose one little picture for each nail as my inspiration and tried to fit it on. I picked the ones that seemed to me to be best suited for nail art, since I'd have had a hard time drawing Bono's face with nail polish. :)

And that concludes my 14 days of celebrating Achtung Baby! I do hope you enjoyed it and maybe even gave some of the songs a listen. :)

Products I used:
Essie Little Brown Dress
OPI Stranger Tides
Essence Buddy Bear
MAC Obey Me
Models Own Concrete Mixer
Catrice Snow Motion
China Glaze Seaspray
China Glaze For Audrey
OPI Greenwich Village
China Glaze Liquid Leather
p2 hug me
Barry M crackle polish in black
China Glaze Mom's Chiffon
China Glaze City Siren
MAC Rain Of Flowers
Catrice Bye, Bye Birdie
+ white striper polish, silver glitter striper polish, topcoat and a lot of time (and also probably some other polishes I forgot to write down)

14 Days Of Achtung Baby: Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World

Happy Monday, lovelies! Another late post today...

Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World

"sunrise like a nosebleed"

Tryin' To Throw Your Arms Around The World, quite possibly my favourite song on Achtung Baby, simply because it's so horribly underrated. Stuck between Mysterious Ways, which is a well-loved tune by most fans, and the last three songs, which are something of a holy trinity, I guess this song just gets overlooked. A shame, because it's bloody brilliant.

"6 o'clock in the morning, you're the last to hear the warning, you've been trying to throw your arms around the world." Haven't we all had nights that ended at six in the morning, going home as the first people go to work, all fuzzy brain and lights blurring in front of our eyes. To me this song is an ode to every spectacular hangover, every night spent looking for something you can't find at the bottom of a glass, every watery sunrise that makes you wince.

Products I used:
China Glaze Liquid Leather
MAC Obey Me
Models Own Concrete Mixer
Illamasqua Hectic
Essie Chinchilly
p2 gigantic
American Apparel Neon Red
Essence Forget Me Not
Dior Rock Coat

14 Days Of Achtung Baby: Until The End Of The World

Happy Wednesday, lovelies! Sorry, it's not a pink one this time around. This will hopefully go up while I'm at work (with a bloody boring manicure at that, boo!).

Until The End Of The World

"in my dream I was drowning my sorrows, but my sorrows they learned to swim"

Until The End Of The World, the first (U2) song I was ever truly obsessed with. There's absolutely no way to put into words the things this song makes me feel. It always makes me think of the T.S. Eliot line "this is the way the world ends".

My main inspiration for this mani came from the lines "we ate the food, we drank the wine / everybody having a good time / except you / you were talking about the end of the world" and "I took the money / I spiked your drink / you miss too much these days if you stop to think".

Let me tell you, so much went wrong here. Polish was too sheer or too dark or didn't dry or dried too quickly. And despite all of that, I think this is my favourite mani so far. It's a little ambiguous, I suppose, but so is the song and I think just spelling it out would be boring. Anyway, what do you guys think? :)

Products I used:
China Glaze Liquid Leather
Models Own Grace Green
MAC Immortal Gold
a england Merlin
Catrice Marilyn & Me
Essence Make It Golden
OPI Midnight In Moscow
Essie Sand Tropez
Illamasqua Kink
Dior Rock Coat (this has been my best friend for these manis!)
Essence Matt Top Coat
+ artist brushes, Nubar quick dry drops and regular top coat

14 Days Of Achtung Baby: Zoo Station

Ahem. So I disappeared from blogging for a while there, for various reasons really. I haven't been very motivated lately (it's been a tough few weeks), so I figured I should come up with something to make me want to blog again. Instead of getting into the details of my life and why it kept me from blogging, let's just jump straight into my little project, alright? :)

As you've probably noticed by now, I'm a huge U2 fan. Now, two weeks from today, 20 years ago, they released their album Achtung Baby. It's arguably one of their most influential, if not best, albums. It's the album that made me fall in love with them, and the one that shaped the U2 that inspired me.

I wanted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my favourite album of all time, and I love nail polish... You see where this is going, don't you?

Over the course of the next two weeks I will (attempt) to post nail art inspired by the album, following the tracklisting - one manicure for each song, plus two bonus manis. I'm terrible at nail art and I've been meaning to improve my skills for ages, I'm hoping combining two of my obsessions might help. Even if you're not a U2 fan and have never listened to the album (though I can only recommend checking it out - early 90's music at its finest!) I would love to hear your thoughts on this! :)

Without further ado, here's the first mani!

Zoo Station

"time is a train, makes the future the past"

Zoo Station, the first song on Achtung Baby, the one that starts and makes you wonder if maybe your CD got scratched or something, the one that jerks you out of whatever headspace you're in. Zoo Station is also the name of a tube station in Berlin. What this song makes me think of is trains, train stations, how fast paced our lives are and how much of them we spend in transit.

I have one particularly vivid memory of being on the London Underground in that stretch of time where you're not sure whether it's still New Year's Eve or already New Year's Day. The billboards were dirty and way too bright for my somewhat fuzzy brain. There was glitter floating through the air. My dad struck up the most random conversation with a drunk guy sitting on the floor. Someone had puked on the tiles. Trains filled with people where whizzing past.

I'm not sure if I really managed to convey what this song evokes in me with my mani, but I did my best. The stars were inspired by the live performance of the song on the ZooTV tour.

Products I used:
MAC Spirit Of Truth
p2 hug me
p2 drama
Sally Hansen Crackle Vintage Violet
Essense Dance Topcoat
Dior Rock Coat
+ artist brushes and regular topcoat

Swatches & Review: MAC Scorcher

(Another reminder that I'm still on vacation until the 18th.)

I feel kinda bad about posting this polish, because it was a limited edition one. Then again, it's also one I love very much and you see HTFs posted all over the place, so why not? :P

Scorcher is a crazy bright coral, it's almost bordering on neon. And it totally freaked out my camera. It's much brighter than it looks here. I used three coats for full opacity, but might have gotten away with two. The formula was good, but I've not been loving the MAC brushes lately. I don't know why, but they give me some trouble.

Other than that, it's a great polish. It's probably not unique, but I don't own anything quite like it.

On a different note, I'm currently probably fangirling over seeing U2 for the second day in a row. :D Hope you're all doing great!

Pink Wednesday: more glitter layering!

Hello lovelies!

All my Pink Wednesday manis seem to be some variation of glitter over pink polish. Meh. I just suck at nail art and I don't own very many pinks, so I usually resort to spicing them up with glitters so I can pull them out again to use in another combo should I run out of new pinks. Not very exciting, but there you go.

Anyhow. I ended up really liking this mani, so I hope you'll enjoy it too despite its lack of originality. <3

Doesn't the blurriness make it look even more awesome?

I cannot stop looking at my nails. I'm absolutely fascinated and amazed by what happened. I was all OH LET'S SLAP SOME GLITTER ON THIS and then this happened. I am in love. <3

For this mani I used one coat of China Glaze Snow Globe (UH-MAY-ZING) over two coats of MAC Steamy (I admit it, I snorted at the name). I really wasn't expecting anything remotely mind-blowing, but boy did this mani turn out pretty. :) The pictures really aren't doing it justice. It looks like my nails are jewel encrusted. And on fire. And possibly tripping on LSD.

Ahem. Yes, I am currently having a love affair with my nails. :D

What are you guys wearing on your nails today?

Swatches & Review: MAC Surfbaby Collection - Eyeshadows

Hello lovelies!

The weather here was so gorgeous today. Perfect swatching weather....... Except that I'm running low on sleep and spent the day with the lovely Christina, trying to find a lipstick for her and buying way too much myself. Ah, well. Finally got those two OPI glitters from the Burlesque collex that I wanted. And I got each 10% off, yay! :D Also, I finally bought the MAC brush cleanser. Woohoo!

Today's post is, you guessed it, another makeup related post. As I've said before, my passion for nailpolish and my passion for makeup go hand in hand, so you'll have to put with these posts. :)

These are the eyeshadows from the recent MAC Surfbaby Collection that I mentioned in a previous post. I've had these eyeshadows for a bit already, but I really wanted to play around with them before giving my verdict, hence the delay.

There is a total of five eyeshadows in the collection and these are the three I got:

Sun Blonde, which has a frost finish.

 Surf USA, which also has a frost finish.

Saffron, which has a satin finish.

And here are all three together; from left to right, Sun Blonde, Surf USA, Saffron.

Here they are swatched on my arm on bare skin, no primer. Left to right, Saffron, Surf USA and Sun Blonde. (The colours look somewhat washed out in these pictures; not sure why. They're more vivid in person.)

Saffron is a lovely reddish-orange rust colour. I do have to say that this was the least pigmented of the three. It still has plenty of colour payoff (especially once applied to the eyes), but not as much as the others. It blends out fairly easily and doesn't fade or crease much.

Surf USA is a medium turquoise and surprisingly not too frosty. It's very soft and blendable and has great colour payoff. Again, doesn't fade or crease very much.

Sun Blonde is... Hm. That's a hard one to describe. It's a mustard yellow but with gold shimmer. Very unique and beautiful colour! Again, blends out easily, not too frosty and doesn't fade or crease much. This one is definitely the most unique colour out of the collection and also the most pigmented one.

Like I said, there are two more eyeshadows in this collection (a frosty white and a frosty grey). I only got these three because they looked like the most unique in this collection and in my collection. Really happy with them. :)

That's it from me for today; I seriously need some sleep. Ta-ra! :D

Swatches & Review: MAC Suntints Liquid Lip Balm in Full Of Grace

Hello lovelies!

Today is another makeup related post. :) I happened to be out and about with my mom today and picked up some stuff from the new MAC Surf Baby collection. I quite like the collection, except for the bronzer/powder stuff. How surprising. (I do wish they'd release a sort of subtle "bronzer" for very fair skin, though.)

I'll be showing you the Suntint I got, since I've only swatched the eyeshadows and want to play around with them before I give my verdict. :)

 Full Of Grace is a lovely pale, peachy pink. It's the darkest of the three shades available and the only one I feel like I can wear. The effect this gives is very my-lips-but-better. I usually go for bright, bold lip colours, but I think this will be perfect for when I go to Canada this summer, since the tube can easily fit into a jeans pocket. (Yes, I'm already planning what to take to the concerts because if you'll be on your feet for an entire day you don't want to carry a whole lot of stuff you don't really need.)

This is described as a liquid lip balm which I think is very accurate. It's very thick but not tacky or sticky like the Lipglasses. You definitely feel there's something on your lips, but it's not unpleasant. I find it very moisturizing and I totally dig the staying power of this: I put it on 3 hours ago and there's still plenty left on my lips even after eating and drinking. Colour me impressed.

The trademark, vanilla MAC scent and the fact that this has SPF 20 only make me love it more. Not to mention the name: it makes my obsessive heart beat faster. I think I'll need backups. :D

(Also, apologies for the pics. Meant to crop 'em, but my laptop kept freezing. I'm too tired to deal with that.)

Swatches & Review: MAC Sheen Supreme Lipstick Full Speed

Hello darlings!

I haven't been feeling all that great these past few days, hence the lack of posts. I haven't been able to take many pictures lately, partly due to lack of sunlight and partly because I simply wasn't feeling up to it. However, I did swatch a lipstick I bought just last week.

This is from MAC's Sheen Supreme line and it's in the colour Full Speed. This is slightly brighter and more orange-toned in real life.

I have to say, I wasn't planning on buying this lipstick. I've been eyeing the Sheen Supreme lipsticks ever since they came out, but kept telling myself that I don't need one, because a) I'm not really into the whole glossy-shiny-juicy lips and b) the only colour that really intrigued me was the red and I have way too many red lipsticks as it is. (I suspect this is me making up for my general dislike of red polishes.) Ironically, when I first saw the display of them, Full Speed was the first colour I picked up to swatch on the back of my hand.

Anywho. Now that spring is here and summer is within reach I started craving corals. (I think OPI Cajun Shrimp is a must for me this summer.) I recently bought a couple of coral-y polishes and blushes, but no lip products. I do admit, Full Speed seemed more orange to me in the store than it did when I put it on, but it's still absolutely gorgeous. I like the slick, glossy texture and am really impressed by the colour intensity; despite the glossy finish, it's not overly sheer. However, wear time is, unsurprisingly, extremely short on this.

It's a loud, bold colour that will probably make people stare at your mouth, especially if your skin is as fair as mine (for reference, on most days I'm slightly lighter than NW15.). I wore this the other day with minimal makeup and messy beachwaves and it looked amazing. This makes for a beautiful pop of colour with an otherwise neutral face, but would also look stunning with a light smokey eye, I think.

One thing I would say, though, is that these don't apply as precisely as other MAC lipsticks. They are broader and can thus be a little hard to control. I have rather full lips, so it's not a problem for me, but if you have smaller lips you might want to be careful with these. Not a major concern, but still something to consider before buying, I think.

I know, I started out blogging about polish, but my polish obsession is much more recent than my love for makeup. I will probably not post about makeup as much, simply because I loathe taking pictures of the products, but you can expect more to come. (Perhaps I really should get a youtube channel for the makeup reviews. What do you guys think?)

I hope you guys enjoyed this and that it was helpful. Let me know what you think and if you'd like to see more makeup swatches/posts in the future!