When I’ve read that China Glaze and Seche Vite are sponsoring a nail art contest on the Polish Bloggers Network I was so thrilled and grateful and I knew that I’d love to take part in this contest.

The inspiration for my manicure was the Ruffian manicure but I wanted to give the metallic color more space on the nails and I also wanted to try a different shape.
One of my favorite color combinations is purple (♥♥) and gold so I picked China Glaze’s 2030 as the base color. Because I wanted to add more sparkles I layered China Glaze’s Cowardly Lyin’ on top of 2030.

To speed it up I applied one coat of Seche Vite after Cowardly Lyin’. To create the shape of the purple part I’ve put two french nail stencils/stickers in the desired shape on the nails. Because I wanted to avoid that the purple gets under the french nail stencils I applied a very thin coat of Seche Vite over the bottom edges of them.

Of course only one of my purples from China Glaze could be THE purple base for the purple gradient: Midnight Ride. Oh how I love you!
I applied one coat of Midnight Ride and let it dry for a few minutes. With a sponge I applied China Glaze’s Coconut Kiss in three thin layers to create a nice gradient.

Let’s take a look at the bigger pictures and I hope you like this manicure.

Unfortunately my head doesn’t agree with the smell of nail polish and nail polish remover right now so I couldn’t make a new manicure.

One thing I love to look at, besides manicures and nail polish swatches, are bottle comparisons so I thought I could take pictures of my taupe nail polishes and show them to you today. I love taupe nail polishes and I still have a few on my wishlist like OPI’s Over The Taupe and American Apparels’s Mouse. There is no such thing as enough taupes, right?

Let’s take a closer look especially at how Chanel’s Particulière compares to my other taupe nail polishes.

The taupe trend has reached my local drugstore.

Recently the German brand p2 (a store brand from the dm drugstores) changed their product range. With this change they unfortunately discontinued a few great nail polishes but fortunately replaced them with 8 stunning new shades and a matte top coat.

The most popular color of the new p2 nail polishes probably surely will be Rich & Royal (208). I couldn’t get my hands on it with the first shipment of the new product range because it sold out very quick but today they got a new shipment and I did what I had to do.. I grabbed it (and a backup.. just in case!).

Rich & Royal looks like if Chanel’s Particulière and MAC’s Cool Reserve made love. It is cooler toned than Particulière but warmer than Cool Reserve. It looks like if is right inbetween them.
In comparison to China Glaze’s Channelesque it is less mauve.

Let’s take a closer look at this beauty.

No.. no I just can’t get enough of pastel nail polishes.

After China Glaze’s Up & Away, Essie’s Art Of Spring and Orly’s Sweet (makes mental note to order a few of them) collections now the German brand Essence has released a spring collection called Cute As Hell with four pastel nail polishes. Of course I had to get them.

I was lucky to be the first customer that could take a look at the display from the Cute As Hell collection because I already heard that this collection sells out quick – especially the lavender nail polish.
When Essence releases a collection with predictable popular nail polishes you have to be quick because the displays of the limited editions only hold three nail polishes of every color and the stock in the displays is the only stock the drugstores get. Sometimes you are lucky and the drugstore gets a second shipment (meaning a second display) but still this only would make a stock of six nail polishes per shade.

But enough with the sadness about the limited stock and lets take a look at the swatches.