Hema Metallic Blue with Sinful Glitter Stripes

Hey darlings! How are you doing? I've been MIA for a couple of days, in my defence I can say it's been hell. I won't even bother you with the details, I'm sure everybody has their own troubles to bear, but this week crap really piled on. Anyway! I have another mani to show you, this one I really loved. One day I was going through blogosphere and I saw this amazing blue on one of the blogs. I can't remember which one was it, but the girl named this BBB - best budget blue. And it really was awesome and I was thinking where the hell am I supposed to get it and then it hit me - I got this one as a present from my dear Tevta when she went to Amsterdam. Can we all say yaaay!?

Now, I know, guys, one of my structures for blog is failing because of me. I planned to have this so-called projects, where i can show you what you'll see in the next period of time on the blog and then continue to the next and so on. And right now I haven't even finished Project Lativa, let alone Tevta's Bday and I'm already one third through what it was supposed to be my next project - my untireds. Oh well. Thing is, I always wear what I feel like wearing, I'm sure you all understand and relate to that. Thus, I think this projects won't be as strict as I planned them to be. I still hope you're enjoying the blog! And the projects, they will be finished for sure. :) 

But now to this beauty. Again, I tried some art work from the wonderful world of scotch tape Erika from Chloe's Nails intruduced to me. And again it's an accent mani, although she did a full mani with it. Why? Because I simply cannot afford to spend so much time on my nails lately. :/ And because I think I need much more practice for a full one. :D Anyway, I hope you like it, here we go. 

 Step 1: Accent manicure, obviously, Hema and Kinetcis Sinful from Project Latvia. 

 Step 2: I layered Sinful with Midnight Blue Glitter, remember this combo? I looooove it, adore it really, guess what was my next full mani?

 Blurry outside picture, because there just wasn't enough light and my camera starts acting weird from the absence of light. Still, wanted to show you how bright and sparkly this is even with grey, dead weather. This is the weather that kills just about every other colour and makes holo go 'blah'.

Sadly Hema doesn't even have a decent number to name the polish, seriously, it's like a 6 digit number or something and I'm not sure it serves as the name of the polish, so I just named it Metallic Blue, as it is from the Metallic section of Hema polish and, well, it's blue. But not just blue! It has tons of silver sparkles too, making this polish super playful! I love it! The accent finger was two coats of Kinetics Sinful (although you could get away with one, this baby is überpigmented), two coats of O.P.I. Midnight Blue Glitter and then one thick of Hema on top. 

Other than that, Hema is really awesome polish. Two coater, application is a bliss, actually everything is the same as with Lumene bottle and brush. With the exception on Hema being 7 ml polish and Lumene 4.5 ml. And I was like wha? So I took a picture, I must say this was quite amusing discovery for me. 

Very elegant solution, Lumene! Hehehe! Which totally gave me an idea of posting another bottle entry!! I don't mind these differences, don't get me wrong, this is not a rant, but I do find them amusing. :) 

So anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Hema is really awesome. Wonderful application, it dried super fast, I put TC just because it dried kinda rough. Mind you, the removal of it is a bit tricky, because of all the silver flecks. Nothing major though, just don't use one pad for too many nails. 

I'll talk more about the other two in my next entry, ok? Just to let you know - Sinful is actually very very dark blue creme and Midnight Blue Glitter has tones of glitter in different colours, not just the big specks of blue.

I really liked how this one turned out. What do you think, fail or win? :)

Thank you for reading, have a nice Saturday evening!

Lumene - Trouble Maker (33)

Hey everybody! How are you doing? I hope everybody is ok, I'm going through my study literature but wanted to take a break and post something. A lot of stuff going on on nail blogosphere, I saw promo pictures of Nubar Spring collection, first swatches of Orly Precious is out, Essence is doing holographic polish (at least I hope they will be holograpic and not that white-blue crap they claimed to be holo in Black&White collection) and many more I'd like to chat about but don't have the time. Sucks, doesn't it? 

But to the polish I want to show you. It's the other from the two Lumenes I got as a gift from Finland, this one chosen by Aelfsciene and I must say, it surprised me greatly. I mean it. One of the most special polish I've ever wore. I still can't figure out what colour I'd call it. Trouble Maker, sunlight pictures, lightbox, natural light and a video. Let's go.

 To show you all the colours of sparkles this one contains.

 Natural lighting, this is how it looks most of the time, but with visible sparkles.

 A really huge picture, to show you the details on natural light. I don't even hold the bottle, lol.

Ok, please, please ignore the major fail of scotch tape design I tried to do and just enlarge the picture to see the details of this polish, that is visible with naked eye on most of lighting but on the pictures it came out best in the lightbox.

A not so good video, but you can still see the sparkles.

I tried to figure out this colour and could not. It changes depending on the lighting and so is the amount of micro glitter that is visible to the naked eye. Sometimes it's goldish brown, sometimes it's dirty silver and sometimes just something in between. The glitter it contains is of gold, bright green, copper, blue also purple colour. Tons of it, but visible in that kind of way that makes you stare at your nails moving them slowly.  This colour is so brilliant, I cannot tell you. Mesmerizing. 

The structure of the polish is the same as it is with Cosmic FX collection, actually it reminded me greatly of Space Cadet alone, being so sheer as the Orly masterpiece. On the picture I'm wearing 4 coats of Trouble Maker, the same as i need with Space Cadet. You can get away with three, but you'll have VNL, and I prefer to put 4th coat on instead of seeing my nails under the polish. SV on top, of course. The brush was great, as it was with Cosmic girl, again a surprise, being so short and flat, but it really is no trouble at all. 

I tried to get Lumene's description of the colour, but they aren't really chatty on their official site. Trouble Maker is a part of Natural Code Punk Princess Trend Collection for Fall 2010, and Finnish blogger said it seemed from the bottle as a decent dupe of Hard Candy Mr. Wrong (Scrangie's swatches of the Hard Candy Collection). Seeing the swatches of Mr. Wrong and wearing Trouble Maker I must say they're certainly not dupes, but are related. They're built the same way, although Mr. Wrong is much more silver and blue, and Trouble Maker remains most of the time this soft brownish copper metallic kind of colour. Like I said, I can't figure it out.

This colour is a beautiful mystery for me, I can't figure out where to put it, and it's built on so many different levels with micro glitter and different tones of colours in different lighting, you feel like you're not wearing just one polish on the nails, although it's not a duo/multichrome. I wore it for three days, and I would the fourth, haven't I screwed it up with failed edgy half moon manicure I tried to do from Chloe's Nails. :/ It really came out wrong, lol, I can't believe I'm posting it. But this lightbox picture really reveals lots of Trouble Maker details. 

Oh, and Trouble Maker lives up to it's name when removing. Remember removal of Cosmic collection? Same stuff aaaall over again. But gotta love the colour. Thanks, Aelfsciene, great one!

What do you think? Do you find it as unique as I do?

Thank you for reading & take care!

Another Depend colour and GFC problem solved

Hey everybody! How are you doing? I'm enjoying my cup of coffee before I start studying and quite frankly, I'm having trouble finding the will to go to my study desk. I don't really know why, usually I do study if I know I have to but today I'm just not into it. Humpf. I hope I'll get to it, otherwise it will be hell until middle of February. 

In other news - welcome everybody! I hope I'll find all the new bloggers in the bunch, forgive me if I don't because lots of you joined in when I didn't have time to browse and then my GFC went all crazy. Speaking of which - my BF solved the problem yesterday. It was really chaos and at one point I got in a really bad mood because of it, but in the end it was working and it still does. Hope it lasts. If any of you have the same problem - I described it here - all you have to do is, when the GFC window opens click 'More options' button  (next to follow button) and there you should see, next to the display picture, info that claims it's using your blogger account and you also have the option of more profiles. Click on that and then 'unlink' the blogger profile. Then it should be working. At least it does for me. I'm sorry for a bad description, but yesterday I didn't think of print screen, as in the end he just improvised and all of the sudden it started to work. You may have to fill the form with your data. I know we did that at some point, and now I'm not sure whether this was an important step or not. :S You know, your nickname, profile image, link to the blog, if you have it. When I went checking on other blogs what data they have on my profile, everything looked normal. And now i do have the B from blogger when i follow new blogs. So basically, it's a mistery for me, but since it seems to be working, I won't dig too much into it. I hope this helps, or at least makes sense. Kinda. :S

But now to my last Depend. This is number three out of three that belong to me and it's called 209. 

 I left this one abnormally large (i don't think I ever posted pictures this large untill now) in hope you'll see at least a bit of details on this polish, because most of the time I failed to capture it. :( If you think you may have seen a blue sparkle here and there, I can promise you, it's there and there are many of them!

A couple of these pictures are left quite big, because I'm greatly frustrated by the fact I'm not showing you this colour's beauty as it should be. Most of the time on the pictures it looks pruplish with pink shimmer. But Depend 209 also contains silver specks of glitter and, most importantly, blue glitter that makes this polish quite unusual. The finish itself it's glass flecked ergo I adore it. The colour itself was a bit hard for me to figure out. Sometimes it looked very on the dark pink side, sometimes it was reddish purple, sometimes just soft purple with pink shimmer ... and the blue came out every once in a while and the silver too. So most of the time I was like: if I had to sort stash by colour, where the hell should I put you??

The application was tricky. Kaneli warned me about shimmery Depend, so I was kinda prepared, but still I wasn't too happy about the trouble it gave me. You can see the not-so-good result on my index finger the most. It was kinda goopy, not so simple to apply on the nail evenly so it doesn't look too hot around my cuticles and it tends to shrink at the end of the nail line, so wrapping is a good idea. I have three coats on, except on my middle finger, where I put only two and I think I can call this one a two coater. I'd prefer to put two coats anyway, because the coats are rather thick thanks to the polish structure and the third coat can give you thick nails, which I really don't like. I put SV on top because of the descirbed troubles, otherwise my mani would be ruined in a matter of minutes.

I must say I like this colour, I really do. It's special in my book. But also not easy to work with, sorry to say. The removal of it is a whole new level of PITA, because the silver flecks stick to your nail and even foil removal can leave you with extra work.

What do you think about Depend 209?

Thank you for reading!

Scotch tape try 2 (Chloe's Rays) with Catrice London's Weather Forecast and Back To Black

Hello people! How are you doing? You may want to skip to the * if you're not in the mood for moody moment. Because I'm quite grumpy today. My head hurts, my BF forgot his cellphone on fu*king Mars or something so I couldn't reach him to go outside when there was still sun and then in the end i didn't went at all because I feel a cold caught up with me yesterday. So yeah, the only thing saving my Sunday today (beside sunshine and awesome new polish) is Dylan Moran. I love that man. If you don't know who he is, boy oh boy, you're missing a lot-t-t! Ok, I'll stop whining!

*

Today I want to show you one of my untrieds that called to me and when I grabbed the bottle, I knew it was love. Catrice London's Weather Forecast. Boy oh boy oh boy! Gorgeous! You know what's funny about London's Weather Forecast? When I first saw the swatches and everybody just went crrrrazy over it I was like: it's a grey shimmer, what's so effing gorgeous about this? I didn't even buy it, Tevta bought it for me, saying I must try it on to see how awesome this one is. And she was right. Again. Mind you, I have some kind of grey phase, or something. Another colour I thought I won't really wear, that is rocking my world. 

And of course, since amazing Erika with her Chloe's Nails blog is making me play with patterns on my nails for the first time, I had to try the (I named it like that) Chloe's Rays accent mani. This entry of hers got me thinking I'll buy this Glazie Peachy Keen just to do the same combination. Argh, so beautiful! Anyway, I said, lets match the gorgeous London's Weather Forecast shimmer, with another black shimmer that Catrice did magic with, Back To Black. I looooove this polish, I can't believe I haven't worn it for months now. It will be my full manicure soon, you can bet your head on that! Ok, pictures!

 See the gorgeous shimmer both colours have? I think I left the bottom picture extra large to see the details.

Natural light the next morning, to show you shimmer is visible in every light.

Ok. First of all, I know, ok, I know the rays are so off center if they were a bit more off they'd already land on my middle finger. And I know the whole stripes thing isn't even, but after looking at it I kinda like that if you look at it from different angle, it looks more like black spikes and not grey rays. Or am I just trying to make myself feel better? Who knows. Bottom line is, I loved how this turned out. Both colours are simply stunning, I actually dare say Back To Black is very close to a particular new RBL shade, with all the colorful shimmer it contains. More about that with full Back To Black mani! Anyway. I'm loving this. Catrice gives me no trouble what so ever, two coats, Back To Black was perfect after only one coat, it dried fast, I used SV just because it was really late at night and i didn't want to ruin it with sheet prints on my nails. 

What do you think about it? And the colours? 

Thank you for reading!

Depend 204

Hey darlings! How are you doing? I'm drinking coffee in hope it wakes me up a bit and thinking about another post I will write as soon as I find the time. Nothing big, just to clear up some stuff about blog. :) And since the feedback on my giveaway is much larger than I thought it would be (tons larger actually!), I already agreed with my BF who is a computer magician, he'll set me a program to randomly pick a winner. :) But all in it's time! Right now I have another Depend for you. This one also belongs to Aelfsciene and I was lucky enough I put it on on a sunny day. Because this one is a stunner on direct sunlight. Not so much in the normal lighting, sadly. Let's check the pictures out.

 Just look at this! GORGEOUS!!!

This is normal, everyday lighting, maybe I should add it's an everyday lighting on a sunny day, as you can see in the background. Most of the blue is out of the picture. :(

I adore this one on the sun. I really do, it's one of those polishes that could convince me to stand on the sun whole day long (although then I must find a suncreme with factor 100 or something). The blue is mesmerizing, it has the glow within effect, aaargh, too beautiful! And it breaks my effing heart this effect isn't visible on everyday light. I want it! It is still a beautiful blackened blue in normal lighting, but the hell with my expectations, when I know there is something more in the colour, I feel I'm missing something. Stupid, I know. Especially because this is an incredibly glossy polish without TC (all pictures are without TC), applies beautifully and needs only two coats to be completely opaque. So basically a really great polish and an amazing colour. 

I think I'll be getting this one. And stand on the sun all day. Don't look weird at me if you see me running around Ljubljana, catching those last sun rays!

What do you think about Depend 204? Oh, btw, I started posting 3 pictures instead of 5, unless there is a comparison with much details or it's a very duochromy/holograpicy polish. What do you think? Better, or should I return to 5? 

Thank you for reading!

A very special surprise

Hey darlings! How are you doing? I'm sorry to say my GFC is still being a little bitch and I can't follow any of new discovered blogs and I have to save the links like in the old days. Sucks. But hey - we crossed 250!! Welcome, everybody and thank you for considering my blog worth your time!

Today I have a special post for you and I actually feel nervous about it, like, don't screw this one up, Ulmiel. About a week ago I got the most unbelievably nice email from Maestra. Yes, you heard me. The Maestra, Parokeet lady. All of you who read their blog and comments too probably noticed I'm a big fan of their blog, I started reading and commeting even before I got a google profile and months before I even thought about nail blogging myself. So when Parokeets noticed my blog and started commeting it I felt really honoured. But this email left me flabbergasted. And so did the package I got today, with wonderful note and amazing gifts, containing food for my two biggest MU addictions, nail polish and eyeshadow and a wonderful smelling tea that I can't wait to try! The polish is Make Up Factory polish I really fell for, of course on Parokeets blog. So of course I had to put it on immediately. And since I'm taking my first baby steps towards nail art (that is more of a 'nail try' at this point), I thought about doing a little something next to this wonderful colour. Maestra, I hope you like it. :) Thank you so much for making this week so wonderful for me, the timing is more perfect than you know and thank you for making a small blogger and nail junkie feel so special. :)

It's the gorgeous Make Up Factory number 123 or Gipsy Green as their page reveals (I hate the numerical names. hate it hate it hate it), that I simply couldn't find anywhere anymore. It's a gorgeous green, don't you think? On my ring finger it's Who The Shrek Are You?, the pattern I tried to make with scotch tape, with inspiration from Chloe's Nails, of course. I'm so digging this scotch tape magic, I'm basically trying with every mani. It's still clumsy, I know, but it doesn't take much time and I hope I'll master it soon enough. :) 

Anyway, two coats of MUF, it's a beauty and no trouble at all. I had no problem with brush, I was only worried about two coater for my ring finger. I put one thick on top and luckily it was enough and it didn't bubble! Seche Vite tho does. I have no idea what's wrong with my bottle. It bubbles like crazy lately. :/ But anyway ... this is it, people. Wonderful surprise from a wonderful blogger and person. I'm trully thankful.

How do you like Make Up Factory 123? And my first tries with scotch tape art? ;) 

Maestra, thank you again. I said it before, and you bet I'll say it a couple of times more. :)

And thank you all for reading & following! *mwa*

Problem with following other blogs

Hey guys. Just a quick question. I have a problem with following other blogs. I took a few minutes to check newcomers on my blog and wanted to follow but it makes me as an anonymous follower, no nickname and no picture. I went through my blogger profile and refreshed it and still nothing happened. 

Has anyone else had the same problem? It kinda sucks, because I want to follow publicly and I have no idea what changed from the last time I hit the 'follow' button. :S 

Thanks for the help!

Depend 019

Hey darlings! How are you doing? A quick post, just to let you know I'm thinking of you. ;) 

As I mentioned in my entry on Lumene, a couple of my friends went North for NY. Surprisingly one of them, not at all a nail polish junkie and an all time 'black only on your nails' person came home with three polishes and only one was black - the crackle one! ;) I think the three nail polish junkies in our gang can pat ourselves on backs for that. ;) Anyway, as she knew how well Depend is written in my books, she lend me both of them, including Isadora Black Tag that I already showed you. And now to the first Depend, misteriously called 019.

 Quick comparison with my own OPI Kangarooby.

Let's start with the first picture, because there you can see just how extremely glossy this polish is. This is without any top coat, people! And you can clearly see the light bulbs on my nails. I really hate when this happens, btw. Sadly I still don't know the way around it.

Second picture shows you comparison with OPI Kangarooby, I was wondering how close they were. Kangarooby is darker, more blue toned. 

Third picture was the cause of my rant when I edited these pictures. I thought I saw dark spots under the polish when I took the pictures but I hoped it's just me knowing there are stains on my nails and it won't be visible otherwise. But it is! These are, ladies and gentlemen, the blue stains Nubar Night Sparkle left on my nails. Remember the comparison with Sapphire and me noticing how this little diva stains? Here is the proof!! It pissed me off too! I didn't notice it before, because I used only strong colours. This red is obviously bright enough it didn't cover the stain. I was so mad! Please excuse the inaccurate swatching because of that. You can see the real Depend 019 colour on my index and ring finger. Of course I buffed the stain off after changing the colour. And I hate buffing. Curse you, Night Sparkle! So beautiful, yet so dirty.

Other than that application was a bliss, no trouble whatsoever, it dried pretty fast, and the finish is superglossy. Two coater too. I do find the colour boring though. As much as I love reds, this is the typical mediocre red that I usually don't like on my nails. I prefer them even lighter and of course extra darker, with more orange or more blue in it. Or with glitter. If I layered glitter polish over it it would kick ass, probably. But anyway. Ä. wears it under black crackle polish, where it does look cool. :) Can't wait for my Glazeies to come!! :) Thank you for lending me these, darling!

What do you think about this colour? Are you a red fan?

Thank you for reading!

Parokeets challenge: Show us your country

Me again! I really want to send my work for the challenge now that I have time to do that, so I'm also posting about the challenge Parokeets ladies have prepared for us with their 2nd birthday. 

I love these challenges, although I must tell you, I feel I'm not nearly as good with nail art as some participants always are. I don't do konad, I draw everything by hand on my nails. Thus, it can get quite clumsy. :) But I love working the idea, choosing the polish and so on! And this theme, Show us your country ,is really a great one and I simply can't wait too see all the nice manicures nail blog sphere has done!

The second big motivator is of course the prize. The ladies have succesfully combined 3 of my biggest obsessions in this one: nail polish, eye shadows and earrings. I want it. 

I hope my mani will be good enough to be shown on their awesome blog and I hope you'll like it enough to vote for it. :) I can't wait to see your art works!!

Green Comparison: ChG Gussied Up Green vs. MNY 761 vs. Joy 383

Hello people! How are you doing? I'm having a break with coffee and cookies and I decided I'll show you an old comparison I prepared for you about two weeks ago but still haven't posted it. 

Before I start - I want to point out an amazing giveaway Kris from My Lucid Bubble blog is doing. It's *the* Clarins 230 and it's a special kind of giveaway where you donate money for it. 1 $ = 1 entry. Entire take will be given anonymously to the safe house for those who want to leave an abusive relationship. I loved her blog before and she's a totally awesome person, but this made me just go all Wayne's World on her with bowing *we're not worthy, we're not worthy!*. Not because of the polish, that seems so trivial when you see the cause of this giveaway, but because of this really fantastic idea, that gives entirely different viewing angle of giveaways and a fantastic idea for new level of nail-blogging. I have such a major respect for you, Kris, for thinking of this and doing this, I cannot express it. You rock, in short! So sign in, people! You can get a bottle of polish that goes up to 200 dollars on ebay and every cent you give for it will go to those in need!

And now to my comparison. I put three shades in the comparison, that seemed very close in the bottle. You'll see one is just pretending to be close, but other two are relatives. ;) 

 

As you can see China Glaze Gussied Up Green is pretty close to MNY 761, but the shimmer is much richer and it makes it greener than MNY. Joy looks close in the bottle, but is totally different on nails, more dark green grassy, with different shimmer, and yet also totally beautiful.

About polish itself: Gussied Up Green is a China Glaze which means for me application is almost flawless, I had no trouble at all, I applied three coats in want of making equal coats for all of them (and failed), but GUG is a two coater. 

MNY 761 is the one I liked the least with the application. Although the brush is flatter and should make application easier, there are bold spots even after second coat. I needed to apply four to make it even, which is a bit much, I'd say.

Joy 383 is a two coater without a doubt, very nicely pigmented, I did three because I thought three will do also for MNY. The only flaw I found on Joy was the stink that wasn't very joyful. This polish stank up my room totally. Nasty little beast. So it's definitively not a big3free polish, but still very beautiful. 

Colours: Gussied Up Green is perfect. I adore this colour and I think it's a must for just about every green fan. I got this from Tevta's shoebox, so sadly I'm still on the wait for my bottle. ;)

MNY 761 is almost too dark, it goes black quite fast. The pretty shimmer it has is quite visible on the sun but it soon goes too dark for my taste. It was a bummer, this one. I had it in my heap of untrieds, so this was my first try with it. I expected a bit more, out of application and colour.

Joy 383 was a major surpirse. I really didn't expect the colour to turn out like this. I mean, check the bottles, it looks just a tad bit lighter than MNY! It's a gorgeous colour, though, I wonder what is this a dupe for? 

I think the brushes are good on all three of them. As for prices, Joy is of course the cheapest in our neck of the woods, 5 ml for around 90 cents. The closest we can get MNY is Austria, there is really cheap, 7 ml for 1,95€. China Glaze, well, you know the drill. Ebay for whatever you can get it, transdesign for 2.99 $ + shipping and our zapikonai.si for 7€ + shipping.

Dupes? No. I don't think MNY and GUG are close enough to be called dupes and Joy is entirely new colour. So yeah, if you like green, get them all. ;) The one I could live without? Probably MNY, as I needed 4 bloody coats for it (i sincerely hope this was just me having a bad day, I will give it another go!) and it tends to go dark fast.

So yeah, here it is. What do you think about them? Own any of them? :)

And here's a lil' something that made me smile and carries a very very good point and the truth!

Thanks for reading!

Long time no see: Essie - Mint Candy Apple + Isadora Black Tag crackle

Hello lovelies! How are you doing? :) I'm just about to hit the books (well, my study books, I've been reading an awesome novel for half a day now), it's going to be a loooong night, but as I'm already here, let's show you a quick post of my mani from a few days ago and an idea for another "theme" on the blog. As you can see, I have a couple of them. The most frequent is NOTD, then it's 'my thoughts on', and 'nail polish (care) related' and I'm hoping others will get added as the blog grows. If you got any ideas, hit me! :) 

The "Long time no see" hit me when I went through my shelf of polish, looking for freakish colours to put on. I was in the mood and my nails have now the optimum lenght for just about anything I want to get on them. And I found a couple of bottles that I haven't used ... I don't know, months, years even. 

One of them is Essie's Mint Candy Apple. I think I put this one on just once or twice, right after I got it. And then it went into oblivion, as it seems. It's one of the rare colours  with which I actually pay attention on my nail lenght and what I'm wearing, when I have it on, because it's such an unusal colour for me and I presonally don't like it on my nails when they're longer. On the second day I put Isadora Black Tag on. It's not mine, a friend of mine lend it to me, to try it out, so I didn't play with it much, as I'm planing to do that with ChGs. :) Besides, with 6 ml of Isadora it seems like a crime to use someone else's polish thorugh 20 manicures, especially if that one isn't a nail polish junkie and owns about 5 polish bottles. ;) Thank you, Ärväthyyll! :* 

 Coats of crackle polish go from L to R: very thin coat, a bit thicker coat, an awesomly thick coat, and on my pinky first one very thin coat in the middle (not entire nail) and then veeeery quickly one thin over entire nail.

Essie's Mint Candy Apple is from Essies Winter Collection 2009 and it's one out of two Essies I own. Until 2010 collections I found Essie to be quite an average brand, with basically only two, three colours I'd acutally like to own. 2010 got some beauties, but spring collection for 2011 looks so freakishly boring from the bottle promo pics, I'm kinda disappointed. 

I hate Mint Cand Apple's application. Hate it! It's like putting soft melted rubber on your nails, extremly chalky and I really can work with thicker polish like Catrice, but this is whole new level. So I wasn't terribly satisfied with the application. This was two coats, the second one was trying to save the application, not opacity, since I think this is pigmented enough to be one coater. 

I still like the colour, it's very unusual, although I feel it doesn't like my skintone much. My hands looked kinda red or ashy, just not a very healthy colour. 

The best reaction ever I got from my BF while wearing this. I must say I'm quite lucky and my BF take this obsession of mine very good, and I think he kinda likes that I'm taking care of my nails. Or at least likes it enough not to complain about it. He's also my strictes judge. When it comes to application especially, but also with the colours. The notes are quite simple: 

"fajn" meaning "fine" = this colour/mani is very nice and I like it 

"v redu" meaning "o..k"  = you can do better, although it's a good enough colour

*shrugh* = oh well ...

"ne vem" meaning "I don't know", said in muted voice = I don't like it

And then the Mint Candy Apple reaction. You know the sound you make when you take meat from the fridge, smell it and realize it's already gone bad? That's the sound I got when he looked at my nails. Followed by disbelieving shaking of his head, like, what the hell is that on your nails, woman. I laughed my head off, seriously, his expression was so priceless, I almost peed myself from laughter. So yeah. He really didn't like it, is a new note in our judging system. :D

Still, I like it. :) What do you think about Mint Candy Apple? And about new theme for the blog, are you interested in my oldies? :)

Thank you for reading! 

Color Club - Wild At Heart

Hey everybody! How are  you doing? 230 of you here, woohoo! Thank you. :) It's a lazy day and I'm almost out of  hand creme which is like major SOS. Tomorrow I must buy it asap!

How about we go through some of Tevta's Bday polishes? I have a famous colour for you today, that you probably have seen a billion times before and yet it's too beautiful not to show it again. :) The famous, purple holo goodness called Wild At Heart. Yummy. These are around a week old, I wore it right before my nail shortage. :)

 

Inside shot, soft lighting. Although the holo effect is down to a minimum, it's still noticable a bit.

This beauty is from Color Club 2009 Fall Collection called - Wild At Heart. And I think Wild At Heart deserves to be the polish that named entire collection, it's definitively one of nail polish worlds best, let alone Color Clubs or this collection.But Wild At Heart collection is one of the best out there, as I can see as I googled it. Not only did Wild At Heart came out with this one, but also Rule Breaker (gorgeus teal-green that I still do not posses) and With Abandon! Very nice! Man, I love Color Club. Not one disappointment from this brand. And I want them *so* bad. Can't wait for their new collection to come out either! 

This was two coats, although this is one coater. I did two, just because I basically always do. You can get away with one. It dries superduper fast and you don't need TC with it, but I put it on just to check if the holo effect really gets more subtle with it and it doesn't, at least not with Seche Vite. So there you have it.

I'm sure you all love Wild At Heart, so I'm curious if anyone doesn't? ;) 

Thank you for reading!

Bottle sizes USA vs. EU brands

Hey people. How are you doing? Since I can't really get Mr. Sandman over here to get me some sweet dreams, I'll write my thoughts that I mentioned for our next chat. When I was typing away the Cosmic Girl entry, I started thinking about bottles sizes that we have in Europe and those of  USA brands.

 Source: zingerbug.com

Why? Because I have this feeling that most of USA brands make strictly 10-15 ml bottles and most of EU brands make bottles 4-10 ml, the only exception I can think of right now is Illamasqua, but that's a high end brand. For those who don't appreciate me talking about mililiters, here's a scale to compare: 0.5 fl.OZ. is 15 ml.:) 

But think of ArtDeco (6 ml), Isadora (6ml), Alessandro (10 ml or 5 ml) also Essence (8 ml), ok, S-he being a slight exception with 11 ml, Miss Sporty with 7 ml, Barry M with 10 ml, Vollare with 5 ml  ... and so on and so forth. USA brands: O.P.I. 15 ml, China Glaze 15 ml, BB Couture 15 ml, Orly 15 ml (even 18 ml!), Wet'n'Wild 13,5 ml, Sally Hansen 14.7 ml, Diamond Cosmetics 12.6 ml ...

  

source: indiamart.com

Obviously I'm not saying it's a rule. I'm sure I'm missing some huge EU bottles of polish and some tiny of USA. But you can see the pattern, and that's just brands from the top of my head. The difference in prices is vice versa, I'm afraid. Euro being stronger now makes the difference even worse. It's not really fair to compare China Glaze prices, perhaps, because we do have to pay duty and so on. But just to let you know, in Slovenia: 9 € + shipping. 1 $ = 0.75 € (in the first transformer Google found, as I'm typing this, so it might changed when you're reading this ;)).

Let's look at "our" brands. Lumene for 4.5ml around 4 €, ArtDeco for 6 ml from 8 to 9 €, Essence 1.50,€ Miss Sporty 1.75 - 2.15€. ArtDeco perhaps being in the range of OPI or Nubar, I feel, and Essence/Miss Sporty being in the range of USA's Wet'n'Wild and similar department store brands.

I don't know about you, but I'm surprised about bottle size difference and the price difference. OK, I get that most american brands are expensiver here, it's kinda logical, isn't it? But why EU brands, why such difference? Is it the smaller market? I bet it is. But it can't be only that, can it?

Anyway ... just my thoughts on that. Fact is, nail polish junkies can easily go with 7 ml bottles, in average,  since we usually don't tend to empty one bottle of polsih. ;) But I personally think the prices should be more equal to the sizes. If it's a smaller bottle make it a lower price.

I'm curious about more info if you have it and about your opinions. I tend not to bitch too much about our prices, because you can get a gorgeous polish for a decent price here too ... here are just the fact and I'm curious about your opinion on it. :)

Thanks for reading & chatting!

Lumene - Cosmic Girl (34)

Hello my darlings! How are you doing on this beautiful sunny day? Well, it's already dark here in Ljubljana, but before that it was really lovely, in spite me feeling a bit under the weather. That was also the reason for me playing with polish. Which is like my favourite thing to do when I'm not feeling well, because I can't really read if my head hurts, sadly. Although I started reading a very nice book today, but had to stop due to the pain and lunch preparation. 

Another thing. Yesterday I read an entry from co-blogger coming from Australia about the conditions they're living in right now. We all know about the mayhem they have in Queensland and I just want to send all my positive energy and good wishes to my readers, co-bloggers, your families and just to everyone out there, trying to survive the Nature's rage. I hope it will pass soon. 

Today I tried out my first Lumene nail polish. A couple of my friends went to Finland for NY's, to visit Kaneli and wait for the new year up North. Sadly I couldn't come with them, but I got some lovely polish when they came back.  Today I'll show you Cosmic Girl, that Kaneli chose for me, and I think she did a very good job, because lately I'm really loving this 'universe on nails' type of colour. Let's have a look, few shots on already fading sunlight, some lightbox and a video of sparkling, because these pictures really don't do Cosmic Girl any justice.

 Sparkle check photo, as usual.

 This is natural light, off direct sunlight, and it's how the polish looks most of the time, if you include the colorful sparkling that is sadly hardly visible on the picture. You can see SV makes it extra glossy, I can see my hand holding the camera on my middle finger.

 Here's the video. Light is already quite yellow from the fading sun, but you can still see the awesome colorful glitter this baby contains.

Like I said, this is my first Lumene and I am always very excited when I try new polish. When I opened the bottle and saw the tiny flat brush I was like: eh? And when I applied the first coat I was like: eh? But although the brush is quite short it is AWESOME! The only thing I mustn't do is wipe it. Then it's magic. It reminded me of yesterday's DS glamour application, yes that awesome! No trouble at all, it hugs entire nail, magic, really. And although the first coat of this baby makes you kinda worried what the hell are you putting on your nail, it's love at third coat, this one. Really. The base black colour is already opaque after second coat, but I wanted more glitter on the nail, so I applied the third one too. And it's totally totally awesome. It won't dry extra glossy, so I put SV on top and now it's pure magic. I adore it. Major plus also to the fact it only needs one layer of TC to be smooth. 

As for the brand, I don't know much about it, except it's finnish and they're paying attention to environment, they've gotten some certificates regarding this, so major plus, people! I love a brand that pays attention to it's surroundings. As for nail polish - it comes in really really cute little bottles that don't take much place. One bottle contains only 4,5 ml (0.14 FL.OZ.) of polish and I think they're fairly expensive. Well, it's Scandinavia, baby. And I just got an idea for our next chat! 

Like I said, I really love these kind of polish. Black base with glitter, that give the impression of space. Alizarine claws did a great wheel swatch of some of them, although Eyeko's Cosmic Polish that I want SO bad isn't here, BB's Vampy Varnish is also missing, although I heard VV needs lots of TC to be smooth. But my biggest lemming of all of these you can see at Alizarine's. Its Evil Shades Rainbow In The Dark, dedicated to Ronnie James Dio who passed away last year after a hard struggle with cancer. My BF was planning to see him just few weeks before he died, although I think they cancled that show even before. He had one of the best voices out there, he saved Black Sabbath for me (although I dig Ozzy's style and all, I can't seem to get into his very specific voice colour), and Rainbow In The Dark is one of the best songs ever. Saying all that, the Evil Shades polish is just to die for beautiful and so I totally want it. Really. Not even sure I can anymore. :( 

But anyway. Kaneli, thank you so much for this polish, it's perfect! *hugs* 

How do you find Cosmic Girl? Do you own any Lumene colours?

Thank you for reading!