Kiko: 254, 266, 299

Hello! Hope you're enjoying your Sunday! I had such a big lunch I can still bearly move. So this break from studying is a bit longer, i need to get my blood back into my brains or it will be useless. I have three Kikos today to show you. It was my first encounter with this Italian brand with the set Tevta brought me one day. It's her style, we go for a cup of coffee and she brings out this big KIKO bag and says: "I bought you a few bottles when I was in Italy." Gotta love her. :) These are totally awesome too. And no, we don't have them in Slovenia, even though Italy is like two hour drive from where I'm sitting right now. Sucks, doesn't it?

 254. These don't do this baby justice at all. It's a great great colour, but it wouldn't photograph, imagine loads of (visible to naked eye) sparkles more, giving a lot of depth to this colour.

 266. Similar to Catrice Blue My Mind, but since I'm a sucker for these kind of colours, I drool every time it's on my nails. 

299. The total winner of Kikos I own. Man, this is SO stunning. Teal goodness with little sparkles, too amazing for words. It's a total must in Kiko department.

The blue one, 299, is a two coater, the purple-red, 254, also, but I advise you to wear three, since you get more depth in the colour (and completely lose VNL), the teal one, 299, is for me a three coater. Someone with smaller and shorter nails could probably get away with two, but I had bold spots.

The brush on Kiko is fantastic. It's flatter, it hugs your nails so nicely. Application is a bliss, they also dry really fast. Really easy polish to work with in general, the formula is excellent. These three are my favourites so far, I have a couple more in the untrieds box, but IMHO the 299 is perfect above them all. I also really loved 254, it surprised me a lot. Both don't lose the sparkle/glitter that the bottle claims to have on the nail and that's totally awesome. Thanks, dear, for getting me these!

Any thoughts on these? Do you have them, have any Kiko polish?

Thank you for reading!

Gosh - Holographic

Hello! Yes, I'm a few hours later than usual again, and I suspect this will be my posting hour for a while, until I get my study-mode on and will be able to post earlier. Hope you don't mind. It's afternoon now somewhere on this planet, right? ;)

Anyway. I'm eating my very light dinner after the jogging hour right now and I can afford to post this one, sice it doesn't need much words to go with it. You all know it, and probably hate me right now for showing it again, since it's impossible to find. Unless you know one of the coolest persons in the world and she sends it to you in a swap package!

This is seriously soft light, I mean, seriously, no sun at all, it only catches a bit of light out of the window on my right and still it shows the straigh lines of holo effect.

This is two coats over Gosh Fix Base coat that Jette also send, giving me a little bottle from her own BC, how cool is that? Holographic applies like a dream, seriously, i could do it drunk and shaking from starving (I can *never* polish my nails when hungry, my hands shake like crazy), it dries really really fast. It lasted on my nails for three days with minor tip wear without any TC, so that's pretty awesome!

It made my camera crazy though, it just wouldn't pick up the holo effect, wouldn't even pick my entire hand while wearing it, it was quite an achievement to get the photos. I don't think I'll ever call any other holo insane, now that I had this baby on. It stayed holo basically in every single light, if only it had a lil' bit of lightning to pick up, it was ... insane. :) Jette, thank you SO much for this one!! You're beyond awesome for sending it to me!

I'm reading a lot about being fed up with a certain colour or finish (crackle, taupe, blurple etc.) ... is anyone out there sick of holographic yet? Or not a fan at all? Don't be shy. :)

Thank you for reading!

Depend - 249

Evening ladies! Well, it's almost 10 p.m. in our neck of the woods anyway ... I didn't think I'll post at all today, it's a funny day, with funny timings for me. I'm having serius difficulties with starting to study all over again. I'm running out of time, like really, and still, I can't bring myself to hit the books. I have no idea why, this is the hardest lack of motivation I have since I began with college. It sucks. At least my nails are pretty. They're getting long again, I miss them being long. Today's post will be with my nails being the shortest ever, it was the second mani I did right after I chopped them all off. 

I'm a fan of Depend, as you might have noticed before. I love their colours, their bottle shape, their everything. I blame Alizarine claws for that. ;) She always does such an amazing work with Depend that right after (and I mean seriously right after) I read her posts on them, I contact Kaneli, who lives in Finland (but is in Slovenia ATM, YAY!!) if she can buy me a couple of Depend bottles. This particular one I got from the amazing swap package Vettelicious lady sent me and it's totally awesome.

Try to imagine this much more vivid. I tried to get the most colour accurate pictures possible (you have no idea how many I got too green, and how many I eventually took), but still I think this looks too ... calm, if you will. It's a bright green, really lovely, it's not neon, but it pops out, I freakishly love it. It's also very well pigmented, two coats are more than enough. It's a bit thick though, I had to redip my brush quite often and I rarely do that even when I have my nails longer. I was a bit surprised, since normally when I have my nails short, I have no troubles with application, in average I need one coat less. But still, it's nothing one couldn't handle, and for this colour I'd have gone through much more trouble than dipping the brush a bit more often than usually. :) 

I love it! How about you, do you like Depend, do you know the brand, own a few bottles? 

Thank you for reading!

Khaki/cool military green comparison: 4

Hey everyone! How are you doing? I'm headachy, again and I'm craving something sweet, ghah! I have a requested comparison for you today. I felt like doing it and then posting it right away, so here it is. KarenD (I love her nail wheel posts, I always go through them like a madman, nail per nail and her display pics, so I can see what's going on in USAs drugstores) asked me in the Enter The Undergrowth post to compare the Catrice with Models Own and Essie. I then added a few pictures with H&M too. 

• Index: Essie - Sew Psyched
• Middle: Catrice - Enter The Undergrowth
• Ring: Models Own - Grace Green
• Little: Catrice Enter The Undergrowth

I tried to take pictures in many lightnings, sadly there was no sun today in Ljubljana. Then I removed Grace Green, since it's the most off of them all and put on H&M Hunt Me Down.

Flash, to make the differences more obvoious.

They are all two coaters, all dry extremly fast and are very easy to work with, I'm quite impressed! Even Hunt Me Down behaved extremely nicely today, unlike the first time I wore it. 

Aside from the application, which was, again, very nice on all four, the colour differences are obvious from the pictures, but lets write it down anyway.

Grace green from Models Own is the lightest green of them all. Gorgeous, I can't wait to wear it as a full mani, and the most different of them all, it's less "military" green, it has a more gentle feeling to it, if that makes sence.

Essie Sew Psyched is the darkest of them all, plus it's the only one that's not a creme, it has a very fine silver shimmer, that is visible only if you have some sort of lighting on your nails (like standing next to a window or something). So I would say it's different enough, a shade or two darker, bit more grey and with the shimmer, hardly visible, but still there.

The closest you get to Catrice Enter The Undergrowth is with H&M Hunt Me Down. You have to look really really close to see that H&M is a shade or two lighter than Catrice. It's also much more glossy. Still, I hate the H&M handle, it's really clumsy and I think Catrice has a totally winner of a brush, so it's my winner in this dual.

To a non-khaki green fan(atic) I think any of the trio Essie-Catrice-H&M would suffice. You just have your pick between darker, lighter and something in between. :) I'm glad to have all four of them. But if you don't count the silver shimmer in Essie, I think any of the three would be enough, quite honestly. If you're like me, and think Essie is different enough, you can pick between Catrice Enter The Undergrowth and H&M Hunt Me Down, they are really really close. 

What do you think? Close enough? Would you have all 4 of them? I don't mind, but then again, I'm a green freak. ;) 

Thank you for reading!

Zoya - Faye

Hey people! Thank you for your response on my poll, it's much bigger than I thought it would be! Thank you also for all your thoughts on the whole subject. :) And FYI, I'm a huge fantasy fan! ;)  After some days I'll elaborate more about the poll, right now I'll let it be for a while, if someone else will find it and vote. :) 

Right now I'm baking a simple cake, it already smells divine, I hope I don't screw it up. I'm really no good in the kitchen. Funny enough, since I love to cook if I'm in the mood for cooking. My plan, when I grow up and have enough money is to buy aaaaalll the books that Gordon Ramsay wrote and the little shelves for spices and the wooden handle for knives, you know which one? And a huge desk where I can use everything. These 4 things are a sign of a good cooking athmosphere in my head, don't know why, really. But anyway! Today for you Zoya Faye. My Lucid Bubble lady was so kind and emptied my never ending Zoya WL a bit, and I thank her for that. She's the coolest swapping buddy evah.

I bet you're getting sick of seeing this collection all over blogsphere, but hell, I love Faye. Faye was my wild card in this collection. I wanted her, but she's not really my colour, with the gold colour being so strong in her. But when i put it on I realized it has antique feeling or look to me and I was in love. She's a special flower, no doubt, very unique (even if OPI made a dupe of it, they are both unique in general) but the antique touch in her makes me love her. She's a part of Zoya Sunshine Collection for Summer 2011. Although I think that this year is the year of Zoya, with strong Spring, Summer and the most amazing Fall collection, the Summer one is IMHO the weakest. Sunshine has at least three wonderful colours, but the Summertime cremes were with exception of one all dupes of previous OPI shades and I'd expect more from Zoya. Still, the Sunshine collection rocks, and they made up for duping more than enough with the Fall Collection, Smoke and Mirrors. It's by far my favourite Fall collection, I want at least half of them, yikes!

This was three coats, these types of finish always demand three coats from me, the application was wonderful, a bliss, really. It also dries so fast you don't need a TC. I missed Zoya in my life.

Did you get any colours from Sunshine and Summertime collection? Are you excited as I am about their Fall collection or do you prefer other?

Thank you for reading!

A short poll

Heya again! Well, the poll very much speaks for itself, but I want to tell you why I made it. I did two themed weeks so far, the red comparison and Eveline Holografic Shine. I have one half prepared and I have a chance to do two others. The thing is, both times I got the feeling you weren't interested much in the themed weeks. Maybe you just prefer the random posts, as I feel posting it and get overfed with one brand or colour going on for entire week (or sometimes even longer). Since these themed weeks do require more time and work from me than the usual random mani posts, especially the comparison week, and since I usually get a bit sick of doing one brand or colour over and over again, i do not wish to bore you. :) So i did a smal poll, the best way I could do. You can be completely honest here, it's anonymous, you can tell me it's utter crap and I should stop doing it too. Of course also in the comments. :) But then tell me also why it's utter crap, please! ;)

It will take you like 25 seconds to do this, unless you write something down for me too, which will make me a very happy hobbit too! :)

Thank you!

Catrice - Enter The Undergrowth

Hey darlings. I'll be short today. When I came home I got so tired, and I still am, I can only think about sleeping, but I really need to study, so I have no idea how will i pull this off.

I have a special one for you today. Yes, it's Catrice, yes, it's Papagena limited edition for this summer (well, one of them anyway), but it's special because of everything that happened around getting it. I contacted the wonderful Danny (her blog is called Polish Chest and if you don't know it yet, you totally should click on that link!) and asked her if she could get them for me when they arrive to Germany. She agreed and everything went smoothly (she even got her friends in Berlin to search for those that were sold out already, yes, she's that cool!) until the package just wouldn't show up at my front door. The last time I waited for like 3 days to get the package from Germany so I expected it to arrive in 5 days at latest. After 10 days of lost nerves I already marked the package as lost and I felt really bad also because I put Danny through so much work to get them for me and then got her all worried about the package. After 14 days (or was it 15?) the package arrived. I always get really happy when I get a package, but this one got me literally jumping in the hall that leads to my room where i opened it and squeeked of joy. So girlish. Danny, thanks a million for these, you're beyond awesome!

The first one I tried is called Enter The Undergrowth.

The application was a bliss, this is two coats, it was so easy to apply it! I added Nfu Oh Ultra Shine TC and for some odd reason it left brush marks on some of my nails, even if there weren't any before. :S It wasn't really visible, so I let it be. 

I don't need to explain why I love this colour so much, do I? Honestly now. This is 100% my type of colour, it's amazing, it's awesome, it's green, but that type of mossy, greyed green I'm loving so so much lately. I did a bottle comparison with a couple I found in my stash, they're close, but not dupes. So yes, I do need them all. There are only two people on the planet that could convince me I have too much green polish, so don't even try it. :P 

If you wish to see a specific comparison of any of these, let me know in the comments!

Your type of colour or not? Did you get any from the Papagena LE?

Thank you for reading!

Búk - 199

Heya people. How are you doing? I'm a bit headachy, but still good from the wonderful weekend I had. It was my BF's bday and we went to the spa and relaxed a bit before the hobbit-like feast. And I discovered the before greatly underestimated addiction and fun of sauna. Sauna, baby! Those Finnish people know what the hell are they doing! I was always sceptical about sauna, because I greatly dislike to sweat, so my reaction usually was: I should walk into a room full of sweaty naked people to be naked and sweat like a pig with them? Thanks, but no thanks. Well, my BF almost had to drag me there, just so we would try it out at least once and I think i loved it 15236 times more than he did. :) Especially the seriously hot ones. And my skin was soft as silk after it. I really had a blast. So i guess I love sauna now. 

But to the nail polish. Today I have for you one of those my BF brought from Lithuania. It's one of their local brands, I'd assume, called Búk. Following the European nail polish habit it's named with a number, 199. As always when I discover a new brand, I googled Búk too. And I found this great post about it from a fellow nail-blogger, she has a blog called Less is more ... and I love how she put everything there is to know about this local brand polish in one post. People, DO MORE POSTS ON LOCAL BRANDS!! They're SO interesting (at least to me) to read, plus in this ever growing community it's always a nice thing to read about something new and unseen, agree?

Appearantly Búk means "Be" in Lithuanian language and they're pretty trendy too, they had a holographic collection in 2008! Nice! They are very cheap, but that doesn't affect the quality of the polish which is always a total win for me. The thing that I love about local brands are also the labels. I have great fun reading all the different ways people say "nail polish". Lithuanian nail polish junkies appearantly say "Lakas nagams". We, Slovene nail polish junkies, say "Lak za nohte". In case you're wondering. ;)

Búk 199 goes to my range of sexy reds. As you'll see, my BF got me only the sexy reds, since he prefers the reds that way. ;) I loved it so much. It's bright, has a bit of shimmer and just looks good on my nails, pardon my arrogance. I was worried how the pictures will turn out, as I took this in the house my BF's family has up there where there is no time, only relaxation, and of course I didn't have my computer, I applied it in low light and tried to catch the last rays of sunshine. But I think they turned out ok. :) 

This was two coats, it dries really really fast, no TC. The brush is ok, nothing above average, but not below it either. It behaves nicely. The only thing that it's quite noticable is the smell of the polish. It has a very strong smell, so I'm guessing toluen is still present in the cocktail. But nothing an open window can't fix! 

It's a great one, I like it a lot. Thanks to my love for getting it for me. I'm thinking I really need to get him used to buying me nail polish, he always picks the great ones, lol. :) 

What do you think about Búk 199? Are you, like me, a fan of trying local brands, do you enjoy reading about them, or do you prefer to choose the "checked", worldwide popular ones? 

Thank you for reading!

PS: I found this picture next to Búk ones, my BF took the shot while I was removing my Nfu Oh flakies and I guess he found it funny enough to make a photo of it.

So yes, this is how I walk around when I'm removing glitter, flakies and all the other hard to remove babies. Looks familiar? ;)

American Apparel - Butter

Hey people! How are you doing? It's my first day of studying ... and I'm almost two weeks late with it. Oh well. No rest for the wicked. Before I start with Butter, I just need to express my awe, lust and amazement with Lacquerized latest post on Nfu Oh 51. Those photos are unbelievably perfect, it makes me wear 51 right away. *dreamy sigh* I'm so happy she's back. :)

OK! Butter. I got it in a lovely giveaway from the super nice Holly from shimmerspark.com and at first I was sceptical about it. It was before my revelation that yellow actually rocks on nails. When I saw the bottle I was immediately drawn to the colour, it looks so soft and fluffy, it's not a stark in-your-face-yellow. It really resembles the colour of butter.

The lightbox draws almost too much yellow from it, but still it's a soft yellow, that applies very nicely. The last picture I'm almost nervous about showing. :) I have never done this type of picture, but I felt like the regular bottle holding pictures make the colour too much in your face. It's not. It's still a yellow, so noticable, but it's not My Yellow Fellow or that sort of yellows. 

My mother almost collapsed when she saw the colour on my nails. She looked at me with that expression of sincere surprise with the fact I'm really going out into public wiht this on my nails. It was quite adorable, actually. :) I wasn't sure I'd like it either, but it really grew on me.

This was three coats, my nails were so long at this point ... I miss them, I love the look of them here. Butter dries very fast and really glossy, this is without TC. For a yellow it applies like a dream. Very nice application. I like the brush too. 

So yeah, it's a very awesome polish, don't skip it on your American Apparel hunt. :) I wouldn't get it for myself alone, so I'm really lucky I won it. :) 

What do you think? Is yellow still not your colour? Are you following the trends for this summer of yellow or do you prefer your other colours?

Thank you for reading!

Alice, meet your sister Dorothy

Heya people! Today I want to show you my newest crush. I've already talked about Absolutely Alice in my posts about special hauls. I got it with major help from the lovely Nola (Hedonism, Limited blog, check her gorgeous nails out!) and in that post one of my lovely readers, AngieP, suggested I do a comparison with Dorothy Who? from China Glaze. Actually, she was wondering how close they get and since I wondered that myself and I have Tevta's Dorothy Who? at home, I said lets put them nail to nail. 

What I thought it will be a comparison post it ended up as an accent mani (Dorothy Who? is on my ring finger only), so this post is picture heavy. I did pictures from 1 to 4 coats and then a few with final mani. Hope you'll enjoy it, I'll talk more about them after the pictures. I put the final mani first, then the comparison pictures after the bottle shot. I also did a video, but after trying a few times I'm giving up on blogger, it just won't upload the damn thing for some reason. If you'd still like to see it, let me know in the comments, I'll try to put it on again later.

 I suggest you enlarge this one, the last two nails are a bit blurry and they show the differences beautifuly. Plus, I love the photo. :)

 

Direct sunlight really kills the differences between the two and it also kills most of their beauty IMO.

Comparison pictures: 

 At this point I needed to hold something in my hand because I knew I wouldnt' distinguish the 4 coats from 3.

Still with me after all the photos? Trust me, this is the lowest number I can make myself to post. I am simply in love with Absolutely Alice. It turns out to be so much more than what I expected, and I expected A LOT, seriously!

The info:

Absolutely Alice is from the O.P.I. Alice In Wonderland Collection for Spring 2010, Dorothy Who is a part of legendary China Glaze collection Wizard Of Ooh Ahz, that got rereleased in year 2009, originally it was released in 2001. 

They both need 3 coats. I have no idea how some bloggers got AA to be a two coater. Are my nails really that big? o.O Anyway ... I put the fourth one just so I covered the tips on AA completely but three will do. They both dry with texture, especially AA. I used two coats of TC on AA and one on DW and they are still rough, although DW is smoother.

Brushes are perfection, of course. China Glaze and O.P.I. get major love from me for their brushes, the application is always a bliss. They dry  fast too, but you need to put TC on for smoothing purposes anyway. 

How close they get? Well, on sunlight they get very close, because the sun kills the gold glitter in AA. But on normal lighting they are only sisters, related in facts they are both blue and both glitter polish. Otherwise they are very different. DW blue jelly base with silver  glitter as main one, AA clear base glitter with brighter blue and gold glitter. It is quite obvious they're not the same, that's why I'm wearing it now as an accent mani.

They are both so utterly gorgeous! SO GORGEOUS! But, like I said, Absolutely Alice is the complete winner for me. I don't care about the bitchy removal or three coats or two coats of TC or even if I discover that it stains my nails. This is one of the colours that go into my section of "so beautiful it could make me cry". There aren't many in there, since this is a seriously seldom reaction from me. But Absolutely Alice does that. No wonder it's so hard to find.

What do you think? Are you a glitter fan, would you like to have them both or even have them both? Like I said, I'm in love with Absolutely Alice, but I surely wouldn't mind having Dorothy Who? too. I can't imagine removing it off my nails, it's been three days since I applied it and I'm not bored one bit. Plus the tip wear is minimal. Thanks again to Nola for all the help with getting a bottle of Alice and thanks to my dear Tevta for letting me play with her China Glaze collection!

Thank you for reading!

Eveline Holografic Shine days: 420

Hello everyone! How are you doing? Hope you had a nice day! Mine was nice, although I got wet as a mouse earlier in the day when the sky opened and started pouring water on us and all I had on me were jeans and a top, I froze to death. But I got the present for my BF, finally, after searching throughout Ljubljana, so it was worth it. :) The air also pleasantly cooled off so the jogging hour was awe-some! 

Today it's our last Eveline in the Holografic Shine days, 420, I don't have a name for this one, but it's my third favourite from the bunch, right after Sandy and Lucky 13. This one is simply gorgeous, I love it! And yes, it's brown, not a colour you see often on my blog or on my nails, so I didn't expect much when I saw it in the bottle. 

I loved this one on me, isn't it stunning? It feels like a cousin of Nubar Jewel and Gem, but I don't have them, so I'm judging from the many pictures I've seen of the both and thus can be very wrong. Nevertheless, I adore it. Also, this is a two coater even on my longer nails, woo-hoo! Gotta love that! Also a good brush, so this one is totally in my good books. 

Btw, I'll do a poll about these themed weeks/days I do every once in a while this week. So you can tell me your thoughts about them in general. But please tell me in the comments what do you think about Eveline Holografich Shine days? And about 420? :)

Tomorrow we'll probably continue with my newest crush, I just can't wait to show you this beauty. Thank you for reading!

Eveline Holografic Shine days: 418

Heya people! How are you? I'm hungry, just about to have my lunch, can't wait, it smells divine. I just changed my mani. Well, an hour ago, it's perfect and I can't wait to show it to you. Why am I telling you that? Because today I'm really starting to miss fast drying top coat. As you know, i'm SV-less for a while now - it dried to the point that the remainder of polish doesn't even move in the bottle - and it's slowly getting on my nerves. I have to wait longer between coats so they are 100% dry and when i use TC, otherwise perfect Ultra Shine from Nfu Oh, I have to be careful not to put it on not dry polish otherwise it bubbles and even then it's best if I watch an episode of some seires or something, so it has long time to completely dry. Even that sometimes isn't enough, I removed my mani today because I woke up with really deep sheet print on my nails. *sigh* And sometimes even after two hours, after you choose a ruined mani over burst bladder and after you wash your hands you see a nail or two is ruined. Kinda tiresome. At this point i'm willing to put up with shinkage and bubbles of Seche Vite or preferably try something new. Alas there isn't a vast choice of fast drying TCs in Slovenia. Ok, sorry about the semi-rant. I just think about this one today more than usually because I DO NOT want to mess this mani! 

On to the Eveline Holografic Shine. It's 418 and it's ugly as hell. I actually said 'yuck' wearing it, and there are maybe 5 polishes in my whole history of trying out colours that got that reaction.

I think this was two coats only. I only swatched it on 4 nails, i disliked it so much. It surprised me, since the colour appealed to me in the bottle. Oh well, it's not like that never happens. ;)

What do you think? Only one more left!

Thank you for reading!