New polish project! Sparkle away!

Hello people! How was your Christmas eve? I hope you had tons of fun. We have such a hangoverish weather in Ljubljana, I feel like sleeping and nothing else. I slept for so long, I dare not even write the hour of my awakening. ;) 

Anyway, as I drink my last sips of coffee and think about making another cup, I can tell you a bit more about Latvia project that I've mentioned in one of the posts already. As said, I'm thinking about taking a break from it, and that's just bottles before the entire set (the ones that we gave away are obviously not included for I never even opened them). Frankly, I'm a bit sick of blue colour and that's basically all that is left. And I'm so sick of it, not even my blue holographic China Glaze doesn't look too appealing to me right now. That's some sort of crime, isn't it? Let's see what's left of P:L.

From L to R: China Glaze 2NITE, OPI Holiday Glow, OPI Russian Navy Suede, Kinetics Sinful, Kinetics Blackout.

You already got a sneak peak of Sinful and I know it's a gorgeous colour, and Blackout is on my WL of Kinetcis, so I'll get to them soon, I guarantee it, but I am in total sparkle mood lately, and this next "project" has Sparkles with a big S. I don't know why I call them projects, probably because it's always a big pile of polish that I got at once and so I see them as "special groups" or something. 

But anyway, about the Lativa project. I got to know a few brands that I've never even heard of them, like Kinetics, or just knew them breafly, like SpaRitual, or changed my opinion on a brand, like Jessica, or got my heart broken like with Nubar's Indigo Illusion. I got some of my major lemmings, like DS glamour, DS tapestery, DS extravagance, China Glaze's gorgeous Wagon trail, China Glaze's Watermelon Rind ... and of course put quite a few on my WL, since they're not mine, they're Tevta's. :D 

The ones, that really pop out for me are SpaRitual's Mood, that is just supreme, O.P.I.'s Glacier Bay Blues and DS glamour, Kinetics Magnificent and My Blue Heaven and Nubar's Teal Glitter. If I only needed to list my top of the tops. The biggest surprise for me is Kinetcis. I really love their brush and the colours are just stunning. Although I had some problems with SpaRitual brush some colours took my breath away and I still have quite a few on my WL. So all in all a very nice score with these babies.

Oh, before I forget - if you wish to see any of the upper five shades, let me know and I will swatch them. It is not a problem! I promise I'll do the layering Sinful + Midnight Blue Glitter, as said on the MBG post, and I will get around them sooner or later, but if you're wondering about certain shade now, let me know. :) 

To the next project after the click. Sparkles!!!

Project Latvia: 42

Hello again! I'm taking a break to write this down, because I just have to tell you the story and share my excitement! Tevta told me about this weeks if not months ago and I couldn't wait for us to finally get the package! Finally about a week ago she told me to get her my WL, and I knew Project Latvia was on the move. :D The thing is, she met this awesome girl that was more than glad to start swaping, and when she told us she has the chance to clear our WLs a bit on this event they had, we just couldn't miss the opportunity! 

So the package arrived today, and we had to open it together. Like early Christmas AND birthday, I'm telling you! 2,8 kg of nail-polish, baby! We didn't know which from our WL are in  the package, because Linda wanted to surprise us, she's really a sweetheart. :)

 Me, as I started ceremoniously to open the package.

 

 The hole, that got Tevta totally worried that someone might took some bottles out. I put the package on our kitchen scale, just to make sure, luckily there were no nail-polish freaks at post office this time! But the poor box really looked like someone was beating a person with it, seriously.

 The bubble-wraped envelope and the goodies inside!!

 Let it rain nail-polish!!! 

 My cup of black tea with milk, and me cutting the bubble-wrap off the first polish. It was ... it was ...

 ... O.P.I. DS glamour!!! Aaaaaaaaaaa!! I nearly fainted! Mine, all mine!!

 And so the most fun little game ever started! Opening bubble wraps, finding out which nail-polish is hiding in the wrap, putting it in line with it's brothers. :D It was *tons* of fun!

 Group picture in the end.

 Then we sorted them by brands (click on the pic to enlarge it). As you can see, there are 9 O.P.I., 3 China Glaze, 4 Nubar, 5 Zoya, 12 (!!) Sparitual, 5 Kinetics, 2 Jessica, 1 Maybelline and 1 Nfu-Oh. I have close-up, but there are already so many pictures, I'm sure you don't need them. :) 

Oh-my-god!!! SO MUCH NAIL-POLISH!! SO MUCH *AWESOME* NAIL-POLISH!!!

I cannot tell you how awesome is this! 42 nail-polish bottles! The number itself is more than totally awesome, since both me and Tevta are total Douglas Adams fans and you know, there are no coincidences. ;) I got a few hardcore lemmings from my WL, like Wagon trail and, oh, yeah, did I mention it? THREE O.P.I. DSs!!  

Tevta was acutally so kind, she gave me just about the entire package to try out first, although most of it is hers, so I have lots and lots of new toys to play with! But I'm *so* happy that I can empty my WL a bit! So so happy, and thankful to überkind Linda and of course my dear Tevta, that always thinks of my little obsession. :D

And now, ladies (and gentlemen :)), I need your help. I cannot decide, which to try out first, and since I have you, my dear readers, you can choose, which one you want to see first, and thus helping me loads with the decision. I painfully reduced the package to 10 nail-polishes, and now I'm asking for your votes. :) You see the poll on the right side of the blog, and here are the pictures of the ten. I tried really hard to capture their bottle colours, sadly I didn't do very well, but I'm sure you already know most of them at least by looks.

 From L to R (please click on the pic to enlarge it): Zoya Veruschka, Nubar Teal Glitter, Nubar Indigo Illusion, OPI Midnight Blue Glitter, OPI Glacier Bay Blues, OPI DS extravagance, OPI DS tapestery, OPI DS glamour, Sparitual Regal and Sparitual Days Of Wine And Roses. 

On this one you can see a bit of the colour play in Glacier Bay Blues, its an amazing colour, it's like beatle wings, tons of colours in the finish, insane colour. And Midnight Blue Glitter is not "just" silver, it has a bazillion blue glitter, that I just couldn't capture. No picture on this planet can do Indigo Illusion justice though, you'll have to take my word for it, that it's a couple of nail-polishes hidden in one.

From the second angle, if it helps. 

So, as you can see, it's been an insanely good Saturday and I'm glad the project ended up in such a nice result. I'll be glad if you'll help me with the poll and choosing the nail-polish, and I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. :)

Thanks for reading!

Tevta's stash or where does the shoeboxing begin

Hey everyone! How are you on this sunny, yet windy day? I went for a jogging hour and the wind competed with me all the way, hope that doesn't result in a headache. :) 

As you can see, I finally figured out how to make the extra pages on blog. Yes, I know, I'm an idiot, I couldn't find it when I started the blog. It's much nicer this way, especially my WL looked totally  too much on the right side of the blog page. Hope you like it!

And nooo, I didn't forget about posting Tevta's stash, I just always wanted to show you something else first. :) But now I've put the pictures together, so here it is. A lot of pictures (they are clickable), for a lot of nailpolish!

 This is their home. It's already full, so she needs to find the second drawer or something. 

 Don't ask me about these bottles, I hardly recognize them. It's 2 Orlys, the rest are at my place, L.A. Girl in the top right corner, others are a mystery.

 Aaaah, O.P.I.! I was shoeboxed with them already, but there are so many of them, I couldn't try all of them. Rescue Beauty Lounge on the right, gorgeous shades, I don't know where I found the strenght to return them, and bottom right Nfu-Oh. Upper right corner looks like MAC, but judging by the number of the bottles and if you look at them really closely, you can see that IT IS ILLAMASQUA! *faints*

 Obviously Zoya on the left, I discovered some of my favourites in this bunch, like Midori, Rea and so on. Blue caps are *the* nail-polish, BB Couture!!! Right next to them Color Club, one of my favourite brands, and Essie. And one RBL, hehe. The golden caps could be Milani? Not sure. 

 Hm. Maybe S-he on the upper half? I know she has tons of them. Below mabye Catrice and Essence? And I'm thinking in the little boxes Joy and her frankens. 

 GOSH, P2, Deborah, I think, and tons of others. 

 This is her franken maker drawer, I'd say. Yes, she makes her own polish, she's THAT cool.

And this is the part that I have at home right now. All the China Glaze, 90% of Orlys, MAC and three others. 

The reason why it's so hard to recognize some bottles (besides the fact that I simply don't know that many brands just by their bottle) is that she has lots of polish that she bought while travelling, and some are local brands. 

It's like nail-polish heaven, isn't it? SO MUCH NAIL-POLISH!!! Aaaaaaa!!  Effing awesome!! This is the collection in one moment. You can't really keep track, it's alive, it's growing. Like right now, the entire Essence Metallics collection is missing, I have it at home for swatching, but forgot to take a picture. The drawer is already full,  I can't even imagine the number, luckily she keeps track, I can't tell you the exact number, but it's close to 600 right now. And you know what? During the weekend, or maybe in the beginning of the next week, this collection is gonna get a lot, and I mean ej lot-t-t bigger. But more about this when we get the package.

Don't you just forget to close your mouth watching this? I do. :)

Thanks for reading!

About nail-polish gurus and shoe boxes

Hey everyone. This post is long overdue, I've planned it for weeks. And today, although it's a beautiful day outside, I had to get up insanely early and just don't have the energy for swatching or jogging or basically anything, so I'll write this down. You see me mention nail-polish guru in every other post and I'm sure it's a little annoying, so I have to do a post that explains it. :))

I'm sure everyone has a NP guru. There is simple equation to see if you do. NP guru is a person, that knows ALOT about nail polish and nails, is willingly showing, lending, updating and sharing her pictures, polish, tips about manicure and so on. And, totally improtant, essential, really, has a kick-ass collection of nail-polish and nail related stuff. You have to try to learn and then to teach, right?

Now, you probably know a person or two like that, or even are one of them. :D Your guru can be a blogger, that you don't know IRL, a friend that you do know IRL, it's someone that made you fanatical about nail-polish in the first place, someone that made you write your wish list. :D Now I'm thinking about my mothers saying (imagine that with alot of sarcasm in the tone): yeah, like it's so hard to make a frog jump into water. ;) But I'm guessing for alot of people those persons are Scrangie, Michele from Lacquerized, VV, All Lacquerd Up blog etc.

But anyway, this is my definition of nail-polish guru, I guess it's a pretty logical one. My nail-polish guru goes in the internet world by the nickname Tevta and she's awesome. It's a fact. She has one of the most awesome nail-polish collection (500 bottles, though I wouldn't bet that it's not already larger, collection gets bigger every time we have coffee :D) and has reached over  the fanatic nail-polish lover border to a nail-polish collector status.  I'd love to pile all that nail polish and just organized it, can you imagine the amount of nail-polish?! Awesome! She almost has them all. And still has over 100 bottles on WL, which totally baffles me. :D Anyway, i've always loved long nails, nice manicures, when I was a kid my aunt always did a red stripe on my nails (the thin stripe was modern back then) and I walked around like the queen of the world. I don't think I ever bit my nails, I always wanted them long, I found that extremly beautiful. But I never thought of tons of colours that are out there until I saw Tevta's nails. Fanatism was reborn in even stronger shape and now it won't go away. :D 

And *the* shoe box. Tevta brings me a shoe box every once in a while. Looks innocent enough, doesn't it?

 

But when you open it, BOOM!

 

It's full of nail polish!! wiiiiiiiii!! The first time she did that (we went out for a cup of coffee) I almost fainted, all the awesome colours!! The ones that are out of the box are there because you can't fit them inside it, unless you lay them all in a pile in a box. Now they're organized by my likeness of the colour and those that I haven't tried out yet.

Here I have China Glaze, Orly and some other brands. All together around 50 bottles. I was shoeboxed with Zoya and OPI before blogging, OPI being the number winner, coming in smaller boxes too ... I had OPI in every room, it was heaven. ;) 

So basically, it's like goint to a store, choosing polish by bottle colour and then taking it home for a trial on your nails. That's how I'm building my WL, with combination of swatches  from other blogs  (and am emptying the WL as often as I can :)). And it's totally awesome system, I have tons of fun with it. So yeah, Tevta is the best. :) Now you know. ;D 

And an old mani, so it won't be just talk talk talk. Milani - Totally Cool. Love this colour. 

So, who is your nail-polish guru? ;)

Thanks for reading!