Hey my dear people! How are you doing? It's nearly two months since I moved to Bratislava, even though it feels like a week or two. Apparently I lost the tourist vibe, as I get asked by confused Slovak or foreign people for directions approximately once a week, and I am still not feeling one bit homesick. I half expected it to hit me about a month after arriving here, even though I always loved to travel. Maybe the fact that my boyfriend comes visit every month helps.
Autumn here is absolutely gorgeous, btw. I am still walking to my faculty, a long walk, but it is so gorgeous, this week we had 23 degrees once! The sun is shining, the trees are changing the colours of their leaves, even the air smells like fall, gorgeous. The baked chestnuts stands on the streets, the smell of fallen leaves on the sidewalks ... gorgeous. No fog, basically no rain. Love it. So here are some random pictures of Old Town, or my walk across Old Bridge across Dunaj river (Danube river), and some of gorgeous Hviezdoslavovo namestie (square) or the park of Medicine faculty and another park near my faculty ... have I said gorgeous often enough in this paragraph?
White (up) and dark (down) chocolate treat in Old Town. YUM
To me this building looks like something wizards would build for their own use. In fact it is a high school. Or so they want the Muggles to think.
Another thing made my Fall here even more awesome. Fates Warning played in Bratislava last week. It was a great, great concert, great sound, great place. Randal Club, I do recommend it!
How is your Fall going so far? :)
----------------------------------- Slovak word of the chapter: strom [means tree (drevo)]. This one really surprised me.
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Heya peeps. This is my 400th post! It sure doesn't feel like I've written 400 post on this blog, hehe. And I'll skip the apologies for my rare posting, because they seem pointless now, I do it in almost every post. Thing is, I have a major competition/work on my college. I waited for the news for quite a few weeks and now I know I'm in and it's going to be a lot of work, but in the end I hope it will be worth it, everyone that's been a part of it says it is. So I'll write when I can and I honestly don't think anyone will be in a bad place for it. ;)
I've shown you my packages in my last post and I've worn almost all China Glaze polish already. They. Are. Fantastic. Lord of the Rings, did China Glaze make an incredible Spring collection!! I can't really say which colour I wanted most, but Stone Cold was definitively near the top, a gorgeous black matte with silver particles, I adore this type of matte polish. It reminded me of the ManGlaze mattes that I dream of. Stone Cold is the perfect black matte for me and the hunt for that baby is over.
Two easy coats, application was awesome. A very strong colour in China Glaze The Hunger Games Capitol Colors collection (Spring 2012), at least for me, I'm a matte fan.
Now about the project I wanted to mention. As you all know, I'm a big Tolkien geek and a member of our Tolkien society. This summer, on our grand meeting we started a project that already grew and is still growing into something incredibly awesome. We filmed a short version of Tolkien's Hobbit. We're all eagerly waiting for PJ's Hobbit (first part), and as we were planning to film some sort of scenes from Tolkien's works, our director said 'hey, let's make a short Hobbit movie'. And we said, why not! Such a crazy bunch of people. I love them all to death. So this is in fact a parody of Hobbit, but a nice parody! I always think of bad fun making when I hear the word parody, The Epic Hobbit is not that. It's our way of showing how much we love Tolkien and his works and have an amazing time while doing that. :) So here it is, the trailer of The Epic Hobbit. :)
Did you get any colours from Capitol Colors collection? Are you looking forward to the Hobbit movie? PJ's or ours? ;)
Thank you for reading & have a great first week of October!
You know, as I posted Essence Open Water Dive few hours earlier, I thought to myself: I really must not forget to post my Paket Petek post tomorrow, being Friday and all (Paket Petek means Package Friday). And as I cooked more tea right now, I realised today is Friday. *sigh* To my defence I can write down that it is not one of my best days, I feel rather drowsy and like a cold is waiting to jump on me. I've started with vitamin C and extra sweater today, hope it helps.
Last week I got a package in my mailbox. Yaaay! Me and my swap buddy took a break from swapping during Summer, and I must say, I was so excited when I saw the package on the table. I was a bit worried that is won't arrive, since the last one got lost/stolen. But there is was and it contained food for two of my obsessions! Nail polish AND eyeshadows! I'm posting it tonight since last Friday I was in Austria, and had no time for scheduled posts. :)
I've already tried all the eye product and they are nothing short of amazing. The pigmentation of WnW eyeshadows is incredible, and the Milani Shadow Eyez in Green Safari has to be my favourite green eye pencil ever. It's gorgeous green, works in tons of looks and stays on lower lash line 10 hours+. Love!
Walking on Eggshells is actually a palette of what I've called 'Why bother' colours before. Now I know the subtle, neutral colours can make so much difference, I'm starting to love them. The package was right on time for my important interview in college, so I opened Walking on Eggshells immediately. And I love it. I also tried both halves of Comfort Zone and it's a sheer perfection, whether you follow the WnW guidelines or use separate eyeshadows in different looks. Amazing, really. They really make me want to try all WnW palettes, I've read so much good about them, but now I also see they're right up there with my best eyeshadows.
The nail polish will be shown in separate posts, of course, but you can see the Sinful Color one on my last picture already. :)
And today I got the second package! Full of China Glaze Capital Colors collection, yay! I'm already wearing Agro (the green one) and it's perfect. I have the best swap buddy in the world, and just in case there is a slim chance you don't know her blog yet: My Lucid Bubble. Go!
And just because I can: my song of this Friday night, one of my favourite bands of all time, Primordial, The Mouth of Judas.
Hey everybody! How are you doing? I'm having my cup of tea that I spoke of yesterday so I decided this is the perfect excuse to write little something here too. :) A week or two ago I wore this mani with Essence Open Water Dive and as it rekindled my obsession with the 'completely the same mani as it is in my head', I have to give it the special attention.
The thing is, in the beginning of my nail polish discovering I had so much energy, patience (and time, as it seems), that I was able to do infinite amount of coats for a mani I wanted, or even change one polish up to three times a day, because I got fed up with the colour I was wearing. Naturally, that didn't happen often, but it did happen. It seems so weird now, hehe. The phase luckily passed and I enjoy polish on a normal scale now. ;) Thus enters Open Water Dive. This is an oldie, Essence Into the Ocean LE came out in 2009 and I got it from a friend, not even trying it on. It was always on my 'give away' pile and few weeks ago, when I did a large selection of polish in my stash, this little thing got the number again. As I watched the swatches though, Nail Junkie had such an amazing swatch of it, I decided to put it on. I love it over black polish but I really wanted to have its real bottle colour on my nails. Knowing Open Water Dive is sheer as hell (you can see that just by turning the bottle in your hand) I prepared for massive coat number, but Lyra's beautiful swatch convinced me it could be done.
After putting 4 coats on my nails and still having very clear VNL on my short nails, I went back to the post and actually read it. Of course Lyra layered it over white and wrote that that clearly too. Facepalm for Ulmiel, yes. But here's when I got stubborn. I wanted the mani to look like that on my nails too! So I removed the 4 effing coats, put 2 coats of H&M White and two coats of Essence Open Water Dive and was a happy hobbit.
Naturally it was a bitch to photograph. It is in fact a very complex shimmer, creating this soft minty-seafoamy colour, appearing to have only silver particles, but contains also green and purple specks of glassflecks, that are acutally visible to the naked eye, especially in the artificial light. And I needed all together 56 pictures taken, before I could semi-capture that on the 50th picture. Ho-ly crap! So here it is, set of my best pictures, plus a video to show how sparkly this is.
This is direct sunlight, my camera barley handled all the sparkle.
The only picture where I actually captured the colours of sparkles. You may need to enlarge it. The artificial light makes my skin really yellow, but it's the best one to show all the sparkles.
Naturally I loved the result. It's an amazing shade, I love it. White with a twist, I guess (or, as my BF calls them, water-pipes-in-hospitals colour), I really like the greenish hue it has. And the glassflecks really make a difference. So yes, worth the troubles, at least for me. It also stayed on my nails for quite a few days. Next layering will be over dark blue, I think, Biba's mani looks amazing!
What is your 'Challenge Accepted' varnish/finish/colour? :)
Hello my dear people! How are you doing? It's been a while, I know, I wanted to let you know before I left for our Annual Meeting, but I seriously lacked time so I wasn't able to post anything. I had the most amazing week (9 days actually), I can't find the words for awesomeness of it. I love the magic we create and all the lovely people there with me just having a blast. But now I'm back and since I need to get to my studying again, I'll probably post more often. ;)
Since this is a nail polish blog, I can also mention my nails are not talking to me at all ATM. As much as the last week was a perfect place for my soul, I didn't do anything for my nails whatsoever. I washed a lot of stuff with my hands and aggressive cleaners and I think I put on hand creme 4 or 5 times in all 9 days. When I got home I had to cut them to the meat and they are still split. So I'm going to show you old pictures for a while, so I can decide whether the pictures I make now are good enough for showing. Oh, I wore Orly Nite Owl, I've shown it before. Gorgeous polish, I'm still not sick of it. My BF hates it though. xD
For today I have another Essence, the photos are piling up again in the Essence folder ... A Lovely Secret is a colour I'd never buy if I saw it on the counter. A pale purple, nothing bad but also nothing special. But then I saw the swatches Nihrida made and I had to have it. The secret of the polish are the tiny blue specks and I adore the result.
Three coats of this lovely secret, because I was really sloppy. The brush is great on this baby, really great. And a gorgeous colour, I love it. Thanks to Nihrida for revealing the secret!
And just because I cannot stop singing this in my head ever since I went to the dentist on my bicycle this morning.
A lovely secret. Have it? Want it? Any suggestions on what I should get in new Essence line?
Heya people! Late hour again. My biorhythm has changed again with all the studying, I see. I get up after noon, and am wide awake after two a.m. Well, I've always been more of a night bird anyway. Tonight I want to show you the very last beauty from Going Green collection, Earth. I could have been cool and post it on Earth day but decided I'm going to miss that opportunity.
Going Green as a whole is a big big lemming killed. And I'm wondering. Do you have collection lemmings too? When entire collection is so perfect, you really want them all? When I got the Going Green collection with major help of my amazing swap buddy (thanks again for that!!), I started to think what makes the collection perfect for me. And I realised it's about my favourite things in nail polish world. Nubar Going Green is obviously singing to my huge green obsession. It also has a duo/multichrome, a holo, a rich creme, an insanely rich green shimmer and insanely rich teal shimmer. You basically cover everything, Nubar.
The two collections I want as a whole (although they're not that big lemmings as GG was) cover my love for glass flecked finish and sexy rich dark shimmers. I'm talking about China Glaze Summer Days (noone does glass fleck like China Glaze!) and Misa Poisoned Passion. So basically, a collection covers one of my loves in polish world so well, I can't say no to a colour. Do you get like that too? :)
But to the pictures! Earth is gorgeous! No matter how you take that sentence, it's true to the core. :) And although it looks quite close to Conserve in the bottle, you'll see they're really different.
Two easiest coats, this formula was pure perfection. No clean up, no nothing, one of those polishes you grab if you're in an insane hurry because they'll work fast for you. Just beauty on the nail, and I simply adore how rich and heavy the shimmer is on this polish (heavy in a good way, naturally!)
And just for fun, let's have Earth's brothers here in this post too. Since seeing them all together makes me happy and all. :)
Nubar Conserve
Nubar Forest
Nubar Greener
Nubar Reclaim
Nubar Wildlife
And just because it's 1:30 a.m. here and I can't stop listening to this gorgeous song:
Fates Warning - The Roads Goes On Forever
Thank you for reading! Have a good night (or a lovely day, if you're reading this with Sun already up :))!
Hey guys! A quick post before my lunch, as I realised on Friday I STILL haven't shown you It's Alive, that is in my top 10 of this year's polishes, it's so fantastic. I hope I'll have time to do my top 10 of this year, I've seen it on a blog and it looked fun. :)
It's Alive is fantastic polish, the mixture of small and large glitter is awesome, great idea, China Glaze! It's from their Haunting Collection for Halloween 2011, I got Haunting too from this collection, but haven't worn it yet. *sigh* It's Alive is without a doubt the star of the collection and quite possible my favourite glitter I own. At least top 3 for sure.
See how the finer glitter sparkles on my ring finger?? Awesome!
As always a video for the glitter check. I've finally come to conclusion that blurry video does that best, the sharp one kills the glitter completely.
Anyway ... as you can see, this is a bit older mani, my nails were longer here. Lately they're really week, I need to shorten them regularly otherwise they just break. As for the formula and application, my notes tell me the formula is quite tooth paste like on this baby. Surprisingly, I don't have many China Glaze with bad formula. Still, it doesn't show on the final result, so it's all good. Oh, and only two coats, people!! Two freaking coats for glitter polish, holy crap, that's great! Two coats of TC too, to minimise the roughness and you're done. Frankly, I'd put up with a lot of work with a colour like this. It's an awesome, quite unique shade of green and it's a fantastic glitter. Right up my alley.
Oh, another thing I have to show you. My BF discovered this guy and I can't stop listening to it. Seriously, it's been on repeat since he found it. It's a mixture of the most famous tunes from Lord of the Rings, played with electric guitar.
I CAN'T STOP LISTENING TO THIS! IMO soundtrack for Lord of the Rings is one of the biggest masterpieces ever, plus a major homage to Tolkien's world, being really musical and all. Howard Shore has made Perfection with his work. My favourite tune is that from Shire, btw (the beginning of this video). :)
Thoughts on It's Alive? What's your favourite melody from Lord of the Rings (if you are such a fan you have it anyway ;))? :)
Hey everyone. How are you doing today? Did many of you got two extra days off like we did in Slovenia? I have no idea how the holiday systems work in other countires. We had our Reformation Day on 31st of October and today it's All Saints Day, so our regular week starts tomorrow. Sadly I have one of those days that start well and then slowly but surely turn into crap. Since early afternoon it's been a giant pile of guilt, sadness, tears (that come with compulsory migraine) and general bad feeling. Not one of my best days. Even changing nail polish didn't help. So I decided I'll show you something I really like and makes me feel good. I already told you about two projects I was working on last week - one was the Nail Polish Blogger Challenge and the second I show today. I quite successfully combined my two favourite hobbies - nail polish and fantasy world.
As I already mentioned before, I'm a member of our Tolkien society and as every year we had an art competition this weekend. I was officially one of the organizers this year so I didn't compete, but since winning really isn't the point here, I of course made something for the competition, also because I loved this year's theme so much (Magical objects of Arda). I decided I'll try the nail polish jewellery thing and create the Three Rings of Elves.
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If you don't find fantasy/Middle-Earth/Tolkien works/reading interesting you may want to skip this paragraph. I skipped way too much data for my liking, and yet it remains a long one.
A bit of history behind the Rings of Power. Even if you know Lord of the Rings only by movies, you already know Rings of Power exist. All of them are combined into the most famous verse/poem in Tolkien's world:
Three Rings for Elven Kings Under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf Lords in Their Halls of Stone,
Nine for Mortal Man Doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne,
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the Darkness Bind them,
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie
The Rings of Elves are named Narya, Nenya and Vilya. They were the only three their creator, Celebrimbor, made alone, without Sauron's help (all Rings of Power were made with the help of Sauron, that back then could shift his form and decieved the high Elves of Eregion so they didn't recognise him and let him teach them the art of Ringmaking), and their power was in understanding, preserving and healing - hence the magical "islands" of Rivendell and Lothlórien. Since Sauron never got them, they couldn't make the bearer invisible, but they could be used as a weapon against their foe even if that wasn't their purpose.
Narya('nar' means 'fire' in Quenya, the Elvish language) is the Ring of Fire. That's the Ring Gandalf is wearing as the last bearer. It's power is to resent the tyranny over the bearer and his despair. It's ring stone is ruby.
Nenya('nen' means 'water') is the ring of Water. Throughout the history of the Ring Galadriel was the sole bearer of Nenya, she used it for keeping Lothlórien timeless and safe. It was made out of mithril, the ring stone is white diamond.
Vilya(the word means "air, sky") is the most powerful ring of the Three Rings. The last bearer of Vilya is Elrond. He used it for keeping Rivendell safe, like Galadriel did with Lothlórien. It was made out of gold, the ring stone is Sapphire.
The Three Rings leave Middle-Earth with their ring bearers, together with Frodo as the One Ring bearer. With the destruction of One Ring the power of the Three faded and they returned to Valinor.
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Naturally I didn't remake the Three Rings. I couldn't even if I wanted to. I wanted to try to create them from what I have, wanted to show how I see their colours through the magical world of nail polish. ;) Sorry for loads of pictures, I like how my box turned out. *blush* Plus, flakie rings always need at least two photos. Right? Right?
The letter in the middle is Tengwar "C" for Celebrimbor (although I should write "K", as Tengwar is a phonetic writing *sigh*).
GOSH Holographic for Nenya. White Diamond sounded a bit boring.
Brucci Sapphire + Nfu Oh 52 for Vilya. My favourite!
Nail System 97 with Nfu Oh 49 for Narya. Probably my next mani combo.
Let's put some music in here too. My favourite song about Tolkien world ever. It's not for everyone taste, mind you, but I'm sure some of you will like it, and I honestly believe that if you like music, you have to like the melody . You'd be surprised how much Tolkien lore is used for metal! Summoning - The Legend Of The Master Ring
Making nail polish rings is fun! What do you think, did I do a good job for a first timer? :) I feel so much better after writing this down, yay!
Do you like nail polish rings? How about Lord of The Rings and fantasy in general?
