China Glaze Month - Blue Sparrow (neon)

Hey everyone. How are you enjoying your Halloween Reformation day (can't resist, I want to contribute to Nina's movement about the acutal holiday that we have here, Halloween is borrowed from the USA, as you all know :))? I'm having a personal party with a very annoying little cold that loves me so much, it won't go away. I swear, when I woke up today, I thought I swallowed a razor blade or two during the night, my throat is killing me. So I'm having Milan Kundera weekend. Actually it's been more like a month or so, I think I've read like 6 of his novels in a row in the past few weeks. I love his works, feel in love with Unbearable Lightness Of Being years ago and I'm still loving it. :) My trip to Česká Republika coincided perfectly with this obsession with the Czech author, so it was even more special. :) 

Anyway, remember me telling you how every once in a while I want to try "not me" colours? Blue Sparrow was a sequel of Bad Landing, but it didn't match it's success, I removed it in a matter of hours. 

In the shade, excuse my middle finger, I don't know what happened there.

As Bad Landing, this isn't my colour at all, and, unlike BL, I hated it on my nails. It's the type of blue I really dislike, it's neon (one trend that I never fell for) and after three coats still very sheer, you can see quite clearly my nail under the polish. I couldn't stand it, I removed it quite soon. And went safe, with a vampy colour, that I've already shown you.
Otherwise a very well behaved polish. Application is a bliss, no trouble at all, brush obeys every order and drying time is superfast.

What do you think? Your type of colour? What about Kundera, do you like him, or do you prefer other novelists? :) 

Thanks for reading!

NOTD China Glaze Month - VIII + Atlantis

The CG vs. Avon post was already so full of pictures I decided to post my NOTD separately. After I put VIII on and saw it's basically a black creme with a hint of purple, I wanted to spice it up a bit. Just a bit. So I pulled out Atlantis or as I call it - effing liquid glitter! It's totally sparkly and glittery and just whoa! And since I'm not usually so fond of glitter, I used it only on two nails, on my ring fingers. I don't know why I'm writing about this stuff when you can see it on the pictures ...

 Isn't it fascinating, how a camera can totally kill the glitter? 

An extra blurry one, so you can see, just how insanely sparkly Atlantis really is. Play of every colour! 

I have three coats of VIII, although it's a two coater, and one coat of Atlantis, like I said, i don't like my glitter too thick and too much in my face. 

I discovered with this manicure, that I have appearantly somehow gotten glitter into my Seche Vite. And I clean the brush every single time! Grrrr! It really made me angry, because you can't really fix anything with SV on, it dries up so fast. So I have an accidental speck of glitter on my middle finger. And it's not from Atlantis, it has to be from previous manicures. I hope it's the only one. Or that the others will have the decency to land on my glitter manicure, and not on the extra dark creme! -.-

Like it? :)

Thanks for reading!

Comparison: China Glaze - VIII vs. Avon - Midnight Plum

Evening! I just got home and am totally lazy, so what better than to show you this comparison I made while doing my NOTD? I was in the mood for something darkish, and when browsing through the shoe box I found VIII and thought it looked insanely like Avon's Midnight Plum that I got for my bday. I tried it on one finger, just to see, if I was right. See for yourself.

 This is the only picture on which I acutally managed to capture the miniature difference between the both. As you can see, Avon has a bit more red and China Glaze more blue in the purple. Otherwise they look the same.

 Again on direct sunlight, the difference is barely visible.

 Again direct sunlight. Can you tell the difference?

 Close-up, direct sunlight. 

Close-up, in a bright room.

With the exception of the first picture, I can hardly tell the difference between both shades, that is more obvious with the first coat. Midnight Plum colour has alot more red in it, it's also warmer, while VIII is totally dark purple, a real purple. With the second coat the difference is almost gone. You have to look really really *really* close and probably be a nail-polish freak to acutally spot the difference in the shades. I did the third one, just out of curiosity. It's the same as the second coat, so these two are two coaters, if you're not clumsy (which I was on a couple of nails). 

I can't really say they're dupes, since the minor difference does exsist, if you look for it really hard, but I think they make a fine substitutes of each other. Especially since - and this is a let-down for me - they look black if I'm not in a room with a strong light or standing out on the sun. Right now it seems like I have a black creme on my nails (with an addition on my ring fingers, but still), and not that I mind black nail-polish, but if I want to have a vampy purple colour on my nails, I still want it to be purple. 

I don't think I need them both, Avon will do. About other stuff: brush is flatter and wider in Avon's nailwear pro line, but I love China Glaze brush, it's never problematic, so I can't say who's the winner. Avon is available only through the catalouge, I think it's around 5€ for 12 ml. Bottle looks boring, and the handle isn't to practical, it's really smooth and square like. China Glaze in Slovenia, as you know, for 9€ on zapikonai.com or ebay for whatever bargain you get, for 14 ml. The bottle is cute and handle easy to deal with. Drying time on both was good, but I used Seche Vite on top, as usual.

What do you think about the comparison, are they close enough for you? :) Do you like/own any of them?

Thanks for reading!

Comparison: S-he 437 vs. China Glaze - Stroll

Hey everyone! I'm totally hyper from my dance classes although I can already feel the pain in my muscles I'll have tomorrow so I'll write another post. I wasn't sure whether to show you this or not, because they're not as close on colour as I thought they'd be, but what the hell, if I did the comparison, I just as may show it. I never examined the bottles together untill I compared them, so they always reminded me of one another, thus making me suspect a possible dupe. But, although the glitter is quite the same, the base colour is different. Pictures!

 Bottles put together. S-he has more brown in it (it's also the reason why I haven't picked it from the shelf in the store untill I saw swatches, it just looked like brown glitter), while CG is warmer red.

 On direct sunlight.

 Here's the reason why I thought they might be dupes - the glitter looks very much alike, perhaps China Glaze is a tad bit bigger, but the S-he glitter is more dense, on the nail the glitter looks pretty much the same, as it does in the bottle. Sorry for the reflection on middle (CG) finger, it almost looks like the polish is smudged, it's not, it's our porch door, I'm afraid.

 And the reason, why they defenitively aren't dupes, just related perhaps. ;) I think this one shows the base colour the best,  CG is warmer, brighter red, S-he almost looks brown.

Again one on the sun, just because.

Here you go ... I hope it's not boring for you, discovering how close two (or more) colours are, I find that amusing and always find a colour, that I think could resemble the other. Sometimes the shades get busted, sometimes they don't. I can easily leave Stroll on my WL, it's too far from S-he. Although I wasn't head over heels with it, to tell you the truth. 

Which one do you like better? :)

Thanks for reading!

NOTD China Glaze Month - Bad Landing

Hey everyone! I just want to say: w-o-w, I have 30 followers! The number made my otherwise bad day brighter, thanks alot for the support, y'all! :) 

Like I said, I felt a bit of post-travel sadness yesterday and I felt like wearing something totally not-me and really bright. When I feel like that, I go trough the other end of the shoe box, because I sort the nail-polish after my taste, and at the very end stand those that don't catch my eye at all. But every once in a while, I want something completely different, and thus I picked Bad Landing. In the bottle it looks almost orange, and so bright, it hurts my eyes. What I really like about it is, that it changes colour depending on the lighting. I tried to capture that with flash and different lighting, and sort of picked a few shades. It goes from almost orange, to really warm cherry red with shimmer to being a tad bit pinkish because of the soft red-pink shimmer that it has. 

 With strong flash, you can see the orange side of it.

 This is outside, in cloudy weather, where it's bright red. It's like this most of the time, I guess, with the shimmer, that it's not visible on this picture, but one can see it on the nails.

This is also flash, just softer, and you can see the red/pinkish shimmer, that adds the warmth to the red colour. 

Judging by the looks my friends and family give me (can't wait to see the expression on my BF's face :D), they think this colour is really a no-no, but here's the weird thing - I totally like it. Although it's a bit too sheer, I can still see my nail under three coats, has alot of orange in it and even pinkish shimmer. Go figure.

What do you think? :)

Thanks for reading!

S-he 437 and a bit of Česká

Hello everyone! I'm back! I came home around 1 a.m. last night, slept until two p.m., missed my classes and so on. I was just too tired and I still am, with a bit of post-travelling depression that I always get after arriving home from a good journey. The trip was simply amazing, I loved it, Praha is just so beautiful I can't begin to describe it. And nothing there was a problem, public transport is unbelievable good and cheap, prices are decent (except for Krtek puppet, but let's not go into that ;)), people are nice (the little contact we had with them in a day), hotel was amazing and all in all a wonderful experience. We also visited Krivoklát castle, that I'll show you later on, because in my opinion it's just amazing and isn't mentioned often enough, and of course Žatec, where the concert happened, but we didn't have time to wander around, the hotel was quite good, and the little town that we saw, nice.

But now on to the manicure that travelled with me. I did a comparison with this S-he and immediately fell in love with it, it's GORGEOUS!

 Inside capture, as usual it's a bit blurry, my camera doesn't do inside pictures, go figure, effing diva!

 Direct sunlight with awesome sparkle.

A bit blurry, but you can really see the sparkles on this one, it's quite sparkly!

Two coater, as S-he usually is, it gave me no trouble at all, the brush was great, drying time I cannot estimate, because I put Seche Vite on top, since I needed it to last for four days. It's an awesome colour, I love it. 

O.P.I. - Sanguine

Hei everyone! Today's post will be a short one (I bet you're saying: 'finally!' right now ;)), since I'm packing for Prague right now, but I wanted to show you this beauty. From Go goth! mini collection I give you the ultra sexy Sanguine.

 Cloudy, grey weather, outside. 

 Direct sunlight, as on all following pictures.

This is one of those polishes, that make you feel sexy wearing it. It is simply gorgeous. It's a two-coater, and behaves very very nicely, brush of mini OPIs is not problematic for me. 

Oh, and guess what! When I return I'll show you Tevta's stash. I've seen it and it's ... it's heaven made of nail-polish. Seriously. Ah. <3 Untill then, have a great weekend! Can't wait to come to Prague, wiiii! :D 

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!

MAC - Bad Fairy

Hei! I just *have* to show you this one. I know you've seen it a million times before and I've planned to post some other stuff before I post this one, but cannot resist. This is the nail polish that completely corrected my opinion on MAC. I give credit for Mean&Green to Orly's Space Cadet, since it was out first, so yeah ... Bad Fairy is so goregous, it's totally worth the trouble of 4 layers. It's unbelievable. I need this one!!

Behold, I shall say no more.

 Under strong light, it looks like magic, dude!

 Another one under strong light. I simply ADORE this.

 Here's the duochrome effect. Du-de!!! Love it! LOVE IT!!

 I don't know why, but I really like this type of photo, you probably noticed I do it quite often.

Except the first two all the other pictures were taken in shitty grey outside lighting, and still this nail-polish looks stunning. I love it. Simply love it. It's undoubtely the winner for me in this collection. I have it on my nails now, and it's a WOW! effect every time I look at my nails. Ah. <3

Now, i've said it before - MAC is overrated in my opinion. Yes, Bad Fairy is a pure perfection, Mean & Green is a total dupe of Space Cadet that is again a pure perfection, and as you all know, Formidable! is not my thing. Still, for a company, that is sooooo worshiped, I'd want and expect piles of awesome, unique colours. Until now the only one that really made me fall in love with it is Bad Fairy. I mean, even looking at swatches. But I guess this is just a thing that every one of us has with a brand. My altar is dedicated to BB Couture and Illamasqua. And, if I'm really sincere, Illamasqua has some kick-ass nail-polish, but i've seen dupes of it, and lately nail-polish section was not up my alley, I prefered other make-up. Do I care? Nope, still my Illamasqua, no matter the price. I guess it's the same with MAC lovers.

What are your feelings towards Bad Fairy, Venomous Villains Collection and MAC in general? :) 

Thanks for reading!

Parokeets are rocking with numbers

lkysppeak.wordpress.com

Yes, our Parokeets ladies have prepared another challenge for us! Klick me! I've been their follower for a while now and have voted for my favourite MU & manicures, but now that I'm doing this little blog of mine, I've decided to accept the challenge. And boy oh boy, is it a challenge alright! I'm really not close with numbers. So I had to think really hard about what should I do for my manicure, especially since  I'm not a konad fan and had to work with other stuff. At last an idea has come and today I tried and, hopefully, succeeded. Tomorrow it goes to Parokeets mailbox and hopefully they'll like it and bare with the fact  that I'm more of a philosopher than a mathematician. ;) You should join, it's really super-fun and the prize is more than nice! 

Great job, Parokeets, it really was a challenge! :)

China Glaze Month - Tree Hugger and a surprise haul

Hei everyone! I'm back online! My computer crashed on Thrusday, I still don't know what happened (I'm an idiot when it comes to computers, I'm afraid :/), but luckily my boyfriend was a sweetheart and did his magic with it and now i'm back with every file still existing, so yey! I have another China Glaze for you today, I wore it a couple of days ago on my impulsively shortened and now too short nails. I always do that, I try to shorten my nails and overdo it. 

With flash.

The lighting wasn't the best, as usual doing this period of time,  I'll need to fix that pronto. But this polish is definitively a cutey-pie of my collection, it's so adorable! It reminded me greatly of another shade, it drove me nuts, before I figured out it's Zoya's Midori that it reminds me of. With a different shimmer - Tree Hugger has a bright green shimmer, while Midori's shimmer is gold. One of my favourite Zoyas too. I love this type of green! I love every type of green, actually ... 

And another thing I wanted to show you (even though I'm thinking about stopping posting my hauls, since then my spending money for polish is published and recorded, not a good thing! ;)).  My guru brought me new goodies from her trip in Amsterdam!

I'll try to post another comparison this week, if the weather will be a bit better (i can swatch my mani in this lighting, I'm not so sure about comparisons, where I'd like to show you the details too), maybe even two, since I'm really starting to pile the comparsions and the polish. 

So, tell me, what's on your nails today? And what do you think about this little China Gaze? Oh, and don't be ashamed, tell me about the latest haul of yours, all numbers are allowed here. :D 

Have a good week, thanks for reading! :)

Comparison: Catrice Plum Play With Me vs. O.P.I. Pamplona Purple

Hello! Had a good day? Mine was very nice, interesting classes, great lunch at spanish restaurant, good jogging hour. That's also why I'm late with this comparison! 

I've honestly never been so mistaken about a dupe before. I already moved Pamplona Purple off my WL, thinking Plum Play With Me is a total dupe. Think again!

 The minute I saw Pamplona Purple in the bottle, I knew I was wrong, it's alot warmer, there is much less blue in the colour mix, honestly, it almost looks pink, although on the nail it's a very beautiful shade of purple.

 Although the difference is very obvious, i still put the names on the pic. Direct sunlight.

 Direct sunlight. 

In a bright room, away from the sun.

As you can see, they are far from being dupes, the colours are totally different. But both gave me really hard time with the application, as you can see on my middle and ring finger. Pamplona is too fluent for my taste, PPWM too thick. I know,  I'm spoiled. But it really was a problem. Still, very nicely pigmented, two coats are more than enough. 

I need to thank Kaneli for lending me Pamplona Purple, she brought it all the way from Finland just to please my comparison caprice. :D Thank you!

And it looks like Pamplona Purple is back on the WL, ladies. ;) Which one do you like more?

Thanks for reading!

O.P.I. - Romeo & Joliet

Hello on this ... head-achy, not-enough-sleep-yesterday Monday! :) How are you, had a good day? :) 

I'm happily trying out my new nail-polish, and Romeo & Joliet is just too perfect, I had to put it on as soon as possible. Sadly, something was funny with the brush. Like it was unkempt or something, the hair isn't straight and in order as it should be. I don't know what happend. I hope it was just a bad day and that I unfairly blamed it on the brush. ;) Because I had a bit more trouble with application than I'm used from OPI. I'll see when I try it the next time, and compare the brush with another OPI. 

But here it is, the gorgeous, the sexy, the WOW!!, Romeo & Joliet: 

I love it! It's a well behaved nail-polish, beside the brush problem, it gave me no trouble at all. It's really totally my colour, awesome, OPI! 

What do you think? :) Which OPI gave you the WOW!! effect? :)

Comparison: Manhattan Pro Mat Top Coat vs. Essence Matt Top Coat

Hello everyone! Today I have a comparison for you. I've gotten some positive feedback in one of previous posts on Manhattan vs. Essence top coats comparison, so it'll go first! 

I wanted to do it at least with two colours, as it happens, I did it with three, when preparing another comparison.

This is with O.P.I. Nevermore. Mani is a few days old, so there is a bit of tip-wear. 

 This is on direct sunlight, with my thumb being the "original" Nevermore.

 Close-up on the sun.

Close-up inside.