Royal & sea & turquoise blue trio

Heya everyone! How about new NOTD? Nail crazy said I should show my NOTDs more often and lately I actually feel like wearing more than one colour I've already shown, so with posting these I don't fear I am not boring you with my nails. :)

I think I am in my blue phase quite strongly lately. I constantly feel like wearing some sort of blue shade. For this I mixed up two colours and a glitter. I actually wanted to fling a duochrome topper in there as well, but I thought it would get too busy. Please excuse the state of my cuticles, I wasn't home when I took these and there is no dishwasher in my BF's cabin up north and that shows. :)

I combined them a bit differently on my right hand and I prefer this combination to the one on my left hand, hence the picture. Excuse the weird position of the hand, I am not used to taking photos with my left. :)

The royal blue is Revlon Royal, I think it has to be one of my most used nail polish, the colour is just sickening. It is a jelly and so it photographs a bit sheer even if it is not. 

The turquoise blue is Kiko 342 and it is in fact a true turquoise, not sky blue, like it is on my photos. Online swatches prove also it is a very nice dupe of O.P.I. Fly, if you really want a cheap but great substitute of that baby. 

On top is the utterly gorgeous Sea Blue glitter made by Esmaltes da Kelly (EDK) I got from lovely Eveline all the way from Brasil. I love how irregular the glitter is, and that it is dense enough I only need one coat to spread it evenly over the nail. Brush is awesome, a lot of brands could learn from this indie np maker. :)

And of course  I needed to put a matte TC on the Kiko combo. Apparently that's what I do with lately with at least 2 nails, my brain decided it is obligatory. 

What's on your nails today?

Thank you for reading and commenting!

The winner of the giveaway and a panda mani!

Hello darlings! I have returned with my winner Rafflecopter kindly picked up at random from all your entries. She also already replied to my email, so she is confirmed winner. :) Congratulations, Amanda, for winning the $20 voucher at Born Pretty Store! I am sure you will have a blast, picking all the goodies for that money! And thanks again to Born Pretty Store for sponsoring the giveaway. :)

BTW; it was great fun reading your comments and I truly appreciate you all who read and comment my little blog, it is basically the biggest reason why I still go on with blogging, despite my not so regular postings, as my schedule gets fuller and fuller. So, in short, you are the best! :) I hope I will host another giveaway soon! 

In light of this being a Born Pretty Store giveaway, I am showing a mani I did in the beginning of the week with their water decals I received for reviewing purposes. You all don't know this about me, but I am a bear fan. I think they are among the cutest animals on the planet. And of course I love the fuzzy cute panda bear! So when I saw these water decals of pandas, I did not hesitate for one bit. :)

Gosh, aren't they adorable!? The item itself is called 1Sheet Cute Panda Pussy Vivid Feather Pattern Design Nail Art Water Decals Transfers Sticker, item ID #12302 (and the main reason why I always write this down is that I find the names of most of their items incredibly amusing). As you can see, you can pick three different images, the pandas, the peacock feathers and a kitty cat called Marie, I think this is from a cartoon of some sort. 

Naturally I picked pandas, since I think bears are adorable and these are really well made, and did this mani with it:

I did the pattern a bit differently on my right hand, that's why I am showing it as well. Isn't it adorable?? I love it! I used Kiko 296 for this one, with H&M White on my ring fingers. 

Water decals themselves are incredibly easy to use, that is also the reason why I am becoming a rather frequent user of water decals. They spice up my mani, it looks like I can do nail art (which I can't, not really) and they take no time whatsoever. You cut the patterns off the sheet, take the protective layer off, dunk everything in water for approx. 10 seconds, take it out and put it on your nails, tap it a bit, so you also remove the water and it is done. Lovely. Plus, they are really cheep. ATM the panda bear water decals (and peacocok feathers and the Marie kitty cat) cost only $1,86. They are on sale from a regular price of $2,86, which is already seriously cheap, with the price on sale they are almost giving them away. Perfect chance for you to get them.

I really loved this mani, I wore it until the nail polish started to chip. Panda bears are adorable!

As always, use my 10% discount code when shopping at Born Pretty Store! Did I ever mention they have worldwide free shipping? Well, they do! And who knows, maybe you will use it again so many times we will have another giveaway soon. :)

What do you think, like it? Are you a fan of water decals? :)

Thank you all for reading and commenting, have a wonderful start of new week tomorrow!

*Product sent for reviewing purposes, you can read my disclosure here.  

Kiko 266 and a comparison with Catrice

Hey my darlings! How are you? I put this Kiko 266 on yesterday and realised I probably never even posted a comparison I did ... well, probably a year or two ago with Catrice Blue My Mind. I did show you 266 before but the photos are not so good, so let's look at it again. It is a gorgeous shimmery blue, I cannot get sick of these type of blues.

This was two coats, very easy application, Kiko has great brushes. And now for the old comparison, Kiko 266 vs. Catrice Blue My Mind.

My gosh, look at my nails! I can't remember the last time I had them this long. Blue My Mind is a discontinued beauty Catrice made in the first wave of their polishes, and both brush and formula were amazing. The colours are very close, Kiko is a tad bit lighter.

Which is your favourite Kiko shade and which one is the winner for you in the comparison?

BTW; this made my day:
 

Thank you for reading and commenting!

Kiko Magnetic nail polish 706 (Deep Green) (try 1) and my Kikos

Evening, people! How are you doing? Thank you for all the lovely comments you posted on the last posts! I'm having tea break ATM, so I decided to show you the result of me playing with magnetic polish this morning. Or rather afternoon, as I woke up from an entire night of studying and was trying to ... you know, turn my brain on again. 

As everyone already knows, this is the year of magnetic nail polish and flakies. Can I get an invisible high five over here for that?  Now, I went insane over magnetic nail polish with the Alessandro Go Magic! Magnetic nail polish some time ago so when the collections came out this year, I almost felt nostalgic with all the buzz around them. I think some companies did a marvellous job with the shades. Sadly they are still on the expensive side, but I'm guessing they are also expensiver to make, so that seems reasonable. Anyway. When I saw that Kiko is also jumping on the magnetic waggon, I had to get me a few shades. You probably figured out already I'm quite the fan of Kiko, their polish is one of the best out there. Sadly we don't have them in Slovenia, but I am lucky enough to have a good friend in Spain that visits Madrid on regular basis and she was kind enough to buy me two shades from Magnetic LE. Out of 8 lovely shades, I'd love to have 4, but since my make up budget is down to a minimum lately, I picked two and the magnet. Today I'm showing you the green one.

Now, maybe it wasn't the best day to play with the polish as I haven't done the best of jobs, and I successfully forgot all the tricks you have to pay attention to when dealing with magnetic nail polish (Kiko gives a couple of advices, Scrangie did an amazing post on advices), the main one being not holding the magnet still and not shaking the bottle enough. My nails are very curvy and I wanted to get the pattern on the edges and thus failed miserably even on the centre of the nails. Oh well, we live and learn!

As you can see, my ring finger is almost completely pattern-less. Sucks. But it is a way to show you how awesome the colour alone is on this baby. :) I also had to fix 5 nails, I think. Hate that. The formula is excellent though, the brush hugs the nail perfectly and so the application isn't troublesome at all and makes the handling with the magnet much easier. Magnet itself is great too, so all in all I'm really happy about the purchase. One bottle costs 4,90€ and the magnet costs 1,90€. I think it's a fair price for the great product, I think it's actually on the cheaper side of magnetic polish on the market. Martina, thank you for getting them for me. :*

One day I also put all my Kikos in one line. I didn't have the Magnetic ones yet, so they're shot separately. Wanna see them? I'll take that as a yes.

I had 4 more, but I gave them away or put them in my swap container. It's quite amazing, how many of them are colour inaccurate on the photos. They are so gorgeous, but so hard to photograph. For instance, the baby blue on the photos is actually this amazing turquoise that I've given up hope on showing to you, because it keeps on coming out so painfully wrong. Oh well. They're still gorgeous. I wish we had them in Slovenia.

How are you with Kiko polish and magnetic polish in general?

Thank you for reading!

Black with something extra

Hello my dear people! A big welcome to all my new readers! Forgive me, please, for not replying to your comments in a while now, I really honestly do appreciate and am happy to recieve every single one of them, it's the lack of time that gives me troubles. I wanted to point that out, I don't wish for any of you to think I take comments for granted, because I don't, k? :) 

Today another three. My pictures are piling up and, well, that's always a good reason to keep my posts loaded with different shades. Or would you prefer the standard 'one post one polish' deal I usually do?

Well, I probably mentioned somewhere in the past year and a half that I love black polish. No matter how big and obsessive and true my love for green is, there's something incredibly awesome in black polish I never get tired of. What I love even more are blacks with a twist. Black base with shimmer, glitter, or whatever. Pure love.

Let's start with my favourite of the three, China Glaze Haunting, from Haunting Collection for Halloween 2011. Yes, I may have only two out of this collection, but these two I love. It's Alive is on my favourites list of last year and I'm considering it to be my favourite glitter ever. Haunting just may be my perfect black with a twist. The silver glitter in it positions so great in the formula it looks like a night star on the nails. I was a fan of these type of black glitters since the beginning and I needed a silver one perfect like Haunting is. It needs only two coats, has perfect formula and I seriously loved wearing it. It also allows me to delete another one from WL, since I don't need Orly Goth if I have this beauty.

Next is Kiko 06, that dear Stefanie sent me. This particular beauty is a part of Kiko Frozen LE, a LE I was very sorry to miss, because I saw some great colours in there. The black one, number 06, immediately reminded me of Zoya Raven, but I feared it will leave a frost finish. Luckily it didn't, the silver shimmer fits perfectly with the black base. It's not a dupe of Raven, I gather from online swatches, but I think it just might be close enough for me. Then again, I love Raven for the name itself too, so yeah ... like there is such a thing as too much black polish! Kiko Frozen 06 needs only two coats for full opacity, formula is superb as usually with Kiko. The fine shimmer could get brush-stroky, but you don't need a lot of work for it not to. 

And the third one, layered over Kiko Frozen 06, Orly Androgynie, from Orly Holiday Soireé collection 2011. *sigh* There is so much about this one already said on blogsphere so I'll try to make it short and simple. The obvious turn-on on Androgynie is the bottle, the hexagons glue to the glass, making this baby look ah-mazing. On the nails, not so much. The hexagons are very hard to capture and believe me, I tried. I even laid the bottle so the glitter would slide to one end of the bottle, where I could grab it with the brush. Nada. The thing is ... Androgyine is actually a very nice black with a twist. It's a black jelly with the goldish specks of fine glitter that really pop out and looks awesome. It's the potential that stays in the bottle that makes us all go, i think, a bit 'meh, whatever'. Too bad, since it is a lovely shade. This is all the hexs I could catch in two coats of otherwise good formula.

I even did a silly little video to show you how everything in this soup just loves gravity.

So yeah. I love black polish, yes. It never gets old. How about you? Any of you out there that weren't so much into the hexs in Androgynie and loved it as it is?

Thank you for reading!

Kiko 300 and 347 with a comparison

 Wow, lately I'm bursting with imagination when it comes to titles, aren't I? Well, right now I'm effing starving, so my thoughts are pretty much all about that very unhealthy pizza I'm about to have. ;) I want to show you another two Kikos I have. 300 beat 299 and is now my number 1 Kiko polish, 347 was number two for the longest time, now it's number 4, but it's still utterly gorgeous! I also did a comparison between Kiko 347 and Orly Enchanted Forest ages ago, so I'm finally showing it to you.

First Kiko 300. Oh dear Lord of the Rings. I never thought I'd seen more gorgeous Kiko than 299, but they did it. It's one of those shades that make you stare at your nails, thinking: 'how the hell can this polish look so awesome?!'. At least I have these moments with polish that sweeps me off my feet. ;) 

Naturally this gorgeousness doesn't photograph well at all. It looks too blue on my photos, so does on just about every photo I found online of it. So I actually went through the scales of colours I found online and the closest I got to the actual colour is a colour called 'teal blue'. And it is, in fact. Add a few drops of green in the colour, but be careful enough to still keep it strongly on the blue side of the teal. Do I make sense? It pisses me off when I can't present a colour so beautiful accurately. You can at least very accurately enjoy in the tiny shimmer/micro glitter/glass flecks this little beauty has. It creates an insanely deep colour. Gorgeous. It took three coats for full opacity, excellent formula and brush. Kiko 300 was in fact a gorgeous NY gift from a good friend of mine, all the way from Spain. Thank you, darling, I love it! :*

Next Kiko 347. A deep green creme, but still green in every light. Right up my alley. 

Great formula on this one too, it's a two coater, the brush is again fantastic. I love these deep green cremes, although I'm more in a brighter green phase now for a while. And teal phase. Loads of teal. Anyway. Still a great one! 

When I got Kiko 347 I still  had Tevta's Helmer at home, and it looked awfully close to her Orly Enchanted Forest, so I did a fast comparison back then. It's so old I'm still using my very thick Seche Vite, hence the bubbles on my middle finger and the shrinkage on Orly. *sigh*

Both need two coats for full opacity, both have great formula and great brush, although I prefer Kikos. If you look really hard you'll notice Kiko has a tiny bit more blue in the colour, in softer light or if you won't check out your nails very carefully, the difference won't be noticeable. So I'm skipping Enchanted Forest, one less on the WL! :)

Thoughts on these two? Are the greens close enough for ya?

Thank you for reading!

Paket Petek

Heya people! Another Friday, another package! Ah, but this one is even more special than usual. I'm always extremely happy to receive any kind of packages, you know, in general, they're just super fun, and with having an awesome swap buddy every package is a total win. That is why I started with this particular label. To praise the packages! :)

Today's particular little gem of a package came yesterday. And it was completely unexpected and I can't get over the awesomeness of it. Remember when I was utterly surprised by dear Stefanie with a bottle of BB Couture Clyde? I keep it in my display picture too. Well, guess what. A couple of days ago I received another email from her. I don't think I could be more surprised about it. It was also a surprise package, so I could hardly wait to get it and when it arrived in a cute box, I could not open it fast enough. What was inside left me speechless. The totally great Rembrandt card with the cutest message that made me smile and ... these:

I couldn't believe it. Honestly. I mean, look at them. Before I forget, L to R: Kiko Frozen LE 06, BB Couture Horned Devil and Widow Maker, A England Order of the Garter, Cult Nails Power Thief and Nubar Gem. And now I'll go faint. 

I could go on and on about this. Two of my great lemmings, my first A England (and what a pick, this blue and the teal and the green holo are the ones I want the most from the new collection, the blue is SO electric and bright!), my first Cult (that looks like a darker Orly Nite Owl with not only silver but green and pink shimmer, FTW!!) ... Kiko looks like it's going to kill my Zoya Raven lemming and Widow maker makes me stare at the bottle for a few moments with its black glitter.
No words for how awesome this package is. Nor for how touched and honoured I am that Stefanie remembered me once more with this wonderful gift. Thank you so much, darling. It was the nicest surprise, I just can't get over it. I'll stop typing right here, because I can't think of words cool enough to express my gratitude or happiness. In short, Stefanie, you rock!

And now to pick the first one to wear! I'm thinking bright orange or bright blue. They are BRIGHT! 

What was in your latest package? :)

Thank you for reading!

Kiko 255 and 296

Hey people! How are you doing on this beautiful sunny day? Hope you're having a good one! As already mentioned, I have tons of stuff to show you, so I'm combining colours of the same brands in one post. It's more interesting that way too, I think. 

Today I have another two Kikos. I've shown you couple of colours before and I must say, their quality still impresses me. The formula and the brush and the colours. All of them awesome. So if you get the chance to grab a few bottles, do not hesitate! 

First the number 255. I dare say this is the star of Kiko line. Everybody seems to love this colour. And so did I on the swatches. On my hands, alas, not so much.

Don't ask me why I didn't like it, I don't know. It's not like I hated it ... just didn't like it as much as I thought I would. Great formula though! I needed three coats. Oh yes, I did a video of all the sparkling for ya too:

And now the second one, called, very originally, 296. A wonderful bright spring green. That was a bit of a diva to photograph. 

Take the first almost-neon photo and then calm it down a bit, but not as much as it is on the other two photos. Then you get the vibrancy that is 296! It's a really bright green, but not neon. My kind of green! Formula, of course, superb. Two coats. I freakishly loved this one. Must wear it again asap.

So yeah ... Kiko is really great. I wish they'd bring them to Slovenia too. What's your experience with Kiko?

Thank you for reading!

Kiko: 278, 319, 205

Hey darlings! And welcome new people! Glad you can join us! I had the most amazing vacation ever, 6 wonderful days with great people on a great place in the middle of nowhere and it was just ... perfect, really. It's where and when I recharge my batteries for the whole year. Even my BF showed up for a day, it was the most beautiful surprise ever (I really didn't expect him to show up at all). So all in all a great week. I should be studying my ass of right now, naturally, but as you already probably know, I can't stay away for long. Forgive me for not replying to your comments, I read and appreciate them all, I just don't have the time to reply them. Sorry! And thank you!

I have another three Kikos for you today. I have three or two left in my untrieds, so I guess another set will be in order. I have *so* many things to show you, I have no idea when will I do that. So you can expect more combined posts.

 278. This type of purple and finish are all over the place. Sadly I get fed up of it fast for that reason, but it's still a beautiful one. It's lighter purple than the rest I have in this area too. A lovely colour, but it doesn't photograph well, you should imagine it tons cooler. I hate my pictures of it. :(

 319. I bet you didn't see this one coming! This was a gift from my cousin, who is the exact opposite of me when it comes to nails. She loves french manicure and the wildest she goes with the colours is this Kiko. So basically a major boredom for me. That's why I was shocked at myself when I realized I love 319. Pardon my arrogance, but it made my nails and hands look so beautiful. I got bored of it in a day, of course, but it's my favourite safe colour now.

A bottle comparsion with China Glaze Below Deck:

205 over 319. It's what I did the next day of wearing 319. Tevta got me 205 because it looks very much like China Glaze White Cap that was at that point completely sold out. Otherwise it has the "french manicure" sticker on the handle. Tell you the truth, if this is how White Cap looks like on the nails for real, I'm disappointed. 205 whitens the base colour way too much for my taste. Still, the golden sparkles are lovely.

278 needs three to four coats to be completely opaque. Not something I love about a polish, but the result is worth it. It looks like a brighter sister of Orly Out Of This World, but with less duochrome. It dries really fast, I didn't need TC for this one.

319 needs two coats only and it's really easy to work with, a very well behaved polish. 

205 is the one I'm not sure about. I don't like the milky bonus it adds to the base colour. The White Cap owners, tell me, does White Cap whiten the base colour too? 

The brush is fantastic and the application a bliss. Kiko rocks, seriously.

What do you think of these? I already have some comparison prepared, if you want to see the Below deck one on the nails too, let me know!

Thank you for reading!