Red comparison week - 1st day: brighter reds: 4

Hello guys! How are you doing? Today we start with our Red comparison week! I hope you'll enjoy it or at least find it useful!

First to explain a few things - although I don't mind finding dupes (especially if it's a cheap dupe for an expensive/discontinued colour), this was not a dupe hunting comparison trip. Meaning, I know some of these are far far off, also by the bottles, but as I divided them into groups, they seemed they have a similar idea in the colour, shimmer or finish. 

Second of all - there will probably be 8 days of comparison. Probably. As I go through the bottle count, I find new and new groups. I must stop at some point, or I'll do this for a month, hehe. Also, this big comparison is a mixture of my and Tevta's reds, just to let you know. My stash of reds is rich, but not that rich! ;) 

As I compared them, I noticed that with reds bottles can really be decieving. They look dark, but are really brighter on the nails - so you'll see some of the colours compared multiple times, as I discovered comparing them they belog to a different group. The point of the red comparison week is for me and for you to decide, which reds do we need still and if some of them are close enough to each other to cut them from the WLs. All in all, I hope you'll discover some new beauties with it too. :) 

First one is brighter reds. 3 O.P.I.s, one Lumene. Pictures first.

 They seem a lot closer in soft light, still, the main difference in brightness of colours remains. 

My Kind Of Brown 2005 O.P.I. Chicago Collection.

Little Red Wagon 2008 O.P.I. Holiday In Toyland Collection.

20 Candles On My Cake originally 2001 O.P.I. World Collection, now in O.P.I. classics range.

Lumene 80 - no bloody idea. I don't think they do collections, but it's a part of Quick & Chic range.

My Kind Of Brown is a black label O.P.I., so it's not a B3F polish, all the other OPI are. Lumene says on the bottle "no formaldehyde" only, and it smells bad too, so the other two are probably in there.

Brush: I like the OPI pro wide and the old brush, they didn't give me any trouble whatsoever. My kind of brown is runnier due to its formula, but nothing big. Lumene has the worst bursh I've seen in my life. I trully hope it's an accident, because this was an effing Barbie broom, you can see my application is a horror.

Coats: Little Red Wagon can be a one coater, if you don't mind a bit of VNL, other O.P.I.s are two coaters. Lumene needed four, just because the brush wiped the polish off with every stroke.

Dupability: As you can see, no dupes. 20 candles on my cake and Lumene 80 seem to be the closest, but Lumene is a bit darker, has a little bit more brown in the colour and the brush is an effing abomination. I really love the three O.P.I.s, I wouldn't mind having all three of them. Naturally only Lumene is mine. :P I think you can have all 4 of them without worrying that the colours are too close. For me, they're totally different. They seem closer in the bottles though. 

If you have any other suggestions what should I keep an eye on with these comparisons and any additional questions about these 4, let me know, please! Do share your thoughts about the first comparison. :) What do you think, need them all or ney? :)

Thank you for reading!

Hema Metallic Blue with Sinful Glitter Stripes

Hey darlings! How are you doing? I've been MIA for a couple of days, in my defence I can say it's been hell. I won't even bother you with the details, I'm sure everybody has their own troubles to bear, but this week crap really piled on. Anyway! I have another mani to show you, this one I really loved. One day I was going through blogosphere and I saw this amazing blue on one of the blogs. I can't remember which one was it, but the girl named this BBB - best budget blue. And it really was awesome and I was thinking where the hell am I supposed to get it and then it hit me - I got this one as a present from my dear Tevta when she went to Amsterdam. Can we all say yaaay!?

Now, I know, guys, one of my structures for blog is failing because of me. I planned to have this so-called projects, where i can show you what you'll see in the next period of time on the blog and then continue to the next and so on. And right now I haven't even finished Project Lativa, let alone Tevta's Bday and I'm already one third through what it was supposed to be my next project - my untireds. Oh well. Thing is, I always wear what I feel like wearing, I'm sure you all understand and relate to that. Thus, I think this projects won't be as strict as I planned them to be. I still hope you're enjoying the blog! And the projects, they will be finished for sure. :) 

But now to this beauty. Again, I tried some art work from the wonderful world of scotch tape Erika from Chloe's Nails intruduced to me. And again it's an accent mani, although she did a full mani with it. Why? Because I simply cannot afford to spend so much time on my nails lately. :/ And because I think I need much more practice for a full one. :D Anyway, I hope you like it, here we go. 

 Step 1: Accent manicure, obviously, Hema and Kinetcis Sinful from Project Latvia. 

 Step 2: I layered Sinful with Midnight Blue Glitter, remember this combo? I looooove it, adore it really, guess what was my next full mani?

 Blurry outside picture, because there just wasn't enough light and my camera starts acting weird from the absence of light. Still, wanted to show you how bright and sparkly this is even with grey, dead weather. This is the weather that kills just about every other colour and makes holo go 'blah'.

Sadly Hema doesn't even have a decent number to name the polish, seriously, it's like a 6 digit number or something and I'm not sure it serves as the name of the polish, so I just named it Metallic Blue, as it is from the Metallic section of Hema polish and, well, it's blue. But not just blue! It has tons of silver sparkles too, making this polish super playful! I love it! The accent finger was two coats of Kinetics Sinful (although you could get away with one, this baby is überpigmented), two coats of O.P.I. Midnight Blue Glitter and then one thick of Hema on top. 

Other than that, Hema is really awesome polish. Two coater, application is a bliss, actually everything is the same as with Lumene bottle and brush. With the exception on Hema being 7 ml polish and Lumene 4.5 ml. And I was like wha? So I took a picture, I must say this was quite amusing discovery for me. 

Very elegant solution, Lumene! Hehehe! Which totally gave me an idea of posting another bottle entry!! I don't mind these differences, don't get me wrong, this is not a rant, but I do find them amusing. :) 

So anyway, where was I? Oh yes. Hema is really awesome. Wonderful application, it dried super fast, I put TC just because it dried kinda rough. Mind you, the removal of it is a bit tricky, because of all the silver flecks. Nothing major though, just don't use one pad for too many nails. 

I'll talk more about the other two in my next entry, ok? Just to let you know - Sinful is actually very very dark blue creme and Midnight Blue Glitter has tones of glitter in different colours, not just the big specks of blue.

I really liked how this one turned out. What do you think, fail or win? :)

Thank you for reading, have a nice Saturday evening!

Lumene - Trouble Maker (33)

Hey everybody! How are you doing? I hope everybody is ok, I'm going through my study literature but wanted to take a break and post something. A lot of stuff going on on nail blogosphere, I saw promo pictures of Nubar Spring collection, first swatches of Orly Precious is out, Essence is doing holographic polish (at least I hope they will be holograpic and not that white-blue crap they claimed to be holo in Black&White collection) and many more I'd like to chat about but don't have the time. Sucks, doesn't it? 

But to the polish I want to show you. It's the other from the two Lumenes I got as a gift from Finland, this one chosen by Aelfsciene and I must say, it surprised me greatly. I mean it. One of the most special polish I've ever wore. I still can't figure out what colour I'd call it. Trouble Maker, sunlight pictures, lightbox, natural light and a video. Let's go.

 To show you all the colours of sparkles this one contains.

 Natural lighting, this is how it looks most of the time, but with visible sparkles.

 A really huge picture, to show you the details on natural light. I don't even hold the bottle, lol.

Ok, please, please ignore the major fail of scotch tape design I tried to do and just enlarge the picture to see the details of this polish, that is visible with naked eye on most of lighting but on the pictures it came out best in the lightbox.

A not so good video, but you can still see the sparkles.

I tried to figure out this colour and could not. It changes depending on the lighting and so is the amount of micro glitter that is visible to the naked eye. Sometimes it's goldish brown, sometimes it's dirty silver and sometimes just something in between. The glitter it contains is of gold, bright green, copper, blue also purple colour. Tons of it, but visible in that kind of way that makes you stare at your nails moving them slowly.  This colour is so brilliant, I cannot tell you. Mesmerizing. 

The structure of the polish is the same as it is with Cosmic FX collection, actually it reminded me greatly of Space Cadet alone, being so sheer as the Orly masterpiece. On the picture I'm wearing 4 coats of Trouble Maker, the same as i need with Space Cadet. You can get away with three, but you'll have VNL, and I prefer to put 4th coat on instead of seeing my nails under the polish. SV on top, of course. The brush was great, as it was with Cosmic girl, again a surprise, being so short and flat, but it really is no trouble at all. 

I tried to get Lumene's description of the colour, but they aren't really chatty on their official site. Trouble Maker is a part of Natural Code Punk Princess Trend Collection for Fall 2010, and Finnish blogger said it seemed from the bottle as a decent dupe of Hard Candy Mr. Wrong (Scrangie's swatches of the Hard Candy Collection). Seeing the swatches of Mr. Wrong and wearing Trouble Maker I must say they're certainly not dupes, but are related. They're built the same way, although Mr. Wrong is much more silver and blue, and Trouble Maker remains most of the time this soft brownish copper metallic kind of colour. Like I said, I can't figure it out.

This colour is a beautiful mystery for me, I can't figure out where to put it, and it's built on so many different levels with micro glitter and different tones of colours in different lighting, you feel like you're not wearing just one polish on the nails, although it's not a duo/multichrome. I wore it for three days, and I would the fourth, haven't I screwed it up with failed edgy half moon manicure I tried to do from Chloe's Nails. :/ It really came out wrong, lol, I can't believe I'm posting it. But this lightbox picture really reveals lots of Trouble Maker details. 

Oh, and Trouble Maker lives up to it's name when removing. Remember removal of Cosmic collection? Same stuff aaaall over again. But gotta love the colour. Thanks, Aelfsciene, great one!

What do you think? Do you find it as unique as I do?

Thank you for reading & take care!

Lumene - Cosmic Girl (34)

Hello my darlings! How are you doing on this beautiful sunny day? Well, it's already dark here in Ljubljana, but before that it was really lovely, in spite me feeling a bit under the weather. That was also the reason for me playing with polish. Which is like my favourite thing to do when I'm not feeling well, because I can't really read if my head hurts, sadly. Although I started reading a very nice book today, but had to stop due to the pain and lunch preparation. 

Another thing. Yesterday I read an entry from co-blogger coming from Australia about the conditions they're living in right now. We all know about the mayhem they have in Queensland and I just want to send all my positive energy and good wishes to my readers, co-bloggers, your families and just to everyone out there, trying to survive the Nature's rage. I hope it will pass soon. 

Today I tried out my first Lumene nail polish. A couple of my friends went to Finland for NY's, to visit Kaneli and wait for the new year up North. Sadly I couldn't come with them, but I got some lovely polish when they came back.  Today I'll show you Cosmic Girl, that Kaneli chose for me, and I think she did a very good job, because lately I'm really loving this 'universe on nails' type of colour. Let's have a look, few shots on already fading sunlight, some lightbox and a video of sparkling, because these pictures really don't do Cosmic Girl any justice.

 Sparkle check photo, as usual.

 This is natural light, off direct sunlight, and it's how the polish looks most of the time, if you include the colorful sparkling that is sadly hardly visible on the picture. You can see SV makes it extra glossy, I can see my hand holding the camera on my middle finger.

 Here's the video. Light is already quite yellow from the fading sun, but you can still see the awesome colorful glitter this baby contains.

Like I said, this is my first Lumene and I am always very excited when I try new polish. When I opened the bottle and saw the tiny flat brush I was like: eh? And when I applied the first coat I was like: eh? But although the brush is quite short it is AWESOME! The only thing I mustn't do is wipe it. Then it's magic. It reminded me of yesterday's DS glamour application, yes that awesome! No trouble at all, it hugs entire nail, magic, really. And although the first coat of this baby makes you kinda worried what the hell are you putting on your nail, it's love at third coat, this one. Really. The base black colour is already opaque after second coat, but I wanted more glitter on the nail, so I applied the third one too. And it's totally totally awesome. It won't dry extra glossy, so I put SV on top and now it's pure magic. I adore it. Major plus also to the fact it only needs one layer of TC to be smooth. 

As for the brand, I don't know much about it, except it's finnish and they're paying attention to environment, they've gotten some certificates regarding this, so major plus, people! I love a brand that pays attention to it's surroundings. As for nail polish - it comes in really really cute little bottles that don't take much place. One bottle contains only 4,5 ml (0.14 FL.OZ.) of polish and I think they're fairly expensive. Well, it's Scandinavia, baby. And I just got an idea for our next chat! 

Like I said, I really love these kind of polish. Black base with glitter, that give the impression of space. Alizarine claws did a great wheel swatch of some of them, although Eyeko's Cosmic Polish that I want SO bad isn't here, BB's Vampy Varnish is also missing, although I heard VV needs lots of TC to be smooth. But my biggest lemming of all of these you can see at Alizarine's. Its Evil Shades Rainbow In The Dark, dedicated to Ronnie James Dio who passed away last year after a hard struggle with cancer. My BF was planning to see him just few weeks before he died, although I think they cancled that show even before. He had one of the best voices out there, he saved Black Sabbath for me (although I dig Ozzy's style and all, I can't seem to get into his very specific voice colour), and Rainbow In The Dark is one of the best songs ever. Saying all that, the Evil Shades polish is just to die for beautiful and so I totally want it. Really. Not even sure I can anymore. :( 

But anyway. Kaneli, thank you so much for this polish, it's perfect! *hugs* 

How do you find Cosmic Girl? Do you own any Lumene colours?

Thank you for reading!