SpaRitual - Sacred Ground and a short break

Hello my dear people! It's been 10 days again since I've posted something and even that one was a scheduled post so it's been even longer since i've actually been blogging or checking your wonderful works of art you're doing with the varnish and the nail. My older (and regular) readers probably know this from last year, May and June are months when I really need to shift into fifth gear when it comes to studying. This year the stakes are even higher, thanks to my ambition to get the highest marks and the fact that I'll be leaving for Spain in the middle of June for one week. Thus I have to pass the planned exams before I departure. 

The stress has hit my nails too and twice now I had to cut them completely off, right to the meat. It hurts like hell for three days, even doing just simple work with your hands. You understand what I'm talking about. But most importantly, with all the work and other stuff in my life, I'm neglecting my nails. Not proud of it, but hey, it happens. That's why I'll do what I planned (and kinda succeeded) to do last year during this time of year. I'm taking a short break from blogging. A couple of weeks, I dare say, with dropping in every once in a while. Somewhat like my blogging is now, but now i'm making it 'official', if you will. If I'll have a spare moment to edit the billion photos I have and write about it, I'll definitively do that - like today, as I'm resting from the exam I had in the morning. I'm also hoping to post a couple of guest posts, if all will go as planned.

But until then, I want to show you another beauty. My first SpaRitual! Yes, I've shown you a couple, but they weren't mine, but this baby is! And it's beautiful! And so cute, a mini bottle, argh, adorable!

SpaRitual's brush isn't in my good books. Usually I had problems with the application. Here, on my shorter nails I didn't, the application was a breeze, actually. I guess my longer nails gave it troubles. Or I just got better at applying nail polish? Anyway. This was three coats of the beautiful, complex polish Sacred Ground is. Just look at all the details. Amazing, I love it. It's also a part of a rather strong collection, SpaRitual Wilde Collection for fall 2011. With quick glance over the swatches I wouldn't say no to another three shades! But Sacred Ground is by far the best in the collection. I love it. 

Any thoughts on this SpaRitual baby? Do you have it? 

Have a great next couple of weeks and if you're studying too - may it be successful!

Thank you for reading and commenting!

SpaRitual - Epicurean

So, today I wanted to do a special "Barcelona is the winner" mani, but then I realized I suck at nail art and don't have time for full scotch tape mani. Oh well. Either way, Barca won yesterday, wiii! Since I can't do a nice nail art mani, I can at least show you my Barcelona scarf. 

I bought it on Camp Nou, when I visited Barcelona. :) It was an awesome trip, I always wanted to go there, I even saw the team practice. That was back in the days of Rijkaard and Ronaldihno, but I have to say, I'm loving the team nowadays so much more, the whole bunch, Pep, Leo, Puyol, Iniesta, Xavi ... they have an awesome energy and their play is just beautiful. Oh, and before I forget: this is how my nails would look like if I could pull it off. It's a work from a new-to-me blogger called Uńas de Colores, and she does magic on her nails, I love it, but especially this Barca mani!! Gorgeous, I really admire what some of you can do on your nails!

Anyway! Here's another one from our Project Latvia box. Man, that was a long time ago. This is SpaRitual Epicurean, and it's my second favourite from Sparituals I've tried. Nothing can beat Mood.

This is one of the sexy colours for me. It's just sex in a bottle, it's incredibly hot, really rich burgundy red, with the famous glow withing effect, and lets not even mention how it looks on the sun, it just might kill me, so gorgeous. But it's amazing off the sun too, really a great colour. It felt like Nubar Torrid Red when I was wearing it, but Epicurean is more purple. 

Aside from the really gorgeous colour, the Sparitual brush still gives me headache. If you're a regular reader, you know my longer, wider nails don't go well with their brush, that can also be seen on my not so good application. I needed three coats, but I think this is a two coater for those with smaller nails. It dries semi-fast, it can trick you, so be careful, if you're not wearing TC with it. 

Because of colours like this I really hate that I don't go well with Sparitual brush. This colour is amazing, but I hate the brush so much, I would consider twice before buying it. Oh well. You can't have it all. At least the bottle looks really really nice. 

I just can't get sick of colours like that. Can you? Your thoughts on Sparitual brush?

Oh, before I forget. It's back-to-hardcore-studying time, so I'll probably be off for a couple of days/weeks, as before. You know I'm keen to break that rule, but just so I let you know. 

Thank you for reading & have a nice Sunday!

Blue Comparison: 5

Hello darlings! How are you doing? I'm hungrrry! And while I'm preparing a quick lunch, I'm going to post the blue comparison I did the other day. First, a few explanations:

1. As you can see, there was no Sun when I was doing the comparison. But the more I think about it the more I feel the comparison shows the colours as they are most often. Nobody really stands on the sun whole freaking day. So these photos are the most colour accurate!

2. I feel I must apologize to Depend 204. Remember how I told you it looks black in normal light? Well, it doesn't. The contrast in sunlight and light in our house with strong sun outside made me believe it is. Actually the dark blue shimmer is visible on the normal light too. Very very subtile, but it's there. Thus, making me want it even more. Too gorgeous!

3. Teycha suggested Depend 204 looked similar if not the same as China Glaze Little Drummer Boy and Nail Crazy asked me to do a comparison with Catrice It Blue My Mind. To these two main comparisons I added SpaRitual Surreal and Etos number 19. 

4. Picture heavy!!

5. Read the info under the pics.

 Group picture. I turned Depend bottle on the side because the writing hides the colour completely.

 The suggested/requested comparison.

 The most colour accurate picture! I left it really really large, huge, really, for you to see all the details. So click to enlarge and see the details!

 These two (upper&bottom) are taken on natural light outside.

 The four colours without the thumb, to get closer look, upper lightbox, bottom natural light.

The only dupes in the bunch. Etos and Catrice, natural light, lightbox, sorry for the blurrines, I have no idea why it came out blurry. :S 

Uf, lots of pics! Anyway. As you can see, neither Catrice or China Glaze come close to Depend 204, although Little Drummer Boy has the same type of shimmer, only it has more green in it, making it almost teal already. It Blue My Mind is much much lighter while Surreal remains black basically in all the lighting. 

These were all two coats, although Little Drummer Boy needs one only! Others are two coaters. All were taken without TC so this one also shows how glossy they are. I encourage you to click on the pictures, because I left them really large for the sake of better shown details. 

My favourite of the bunch? Depend 204. It's beautiful. China Glaze Little Drummer Boy a very close second, but I prefer the depht of Depend more. But all in all wonderful blues. The one I could skip on is Surreal, because it's too blackened for me. And this time it's for sure, I wore this baby the second time now!

I really hope you like the comparison, let me know, if I missed something, please! Teycha, what do you think, similar enough? And Nail Crazy, which one do you like more, Catrice or Depend? The rest of you, what do you think, which one is a keeper? Or do you need all of them? ;)

Thank you for reading!

My top 5 of 2010

Hey people. Me again. I'm getting this out in the last moments, I'm about to hit the showers and tomorrow I'm gonna have a hectic day, preparing for NY party, so i better write it down now. Jette Fromm tagged me with my top 5 of 2010, check her top 5 too! :)  

Here it is, for 5th to first place. I payed attention about this being all 2010 collections, although I discovered this year some of really the best polish ever, from previous collections.

5. I had to do a tie, I'm sorry. MAC Bad Fairy  from Venomous Villains is one baddass polish, and I can't choose between her and Orly's Meet Me Under The Mistletoe from Orly's Holiday Collection. So they share the fifth place. And this is by far the best I could do to shrink the number. ;)

4. O.P.I. Nevermore from Go Goth! Halloween Collection. I cheated, I know, it's actually Ink, but it did came out this year! :P

3. Violet Sparkle from Nubar Sparkle Collection for Spring 2010.

2. Verde from Nubar Venetian Glass Fall Collection 2010.

1. And, of course, you probably saw this one coming. From the Cosmic FX Orly's 2010 Fall Collection, Space Cadet!

This is it. It was hard for me to choose, even in this year my crushes were also Who The Shrek Are You?, Halley's Comet, Fire Sparkle and so on. And some of my biggest lemmings come from this year, but I just didn't have the opportunity or/and money to buy them. Like quite a few bottles from BB Couture's Ladybug collection and Infamous Lovers, where I want like entire set. :)
One thing did surprise me. No China Glaze in my top 5? What? I worship China Glaze, right now it's my number 1 brand, from all the gems I discovered lately! But I have to admit, their collection from this year weren't my cup of tea, with the exception of the Holiday collection, where I still have three polishes to try out, and I do suspect Jolly Holly would have made it to the list.

Saying all this, I must mention a few of my biggest crushes this year, that are found in earlier collections, but I discovered them in this one. In no particular order:

China Glaze: DV8, Watermelon Rind, Wagon Trail. (2009 OMG, 2009 Summer Days, 2008 Rodeo Diva)

Kinetics: Magnificent (2008 Pure Elegance)

O.P.I.: Yoga-ta Get This Blue, DS Glamour (2008 India, no collection that I know of)

SpaRitual: Mood (2008 Inspired)

Illamasqua: Rampage (I don't know when it was released, Scrangie first mentions it in may 2009)

Magnetic: Spectacular (Spect.) Stone (I don't think Magnetic gets out in collections)

Zoya: Rea, Suvi, Midori (both 2008 Downtown, 2009 Oh-La-La).

And bazillion more. I'm sure I forgot quite a few of them. But there you have it. A sneak peak into my nail polish favourites. :) 

And now I must tag, haha! I tag Lalica, Biba, Nail Crazy, AmyGrace, Alluring_mum, Taya, Sonidlo and everybody else on my blogroll, because I'm tooootally curious about your top five! Come on! :) And if you're not a blogger or don't have time for posting it, write it down in the comments. :)) 

All that is left for me to do now, as I'm already typing this away on the last day of 2010, is that I wish you  

a happy new year, may it be succesful, full of love, laughter and joy, may your expectations be reached and surpassed and let us all have the best nail polish year! 

Thank you for reading, have a great new year's party!

SpaRitual - Can You Dig It? second try and BB Couture Spring Collection sneak peak (tnx Lextard!)

Ok, darlings, I've tore the one extra long post into two. I didn't liked the length of it and I'm sure you wouldn't either. It's mostly pictures, yes, but still, I felt it was a bit much.

**

I wasn't happy with my Can You Dig It swatches, because the base colour disappeared completely, and I think that the ones with smaller nails (or better application moves) can pull it out, so here you have it. One coat + two coats swatch, with such a horrible application I feel like I owe SpaRitual a letter of apology for posting these.

And now a sneak peak of new BB Couture Collection called Wild West that Lextard posted on her blog and kindly allowed us to repost the pictures! She has really nice pictures and an awesome blog altogether so don't forget to check her out (although I'm sure you already did :))!

left to right top row: Pistol Packin' Mama, Laced Corset, Wrangler
left to right bottom row: Frontier Woman, Saloon Girl, Belle Starr

left to right top row: Outlaw, Posse, Sundance
left to right bottom row: Gunfighter, Rustler, Bandito

Being a big BB Couture fan these news made my day! The pictures are not really colour accurate, as Lextard warns us, buuut as we all know, BB Couture is into the details and I can't wait to see the swatches! I have to get Laced Corset, if not for anything else, for the name. And the green, doh! I'm still not sure about the men part of the collection, from the bottles only Outlaw and Posse look promising. But we'll see!


What do you think about Can You Dig It, looks better now? And about BB Couture new collection?

Have a nice Saturday evening & thank you for reading!

Nubar - Green/Silver Glitter (over SpaRitual Surreal)

Hello darlings! How are you? I'm super good, my headache finally ceased and I got two awesome Lily Lolo mineral eyeshadows today, so yeah, new make up people! :D Can't wait to try them on! You can all probably almost feel the buzz and tension over the blogosphere about China Glaze's Tronica. I was just thinking, while answering your lovely comments, that they really should forbid by law to make holographic polish only in limited edition. Really, nail polish world will go insane on February, I can already imagine it. Prices on ebay will be so high, I'll probably laugh my ass off again, just looking at them. Oh well ... maybe we can hope CG makes it more available. Should we try to bribe them or something? ;) Just kidding!

People, I'm thinking about stopping with Lativa project for a while and move on to the next one. I'll post some pictures of the few left (5 or something), and I'll hear you out about it, if you'll wish to see the rest (or one or two specific) I'll post them, of course, but otherwise I'm much more in the mood for sparkles lately, and there aren't any left in Lativa project polish box and there is TONS of sparkle in my next project box. ;) More about that a few posts later on, what do you say? Speaking of sparkles ... this one is amazing. Nubar's Green/Silver Glitter isn't only green or silver, it's TONS of colours, even holo particles, it has e-very-thing! Awesome! You have no idea how hard it was for me not to post 20 pictures of this baby. 

 Holo particles!! But not sparkly enough ...

 Uh, boring front picture that only proves how much can a camera kill the glitter. And yet, I see a few sparkles! Still not sparkly enough, nope ...

 It's holo, baby! And glitter and and and ...

 ... and boom! Glitter, sparkles, of all colours, wiiii!

Ok, how sparkly can this get anyway?

 Sparkle check, lightbox, you may need to enlarge this, just to see how crazy it is.

Another sparkle check blurry pic, this time in yellow artifical light, just because I love all the colours it pulled out. Again, maybe you should enlarge it.

Come to think of it - perhaps it's best if you enlarge all the pictures. The glitter details are amazing! And still, you know photo takes a bit of sparkle awesomness from the polish, I should film the sparkle play. It's a stunner, it is. Love it! Very playful polish, I'd say! 

Technical details: one coat over SpaRitual Surreal, with the exception of my ring finger, there are two coats, and you can see it's basically opaque with two coats. It dries extremely fast, is a bliss to work with, no trouble whatsoever and a perfect glitter polish. I love it. Still, I think Teal Glitter is even more awesome, but what's not to love on Green/Silver Glitter? 

How do you like it? :)

Thank you for reading!

 PS: China Glaze blog released the names of Tronica polish, here they are:

• Techno Teal – Turquoise Holographic
• Virtual Violet – Violet Holographic
• Electra Magnenta – Magenta Holographic
• Gamer Glam – Purple Holographic
• High Def -  Blue Holographic
• Hologram -  Silver Holographic
• Hyper Haute – Rasberry Holographic
• 3D Fantasy – Peachy Pink Holographic
• Digital Dawn – Dusty Rose Holographic
• Cyberspace – Taupe Holographic
• Mega Bite – Gold Holographic
• Laser Lime – Lime Green Holographic

Well, I'd kill for some swatches. From the names, I'd love to grabe Techno Teal, Virtual Violet, Electra Magenta, Gamer Glam, High Def, Hyper Haute, probably Cyberspace and perhaps even Laser Lime. Yeah, sure. In a limited edition collection. Great job, Ulmiel. 

SpaRitual - Surreal

Hey everyone! How was your beginning of the week? Today I have a quick post for you, my aunt is in the town, and, although I thought it will be strange, not seeing her for so long, I'm actually glad she's here, it brings back some quite lovely memories from my childhood. So I think it's going to be really nice. I'm doing lunch right now, that's why I have a few minutes to write this down, while everything is still in the oven and it's too soon to prepare the salad. ;) It's the last SpaRitual I have, and I thought I'll save it as the best for last, but beauty as it is, it didn't surpass Mood, at least not in my book. Let's have a look at Surreal.

 Flash photo, because I couldn't get the shimmer out of the nail.

 Both of these are taken on direct sunlight, and I think the pictures don't do justice to Surreal on direct sunlight,  it's very neat when you look at it in such a strong lighting.

Can you believe I managed to get two coats out of SpaRitual?? Yay me! So for the first time, two coater for me too, extremely well pigmented, although that comes with a price - this baby stains! A lot! As you can see on my ring finger, every mistake costs you greatly, because you simply can repare it without visible mark. Also when you remove it, it's a whooole new drama. I still have stains on some of my fingers (note: I changed a lot of polish on my nails today. Don't ask, I don't know, every once in a while I get into this phase where nothing suits me), and it's really annoying part of Surreal.

Now to the colour. Every time a bottle promises something, that I don't get visible on the nail, I feel cheated. Sadly, this one is the same. Bottle holds this amazing shimmer, that got me drooling the moment I saw it, and yet, it's hardly visible on the nail. And with hardly, I really mean hardly. With very strong light, when you move your fingers and look at your nails very closely. Otherwise not at all, it looks like a blackend blue creme. I struggled with swatches, just to show you at least a bit of this shimmer, taking tons of lightbox pictures, flash pictures, and since I got lucky with sun today, also sunlight pictures. And this is as best as you can get with this shimmer. The very best and noticable. I must add, this is a stunner on the sunlight. The blue comes out a bit stronger and it's just gorgeous. Usually it's on the verge of being too dark to be called blue. You catch a hint of blue even in not so strong light, but with soft light it will turn to black. Kinda like Jessica Divine Pine, with the con of blue being closer to black than green ergo you notice it even harder. And so my expectations for Surreal were a bit high and not met when I put it on my nails. That said, I still think it's a beautiful shade of blue, that's stunning in the right lighting. But personally I rather wear blues that are blue most of the time or all the time even, with Lativa project quite a few like these were shown, and I think those are the winners.

What do you think about Surreal, to blackened for you or ney?

Ok, now I really must run. Have a nice week, and thank you for reading!

SpaRitual - Mood

Hey people! How are you doing? I just finished watching second part of Marathon Man documentary, about Eddie Izzard running 43 marathons in 51 days. Yes, days! I'm trully impressed. Not only is he a marvelous comedian, he's also the most stubborn and inspiring person I've ever seen in my life. I recommend his stand up shows, if nothing else. Although his life path is simply admirable.

But now to the nail-polish. I think I'll repost Can You Dig It? in two coats. It may be uneven, but I really regret not showing you the base colour. When I'm finished with the rest of them of Lativa swap. But now: I may have discovered my first true crush with SpaRitual. Wow! Mood is an awesome silverish-dark grey shade with tiny tiny sparkles that I couldn't capture with my camera, but are visible to naked eye. It reminds me slightly (with ignoring the colour difference, of course) of type of shimmer that Wagon Trail has. Let's look at the picures.

It's gorgeous! I absolutely adore it. The tiny shimmer is really stunning, I can't stop looking at my nails, moving my fingers. I wish I could capture it on photos. These two are the best I could do, and yes, they are abnormally big and very blurry, sorry about that, but I really want you to at least get a glance of it.

You'll probably need to enlarge these two to se what I'm talking about. Mood has this really micro, fine shimmer, the main colours are green, pink and silver and it gives the metallic grey colour unbelievable variability and the WOW! effect I'm looking in a polish. A real stunner. I didn't think any silver polish would beat OPI Brand New Skates, but I think it just found it's match.

Otherwise this is three coats, as usual, it dried really fast, and was actually quite easy to manage. I'm getting used to SpaRitual. And Mood is worth it. I'm loving it on my nails. :)

What do you think about Mood? :)

Thank you for reading!

SpaRitual - Can You Dig It?

Heeello everybody! I see some major love for CG crackles, I feel you, ladies, I can hardly wait for them myself. :) It looks like a great start of 2011 for CG. :) But until then - I have only 8 Latvia polish bottles to show you! Let's see another SpaRitual, and ladies, this one I like! It's a 100% autum beauty. 

Can You Dig It? is a beautful dark purple based colour with copper shimmer that is so dense, you almost get frosty finish. If you enlarge the pictures, you'll see the base colour more clearly, sadly 3 coats really hide it well, with two it's much more obvious, but as you know, for me SpaRitual is a total 3 coater. Still, on the nail purple is visible, especially on the edges and with the shimmer combinaition it makes a killer shade for Fall. This screams to me forest colours of Fall. I really like it. Yep, the second SpaRitual I really like in the stash, yay! Still, I wish they'd apply more nicely, I hate how hard it is to even the layers. Do you have the same problems, or do you manage to get two coats out of SpaRitual? I dunno, man, if I only had problems with one, i'd say I had a bad day, but now it's the sixth bottle and still same crap. I guess I'm just not for their brush or something. 

What do you think about Can You Dig It? Like it, or would you call "Fall" colour some different shade?

Thank you for reading & have a nice evening!