Protecting nail polish

I have a nail polish table in my room. Basically a place where I can polish my nails, and put all the untried polish and other nail polish related stuff. Before I had it all over the house and it just wasn't working for me. The problem I'm having since the increase of number of my little beauties is that no matter where in my room I put the bottles, the sun will always get to them one time of the day, that's why I need some sort of box or a drawer to finally put them in and protect them.

Today I got home, walked in my room and saw how my mom protected the bottles from the sunlight and I was so amused I had to take a picture of it.

It's a good feeling though, knowing at least one person more takes care of them when I'm not at home. ;) 

Guest post: "How To Grow Healthy Nails"

Hello darlings. Today I have for you something different, for the first time on Did someone say nail polish? a guest post is published. A while ago I was contacted by super nice Aleya, asking me if I'd be interested in publishing a blog post in the blogger outreach program their Manhattan beauty school-Hair Design Institute is having (I recommend visiting the sites, I loooove some of the pictures and the work they've done on them!).  As I love to interact with you lovely people, I of course loved the idea, especially when we agreed to do a nail care related post. Because I strongly believe that just like a healthy skin is base for a good make up (no matter what high end brand you're using), healthy nails are base for a good manicure. 

The idea behind this is that you now ask questions about anything nail related, since they're in the profession of beauty, they can give also give you a more professional answer about it. So here's the post Aleya prepared for you guys and then we chat some more.

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zonelifestyle.com

How To Grow Healthy Nails

One thing that most women have in common is that they like to have beautiful healthy nails. Unfortunately, life sometimes gets in the way and our nails become or appear to be unhealthy and inevitably break. Here are easy to follow tips on growing healthy nails:

Wear Gloves

Everyone skips putting on gloves from time to time when doing dishes. However, the chemicals in your washing detergent can be very harmful to your nails as well as your skin so you should make a conscious effort to always protect your nails by wearing gloves.

Don’t Bite Your Nails

Whatever your reason is for biting them, just stop. 

Your Nails Are Not Tools

Want to open a soda can? Maybe peel a price tag off something? Be sure to use a pen, knife or scissor instead of your nails. When you use your nail as a tool, you’re putting pressure on it and bending it backwards. You’re nail will have no option but to eventually break.

Don’t Cut Your Cuticles

Your cuticles are very important! They keep bacteria out of your nail matrix so that they remain healthy. If you want your nails to look clean, simply push them back.

Moisturize

Just like your skin needs care, so do your nails. Apply moisturizer to your hands and use it to massage your nails and cuticles. This will get the blood flow going and will help you grow longer, healthier nails.

Polish Properly

When applying nail polish, first use a base coat, then apply two thin coats of nail polish and finally apply the top coat. Thin coats of polish will help make your nail polish last longer.

Take Your Vitamins

This is especially important if you don’t follow a healthy diet. You can even find over the counter vitamins that help to promote the growth of nails.

For the most part, your nails should be doing most of the work.

Aleya Bamdad writes the beauty blog for a cosmetology school that has branches in New York and Florida.

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If you have any questions you'd like to ask, let me know in the comments! I think the tips are a nice general sum up of basically all the secrets you need to follow in order to keep your nails healthy (I would only add that two thin coats of polish are not always enough). So if you have anything to add or ask more specifically, don't hesitate to write a comment, e-mail is of course also at your service  (did.someone.say.nailpolish (at) gmail dot com).

Thank you for reading!

Taking care of my 10 little divas

Hello everybody! How are you doing? It's a beautiful day, darlings! Classes were interesting, I had a lovely coffee before them with lovely people, sun is shining as I speak, I went everywhere on foot just to enjoy the pretty, warmer weather. And I'm really excited about my GA ending tomorrow at midnight! It's been an interesting journey. :) BTW, people, please use the form! I don't acctept comment entries, I've warned about that and I still got new one today. Will add the warning, again, to the GA entry. But anyway! This post is long overdue. Taya asked me a month ago if I can show you how I'm taking care of my nails, and now I'm finally typing this away. So sorry it took that long, Taya, hope you don't mind! 

It's also the last one I owe you for now. Again, if you have any wishes for comparisons, specific colours or anything nail (polish) related you'd like me to write about, let me know!

To the topic. It's going to be a longer entry, but I'll try to explain everything in it, I'll also share my nail care WL with you (yes I have that one too). There are some steel facts about my nails you need to know. 1. They are divas.  2. There are strict rules for taking care of them, and I can't change that too much or they'll start to layer and break. I actually had to refuse a review of a really awesome gadget because I was worried about chaning file for filing down my nails. The last time I did it, I had to cut down my nails completely, layered as they were. 3. I have a slight cuticle/hand skin OCD, I cannot have them dry. Serisouly, I get nervous, I can't think about anything if I feel like my hands are made of paper bag because of the dry skin. Thus, I admit, I may get a bit extreme about hand cream and cuticle care.

I'll show you the things I pay attention to throughout the year, but especially in cold winter times. I have no idea what the order of things should be, but let's start with my best secret for perfect cuticle and nails.

• Hand Creme And Cuticle Butter

Lord Of The Rings, how much I adore Badger Cuticle Care!!! This baby is my number one product for nails and I worship it for what it has done to my nails. Not to mention the cutest packaging ever! Look how the little badger is showing its claws. Together everybody: awww! Seriously people, this baby does everything it's promising to do for the nails. Cuticles are fed, not dry, they get dry slower, the nails are growing almost too fast, they are super strong (seriously, they don't layer or break, unless you really hit the wall with them. What I usually do when I break a nail), and just ... you know, healthy, happy, spoiled nails and cuticles. 

I use it just about every day, in average 6 days a week, usually when I go to sleep. The amount you use is really small, since it's really butter-like and you massage it into your fingertips. That's it. I purchased also cotton gloves not to wipe it off my nails, but more about that later on. Smells of lemon, it's also yellow. Badger also has USDA organic certificate, so major plus, people! I adore Badger, really, I'd love to try the body butters and other stuff as well, but usually never manage to keep money on me for that long to buy it. I buy my Badger goodness in BB Natura shop, they have a stand in Supernova in Ljubljana, it costs 7€. Since I am around the middle of the contents with every day usage after whole 4 months (!!) I'd say it's a fair price. You get magic with it, people!!

Second thing I'm always - and I mean always - having with me is hand creme. The one on the picture is actually my 4th or 5th favourite. The best cremes for me are Balea Urea Handcreme (urea on second place of ingredients!), Balea Olive Oil Handcreme and also Afrodita Aroma. These are also very cheap. I tried a wide range of hand cremes, very expensive and very cheap, and I'll tell you, the price does not always bring quality. Balea is laughably cheap and I adore it. Fact also is I use one 100 ml hand creme per month, so I couldn't really afford extra expensive ones. My advice is: use hand creme as often as you can. For me it has become essential like a tooth brush. I use it almost every time I wash my hands, which is quite often. Make a habit out of it. 

The SOS product for cuticles, when I'm at my BF's and I don't carry around my Badger, is the best lip balm I've ever tried. Ziaja Orange Butter Lip Balm. I love Ziaja's products, they have the best body scrub, shower gels and so on, but this is the winner in my opinion. Not only for lips, but also for your cuticles. Awesome! And I hate it sooo much I can't find it anywhere in Slovenia anymore. :( 

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WL: I'm perfectly happy with Badger Cuticle Care, I'd be happy to use it for the rest of my life. However, I'm always happy to try new things (you can be sure I'll have Badger lying around too, JIC) and frankly, I'd like to try LUSH Lemony Flutter just because people say it's so damn good and I want to see if it will beat Badger.

As for hand creme, again, I'd love to try something made by Badger, also the LUSH one, Lalica told us it's really good. 

• Nail polish remover

I had the worst experiences with nail polish removers possible. One dried out my nails so badly, I had to start taking biotin pills for them to recover. It was horrible. I know lots of you are perfectly fine with low price, Essence/Ebelin/etc. removers but they cause chaos for me. Thus I stopped even trying and am strictly using Afrodita Oliva and Aroma nail polish removers. Both of them on the picture are perfect! You can se the ingredients too, they're pretty decent, I'd say. And they don't dry up my nails, which is essential. As I empty around one bottle (maybe more) per month, with 2.20-2.70€ per bottle they aren't really the cheapest out there, but they are excellent. If you're having major problems with your nails, perhaps you should try and change your nail polish remover. People think it doesn't do damage, trust me, it does!

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WL: Zoya nail polish remover. Because I've heard it's perfect.

• Shaping the divas

Crystal file was a complete revelation for me. Before that my nails layered as i filed them down, so the dust actually went between the layers of the nails. It was horrible, people! Remember the mentioned refused review? That's the reason why. I can only file my nails with crystal file if I want to avoid layering. Essie file is really great, I love it! On the picture also the wooden stick for cuticles, although I rarely need it (please don't push your cuticles off the nail with the iron one, it hurts me and I'm only writing about it. It's way to agressive) and a buffer cube. Now, people, I don't buff unless I really need too, I don't want to weaken my nails. I have it just in case if I need to buff down really bad stain or some kind of irregularity on the nails. Otherwise I'm against buffing, I fear I'd ruin my nails with it. 

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WL: Little travelling version of the Essie file, to have with me all the time.

• Gloves 

I use three pairs of gloves. The white cotton one are for night treatment with cuticle care balm. If you want to use cuticle oils regularly, I really recommend them, because then you won't have the excuse for not using it like: i don't want to get oil all over my keyboard, books, dress, sheets, etc. They also make sure the oil stays on the nail and cuticles not just about everywhere else. With cotton gloves you can type, read, just about everything while you're pampering your nails. :)

The black one are obviously for the cold outside. I see lots of people going out without gloves, for me that's a killer of nice cuticles. If I don't have gloves my cuticles dry up completely, it's awful. Especially if I have to carry something and don't have my hands in my pockets. Obviously these are important for winter and it's cold, I don't walk around with gloves in Summer. :)

The latex one are for cleaning house. No matter what it says on your dish cleaner, people, it's aggressive and you should be wearing gloves while doing the dishes. We have a dish washer, so most of the time I don't need gloves (I don't put them on to put the dishes into the washer), but when I'm cleaning like bathroom or using any kind of really aggressive cleaners, I use the gloves. I have latex one, because those we had at home, otherwise you have much better ones for cleaning out there.

•  Base Coat??

This is where my care of my nails fails. Good base coat. I thought before I don't need one, but the more I use nail polish, the more I see I need one for certain colours. Because my nails are really badly stained. Not that it's a problem most of the time, but I'd still like to try and invest into a good base coat, especially after I realized it can sometimes mess up the colour accuracy with swatching (remember depend and night sparkle fiasco?). The only one I've got is this Essie Fill the gap! mini bottle. :/ 

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WL: I don't know. You tell me! I have my eyes on Zoya base coat. Dunno why, but I like Zoya, and I'm guessing it must be good. :) 

I think that's just about it. My secrets revealed! ;) Well, not much of secrets, anyway, I'm sure most of you know and do all of this already. :) 

Tell me your opinions on my treatment, please. And if you know a good base coat, I'd be glad to hear your suggestions and tips!

Thank you for reading! :*

Bottle sizes USA vs. EU brands

Hey people. How are you doing? Since I can't really get Mr. Sandman over here to get me some sweet dreams, I'll write my thoughts that I mentioned for our next chat. When I was typing away the Cosmic Girl entry, I started thinking about bottles sizes that we have in Europe and those of  USA brands.

 Source: zingerbug.com

Why? Because I have this feeling that most of USA brands make strictly 10-15 ml bottles and most of EU brands make bottles 4-10 ml, the only exception I can think of right now is Illamasqua, but that's a high end brand. For those who don't appreciate me talking about mililiters, here's a scale to compare: 0.5 fl.OZ. is 15 ml.:) 

But think of ArtDeco (6 ml), Isadora (6ml), Alessandro (10 ml or 5 ml) also Essence (8 ml), ok, S-he being a slight exception with 11 ml, Miss Sporty with 7 ml, Barry M with 10 ml, Vollare with 5 ml  ... and so on and so forth. USA brands: O.P.I. 15 ml, China Glaze 15 ml, BB Couture 15 ml, Orly 15 ml (even 18 ml!), Wet'n'Wild 13,5 ml, Sally Hansen 14.7 ml, Diamond Cosmetics 12.6 ml ...

  

source: indiamart.com

Obviously I'm not saying it's a rule. I'm sure I'm missing some huge EU bottles of polish and some tiny of USA. But you can see the pattern, and that's just brands from the top of my head. The difference in prices is vice versa, I'm afraid. Euro being stronger now makes the difference even worse. It's not really fair to compare China Glaze prices, perhaps, because we do have to pay duty and so on. But just to let you know, in Slovenia: 9 € + shipping. 1 $ = 0.75 € (in the first transformer Google found, as I'm typing this, so it might changed when you're reading this ;)).

Let's look at "our" brands. Lumene for 4.5ml around 4 €, ArtDeco for 6 ml from 8 to 9 €, Essence 1.50,€ Miss Sporty 1.75 - 2.15€. ArtDeco perhaps being in the range of OPI or Nubar, I feel, and Essence/Miss Sporty being in the range of USA's Wet'n'Wild and similar department store brands.

I don't know about you, but I'm surprised about bottle size difference and the price difference. OK, I get that most american brands are expensiver here, it's kinda logical, isn't it? But why EU brands, why such difference? Is it the smaller market? I bet it is. But it can't be only that, can it?

Anyway ... just my thoughts on that. Fact is, nail polish junkies can easily go with 7 ml bottles, in average,  since we usually don't tend to empty one bottle of polsih. ;) But I personally think the prices should be more equal to the sizes. If it's a smaller bottle make it a lower price.

I'm curious about more info if you have it and about your opinions. I tend not to bitch too much about our prices, because you can get a gorgeous polish for a decent price here too ... here are just the fact and I'm curious about your opinion on it. :)

Thanks for reading & chatting!

Opening bottles in stores?

 My lame attempt to do a topic related picture, be gentle. xD

Hey guys! I have another nail polish related theme for our chat that got me thinking the other day, when buying things for little somethin somethin to give to you (it's a slow proces, because I'm on a student budget, so I'm buying it piece by piece and thus buying it eeeearly :)): should I or should I not open the bottle to see if it has been opened before. Since I'm not buying it for myself, I shouldn't open it, right, but to give away a nasty neck, claiming it hasn't been opened, because someone else opened in the store, argh, it makes me nervous just thinking about it.

Because, you know, I could yell at this lady next to me opening every piece of make up she put her hands on, smelling the mascaras, wiping the brush and so on and i knew  if she got her hands on those nail polish bottles, they have necks dirty as if I put them through 15 manicures already. Once we went shopping and a friend of mine opened a bottle and wiped the brush on the neck so a drop of polish was on the outer side of the neck. Poor thing got such a nasty look by me, telling him off, I hope he wasn't offended ... he didn't mean anything bad by it, he just thought that's the only way to see the colour of the polish. 

And now I'm asking you - do you open the bottles to see the polish inside, or do you look only at the bottles? For me, it's swatches first (if they exist), then buying the polish without opening it or just buying if i like it in the bottle. It's not like it's any different on the brush as it is in the bottle, it can still look like crap on the nails - or really surprise you with the second coat. :) The only thing I do, and I don't feel bad about it is, that I open it carefully (!!), not touching the neck with the brush, to see if anyone wiped the brush already. Because I'd *freak out* if I got (by chance a very expensive one) polish home, open it and saw that the handle is practicaly glued to the neck because it has been opened so many times. I mean, yeah, maybe it's a bit of overreacting, since nail-polish is someting that lasts for ages, but hey, if I buy it, I want it clean and not used before, unless I know it has been used (like for swatching or something). I don't mind getting used nail-polish, because it's not really a tooth-brush, is it, but if I know that before I buy/get it. You know what I mean? I'm all for swaping and exchanging nail-polish, it's a very changable thing, but I don't really like buying used bottles in a store without anyone letting me know they've been used.

So yeah, basically, I'm just wondering, do you have a habit of opening the bottles in the stores or not? :) And would you mind getting a nail-polish in a swap on a giveaway if it has been used before, maybe only for a nail or two or a manicure or two? Of course, if you knew that before getting it. :) I don't think anyone would be particularly happy if they just got opened bottles, without anyone saying a thing.

I'm posting this as the last post of the week, I really doubt I'll have the time to post anything tomorrow, I'm abroad 'till Sunday. Me and 3 of my friends will have a lil' party weekend to celebrate a project that we  successfully carried out during the summer (yeah, it's been months, we just didn't find the time) and so you'll get a bit of rest from me. ;)

To let you know about my blog plans - I have a couple comparisons planned, Zoya vs. Orly (judging by the bottles, I have a 100% dupe of Out Of This World in Zoya's Julianne), SpaRitual vs. Orly (Optical Illusion - It's Not Rocket Science), I need to find out if I need to buy Halley's Comet due to Essence's brush in Choose me! bottle, and I fear Choose me! is more blue than Halley's Comet, so I'll have to compare them, and finally Orly vs. China Glaze (Glam -Ruby Pumps). Other than that I'm enjoying trying out my Project Latvia polishes, by poll I'll get DS tapestery and Nubar Indigo Illusion next week, yay! After the poll polishes, I still have to decide, whether I'd try the rest of SpaRitual or go through my untired nail-polish, it's around 15 bottles or more by now and I feel bad every time I look at that pile.
If you have any special wishes let me know. :)

Oh, my manicure for the weekend, just a quick shot I did today. The gorgeous Wagon Trail, one of my favourites in my collection.

And chat away! :) Thanks for reading, have a nice weekend!!

Taking care of nail-polish

Hey everyone! Thanks for awesome feedback on 42, it made my day! :)) Today we actually had a little bit of sun, at one moment it was raining while the sun was out, it was really nice, but otherwise a lazy day (although it shouldn't be), so I decided to take care of the bottles a bit and now I'm in a chatty mood, and encouraged from the *awesome* feedback on my first chatting post few days ago, I'm asking you today: how do you take care for your nail-polish? :)

I admit, I have a slight OCD about it, every now and then I take all the bottles out, shake them, roll them, clean the necks and so on. What I find interesting is, that a lot of people are saying how important it is to clean the necks of the bottles, and yet, I know only a few persons that actually clean the necks. I'm not saying I do it regularly, but like every month or so I take out all the bottles I used in past weeks and clean them all. I know a lot of people probably remember that after they did their manicure - I know I do - and I've found the perfect solution for that: rubber gloves. It's the only way that actually allows me to clean the necks regularly, because I don't think about doing that when I remove the nail-polish off my nails, and basically, the only time that I wouldn't ruin my manicure with cleaning the bottles is in that minute, that I'm preparing for another colour. 

So, I'm telling you, rubber gloves, a pile of cotton pads, an n-p remover bottle and 10 minutes of your time for around 11 bottles (that I cleaned today). What I noticed with cleaning the necks - it gets faster after a while, you get used to it and, this is important, you have to learn to clean it so that the remover doesn't get into the nail-polish. It's the easiest way to soak a pad in remover, put it on the neck and rub it really hard, but that's how you get the remover into the polish, and that's really not a good thing, so I'm avoiding this now by "hugging" the bottle with the pad and moving it around it, not on top of it. I know, I made a science out of it, but knowing, that I'm not cleaning just my polish, and even with mine, I want it to last, I don't want to ruin a bottle with trying to do something good. :) 

Just for fun, I took a few shots today, because I'm so used to have my camera with me when I'm doing something nail related.

This is Guissed up green, and you can tell it's been used a lot! :D I did a very fast shot while cleaning, because I don't want to leave bottles opened for too long. I like after the cleaning, how better the handle closes up the bottle and it's much easier to open it then.

So, the other, usual stuff is shaking the bottle every once in a while (although, I'll admit it, I don't do it so often as I should and then sometimes I grab a bottle that has visible pigment and start to shake it like crazy), keeping them in shade or boxes, on a steady temperature - in my room and the office/guest room I have a pretty steady temperature throughout the year and no direct sunlight on the bottles, but I don't know what I'll do when I'll run out of space, which will happen ... very soon. o.o

Anyway, yeah, I think that's just about it. Luckily nail-polish doesn't take much to be just fine. :) So tell me, how do you take care of nail-polish? Do you bother with the necks or is that not important to you?

Thanks for reading!