Winter Stamping

...made in the middle of the previous summer. Very consequent of me, I know, I know :) I still like how it turned out, because I used one of my ever-favourite stamping patterns. 

But firstly a couple of words about the base colour. I have to utter it: this is one of the worst polishes in my stash - 17 Toasted Almond. It just managed to be baaad in everything: texture, application, drying time *crazy face* Well, I am not to blame - I got it as an extra in some swap.

As you see, it's a beige shimmer shade with an ugly frosty finish. I don't think it's possible to apply it without the strikes, although they are not so obvious in real life. It takes 2 to 3 coats to cover the VNL, and it doesn't dry any quickly. Sad story - to be brief. Don't buy it. Just don't. Ever. 

What do we do with uglyish polishes? Right, we just put some layering top or stamp over them. I did the latter, and surprisingly I was happy with the result! The plate I used was BM-314, and the stamping polish was Konad Black.

Not so bad in the end, right? ;)

Lilac Seduction

Lilac time! And not just a simple lilac, this tiny pretty thing called Deborah Milano Prêt À Porter Lilac Seduction made its way together with me from its motherland, Italy! : ) Since there were so many beautiful polishes in Italy to bring home, I was choosing only some kind of special ones, and I do think this one can be called so too. 

Lilac Seduction is a lilac (obviously) polish, slightly muted, with pink microshimmer. Some of you will say it has a frosty finish, and I will not disagree. It's just a matter of the subjective crossing line between a shimmer and a frosty polish... everyone defines this border by himself.

The tiny bottle.. I just love them. Most probably I will never finish it up anyways :P 

Oh, in case you missed out the little sisters of this polish, Startdust and Love At First Sight - just click the names to see them :)

Close-ups: yes, you might see the streaks, but it's obvious that they are not visible in real life. Unless you stick your nails right under someone's nose, I mean.. :)

Oh, I shouldn't forget to mention the application: you seriously can apply Lilac Seduction with your eyes closed. From the first look I expected this polish to be on a sheer side, but it flawlessly covers the VNL in 2 coats. What I also liked is the way how the thin coats layer one over other - smoothly and without any cuticle "build-ups".

Still not sure if I would call this polish a duochrome, but it definitely has such features, shifting from lilac to pink and back.

And I cannot but share how much I missed nail stamping!! Both the process and its results, which I'm happily posting now:

The stamping job was done with the help of Cheeky Plates - CH44 and Wet'n'Wild Buffy The Violet Slayer as a stamping polish.

And lastly, this was actually my manicure to wear the Nevskiye Berega Beauty Expo - I just wanted to create something catchy but yet not kitschy :) I should have gone for kitschy though, I would be much closer to the expo thematics :)

Blue Matte Glitter

Sometimes I think I don't play with my matte top coat often enough.. So I decided to change that and made a simple glitter matte manicure, the one you see below:

But I wanted to show also how I reached this look. First, I started out with 2 coats of OPTIMA polish (nameless, numberless), a medium-blue frosty shade. Frosty! What was I thinking when buying it?! Obviously, "oh, a new polish brand detected! Let's check it out!". This checking out turned out to be an epic fail buy : {

Ewh, just look at that streaky finish. It neither works ok with stamping, so with a cold heart I just sold it on ebay a couple of days ago. Probably because I wanted to get rid of this yucky finish so desperately, I covered it with NYC Lights, Camera, Glitter!. This magic baby can always make things prettier. It did, in a way, in this case too:

But even that was not enough. So I topped all that with Essie Matte About You, and only after that I was totally satisfied : )

Do you have any bias against frosty finish? Or it is what you like? :)