Rosa Fenicottero

Last week I experienced something which I would describe as KIKOphoria - I was wearing 4 KIKO shades in a row. Out of four that I own. No idea what I would do if I had 20 KIKO polishes, but since I started the topic, I decided to show you one more colour - Kiko #288.

Kiko Rosa Fenicottero (beautiful name, no?) is a fuchsia creme with a glossy finish. Equally I would describe the colour as "Barbie pink", but apparently the perception of Barbie pink varies from person to person. Easy application on 2 coats (hooray to KIKO cremes), no top coat needed. 

The colour is nice, but not so easy to catch on the photos. It strongly depends on the light and its type: the polish by itself has a strong blue (i.e. cold) undertone, but it looks a bit warmer under the sun and under the lamps indoors.

Thinking what to do with this nice base for nail art I firstly wanted to stamp over it, but I realised I did it last time - you can check my old swatches by the way :) So this time I just layered a fun glitter on top - Dance Legend Flossy #146.

Those Flossy tops are fun to play with! Here you can see #144 over red, grey and beige, just for example. Recently Dance Legend has launched the new Rio tops - can't wait to get them! 

 

Oh, and the next post will be also about KIKO. Hehe. 

Easter Eggs

Easter holidays have passed already, but I'll still publish an Easter style post - to recall good memories, for example. And to match the thematics of the nail polish collection called "Easter Eggs" by El Corazón, two representatives of which I am showing today. Easter Eggs collection includes pastel shades with larger-sized black hexagonal glitter and smaller black glitter particles. Actually, El Corazón created 6 "easter eggs", and below you will see my 2 picks.

First one to show, a pretty muted blue shade #423/98 - the texture is rather jelly-like, which makes the polish easier to apply - but the colour is fully opaque in 2 coats. As I said, it has black glitter of 2 sizes, smaller and larger. Very interesting polish I'd say,many of my friends and colleagues were like "oh, what do you have there on your nails?? Show me!!" :)

The second "Easter egg", #423/100, is a bright fuchsia with the same hexagonal and also smaller size black glitter. The formula is as great as in the first polish, 2 easy fast drying coats. 

This polish reminds me of a watermelon a bit, and I adore watermelons :) Also, the finish is very glossy, you don't really need a top coat, but I applied one to wear it longer - top coat creates a nice glassy effect.

And a photo of how I wore it:

I was wearing both of the polishes for 4-5 days each, and that's saying a lot for a polish addict!! :) Probably that's why I didn't manage to write this post before Easter.. :)

More El Corazón polishes you can see on their web-site and blog. Remember: El Corazón ships worldwide, so if you want to get some of their lovely bottles, just write an e-mail listing your order. Very customer friendly :)

*The nail polishes were kindly provided by El Corazón company for my consideration. In this post I expressed my honest and unbiased opinion about the products.

Strawberry...?

Since in the last post I mentioned Avon polish, I realised I still have swatches of this brand to show. So why not to break the gloominess of these days with a blazing shade of Avon Strawberry? :) 

As it was the case with Barielle Grape Escape, the colour of Avon Strawberry doesn't have to do much with the real fruit colour. Nevertheless, it's a pretty magenta creme, very glossy and quite pleasant in application. Actually, it's a 1-coater, but most probably you see 2 coats on the picture - I often do so to prolong the polish wear.

What I liked about the shade is that it's bright enough to attract attention, yet neither neon nor vulgar. Surely I'll give it a try during the sunny summer days :)

Later I stamped my nails with BM-315 and got a somewhat mediocre result, but okay, I promised myself to post in this blog everything which is not a total epic fail. And yes - one of the rarest times when I was shooting the pictures under the indoor light. Winter doesn't provide us with too much day time to swatch, unfortunately.

Viva Pink

How about some bright spot in the middle of calm and muted winter colours? I realised that sometimes I need a 'restart' - either by wearing something vivid or by wearing nudes. This time I picked Avon Viva Pink - as vivid as I could wish : ) 

Viva Pink is a bright pink/magenta creme, not a neon though, but quite in-your-face. Exactly this colour I imagine when I hear 'barbie pink', but as it turned out, we all have different perception of which pink is a barbie one : ) The formula is quite fine, 2 coats will do. What I liked is the amazing gloss - I didn't use any top coats on the photos. The brush in this case was my friend and wanted to cooperate : )

Somehow I didn't take a lot of pics because of the poor light.. but I hope these 2 are enough to create an impression. Viva Pink is indeed a very nice polish, I totally recommend it.  

Berry Jelly & Sparkles

The polish I'm showing today is one of my favourites in the whole stash. Although I already posted the swatches of it, I think it fully deserves to be reswatched and also shown on shorter nails. MNY #265 is a berry jelly packed with holographic shimmer, which looks like subtle sparks on nails although the particles seem to be rougher in the bottle. 

The shade is so squishy, so juicy...mm love it! And for a jelly, the formula is super nice - 2 coats and that's it. Here are some pics under the sun:

And a close-up. I'm not a fan of VNL, but although you can see it on the pics, it's not so visible in reality, so no problems with that.

And now the saddest part: this beauty is obviously discontinued : ( It's just MNY, the whole brand, disappeared from German drug stores for unknown (to me) reason. I'm already upset in advance when I think that this bottle may end someday : ( On the other hand, I saw something similar within new Maybelline Color Show lines, but I'm afraid it's not the same. 

Uf, I definitely need more jellies in my life. Houston, we need a jelly! : )

P.S. If you want to see this polish on my looooong nails, klick here : )

UPD: One of the readers, Maria (thank you!), just told me that Maybelline relaunched this colour in their new ColorShow line, just like I thought. In Germany, the colour is called Wine Shimmer (#265!). Maria wrote that in Russia this shade is called Colorama #54 *facepalm*! BUT all three polishes are the same, check Maria's swatches to see :)

Hellenic Duo

Soo I'm back from holidays again, this time from Greece :) Amazing country with amazing landscape, delicious food if not swimming in olive oil and nice maybe a bit too loud people.. I wish could go there again and again!

Knowing that I'll have no time for stamping, sponging, dotting and even proper manicure routine, I decided to go into duo colour manis, because I still wanted something more special than just plain polish. So I did: version 1: yellow and lilac Essence polishes flom Blossoms LE. 

And version 2: pink and fuchsia baby Alessandros, here you can see the bottles and the pink one alone.

Excuse me the quality of manis and photos: my personal photographer has a lot of space to improve his art skills :)
What can I say? I loved doing duo manicures! Silly me not to try it earlier :)

What about you? Do you like duos?

Pink Flamenco

How about something bright and juicy for the summer? : )

The weather is so summery now here in Germany, and I'm mostly wearing pastel light shades but with some "bright exceptions". OPI Pink Flamenco is a beautiful bright spot of my nail polish stash, it comes from OPI España Collection 2009, which is one of my favourite by OPI ever. So, on to the vivid and vibrant sumer nails pictures : )

OPI Pink Flamenco is a shiny fuchsia/pink creme, bright but still not neon (which is good, because I'm not a big fan of neons..). The application was great, I will not even rant about the stupid OPI brush today : ) The only little "fail" of this polish is that it chips superfast!! Okay, to be honest it does not disturb me much because I change the colour often, but when I once did a pedicure with Pink Flamenco and it chipped on. the. following. day!!! I freaked out!!! Usually my pedicures last up to 2 weeks...

Otherwise, the colour is beautiful, I just love it. Others do too, lol, because such a screamy shade does attract a lot of attention. Now I'm thinking of buying a maching swim suit, because I'd love to wear such shade on the sea somewhere.. 

How about you? Are you in the mood for summer brights already? : )