Cats of Greece

Not nail-related post, but I do observe an evident bond between nails and cats.. Many nail bloggers have a cat, those who don't - still like them, just like me :) So today I'm posting a random selection of kitty pics that I shot during my trip to Greece.

[Athens]

                                                                                         [Athens]

                                   not really a cat                                                             its friend, a cat

[right next to Acropolis, Athens]

colour match [Folegandros] 

                                                                               local diva [Folegandros] 

   [Aegina]

not a cat, but still a cutie  [Aegina]

he was having dinner with us! [Santorini]

and this baby won my heart! [Pireaus, Athens]

What's your favourite? :)

Holiday Nails

Back. Depressed. After a month in +35 got into +15. People in swimwear changed to people in jackets and coats. Just to cheer up, I'm posting some random pics of my summer manicures. Disregard the quality of application and photos, it was holidays after all :)

Bright turquoise, almost the colour of Cycladic islands waters - Depend #227:

Golden foil China Glaze Midnight Kiss.. I wanted to wear golden nails so much this summer!

Pupa #715, my ever favourite blue:

And two pedicures, although I don't usually post feet pics. Someone was waiting for me in Santorini so much, that he even wrote my initials on the ground :) :)

And this gateway plate... I just liked it :)

One observation: I guess now I know why there are so few nail bloggers from Greece: it's soo hard to paint the nails there in summer. My polishes were freaking out, being goopy, leaving streaks, so did the top and the base coat!! Bubbles everywhere, every time.. 

And finally, this is the place that totally won my heart... Santorini:

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?

Baaack!

Bonjour les filles! Comment allez-vous? :) Me voici de retour du Maroc!

Oh my, I think out of nothing I acquired A1 level in French while struggling to communicate with the local population :) So yup, I'm back, I had a great time, and I hope you're enjoying your summer days too! :)

Time to tell what I was wearing in Morocco, right? My holidays were not so long, plus very active, so I spent minimum time on doing my nails. The only thing I wanted was the polishes to combine with my swimming suits :) So I took off wearing Eyeko Vintage, a polish I didn't manage to swatch, and packed 2 more bottles with me: Alessandro Pale Blue Lagoon and Andreia #93. 

First to show is baby Alessandro - I already posted about it here - but this baby blue creme is so pretty, that I can't help writing about it again. And again a warning: don't be decieved by it's prettiness, because the formula is far from being a good one. You'll need 3 coats, because the brush tends to leave bald spots. Also, the polish tends to become goopy in the bottle after the second use. But for objectivity reasons: it does stay long on the nails without chipping.

The next one is Andreia #93. For a long time I have been craving a golden glitter polish, but a swap with Akuma Kanji solved this problem very easily :) I'm still thinking of getting Butter London West End Wonderland one day when I have money. 

The "golden look" required some effort: I needed 3 to 4 coats on different nails. Was totally worth it though! By the way these swatches are unique: they were shot at 5 am. Yeah, what else to do if it's only one hour before breakfast :D

Not the best quality swatches because they were taken with a phone, but I didn't have much time and proper conditions.. And some bonus pics: 

Yay! Holidays!

Dear girls!
Now that you are reading this post I am sitting in an airplane heading to....

THERE!

Believe me, I am super happy because I was waiting for such a holiday for a loooooooong time. No worries, I have some posts scheduled already :)

To make it more interesting, I won't tell you where I'm going. However, it's not that difficult to guess. And if you do guess, you'll have +10 entries in my next giveaway :DD If you name the country AND the place/city, you'll have +20. No kidding! First come - first serve, comments are valid today and tomorrow. And a hint: my next giveaway will be a cutie holo polish :)

Nail Polishes & Travelling + Haul from Russia!

Heeeheeeeeeeey! I'm baaack : ) From a big trip to the biggest country ever. Weeks ago my boss kicked me out of office for a business trip to Russia, but I decided that going for 2 days would not make sense and went for some weeks : ) So the trip was a combination of work&fun.

When I was packing my stuff, I got into a huge dilemma: which polishes should I take? Leaving for weeks (!), and with my habbit to repaint my nails every 2-3 days.. I should have taken like 10. But then I thought: hey, what about local stuff? Am I so stupid to think I won't buy anything in Russia? Sure I will. So I stopped on a number of 5, plus base coat and top coat. Last step was to take only minis - yep, I even have a special set of mini base&top - to save the bag space. So I did : ) 

L to R: Depend #228, Pupa #202, Debby ColorPlay #188, OPI RapiDry Top Coat, Mavala Toulouse, Claire's #23(?), Essie Fill The Gap (base coat)

In the end my estimations were right: I wore all the polishes + swatched all of them, and.....
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I brought a huge "piece of cake" from Russia! Both of well-known brands and some local masterpieces : ) Guys, for those who are not aware: in Russia (big cities) you can find ev-ry-thing. From Lady Rose to OPIs, Orlys, CGs etc etc etc and from Essence to Deborah Lippmann and USLU Airlines. All you need is just money and patience. Now to the haul!

Firstly local Russian polishes! (left to right):

Smart Enamel "Wet Look" Top Coat: this I got because of a lot of positive reviews, and a recommendation of one of the blogger fellows - Miss Jones. She knows things : ) Because this is a great super fast drying top coat with a super glancy effect! Price: around 2€. 

Dance Legend Thermo #170: you know what it is?? A thermo polish changing from [almost] black to red!!! I was dreaming about it! Price: 10€ (!). 

Dance Legend Domino Top: I mean...look at that one!!!! Black&white glitter top coat! Russian blogger girls are calling it "response to Lynderella", lol! Price: 5-6€. 

Irisk #012: red and silver glitter, very pretty! Actually, the label says "made in France" but oh well... I doubt :)

Then, the world known brands (left to right):

OPI Sparkle-icious: yes!! It's him! Rare HTF thing from Burlesque found in a smaaall shop at the suburbs of Moscow!! Bought together with OPI Show It & Glow It! for 8€, with a lazy-looking seller saying yeeeea they are quite old, noone buys them anyways.. *yawn* o_O!!!!

China Glaze Flying Dragon: despite all the negative reviews I read... when I saw a bottle... oh, my!

China Glaze 2Nite: a, that was funny. I'm not a big fan of holos. But for 2,5€, you know.. who can resist? : )

OPI Show It & Glow It!: couldn't choose between this and OPI Sparkle-icious => took both! :)

And lastly, known brands again. And one not so known.
Nubar Iced Licorice: I was lemming it for ages.. Russia - impossible is nothing.
Seventeen #271: do you know where these polishes are produced? In Greece! Right, why not to sell them in Russia? Especially when in Germany we barely have stuff from France and Switzerland (grrrr!).
Orly Snowcone: also from my wish list. Couldn't resist the price of 3€ :)
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So, as you can guess, the programme of the blog for the following weeks is to show you all I took&brought&swatched! Be ready! You can order what you want to see first :)

Now, girls, I wanna talk a bit about you and polishes and travelling! :) For me it's quite vital, since I do travel much.
What do you take to your trips from your manicure stuff? 
How do you choose which polishes to take? And how many?
When you go abroad, do you prepare a "to buy" list? :)

Italia & Smalti

Buongiorno principessas! :)

I'm just back from my amazing Italy trip, full of impressions, emotions and fresh powers :) Now I definitely have some new stuff to show you and I don't know where to begin. For today I think I'll just drop a couple of pictures and boast with my Italian haul. Get seated :)

The route of the trip started from Milano, heart of fashion and art. Decoration of vitrines is also art: 

Louis Vuitton

Dolce&Gabbana:

Bologna (upper) and Verona (down) were the next. Both are calm old cities, but at the same time very different ones:

... and Venice is Venice. Famous enough not to say much : )

Now to the most interesting : ) The thing is - I didn't plan to buy much stuff, maximum a couple of Pupas and Laylas to try, but... 

...Italy has so many interesting and unknown to me brands and colours, that I couldn't stop : ) What was impressive is the price: Layla&Pupa polishes are 5-6€ depending on the shop, Deborah Pret a Porter (tiny bottles) are 2-3€, Debby colorPLAY - around 4€. All this is a little pricey comparing to Germany, but on the other hand - congratulations, Italian girls, you have a great choice of everything out there! 

Left to right: 

Debby colorPLAY #177

Deborah Milano Pret a Porter #13 Love At First Sight

Deborah Milano Pret a Porter #32 Lilac Seduction

Deborah Milano Pret a Porter #26 Stardust

Debby colorPLAY #188

Left to right: 

Essence Nail Art Twins Troy

(found for 1€ and grabbed cuz now they are discontinued)

Pupa #200

Pupa #715

Pupa #202

(they had a promotion for Pupa: buy 2 get 3rd for free :P)

Left to right: 

NYC #105 Lights-Camera-Glitter 

(my first NYC, and what a name!)

Layla Ceramic Effect #18

Layla Ceramic Effect #13

Ever #12 Fuchsia Dorato

Optima ?

(pure mystery: no name, no info in the net..)

Quite a haul, no? :) To be honest, it was very hard not to buy even more. I'm super excited about all of them, and started trying out already! To conclude, I sincerely recommend you Italy as an amazing country for everything: eating, travelling, shopping and enjoying! :) 

*waving to my Italian readers!*