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!*

2$ Ebay Deal

Sometimes Ebay is like a drug for me.. Can't stop browsing stuff, especially cheap cute things like this:

(picture from seller)

Do you buy a lot on Ebay? Except for nail polishes? :)

Diddy Mow

I was sure that I won't get any Rescue Beauty Lounge polish sooner than in a couple of years, because I simply don't earn enough to afford them. How could I know that much sooner I'll come across a very kind person, who will send it to me just like this??! Yes, I got my first RBL thanks to a gorgeous fellow blogger Sona - you all know her Sonidlo's Nail Polishes - who enclosed RBL Diddy Mow as an extra (!) together with the giveaway prize I won from her and another hard-to-findtreasure China Glaze Frosty. You can imagine my hapiness...

Diddy Mow is a complex and interesting shade, it's warm khaki with silver nanoshimmer. Quite a creative combination. As I know, Essie Sew Psyched looks pretty similar, but the shimmer is now so explicit. Essie is generally bad with shimmers. Should I mention that I had no problems with application of Diddy Mow or it's quite obvious? : )

What I noticed is that the swatches of this polish that you can find in net are so diverse. Just google it and see yourslef. All the pics you see in htis post are made under the sun, but the colour came out realistic. In other blogs you might discover photos of Diddy Mow being cool toned, but in reality it's warm! Obviously other cameras - just like mine - also like to give out the "crab hands effect" when one swatches green polishes, so I guess some bloggers tuned their photos to look more attractive. 

Now what can I add.. It's unfair to judge by one polish, but I really liked the experience with RBL. At least I could judge - thanks to Sona!! If there are polishes of this brand which you didn't like quality-wise - let me know! 

Just to blabla... / Einfach zu quatschen... / Потрындеть...

via

There's one issue that I was always thinking about.. The point is that although I have been blogging for 1,5 years already (uf, the time flies so fast!), none of the real world people from my surrounding knows that I have a blog. Even the closest ones. Neither my bf, family, friends - noone. Not that I'm hiding it - why would I hide my beloved hobby which is appreciated by other people - here I mean my dear readers, of course - but I'm just not telling. Mainly because of the unwillingness to encounter a misunderstanding. Don't tell me you never had people looking at you like you're a recessive psychopath once you tell them you have 200 (300, 400 etc.) polishes? 

For the same reason I'm keeping this blog rather impersonal: you will never find a picture of my face here, and only a few followers know my real name. This might change in the future, but so far I'm sticking to such frames. I'm separating the blog and the real life, both consciously and unconsciously at the same time. Is that even normal?

So, my dear followers, what I'd like to ask you is your opinion on that. Also, tell me your experience: does any of your real life friends, colleagues, husbands etc. know about your blog? How do they treat it? Did you ever suffer from misunderstanding? Please share, it's very important for me! 

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Es gibt eine Sache, über die ich immer nachgedacht habe.. Das Ding ist, dass obwohl ich schon 1,5 Jahre mein Blog führe (uf, die Zeit vergeht so schnell!), niemand von meiner Umgebung weiß eigentlich, dass ich ein Blog habe. Sogar die engsten Freunden. Auch mein Freund oder meine Familie nicht - niemand. Es ist gar kein Geheimnis - warum würde ich so ein tolles Hobby mit einer starker Unterstützung von den anderen Leuten verheimlichen (hier meine ich natürlich meine lieben Leserinnen) - aber ich sage einfach nichts. Meistens weil ich eine Missverständnis befürchte. Sagt mir bitte nicht, dass niemand hat je gemeint, dass ihr verrückt seid, wenn ihr über 200 (300, 400?) Nagellacke erzählet? :)

Aus dem gleichen Grund bleibt mein Blog auch etwas unpersönlich: man kann nie ein Bild von meinem Gesicht hier finden, und nur wenige Leserinnen kennen meinen echten Namen. Das alles kann sich in Zukunft ändern, aber jetzt bleibt es so. Ich trenne das Blog und das wirkliche Leben, sowohl bewusst als auch unbewusst gleichzeitig. Ist das aber normal?

Also, meine lieben Leserinnen, was ich euch fragen möchte, ist eure Meinung dazu. Erzählt mir auch eure Erfahrungen: weiß jemand von euren Freunden, Männer, Kollegen, Familie usw. über euer Blog? Was halten sie davon? Unterstützen sie euch? Habt ihr mal ein Missverständnis erlebt? Teilt bitte mir eure Erfahrungen mit, das ist für mich im Moment echt wichtig!

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Девчули (хехе), я потрындеть :) Есть один аспект, над которым я уже давненько раздумываю. Свой блог я веду уже полтора года (ух как время летит!), но никто из моего окружения в реальной жизни не знает и даже не догадывается о моем увлечении. Даже самые близкие. Ни мч, ни друзья, ни семья - никто. Не то что я это скрываю - с чего бы мне держать в тайне любимое хобби, да еще и с такой поддержкой от других людей (здесь я имею в виду моих любимых читателей, разумеется) - просто не говорю и всё. В основном потому, что боюсь натолкнуться на недопонимание. Не говорите мне, что никто еще не крутил пальцем у виска, когда вы рассказывали о своих двухсот (трехсот, четырехсот итд.) лаках? :)

По этой же причине мой блог достаточно безличный: вы никогда не найдете здесь фото моего лица, и только очень немногие читатели знают мое настоящее имя. О цвете моего паспорта вообще никто не знает наверное, хотя это как раз и неважно :) Может в будущем все изменится, но пока что я придерживаюсь таких правил. Я сознательно и бессознательно разделяю личную жизнь и блог. Это вообще нормально?

О чем я хотела спросить, так это о вашем мнении. Знают ли ваши друзья, мужья, вторые половинки, коллеги о ваших блогах или лакоманьячестве? Поддерживают ли? Наталкивались ли вы на откровенное непонимание? Поделитесь, для меня это на данный момент очень важно!!!

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P.S. The comments in any language are very welcome, as usual : )

        Die Kommentare sind in allen Sprachen wie immer herzlich willkommen! : )

        Комментарии приветствуются на любом языке! : )  

Nails In Foil

As usual, I'm posting the swatches of a limited edition in a very timely manner, i.e. after a year after its release : ) But that's me, and my blog is a very direct reflection of my personality. Anyway, today 2 pretty foils from Essence Nails In Style LE - a little flashback to the last summer. 

The first one here on the pictures is Essence Style Me Love, a very thick and opaque warm purple foil - works per-fect for stamping by the way. One coat (!) on the pictures. Dries fast but chips even faster. 

Close-up below. The "foil" actually consists of purple and silver shimmer, you can see the texture very well:

And now onto the second polish, Essence Style For Summernights, which is a tiny bit less interesting - I find. Just because you can find a silver foil everywhere now, and if you missed this LE of Essence you can grab Zoya Trixie or China Glaze Icicle or China Glaze Cheers To You. Or many others. Two easy coats, but my favourite thing is to mattify it. If you have foils, I do advise you to experiment with matte top coats, you'll love the effect :)

So, yay or nay to the foils? I know, the best season for them is winter, but I just can't switch to spring/summer shades. Not yet. What do you think?

Fresh Teal

Before writing this post, I was choosing which polish to show for like half an hour : ) The problem is that I have >1 giga of swatched polishes and manicures, so I was really confused what to pick. In the end I thought that it's been a while since I posted a teal colour, so here we go, and not just teal, but Fresh Teal by Milani.

The tricky thing you should know about this polish and the whole neon line of Milani is that they are NOT the same colour with the bottle. You can see it on all the pictures, and you better google some swatches before buying these polishes. In case of Fresh Teal it didn't disturb me, I like both the colour of the bottle and the real colour on my nails. 

Otherwise, Fresh Teal is a gorgeous creme inbetween blue and green, depending on the light and your skin tone you will see more blue or more green on your nails. The formula is great too, on all the photos there's only 1 coat applied, no top coat. I won this polish in a giveaway of Stickers, so I'm now using the chance to say thanks to her : )

And an epic stamping fail. I should have been more careful with the black stamping polish:

Do you have your favourite teal? : ) I'm still in search of mine..

Inspired by Illamasqua

Surely you all have seen the video of Illamasqua on Human Funda-mehndi nail art. Somehow unconsciously I got my inspiration from it and decided to partly recreat it, adjusting to my nail shape and the polishes I have in my stash.

Since I don't own any Illamasqua polishes *sigh*, I used Essie Greenport as a base and Wet'nWild Buffy The Violet Slayer for the dots.

For those still wondering what I am talking about here's the video:

Artists's Sapphire

And I continue with my super summer shades =)

Seriously, I don't know what's going on, winter (ha!) has passed but I'm still into dark and gloomy colours. But they attract me so much and look so nice.. For example this one, Finger Paints Artists's Sapphire (what a name!!):

I firmly believED that dark blue shimmer is absolutely not my type of colour - before I painted my nails with it. After that I couldn't stop staring on my hands :) Actually, myself I would never buy such a shade deliberately, moreover Finger Paints brand is not sold here in Germany - this bottle was sent to me in a swap by lovely Carolina, to whom I am very thankful for that - she knew exactly what I need! 

Apart from a gorgeous name, this polish has a great formula, which is very easy to work despite it's a dark shade. On the photos I did 2 easy coats, no top coat. What I also like is the colour - it's such a rich and deep dark blue, that you will always want to stare at it, I guarantee! 

Because I wear such blues quite seldom, I couldn't miss the chance to add some gold - dark blue and gold is one of my favourite colour combinations ever.