Bloom-A-Loom

Hellow! : )

No worries, I'm still alive, just pretty busy.. During the last weeks I've travelled so many km within Germany, that Deutsche Bahn has to grant me BahnCard 150 1st Class+ or something like that. Fuf. 

Anyways, I never gave up painting my nails, neither blogging, so here I am with a new post. Today's post is in a way a tribute to one polish I like very much - Essence Bloom-A-Loom, as well as the whole collection it stems from, Blossoms Etc LE. I bought all five, and it was the only time that I bought am entire collection. Actually, I already showed Bloom-A-Loom stamped, and within a duo-manicure, but now it's gonna shine alone : )   

Essence Bloom-A-Loom is a very simple lavender creme, with a hidden shimmer which is only (and barely) visible in the bottle. The polish is opaque, but thick, I had to be careful to layer the 2d coat carefully. Otherwise it's nice. But of course not unique. 

There's nothing much to add, besides that I like this polish. So I just let the photos speak for themselves : )

Eternal Optimist

I perfectly remember that sunny spring day - yes, old swatches again - when I felt like wearing something bright or neon, but because of a damn meeting in the ministry the most I could "afford" on my nails is a muted nude. So I chose Essie Eternal Optimist, which I personally refer to the category of "nude but not nude" polishes. 

What is special about this polish, is more the name than the colour. Although under "Eternal Optimist" I would more envisage some crazy pink neon shade, I still like it because this is exactly how my friends call me, lol. 

The colour, on the contrary, is not very optimistic - it's a beige-pink nude creme, and not the easiest one to work with. If you are lucky, you'll get away with 2 coats, if not - 3.

Moments when I like the colour of Eternal Optimist the most is when it occurs to be under the cold day light. Then it shows the drop of its purple undertone, which is so flattering for my skin tone: 

After a long day, when I was finally home, I decided at least to make some stamping to spoil the calmness of the colour. Here it is, done with Catrice Plum Play With Me, as far as I remember. 

Unfortunately, it turned out too subtle too, and so not matching my demand for intense colours. Well, maybe that's why I'm posting it now - when I took the pics, I didn't like this mani. Now I do. Eh, time changes everything : )

Atlantis

Most probably it will be the pic heaviest post ever written by me about a polish and a largest post about China Glaze Atlantis ever written by anyone. But if you have THIS on your nails, you just can't stop shooting photos!

I personally consider Atlantis one of the best China Glaze masterpieces. Legendary polish. Aqua green jelly base packed with holographic glitter, sparkling in every little ray of light.

What is more, it's sparkling without rays of light, too.

Oh, and if you think that I'm going to post the typical "blurry trash" to show the holographic sparkles.. you are absolutely right : D : D

To be fair, I will say that I already posted about Atlantis here, but in that old post I layered it on another green polish, whereas here you see "pure" 2 coats of Atlantis and a thin layer of top coat. Gritty surface haters can use a thicker top or more coats of it.

I'm telling you, I couldn't stop swatching it, even with my phone. And that tells a lot : ) 

Blueberry

As the days are becoming darker and colder, so are the colours on my nails. I didn't wear all the summer brights I planned to wear, but I don't mind, I'm already in a "autumn-winter palette" mood : ) And because in April I was not yet, MIYO Blueberry was waiting to be tried since spring, since the time Akuma Kanji sent it to me in a swap. 

MIYO is a brand available in Portugal, but presumably fabricated in Poland. It was the first MIYO polish for me to try, and I should say I'm pretty satisfied. Dark polishes are always super hard to work with for me, but I managed to apply it very smoothly and easily. I can even say I was proud of myself : )

MIYO Bluberry has a colour of... guess what?...blueberry! : ) Actually not. As a fan of blueberry, I'm telling you it's way bluer. The polish is a dark purple creme, so dark that it will seem almost black indoors. A tone too dark for my taste maybe. The texture, as I said, is nice and super opaque - 2 coats on the photos, but you can get away with one easily.

All the pictures are taken in a gloomy daylight, I had no chance to test the colour under the sun.

Well, I know this post is pic heavy already, but I have to show the stamping I did, too. Pls have some patience and take a look at the bundlemonstered Blueberry : ) For that I used Stargazer Chrome and BM-320.

Uf, that's it. The next post will be shorter and lighter I promise :)

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? :)