Kiko #338

Thank you for your patience, for you have seen 4 polishes of the same brand shown in a row in my blog :) :) Today I'm showing you the last one out of 4 KIKOs that I own - Kiko #338. The colour is pretty interesting - and hard to photograph, so I'm honestly telling you in advance that I was tuning the colour up in Photoshop.

Kiko #338 is a bright lavender creme with a good drop of white. By bright I don't mean "in-your-face-bright", but it's more contrast and vivid than it looks in the bottle. The original name of the polish is "Lavanda Chiaro" - well, so be it. 

As it often happens with Kiko, I was more than satisfied with the quality and application. The polish is very opaque and pigmented, yet not goopy and applies very well in 2 coats. If you need a top coat or not - is totally up to you. I often wear Kiko polishes "as they are".

Next post will be featuring another brand, I promise!! ^^ And generally I think I won't be showing Kiko polishes until I buy more of them... which I hope will be soon. Their Cupcake collection is very VERY attractive ;) 

Flowers'n'Gems

Long time no see from... water decals. Although they are such an easy upgrade to a manicure, I haven't been using them for ages. That's why I was happy when I got my package from Born Pretty Store with a sheet of cute white flower decals to try. Immediately I thought: what a delicate spring pattern - and did a simple manicure with them.

But hey, hold on :) I can't omit a couple of words about the base colour - Kiko #340. Oh, sorry, Kiko Celeste. But who cares, noone knows Kiko polishes by names except for the creators anyways.   

Kiko #340 is a bright blue creme with a glossy finish. The texture is pleasant to work with, opaque yet not goopy. The application was easy as hell, 2 coats and I didn't even apply a top coat - there was no need in it.

Sorry for the photo spam, but the shade is pretty (I reckon) and it was so easy to photograph. Couldn't stop. And it's not even a holo.

And now finally - on to the decals from Born Pretty Store. They arrived in a pink hard paper and with a protection film on top. Very easy to unpack and prepare for using. There was even a "user guide" printed on the back of the pink carton, but hey, who of us doesn't know how to use water decals.. :P

So, what I did was just applying the flower pattern on 2 nails and placing rhinestones on the other 3. As simple as that.

I should say that the water decals were so easy and pleasant to use that even my 7yo niece would cope with them! And the quality was great, they slid gently from the paper back, they didn't tear or fall apart during the application. Also, after I applied the final layer of a top coat the decals looked like I hand painted the flowers. People were really asking if I did!

You can find the water decals shown in this post here - they retail for 2.86$. As usual, the prices of BPS are very customer-friendly :) 

Moreover: here's a coupon for 10% discount at Born Pretty Store. Check their site, apart from stamping plates they have a whole huge variety of different decorations, nail art tools and supplements and other nice stuff for nails! 

*The stamping plate was kindly provided by Born Pretty Store PR team for my consideration. In this post I expressed my honest and unbiased opinion about the product.

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. 

Kiko #339

Hey guys! 

Sorry for being absent for a while, some foreign guests came to me and I was running around the city like crazy for the last week! And although I had no time to blog, I did shoot some nice swatches of my oldies-goodies which I wanted to show you. This Kiko #339, for example: 

Kiko Fiordaliso (yep, Kikos have names..) is a sky blue creme with periwinkle hue, very glossy and of middle opacity. I got away with 2 coats, but there were some tiny bold spots left, not even visible on the pics. What I liked about the polish is that it dries very fast and basically doesn't require any top coat. No top coat = less time spent for a mani, haha. 

Oh, and the shade is very pretty - is that really necessary to say?

A kind of "I wore it out" pic. Now with a new phone I get nice phonopics :) 

P.S. When I was about to click "publish", I realised that I showed this polish in my blog already.. The more pics the merrier, so feel free to check my "old style" swatches too :)

Blue Starz

Hellou girls! My pace of posting is still very irregular, but oh well, so are my life conditions. Hope for your understanding : )

Today I'm showing one very pretty lilac/lavender - Kiko #248 Lavanda Chiaro. Here I don't have much to say, the name of the polish and pictures are speaking for themselves. But don't be deceived with its seemingly calm colour - this baby is eye-catching (I judge by the looks of random people and my boss :). As for the formula, it's just as nice as all the rest 3 Kiko polishes that I have: easy to work with (2-coater) and fast-drying.  

In the artificial light the shade becomes a lil bit more "neony":

Aand some starry stamping with Shirley's plates:

Oh my, I wish I bought some more KIKO polishes this summer when they had sales. Maybe they'll have some special offers for Christmas too...

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Announcement for the German ladies: 

- good news for those who don't have Kiko shops around! Kiko opened its online-shop and now ships within Germany (as well as to France, Spain and Italy of course). Free shipping during first 15 days after registration!

- Butter London (!) polishes noticed in Douglas (NRW)! Price: 16,95€.

- NYX polishes are sold in Douglas in Köln. Quite a nice assortment, price: 4-5€ (don't remember). 

- Essie Cocktail Bling Collection is now retailed in Douglas at 7,95€ (instead of crazy 12,95€). 

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Pink Delight!

- this is how this polish should be called! So juicy, fruity, vivid, glossy, you_name_it - I didn't even expect I'll like it so much. Nevertheless, originally it's just KIKO 288, or Rosa Fenicottero, if to check the KIKO website. Great application in 2 coats, fast drying and the colour...mmm I'm just in love with it!

And some "not the best in my life" stamping:

Cloudy Blue

As promised, showing you KIKO 339 Fiordaliso, the "cloudy blue", as one of my readers, Kim, has described it. Nothing to add here: gorgeous airy sky-blue creme with periwinkle undertone with a glossy finish (no top coat on the photos!). Application was easy: 2 coats over my favourite Nail Tek Foundation (this time III, not II). The brush was a tiny bit too wide for me, but no big complaints here either. 

And some attempts to recreate the cloth's pattern by sponging: