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. 

Stamping Plate QA27 from Born Pretty Store

Let me boast about my new stamping plates: for a while I was not buying any, but I was lucky to get some plates for review from Born Pretty Store. And below is a sneak peek of the result I got with their help:

But let me tell a couple of words about the base colour first: this is a 1EUR (sale) Alessandro Candy Floss Pink polish that I own for ages. Together with 2 other little Alessandros.

 

Alessandro Candy Floss Pink is a baby pink creme wannabe, quite whitened out and with a drop of coral. The application is everything but easy, this little b...baby makes such bald spots that you can't imagine. If you get away with 3 coats - you are lucky.

I don't think this polish is still available in stores, but it doesn't matter because I don't recommend it anyway :D The shade is interesting, but not so unique, so you can easily find a substitute. I like how it looked on my nails in the end, and it was a good base for stamping.

The duty is done - the swatches are posted, the honours are paid to the polish, now it goes to "use-them-up" bin and I move furhter to the stamping plate. Here it is, below - QA27, with a blue protection film on the left and ready to use on the right:

As you might know, I prefer the full nail designs over small ones. And for me the major factor is the size of the image on the plate, as I'm not willing to double-stamp, we are not in 2009 ;P In this particular case the size was not a problem at all, the image is 1.6 x 1,4 cm (for comparison: Bundle Monster (2012) is also 1,6 x 1,4 cm, Konad is 1,5 x 1,2 cm). Quite good, eh?

Even better is that this plate retails at $1.99 (!) - you can purchase it here. For this price, the quality was superb - I had no problems with the stamping process whatsoever, I hope it is visible from my pics, even though I used a normal nail polish for stamping - Alessandro Strawberry Daiquiry. 

I'm looking forward to testing the other stamping plates as well, but even now I can tell you - I'm quite inspired by the price/quality ratio.

And finally, 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.

Love Bug

As an "afterparty" post to the St. Valentine's day manicure, I'm showing not less "sweet", and of course a pink, polish - BB Couture Love Bug. A sweet name is included, as you see.

Apart from a sweet name and exterier, BB Couture Love Bug has an interesting formula: it's a pink (I'd say Barbie pink) jelly with golden shimmer. The shimmer particles are big and therefore quite noticeable, they sparkle under the sun occasionally. On the photo below I hopefully managed to capture that it looks like syrup a bit... I love this effect.

By the way, this is my one and only BB Couture polish - a lonely bottle in a huge stash :) And even this one I'd never hope to get if it was not for Caroline and her help. Thank you so much! ;)  

As for the colour, I liked how it looks on my nails. Pinks suit me, and I love them in return - I won't go in circles around this fact. This dolly shade makes you feel younger, although I AM quite young :)

Would you wear such a "princess shade"? :)

Hearties Day

As you know, I'm not a frantic fan of St. Valentines day, and this is a pure personal thing. I'm not going to poor around bullshit about love capitalisation or whatsoever. Kissing couple make me smile, it's just we don't celebrate it with my bf. However, I find this day a great reason to paint some hearties on my nails :D 

And what colour should be the hearties if not pink... on pink background, hehe! So I used 2 coats of China Glaze Something Sweet as base colour - for its shade, not for its name ; ) And then just stamped the hearts with BM-317 plate and Zoya Andi. I wanted to make the hearts red, but I don't have that special stamping red polish... and the usual reds always lean fuchsia/pink when used for stamping...

I did like the result, only the job could have been done more neatly. The patterns did not really want to transfer to the nails, don't know why : {

What are you wearing on your nails for the Valentine's day? :) Tell me! Or spam me with links :)

Oh Baby Pink

Who's up for a good old pink creme? I mean, what can be simpler than that..? A baby pink is a shade that every girl has, if she at all has polishes. However, this is not "a" baby pink, it's Oh Baby Pink by Nubar :) Lovely name, isn't it?

Application is not that lovely though, 3 coats are definitely needed to cover all those endless bald spots.. The positive aspects are the texture (not goopy, not runny) and the drying time. You better use top coat to even out the surface or in case you have built up that damn "step" next to the cuticles.

The photos are taken in the natural light (no sun) and my hands are tanned, yeeeey! Summer, I miss you already :{

As for upgrading the manicure, I had a lot of ideas for such a clean pink base palette, but unfortunately not so much time. So I just quickly glitterised it :) 

Index and pinkie have OPI Pirouette My Whistle on top, and middle and ring fingers - BK Deluxe polish. Very weird animal, the latter one. You can see the bottle in my hand on the pic above. I only can say that I once bought it in C&A (!) for 2EUR once, and it's actually pretty, but stinks like a sulphur swamp.

A kind of ballerina manicure I got in the end, right? Still looks pretty to me though :)

Wedding Crasher

*planned post; me partying at a wedding on Crete*

Honestly, I don't see how a nail polish could potentially crash a wedding, especially such a decent shade... Apparently the creators of Sally Hansen Wedding Crasher had some ideas in mind, while naming the polish this way :) Besides, I keep remembering the movie about the two guys, the Wedding Crashers or so... a funny one-time-see film :)

Wedding Crasher is a pink jelly packed with pink glitter, that turned out to be more dense than I expected when looking at the bottle. The coverage is reached in 2 thick(er) coats only. The surface is not gritty, so it only makes sense to cover it with a top coat if you need a bit of gloss and shine.

Actually, Wedding Crasher was a present form my aunt, and honestly speaking, I was not inspired by this shade until I painted my nails with it :) 

If you like this kind of colours, give it a try! I look forward to comparing it with Zoya Astra, I have a feeling that these two have a lot in common. 

Anyways, I hope that the big fat Greek wedding I'm partying at right now will never ever be crashed!! :) And I hope you are having fun this summer too :) 

Ninja Giveaway Win + Swap #14

Lately I am being quite lucky in winning things *knock knock knock*. Actually, I win different stuff intermittently, couple of times per year or so. However, this time my winning of a giveaway on Good Lack, Nail! blog came as a total surprise. I was all in work and suddenly baaam, an e-mail "hey, you won a giveaway"... what could be nicer? :) 

After a couple of mails from the owner of Good Lack, Nail!, Caroline (check her manicures and especially "how I wore it" posts!!), we decided to turn it all into a swap ;) Unbelievable, how many lemmings of mine she killed with one parcel! Let's have a look:

Ninja polishes: my giveaway win! :D
Left to right:

Ninja Polish Ambrosia

Ninja Polish Shillelagh

Ninja Polish Divinity

And all the rest is already the "swap" part!
Left to right:

BB Couture Love Bug

China Glaze Angel Wings

OPI Dutch Tulips

Left to right:

Zoya Rory

Love&Beauty Gold

Essie Watermelon

                                                      Revlon Princess               Caroline's Franken called Kaffeeklatsch

As always, when I receive a huge nail mail I get lost and choose for hours which polish to wear first. Especially in this case, when I got like half of my wish list in one pack... but I decided to try Caroline's creation as as my first choice, so meet the pink Kaffeeklatsch!

Kaffeeklatsch is a bright pearly pink with pink shimmer and hexagonal glitters, I also saw a couple of heart-shaped glitters there. You know that I'm not a fan of frosty finish, but when I applied Kaffeklatsch onto my nails, I liked how it looked! Somehow it was not streaky, and all in all looked so.. merry! :)

By the way, Kaffeeklatsch means gathering together for a coffee and chatting - in case you were wondering :) Nice and unusual name for a franken, I reckon. All these "blue my mind" and "mellow/yellow/fellow" drive me crazy already lol 

Besides that I'm truly madly happy with what I received, I want to say a huge THANK YOU to Caroline!!! I really enjoy what I got! :)