Hunt Me Down

Here's a real polish champion in terms of waiting to be tried.. : ) It's a real shame to say, but H&M Hunt Me Down was waiting for its turn to appear on my nails for 1.5 years... gross! And I can't even come with any excuse why I was postponing to paint my nails with this pretty shade: 

Hunt Me Down is a dusty khaki creme with a nice 2-coat-opacity formula. I don't even know what else to add, apart from it's pretty and that my nails feel so cozy in this colour during the autumn days.

Now, girls, is there anyone worse than me in the world in terms of untrieds? What's your record? :)

Swap №11: First WIC & Indie!

After quite a while I did another spontaneous swap. Lovely Sarah from Netherlands contacted me about one polish we had here in Germany, and in exchange she offered something I couldn't resist :) Here's what she sent me: 

Left to right:

- Hugo Boss Nuit parfume (I loooved it!)

- W.I.C. by Herome Bogota

- China Glaze Stone Cold

- Lush Lacquer Party Rockin

So, I got my first W.I.C. by Herome nail polish, first indie brand polish, Stone Cold which I was chasing mainly for stamping, a bunch of nice sweets and a cool perfume. How pleasant is that! : )

Traditionally, I'm showing swatches of one of the received polishes, although I tried all of them already. But for this time, it's W.I.C. by Herome Bogota:

I was craving Bogota since I saw some random swatches long ago. Moreover, I so much liked the concept of W.I.C. (by the way W.I.C. means World Inspired Colours) - naming the polishes by cities/countries! Before recently I had not a single connection with Bogota as a city, until my bf went there for a couple weeks for his work and brought a bunch of interesting pictures and stories. I think I urgently need "Frankfurt" too :)

Bogota has a muted dusty greyish-blueish jelly base complemented by golden shimmer. The texture is semi-sheer and light, the coverage in 2 coats gives a decent opacity though. If you don't want the 'tip wear effect' which is so common for jelly polishes, you have to polish your nail tips well, also from the ridges.

The closest shade to Bogota that I had in my stash was Orly Pixie Dust, so I couldn't but post a lil comparison. The difference is that Pixie Dust is greyer, and has silver half-flakies half-shimmer, and Bogota is bluer with golden shimmer. Because I love such texture so much, I'll keep both in my stash.

And, although I won't post swatches of China Glaze Stone Cold today, I'll show how it stamps instead. It was exactly the reason why I wanted this polish - a graphite shade for stamping. And I was right, it does work well, with one only condition: you have to be fast. By fast I mean lightning fast. Otherwise it dries on the stamper and never transfers to a nail. With some efforts to understand its character, here is the result I got: 

Oh, and I can't wait to show Stone Cold alone! It's such an enchanting matte graphite polish.. And Lush Lacquer is great too. So stay tuned : ) 

Grape Escape

Early autumn.. Grape time, no? :) We have crazy low prices for grapes now and I seriously think I got grape overdose in my nutrition plan :) Whatever, I'm never sick of them, neither of the grape colour in polishland. Well, conditionally "grape colour". Just as the creators of the polish below imagined a grape colour. The creators of Barielle Grape Escape: 

I don't have much to add, you see everything yourself at the pictures. Flawless application in 2 coats with Barielle thin brush (❤). At some point I saw the bubbles, but it might have been my fault - sometimes I apply basecoat, go eat a slice of pizza and then continue with polish : {

And some fruit bonus :) I'm not really fond of swatching with fruits, but because of the name of the polish I couldn't but make an exception :)

If the grapes were really the same colour with the polish, I would assume that they are too toxic to be eaten. But look at OPI Grape Fit, China Glaze Grape Pop, Grape Juice and A Grape Fit!, etc. - they are all the same. Somehow THIS is the grape colour in the perception of the polish makers. Not in mine though: my grandpa used to make wine as his hobby, and I saw a looot of grape types of different shades, but of this one. Whatever, I still like it! :)

Berry Jelly & Sparkles

The polish I'm showing today is one of my favourites in the whole stash. Although I already posted the swatches of it, I think it fully deserves to be reswatched and also shown on shorter nails. MNY #265 is a berry jelly packed with holographic shimmer, which looks like subtle sparks on nails although the particles seem to be rougher in the bottle. 

The shade is so squishy, so juicy...mm love it! And for a jelly, the formula is super nice - 2 coats and that's it. Here are some pics under the sun:

And a close-up. I'm not a fan of VNL, but although you can see it on the pics, it's not so visible in reality, so no problems with that.

And now the saddest part: this beauty is obviously discontinued : ( It's just MNY, the whole brand, disappeared from German drug stores for unknown (to me) reason. I'm already upset in advance when I think that this bottle may end someday : ( On the other hand, I saw something similar within new Maybelline Color Show lines, but I'm afraid it's not the same. 

Uf, I definitely need more jellies in my life. Houston, we need a jelly! : )

P.S. If you want to see this polish on my looooong nails, klick here : )

UPD: One of the readers, Maria (thank you!), just told me that Maybelline relaunched this colour in their new ColorShow line, just like I thought. In Germany, the colour is called Wine Shimmer (#265!). Maria wrote that in Russia this shade is called Colorama #54 *facepalm*! BUT all three polishes are the same, check Maria's swatches to see :)

Navy Jelly

Girls, I urgently need to share this awesomeness with you - Layla Ceramic Effect #13! I bought it during my trip to Italy with a bunch of other cool Italian polishes : )

Look, look at this 'syrup effect'!!

Layla #13 is a fantastic navy blue jelly that creates a glossy glass look on your nails. What I didn't like was the brush - too wide and quite hard to manipulate whereas with dark shades it's especially important to be as precise as possible.. But the formula is nice - 2 coats are enough. 

And a couple of illustrations from "how I wore it" series : )

So, if you are lucky to live in Italy, I really recommend you to grab this one. If not, you can ask our Italian nail bloggers for a swap : ) Oh, I wish I could come back to Italy soon to get my hands on their local polishes.. : )

Forget-Me-Not

A blast from the past. The manicure I was wearing last December. Either the time goes very fast, or I am very slow in posting.. : ) Regardless, the polish is still pretty, a periwinkle shade by Essence - Forget-Me-Not. 

Essence Blossoms Etc. was the only collection (limited edition, actually) which I bought whole, as it was. I still don't regret about it - those pastels are so pretty. Essence Forget-Me-Not was a part of that collection - slightly dusty periwinkle creme with blue nanoshimmer, which is not any visible in reality but still makes the colour less flat. No issues with application, 2 easy coats.

And some stamping I did back then using Konad white polish and m63 plate..

Red Holo Perfection

If you happen to search for a perfect red holographic and if you prefer scattered holos over linear ones - this is THE ONE, Ozotic Pro #621. When you look at it, it's like fire burning inside the red shade... I am wearing it for the 4th time already (says a lot!), and just yesterday there was a perfect weather to swatch it in all its beauty. First set of pictures are taken in the sun:

Now I MUST tell you, how awesome it is in terms of application: first of all, it's a one-coater (!!), it applies like butter and has a thin brush so that you won't have to clean up anything afterwards. I usually hate red and dark colours because you have to be extra careful with application, but this is totally not the case. Normally I wear 1 coat of Ozotic for a day, and then apply the second coat next day to prolong the manicure. Oh, I almost forgot: it dries in a snap!! You paint&you go, that's it. Surely, it's one of the stars in terms of formula in my stash.

For objectivity reasons I also took some pictures in the shade, to show that it does not become a boring red even then, and preserves its depth and beauty.

Even the photographer aka bf was in the mood to help me with the pics yesterday : )

*The polish was provided by the piCture pOlish company without any terms or conditions. Be sure that my opinion about the product was not influenced by anything or anyone apart from my alter ego or imaginary friends :)