Amsterdã

*planned post; me camping on Chalkidiki*

"Too much glitter?" No, never heard such thing ; ) That's why today I will be showing you... glitter on glitter : ) And very special one, because it's hard to find in this part of the world where I live. So I only own it due to lovely Mauni, who was so kind to send it to me in a swap from Brazil! Crazy amounts of glitter you see below is Hits Speciallità Amsterdã layered over Dare To Wear Ready For My Close-Up (swatched here).

Amsterdã is a multicolour glitter of various sizes, including silver, gold, blue and green larger hexagonal particles as well as smaller colourful glitterinis. I should say that this polish matches much more with the city it was named after, than, say, Cairo.

Application did not cause any problems: the glitter is a bit dense, but there is nothing impossible in layering it properly. I think I'll try a dark blue glitter base next time :) 

The more I try Glitters of The World unite by Hits Speciallità, the more I like them! They are fun to play around with, to seek for cool combinations of base colour + glitter topper. Now it feels pity that the bottles are not big enough, so I even might be able to [ohoh!] finish a couple of them, who knows :) 

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! :)

Water Spotted Fail

For those who miss some indecency and mess in my blog - here you are, a creepy manicure : ) You know the situation when the mani idea looks so nice in your head, and after you implement your vision, you glance at your nails and say "ewww". That was the case. Meet the great and horrible water spotted manicure : ) 

If you wonder about the technique: I was using this tutorial. By the way, instead of hand sanitiser you can take whatever spray that contains alcohol. I grabbed my dad's old deodorant, I hope he never finds out, hehe. 

What's wrong in here? Right, the colours. My idea was to use black over bright coral (Orly Pixy Stix), but the black didn't want to spot, so I used dark purple - Andreia #96. If in reality it was not sooo bad, on the photos it looks like splattered blood :{

And I don't know why, but the size of the dots varied a lot when I was spraying. It depends on the spraying intensity and distance, so I didn't learn to control all that yet. Water-created manicures are still something I have to practise in :) 

What do you think? Gross, right? :) 

Souvenir Eggs

Me here again with an "egg" polish! :) Another creation of the Russian brand El Corazón - #423/106 from their "Souvenir Eggs" collection. Seriously, how can such simple things as eggs inspire someone that much so as to create a whole nail polish collections? Well, if we recall the Faberge wizard, maybe it doesn't seem impossible anymore.. :) 

Unlike its "Easter Eggs" sisters (I showed 2 shades here), El Corazón "Souvenir Eggs" #423/106 has glitters of two colours instead of one - smaller black and larger silver hexagonal glitter. The base colour is mint semi-jelly - a warmer shade of light green. 

The texture of the polish is just great, it applied nicely in 2 coats and dried pretty fast - I didn't even use the top coat. To be honest, I always avoid top-coating if I can : )  

The bottle is the standard one of the brand. By the way, "active bio-gel" formula is supposed to fortify your nails! Honestly speaking, I can't report on any effect just because my nails are very thick by themselves, but I've read several reviews stating that it actually works! 

Generally, I think that this is a nice shade for all seasons, although the pastel green whispers spring : ) 

Other shades of the Souvenir Eggs collection you can see here. If you would like to purchase El Corazón polishes - they ship worldwide, so if you want to get some of those, just write an e-mail listing your order. 

*The nail polishes were kindly provided by El Corazón company for my consideration. In this post I expressed my honest and unbiased opinion about the products.

Yellow Mess

It all started with a simple desire to wear yellow. See, I don't have a lot of yellow shades in my stash, so choosing did not take a lot of time - I opted for Essence My Yellow Fellow. After enjoying it for a day, I decided to add up some stamping, and here I was pondering a lot. I ended up with a random lines stamping... and I called this manicure "a yellow mess" : ) 

The stamping was not any complicated: I used a BM-316 plate and triple-stamped the lines using Konad white polish, China Glaze 2030 and Orly Hook Up. I was just placing the stamper in a random order, so that the lines are not stamped one over the other. As simple as that.

And now I'll do something I've never done before in this blog - I'm posting a pic of my full hand! So that you can laugh at my curvy and bony fingers : )

I hope you enjoyed the yellow mess, because I actually did. And the people in the public transport did as well : ) 

Surprise Pack from Belarus!

Back in December (great blogger I am, I know *sigh*) I got a parcel that was both a giveaway win and a surprise pack at the same time. One of the nail bloggers that I follow for a long time, Tatiana, decided to organise a spontaneous giveaway and just award two followers who comment the most. I happened to be one of the lucky girls, and some weeks later I received a pack - and I had no idea about its content! :)

See, Tatiana lives in Belarus, and she decided to send a full box of local Belarusian goodies! I mean, how amazing is the concept of showing other bloggers the best of the local products!! Here I totally bow down to her idea :) 

In the parcel I got 2 face masks: Belita algae-based, and BelKosmex moisturising with hyaluronic acid and vitamins; a cuticle eraser (a soft cuticle remover) and a nail polish from the brand Viteks (orig. Вiтекс).  

I have to say that I totally loved the face masks and the cuticle treatment, and - who would doubt - I adore the nail polish! The only Belarusian creation in my stash and quite a bright shade - Viteks Passion Dance (orig. Biтекс Танец Страсти) has gained my sympathy from the first stroke!

Viteks Passion Dance is a cold-hued red/crimson semi-jelly meaning that it's more liquid than creme and way more glossy. Application did not cause any problems: 2 coats and a great thin brush attached. I did have a feeling that it dries longer than expected, but I was in a hurry anyways and could have an inadequate perception of time. Top coat application eliminated that concern :) 

I liked the bright crimson shade a lot, and I had nothing similar in my stash as I normally grab darker red tones. Amazingly, this one suited me well, and it also works great for pedicure! :) 

Oh, how I love surprise packs!! :) One more time I'd like to thank Tatiana - check her nice blog by the way! - for sending me all these wonderful things!

Yay for nail polish international community! :D

Fashionista At The Party

Remember the first Fashionista polish that I was showing recently? I have another one, this time El Corazón Fashionista At The Party (orig. Модница на вечеринке). Bright, summery, eye-catching - a perfect combination for the warm summer days :) 

Just like its lilac sister, Fashionista At The Party is a bright, even neon-y jelly with white hexagonal and smaller-sized white "sand" glitter. It's just the base colour is barbie pink instead of lilac.

Believe me, you WILL be gathering looks (and questions) with this polish on :) I did! Mostly of my colleagues and people in the subway :) 

The application was very similar too: 2 easy coats, not so well-drying though, so you'll have to use a fast dry top coat. As I was writing already, using top coat also adds some glossy-glassy look, which I like so much in these polishes.

I have a weird skin tone colour on these photos, please disregard it! You probably know how hard it is to photograph the neon polishes... :) 

Usual close-up pics:

If you want to get your hands on any of El Corazon pretty things, you cam simply write them an e-mail listing your order - they ship worldwide! Also, you can browse through their collections on El Corazón web-site.

*The nail polish was kindly provided by El Corazón company for my consideration. In this post I expressed my honest and unbiased opinion about the product.