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? :)

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 : )