ESSIE ABSOLUTELY SHORE

A week ago, I let myself binge shop Essie shades. Previously, I had always stared at the huge Essie shelf not really knowing which shade to get, so instead of getting something, I left empty handed.

But, that day I allowed myself to walk out with three shades. (They'll all make an appearance on the blog, no worries.) One of those shades was Absolutely shore. This is a special one. As soon as I applied it, I felt it made my hands look so much more feminine. Does that sound weird? It's such a gooorgeous soft pastel shade that you really need to see it on your nails, because the bottle definitely doesn't do the color justice.



For some reason, when you google the color, the swatches look a lot more green then the color ever appeared in my eyes, I rather consider it an extremely soft mint color. Even on the website, it looks like a light green and the color is described as a sea foam green, which is definitely way too green for me to admit that Absolutely shore is a sea foam green shade. On my nails it just doesn't show up that way.



I feel like I analyse the colors far too excessively. But when it comes to swatches, I feel like they can portray a color shade in a thousand different ways.

This glitter shoot took a whole lot of effort and many many photos to get it right, but I think the outcome is quite pleasing. :)

ESSIE IN STITCHES

A dark pink blush nail polish... In stitches... Pink... Stitches...

Nope, I just can't figure out how Essie's team comes up with such crazy names for their nail polishes. OPI also has some crazy ones, while NARS's are plain inappropriate. I wonder how they decide what to name which color. The naming aside, this nail polish is described as a cheeky blush pink, an innocent-dusty dark pink, and I have to agree with Essie's website. It's a wonderful color for fall, and it is actually a part of Essie's 2010 Fall Collection. It is also my third nail polish by Essie and with every application I am more and more in love with Essie's nail polishes. They glide on easily, they're incredibly opaque, dry fast, don't cheap, last for days with no wear - even my OPI isn't this good. Yeah, I only have one OPI nail polish, a post about that one will follow. I've always read such rave reviews about OPI's nail polishes, and the whole brand is a lot more out there than Essie.

I keep wearing this shade because it's very feminine, not too pink, but pink enough to stop it from looking bordeaux.

I am now in the mood for a red and a dark red nail polish by Essie, please recommend your favorite shades. :)

DEBORAH MILANO SHINE TECH IN SHADE 29

This is going to be hard to write. I try hard to be an optimist, to find the best in everything. But, with Deborah Milano's nail polish in the shade number 29, that's incredibly hard to do. I bought this nail polish months and months ago back in Croatia but I don't like using it. You will see by the photos of the bottle, it is obvious that I have used it many times, and I am forcing myself to use it up even though I don't enjoy it.

The color is a nice deep red, it goes on smooth, it's very opaque, but the general quality of the nail polish is where the problems appear. It does not chip though, it can go for up to two whole days without a single chip, but the problem is how fragile the surface or general consistency of the nail polish is. I applied two coats and let my nails dry completely. With most nail polishes it takes 10 minutes tops. But with this one, even during the next day I couldn't properly touch or scratch the nail without leaving a dent in it. I'm really hoping that you understand what I mean by the way I'm describing it.

Basically, through all those scratches and fingerprints, the glossiness of the polish disappears. That's very unfortunate because it could have been such a nice, glossy, dark red color. I applied it yesterday evening and my nails already look scratched with an obvious lack of shine which is why I rarely wear it over a day. What is your experience with this nail polish brand? Have you experienced the same problem?
 

ESSIE CHINCHILLY

Store all grey and beige nail polishes away. I mean it.

I've been enjoying the lack of true, bright color on my nails lately. Greys, beiges, anything colorless feels very autumn-y. So, as I previously posted a lavender grey Essie nail polish, this was the polish that I bought with it. Chinchilly is a "sleek granite grey" nail polish, says the website. Definitely not as blue as Cocktail bling, the color actually reminds me and my boyfriend (who's horrified by just about any color other than red) of clay, as there are definitely some brownish undertones in it, so I wouldn't say it's as grey as granite. Aaanyway, enough color description. In my head this color, as most do, I guess, looked better matte, so I used Essence's matte top coat. I was very pleased with the result. I then paired this nail color with a very old, yet sweet, feather ring. I was thrilled. My boyfriend - not so much. :)

ESSIE COCKTAIL BLING

This fall, I've been obsessing over grey and beige nails. It's actually quite surprising, though, that I've never before owned a single grey nail polish while at the same time 90% of my wardrobe is in tones of grey and beige.

Even though Essie's website describes the color Cocktail Bling as a pale grey, I wouldn't confirm that. To me, it seems to be a lavender grey, there are definitely tones of blue or lavender in it. I still need to find a real, pale grey. Also, this shade is my very first Essie nail polish, so I'm yet to be convinced of its quality and whether or not it justifies the fairly high price (€9,99).

What are your thoughts on Essie's nail polishes in general? Which shades are your favorite? :)

BOURJOIS SO LAQUE GLOSSY

I am back. I am actually back. This time for real. I have been missing this blog for far too long and this time, I will not quit. I also have a new blog design - new header, new fonts, bigger images. A lot of things have happened in the past few years which I'll slowly reveal throughout future posts. Without further ado, this is today's post. A lovely mint nail polish.

 I was introduced to Bourjois back when I was very little. I remember that my mother had one of their small round blushes and that she would take it everywhere. She would also let me play with it because I was incredibly drawn to it due to its strong, pink color. I bought this nail polish on one of my trips to Croatia. As it turns out, Bourjois stopped selling their products in Austria a few years ago, so I'll have to stock up on anything I like in Croatia or order it online.

04 Amande defile is a pretty mint color. Sadly, and I'm going to say this right at the beginning, the color payoff isn't that great. I'm used to applying 2 coats, everything above I consider sheer. This took 3 coats to get this opaque color, so I have to count that as a con. When applied though, the color looks great. Not too green, not too blue. I love pairing mints with gold, so I always wear gold jewellery with a mint manicure.

I'd say that, considering I applied this nail polish yesterday, and that I can already see some scratches on some of my nails, the longevity of the nail polish is not great, even though three coats were applied. Can you recommend a good mint color with great color payoff and quality?

KIKO SHOPPING TRIP

The very first Kiko Cosmetics store opened in Vienna on April 13th, and since I was on my way to that shopping centre to get black ballerina flats, I stopped by. I was amazed by their striking blue nail polish I received as a friend and featured in one of my posts a looong time ago. Link here.

All the nail polishes were €2.50, which is a nice deal since usually they're €3.90. I decided to spend 10 euros (I am trying not to spend overly huge amounts of money on make up). I looked at their blushes, eye shadows, lipsticks and lipliners and the array is beautiful! Also, all their make up is arranged so nicely, and the staff was incredibly nice to me.

I picked up four quite similar colors, but different shades. The bottles don't have the names on the bottles so I looked their names up on the Kiko website. From left to right I got:

209 French Baby Pink
359 Light Peach
358 Peach Rose
366 Rose Terracotta

And here are close ups of the colors:

209 French Baby Pink

359 Light Peach

358 Peach Rose

366 Rose Terracotta

I have been loving the clean nail look on one of my dear friends from uni, so for today I went with French Baby Pink and I love how nice it looks when applied.

ESSENCE SEASON OF EXTREMES NEON ORANGE NAIL POLISH

This spring/summer's biggest trend are neon colors. I had to pick up this beautiful neon orange nail polish by Essence - 03 PIMP MY BRIGHT. It's from their whole line of "extreme" colors: Season of Extremes.

And when the sun finally came out after days and days of rain, my mother surprised me with beautiful orange roses which reminded me of this nail polish so I was tempted to wear it again.

WHERE HAVE I BEEN?! + MATTE AQUA NAILS

Hello my lovely readers, I'm back from being the worst blogger ever. And I'm ashamed to admit that. I'm that type of person that enjoys doing many things at once, so it's very easy for me to leave some behind for a while and get back to them.

After I returned from my trip from Germany, I started getting into beauty retouching. I've been using Photoshop for ages, but just recently I discovered all the secrets of the industry and how much time is invested to turn a raw photo from a studio to a high fashion one you'll end up looking at in the magazines. And trust me, you have no idea what hides behind those retouched photos you most likely admire.

Aside from that, I've been preparing for college. My dream has always been to study architecture and it does take work if you want to get in since the college only accepts 120 people. Hope I'll be one of them. Enough of small talk.

Three days ago I bought Essence's nail art special effect! topper. It's a matte topcoat that turns every nail polish into a matte one. The reason why I bought it is that I started loving that nice, satin, matte finish and instead of looking for the colors that I like in matte edition, this is a perfect, and very cheap solution.

Excuse the shortness of my nails, I've tried to regrow them several times already and this is another try.

GALAXY NAILS

I've been gone for a long time. But I'm back. My nails were having a rough time for the past few weeks and I was too ashamed to post photos of them online. Also, this is not going to be a post about my ring collection because, at the moment, I am in Germany visiting my brother. And you know what that means - an excuse to buy tons of stuff!

I've been wanting to get Essence's Time for Romance glitter nail polish for the longest time, ever since I fell in love with Make it Golden. So I bought that and a plain black nail polish because I hadn't owned one for about 2 years. Today, after the regrowth process of my nails had finally finished, I painted my nails black.

On top of that I added Essence's Time for Romance.

I am really loving this. I was left with galaxy/outer space-like looking nails and I think I'm going to be wearing the combination of these two nail polishes on my nails a lot. I'll try to experiment by adding some white dots or specks and other colors with a simple sponge to make it more three-dimensional. How did you spend the winter holidays?

BETWEEN RED AND BROWN NAILS.

I've been away. Life's been tough for the past 2 weeks, I had many exams but luckily, this week is the last so I can finally come back to keeping this blog alive. I'm leaving for Berlin on January 1st and I cannot wait to get back because I think I'm going to do a little giveaway of things I buy there. Today I'm wearing a gorgeous color, and it's hard to determine the exact name since it's red but with a strong touch of brown. It's definitely not a clear red. The wing ring is one of my favorites, I've been wearing it a lot. I think I'm going to do a post about my ring collection as I already mentioned. How's your life been? Are you looking forward to Christmas?

UNION JACK NAILS.

I love the UK's flag. I have already made myself a t-shirt with it and now it's on my nails. :)

MY VERY FIRST GLITTER NAILS.

What's that? Yes, indeed, I bought my very first glitter nail polish. I never thought I would have done it since I don't like crazy, bling bling things on myself, I don't really believe they look good on a minimalistic person who practically only wears and lives in the most monotonous colors you can think of - white, grey, black and beige. On others, I love them.

But every now and then, I surprise myself with a pop or if you want - a breath of color. When I wear a red cardigan, people think something is wrong with me - really - I get those questions from friends. :)

So, yesterday, I bought this little, precious nail polish with gold shimmer, glitter and flecks. It's Essence 67 Make It Golden. I paired it with Essence's 62 Reach Peach, a beautiful maroon color with just a hint of brown I would say. They're both from the Color & Go line of nail polishes, and I really like those. They're small so you use them up quickly, and they're the cheapest - around 11 kunas which would be somewhere around $2.

What are your thoughts on crazy glittery nails? :) Is there some nail effect/nail polish type you would never wear?

Also, should I try and go 5 days with this on? I'm thinking I'll have a very nice time trying to take the glitter off.

A GUIDE ON NAILS

This is going to be a long post but I am sure that you will read something new, and maybe even scary.

Most girls that I know have problems with their nails. Their nails are extremely soft, even so soft that they can bend them over, they break and peel very easily. I, myself, used to have this problem back when I was small and used to bite my nails.

PEELING, BRITTLE & SPLITTING NAILS
What causes the problems? To sum it up - the nail plate is made up of several layers of a protein called keratin. Those layers, ideally, are sealed together to form a unified nail. Some nails can't hold on to moisture. Repeatedly wetting and drying your hands can cause nails to dry out but too much moisture can also weaken the nails, making them soft and causing them to split.
Why it happens? Peeling can happen if your hands are in water a lot, or exposed to cold, dry air, and it can also mean that you're lacking linoleic acid which can be increased by taking in more vegetable oils. You could also be lacking iron in your diet, and that can also cause cold hands and feet, pale skin and headaches.

It is very important to care for your nails by filing, moisturizing but it's even more important to care for them within by drinking lots of water and eating healthy.
Nails, skin and hair are all connected to vitamin B and your organism might be lacking it which may be the cause of bad skin, hair and nails. But, before you buy vitamin B in pills as a supplement, try eating more foods that contain a high level of vitamin B. You can find a whole list of those here:
http://www.bdiet.com/goodfoods.html
Getting enough calcium, zinc, protein and vitamins A and C is important as well.

Always, and I cannot stress this enough, try to go for a natural remedy for any health problem that you have, because most people don't know that most artificial remedies you buy in the store are practically poisons. Right now I'm in the process of constantly analyzing product ingredients before I buy them and replacing all the bad ones that I own.

NAIL STRENGTHENERS CAN KILL YOU!
Yes, I am serious and I know that this will come as a shock to many of you.
Most nail hardeners contain an ingredient called FORMALDEHYDE. This ingredient is also the main ingredient in products that are used for a brazilian blowout, a procedure becoming more and more popular around the world. The products' labels say that they "contain no formaldehyde," as opposed to being "formaldehyde-free". But the products do contain methylene glycol -- a liquid form of the chemical that emits formaldehyde gas when heated.

The short-term health effects of formaldehyde exposure, as http://www.cancer.gov reports, are:
"When formaldehyde is present in the air at levels exceeding 0.1 ppm, some individuals may experience adverse effects such as watery eyes; burning sensations in the eyes, nose, and throat; coughing; wheezing; nausea; and skin irritation. Some people are very sensitive to formaldehyde, whereas others have no reaction to the same level of exposure." 

But the long-term health effects are much more worse. Formaldehyde is a carcinogen, which means that it can cause cancer and it is actually linked to breast cancer. So, if you're using a nail strengthener, find its ingredients. Try to stay away from formaldehyde, toluene and dibutyl phthalate because they mess with your hormones, your respiratory and neuro system. You can start your own research on these three ingredients and read terrifying stories from women who have had very bad experiences from exposure to these ingredients.

Home remedies:
I have not tried these but I have found them on various internet sites where people claim that they work.
-Soak nails in lemon juice for 15 minutes everyday.
-Use a clove of garlic occasionally. Rub it in your fingernails and if you find that it smells bad, the smell of nail polish will neutralize that.
-Use a little bit of olive or jojoba oil after you do the dishes, clean, etc. - it really strengthens the nails and provides moisture for dry cuticles.

Other ways of caring for your nails:
- don't bite them.
- don't cut your nails, file them instead.
- invest money in a good glass file, you will see how much better it is than a metal or a cardboard one.
- try to file your nails in one direction.
- use hand creams or natural oil on your hands and cuticles to keep them soft and moisturized.

Please, do take this seriously, we daily ingest many dangerous chemicals in the tiniest amounts, but their long-term intake can have serious and lethal consequences.

BABY PINK NAILS!

There is ONLY one more day left to enter my giveaway, so if you haven't, do so here.

I took these photos a few days ago, back when I still had long hair. Yes, I cut my hair. For as long as I know, I've wanted long hair, but now that I pretty much had it, I got bored with it. It is sort of tiring to have and care for long hair when your natural hair is curly, mostly because of all the time spent blow drying it straight, straightening, repairing the damage caused by those processes. And I sort of needed to end the obsessive bond that I had with my hair. So I cut my hair into a bob. You might see that in one of my next posts when I'm going to be reviewing a lipstick.

What I was wearing was Essence's Wanna Kiss?, an adorable baby pink color.

BRIGHT RED NAILS!

A few posts back I said that I prefer wearing dark red colors over bright, bold red ones. But today I was in the mood for bright red nails since I haven't painted them like that in months. I am wearing Essence's Multi Dimension XXXL Shine Nail Polish in the color 29 GLAM GIRL.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do today. Maybe just sit back and relax, read a book, eventually study or draw. I don't think I'll be going out tonight. What are you doing this weekend? Are you going out since it's Saturday? :)

THE FIVE DAY NAIL POLISH EXPERIMENT - DEBORAH

No good nail polish goes unpunished.
I decided to "punish" Deborah's SenseTECH in 04 by wearing it for 5 consecutive days. I fell in love with this nail polish as soon as it dried on my nails, which was very fast. Here's the conclusion.

I like this nail polish a lot. It hasn't chipped anywhere except for two tiny spots, one on each thumb finger, which happened around the 3rd day, and the big gap on my pointer finger is there because a small layer piece of my nail peeled off. So there is no major chipping like with Essence's nail polish, just mere tip wear. Whenever I notice that my nails are getting weak, or I notice peeling, breaking and problems like those, I do a strengtening treatment. I'm going to write about that very soon.

I'll post everything concerning the giveaway I'm planning Sunday so stay tuned for that and enter!

MINTY NAILS!

Today it struck me how close winter is. For the past few years the first snow fell around the 20th of November, and yes, I actually write these things down. :)
But, while it's still fall, I picked up a branch with small yellow leaves outside.

I'm wearing Deborah's Sense TECH 100% MATT nail polish in the color 04.
I wouldn't say this nail polish is 100% matt - rather satin, because it's not entirely matte, there is still a slight shine but nothing strong enough to classify is as glossy.
On the back of the bottle it says to "apply on bare nails to make your fashion statement. Do not use base coat, top coat, drying drops or hand lotion", so that's what I did, two coats and now I'm enjoying my minty nails, especially the satin finish. I have never previously applied anything other than creme nail polishes. I am not a huge fan of glitter, shimmer, pearl, frost finishes on my nails, I definitely don't find them ugly but I feel like they don't coincide with my minimalist nature.

One more announcement: I will be doing a giveaway in a few days to honor my loyal followers. I first have to go out and buy the products I'm going to be giving away so watch out for that post! :)

I cannot find anything about Deborah Milano testing on animals so I cannot give it a cruelty free stamp.