Layla - Hologram Effect Flash Black

Last colour I've worn in 2012!

First I have to thank Stregalice for having found me this gem at a decent price - I would have liked to own more Layla holo shades, but they're too expensive for me, so when she told me she found some bottle for "cheap" (less than €10!), I chose the only one really worthy, the black :D

(artificial light - NO lightbox! Just the hanging lamp in my kitchen...)

Unfortunately, I don't have full sun pictures, because I only had the chance to take pictures in a mid-sunny day, but, hey, I think you can see how beautiful is this colour :>

Example: next pictures were taken in daylight, and rainbow is fully visible *_________*

(daylight)

Best best reflects, nothing more to say.

(daylight, a little washed out)

What about application?

Well, here's the deal: formula is runny and pretty impossible to work with :D

Some time ago, I bought the Essence Studio Nails 24/7 Nail Base, which was supposed to work well with holos; since that I don't have an aqua base, I tried this one.

It's actually a little sticking and gummy-looking, but first coat of "Flash Black" was a true disaster, patchy as all good holos are.

Every time I read about aqua bases, they're always effective with holos, so I guess this Essence base isn't really helpful :D

Second coat went better, but all dried mat, because this Essence base dries completely mat: almost no reflects at all!

So I applied top coat and applied a third coat, gif below shows the difference:

Left (or upper) nail is the result of two coats of "Flash Black"  + top coat = glossy with some reflects.

Right (or lower) nail is two coats of "Flash Black" + top coat + one third coat of "Flash Black" = BOOOM :D

I painted all my nails like that.

(demi-sun)

Anyway, I can't complain, if I will ever find an aqua base, I'm sure it will be a total pleasure :>

(artificial light)

Full hand shot: don't you think it's great? I'm not really a "pure black" nailpolish, this one is perfectly dark-looking and FUN at the same time!

Have a nice day/night/whatever and thanks for your attention ;¬)

Latest buyings :>

... I mean, latest from June and July.

Pupa n. 032, bought when Pupa put holos and others on sale, and Layla "Flash Black", brought to me (at a lower price) by Stregalice <3

H&M "Fantasy Ocean", still don't know if it's the tenth teal-with-gold-shimmer I own...

Next, the new Shakas: together with the holos, Shaka released some "collections": the only one I could recognize is the one dedicated to planets, but honestly I don't know the others - and I repeat, Shaka's site is awful.
Anyway:

Shaka n. 660 "Ternder" (spelling mistake, I suppose :D), n. 670 "Deep Passion" (look!), n. 775 "Forever Green", n. 860 "Universe" (the one in the "planets" collection).

These colours are to die for, so I decided to make some cap-swatches:
 

N. 860 "Universe" has a dark teal base with electric blue shimmer *_*
N. 660 "Ternder" has a beautiful and glowing pink accent in a lavender base; a little watery, though.

Next, the masterpiece, in my humble opinion:

N. 670 "Deep Passion" has a blue base and DEEP red shimmer, I BET this will be STUNNING once on my nails <3 <3 <3

N. 775 "Forever Green" looks teal in the bottle and grass green on cap, but I've discovered it's a blued green jelly: here I put just one coat (quite saturated!), I think two coats will be enough and more similar to bottle's colour, even if not so dark.

Next, thanks to a blogger whose name I can't recall now, I bought the polish on the left straight after I read her post on Rimmel's "Night Before" :D

Since that I already own "Blue Me Away", I decided for a small comparison:

"Night Before" is darker and less blue, while "Blue Me Away" is absolutely blue °_°

Shimmer (which is lightly duochrome, by the way) is the very same, I think, only inserted in a different jellish base.

Last, random picture :D
Some lovely italian girls send me "Grumpy" from the Snow White Essence LE, you all know how much I love electric blues <3

And I picked a couple of Basic Beauty for me, there were an offer on all the makeup items...

N. 76, the purple one, is VERY dark, very vampy.
N. 67PE, is a magenta PURE jelly (picture show it lighter). Yes, it's the third pink jelly from BB I own, I'll do a comparison in the future when I'll come back home.
BB, why don't you make more colours in jelly formula? :°°°


Have a nice day/night/whatever and thanks for your attention ;¬)

April's stuff

... Stuff I got in April.
Oh my, lately I'm getting so many bottles. Beautiful bottles *_* :D

From left:

- Berry-magenta JELLY from Basic Beauty, n. 68PE. How rare is a jelly nailpolish here in Italy? And it won't even be the only one in this post!

- Debby n. 186, blackish base filled with blue/purple glitters (not big size, almost a shimmer). Impulsive purchase :D

- Basic Beauty n. 15: pink-mauve creme. A little runny, but I think it will be awesome on nails. Feminine, but not corny :D

- Debby n. 175: dark emerald metallic. Another impulsive purchase...

Next pic shows the two Debby in detail:

And below you see a comparison: n. 175 reminded me of a glorious Essence discontinued green, "All Access", and I thought they were almost dupes, looking at the bottles, but my cap-test reveals they're different:

Then, a franken: remember this Sinful Colors "Let Go"? I tried to improve this colour by adding some scoops of Specktraflair pigment, but I'm not sure about the result: I got a semi-sheer lilac wiht a STRONG green reflect (but a little frosted) and holographic side.

 

Bottom part of the picture shows one coat of the franken over Essence "Passion For Fashion": in direct sun you can see the holo rainbow and the green side (it has been difficult to catpure it)... I have to try it again and find a good colour base.


Next, my first magnetics... Of course a purple and a blue :D

Upper, Prestige Bijoux, n. 03 "Topaz". It's just the purple I was looking for, cold and dimensional.

Bottom, Debby n. 4, "Neptune": it's a blue which reveals violet when magnetized = ♥ ♥

Then, more Shaka gems:

Names and numbers are listed in the picture.

First one, "Storm" (great name :D ), it's a rich semi-glassflecked nailpolish, you know my tastes :D

The other two are jellies! DARK jellies ♥

I don't understand, how it could be possible? :D

Below, "Glossy Blue" (the blue jelly) and "Storm" in detail:

And now a demostration: look at the sheerness; these are one coat each, and you can see they're actually a purple and a blue, even if, to the naked eye, in the bottles they look VERY similar.

I wanna try them alone and see how many coats they require to cover the nails :D

But I know many of you thought about glitter sandwiches :D ^_^

Have a nice day/night/whatever and thanks for your attention ;¬)

New March things... Again, pt. 3 °________°

And now, the third episode of my shopping suggestions :D

As you know, Essence renewed its collection and made a lot of great products this spring.

As soon as I stumbled accross an updated stand, I grabbed all the items I was interested in which I spotted previously on other blogs:

These are almost €20 of beauty items (an eyeshadow brush too over there) :>

While taking pictures of all of them, I realized I lost that lilac bottle in the foreground (n. 97?), I don't know where it is.

Anyway, here they are:

From left: "A Lovely Secret", lilac with pink shimmer (one of the most original shades of this season from Essence), "Gold Fever" (not a me colour, but I liked the small dark gold glitter, even if there are some red too :D ), "Passion For Fashion" (dupe of Kiko n. 333, oh well -.-)

The lacking lilac (lol) I guess is another dupe of another lilac Kiko I bought in the past... Maybe n. 338?

Next, we have the new (for Essence, duo polishes are as old as Methuselah) duo-trio Nail Colour³.

I picked them just for the shades you see in the picture below:

From top to bottom: the chunked-flakies-in-a-raspberry-syrup-base "Party All Night Long" (name of the duo: n. 02 "Shopping Trip In Soho"): how beautiful? To the naked eye i'ts brighter and pink-er, not as dark, but it's way different from "Princessorize", which is a HOT pink base.

Othe half is a Barbie pink with a Barbie pink shimmer >.<

In the middle, I tried to show you the stunning shimmer of "Ticket To The Show" (same name of the duo, n. 06); balck base with multicoloured shimmer, I hope it will show well on nails :>

Other half is something very similar to a Fontana Contarini one, the second from the left you can see here. Or a lighter version of "Gold Old Buffy"? I think you get it.

Last, probably a dupe of  Nfu-Oh n. 52, which is my favourite Nfu-Oh even if I don't have it :D So, when I saw these 4ml of  beauty, I fell in love istantly. It's called "City That Never Sleeps" and it's the duo n. 01, "midnight Date"; I have to say the other half of this duo ("Midnight Date") is great too, as it's a saturated dark blue with subtly duochrome shimmer. ♥

Finally, flakies top coat arrived in Italy too, so I picked it, useless to point that out :D

Next, Kiko released its summer collection (even if we have autumn right now, to be honest), you can see it here, but I have to say that polishes aren' that great, for me at least, you know why...

BUT there's a blue, and I can' resist it:

Kiko called these "duochromes", I think these are sure "chromes", not always "duo" :D

This blue, n. 398, is a dark indigo chrome blue with almost black edges and a subtle purple side - I don't think it will show on nails...

I wanna warn you it's a little on the sheer side (I guess three coats at least, we'll see it later), but I don't have anything like that and probably tomorrow I will find the most pigmented blue-with-dark-edges by another brand, but who cares :D

Last, my Swiss-nailpolish-partner Lisa got me two of the "new" Catrice top coats, together with a couple of little cute things :>

Top part of the picture, from left: C05 "Return Of Space Cowboys", gunmetal base filled with colour-changing micro-chunkies-glitters ♥ ♥ and a bottle of Sinful Colors "Let Me Go", which I always wanted, but always read as well about its terrible quality; since she had it for swap, I decided to take it for frankening purpose, let's see if I'll get something good out of it :D

Bottom part of picture, from left: Lisa made me a surprise present and included in the packet one of the new Deborah Scarabèe n. 70 "Twinkle Star", a champagne metal-chrome with a blue-green side - see the swatch here by Stregalice - thank you!

On the right, C06 "Godfather Of Pearl", a stunning mix of lighter micro-chunkies-glitters in a semi-milky base; I noticed that glitters are almost the same of  "Return Of Space Cowboys", but they surely contain something more, like tiny silver glitters which make "Godfather Of Pearl" lighter and a little more luminous.

Will these top coats arrive in Italy too? I still don't know, that's why I asked Lisa to get me them, as we say: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure :D

Have a nice day/night/whatever and thanks for your attention ;¬)

Kiko - Frozen n. 06 + Ozotic Pro - Elytra n. 528 + Kleancolor - Chunky Holo Purple

... This is the little touch of colour I mentioned in my previous post :D

Since we're having sunny days, after the snow, glitters called me and I replied :D

(full sun)

I often see in blogs how much beautiful is layering different coloured flakies, but I don't have them (well, at least not the most common types), so I thought about these duochromy glitters.

(daylight)

See how these three buddies look like combined together?

I layered them in a sandwich mode: Ozotic/Kleancolor/Ozotic/Kleancolor/Ozotic.
My first idea was to apply two layers each, but in the end I've noticed that the glitters contained in the Kleancolor are bigger than the Ozotic's, so I had to apply a third coat of Ozotic to let them show better.

(full sun)

But final result is so beautiful, like a black Carnival :D
I see every colour of the spectrum ♥

(low light)

Clearly, camera can't catch all the single glistens, so you had to imagine that there are hundreds of sparkles on the nails in addition to the ones you see in my pictures.

(blurred on the left, it appears like a multicolour foil :>)

What about this mani in artificial light? *_*

And look at the colour changes!

Well, a little over the top, but it all depends on your personality, plus I've shortened my nails...
Yes, sometimes I do think that darker/crazy shades look a little better with shorter nails.


Have a nice day/night/whatever and thanks for your attention ;¬)

Kiko - Frozen n. 06

From the latest Kiko winter collection, Chic Chalet, during sales I picked three nailpolishes: two I already showed here, and a third one, the black of the collection, n. 06:

It's difficult to catch it in pictures, but this black contains an inner pearly silver vein, you can see it in the bottle shot below.

Nothing more to say, these are two coats, it's quite pigmented, top quality as usual, dries quickly and glossy (see first photo :> ).
I wore it alone just for a day, then I added... a touch of colour, you'll see :D


Have a nice day/night/whatever and thanks for your attention ;¬)

New buyings, a swap, a comparison...

Ok, this new posting layout is somewhat confusing and very stupid (I had to rewrite things tens of times, text options keep changin' themselves without any intervention by me!), but I'm trying to get used to it, because I guess it will be the definite one and the old one will disappear soon.

Then, I saw a lot of blogs with the new comments system why I don't have it? :^|

Anyway, in case you 're interested in new items, here are mines:

Kiko n. 03 (metallic-frost green) and n. 350 (champagne? I don't know...), two limited edition colours from two different makeup collections; they were on sale, so I grabbed them, together with the black Frozen one (not pictured).

These came from Switzerland!

A girl mad about duochromes asked for some Fontana Contarini she saw on my blog, and I sent her a handful of them; since Re-mix Your Style hasn't been released here in Italy, I asked her for some topcoats, and she managed to get me Love (detailed in picture) and Rock (*psst*, if you have the other two and want to sell them to me, my email is up to the left :D); but she was so kind and added an Accessorize purple nailpolish (n. 34) - they aren't sold in Italy, as usual :D - and a Misslyn n. 595, a German brand I suppose, not sold in Italy again.

As you can see, it's a gorgeous slightly duochrome blue = *__________*

Next, my last find: a new shade of Deborah Prêt à Porter, named "Carpe Diem".

I compared it with other similar shades I already own: Fontana Contarini n. 75 (left) and Essence "Where's The Party?" (right), always on my trusted plastic bottles cap :D

(all two coats)

N. 75 is the most changing colour above all three, while "Carpe Diem" is the most pigmented.

Pretty nice, don't you think? Duochrome from a teal to a purple <3 <3


Have a nice day/night/whatever and thanks for your attention ;¬)

New arrivals... including a special one :D

Yeah, november buyings...
This time I included a very special one, you'll see "it" later :D

Do you remember the Fontana Contarini polishes?
Last week I purchased some for a girl who saw my posts and wanted the duochromes, so while there I snatched a couple (well, more than a couple :D ) for me too :P

From upper left:

- n. 76, strong amber/pink copper duochrome.

- n. X (doesn't have any sticker on), it's a clear base infused with irregular shaped glitters - like microflakies - old gold coloured, very beautiful.

- n. X again, darkest teal jelly *_*

- n. 51, it's something like China Glaze's "White Cap", but its glitters are soo tiny and multicoloured, I spied gold, orange and green... We'll see them better when I'll wear it :>

- n. 65, STRONG duochrome from lime green to orange/pink <3 Imagine it over black...

Above, a picture in the sun (yeah, SUN!) and, below, the duochrome of n. 65: isn' it beautiful?

At first, it reminded me of "Prism@tic White", but fortunately n. 65 it's much more sheer, not pearly/milky at all, so it's great for layerings :>


Then, a new Layla Ceramic Effect, a blue one with tiny silvery white glitters, and "Old Gold Buffy" from the Essence's Vampire Love TE.
Seems like I'm in the mood of old goldy shades.

Last from Essence, base and top coat from their Better Than Gel Nails range.

I already used the top coat a couple of times, and the base coat one time, because I didn't have time to do a full coloured manicure, but I'm not completely satisfied at the moment, especially with the top coat: it makes may nails so shiny for all the week, but it's way less durable than my regular clear varnish top coat, I got chips I never usually get after only two or three days of wearing...


Well, it's the moment of our (me and my boyfriend) special new "buying" - no, I didn't buy it :D
We got it one week ago...

This is Coal :D
Black male Maine Coon, positive FIV, one year old, he's born on November 1th *_______________*

I'm in love, it's my dream cat <3 :D


Have a nice day/night/whatever and thanks for your attention ;¬)