ABC Challenge: Letter U - Marine, U rock

Hello everybunny!

Ten days ago I spent a weekend with my French family, and it was a blast. Of course, I had taken  a little of my nail gearwith me, and so my cousins (Marine & Laure) and I spent the rainy afternoons home, being girly, chatting and nail-arting :)

For today's installment of the ABC Challenge I am feauturing Marine's nails, of which I have always been secretly jealous [I guess it's not a secret anymore :p]. Marine, U are the star of this post:

For this mani I used two easy coats of Essie Go Overboard as a base. The details were done using another Essie (the name of which I can't remember because it was hers), striping tape and a fine nail art brush. 

But I need to give credit where it's deserved! What you're looking at is the result of team-working: Marine for the nails and patience, Laure for the thumb's cute lace and me for the rest ^^ Yay for family, for such a beautiful model and for a great afternoon!

Take care!

M.

Berlin Haul

Hello polish lovers!

Here is my Berlin haul + some polishes I got as a present for Christmas. I get a polishgasm just looking at those pictures, true nail porn. Enjoy!

 Ciaté Regatta - Sally Hansen Blue it - NOPI Sky's the Limit - Misslyn Blue Lights

 Misslyn Royal Desire - Misslyn Space Camp - Rival de Loop (?) - Ciaté Halo

 Rituals Mystic Amethyst - Essie Bahama Mama - NOPI Fanatical Fuchsia - Manhattan (?)

 Ciaté Starlet - OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service - BeYu 475 - Kiko crackle green

 Essie Lapiz of Luxury - Catrice After Eight - Ciaté Glametal - OPI Goldeneye

Misslyn Star Dust - Misslyn Over and Over - P2 Passion - Manhattan 46D

Is there any of those lacquers you want to see first?

M.

Born Pretty Store stamping plate Review

Hola, señoritas!

I plead guilty today. Guilty of waiting too long to review this stamping plate, that I haven't been able to find on Born Pretty Store's site anymore. I hope it has not been discontinued, because otherwise this post makes absolutely no sense.

The plate I was sent contains a great deal of designs, mostly flowers, but you can also find some butterflies here and there. Close up of the plate:

And here's the results, stamped on a piece of paper using a very pigmented black I had at hand: 

As you can see, the designs came clean and surprisingly detailed, except one. I am positively impressed about the quality of this plate, and as the only con I'd mention the sharpness of the edges. Make sure you don't handle it with a recently painted manicure, otherwise you'll end up with little markings, no doubt. If you're as clumsy as me, that is ;) I am not willing to underestimate your abilities!

And that's just some testing I've done on my current manicure and Gosh Silver.

The latter also illustrates the fact that Essie Bahama Mama is one well behaved polish: the picture has been taken after 5 days of wear and you can only notice nail growth (I can't blame Essie for that, though) and some minor tipwear. Nothing to complain about!

Have a nice weekend! :)

M.

ABC Challenge: Letter B - Bahama Mama (Essie)

Hello there!

Argh, I am having an intense week at work, so I am glad to be participating in this challenge to keep me focused on something unrelated to laws and crimes. Blog, sweet blog! Yup, I joined this group of ladies slightly late, but I hope to be able to follow the rythm all along :) I haven't even checked if I have all the polishes/letters I need... I will hopefully do my homework this weekend.

This is the polish I am currently sporting, a great burgundy creme from Essie, Bahama Mama:

It's another of my Berlin acquisitions, I am so glad it came home with me! Sometimes a good creme can really rock your world, and this one is just perfect. The formula is amazing, I actually liked it way better than Lapiz of Luxury's. And the color is sexy and classy, perfect for work and for a romantic evening (that I don't plan on having, though); the kind of color that makes you feel good. 

You can also take a look at The Boyfriend's Christmas present: that awesome ring! Lurving it!

Take care!

M.

Striped manicure and eBay experience. Essie Lapiz of Luxury & Ciaté Glametal

Hello darlings :)

How is your weekend going? I hope it's been a BLAST. Mine has been nice, but I truly believe someone is tricking me time-wise, because the working days never go by so fast. It's suspicious.

Last weekend I was in Berlin visiting a dear friend of mine; can you guess what I brought back home? Marzipan? No. Beer? Nope. 18 bottles of nail polish. YEAH! Plus I had 6 more as a present, which gives us a total of 24 new bottles of polish, infinite combinations and mind colapse due to the well known "which one am I going to wear first?!" syndrome. 

The first lucky pair of the bunch were Essie Lapiz of Luxury and Ciaté Glametal. While I loved this combination, I had a hell of a time doing this manicure. The story comes after the break:

I have a MASSIVE problem right now. I'd dare to say it would be a tragedy for any of us polish addicts lovers. I ran out of top coat *sobs*. Worse than that, I ran out of any of my preferred top coats. So let's see: 

1. INM Out The Door: empty. 

2. Seche Vite: extra thick, gooey and bubbling prone. 

3. Poshé: empty.

4. Why on earth would I need a fourth favourite?!

That's what happened: none of them can be bought phisically in Spain, so I need to restock periodically via eBay. Thus, as any other time, I checked my fave sellers' stores and bought 2 INM's in advance. One month and two weeks in advance, to be exact. I was so naïve that I thought I had plenty of time before any of the other bottles would be emptied, and honestly the idea of running out of all of 'em never crossed my mind.

BUT my trusted eBay seller, Ms. Glitzandglamorize, let me down this time. Shamelessly, I might add. 20 days after shipping I contacted her, telling her I was worried because her packages never took longer than 10 days to arrive, and asking her if she was aware of any problem. She replied in barely three sentences telling me to be patient because the usual delivery lapse was one month. I was surprised, because in more than four years not a single package had taken more than 10 days to arrive... But I waited. Until a month and a week had passed. And I contacted her again. 

She unblushingly replied that I had to keep waiting because the delivery could take an entire month. At this stage I was completely pissed off. This lady had not taken the time to read the content of my emails, and her lack of proper reply was unacceptable. And more so when items acquired after my purchase to her had arrived from China before that package. China, for christ's sake. And even more so when another seller had just contacted me fo he was concerned that I had not received his package yet (again, sent from China) after 20 days, asking me if I could take the time to wait and offering me a refund or to ship it again. What a difference, don't you think?

So I bought my top coats from another seller, left Ms. Glitzandglamorize a bad evaluation and asked for a refund. She didn't even reply to me. She refunded me partially, and after inquiry she told me she had charged me a fee. Un-fucking-believable. 

All that story is to make public such a bad service in case it can help anybody in determining who to buy from in eBay. But also to explain why my activity here has been slightly lesser than normal. I hope this situation will be fixed soon and that I'll be back to polishing as always. I have to face the fact that I am nobody without my top coat ;)

Have a nice Monday (I know, it's paradoxal).

M.

Naked nails + favourite nail treatments.

Hey there!

I thought maybe someone out there was interested in knowing which nail products I use in a regular basis, that proved to work for me and could work for you aswell. 

First off, here's a picture of my bare nails. I confess I took the picture in a moment in which I had little staining and the overall look of 'em was healthy, but I also need to say I had major staining problems in the past. The thing is I love me some blue / green colors; the big fat staining ones, you know? Added to this, I didn't use any base for several years (shame on me!), so after moving in this new flat in August, process due to which my nails sucked big time and broke repeatedly, I faced the fact that my nailies needed some heavy pampering and a healthy maintenance regime. 

I have now tried many different products and finally settled in a handful of them. From left to right, the products that I reach for every time I change my manicure are:

- Rituals Hammam Mint exfoliating body scrub. This smells deliciously fresh and exfoliates the skin of my hands while hydrating them. 

- Douglas Nail Butter. I bought in without paying much attention to what it was, and I am very pleased with its effects. It nourishes the nail and keeps it flexible and healthy and smells like a candy store. It's not meant to be quickly absorbed, so I gently rub it on my nails while watching a movie. Meanwhile my nails have also some time to breathe, and that can only do them good.

- The Body Shop Hemp Hand Cream. Amazing. This thing does miracles with dry skin and preventing skin dryness. It's unctuous, so you may want to use it before going to bed or when you have a moment for yourself. It does not smell especially good (it has a natural herbal scent to it) but is so worth it.

- Hacendado Cuticle Cream. I am afraid this is only available in Spain, it smells great and smoothes my cuticles quite well.

- Essie All in One Base. It's supposed to provide vitamins and calcium to the nail while protecting it, and it really does prevent them from staining. It dries super fast. Perfect underwear.

Do you use any of those products or have you ever tried them? If so, what is your impression? I'm also curious about what products do you personally recommend; any tips to share?

M.

Mix 'n Match

Heeeeeellow,

Today I am showing you the mani I've been rocking all this weekend, of which I can't help but be a little proud of. I had my afternoon off on Friday and unvoluntarily dedicated most of it to doing my nails. Seriously, I think I've never spent so many time on nail art EVER, and it was quite a lot of fun! I should do it more often. Take a look:

So I took a look at my inspiration archive and could not make my mind on one single design so... I picked five of them and made some sort of mix and match with them! I need to credit The Daily Nail for the index design, it's totally hers; it's so cool but time-consuming... If you try it out (you should!) as part of a manicure I totally recommend to start with it, because you'll need to wait some time between stages, so you can proceed with the rest of the manicure while building this design up.

I had a party on Friday night and some people were like: "what?! YOU did that?!" [re-thinking about it I'd answer "yeah, I can do more than procedural writs, awesome right?"] and "nah, those nails aren't yours"; even my mother felt the urge to take my hands on picture this morning. It feels daaaaaamn nice! If I was a cat right now, I'd purr badly.

Sadly, I have to take them off because tomorrow is Monday already *sobs* so I needed to immortalize them (sort of) in my little bloggy :) Hope you like them!

Recipe:

- Index: China Glaze Sea Spray, China Glaze Liquid Leather and Kiko nº 383.

- Middle: Gosh Silver, Flormar nº 385.

- Ring: China Glaze Snow, China Glaze Liquid Leather, Orly Green Apple, Sally Hansen Pacific Blue, China Glaze Heli-Yum.

- Pinky: Essie Armed & Ready, IsaDora Gold Sparkles.

M.