Kiko Quik Dry 380 - Metallic Blue

Hola lovers *wink*

Go fug Yourself anyone? It's hilarious, I just love the girls behind that blog and their magnificent brains. I guess if I happened to be a J-Lo fan I would be slightly pissed at them, but I ain't so... that's what you get!

[note: "hola lovers" is always the first line about Mrs. Lopez at Go Fug Yourself, no matter if it's fug or fab, they can't help it].

Today's post is a NOTD and I am not even on holidays. I'll be honest though, it's not bravery on my side; it's just that 1/2+ the people at my firm are on holidays so... BUT I did have a couple conversations with a Founding Partner at the Firm and he didn't say a thing. Was he thinking loudly? I don't know; not loud enough, I guess? We'll never know.

Actually, I've been re-reading some of my older posts and I seem to be very concerned about my nails, the Firm and the two combined together. And I am starting to think that the person who's most concerned about the color of my nails is actually... me? And possibly no one else gives a shit about it? But I digress.

The bad boys that I am rocking are an easy combination of Kiko Quick Dry 380 - Metallic Blue and white stripes. Now, let's get serious because there is something y'all need to know: the color payoff on Metallic Blue is S.P.E.C.T.A.C.U.L.A.R. The pictures don't do it justice, this polish just glows like crazy and is a true eye-catcher. Find it, buy it.

This is two coats of it on its own. Again, this pictures are dull in comparison to the actual color, but I couldn't do better. 

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to make out with Metallic Blue for a while... don't mind me.

Be fierce :)

M.

ABC Challenge: Letter H - Holographic, Pupa no. 033 (Part 2)

Aloha everyone!

I'll admit I started to freak out about letter H. I was not ahead of my game, and a fearlessly rocked a manicure this weekend (that I'll show you later on) completely unrelated to letter H. I gave it a long thought, trying to do some language engineering so I could post about it today... but everything was too acrobatic to be accepted. So I even resigned myself to not post anything this week... Until I remebered I had some archives! [speedy neurons, ya.]

Thus, this is a manicure from the vault that was not meant to see the light of the bogging world. It's the Part 2 of a manicure I showed you back in 2012, that you can see here. It's my right hand so please bear with me.

As you can see it was all about contrast. The base is Pupa Holographic in no. 033 and the central lines are done with regular blue rhinestones purchased off eBay. The pictures are crappy crappy and I wasn't able for the life of me to take a decent picture of my right hand. What a shameful pose, ha! Whatever, you get the gist of it.

Take care!

M.

ABC Challenge: Letter G - OPI Goldeneye

Hey there :)

I have a quickie for you today, work is calling me already and I need tu rush! This installment of the ABC Challenge will be featuring two polishes that were given to me as a present this Christmas ^^ For letter G I chose OPI Goldeneye, that a friend brought me from the USA, and I paired it with Sally Hansen Blue it!

I had seen tons of pictures of Goldeneye but jeez... I was still surprised to see how in your face it is! I love gold for little nail art details and find it most appropriate for Christmas, but wearing it as a full mani at the beginning of February made me feel a little odd! So me and my dear striping tape covered it strategically with Blue it. Problem solved! 

Be bad and rock those claws of yours!

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.

Color blocking & snake update!

Aloha everybunny!

How's the after-Christmas but before-NewYear's eve time going? I hope it's being terrrrrific for you! :D

Today I have some color blocking to show you, in nude and black. Nothing rare, you'll have seen this a gazillion times, and yet I wanted to have my take at it. Bandwagon b*tch...

Now let me put this down in words: THIS look ROCKS (I say so myself, and shamelessly! That's how much I liked it). 

Went to a party with those talons, got complimented. TONS. And guess what? This is as easy peasy. All you need is some striping tape and one color. Place your tape randomly, avoid making two identical nails, paint, take off the tape and... done. Boom! Magical. Just make sure you wait some time before topcoating: you want your lines clean and perfect. That's about it.

Okay, onto some SNAKE stuff (run!): Discordia shed again, she's grown 10cm in about 6 weeks (I swear! I was astonished and even double checked) and she did it before my eyes. If you're not familiar with snakes, let me point this out: some people have kept the same snake for years and never watched it shed. They tend to prefer intimacy for it. But mine is open-minded, yay!

To celebrate, here are some pictures of my baby-beast freshly shed:

The yellow is starting to peek through her neck, while her body is clearly brown, white around the saddles and grey/pastel brown on the outside. I wonder how she makes those colors look so neat and beautiful together . Maybe I am a weirdo, but I luuuurve this snake.

Hasta la próxima,

M.

Pink striped blue

Hey!

I hope your weekend was good! Mine was / is being just meh because we here in Barcelona have what we call a "bridge" (a Friday or Monday off, added to a regular weekend = a bridge), and I get to work 2 out of 3 days. 

So in order to cheer me up in those long hours of reading case laws, I decided to have something cool. I had never noticed that I am kind of drawn to combine blue and pink, but I am forced to face it is so when I take a look at my archive. I need to stop being so predictable ;)

This is two coats of Barry M Pink Flamingo and one coat of Kiko nº 300 Pearly Malachite Green. And a coat of Seche Vite, which kind of freaks me out now. Do you notice how it shrinked? My tips are already showing and there are some breakages in my index and middle fingers. Seriously, SV, I am warning you. I love you most dearly, but I won't stick with you at all costs. 

Any good alternative to the ever-shrinking SV?

Oh! I just remembered something that happened to me last year. At that time I thought "if I had a blog I'd post about that, hands down". I guess now is the time!

So the story goes like this: I was in London, and I had some free time. So I decided to walk around and give me one cool manicure. I had thought of a clear base and bright blue tips; funky french kind of stuff. My steps (and the subway) took me to Chelsea, where I found a little salon that was having a promo for manicures. I thought myself lucky at the time; I couldn't be more wrong. 

I entered, and was suprised when the lady told me they were about to close. Yeah, I had my Spanish schedules in mind (our shops close at 20h30), my bad. Well, she said I could have a plain mani, and I thought: let's go.

So I was made to sit in front of a young lady, she was totally inexperienced. I mean: TOTALLY. I picked a color and un-luckily the bottle was half empty. That girl, she looked like she was called Brenda, did an awful job. It was seriously the worse mani I have ever had. Counting the one a friend gave me a while back, and he was a man. 

So, as the bottle was half empty the brush came out half empty each time, and Brenda needed to dip it in the bottle several times per nail and coat. She turned the bottle upside down, and I can tell she struggled: she licked her lips just like children do when they are concentrated, you know? It was a deep effort there. The polish dragged, and pooled. In the end, I had half bald spots, so the color was not uniform at all. And Brenda's conversation was plain, and oh-so-boring! 

The worse thing was what she did between coats.

SHE BLEW ON MY NAILS.

In each and every one of them, for Christ' sake. And when she thought she was done, she asked: are you happy? I was totally astonished, and kept looking for a hidden camera somewhere in there. Brenda looked like such a sweet and dumb lady that I said I was happy.

I paid 13 pounds for something I took up the minute I arrived to the hotel; you can tell I cried on the inside. And I was ashamed to hold myself to the bars in the subway, because anyone could see that mess. 

I can't believe I forgot the name of that salon...

With that said, have a nice week :)

M.

Manicure party :)

Hey there,

This Monday's morning has been somewhat different at my place: my lady friends came over for a little manicure party, and we had a really sweet time ^^

I have to say they all made very wise choices, and that I am very happy with their performance at hand modeling, yay! Take a look at the cool designs they took home with them:

(Clockwise) Carolina, Iris, me and Marta

Those are the recipes:

Carolina - 1 coat of Flormar nºM109 + 2 coats of China Glaze Ahoy! + some flowers stamped in white with Konad and a rhinestone in the middle.

Iris - 2 coats of Catrice Heavy Metalilac + some polka dots done with Essence Fall for me.

Marta - 2 coats of Zoya Dove + striping tape and one coat of Kiko nº343 Spring Green.

So, how do you like them? Which one is your favourite?

Striped Zuza

Señoritas,

I hope you enjoyed your weekend at least half as much as I did. This afternoon, seated in a cafe in one of the main streets of Barcelona, in one of those sunny perfect days that only early July can bring, I had a smoothie in my hand and I realized a full life is made of such tiny moments of happiness. On my nails, I had Zoya Zuza.

I'm so happy to have this beauty in my stash; I won a bid last week on eBay and now half the collection is mine (evil smile)! 

But well, as many lemmings of mine, Zuza was a little disappointing IRL. More green than blue to my eyes, not exactly what I had been expecting, yet beautiful.

I enhanced it with one big silver stud on each of my thumbs and two fine lines done with silver striping tape in each of the nails. Simple and quick. Yet effective. 

Here's Zuza on its own. I swear photoshop has nothing to do with this picture. I know you've seen her a hundred times. But, again: wow.

Now, brace yourselves. Monday is coming.
M.

The Blues

Ladies,

Here's the thing. I was quite satisfied with my sponged manicure, so I really didn't feel like taking it all off. I just need to have the time to enjoy my manis some more at times, but when Monday is in its way I just surrender to work-safe (but still cute) polishes. My yearly evaluation has passed, it went fairly good (I'm a tiny bit proud, hee hee) and I'm heading to the department I belong in a little more than two months. I know, it's awkward, but I'm just a tourist here in Business Law Department. And I say it's time to rock the place some more. They can be so dusty...

So I simply taped a line in the center of my nail with the oh-so-loyal striping tape, and painted over it with Essence's Into the Dark (from the Vampire's Love Collection). I thought its silver shimmer would match my base color (CG Sea Spray), and it most certainly did.

What do you think about that? Yay or nay?

Take care!

X nails and other stuff

Hi Ladies,

Long time no see, I hope this marathon I'm currently living will soon decrease, for I'm startig to feel I really miss my beloved habits... I just want to say, at least it's for a GREAT cause :)

Here is a manicure I quickly did on Sunday, simply taping off the "x" and topping the red with a layer of black. I thought using striping tape would make my "x" almost unnoticeable; I'm glad it wasn't so.

As I didn't have much time, I just added some fun to the manicure I had been rocking all week long. It's Anny Open My Heart, and as you can see it's pretty darn well behaved. Yup, the previous picture was taken after 6 days of wear. Awesome, I say. And, for your viewing pleasure, you have it below on Day 1. It's a jelly, so it's definitely not one of my faves, but it's worth to be in my stash. Humm... what isn't, really?

And lastly, I wanted to share with you an experiment that turned out quite good. I'm craving for a chained manicure, and the sweet lady from Copy That Copy Cat told me she uses jewellery chain. I was quite lost, and didn't find what I was looking for on eBay. I know, I know. How is that even possible?

Well, I didn't want to let go so I just did a random search, and came across that necklace...

Not that I would wear that as a proper necklace. But look closer... Yup. Chain. And perfect for nail art. How cool is that? This remedy costed me about 3 dollars, free shipping. If you're interested, just search for "multi-chain gemstone pendant", and voilà!

I hope you find that messy remedy useful :)

Take care, and be bad!

Let's stripe it!

Hey!

I've been MIA, sucked by this amazing pastime called "Work". I'm talking about around 14h a day (1h30 of those for lunch-break) *sigh* 

So on Friday I was tired as hell, how suprising and unexpected is that, huh? Yeah, I'm such a whiny little thing...

On to the manicure now! I received my first striping tape, so I gave it some use. Pros and cons? PRO: it's not as sticky as tape, so you do not need to let your base dry for so long; do not fear to ruin it. I waited 20 minutes (aprox) and had not a single issue. CON: I had trouble obtaining straight lines, but I am sure it would have been easier if I had tried to make horizontal lines. In fact, I had so much trouble that I called for external help... Don't tell.

I used Barry M Pink Flamingo as a base, applied the striping tape and covered most of it with China Glaze First Mate, which is one of my faves of all times. I really don't know why: no shimmer, no spectacular color, no glitter, no nothing. Go figure.

BTW, if you have 5 minutes and would like to read a post that really moved me... go check Ana's: "My five year old likes to wear nail polish and I'm okay with that."

Keep it movin' ladies!

Stripes, shimmer and Gin

Hi there!


I hope you had a weekend full of laughs and polish! For my part, I went to a Gin masterclass and tasting with some friends, in a pub called Bobby Gin (Barcelona), where the allegedly best bartender in Spain explained us the evolution of Gin while we tasted 8 sorts of it. After that, we had a Gintonic for "dessert" and a lot of good humour. Of course, I had to wear something special for the occasion, so I went for a striped manicure. 

I used 2 coats of N.Y.C. nº 306 for the base, which is a dark blue with purple and gold shimmer that is quite visible in natural light. You can see some purple in my thumb here...

And the stripes were made with Barry M Bright Purple. My BF chose those colours, and I have to say he chose really well! What do you think?

I received some compliments with this manicure, and I truly appreciate them coming from man, for:
1) They spotted it; 2) They liked it; 3) They complimented me out aloud and 4) They asked me how I did it. 
But a lady never reveals her secrets, you know. I like to play it mysterious, hee hee.


Take care!