Happy New Year!

Hey everyone!

I just want to wish you all a very happy New Year. In my family we don't celebrate Christmas, so New Year's Eve is our special holiday occasion.

I'm glad that 2011 is finally over, it was a sucky year for me and my family. My dad has been ill, our cat has been very sickly, we had other problems, plus cummulatively my parents and I have reached the ripe old age of 125.

Thankfully there are things to look forward to in 2012. My graduation perhaps (finally!) and my parents' 30th wedding anniversary to name just a few.

Happy New Year!

Lots of love,

Viktorija

Favourites of 2011

Here are the polishes that I liked the most this year. Certainly a lot of them did not come out this year, but I only tried them in 2011.
For a person who is not that into blue polish, I sure have found quite a few blue polishes that I adore.

Essence Circus Confetti
Probably the coolest glitter I own, it has so many different colours, shapes and sizes, yet they all work well together.

Catrice Forget-me-not!
Purple happens to be one of my most favourite colours and this polish embodies awesome purpleness perfectly.

OPI Lunch at the Delhi
I actually don't own this one, it's my friend's polish but it is so nice! It is very feminine, work safe, but still has enough colour not to be boring.

Essence Irreplaceable
At first it looks boring, but then it is revealed in all its glory. It has theis awesome lit-from-within look.

OPI Skull & Glossbones
This is a new neutral favourite of mine, I like how it looks with my skin tone, and that it is just a slight hint of grey.

SpaRitual Earth Matters
This is a gorgeous green glitter with a hint of gold to it.

OPI Golden Rainbow
This is one awesome polish! It has big holographic glitter as well as tiny gold circles.

China Glaze Trendsetter
I unexpectedly love this ugly-pretty shade.

China Glaze Meteor Shower
It is like a starry night sky, it sparkles in different lights and angles.

OPI DS Glamour
Blue holographic goodness, what else is there to say.

Jessica Blue Diamond
I like this polish a lot because the shimmer, it is both blue and green.

American Apparel Poppy
While the colour is not that unique or special, the formula on this is pure perfection, it only takes one coat.

China Glaze Solar Flare

Today is my friend's Sophia's birthday! Happy Birthday, dear! Today I also happen to have my varda diena, a local celebration of "name day". It's a nice local tradition where many common/traditional names are allotted specific days that you can celebrate, like Victoria on December 23rd, or Alexander on November 18th. I view it as just an opportunity to treat yourself a little bit.
Anyway, my parents surprised me by presenting me with DS Fantasy, a polish on my wishlist. Awesome!!!

But today I have a chunky glitter top coat to show you. China Glaze's Solar Flare reminds me of golden fish scales. It has big gold hexagons glitter in a clear base. Here I am wearing one coat over OPI Lincoln Park At Midnight. I've worn Solar flare over other colours, and I especially like it over red (very festive) and over blue. This is one of those polishes that looks great in indirect light\cloudy weather as the hexagons reflect light at different angles.

Below is a close up of the polish in natural light, with a flash and in the sun.

OPI You Don't Know Jacques

Last week I managed to walk into a door (again), and basically snapped my nails off. They are the shortest they've been in years, I feel almost naked without them. I don't like my nails when they are so short for two reasons - the polish, any polish, chips very quickly, like within a day and a half, and the tip wear shows really fast. It also seems that when my nails are very short I need to be very neat in terms of application, otherwise every imperfection shows.
So I'm going to go through the backlog of swatches that I haven't posted before. Plus there will be no sun around here for weeks to come, so it's fine.

I don't know about you, but I'm undecided about Jacques. On the one hand it's a very classic shade, on the other I find is so dreary! Yet another taupe brown, and I'm not sure if this shade goes well with my skin tone well. I was rather worried when I started to put Jacques on. First coat was extremely patchy, I thought it would never be even. Second coat was better, but here I'm wearing three coats to even out all the patches. Also this polish dries much darker than it looks in the bottle. In terms of wear, it lasted a couple of days on my nails, kind of average.

Essence #47 Red-y To Go

I've finally put up a Christmas tree! But unfortunately there is still no snow, at least no snow that would stay on the ground for more than 10 minutes. For me the Christmas or New Year celebrations are not complete without snow. These days it's just very, very murky around here.
So I use all the cheering up I can get in the form of bright and girly nail polish. At the moment I'm wearing Essence Red-y To Go. It's not exactly red, it has a lot of pink in it as well as an occasional hint of orange to it. The formula is really rather nice as well, it is opaque in two thin coats, or one thicker coat.

Jessica Blue Diamond

Finally, finally, finally I have some free time. I'm done with all my exams, and it seems that I'm going to pass them all pretty well. I'm looking forward to putting up the Christmas tree tomorrow, me and the cat will have to battle over the decorations. Also some free time means that I can catch up on some sleep. I've spent the last couple of days sewing a present for my mum, I've raided her fabric stash and made her a few aprons for Christmas.

Okay, so this polish is amazing! This is my first Jessica polish and I'm very impressed both by the colour and the formula. Blue Diamond #816 is a lovely dark blue polish. What makes it super awesome is the blue AND green shimmer. Amazing! This was two coats, but if you are careful I think you can get away with just one. I wore this polish for three days without any problems before I decided to try a new top coat, and I woke up with a bad case of pillow fingers for the first time in years. Now I know Jessica polishes don't work with Essence top coats.

China Glaze Bridezilla

Hey everyone! I can't believe I only have one exam to do tomorrow, and them I can decorate a tree, wrap the presents and relax a little. Sometimes I get tired of all the dark and vibrant colours I wear, then I wear fairly boring and neutral polishes for a while. That is not to say that they are any less pretty. I like how delicate this polish looks. Here, I'm wearing three coats, but two are fine as well, if you don't mind some VNL.

Catrice #120 Plum Play With Me

I have no idea why I never posted these, I've done the swatches months and months ago. Well, the polish is pretty and purple, and there's nothing better than purple! The formula is not as good as some other Catrice polishes I have, but it was still mainly two coats, just a few nails needed a third coat. I like this polish both on its own, but also for layering things on top.

Trendsetter revisited

After wearing China Glaze Trendsetter for a couple of days I really wanted a change, but as I didn't really have time to take the polish off I went the 'add another polish on top' route. I don't think I have any glitters that would go with this odd colour, but then I thought Flakies! Inglot flakies 205 change colour precisely from yellow to green, so they go hand in hand with Trendsetter. I like this combination a lot, I'm sure I'll wear it again.

Blue Polishes etc.

My life has been manic the last couple of weeks. Last Thursday was my last lecture ever for the foreseeable future. I hadn’t realised that until yesterday. This week I have exams every single day.
Also I’ve found that my cat hates women in skirts. This morning he looked at me in terror as if I were an alien and ran away.

My mum has pointed out that we have more nail polish than polish than we need (again), while I proceeded to make a point that we don’t with blue polishes that I don’t wear a lot of. My quote of “I have no more than 10 blue polishes” came back to bite me.

When I painted all of my blues on a nail wheel I was proven SO wrong.
Top row look more purple but I would call them blue. All polishes are two coats.L-R:

Tone Lise Design, no idea which shade this is
OPI Ink Suede
OPI DS Glamour
Essence 78 Blue Addicted
OPI Play Til Midnight
China Glaze Meteor Shower
OPI Simmer & Shimmer

Full wheel:
1 – Buk 112
2 – SpaRitual Full of Life
3 – Essence 53 You Belong To Me
4 – Catrice 540 Am I Blue Or Green?
5 – Orly Gumdrop
6 – Barry M 295 Turquoise
7 – China Glaze Kaleidoscope Him Out
8 – Revlon 320 Ocean Breeze
9 – Essence 55 Let’s Get Lost
10 – China Glaze DV8
11 – Essence 38 Choose Me!
12 – OPI Catch Me in your Net
13 – Essence 24 Under Water
14 – Misa On the Edge
15 – China Glaze Eyes Like Sapphires
16 – China Glaze Dorothy Who
17 – Essence 76 Hard To Resist
18 – Jessica 816 Blue Diamond

I now realize that I forgot to add a few polishes to the wheels, off the top of my head I’m missing H&M Peppermit Fusion, OPI Midnight Blue Glitter, one of my frankens, and probably something else. I am also happy that there aren’t too many dupes.

China Glaze Drenched In Diamonds

Normally when I am faced with a nail polish that even has a hint of frost to it, I run a mile. To me it looks really dated, like the 80s (not that I remember the 80s). But in the case of this polish I had to at least try it as it was a gift.
I can't say that I hate this polish, but I also don't like it. Let's say I don't dislike it as much as I thought I would. I think it's because the polish looks like snow, it is a sort of silver white colour, but damn this polish is sheer, sheer, sheer! This is three coats and you can still see my nails. It does apply quite evenly, so I would use it for layering in the future.

China Glaze Trendsetter

For now I only got two polishes form the China Glaze's autumn collection, this and Midtown Magic. I don't know what I was thinking when I bought this polish, it's totally not "me". It is certainly a very interesting colour, but I find it hard to call it pretty, it's both ugly and pretty. I like that it has this lit-from-within quality to it. The colour is the most impossible shade to describe. It's a cross between green and yellow, with a hint of mustard. That's the most pleasant description I'm going with. The formula is perfect, it needs just 2 coats.