Catrice Berry Potter & Plumbledore

Catrice #46 Berry Potter & Plumbledore is a plum/purple polish with a striking blue shimmer. I used two coats, and it dries quick-ish. The base colour is slightly lighter that my swatches show is, but it is the shimmer that makes is interesting. And I love the name :)

Catrice Mint Me Up

Mint Me Up came into my stash just the other day and quite by accident, but I'm really happy that it now lives with me :) It is a fantastic and delicate-looking polish, pale green wth golden shimmer and tiny copper flakes. The overall effect is quite lovely! The formula is quite good as well - I used 2 thin coats, but I think you can get away with one thicker coat applied carefully. The base color of this polish is rather similar to OPI Mermaid's Tears, but with the shimmer the effect is quite different.

Catrice King of Greens #740

When I first tried this polish some time in January, I quickly realized that it would be one of my favourite green polishes out there. I call it 'none of the above green' as it is so difficult to describe - it is not light green or dark green, it is not bright, neon, pastel etc., it is not moss green or forest green. It is none of the above green.
It has the most fantastic green shimmer in it, and it needs just two coats. I don't really like the brush in this polish, but it's ok.

Catrice Oh My Goldness!

Cartice Nail Polish #910 Oh My Goldness! could not be named any more aptly. It is gold, very gold. I don't have a lot of gold polishes, so it is a nice addition to my stash. I think it will be a great shade for summer. It looks like warm liquid gold on my fingers, and I like it. The formula is a little on the sheer side, so I needed to use three coats for full opacity, but I think it is worth it.

Catrice Sold Out Forever

Hey Everyone! I'm going to show you some really, really old swatches that for some reason I've never posted. These must be from summer 2011, and look at those nails!!! I have no idea how I could go around with nails that long.
Sold Out Forever #240 is supposed to be a dupe for Chanel Jade. I don't know about that, but is certainly looks close. The formula is okay, if you're careful you can get away with 2 coats, or use three thin coats. I also needed top coat to make it look more even.

Catrice George Blueney

Catrice nail polishes appeared in the shops some time around the New Year. Needless to say that I got a few. And by a few I probably mean around 10. I chose all the pretty and shimmery shades. George Blueney #915 was one of them.
It is gorgeous, truly stunning! Deep, shimmery blue. This was two coats. The only thing I'm not completely crazy about is the brush this polish has. It is rounded at the edges and is too soft for my liking, it makes more difficult to paint close to the cuticle for me, so I prefer the old Catrice brushes.
Also, on Saturday we went to Reims. I liked the city, it is so much better than Troyes where I'm currently stuck. The city itself is nice, but they have the most spectacular cathedral. The attention to details is just sick!

Catrice Marilyn & Me

Hey there! Long time, no posts. I somehow have fallen off the blogging wagon for a little bit. I can't quite wrap my mind around the fact that in a few weeks time I will be in France.

Since I'm still in the holiday mood, I decided to show you a rather festive polish - Catrice 550 Marilym & Me. It is a great polish, a red shimmery jelly with a little bit of red glitter thrown in the mix. It only needs two coats, dries quickly and looks like strawberries :)

Catrice #280 London's Weather Forecast

It is that weird time of the year when it is no longer winter and almost no snow, but it is not yet spring. Everything looks faded and boring. Also I'm going to London next week, so it seems like a good time to wear this polish. I don't love it as much as I hoped I would. It's a very pretty grey that has very subtle silver white shimmer in it. The formula is also quite nice, this was two coats.

Catrice 220 Lost In Mud

It's snowing again, but it is windy too, so as I look outside my window it is snowing completely sideways.
Originally this polish was supposed to be a small gift for a friend who was dreaming of Jacques. We looked and looked for it in all the usual shops, but it was nowhere to be found. This seemed like a fairly similar colour, but then one of the shops in Amsterdam had a whole bucket of Jacques. So she got that and I kept this one. In the bottle the colours are actually quite close, I'll do a comparison some other time.
Lost In Mud has a pleasant formula, it needed two coats, and it dries quickly. As for the colour I am still not sold. Hopefully in time I will warm up to the whole range of taupe brown colours. I should probably try layering something on top and see if I like it.

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.

Catrice Am I Blue Or Green?

Morning everyone! First of all I would like to wish the lovely Natasha happy birthday. She's currently stuck in Moscow for the foreseeable future, and I hope she has a good time!

In terms of polish, here is one that I like quite a lot. Catrice #540 Am I Blue or Green? is clearly blue, not green. This is two coats, the application was okay but I guess it could be better. I think Catrice was going for the Nouvelle Vague look with this. I like it quite a lot, plus the only close colour I have at home is Orly's Gumdrop which bubbles like crazy on me.

Catrice 490 Iron Mermaiden

A couple of weeks ago I broke a few of my nails while moving and filed them all down to basically nothing. So I was going through the swatches I have, and found this. I'm astonished by how long my nails are here. As for the polish, well I have a couple of these duochromes, that look similar but are not totally identical. Well, most of them kind of remind me of mould, not in a bad way but just colour-wise.
This one applies fine, if somewhat sheer. The first coat was particularly sheer, but it builds up nicely, this is three coats. I actually quite like this polish, the colour is interesting, I think it would be flattering on different skin tones. On me it wears for an average of three days.

Catrice Welcome To The Jungle

Here's Catrice Welcome to the Jungle nail polish. It is a kind of bronze olive green with flashes of golden and red. It sort of looks like a younger sister of Wagon Trail. This needed just two coats and the wear time was good, about three days I think. For me this polish is also rather sentimental. When I was a teenager I went through a phase when I only wore clothes of this colour. Skirts, tights, sweaters, even shoes came in this colour. I have no idea what I was thinking back then, but there you have it.

Catrice Forget-me-not!

Hey everyone! Here I am blogging during my lectures. How fun! Today I would like to show you one gorgeous polish I got in Amsterdam on my holidays. Catrice Forget-me-not! is amazing. It's purple and it is kind of metallic foil with a lot of silver in it. It has this interesting look, as at times it seems more silver that purple. This is just one coat, and it dries nicely on me. It needs a top coat because it dries to a kind of dull finish. Overall, I'm really happy with the quality of polishes by Catrice, especially for the small price.

My Stash

Surprisingly I've never put all my polishes in one place and take a picture. It was actually an eye-opener for me. Who would have thought that my polishes divide fairly equally into pinks, nudes, dark colours and glitters. I know that I'm missing some 10 polishes that my friends have, some OPI, China Glaze and SpaRitual glitter and holographic ones.
It's not a surprise to me that OPI represents a big part of my stash. For the most part I really like their formula, I like the ProWide brush and most of the polishes last at least 3 days on my nails.

My China Glaze stash grew to it's current size in just a few months. Before that I was really reluctant to get them due to a bad first experience. But them I got OMG and DV8 holos in a sale and never looked back. I only have 2 full sized Orly polishes, crazy I know. But I never totally fell in love with them. But I do love their mini polishes a lot! It's like a quick colour fix.

Here is a box of different brands, polishes that I only have a few of each, and bottles I only got because of the colour.

Here is Essence and Catrice polishes that I got on my holiday in Amsterdam. I wish these brands were represented where I live! They are cheap and for the most part have a nice quality and cute colours. Also I do like both of their brushes.
Here are Misa, Barry M, American Apparel etc. I love the formula on these two AA polishes, you have to love a one coat polish. My only Zoya is here too. I mentioned before that buying Zoya polishes here is just prohibitively expensive, even if they have very pretty colours.

Here are my boxed goods :) I store them separately from other polishes because the boxes don't fit in the drawers where I have the rest of my stash. It's horrible, but I occasionally forget that I have these at all.


I do have another two boxes that didn't make it here. One is with all the base and top coats, cuticle stuff etc. And the second is a box with all the frankens and polishes I tried water marbling with, nothing interesting, Coloramas and such.