Author: RiaG

My new, temporary makeup/nail corner

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As many of you know by now we just moved into a new place. I will have enough room here to build my own room aka womancave for my cosmetics and nail stuff. That project just isn’t first on my to do list so I set up my table and drawers on our bedroom corner for now.

So this is how it looks at nighttime when I actually have time to do my nails while the kiddos sleep. Naturally I move the makeup mirror out of the way. All the furniture is from Ikea except for the chair and the purple nail polish drawer which have been bought from Finnish stores a few years back. I love how the table has a glass covering it so I don’t have to worry about spilling acetone or polish on it. The lamps have daylight bulbs on them.

 

 

All my polish fit in to these two drawers (for now) next to my table. Soon I’ll be needing another Helmer from Ikea but I hope that won’t be until I get to move everything into my womancave.

 

 

My most used makeup products are on the big table drawer and the rest of the cosmetics and on the big drawer next to the table.

 

 

I quite like the setup I have here. This works the best for me and when I get to move all the stuff in to their own room I’ll set them up like this there too. I’ll also add a little table for my lightbox and a table plus chairs where I can work with UV-gel. I plan on also building a little shelf for the unswatched polish bottles where they can sit until I have swatched them and they can move to the polish drawers.

I also changed my banner. I hope you like it :) That’s all for today. Happy Sunday everyone and I’ll be back tomorrow with a nail polish post, I promise!

Desert Essence Coconut shampoo and conditioner

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Hello my lovelies! I’ve been thinking about starting to also blog about other things than just nails. Nails are what started this blog and will always be the main topic here but I have a great passion for beauty and cosmetics and sometimes I have other, none nail related things I feel like talking about. I hope this doesn’t drive anyone away :) My makeup posts will mostly be swatches and easy every day looks. I’m a certified makeup artist and I own a lot of makeup products I’d love to share with you. My makeup stash as well as nail stash is ever growing :P

So here goes a hair product post. I recently bleached my hair back to platinum blonde and it was quite a rough ride. Now I need good products to keep my hair shiny and healthy. Today I have my favorite everyday shampoo and conditioner combo for you. Of course I use a lot of other products along with these but I’ll get to those on some other post. My problem is that my scalp can’t handle silicone at all so that is the first thing I look for when I find new products that touch my scalp. I get itchy bumps and my hair starts to fall off easily of I use products with a lot of silicone for a long time. So I’d decided it’s better to just buy shampoo and rinse off conditioners that don’t have silicone at all. I do use leave in conditioners with silicone though (did I use the word silicone enough?) ;).

 

 

I have found Desert Essence Coconut shampoo and conditioner to be perfect for my bleached hair. I buy these from iHerb. The price is very reasonable and they ship internationally.

The shampoo lathers really well which isn’t always the case with natural shampoos. It also washes my hair squeaky clean. After the shampoo my hair feels like one big dry mess that will never be untangled but when I add the conditioner I can run my fingers right through it without any problems. Formula on the shampoo is very gel like and it isn’t runny at all, the conditioner is thick and creamy. I also LOVE coconut scent in almost any cosmetics product so the strong coconut scent is just one big plus for me. These do smell pretty sweet so if you don’t enjoy coconut these might not be for you. I haven’t noticed the scent staying on my hair too long though.

Here’s the back of the bottles with the INCI.

 

These really work great for my hair and I use them most of the time at the moment. Along with these I also use moisturizing conditioner along with a keratin conditioner. After the wash I use leave in conditioners. My favorite at the moment is Moroccanoil.

What are your go-to hair products and you have any good tips for me?

ABC Challenge – Y is for yellow

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Only one day late this time :D Hopefully I get the last ABC post up in time next week. Wow, I just can’t believe we are almost done with this challenge. I’d be super upset if we didn’t have another really cool one waiting for us in a near future. Our group is so much fun and I’ve got to know some amazing ladies along these few months :)

This Y week kinda sneaked up on me. I have been under an impression that I have plenty of Y polishes and I’m covered for that. Now that the week is finally hear none of my Y polishes really called my name. Not even the untried ones. Bleh! So I decided to go with an oldie but goodie. Color Club Volt Of Light is the only well behaving yellow I own. It is very sheer though and requires at least three coats. But I don’t see that as a huge problem since it also applies really thin. This is a neon shade and dries semi-matte.

This is three coats of Color Club Volt Of Light with G & G HK Girl top coat.

 

Volt Of Light has a lot of fine green shimmer and it kinda reminds me of those neon yellow markers that you use to highlight parts of text in your school books. IRL this is screaming bright neon and really glows! This would also make a great base for some nail art. I’m just so busy with all the house stuff that I left it be and just enjoyed the super bright neon yellow on it’s own.

 

G & G HK Girl Fast Drying + Super Shiny Top Coat

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Today I want to share my experiences on G & G HK Girl top coat. You have probably seen this top coat mentioned in several other blogs too. I got my first bottle late March this year and I’ve only been using HK Girl since. I first ordered a bottle to test it out cos I saw so many people say only great things about this top coat. I used it a couple of times and was so impressed by it that I immediately ordered two more bottles.

HK Girl dries all the polishes at least as fast as my previous favorites Seche Vite and Inm Out The Door. I have experienced zero shrinkage of the polish and shine is superior to any other top coat I have tried. And you know what? I can get through the whole bottle without using thinner once. You heard me right! HK Girl doesn’t turn into a thick gloopy mess and you can use all of it without having to thin it. I love it!

 

G & G HK Girl top coat with OPI A Definite Moust-Have
HK Girl is quite thin and very easy to apply. This has worked great with all the polishes I have used it with. Because it is very thin I don’t try to build it up to smooth them chunky indie glitters. For those I use Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food with HK Girl top coat. That is the combination that creates a super smooth and glossy, shiny finish with even the chunkiest glitters.
I think it’s quite clear how much I LOVE HK Girl top coat (and I’m not the only one)! It’s my all time favorite top coat. Now if you haven’t tried it yet, do yourself a favor and hurry down to Glisten & Glow webstore to get yourself a bottle. Customer service is great and the lovely Jill ships internationally.
***This particular bottle was purchased by me, I have later received free bottles.

ABC Challenge – X is for Xixabangma

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My X post is late but better late than never :P The letter X seemed to be a problem for many. I already got one polish for this week quite a while ago and right after ordering that one I ran into this polish on Elevation Polish webstore. I mean it’s green, it has beautiful subtle shimmer and the name was really awesome so I just had to get it right away :D

This is two coats of Elevation Polish Xixabangma with G & G HK Girl top coat.

 

Xixabangma has a thick-ish formula that applies really well and is opaque in two coats. This might even be a one coater for shorter nails. Dry time was quick. I just love Elevation Polish. Gorgeous colors with really unique names. I need to get more of these in my life :)
Elevations Polish beauties can be bought from their webstore.

OPI -A Definite Moust-Have

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Hello my lovelies, I’m back! We have moved and things are starting to calm down. Still plenty to do around here and this place is gonna keep us busy for a lot longer. I’m trying to get back to my almost daily post rhythm and it actually felt really good to start taking swatch photos again :) I broke a few nails during the moving process but I fixed them with plastic tips and UV-gel. Photos of those accidents and fixed nails can be found from my Instagram. I should also be all caught up with answering the comments and e-mails now :)

So on to today’s polish. This is OPI A Definite Moust-Have from the Couture de Minnie collection. I bought the whole collection from Glisten & Glow’s online store. I’m a sucker for red nails and if I could only choose one color to wear for the rest of my life it would most likely be red. It’s just always so classic and sexy.

This is two coats of A Definite Moust-Have and G & G HK Girl top coat.

 

A Definite Moust-Have applied like a dream and was opaque with two coats. Dry time was also short with a little help from HK Girl Fast Drying & Super Shiny top coat. This is such a perfect color for summer. I’m absolutely in love with this shade! There’s also a very subtle shimmer in this that is visible in sunlight.

 

Quick update

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We have moved in to the new house. Everything’s still a big mess and I have a lot of organizing to do, including my makeup and polish stash. Due to some yet unknown problems connecting the Internet here I’m without a broadband connection right now. 

I’ll be back online as soon as I can and I will also answer all the comments  you guys have left me  :) I have a lot of really cool stuff to show you when I get back to business :D 

ABC Challenge – W is for Walking Dead

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Happy hump day! I’ve been wanting to wear this polish for quite a while now but I decided to save it for W week :) This is one of Ketlyn’s awesome creations, BG Cosmetics Walking Dead. This is the first BG polish I got interested in and it’s cos of this polish that I got to know Ketlyn :) I know there’s also a few fellow Walking Dead TV-show fans here on our little group so let’s all take a deep breath now and think about Daryl Dixon. Ok, got that out of our systems and now we can continue with the polish ;)

This is three thin coats of Walking Dead, a coat of Glitter Food and G & G HK Girl top coat.

 

Walking Dead is described as “An opaque mossy green, filled with black glitter and speckled with red hexagonal glitter” on BG Cosmetics website. This applied well and three thin coats was enough for opaque result. I didn’t really need to use Glitter Food with this one but I did so anyways. I think that adds a little depth and smoothness to the finish. I quite like the color combination and this is definitely unique in my collection. And of course, you gotta love the name!

Now I’m off to paint some more walls again.

 

***All the products used in this manicure were purchased by me.

ABC Challenge – V is for Vintage Minnie

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Today I have a very late ABC Challenge post for you, this was supposed to be up last Wednesday. I just haven’t had time to do my nails at all :/ I did this manicure last night and it’s a quick one. I just didn’t want to miss a letter since I haven’t done so by far and I had to come up with something LOL I didn’t really have any cool V polishes except one from Crazy Polish Lady but I just used her polishes for letter U so I didn’t want to go there again. Then I remembered my OPI Vintage Minnie minis collection I got a while back but never really used and decided to do something with that.

So here’s my quick Vintage Minnie manicure for letter V. I used the three polishes in the collection and also used OPI Alpine Snow, The “IT” Color and Baby It’s “Coal” Outside. I finished the manicure using G & G HK Girl top coat. The bow is from Born Pretty Store.

 

 

So this was my late post for V week and I’ll try and have my W post up in time tomorrow :)

 

***3D bow decoration was sent for review. Everything else used in this manicure was purchased by me.

Crazy Polish Lady – Cinderella Shoe

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Hello my lovelies! I’ve been crazy busy again and haven’t been able to post daily. We are getting the house renovation project done this month and we are getting ready to move soon. So much to do still and I think that I might not be able to blog as much as I wanted for a little bit longer. Already trying to come up with a plan of how to move all my precious polish bottles and cosmetics safely ;) We are in a lucky enough situation not to have to move everything in one or two days so I can take my time and get everything there in one piece, hopefully…

Enough with the babble, let’s talk about today’s polish. This is another pretty creation from Portuguese indie brand Crazy Polish Lady. Cinderella shoe is from her second collection called “Memories in Colors”. This has a lot of white hex glitter and smaller holographic glitter on a clear base and this is meant to be used with a base color. You can practically wear this with any color you can imagine. I layered it with two Crazy Polish Lady shades I have previously reviewed Strawberry Swing and Cosmic Love.

I used a sponge to do a gradient over Strawberry Swing. I really loved how this turned out. The glitter pieces also laid flat enough and I didn’t need to use Glitter Food to smooth it out. This is two coats of Strawberry Swing, couple of coats of Cinderella Shoe sponged and G & G HK Girl top coat.

 

Next I tried this with Cosmic Love. I sponged a reversed gradient on three fingers and on the ring finger I applied two regular coats on a whole nail. So this is two coats of Cosmic Love, two regular coats on the ring finger and two coats sponged gradient on the three other nails plus  G & G HK Girl top coat.
Application was good and glitter came out of the bottle easily. I really like the white glitter and the holographic glitter gives this polish a lovely sparkle.
Crazy Polish Lady lives in Portugal and she ships internationally. She doesn’t have her own store yet but you can message her on her Facebook page or email her carvalho.sophie(@)gmail.com and place an order. Her first collection is now also available at Mei Mei’s Signatures.
 
***Cosmic Love and Cinderella Show were sent for review, Strawberry Swing and HK Girl top coat purchased by me.