I really don't like

photo by Credit: Shutterstock
when companies state that their all natural products contain materials neither me or my friends in the Botanical Perfumery world has ever heard of. Like cold pressed vanilla oil.....in my world there are three vanilla materials; infused oils or tinctures (you put the beans in your oil of choice or high grade alcohol and let them steep until they smell like paradise on earth), vanilla oleoresin/resin ( en "hydrocarbon extraction") and vanilla absolute. Check out "Perfume and Flavour Materials of Natural Origin" by Steffen Arctander and read it all, he was a real master and the books is a botanical perfumery bible ;-)


Here I have to insert that I have been into natural botanical toiletries including perfumes since 2001, so I think I'm quite knowledgeable;-P But after much hassle with not very pleasant people in the same "industry" involved, I promised I would never open my mouth  questioning other peoples methods or products or how they conduct their business. But hey, some promises are meant to be broken - hahaha.




But, I mean it can be a possibility that some chemist has developed a method to press the oil out of the vanilla pods seeds? Can you imagine the price that would obtain? Not that vanilla absolute comes cheap, it is verrrahhhh expensive, but those seeds are tiny tiny tiny.


Like the ones in blueberries.....I do know that there are blueberry seed oil to get at the price of almost 2000 SEK for 500ml, these seeds are smallish too so it and it certainly takes an enormous amount of berries to produce a small amount of oil. But there is maybe the same phenomena as ever with other über expensive ingredients; you use cheep (but vegetable) oils like rape - and sunflower seed oils and then just run by the vat with the blueberry oil??? Or you just ask for a steep price for the end product. Feel free to call me cynic ;-) To be brutally honest, if you want a personal and lovely body oils, Crearome here in Sweden carries a nice selection and you can scent it anyway your heart desire with nice Essential Oils and Absolutes. Hmm, there are days when I regret that I didn't go into this all natural toiletries full time way back in time....now I just make them for my own, family and very close friends enjoyment. The reason is that the rules and regulations both Swedish and EU's are so ridged, that following them would cost a bundle or two. Here my bitchy side again -  I wonder if all the companies out there follow these rules to the T??
Side note - If I may brag, my own handmade handcreame rock .


Think I'm going to take of Zoya Caitlin which has behaved beautifully and stayed put for four days, looking pretty. The only reason to take it of is that a huge nail flake peeled of at the right thumb and so far, I never managed to get any extra polish on such bold spot to look good. I'm going to check my camera later, I think I have a pic of it, if so - I'm going to edit this post later. Edit - that flake tore of a large piece of the nail = short thumb nail :-( Now I absolutely need to re-do my nails before every tiny chip turns into a disaster. But first I have to go to a meeting at John school. Edit again - here is the pic of Caitlin and I agree, I'm not much good at photographing nails :-( But the polish along with Marley is veryvery good.

Zoya Jules

Looked in the bottle as a pale foilly goldy thing, but on the nails it turned boring sandy with a hint of sparkle. In fact, in fact it was so danged boring that I had no clue on what  to do with it - to stamp or to bling it or.....So I took it of as fast as I had applied it, hence no pictures. But you can find the color at Zoya's own website but I promise, it looks nowhere near it on the nails :-(
Verrrrahhh cold in Stockholm today.

Valerie - a bit of a dissapointment

Zoya's marly worked so well that I just had to take it of on Friday night and try out the (in the bottle) gorgeous Valerie. Could she really work as well, dry up and all? Well she did dry decently well (within 15 minutes or so per layer), but she really needed the help of Poché to be totally OK. But the downsides are two - tipwear started to occur fate only a couple of hours and the next day it started to flake.
This is what it looked just 30 minutes ago:

Since then I have taken if of, wonder how come that polishes from the same manufacturer behaves so utterly different. Marley stayed stead on my nails for 4 days, this one didn't even last a night. And - in the bottle Valerie looks absolutely stunning, with more colors going on that one thought was possible - burgundy, purple, gold...But on the nails, it mostly looks kind of purbudgy. It's only under the LED lamps on my Horizon that it looks it's very best....the trouble is - nobody but me sees my nails there;-)

Now I have to choose too try out  Zoya Caitlin or China Glaze VII, the latter looks quite alike Valerie in the bottle.

From a minus 16C wintery Stockholm,
Wolfie

Shame on they

who gives up ;-) Personal translated from Swedish saying "skam den som ger sig" LOL.
In this case it's about Zoya polish. Anyone remember I was so disappointed with the Wicked collect and had so much trouble with many of the ones I bought on eBay? They never dried, just got and scrunchy and gooy and I felt that was the money badly spent. I ended up giving almost all bottles away to our nieces and as far as I know, they don't have any problem with Zoya at all.

Well, when the new Intimate collection came out the temptation became to much, I couldn't help myself but ordered Marley, Caitlin and Jules. The first one I have tried is Marley -  simply gorgeous pale grayish lavender and low and behold, the first layer was dry after 10 minutes, the second layer dried too and with a top of Poshé, after 4 days it's still there and almost no tip wear at all :-O

In fact, it stay so well that I'm really reluctant to take it of and try out Caitlyn or the glorious Valerie that came in the same order. The only down thing was that Swedish customs got their greedy little hands of that small package and slapped me with 200SEK in additional fees and taxes. You would think they had more important things to mind..... In my experience there are always certain etailers whose packages they always every time catch - like Hancocks of Paducah (quilting stuff) and Enailsupply.

I think I'm going to try one of these beauties between loads of laundry and some test driving on my new Horizon, a miracle of a sewing machine so far:-) The DH cast his eyes lustfully on the large acrylic table that comes with in and uttered one word - LED!! Go ahead honey, pimp my Horizon ROTFLMFAO.

Winter wonderland

After going through some nude polishes, some Konad stamps for making a nice and lovely lace pattern, I totally gave up. And I ended up with this; Color Club "Who are you wearing" as a base and a China Glaze glitter - I think it is "Golddigger" as tip and a wee bit of fading.

Quite simple, nothing fancy but nevertheless good-looking:-)

Enough to make a grown woman cry

Yesterday I decided to try the blue version of the Byzantine mani and started with Orly's Witch's Blue. I liked it, but when adding glitter polish it went scrounge and I took it of, thinking "I have a blue China Glaze, why not try it out?" Said and done - bring out the Calypso Blue, but something with the application was not up to my standards and I started to take it of, immediately remembering why I never use it: it's impossible to get of and it stains the skin like nothing else! After using pads upon pads with remover, I drenched the finger tips in it and almost cried. My youngest son came into the bathroom asking me what I was doing, thought a bit about my explenation and then said "do you still have these falsies?" yahhhhh I answered and then he went "if you polish one of these falsies the next time and try to take it of, all your nails will be unharmed ."

Jeezzzz, how come he so smart? Next time I want to try a strange color, I am going to use it on a false first, that's for sure:-)

I've been good

John has suddenly turned to wearing sweats after living more or less in jeans for like forever - Sam on the other hand has gone through the reversed phase - strange.. ..

So I went into H&M to get John a pair of pants and a hooded jacket and while I was there - why not check out the cosmetic dept to see of they had any of the polishes I have read about on different blogs. I admit, I was sorely tempted to lay my fingers on a very bluish one, but managed to hold myself in check, even though it only costed 39.90 SEK. In my experience H&M's polishes sucks, so why spend another krona on them? Also saw a very beautiful eye shadow palette in matte - pink to grey, but once again - IMHO they are so badly pigmented that it's simply not worth it.

So I wait for my latest order from eNailsupply to wing it's way over the big pond - it's over 3 weeks since the order was confirmed...wonder if they have sent it of?

And while waiting for that, today it's time for a new manicure in the same style as the Byzantine one, but in blues and silver.

Later :-D

Byzantic glam

Welllll I did try the RBL "Moulin Rouge" once more and even though it is a joy to paint with, the time for it to dry is like never ever story, not even with Poshé topcoat. I admit, it did feel dry after an hour, but as soon as I got in contact with other objects, it scrunched and flaked. Sigh. So the five bottles of RBL polishes that I splurged on for Christmas, will be put away. Far far away. For that sum that these bottles costed me, I could have gone crazy on some Ilamasqua or Nubar...More sighs.

So of with that sticky mess and time to get creative, since I did love the color of "Moulin Rouge" in my small stash of NPs I did find it's almost twin - Color Club " Be Bold". So two layers of this, Nubar No G188 (fanciful name - huh?) at the tips, Zoya Richelle sponged in between finally topped with a layer of Poshé. I'm quite pleased with the outcome - this will probably be one of the manis you could ogle all day long LOL.

My time and inspiration for doing my nails have been about null this last week. I did have a quite boring French mani (some translucent pink from Color Club and the tip white from Yves Rocher) on for the first couple of days, but even if it started to chip after a short while,

it was kept on until yesterday, because no way I'm going out the door with undone nails ;-) Except for yesterday, when all I had time for was a layer of Nail Tek Ridgefiller. The reason why can be found here
Today is a day for rest and recouperation, I won't even do the laundry - it can keep intill tomorrow. So I decided to retry one of the RBL polishes - "Moulin Rouge" to see if it will behave better this time around. I mean, I do have the time to wait it out, I can just lay here with my hands on my tummy and double dare it to dry LOL.