Desperate attempt at bringing this blog back to life

Hello again my dear readers! I can’t believe it’s been three months since the last time I’ve posted anything here!

So let’s see what’s been going on in my life for these past months. My summer went relatively well, although I managed to spend most of it online. My summer trip no. 2 was going to Pärnu, Estonia with my family. It was fun, except for a couple of  minor family crises that made me think we will never go on a family trip again. I don’t have many photos, as usual, but you’ll get to see what I bought (read: what dad bought for me) from there. :)

Oh God, possibly the worst photo ever and nobody even mention the pose. The point of this: the lace shorts and the heels. ♥

New nail polish no. 1 – OPI An Affair in Red Square ♥

New nail polish no. 2 – (the blue one) OPI DS Magic ♥

New shirt no. 1 and also the most recent photo of my lovely face. :'3

New shirt no. 2 featuring my kawaii face.

~♥~

Other real life news: My sister turned 18 in August and got her driver’s license and I’ve started driving to school. I’ve been to my grandparents’ cottage with my dad and uncle to pick mushrooms and I’ve seen a concert version of Jesus Christ Superstar in Lahti and the Finnish version of Tanz der Vampire (which was AMAZING and cost me way more than I would’ve liked) in Seinäjoki. School has been better again, but I’m supposed to start on-the-job training soon and it’s making my stress levels go up again. I’ve finally started taking ballet lessons and it’s one of the best decisions I’ve made in my life. Now I just need to stop being lazy on Thursdays and actually go to the classes every week. :'D

~♥~

Things that are rocking my world: internet with all the amazing people I’ve met (hi guys I love you ♥), and Takarazuka. I’ve written my first fan letters to my princess a.k.a. Sagiri Seina and bought the ultimate amazingness a.k.a. said princess’ Bow Hall show’s DVD. Nijinsky, you guys. Watch it. Now. ♥ Also, my dear Zara was in Japan so I had her buy me everything I could afford, namely these things:

♥___________♥ Everything is shiny and nothing hurts. Obviously Zara bought a lot of stuff for herself too, and we had the best 'Zuka sleepover this weekend. ♥ Yukigumi. ♥

~♥~

Dad installed Windows 7 on my computer last week and everything looks shiny now. We did three different backups of my old files and stuff but I still haven’t figured out how to get some things back the way they used to be. Like my Firefox bookmarks. ASDFASGDF. And I finally got the new Photoshop dad promised to buy me years ago. I actually got the Adobe Creative Suite 5.5 Design Premium and it’s so full of things I hardly know how to use it. A huge leap from my old Elements 2.0.

Okay, that’s enough of text for now. Hopefully I’ll get back to more regular updates soon! Until next time, lovelies. ♥

Infection

(I seem to have fallen to the level where all my titles are song names. :'D)

It’s time for apologies and explanations again. Sorry for the lack of updates. School is eating up all my free time and I haven’t slept nearly enough in the past four weeks or so. Also, my fever at the beginning of the month extended and I also caught an eye infection, so I’ve been feeling a bit under the weather. I’m already healing up, so there’s no need to be too worried.

I’ve failed a lot, due to the illness (I hope). On the 13th I managed to lose my phone. The next Monday I lost my bus card. I was so frustrated I can’t put it into words! I’d probably lose my own body if it were possible. -____-'' Well, the good news is I got a new phone! Here she is:

My new Nokia 5230. The Siren ~Redemption~ (No, I still haven’t got rid of my habit of giving names to my electronical devices.)

~♥~

On the 22nd I attended the much anticipated gig of D’espairsRay, without any make-up due to the eye infection. I had lessons until four o’clock, so I headed to Helsinki straight from school. I got my new bus card first and then went to grab a little something to eat and drink before the gig with Zara and Sami. Taitti joined us when we were already queuing inside. I started to panic about getting a right-sized tour shirt, as I always do, but in the end both me and Taitti got our shirts and found a good place to enjoy the gig from, right next to the mixing table.

The set list was amazing. No, I’m not just saying, it really was that good. The only song I still missed was Reddish, but other than that I was completely blown away. The first two songs, BORN and Marry of the blood, had me thinking I must have died and gone to heaven. The rest of the songs didn’t let me down either. Garnet, fuyuu shita risou and DEATH POINT kept the mood up, but when they played dope, 13 -thirteen-, Love Is Dead and Damned in a row I was on Cloud nine. I enjoyed in vain and Devils' Parade, but Abyss got me a little distracted from the show, as I hadn’t paid it all that much attention when listening to MONSTERS. Lost in re:birth wasn’t my favourite song either, but Hollow got me back on track again. I was more than happy listening to Human-clad monster and REDEEMER, and then Abel to Cain made me go wild. The encore with forbidden, TRICKSTeR and MIRROR was great, but I felt a bit unsatisfied with the lack of Reddish. Both me and Taitti were all “So when will we see D’espairsRay again?” afterwards and were sad to read about the break they are taking after this tour. But as long as Hizumi will get his vocal cords in shape again it’s all good. Thank you for the amazing show again, D’espairsRay!

~♥~

I’ve actually been a bit depressed lately, probably due to the shortening days of autumn. I’ve been forced to wake up at 5:40 a.m. for way too many mornings in a row and it’ll only get worse after the (heavenly!) autumn break of 11 days starting next Thursday. Technically we aren’t allowed to eat anything in our classroom at school, so I’ll have to start having breakfast at home rather than just taking my morning tea and sandwiches with me when I leave the house. This means that I’ll have to wake up at 5:20 practically every weekday morning. I do not approve of this! Well, I can’t really complain since I was the one to decide I’d go to school so far away from home, but still. >.<''

Okay, enough of that rant for now. If I won’t update my blog too frequently from now on it’s just that I’m depressed and tired, that’s all. But! On to nicer subjects!

Dad bought me the cutest bottle of champagne ever!

(Sorry for the bad photo – as always. x3) Look, my Nicolas Feuillatte is wearing a pink winter coat! Just how cute is that? :D Now all I need is a pink coat with white fur for myself and a chihuahua with a matching outfit and I’m all set for a very chic New Year’s party or something. xD

Also, I got a gorgeous pocket watch from my dad! He already had one that used to belong to his uncle or grandfather, so he gave the other one to me. :D

*____* I don’t know where I’m going to wear it, but its cool. A great piece of accessory for a gothic photo shoot, don’t you think? I just need a chain for it…

~♥~

Last Friday was an exciting one. ;) Zara totally got me a heart-attack by texting me that she had got this:

My Miki in Budokan! *q* I left the house in the morning thinking that my life would be complete once I would get my hands on my new baby in the evening. But before that, I had to visit two museums with the other first-year artisan students from our school and then spend the afternoon in Helsinki with Taitti. We were going to buy some new Neopikos from Stockmann, since they had the big sales (Hullut päivät), but decided against it in the end. I bought some stuff for school, the seventh volume of Vampire Knight manga and, you got it right, nail polish. *sigh* I was only going to get myself a new base coat, but then I got my eyes on this:

OPI Kinky in Helsinki! (VERY inaccurate photo colour-wise. It’s much more… not-red IRL, more like magenta. Go Google it, it’s a pain to capture on camera but I’ll try again tomorrow with natural light.) My face was probably something like this: O________________O when I spotted the display next to all the other OPI polishes. My limited-edition-obsessed mind forced me to buy a bottle without stopping to think about it for one second. Luckily I’m absolutely loving it on my nails. ♥__♥

Now on to the curious case of Miki in Budokan. I went to see Zara straight from Helsinki and had to do a lot of self-restraining in order not to drool all over the package during the ten-minute train trip to Sello where my parents picked me up on their way to the grocery store. Once I was finally home, I went straight upstairs and plugged in the VCR. It was at this point that I realized what a huge failure of a nerd I am. The Japanese have their videos in NTSC format whereas our VCR can only play PAL videos. All I saw on the TV screen was a white mess and the sound was too slow and overall weird. I must have flipped because at first I couldn’t do anything but laugh so hard at myself for being an idiot and then I started to frantically search the net for any information on how to get my hands on a VCR that can play NTSC videos. So far it has proven to be quite difficult, but I’ll try searching through flea markets and recycling centres when I find the time. Gosh I wish I had more intelligence in my brain…

~♥~

Well, I could keep on ranting about my angst for the whole night, but I guess it would be unhealthy for me and very unpleasant to my readers, so maybe I’ll just keep all the gory details of how the Tarja/Nightwish-deal still gets me depressed to myself. Hopefully I’ll have a nicer post for you next time. (There’ll probably be some major Mizu!fangirling, since I’ve ordered myself a few new things from Japan~ :D

Until then, dears! ♥

P.S. DAMNIT, if only I had waited for 21 more minutes to publish this… I didn’t realize 10/10/10 at 10:10 would happen twice if you’re using a.m./p.m. time format. >.<''

P.P.S. I’ve got to do this now so that I won’t forget…

I got this Beautiful Blogger Award from Zara. I have to share seven facts about myself and then tag seven people to do the same. I’ll tag all my readers, because I don’t like to spam people’s comment boxes with things like this, even though this is a nice award and everything. :'3

1. I feel like a failure. Mostly because, even though I’m studying to become an artisan, I feel like I have no direction in my life and I get absolutely nothing done.

2. I’ve inherited a tendency to get depressed during the darker months of the year from my mom.

3. I’ve also inherited her genes that allow me to eat practically anything and still stay thin.

4. I always try very hard to please other people and I sometimes get all worked up because I can’t please everyone at the same time.

5. I tend to get some sort of an identity crisis every other month or so, due to an obsession or the previous fact.

6. I feel like I’ve failed in English again in this post and it bothers me very much, as always.

7. I’m a procrastinator and a perfectionist. NOT a good combination, I can tell you. I always get depressed over things I haven’t done but it doesn’t make me do them any faster. *ahem* driving lessons, taiji and student card *ahem*

In for a kill

Put all your angels on the edge
Keep all the roses, I’m not dead

Missed me much? :D I’ve caught a cold so I didn’t have to go to school today. And you know what that means, right? Spending the whole day on the computer! …Ahem, I obviously meant to write ‘resting and trying to get better’. x3

I should really do something to improve the quality of this blog… It’s really starting to bother me that my most used tags are random and fail. >.<’’ I’ve been thinking about sorting my blogs out. This one would be for my life in general, Alteregoizm would remain the vampire blog, my lj would be for fandoms, I’d have an angst blog and a writing blog and lastly, I’ve been thinking of starting some kind of a fashion blog. That’s six blogs in total. I wouldn’t be able to update any of them, would I? But I really need a fashion blog for my studies… Would it get very confusing if I just started adding some fashion illustrations here? o.O

Anyway, my blog improvement started with a new header. I was tired of the old one, but now I’m not sure if the new header quite fits the current layout. I really wouldn’t want to change this blog’s appearance too much… The light violet text on the darker background probably isn’t the most eye-catching, but I really like this colour scheme. Life’s hard.

~♥~

On to the happy events of these past two weeks! Tarja’s new album What Lies Beneath was released on the 1st of September but I only got my hands on it on the 2nd.

(Distracting Mizus of my school folder in the background) I obviously had to buy the Deluxe Version of the album, with three extra songs and a video of Tarja talking about WLB. :3 I’m loving this CD so much! Musically, it still isn’t at the same level as Nightwish, but Tarja’s voice is so beautiful! I’m loving the lyrics in most songs, too. I really felt the hype for this album when Tarja released the videos of Falling Awake, I Feel Immortal and Until My Last Breath. Luckily, the rest of the songs didn’t disappoint either. I think this album is more mature than My Winter Storm, but the musicians still need to put more passion to their playing to really bring out Tarja’s voice as best as they can. I’ve listened this from the top for about 13 times and by now I’m loving about every song, even the slower ones that didn’t quite catch my attention on MWS. Tarja’s first solo album had a couple of songs that felt more personal, My Little Phoenix for me and I Walk Alone for Tarja herself, the Alice Cooper cover Poison that still sounds great, and Lost Northern Star and Boy and the Ghost that I still keep listening, but WLB is an album I can keep listening without skipping one song. Unlike I Walk Alone, I still haven’t grown bored with Falling Awake. Major improvement there! And I can’t do a mini-review of this album without mentioning the extra song that got me drooling; Still of the Night, a Whitesnake cover that rocks my socks! The lyrics, the power, the love! *-*

~♥~

Next up: what I did last weekend!

I went to see my grandparents in Lahti. There was some kind of an art day, so the town was full of events from free tickets to various museums to a 50’s fashion show. It was fun, but the freezing weather (about 12 Celsius degrees and a terrible wind) made it slightly unpleasant to go from one place to another.

Me and my granny went to an art gallery where the first 50 visitors got a surprise gift. Thus, I am now two Neopikos richer than last week!

I really couldn’t remember which two colours I had already, so I just took a turquoise marker that looked nice. My granny picked a pink one, which she gave to me afterwards. *-* I also bought a Japanese brush-like pen, since they had a 20% discount on every product they had. I really don’t know what that pen should be called, but it has a brush tip and black ink inside. Taitti had bought one of those before and she liked it, so I thought I could get one as well. :3

Other than that, my weekend was very tasty. Dad’s mom took me to a Spanish beef restaurant for lunch on Saturday and in the evening we had some apple pie she had made with ice-cream and other tasty things afterwards. On Sunday I ate porridge for breakfast, with some delicious blueberries and nonna, my mother’s mom, took me to Santa Fé to eat some more beef for lunch (pear ice-cream with caramel sauce for dessert, as usual ♥).

When I got back home, it didn’t take long before my dad came back from Tour de Helsinki, a big bicycle race, with his collar bone broken. He had fallen over at around 3 p.m. and was heading to hospital, just stopping by the house to pick some clean clothes with him. We’ve been having a bit depressing mood at home this week, since he hasn’t even been able to have a surgery yet. Get well soon, daddy! ;__;♥

~♥~

On to shopping! Actually, I was shopping on last Thursday, so these should have been higher up the post, before my trip to Lahti. Anyway, I finally bought myself a pair of leggings!

(Sorry for the face lag, took the photo today, with no make-up on and feeling ill.) I remember swearing I’d never get a pair of leggings. Well, as they say, one should never say never. :D Takarazuka freaking fandom, would you stop messing with my mind already? …The leggings are actually a bit thin-fake leather-like and look more shiny in real life. :'D With those boots… (Hey, I’m also showing you my lovely new feet-killers here!) Internet is for porn? :____D I really don’t know if I’ll ever have the guts to wear those anywhere public. x3 My wardrobe isn’t exactly full of clothes that could be worn stylishly with leggings…

Ahem, anyway, I also bought a you know what… Nail polish! FAIL! xD

OPI DS Coronation. (No I didn’t spend 19,95 € on a nail polish when I’m saving for all that Zuka stuff and dreaming of new clothes… >.>'')

In a toilet artificial light…

…And natural light.

As always, the application is perfect. *-* You just can’t go wrong with an OPI DS polish. This would actually have been a three-coater, but the sparkliness allowed me to go with just two coats. (I did my nails at around midnight and was supposed to wake up at six in the morning. x.x)

Now I’m tempted to wear DS Extravagance next, but I’m also getting a feeling that I haven’t had red nails for too long… D: The problem of owning too many nail polishes, it’s always a pain to decide which one to wear next!

…I also bought two zippers to sew on the legs of a pair of black pants to make them more up-to-date. :3 Just have to get around to actually doing it…

~♥~

Lastly, I would like to share something related to style with you! :3

A photo from Stockmann’s Premier magazine. If I had the money, I would definitely go and buy some of those clothes! *-*Especially the ones in right… And about all the shoes… Damn, why are Stockmann’s clothes so expensive? T-T

~♥~

That’s about it. See you next time~

Devils’ Parade

Hiya all! Long time no see. For once I’m not going to apologize for the blog silence since I’ve got a perfect excuse for my absence. *dum-de-dum* It’s actually school. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, for the past two weeks I have actually been studying! I got accepted to the school I wished to attend! Yay, go me! I’m studying sewing women’s clothes. 8) Suits me perfectly, don’t you think?

Okay, I have a crapload of photos to show you and nothing much in my brain to tell about them. :'D It’s obviously been too long since my last update, too many things have happened and I can’t keep my thoughts organized. Sorry if this gets messy again. x3

Since I mentioned visiting my godparents’ summer house in my last post, I could start with that. No, I didn’t take any photos. Yes, I did manage to get Stella somewhat hooked on Takarazuka. Heck yes, we had a great time! We should definitely see each other more often~

~♥~

Chronologically, the next thing would probably be D’espairsray’s new album MONSTERS.

Limited edition with DVD (that I haven’t actually watched yet o.O), straight from Japan. :3 Took me a while to really get in to the songs, but the more I listen to it the better it sounds. It’s a bit lighter than their usual style, but it’s catchy and I’m sure it’ll work well live. I really need to start learning the lyrics by heart…

~♥~

I have been enjoying the Zukaism with Zara. One Saturday we went to Helsinki to window-shop all things otokoyaku. And, well, I bought a pair of Kamijo-boots. :____D It just happened, I swear I didn’t mean to! …Ahem, whatever, here’s a crappy photo of my outfit of that day:

The otokoyaku scarf combined with a black shirt and a pen skirt? I really don’t know. :'3 You can’t actually see it all that well in the photo, but I managed to make myself the Tooto nails. Finally!

I bought myself a new nail polish, yet again. My previous Tooto polish had run dry, so I couldn’t help buying GOSH Black Passion. The colour is love, but I don’t really love the horrible tip pull it creates. Anyway, Black Passion was the base, OPI Catch Me in Your Net was added on the tips and the finishing touches were done by an eyeliner brush with Lumene Natural Code Classy. The result? Here:

I didn’t bother to take too detailed a photo, since I haven’t got any detailed photos of the real Tooto nails myself. (Explanations, explanations. x3) I ended up loving the result and am actually thinking of doing this design with some other colours too. (RED, anyone?)

~♥~

Ahem, then I’ve got a mass of photos of my face from a random lonely photo shoot. :'3 Feel the otokoyaku-vibe with a hint of feminine Hetaism added in. :'D

Man, I feel like a woman~♪ Or not. xD Dude-ism (what’s with the creative use of language again?) doesn’t make me look hot… I don’t even look like my dad here. x3

~♥~

Okay, now on to the good part! Me, Zara and Nepi went to Helsinki last Sunday to take some photos. It was so much fun and it shows. :D

Wanna get in trouble?

Rio de Bravo, anyone? :D

Interesting bugs down there?

The coolest photo of me and Nepi.

Can’t touch this~

Our Zuka dance reinvented caboeira. xD I can’t help lolling at these~

An unedited photo of my failing hair me. Ta-dah!

~♥~

Umm, I don’t really have all that much free time these days… It takes me about an hour and a half to get to school and the same to get back home, and the days aren’t all that short either. Last week I managed to not sit on the computer every night and thus I got to sleep about six hours per night. Yesterday, I failed. I stayed up ‘til half past two in the morning, watching Zuka videos. How irresponsible can one be of herself? >___>'' Now I just have to share this, even though most of you probably aren’t interested… My Zuka fandom has risen to a level where I hail about every otokoyaku I see. I just discovered the greatness of Maya Miki and that discovery is going to cause me so much pain. The woman has had a concert in Budokan. Where she sung Malice Mizer’s Gekka no Yasoukyoku. The live video is extremely hard to find. Somebody please shoot me now! A hot otokoyaku (they really knew how to fanservice in the 90s) singing one of my favourite songs! Gekka no Yasoukyoku is actually my example of how to somewhat ruin your favourite song by having it as the tune of your alarm clock. But it’s love. I would do about anything to see a clip of Miki singing it. WHERE CAN I FIND THAT VIDEO? (It has also Mizu in it. *-*)

I ain’t got no money, money~♫

…I love the autumn fashion collections, by the way. They’re always full of clean cuts and black and everything that I love. If I had the money, I would shop ‘til I drop in Seppälä, Lindex and Stockmann. I need shiny leggings, for example.

Due to lack of sleep last night, I can’t come up with anything clever to write. :'3 Sorry~

Until next time sweeties~ ♥

P.S. Keep listening to Desert Rose by Sting (whom I won’t be seeing live T-T) and watching different versions of the hotness Kosame. ;3

P.P.S. I should probably revive my writing blog, since I’ve got some 3000 words of YuMizu fanfiction on my computer… 8D

The major fangirlism strikes back!

GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! ASDFGH (sorry about this :__D) !!

You know what ‘tis all about, right? I’m really starting to feel the GACKTism here. I’ve dreamed of seeing him live ever since the 8th grade and even though I got the ticket to his concert and got the trip settled, the whole thing just seemed very surreal to me. Until today.

As you might have guessed, I read some gig reviews by the people who were at his concert in London yesterday and the fangirlism stroke me very hard. (The internet is such a dangerous place for a girl like me who easily takes influences from others. The *squeeeeee* mode spreads like nothing else when I read any fan reports.) Only five more days and I’m off to Munich all on my own. And after that, just one day before I’ll get to see the egoist of my life. ♥ x3 And this time I’m up for the whole lining up thing too, like a good fan. I’ve paid enough for this and I’m going to get the full experience of a great gig. What would I do alone in Munich anyway? I’ll just leave the hotel on Thursday morning, grab something to eat and head to the concert place to meet the other fans and wait for the Man with his crew to arrive. :'3 (I wish I had some information about the gig routine in Germany… Limits to the time we can stand in line, are there any extra fees we need to pay in Theaterfabrik etc.)

Oh well, I guess we’ll see how it goes. I’m just so excited about this whole trip, traveling alone, seeing GACKT etc. that I can’t even write anything understandable. (Wonder why I even started… I guess I just had to get all that ‘gah’ out of my system. :'D My apologies.)

~♥~

Ahem, let’s see if I’ve got anything comprehensible to the non-j-rock-loving readers… (A short pause in writing here, reading another review and almost crying already.)

It’s still Too Darn Hot here (and I can’t stop loving that song, btw), so I haven’t really been doing much. Or actually – I forgot it’s been two weeks since my last post. I was on a Saimaa cruise with my parents for four days the week before, and we’ve had about 30°C almost every day since then. Can’t complain, because we don’t really get warm weather often here in Finland, but I’ve got to say that this darn heat is eating me up.

Anyway, I forgot to take my camera with me to Saimaa and my dad has got his camera with him right now, so I haven’t got any photos from the cruise. The Saimaa Canal was amazing and I loved Olavinlinna, as I love all the old castles I visit, so the cruise was a success. I suffered from a slight lack of sleep from staying up ‘til four in the morning on a couple of nights before the cruise (MSN with Zara, obviously. Dad found out but hasn’t killed me yet.) and as we were going through the Canal from 3:15 to 8:15 in the morning, I was a bit tired and actually slept in the cabin whenever I could (I had to wake up to eat occasionally). :'3 The hot weather was unbearable, even when we were at the sea, but at least it wasn’t +15°C and raining.

~♥~

Before the cruise (yay, Heta, thanks for doing this chronologically), I surprised myself by sopping in Sello and actually managing to buy something! Bad for my wallet, I guess I won’t be eating much in Munich, but good for my mood. :3

I finally bought myself a new wallet! I was happily surprised that this one has actually got a good amount of card pockets in it. Now I won’t have to try to stuff all the cards on top of each other. Notice my French manicure in the photo, too. Mavala White and Lumene Dancing Waves.

I found these too from – surprise, surprise – Seppälä. Again, their size 34 is too big for me, so I have to buy from their ‘teenager line’, Link. I’m starting to feel like these shirts make me look like a child…

Well, this dress is actually from the women’s section. ^^' I actually really like this one, even though I never seem to get the collar right…

~♥~

Alrighty then, next a little something about nails! First I’d like to show you a wannabe summer-y manicure I did a while back.

Sorry for the messy. :'3 I wanted to try something a bit out of the ordinary (my ordinary, that is) and went for a nail art with summery colours. As you might know, my polish collection consists mostly of darker or flashy colours, not of the currently fashionable taupes or creamy pastels, so I went for the brighter shades. Mavala Gold, OPI DS Reflection and OPI Catch Me In Your Net. Due to the hot weather, the golden polish got extremely bubbly. For some reason, I could only stand this mani for a day or so before replacing it with the French one, shown earlier in this post.

Next, a new polish to my collection. I know what you must be thinking right now, but please let me explain! My little sister was in Barcelona for a week and she bought this to me as a souvenir. It’s not completely my fault that my polish collection just keeps growing!

Sorry for the crappy look. I was pleasantly surprised by this, because I had just read a review of a Kiko nail polish in someone’s blog when I got this. The review was very positive, so I couldn’t keep from trying this on right away. I first applied this on a fake nail and noticed immediately that this one could be the great one-coater. I was super excited and almost jumped up and down from the perfection of this polish when I first applied it to my nails. The excitement didn’t last long, however, because I noticed that the polish was getting very bubbly when it dried. I removed the polish in the evening, disappointed. But, as I reapplied it in the morning, in the basement where it’s cooler than elsewhere in the house, I noticed that the bubbliness (is that even a word?) was again mostly just caused by the warmth. My top coat, however, seems to have suffered more by the warmth, since it almost made this polish look worse than what it was by itself.

Kiko polishes cost only 1,90 € and it seems to me they are worth every cent. This colour, Midnight Blue, is a great example for me of the fact that darker polishes are actually harder to wear than the lighter ones. I should have cleaned the polish more around the cuticles, and the tip wear starts bothering me with these darker colours sooner than with the lighter polishes.

~♥~

I’ve been trying to take some photos of myself (narcissistic, much?) despite the heat we’re having. I’ve got a few okay inspirations and a couple of nightly bad-for-the-quality inspirations too. Here are some photos I’d like to show you:

A ballet-inspired piece. The concept was ‘Never the ballerina I longed to be’ or something similar. There are many things I don’t like in this one, but there always are. :'3

Here’s what my nightly inspiration looked like yesterday. I don’t know why but this photo somehow reminds me of some old paintings of noble ladies (except that they obviously looked better x3). Maybe it’s the serious look or the play of light and shadow… I don’t know. (By the way, corsets can really do wonders to one’s bust. >w<)

And here’s something very different again – me by the pool. Erm, lol?

And – well, another lol at me trying to look cool?

I could keep this on forever, but I’ve got to go to sleep soon. >.<'' 

~♥~

Just one more thing about what I’ve been up to.

I was in Helsinki with Zara today. She was hungry, so we went to eat. Here’s what I had:

A big ice-cream (strawberry, vanilla and salty licquorice) with heart-shaped pink waffels, whipped cream and sauce. And freshly juiced orange juice, the best drink you can get, after blood orange juice. ♥

And before I finish, I’d like to get your opinion on something. As you might or might not see in some of those photos, I have tried to keep my bangs off my face as much as possible lately. Yay or nay? I actually like the look more than I thought I would, but as I was searching through some old photos I came across this:

It tempts me to cut my bangs again! Why does it always have to be so hard to decide on a hairstyle? Last week I almost convinced myself to get a bob cut again… Gah!

~♥~

Okay, that was it! I’m sorry about the hugeism, the fangirlism, the failism and all the other isms in this post. :'3 And sorry for anything I might have forgotten to mention. And for the language. Excitement and tiredness isn’t a good combination – especially if you’ve had a two-week break in blogging.

Anyway, until next time, honeys!

♥ Hetha ♥

P.S. I want to make hats! :D

Too Darn Hot

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me present you the long awaited nail post! WARNING: This is going to be HUGE!

We’re having a cozy warm weather, about 22 Celsius degrees in shade, so what better way is there to spend the day than blog on my dad’s computer on our patio? :'D Well, I can actually think of a couple of other things, but as I’ve spent the morning cleaning around the house I wanted to come outside. The heat wave is making me incredibly lazy, so I’ll just spend the afternoon taking photos of my nail stuff and blogging. :3

This post includes:

• My nail care equipment
• My nail care routine
• My nail polish collection
• My current nail situation
• A short how-to-repair-a-broken-nail tutorial

As I like to say, on with the show!

My nail care equipment

Here are all the things I use for my weekly nail care. I’ve got two files, a paper nail for shortening the nails and a glassy one for smoothing everything out. I put the clippers in the photo too, but I try to avoid using them as much as I can. It’s just when I need to shorten my nails for more than 4 mm that I use them. I’m slightly too impatient to file off half a centimetre of my nails. Then I’ve got an old Swisa Beauty buffer (that one I use only when necessary, not every week), and Hand & Body Lotion and Cuticle Oil from the same brand. There’s also a Mavala nail polish thinner for older, streaky nail polishes and a super glue for repairing any broken nails, but more about that later.

My nail routine

I usually do my nails only once a week, because I usually can’t find time to do them during the week or am just too lazy for that. In my opinion, Sundays are the best for doing nails, since I usually don’t really have anything else to do and might be a bit depressed for the upcoming Monday.

I usually start with picking up something to watch from our digibox, grab some cotton and my nail polish remover (which is missing from the photo, apparently. I usually use Lumene’s acetone-free nail polish remover) and obviously remove my old nail polish. For me it works best if I first just hold the remover-soaked cotton on my nail for a little while; that way the polish is much easier to remove.

After removing the old nail polish I usually use some basic body cream for my hands and them wash them with soap, because Lumene’s nail polish remover leaves my fingers sticky. After washing my hands I use the Swisa Beauty Cuticle Oil and Hand & Body Lotion and wait for some time before doing anything else. I guess I’m trying to let my nails rest for a while.

If I need to shorten my nails, I start with either clippers or a paper file, depending on how much I need to shorten them. I always finish with my glass file, since it’s the only thing that keeps my nails from chipping. I know that some people say it’s best to shape your nails with nail polish still on, but somehow I usually prefer to shape my nails when I can actually see everything about them. This is obviously a matter or preference. My nails always start to curl inwards from the sides when I have nail polish on, so shaping them is harder then.

When it comes to actually polishing the nails, I always start from the left hand’s thumb with a base coat and than go fro there on. OPI Natural Base Coat dries really fast, so I don’t really need to wait for the left hand to dry before continuing with the right one. After applying the base coat to both hands I do wait a while before starting with  the actual coloured polish. My techniques are far from perfect, so I won’t go into much detail. I recommend reading this article by Michèle from LACQUERIZED. (And please do read her other articles, too!) Her blog is amazing. Every time I read one of her posts I end up wondering why I even bother with this blog of mine. She’s phenomenal and her nails are to die for. ♥ …Anyway, back to my nail polishing routine. I first polish my left hand’s nails, then wait, then polish the right hand’s nails, then wait some more, repeat the previous steps, wait again, then apply the top coat and after a minute or two apply OPI Drop Dry. After that I don’t need to wait for all that long for the polish to dry, but I do try to avoid any unnecessary contact on my nails for the rest of the evening. :'3 If I have the energy I’ll do some cleaning up around the nails. And that’s pretty much it for my nail routine!

My nail polish collection

The huge part starts here. :'D

First, here’s where I keep all my nail polishes:

An old box I’ve got as a Christmas present years ago. It’s just so cute, don’t you think? I can’t buy any new nail polishes though, if I want to keep them all in there…

Here’s how the contents of the box looked before last Christmas, compared to the current situation. I can’t stop wandering what the crap happened in these past six months. xD And my collection (36 polishes) isn’t even of a medium size compared to most nail bloggers out there. :3

And now on to the polishes!

Starting off with Mavalas. You can probably see the names on the bottles (apart from the Base Coat, which is hiding in the Black bottle, since it’s own bottle broke when mom tried to open it for me) but I’ll write the names here anyways. From left to right: French Cancan, New Delhi, Night Club, Silver, Gold, Top Coat, Base Coat. I have probably reviewed most of these here before, so I’ll just put this briefly. Mavalas are okay, in my opinion. Not great, but they serve their purpose well. I’ve heard many people complaining that Mavalas are too expensive, but I think their price is reasonable. They are not cheap by any means, even though that’s what my mind seems to think every time I see a colour I like. Usually people also complain about the short wear of Mavalas, but that’s nothing that couldn’t be fixed with good base & top coat.

Next up are my L’Oréal and Lumene polishes. The four polishes from the left have gotten extremely streaky and I don’t use them all that much anymore. They were all very pretty, though, when they were still usable. The two polishes on the right are both in a perfect shape. The polishes are, from the left again, L’Oréal Star Magnet magnetic silver, L’Oréal Resist & Shine 540 (I couldn’t find any name for it), Lumene 512 Good Time, Lumene 15 Late Night, Lumene Natural Code 22 Classy and Lumene 534 Dancing Waves.

And here are some random polishes. GOSH 054 Steel, which I don’t like at all, colour wise, a red Aden Cosmetics polish I got from my mom but have never used (and I’ve never heard of this brand before, either o.O), Nivea colour mini 55 Black Sparkle (my Tooto nail polish ♥) and Chanel Blue Satin, which looks almost black and is a pain to apply.

And here are the essentials: OPI Drip Dry, Natural Base Coat and Top Coat. What would I do without these three? I can’t honestly say that these would be best products around, as I haven’t really tested too many of these, but at least these beat Mavala’s top & base coats.

Here are my China Glazes and two other GOSH polishes. Man, I love how my camera can’t get the colours right. CG’s Stroll and Ruby Pumps look quite right, but I can’t say the same about those two GOSHes. Well, they are Golden Dragon and Ocean, anyway. For these polishes, I wish CG would have bigger brushes on their polishes. The polishes could be slightly more opaque, too. The GOSH frosts could apply better, too.

Hey, look! Another example of almost accurate colours! Anyway, these are all OPIs (Oh really? Please don’t even start with stating the obvious. –.-''), Catch Me in Your Net, Yoga-ta Get This Blue, Ink, Sapphire in the Snow and Lady in Black. Nothing bad to say about these babies. All lovely colours. ♥

Last but not least, more OPIs! (What do you mean my favourite colours seem to be dark red and blue?) I’m Not Really A Waitress, O’Hare & Nails Look Great, DS Reflection, DS Extravagance and Sweet Heart. My INRAW has got slightly sticky. ;__; It’s probably time to use some of that thinner… O’Hare smells awful, as I mentioned in my last post, I just love the DS’s and Sweet Heart is a pain to apply, plus it chips off easily, even with base & top coat.

My current nail situation

As I told in my last post, I’ve shortened my nails for quite a bit. Honestly, now that I look a these, I think that’s a good thing. ^^

Ahem, so here are my nails, all natural and stained from three weeks of nonstop use of red polish and everything. :'3 I’m having a hard time deciding what colour to go for next. Something summer-appropriate, for sure. Plain white? Sparkling blue? Should I perhaps try to do some kind of a funky manicure? Gah, life’s so tough. ^__~

Anyway, I think (I might be just imagining things though) that my nail beds have grown slightly. Yayy! I have always had very round nail beds, so my nails look really small if they don’t have any length in them. Overall I am pretty happy with my nails at the moment, disincluding some chipping on a few nails and the obvious stains. I’m not a hundred percent sure about the shape, though… (I never am. :'D) My nails don’t seem to be co-operative when it comes to my desired shapes. I wish I could have those red old Hollywood oval-shaped nails… ;_;♥

How to repair a broken nail

Again, you would probably find a better tutorial from some proper nail blog (LACQUERIZED, I’m telling you!) but I’ll just briefly tell you about my method of quickly and easily repair a torn nail. I don’t take any credit for this, though, since I’m pretty much copying someone else’s idea. (Seriously people, Google is your friend. ^^)

Here’s where I’m starting from. My thumbnail is slightly torn from the left, just above the point where the nail bed ends. This is the most annoying way to break a nail, because you’d have to cut the whole nail off if you didn’t want to get it stuck to every possible piece of fabric or hair or whatever. The most simple way to go about this would be to just apply a small amount of super glue in the fracture, wait for it to dry and maybe carefully buff any excess glue off, but I decided to do a little extra.

Usually one would like to buy a special nail repairing kit for this, so one would get all the things needed for the repairing. I thought I’d save a few bucks by just using super glue and the things I already had at home. For this method, you’ll need:

• Super glue
• A piece of silk wrap, coffee-filter paper or tea bag paper
• Tweezers
• A toothpick

I started with making sure that my nail was totally clean and unpolished. Then I cut a small piece of coffee-filter paper, making sure it would cover the whole fracture. I applied a few drops of Super glue in the fracture and then a few drops on the coffee-filter and used the tweezers to place the paper on the fracture. Please notice that it’s probably better to use a quite thin paper for this. My coffee-filter was a bit too thick, so I wasn’t able to wrap it below my nail for some extra hold. (Also, the thicker paper showed through my nail polish.) Finally, I used a toothpick to make sure that the glue and paper dried evenly on my nail and waited a few minutes for the glue to dry completely. Afterwards I gently buffed the repaired part of the nail, to make sure everything was as smooth as possible and then just applied my nail polish as I normally would. The wrap stayed on for months and I didn’t have to worry about the fracture anymore.

 

Here are my fixed nails, thumb, index and middle finger. I guess I could have done better with these, but it was my first time. I managed to get a small fracture on the other side of my index finger too, and I’ve repaired it with just super glue this time. It seems to be working fine and is a lot more subtle than these wraps.

Gosh, was that all? I guess so. That was a handful to write. ^^ It’s past midnight already, so forgive me for not proofreading everything. I don’t even want to know what horrible typos might lurk in there, tiredness with the laptop keyboard isn’t a good combination at all. D:

I fail so much… Well, all comments are appreciated!

Until next time, dears!

♥ Hetha ♥