Essence Glow & Care luminous nail polish in 06 berry caring

I have here a nail polish from the new Essence line. It came in the regular assortment with the latest product update. 

This new nail polish line is supposed to strengthen and protect the nails. It creates a soft glow with light shimmer effect and contains kukui oil.

I don't believe in effects of strengthening, I usually buy nail polishes because of the colour, but if this kukui oil actually works, then so much better.

The nail polish has a big brush, like all the essence nail polishes and I'm used to it, but somehow the application wasn't as smooth as I expected. I didn't have the control over the brush and I couldn’t make straight lines. But maybe it was just a bad day to colour my nails.

The colour is (oh, I'm so bad at describing colours) a violet with tiny pink shimmer. On the nails is fairly dark.

About the longevity I can't tell you much. It last one day on me without chipping, just like any other nail polish. 

Have a great day!

What I'm reading + NOTD pt. 57

The Virgin Blue is the compelling story of two women, born four centuries apart, and the ancestral legacy that binds them. Ella Turner does her best to fit in to the small, close-knit community of Lisle-sur-Tarn. She even changes her name back to Tournier, and knocks the rust off her high school French. But it is all in vain. Isolated and lonely, she is drawn to investigate her Tournier ancestry, which leads to her encounter with the town's wolfish librarian. Isabelle du Moulin, known as Le Rousse due to her fiery red hair, is tormented and shunned in the village - suspected of witchcraft and reviled for her association with the Virgin Mary. Falling pregnant, she is forced to marry into the ruling family: the Tourniers. Tormentor becomes husband, and a shocking fate awaits her. Plagued by the colour blue, Ella is haunted by parallels with the past, and by her recurring dream. Then one morning she wakes up to discover that her hair is turning inexplicably red.

I've read two books by Tracy Chevalier so far, Remarkable Creatures and Falling Angels, and found them interesting, all in all good books. But The Virgin Blue was a disappointment. From the half way onward I just wanted it to end. The connection between the past and the present wasn't very credible and if the past story was bearable I can't say that for the story that happens in the present. Really, Ella's husband all of the sudden has a lot of flaws and the new man is just perfect for her. Blah.

The nail polish is also a small disappointment. Now it look like it is leaning towards violet, but it was blue originally. You see the difference between the cap of the nail polish and the nail polish? Nail polish should look like the colour of the cap, but it's not. The difference may be small, but I can see it. Other than that, nothing special. An ok application, two coats for decent coverage, a base and a top coat. Nail polish is from Essence, with the name Sure Azure. See, even the name suggest that it was blue, but now, I'm not so sure (o look, I made a pun :) )

Have a great day!

What I'm reading + NOTD pt. 56

According to The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch (the world's only completely accurate book of prophecies, written in 1655, before she exploded), the world will end on a Saturday. Next Saturday, in fact. Just before dinner. So the armies of Good and Evil are amassing, Atlantis is rising, frogs are falling, tempers are flaring. Everything appears to be going according to Divine Plan. Except a somewhat fussy angel and a fast-living demon--both of whom have lived amongst Earth's mortals since The Beginning and have grown rather fond of the lifestyle--are not actually looking forward to the coming Rapture. And someone seems to have misplaced the Antichrist.

I've read two books by Gaiman and none by Pratchett, so I don't know his style, but I can see the humor in this work is somehow similar like in Neverwhere, let's say. I like this kind of humour and this book goes well with my taste.

The nail polish is very old, but the colour is perfect and even the application is still ok. I'd say the colour is called petroleum, a dark green with a hint of blue. The name of this polish is Trendsetter and is from essence, a really old line, like I said.

Have a great day!

What I'm reading + NOTD pt. 55

My current job consists also of watching films with teenagers and analyzing it afterwards. The film of February was Room and since I bought the book (if you haven't figure it out, the book is Room by Ema Donoghue) but not read it jet I decided I have to do it before I watch the film. I have a belief that the film will ruin my reading experience. Now I'm not so sure about this anymore.

Jack lives with his Ma in Room, which has a locked door and a skylight, and measures 11 feet by 11 feet. He loves watching TV, and the cartoon characters he calls friends, but he knows that nothing he sees on screen is truly real only him, Ma and the things in Room. Until the day Ma admits that there's a world outside ...Told in Jack's voice, Room is the story of a mother and son whose love lets them survive the impossible. Unsentimental and sometimes funny, devastating yet uplifting, Room is a novel like no other. 

I read the book in one day, it's really hard to put it down. The film is also good, but the book kind of ruined it for me. If I read the book before I watch the movie I always look for differences between the book and the movie, and there will be, because it's impossible to fit everything in the movie. Yes, if you watch the movie first there is also a possibility that you won't enjoy the book as much, but there is so much more in the book so the experience can be still enjoyable (it happened to me with the fifth Harry Potter book. Because of the circumstances I first watched the movie, but that didn't destroy the reading experience). There is also a third option, not watch the movie at all :)

The nail polish is from old Essence line called Hard to resist. It's a dark blue with small blue shimmer, the brush is flat and easy to use. This one is one coater. No problems with the application but I need a new base coats since my current one is becoming goopy and hard to use.

So what do you think, it's a good idea to read the book first before watching the movie? 

Have a great day!

What I'm reading + NOTD pt. 54

Don't Move (original title Non ti muovere) begins with an accident. Called to the hospital when his fifteen-year-old daughter, Angela, is injured in a potentially fatal accident, a prominent surgeon, Timoteo, sits and waits, silently confessing the affair he had the year Angela was born. As Timoteo s tale begins, he s driving to the beach house where his beautiful, accomplished wife, Elsa, is waiting. Car trouble forces him to make a detour into a dingy suburb, where he meets Italia unattractive, unpolished, working-class who awakens a part of him he scarcely recognizes. Disenchanted with his stable life, he seizes the chance to act without consequences, and their savage first encounter spirals into an inexplicable obsession. Returning again and again to Italia s dim hovel, he finds himself faced with a choice: a life of passion with Italia, or a life of comfort and predictability with Elsa. As Angela's life hangs in the balance, Timoteo's own life flashes before his eyes. 

I can tell you one thing, I hated Timoteo with a passion and it's difficult to hate a character that is also a narrator. But Timoteo managed it just fine. I had zero compassion for him, but I felt sympathy for the women around him.

Nail polish is from Essence, a discontinued one, and also a magnetic one. I don't use it as such, but as a simple nail polish. The colour is red with tiny silver shimmer. The name is Magic red carpet. 

Have a great day!

What I'm reading + NOTD pt. 53

There is a special feeling when you read the first book of the trilogy and you like it. Knowing there is more to read, the anticipation for the next book (jet to be written or just to be free at the library).

Here we have the first book in the Century trilogy by Ken Follet. In the first book, Fall of Giants, the story follows five families through the world-shaking dramas of the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the struggle for votes for women. It is 1911. The Coronation Day of King George V. The Williams, a Welsh coal-mining family, is linked by romance and enmity to the Fitzherberts, aristocratic coal-mine owners. Lady Maud Fitzherbert falls in love with Walter von Ulrich, a spy at the German Embassy in London. Their destiny is entangled with that of an ambitious young aide to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and to two orphaned Russian brothers, whose plans to emigrate to America fall foul of war, conscription and revolution. In a plot of unfolding drama and intriguing complexity, `Fall of Giants` moves seamlessly from Washington to St Petersburg, from the dirt and danger of a coal mine to the glittering chandeliers of a palace, from the corridors of power to the bedrooms of the mighty.

What I love about this book is that is so historically accurate. We have real persons interacting with the fictional characters and all is so well done, that it actually could have happened.

The nail polish is from an old Essence limited edition called Vampire's Love. I have all the polishes from this collection but sadly I managed to destroy one. This one is True Love and it is beautiful (and so was the one I destroyed, I'm still angry about it). It's shimmery violet, the application is flawless and I have nothing bad to say about it.

Have a great day!

Agatha Christie 1950's Omnibus and NOTD

Agatha Christie's imaginative crime novels and thrillers made her a household name from 1920s trough to her last books in the early 1970s. Best known as the creator of Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, Agatha tirelessly provided her publisher with at least one book every year, and twenty of her contemporary crime novelswere to feature neither Poirot nor Marple. Instead a wide range of ingenious plots would be played out by a selection of amateur sleuths, professional detectives, young adventuresses or unwary bystanders caught up in unforeseen events. And the 1950's Omnibus is a collection of four novels of such sorts.

Designed to be read individually or as a set, this collection provides a fascinating window on a changing world.

1) THEY CAME TO BAGHDAD, 1951

An exotic adventure begins when a wounded British agent dies in the arms of a courageous young woman.

Nail polish: Miss Sporty Clubbing Colours number 314

An old nail polish, a dark blue, reminds me of ink.

2) DESTINATION UNKNOWN, 1954

In Casablanca a girl with nothing to live for is recruited for a suicide mission to find a missing scientist.

Nail polish: Miss Sporty Clubbing Colours number 314 + Essence colour&go 78 blue addicted

Now that I have peel off base coat from Catrice it's time for glitter. This is an old one from Essence that everyone was crazy about when this came out. It is indeed beautiful, but my brush is bad, so it's really difficult to apply it properly. The glitter is hexagonal shape in blue and green with blue small glitter. 

3) ORDEAL BY INNOCENCE, 1958

When an innocent man imprisoned for murder dies behind bars, the real killer seeks to bury the evidence.

Nail polish: Miss Sporty Quick Dry 'n 1 min number 60

A classic warm red colour, again the application is not the easiest, because the polish is really old.

4) THE PALE HORSE, 1961

A priest's brutal death near a county inn reveals a recipe for witchcraft with a perilous twist of danger.

Nail polish: Miss Sporty Clubbing Colours number 313

I don't like this colour very much, but since I had a theme with nail polishes and the book I went with the flow and pick my last Miss Sporty nail polish.

Have a great day :)