Make up review: Mavala Mini Color nailpolish

A while ago, since I love nail polishes and nail art, a friend of my mother who works in a perfume shop, gave me some samples of Mavala Mini Colour nail polishes to try, and now that I've finally tried on all of them, I want to write a little review of this product.

The colour I have are (from left to right in the picture above):

- Traviata (no number)

-128 Acid Yellow

- 20 Cairo

- 127 Volcanic orange

- 64 Bilbao

- 65 Adelaide

- 29 Glasgow

- 218 Minsk

- 155 Bronze Green

To show you them all in once  used a set of clear fake nails, here's a picture of all the colours worn (I couldn't catch it clearly in the pictures, but left side is how it looks with just one coat and right side with two coats)

And now my review!

Colours: 5/5 the colours are very bright with shiny pearly reflections. Except for the lighter ones, just one coat is enough to get a good covering colour with no signs of brush strokes. My very favourite of these colours is Acid Yellow.

Colour Lasting: 3/5 they are easy to take off with nail remover, even the darker colours don't leave any shadow on nails, but they are also easy to scratch!

Price: 2/5 I got these ones as a gift, but I checked the price on the web and they are 4€ (5,6$) each, considering how tiny is the bottle (5ml, half of a regular polish bottle) the price is a bit high.

My overall rating: 3,5/5

(This my very first make up review, so please if you have some tips, constructive criticism or more features you want to see in a review, feel free to write me, I'm looking forward for your advices :))

Action for Japan Day

Last Sunday I attended Action for Japan Day, a charity event for Japan, organized by a local Japanese culture association.
There were a few stalls selling Japanese items and demonstrating various traditional arts and activities to raise funds for Japan: origami, go, bonsai, japanese cuisine (I finally tasted onigiri! I love them!), Shodo (calligraphy), Sumie painting, martial arts and kimono dressing.
I also met two of my Japanese lecturer from University: one was teaching some beautiful origami to the children and the other ran the stand of japanese items.
Although the event was rather small, I found it very interesting: my boyfriend tried playing go and I had the chance to wear a real yukata (summer kimono): it seems quite difficult to wear but it's very confy! (except for the heat, but I was wearing my clothes under it ^^)

We also bought a paper fan (uchiwa) with "Ganbare Nihon" ("Hang in there Japan") written on it at the calligraphy stand, a forehead band (the ideogram on it says "Matsuri", festival) and two set of ramen bowls and spoons (I often cook ramen in winter)

I did not know of the existence of this Japanese cultural association, but I'll keep an eye on their site, because they organize a lot of interesting courses and events (for example in June there will be a basic course of Japanese cuisine).
Bonus pictures: three amazing bonsai in full bloom, from the "Bonsai first aid" corner

Baby Angel review (picture heavy)

Last week I received as a birthday surprise form my boyfriend two "famous" skirts by Fiorucci's minor brand Baby Angel. I said "famous" because not only those skirts (and another jsk) gave birth to a lot of discussions in the italian lolita community, but they are in fact two Metamorphose replicas. A lot of people was disappointed about Baby Angel's spring/summer 2011 collection, because it includes those two skirts that are "heavily inspired" by Meta's Cherry Berry and Blooming Garden, and another jsk very similar to a Putumayo one. There are a lot of complaining posts on Baby Angel fb page and a long discussion on our national lolita community about this, but I will not report them here, I have nothing against replicas (even though I know that this position can not be shared by many) so here I will just write my personal review of the skirts.
Let's start with "Cherry Berry" skirt, here's a picture of it lying flat:

The print is gorgeous: very vivid colours and nice details, the cotton which it's made of also seems good (touhg a little too light for winter). I can't decide what is my favourite of the two, because they are both beautiful and well constructed, the only "odd" thing about this one is the writting, you cans ee from the pic below that it says "Baby Angel temps de fille", it doesn't sound great, but I can live with it ^^ (it would have been better if they had just written Baby Angel or nothing at all)

The lace on the edge is quite good (cotton, I think)

and they both have a light built in petticoat (so the skirt doesn't look too flat if you're not wearing a proper petticoat underneath)

And now the "Blooming Garden":

This one doesn't have any strange slogan on it (it only says "Baby Angel"), this print also is very beautiful: vivid colours and nice details as the other one, here's a close up

The tulle lace on edge isn't my favourite but at least is very soft

However I wouldn't recommend them to anyone taller than 1,65/67 m, because they're  a little too short, luckily mines are both in L size so they're long enough (they are large on the waist, but it can be tightened with a belt or waist ties)

To conclude I can say that I'm really pleased of these skirts, I can't wait to wear them in an outfit! (Tomorrow begins Torino Comics 2011, a local comiconvention and I'm planning of wearing the cherry one, I'll post some pics ;))