My current skin care must haves.

For me, as for not dermatologist or someone related with this, was pretty hard to find the perfect system of products from the first time, in which every product not only could work wonderful for its own, but also could complement each other in its properties. When I first noticed my skin imperfections, my mom took me to the clinic, when they immediately recommended me to do a hardware face treatment, which didn't work out for me and made my skin even worse. So I decided to buy treatments by recommendations from the Internet, friends etc. And this experience was successful only partly, mostly because of  the expensive treatments, that I read were very rich in different beneficial ingredients. But later I realized that these products were not even useful for me and my problem, because they were not for my skin type and contains the ingredients that didn't fight that acne bacteria (why I said partly helped is, that they helped me to keep my skin hydrated and improved my skin tone a little bit) .... And another problem of mine was also not using a tonic or some sort of  pH balancing things, which is SO IMPORTANT! So when I almost gave up on fighting those pimples I was introduced to this ah-mazing french dermatological laboratory La Roche-Posay and its line EFFACLAR, which is made specifically for oily acne prone skin. And I gotta say that it changed my skin a lot for better and changed my whole routine forever! I highly recommend it!So I can't no longer just talk about it, because the only thing I know from my experience, that it really gave me clean and healthy looking face and I couldn't even ask for more. So below I wrote you my whole skin care routine with the products that I use almost a year now and I can say that this is my favourite skin remedies that I have ever used so far! Also I wanted to mention, that a huge part in the getting flawless face plays a diet! Try to keep it as healthy as possible and drink at least 2 litres of water per day, because what you eat will indicate on your face immediately!

So these are my absolutely favourite skin care remedies:

1. Cleansing.
For cleaning I use this La Roche-Posay Foaming Gel, because it works a lot better than gels, soaps etc. for me. It;s really gentle. And I know this will get rid of excess oil without removing those special oils that act as a natural barrier for the body.

2. Toning.
So when my skin is squeaky clean, I go straight to my toner which gives a skin pH balance, disturbed earlier with the cleanser, we bring it quickly back, so face on the skin won't work overtime to restore the balance. I use Tea Tree toner from The Body Shop.

3. Moisturizing.
 I picked this one in terms of getting rid of acne marks and small pimples on my face and it really does its job. (I use it almost a year, so I can tell!) It's from La Roche-Posay, from the same line as my cleanser.

That's all, that I use daily( twice ). And now I will talk about additional products, which are working as great and helping me a lot!

As for the masks, I apply it preferably after the bath, when my skin is steamed and pores are open. In these conditions you will easily deep clean the skin. My faves are:

1. The Body Shop Tea Tree Face Mask, from the same line as my toner.
2. Freeman Avocado & Oatmeal Clay Mask. Super simple and cheap, but super effective!

Plus at more colder weather, like it gets right now for my cheeks, nose and chin areas I use a different face cream. I replace my La Roche with the one by Avene, which is called Cleanance HYDRA . Because if I don't switch my cream for more soothing and nutritional, my skin will start peeling in the places that I mentioned before. So below is the photo of this awesome cream and my favourite moisturizing lip butters (i love raspberry and macadamia&vanilla), which I use only at the night time, because they are too heavy for the daytime wear. I apply them for the same needs, mostly during the cold seasons, when everything needs an extra hydration.

I hope you enjoyed todays post and found it helpful for yourself. Write me in the comments section what skin care products are working for you the most and how you keep your face clean, I would love to read about it and I will talk to you again very soon!

Much love,

Katya xx

Golden Fall

Hello, lovelies!

I hope you're doing well and enjoying this marvelous time of the year, cause I really do! I love every season, but fall is something that is so incredibly beautiful to watch! Leaves changing their color into an amber, which is not only make you go outside and have a long walks, but also it pushes you to take an overwhelming pictures of this wonder, so what did I.

When days shorter and nights colder, warm each other with hugs and good conversations. These happy photos, by the way, were made after I watched an amazing new film in cinema starring Anne Hathaway and Robert De Niro, called "The Intern". These actors made a magnificent combination! This film is one of these rare "must watch" super delicate, intelligent and incredibly hilarious films, at least I think so) I'm highly recommending it to you! oops, this post slightly transitioned from an outfit post to the film review! ha ha))  But I needed to tell you, guys , about it, because look into what positivness it turned out!

I hope your fall also filled with lots of positivity and great mood. I wish you lots of love and warm, enjoy every single minute, while you're alive! Stay tuned for more posts this week!

Much love,

Katya xx

SAINT PETERSBURG, October 5

I was wearing:

MANGO Trench Coat

PUMA Ferrari black bag

VINTAGE lizard boots 

STOCKMANN burgundy scarf

MANGO black velvet pants

Fall Shopping : shoes edition

So fall season is all about cool and chic stuff. I thought to start a "Fall Shopping" article series where I will share with you my favourite things to buy in the autumn. And todays post I dedicate to the SHOES! Shoe lovers - this one is for you!

From left to right:

1. ZARA Ankle Boots with fringes

2. PROENZA SCHOULER woven matte boots

3. ISABEL MARANT ashes leather boots

4. ALEXANDER WANG cutout calf hair boots

5. ZARA bootie with ankle strap

6. SCHUTZ leopard bootie

I picked not only booties in the basic black color with not so basic details (of course) but also one pair with cool leopard print and one in the neutral color to dilute the dark palette.

From left to right:

1. ZARA Studded flats

2. ZARA Combined fabric loafers

3. OSCAR DE LA RENTA metallic loafers

4. TORY BURCH lace-up leather flats

5. ZARA flats with metal toe

6. STEVE MADDEN taupe suede flats

Here you'll find both: femenine styles and inspiration from your most stylish guy's closet. Also these stylish flats are made to be multi purpose things. You know we all want to purchase things (especially shoes) which will work in a lot of different situations. So you can easily wear them in the office, school, university (if your dress code is democratic enough), and then transition them into your night/evening life.

From left to right:

1. FRYE over the knee flat boot

2. ZARA flat leather boots with zip

3. JEFFREY CAMPBELL suede cowboy boots

4. HUNTER gloss rain boot

5. ZARA high heel boots with laces

6. GIANVITO ROSSI suede over-the-knee boots

This part of the article not for everybody fall times, because you know we all live in the different climatic conditions, so maybe these shoes will meet your end of the fall/winter needs. I personally love high boots in warm colors they reminds me of an autumn time and leaves you know, but for the rainy days I prefer to wear rubber boots and plus they are that stylish, so why not ?

From left to right:

1. SENSO black leather heels with laces

2. MIU MIU burgundy satin sandals

3. SCHUTZ tassel and fringe sandals

4. SENSO lizard leather heels

5. SCHUTZ caged sandals with laces

6.  SENSO suede heels with metal gold toe

This is my favourite part! I love sandals, heels and sandals on heels..) But in my weather conditions  I can only wear them indoors, but even inside there are a lot of occasions to wear them to: parties, dates, another special occasions, so it means - a ton! So even in sandals I want to feel fall vibes : suede, satin, warm colors and fringes, but the basic black will never hurt too) The more dramatic the better!

I hope this post was fun to read and you've found something interesting for yourself. Feel free to write me down below in the comments your thoughts and what kind of shoes and styles do you prefer for the fall time. See you very soon!

Much love,

Katya xx

10 Inspirational Quotes

It's been a while since the last time I wrote something here. I feel so bad about it and  i promise I'll post more frequently. And for today's article, I thought to share with you my favourite quotes of the great people in the world, that really do motivate me to start doing changes and just start doing the things, that I need to do. I come back to these quotes when I'm out of inspiration and I need someone who could kick up my butt. They really do help me to get back to the positivity and start feeling the life again and don't look back, because you need to do this, if you want to live your life like the happiest person. You need to leave the past in the past, so it would not drawn you down. Sometimes it gets too much and you need to hear or read something that will cheer you up and recall that there's always will be good and bad in life, It's all about how you perceive it. It's all about what is really important and what is not.

For today I picked 10 of my favorite quotes, so here they are:

1. "Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve."
― Napoleon Hill

2. "The unhappiest people in this world, are those who care the most about what other people think."

― C. Joy Bell C

3. "It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop."

— Confucius

4. "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."

— Oliver Goldsmith

5. "Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart."

— Steve Jobs

6. "Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be."

— Abraham Lincoln

7. "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."
― Eleanor Roosevelt,  This Is My Story

8. "Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can."

― Arthur Ashe

9. "Everything, you can imagine is real."

― Pablo Picasso

10. "The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams."

― Oprah

I hope you found these quotes helpful. I want to say that whatever happened to you or happening right now never give up and keep walking with eyes wide opened, because you never know what miracle can happen to you today or tomorrow. And in the end I want to write the last good quote by Abraham Lincoln, which is: "Whatever you are, be a good one."

Much love,

Katya xx

Sunday Funday

Happy Sunday, lovelies!

Since I live in the northern city  there's such a small amount of sunny days and if it happens we try to spend all our time outside walking and exploring the beauty of St.Pete's architecture, rivers and canals and just relaxing under the sun. If I'm going for a long walk I try to dress really comfortable so nothing could constrain my moves.

So here it is one of my go-to summer looks that I'm wearing a lot this month. 

Stay tuned for more looks. See you very soon.

Much love,

Katya xx

SAINT PETERSBURG, August 7

I was wearing:

CONVERSE classic red sneakers

VINTAGE belt

ZARA white t-shirt

ZARA sunglasses

TALLY WEIJL ripped jeans

6 essential photo editing apps

People often ask me about how I am editing my photographs, what kind of filters do I use, how I make different effects and layouts. I love to read and watch other peoples recommendations myself and therefore finding a new cool apps for my phone, so I thought why not to share all my tips and tricks with you! So here they are, I wrote my own list of apps that I use all the time, so without further ado let's get right into it!

1. Afterlight. It's the first photo editing app that I use when I editing my pictures. It has a lot of awesome features, like clarity, grain and the basic ones like brightness, saturation, exposure etc. Plus there are a lot of cool lighting and dusty effects as well as a simple filters. But I want to mention that it's not free app, but not that expensive also. I just love to use it and come back every time I edit something.
2. Facetune. Wow. This one is a bomb. I use it not only for its direct mission to get rid of any pimples and to clear up (when I need sometimes) my skin, but also to whiten my photographs. It sounds strange, but you know when you photograph something white with bad lightning it looks terrible, and that's when this app also comes in handy.Afterwards it will look perfect! And that's not even it, what you can get from this app. It also has a features like blurring, changing the contour of different things and photo filters! It costs and absolutely worth it!
3. VSCOcam. Probably the most famous photo editing app out there. It's so simple and free! Yay! My personal favourite filters are HB1, HB2, sometimes P5 and F2, but it all really depends on photo. And I really love black&white filters here!
4. Squareready. It's definitely an essential! It's what you use when you need to get square photo for that Instagram. Also you can change the colour of the background and make it blurry.
5. PicsArt. This one is a whole photo studio for the phone! It is a decent analogue to Photoshop but much easier to work with. It has a lot of unique photo effects and tools. One of my personal favourite is a motion and clone tools. You can see a lot of it on my Instagram (@katyaviko). Also you can add texts, clip arts and lens flares there as well as making a collages and draw everything you want on anything you want!
6. InstaCollage. I use this one to make the classic collages from mu photographs. But if you want to make something special this app has a variety of collage layouts to choose from. Also you can make fun and unique posters there. They offer you photo editor there too, but to be honest I prefer to use an Afterlight and VSCO for these needs.

So this is going to be it for today's post. I wanted to share the very best of what I've learned about editing with all of you. Feel free to let me know, by leaving a comment,  which apps do you like the most to edit pictures with. I hope today's article was helpful and easy to read for you. Stay tuned for more...

Much love,

Katya xx

Peace.

SAINT PETERSBURG, August 11

I was wearing:

TOPSHOP lizard skaters

URBAN OUTFITTERS purse

ZARA white t-shirt

ZARA jeans

H&M khaki blouse

Summer essentials

It's already the middle of the summer ( it really just flies by, wow...) and I thought to share with you my go to things by far, things that I've been using/wearing basically every single day. So without further ado let's get right into it!


Let's start this list from the facial essentials.
You know in the summer time we all want to be comfortable, easy in makeup, we want our skin to be flawless and not heavy and caky with all of that coverage makeup products. So what I found for myself is that I just using this Garnier  BB cream, it's not expensive at all ( in case you'll bring it with you on the beach and might leave it there, who knows?) and supper effective! I mean it's light, designed for that oily skin, contains SPF and does great coverage without making skin too overloaded. So this product is definitely my fave for the summer time. And the last things that I use for my face are an eyelash curler, a lip balm (of course) and maybe a little bit of brow gel to keep them in shape. I like to leave this summer "makeup" like that, because it is that simple and I just love how it looks on face.

Talking about the face, my go to sunnies for this summer have been Zara shades, I love them for their print, design and shape, which  is super popular right now and this model is similar to the designer ones but the price is much lower!

For my nails I fall in love using Essie's light marshmallow and nude shades, like Blanc, Mint Candy Apple, Sand Tropez . They look so chic and these colors goes with every summer outfits.

As for me I love spending time outside in clothes that  allows me not to control my every single move and for that I've been loving my Topshop jean shorts. They cope with this mission so well!

To capture my little adventures on the go I either use my iPhone or my small camera. You it happens a lot for me when all the day I'm using my phone and right when I need to capture a beautiful moment my phone turns off, so in that case I always have my camera with me.

And finally I want to share with you my summer reading, which is the book called "The Catcher In The Rye" by Jerome David Salinger. If you haven't read it yet I'm highly recommending this incredible book and if you've  already done with it, please let me know in the comment section what do you think about it. 

So this's going to be it for today's article.

Feel free to share with me your personal favorites down below. 

See you very very soon here on The Timeless Classics!

Much love,

Katya xx

Favourite summer music

Happy Monday Lovelies,


Just a quick post to let you know what kind of music I've been loving this summer, maybe you'll find something new for your playlist, until the summer is over. I love finding a new cool music and when people recommend me different catchy jams, so I thought to share with you my list of personal favourites.

So here they are, enjoy!

1. Bad (feat. Vassy) - David Guetta & Showtek;
2. Where Are U Now (feat. Justin Bieber) - Skrillex and Diplo;
3. Rather Be (feat.Jess Glynne) - Clean Bandit;
4. Uptown Funk (feat. Bruno Mars) - Mark Ronson;
5. Wish You Were Mine - Philip George;
6. Geronimo - Sheppard;
7. Can't feel my face - The Weeknd;
8. Of The Night (MNEK Remix) - Bastille;
9. Feeling Myself (feat. Beyonce) - Nicki Minaj;
10. Honey, I'm Good - Andy Grammer;
11. Hey Mama (feat. Nicki Minaj & Afrojack) - David Guetta;
12. Want To Want Me - Jason Derulo;
13. Ayo - Chris Brown &Tyga;
14. King - Years & Years;
15. Cheerleader (Felix Jaehn Remix Radio Edit) - Omi;
16. Tonight Belongs To U - Jeremih Ft. Flo Rida;
17. Outside - Calvin Harris ft. Ellie Goulding;
18. Talking Body (Gryffin Remix) - Tove Lo;
19. Leave Your Lover (Motez Remix) - Sam Smith;
20. FourFive Seсonds - Rihanna ft. Kanye West and Paul McCartney.

Be sure to follow along on Instagram @katyaviko.

Stay tuned for more!!


Much love,
Katya xx

How I do my manicure. Tips + Products ♡

Basicly everybody wants strong, healthy and pretty looking nails. But lets be clear it takes a while to make them so and then to keep them in order. So lets get right into it. 

All of the products I am going to talk about today I have found without any recommendations or ads. If the previous ones didn't work for me I kept trying and exploring more and more. And finally I found the perfect products for myself . I hope they will work for you as grear as they do for me.

So here are the steps that I follow, when I do my manicure:

1. Use nail polish remover. It doesn't matter whether your nails coloured or not. I do this to prevent the bubbles and to make sure that there's nothing left on my nails and that they're completely clean. Nail polish remover makes the perfect base for the future manicure.

2. Make the perfect shape using the nail clipper and nail buff/file. Ther's nothing special just crop it and make the nail form that you want.

3. Get rid of the cuticle. This step requires a cuticle trimmer and Sally Hansen instant cuticle remover (this one is my favourite! In combination with the trimmer my cuticle really disappears). What I do is that I just put a little bit of product on each finger, wait around 10 sec., push the cuticle down with the trimmer's other side and then I remove it.

4. The last but not least I put on the nails my secret weapon! It's this amazing nail base by Belweder, which contains vitamin C, vitamin E, panthenol and argan oil.I found that this thing makes my nails stronger and prettier actually, with its creamy colour. It really is my go to treatment.

Then I would leave my nails like that or I'll put on a nail polish. My favourite summer nail polish by far is Essie Blanc one. I'm just obssesed a bit with this simple and clean colour that goes with everything. I've been wearing it nonstop lately. So yeah, and then I use my fave top coat, which is Revlon multi care base+top coat. 

So that's gonna to be it for today's post. And also I wanted to say that of course beauty comes from the inside and to recieve enough calcium, zinc, vitamin B12 and iron is the most for that gorgeous healthy nails.

Also I wanted to know what nail products are your favourite?  I hope that this post was helpful and interesting. See you very soon, I have a lot to share!

x

Katya

Day in the Amusement park

This was a really cold summer day ( no wonder, i live in the northern city), right after my 18th birthday, so we decided to extend our celebration and go to the new gorgeous amusement park which was built on one of the St. Petes islands, and its called Divo Island now. It really is as wonderfull as its name. Now it is a summer time, therefore it means a flower season, so I got to see their marvelous tulips composition, that they made at the entrance and of course take a photo of that! yay!

I an a fan of classical attractions. So I ride on the Ferris wheel with mind blowing view. ... also because it was tooooo cold for a fast ride and anything like that!

So that's it for todays article. I really enjoyed riding there with my family and that day in general.
Stay tuned! I have a lot to show you!



And here I found for you the exact same and similar clothes that I wore, click on the images to see details:

Trench from MANGO (exact )

pants from MANGO (exact)

black Ferrari bag (exact)

Scarf  from H&M (similar)

 

Slip ons from TOPSHOP (exact) 

A day of reflection in The State Hermitage Museum

I was sitting one day right before the weekends, in friday, and thinking about places that I want to visit, that I have never been into before in my city and I realized, that there's one important and such a magnificent place that I have never visited. And that's rigth, you guessed it by the title, it was The State Hermitage Museum in my city Saint-Petersburg.

In this cloudy and rainy day it was such a blast for me to touch and see something that huge and significant. It's nice to know that it's special not only for me or my country, but for the whole wide world too.

When I walked there I thought about nothing but history and culture that have been built for such a long period of time by all of those famous and important people. Or those incredible artist who wrote a thousands of great pictures and made those insane interiors and sculptures. But at the end I started realizing that all of those fabulous and gold things didn't make all of them that happy at all, most of them lost their minds or weren't appreciated at all in their time because they were such a geniuses. That's so bad to know that for everything that they've done people were so unfair to them and just didn't understand it. So my thought was for the life in general is that we make a lot of conclusions about something or someone even if we're not specialists in it, so let's be pacient and kind to each other as long as we can be, value people around us, mind our own businesses and maybe someday we will be remembered too.

Love you,
Katya xx



What I was wearing

Black zip pants

Black Ferrari handbag

Striped navy blue sweater (similar)

Jewelery