Saint Petersburg Beauty Expo February 20-23

The Beauty Expo I’d love to tell you about is a biannual event that takes place every February and September in Saint Petersburg. They call it International, but so far I only saw representatives from Russia and some other former USSR countries there. Luckily the products that you can see, try and buy at the Expo are from many worldwide known brands.

nail polish swatch palette

This February the Expo was opened on Thursday, 20th and it continued till Sunday, 23th. I didn’t get to experience the entire attraction due to timing, as I had only a couple of hours free on Saturday. Still, having seen the previous 4 Expos in the last 2 years, I more or less knew where to go and what to buy. As you may guess, I was mainly interested in nail polish and nail art products. Another “side effect” of me being in a hurry there was that I took only several random blurry photos with my phone.

Beauty products stands

As I said, there were a lot of beauty brands there, mostly represented by their resellers. I spotted China Glaze, VOV, Impala, Sagitta, CND, Mavala, OPI, ORLY, Seche Vite, INM and some others. I wanted to buy some nail products from Zoya and Kinetics, but I couldn’t find any stands selling them.

On the bright side I found a big Dance Legend stand, you’ve probably heard of this Russian nail polish brand. There I stopped for a while, searching for their peeling off glitter base and trying to take some decent pics of their products. I didn’t buy the base and I took only one photo because its was very crowded there. Girls mostly were gathered around a big stand covered with all those numerous color weels of DL recent collections, looking for the colors they wanted to buy. I was able to have a look at their full WOW Prism, Fresh, Sahara, Magnetic, Crack, Fruity Milk and Icy Time collections. Here’s that pic I managed to take:

Dance Legend color weels

Next to the DL stand there were several nail art stands with all kinds of glitter, water decals, rhinestones, flocking powder, microbeads etc. Also there were stands selling acrylic colors and nail art brushes.

The note in the pic below says “One 5gr pack of glitter for 80 roubles, 3 packs for 200 roubles”. Actually one could find many good deals and sales at the Expo.

Packs of colourful glitter

Near the exit I stumbled upon a flower stand with these slightly weird but lovely creatures:

Cat garden figure

And now to the most interesting part – what I bought at the Expo this time. I spotted a water decals brand Patrisa Nail which was a new name for me, so I bought a couple of their floral decals to try. In the pic there’s also some pink and white pearl studs:

Patrisa Nail water decals

Next goes a set of OPI colors. You know my love for OPI, I just couldn’t miss some spring-y colors from pervious OPI collections! I also saw all the Brazil collection, but the prices were ridiculously high, and I decided to wait a bit until the polishes appear at my local beauty shop. Now when I saw it, I know that yellow I Just Can’t Cope-cabana will be mine :))

OPI nail polish bottles haul

Non-polish related but still, there were quite a lot of jewellery stands with hand made rings, hair pins, pendants, beads, earrings and all that stuff. There’s always something special about jewellery that is hand made, not to mention that each item is unique and one-of-a-kind! I thought I’d buy a piece of jewellery there, and I found these boho bronze earrings with green jasper and crystal beads. The earrings were made by a talented artist Iva, who came to participate in the Expo from Almaty, Kazakhstan.

Boho bronze jasper earrings

Apart from the earrings, polishes, studs and decals I also bought some acrylic paints, nail art brushes and a set of false nail tip sticks for swatching.

That’s it for today! Thank you for reading! See youuu :)

13 Comment

  1. Been there this time as well… I wasn’t very inspired though. Got a couple of DL, CG, a replica of Frey Wille earrings (I’m pathetic, I know :) and went home ;) I wanted to get DL Aquagenetic base, but it was gone by the time I reached their stand. Next time maybe.

    1. Mari says: Reply

      ..and I simply had no time to get inspired :)) I heard of the Aquagenetic base, If you get it, please do write a review on it, it would be nice to hear your opinion :)
      It’s not for the 1st time I hear that a lot of DL products are sold out before most of the visitors can even reach their stand.. It’s either there’re SO many girls wanting to buy their polishes/bases or DL just brings only several bottles of each color to these Expos :/

  2. Nice shopping! I’ve never been to a beauty expo yet :)

    1. Mari says: Reply

      Thank you, tho I think I would have bought more polishes there if I’d had more time :)

  3. These earrings are really very interesting and I think I could lose myself (or my savings) in all those beautiful nail polishes and coloured wheels :-)

    1. Mari says: Reply

      Thank you :) There were many interesting polishes at the Expo, although some major brands like Zoya weren’t represented :(

  4. Those creatures are really sweet – wow – I would love to go to such an expo sometime, it must be amazing!

    1. Mari says: Reply

      :) it feels good to be surrounded by so many nail polishes and colors, tho the downside is it’s usually very crowded there..

  5. What a great event, I love these kind of expo’s, they always have products with special prices! Great post!

    1. Mari says: Reply

      Thank you Andrea, unfortunately the pics don’t show all the brands and products :)

  6. Nice OPI picks, we have a beauty expo over here soon I hope we’ll get some good deals

    1. Mari says: Reply

      I’ll be looking forward to you report then ;)

  7. Very interesting! :-) Now I want to go to a nail expo too.

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