Tutorial: Bubbly champagne glass

Hi everyone! Here's my first New Year's Eve nail art tutorial, just in time for the 31st. In this tutorial I'll show you how to make a simple glass of bubbly champagne. The design is very doable, whether you're experienced or just beginning with nail art. So if you're still looking for a fun and super easy design for the last day of this year, this might just be the one!

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Abstract Mistletoe

Here's a quick post to show you my Christmas nails and to wish everybody a merry Christmas! I hope you're all having a great time with your loved ones. Tonight I had to work, but the next couple of days I'll be spending some quality time with my family. On my nails I'm wearing classic red, accompanied by glittery pinkies and an abstract mistletoe accent nail that I made with tape. (What else?) The polishes I used were all three from China Glaze: Phat Santa, Party Hearty and Custom Kicks. Happy holidays!

Neon geometric Christmas nails

Hi everyone! I thought it would be fun to do a Christmas mani (Christmani XD) in neon colors. I already had the idea of building a Christmas tree and six-pointed star with see-through triangles using tape, and when I stumbled upon China Glaze Surfin' For Boys in my stash, I knew it would be the perfect color for the job. It's so incredibly bright! For these photos I used my iPhone5 camera, it's much more accurate with capturing the true color of Surfin' For Boys than my trusty old Canon IXUS 85 IS, but even in these pictures the brightness is nothing compared to seeing it in reality.

I combined the Christmas ornaments with random triangle shapes in neon yellow, teal and silver. The polishes I used were Orly Glowstick, Color Club Age of Aquarius and China Glaze Millennium. The 'white' basecolor (actually a super light grey) is Essence Enter Wonderland, a very pretty matt polish. To keep that lovely matt finish in the entire look, I finally sealed everything with matt topcoat. Hope you like it and thanks for reading!

Lacey Christmas Nails

Hi everyone! For this Christmas themed post I want to share this green mani with lace accents with you. Although lace isn't something Christmassy per se, I feel like it suits this time of the year well. The fine details - especially in white - remind me of a cosy crochet tablecloth at Christmas dinners, or a crochet rug that goes under the Christmas tree with all the presents on top, or dresses with crochet Peter Pan collars. So yeah, Christmas/crochet associations all over the place! Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, to make this mani I started with two coats of the green, which is Orly Lucky Duck. I then used a white striper polish from the brand Janet to freehand the lace. I already liked it with just the green and white, but just to add a highlight color I made the little red cross. (Which is obviously a tiny bow. If you squint.)

That's it for today, I hope you like it and thanks for dropping by!

Tutorial: Reindeer Rudolph

Hi everyone! Yesterday I showed you my Rudolph accent nail mani. And since a lot of you seem to enjoy all the Christmas tutorials each year, I thought I would show you how to make this cheeky Rudolph this time. Just follow along the steps below! Continue reading »

Rudolph, the Rhinestone nosed Reindeer

Hi everybody! Christmas is around the corner, so I've prepared a couple of Christmas themed nail art ideas that I will share with you in the upcoming posts. Among them is this cheeky Rudolph accent nail. I used OPI Get in the Expresso Lane for the head, a couple of striper polishes for the details and to top it off I added a shiny rhinestone for the nose. On the rest of my nails I'm wearing China Glaze Ingrid and I decorated it with little gold stars to match Rudolph's antlers. Hope you like it and thanks for reading! :)

Art Deco Line Work

Merry Christmas, dear readers! Here's how my mani looks like this year. Not very Christmassy per se, but liking it anyway. :-) The gold in my hands is Essence A Piece Of Forever from the Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 collection. I was only swatching it, but ended up wearing it after liking it so much with the improvised line work, for which I used my trusty striper Ink from China Glaze. Since I'm not confident enough to make such detailed work with my non-dominant hand, I kept my right hand plain black. But it actually looks nicer like this, more balanced I believe.

Until next time then! Have a great time with your loved ones. :-)

Tutorial: Holly Leaf

Hello, creative person! Welcome to my holly leaf tutorial. Like the design it is inspired by, the freehand cloud, it's quick and simple to make, even with the small additions. What I like about this design (apart from being very Christmassy ^_^), is that it combines the use of different tools. It's a great way to practice both freehand and dotting skills. But once again, it's pretty simple so I hope you'll give it a try! Continue reading »

Holly Leaf

Hi everyone! For this post I have another Christmas themed design to share with you: a holly leaf accent nail. :-) I've always loved the shape of holly leaves, so imagine  my excitement when I found out how easy it could be to have that shape on my nails, just by using a design that's familiar on this blog: the cloud design! You can see I didn't have to add much to make it look like a holly leaf. But those who still want a little more detail of how to make the design can use the tutorial that I'll be posting next. :-)

For the accent nail I used OPI Jade Is The New Black, Color Club Artsy Crafty, a blue striper polish and P2 Fever for the berries. And last but not least, that gorgeous gold on the rest of my nails is Orly Solid Gold with a layer of topcoat. It has an amazing matte fisnish on its own, but adding topcoat makes it so sparkly! Perfect for the holidays. I also did a series of Solid Gold manis a while back, you can find them all here. See you next time!

Mint Winter

Hello, dear readers! Here are pictures of my first winter mani this year, on my shorter nails. Stress made me bite every single of them. :-( That didn't happen in years! I still like my nails a tad longer, but that doesn't stop me from painting them. :-) The lovely basecolor is Catrice's I Sea You and on top I drew the bare Christmas tree from my last tutorial, plus cute snowflakes that you can practice yourself with this tutorial from last year. Have a great day!

Tutorial: Bare Christmas Tree

Hello everyone! Welcome to my third Christmas tree tutorial. (You can find the first two here and here.) This one shows you how to make an easy-peasy freehand Christmas tree. Even if you're a nail art beginner, this design is very doable. Continue reading »

Shine like a star

Hello everyone! I hope you're having a merry Christmas with your loved ones. This year I'm rocking this star pattern that I made with a new image plate from Essence. It's only available in a set including a stamper and scraper, which I already have, but I really wanted the star design. The star shapes I have on other patterns are quite small which makes them harder to work with and less recognizable. (And besides, €3 for the whole set is a pretty good deal!) I used Color Club Where's The Soiree as my black, as usual, and the gold is China Glaze 2030. This look isn't very Christmassy per se, but I love it anyway. So much that I might even wear it again for New Year's Eve ^^ Happy Holidays!

Sweet Snowman

Hi guys! For this post I've made this chubby little snowman design by Rins from Simply Rins. I saw it on her blog just a little while ago and fell madly in love... I couldn't stop looking at all ten of them on her nails, because they're just too cute! So many, many thanks to Rins for this adorable design! Seriously, don't you want to hug it? ^^ I used acrylic paint to draw the snowman and the base color is Essence Viva La Green. I love the color because it's not that typical mint green that we've come across many times in the past few years. It's a bit darker and quite vibrant, although it doesn't really show in the pictures (where I'm holding OPI Spark The Triomphe as decoration heehee). Rins also made a tutorial for this design which you can find in the orignal post here. Make sure to check it out, as well as the rest of her blog, she's created plenty of other amazing (freehand!) looks, very inspiring.

Thanks for reading and see you soon :)

Abstract Christmas tree

Here's a little bonus post that shows the design from today's tutorial "in action" :) The green is China Glaze Mistletoe Kisses on top of OPI Jade Is The New Black and the gold is China Glaze 2030. Good night everyone!

Tutorial: Abstract Christmas tree design

Hello everyone! Recently I posted my second Holiday tutorial, which shows you how to make a traditional Christmas tree shape. But for this tutorial I have an abstract take on the Christmas tree, for the more modern nail art fans who are looking for something different. All you need is two polishes, tape and something to act like your tree topper. I used a rhinestone, but you could also use one larger (star shaped) glitter, a sticker, a stamping design and so on. Be creative ;-)
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Christmas Fever

Hello everyone :) For today I have the mani I made after finishing the tutorial for the Christmas tree design with tape. The tutorial already received many comments, so thanks a lot for that! :) The beautiful red base color is P2's Fever. I love how elegant Fever is, the shimmer's just gorgeous and the finish is especially great for this month of the year. In the pictures you can see that the bottle has a golden glow, however that's not the case in real life, just a plain and perfect red shimmer! For a higher party-factor, I added a coat of Milani Gems. It looked fine with the glossy finish, but I mattified it anyway, so I could see all the different colors better ^^ Thanks for reading!

Tutorial: Tape Christmas tree design

Hi everybody, welcome to my second Holiday design tutorial! In this tutorial I'll be showing you how to make the classic Christmas tree shape, with the help of tape for perfectly crisp lines. The design isn't too difficult to achieve, but you do need to cut and place many tape strips, so you may want to use it for accent nails only if you'd like to save yourself a lot of work ;-) Let's give it a try, shall we? Continue reading »

China Glaze - Mistletoe Kisses

Aaah... China Glaze Mistletoe Kisses ♥ When I first saw this sparkly, green beauty from the 2010 holiday collection online, I knew I needed it! Mistletoe Kisses is pretty opaque, it covers in two coats. But since I was already wearing OPI Jade Is The New Black, I just applied one coat of it on top. The tiny silver glitters add so much glamour, without hiding the emerald green base. Perfect for the december holidays ^^ Do you own Mistletoe Kisses? And what do you think about it?

Christmas scene

Hi everyone :) For this post I have another Christmas mani. Since I haven't made any Halloween looks this fall, I'm planning on catching up some holiday manis with this year's Christmas ;-) Anyway, this week's been terribly busy, so I've been wearing Essie Your Hut Or Mine for the last three days. But today's weekend, yay! So I finally had time to update my mani. I added a Christmas tree for my accent nail, using tape. You know, if you think about it, a Christmas tree isn't that different from a lightning bolt! I mainly used tape triangles which I placed underneath each other on each side of the tree to create the zigzag lines. For a little sparkle I added silver glitter on top and a larger piece of glitter as my tree topper. On the rest of my nails I made "funky clouds", representing a snow scenery and later I added the "snow" with a dotting tool. In retrospect, I think the dots are a bit too much, so I doubt if I'm going to keep this mani longer than a day. But oh well, that means I can do my nails again tomorrow ^^ Thanks for reading!

Polishes I used:
Essie - Your Hut Or Mine
Essie - Lion Around
Orly - Pure Porcelain
H&M - Confetti Kisses

Christmas nails with lace

Hi guys! These lacy nails were made recently when I was in a very Christmassy and girly mood, can you tell? ^^ I used OPI Big Apple Red and Konad imageplate M71 with Essence Stamp Me White!. This look is a lot girlier than I'm usually going for, but I enjoyed it nonetheless, squealing like a little child when I noticed how they matched red Christmas glasses from the Ikea was part of the fun haha.

Thanks for stopping by!