Sci-fi chic Skittle

Hi everyone! Today I have this sci-fi kind of skittle to show you. This mani started with the two semi-nude accent nails that I made using tape and freehanded strokes of polish. After that I went through all my drawers like a crazy person to find polishes that would match the accent nails. The result is an unusual combination of colors, which in hindsight, I'm not sure whether I love or hate. Doesn't matter, I enjoyed the process of doing these nails nonetheless. :)

The polishes I used:

Index finger: China Glaze Tinsel Town on top of China Glaze Westside Warrior

Middle finger: OPI Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ

Thumb and ring finger: Color Club Where's The Soiree and Barry M Cobalt Blue

Pinky: China Glaze Sea Spray

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!

WIC by Herôme - Shizuoka

From top to bottom: WIC Shizuoka, Nagoya and Yokohama, and P2 Artful on the right.

Hi everybody! Today I want to share this easy-peasy nail art with you, that I made with a couple of new WIC by Herôme shades from the Mystic Japan collection. The pink basecolor is called Shizuoka, a typical Barbie pink with a subtle shimmer. I noticed this polish caused dragging sometimes, but fortunately a thicker second or third coat was able to fix that.

I made the nail art by painting a few partly overlapping strokes in different colors. Simple as that! A nice bonus is you don't need extra tools for this, as you can just use the brush that the polish comes with. Hope you'll give it a try too! Goodnight. ^_^

W.I.C. nail polishes are available in the Herôme online shop for €7.50 per bottle of 0.7ml/0.2 fl.oz., or €12.50 for two. Shipping is worldwide. Some of the products in this post were sent to me for review. This does not influence my opinion on the reviewed products.

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!

31 Day Challenge, day 16: Tribal Print

Hi everyone! Today's it's time for tribal nails with Hema #844 as my basecolor. I was just improvising with a gold striper polish (Janet #115) and this was the result. Not sure if they look tribal per se, though I did recognize an arrow tail in the design when I was done. And that's pretty tribal, right? ;-) The print was really fun to do, and quite easy as well, as it basically just consists of seven straight lines. I can't wait to try it again with bright colors!

31 Day Challenge, day 11: Polka Dots

Hi lovely readers, welcome to day 11 of the 31 Day Challenge: polka dots! I think polka dots are amazing; they automatically make a mani look sweet, plus they look great in almost any color combination. Still I don't wear them often because I'm usually too lazy to make them, either by stamping or with a dotting tool. But I was up for this challenge and decided to use the latter technique. And apart from the weird looking blobs on the pinky, I'm actually quite satisfied with how my dots turned out. :-D Three base colors were used for this skittle, polka mani:

H&M - Wildflower

Essence - Via Airmail!

Essence - Bella

For the silver dots I used Essence Romeo and finally I mattified my look with a matte topcoat from H&M, to make everything somewhat calmer as there was so much going on with the pattern and all the colors. So how do you feel about polka dots? :-)

31 Day Challenge, day 10: Gradient

Hi everybody! :-) It's about time that I continue with the 31 Day Challenge, so here you have my attempt on day 10: gradient nails. And what a terrible attempt it is... I tried so hard and so many times to get the gradient smooth, but so far this was the best I could do. I do like the colors though, and from a distance it doesn't look too awful. So with a lot more practice, I hope to show you a better gradient next time. ;-) I used P2 Funky as my basecolor and used a fine make-up sponge to dab on Essence Sending You Kisses on the tips.

My next post will be featuring polka dots, hope to see you again then!

31 Day Challenge, day 9: Rainbow

Day 9! This time the challenge was to make rainbow nails. I was looking really forward to this challenge, even though I knew it was going to be challenging indeed. In the end I came up with this very simple look with colored strokes. Basically I used the technique I also use to make my cloud manis, only using a different color with each stroke. I really like the end result, all the colors together make me so happy! Maybe also because they remind me of a box full colored pencils. :3

If you like this look, I hope you try it out yourself too. It's a quite easy way to create that oh-so-lovely rainbow effect. ^^ Thanks for reading!

Polishes I used over China Glaze Snow:

Essence - Beauty On Tour
H&M - Peach Me Soon
Color Club - Almost Famous
Catrice - ACid DC
Safari - #100
Essence - Via Airmail!
China Glaze - Gothic Lolita
Essence - Sending You Kisses

Nubar - Reclaim

Hi everyone! For the green nails challenge I initially wanted to use Nubar Reclaim. But I just couldn't add any form of nail art to it, because it was already perfection on its own. And I do insist on nail art with each challenge, otherwise it wouldn't exactly be a challenge, would it? ;-) So Reclaim isn't included in the challenge, but it's pure awesomeness nonetheless and totally deserved its own post. My pictures are taken in artificial light and as you can see it already reveals that linear holographic finish, which only gets better in sunlight. This was two coats, no topcoat. Absolutely love it! ♥

31 Day Challenge, day 4: Green

Hi guys, time for some green nails! :-) This week I had a party for which I did simple, stunning, silver glitter nails to match my red dress. I used China Glaze Millenium and a coat of Silver Lining on top, also from China Glaze. I didn't have an idea for my forth challenge yet at the time, but when I saw the dense silver glitter sparkle on my fingertips I just couldn't wait to combine it with a bright green. So the next day I made these V-gaps with Barry M's Spring Green. I love, love, love the color. It's so vibrant! Almost like a neon. I didn't manage to capture its true color in the pictures though, where it looks a bit turquoise. In real life it's more like a Hulk-green, wild and strong. ^^ What do you think of today's green nails?

31 Day Challenge, day 2: Orange

Day 2 of the 31 Day Challenge! This time the challenge was to do orange nails and it was truly a challenge. I had a hard time coming up with something with orange as the main color instead of an accent color. Finally I decided to go with trusty clouds (tutorial here) combined with two shades of green, as I find orange to combine best with certain greens or blues. The lovely pastel orange is H&M's Peach Me Soon, in the middle you see Orly Ancient Jade and I've got Essence Bella on the tips. I look forward to my next challenge: yellow nails! See you soon. :-)

WIC by Herôme - Colourful Curaçao collection

Hello everyone! :-) For this post I have swatches from Dutch brand WIC by Herôme. Every now and then WIC comes up with a limited collection. And I'm always very excited to see them because they often contain interesting colors or finishes that really stand out against their core collection which mostly consists of cremes. This time I'm showing you the Colourful Curaçao collection, a mix of bright shimmers and two frosts, let's have a look at the polishes then!

Kontiki Beach - A lovely violet shimmer. The formula was amazing and it needed two coats for coverage. Usually I'm more drawn to blue-toned purples but I think Kontiki Beach is just gorgeous!

Mambo Beach - A typical old-fashioned pink frost that our mommies used to wear a few decades ago... (Though it appears much more orangy on the pictures.) I tried to be open-minded when I swatched this polish, but I really don't like it. That color combined with the frosty finish is just so dated. The good thing however, is that brushstrokes were easy to avoid. I applied two coats and as you can see, the frosty finish is almost perfectly smooth.

Blue Bay - The second frost in this collection, a silver with small hints of blue/purple. The color was hard to capture in my pictures though, in real life it's less purple and more silver. Blue Bay looked quite interesting in the bottle, but unfortunately it's not that pretty on the nails. I used two coats for coverage and extreme brushstrokes were just inevitable. :-( 

Cabana Beach - A bright turquoise shimmer. Ooh, I love this one! The color, formula and application are great. The only thing that would make Cabana Beach even better is if it covers in less than three coats, other than that it's perfect!

Banda Bou - I was most excited to try out this polish. The dusty, yellow-toned green color is already interesting, but then there's that subtle silver pearly finish that completes it. Yellow-toned greens normally aren't my cup of tea, but this one I like. Look at that unusual color and finish. ^^ I applied 2-3 coats.

Daaibooi Beach - Last but certainly not least! Daaibooi Beach is a rich, blue-toned green shimmer. It's quite an unusual color for a spring collection, but who cares when it's this pretty, it has so much depth! This one also needed three (thin) coats, but you can probably get away with two thicker ones as well.

So here you have it, WIC's Colourful Curaçao collection. I honestly like the whole collection except for the two frosts, but I'm glad to see WIC has the courage to try something different, who knows what they'll come up with next time. What do you think of these polishes?

W.I.C. nail polishes are available in the Herôme online shop for €7.50 per bottle of 0.7ml/0.2 fl.oz., or €12.50 for two. Shipping is worldwide. These polishes were sent to me for review. This does not influence my opinion on the reviewed products.

Gold Tribal

Hi everyone! I hadn't done a freehand design in a while so today I made a detailed tribal pattern on a few accent nails. The basecolor is the lovely Westside Warrior from China Glaze and I used a gold striper polish (Janet #115) for the nail art. Though it looks pretty detailed it was really simple to make. I drew a few stripes on each nail and then I filled in the bigger stripes with dots or zigzags, that's it! I hope you like it. :)

Happy Skittle

A big thank you to the lovely boyfriend for taking this picture for me! :-)

Skittles! Pretty much the easiest form of 'nail art'. This time I went for a bright and funky color scheme with four (once again) Essence polishes:

Let's Get Lost
Viva La Green
Lime Up!
Ultimate Pink

I just love these Colour&Go polishes! Their formula is just perfect most of the times, they cover in two coats and yes, they're small, but also very cheap (€1,29 for 5ml/0.16 fl.oz.) so you won't have to hesitate on buying a back-up of your favorite shade.

I didn't know pretty nails could affect my mood so much, but looking at today's mani just made my day over and over again, haha. I'm such a dork. :-P

Thanks for reading, guys!

Funky Easter

Happy Easter everyone! When I think of Easter nail art, I think of pastel shades and detailed designs. But after wearing soft colors so often lately, I wanted to have something brighter on my nails now! :) I started with H&M Wildflower as my basecolor, then I painted half of the nail turquoise with Essence Bella, using tape for crisp lines. Finally I added a few dots with Color Club Almost Famous and my funky Easter mani was done. :) Have a great day!

Abstract '80s

Hi guys, another tape mani for you today! Oh, how I love stationery tape. It's so perfect for making geometric shapes, which I happen to love too. ;-)

After (re)discovering the layering possibilities of sheer polishes with my recent springy stripes, I used the same technique in this mani. My base color (H&M Polish Me Happy) was applied the day before, so I could immediately place tape strips on top to form the mint green shapes with Orly Ancient Jade. When that had dried I once again used tape to make the pink triangles with Color Club Warhol and I just love how new shapes are formed where Ancient Jade and Warhol overlap. Speaking of Warhol, it's such a great polish for this layering technique. It's sheer, but covers very evenly and the color is so unbelievably bold! (Also take a look at layered Warhol together with its neon friends in this crackle mani.) And that's it for this post, I hope you enjoyed it. :-)

Glitter V-gaps

Hi everyone! :) For this post I have a glittery V-gap mani to share with you. As my base color I used two smooth coats of the lovely murky green China Glaze Westside Warrior. Normally I love to combine Westside Warrior with a gold like I did in this post, but this time I wanted to try something different so I picked multi-colored Rain Glitter from Amour for the V-gaps. It's a very suitable polish for tape manis, as the glitters are very dense, so just one coat was enough to cover the taped shapes.

In the bottles, Rain Glitter and Westside Warrior looked amazing next to each other, on the nails however I expected the glitter to pop more against the green so the V-shape would be more visible. I'm really enjoying Rain Glitter though, I have such a huge weakness for anything with lots of color, especially when they're this sparkly... But I'm sure many of you feel the same way ^^

What do you think of today's tape mani?

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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