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

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. :-)

Divergence

Hello lovely readers! For this post I have this colorful divergence mani to show you. In the pictures I'm holding China Glaze Life Preserver, a dusty orange creme. Orange is probably my least favorite color when it comes to nail polish (next to browns), but I actually really like Life Preserver in this mani! It adds that bit of warmth to the whole. The other polishes you see in this tape mani are Diamond Cosmetics Don't Teal My Heart Away (absolutely smitten with this polish ♥) and China Glaze 2030, the gold chrome. Thank you for reading! :-)

Queen's Day 2012

Hello everyone, here's my belated Queen's Day post! On this national holiday everybody wears orange and sometimes with hints of the Dutch flag, so that's exactly what I did here. I started with the orange and then layered the red, white and blue on top, using tape for crisp lines. This mani took forever to make as I had to wait three times in between for my polish to dry before I could place the tape on my nails, but it was definitely worth it and I received many compliments on it that day. ^^

To show our country a little love on days like these, the Dutch brand Koh set up a little collection with 'Dutch' colors which I've used for my Queen's Day mani. Below are swatches of each polish.

Brilliant Red!. This is a classic red jelly with a hint of orange, it's very pretty and bright but not unique. It does have a great formula and application, like I'm used to from most jellies. This was two coats, and as you can see it still shows a tiny bit of VNL but strangely it doesn't bother me much in this case.

Crystal!. This was my second favorite polish from these four (and the only one I didn't include in my mani because it was too sheer). I honestly expected to hate it as it's a frosty white which looks very dated to me, but I ended up loving it! When you think of frosts, you think of brushstrokes, but fortunately Crystal! doesn't suffer from those with its easy application. :) It takes three coats to get full opacity, but it's totally worth it in my opinion. And I know it's not even summer yet, but Crystal! would be a great color for winter too, look at that pearly shimmer! I already start to feel Christmassy when I look at it haha.

Rock Chick!, my favorite from the bunch. ^^ This cobalt beauty is so bright that it looks like a neon in certain lighting, really gorgeous... And like Brilliant Red! this is a jelly with a perfect, rich formula. It covers perfectly in two smooth coats, love it!

And the last one is Dutch!. Like many other girls, I'm not a big orange fan when it comes to nail polish. But it is the perfect orange for Queen's Day or to show our team some support during the UEFA European Football Championship this summer! Pictured is three coats, once again the application was very nice.

Thanks for reading!

The products in this post were sent to me for review. This does not influence my opinion on the reviewed products.

Springy stripes

Now that spring is slowly starting to appear, I've noticed I like to wear pastels more often now. This week I'd been wearing China Glaze Lemon Fizz for a few days and when I got tired of it I spiced it up with a colorful tape mani. It wasn't my intention to make stripes though, after I did blue tips with China Glaze For Audrey I wanted to add geometric patterns in coral with Essence Think Pink. However, Think Pink was a lot sheerer than I thought, creating different tones of coral with the polish underneath. (The middle two colors are For Audrey and Lemon Fizz underneath Think Pink.) I was so pleasently surprised by this that I continued playing with this layering effect and ended up with these cheerful stripes. :-) Thanks for reading!

Nicki Minaj inspired nails

So many things to post and so little time! At the moment I'm in the middle of my exams, hence the lack of posting this week. But I've got plenty of fun stuff to share with you once things are slowing down. :)

Between all the studying I did manage to create a look for the OPI Nails 4 Life contest on Facebook. My entry had to be inspired by one of the four Nicki Minaj outfits provided by OPI. I chose the outfit she wore to Victoria's Secret and didn't have to think long about my choice, I was crazy about the fun graffiti style in vivid colors. Different techniques were used to achieve this look: sponging for the background, taping for the striped accent nail and a lot of freehanding for the stars, hearts and Nicki's initial, which took a lot of time to make but turned out pretty cute. ^^

If you like my entry, you can vote for me through this page. The prize is the entire OPI Nicki Minaj collection, plus an autographed copy of her Pink Friday album! Isn't that awesome?! I'm thrilled about the whole prize, so I'd appreciate it if you truly want to vote for my entry, though that's entirely up to you of course!

Did you participate in OPI's Nails 4 Life contest?

Image source

W.I.C. - Roskilde & Hollywood

Hi everyone! For this post I have some polishes from W.I.C. by Herôme to share with you. Herôme is a Dutch nail and hand care brand, they first started selling mainly treatment products but now also have a big, colorful nail polish collection named W.I.C. (World Inspired Colours). Each polish is inspired by and named after a big city. I'm a very, VERY lucky girl for having the entire W.I.C. core collection that I won in a nail art contest, but in addition to that Herôme has kindly sent me four new polishes from their latest limited collections from which I'm going to show you the first two today.

From left to right: Aspen, Hollywood, Roskilde and Frederiksberg.

This pretty from the Denmark collection is called Roskilde. Roskilde is a corally pink creme with a subtle pink shimmer. Because the pink is red-toned, it's a lovely warm color which actually suits my skintone, unlike many other soft pink shades. I know it looks pretty much just coral in the pictures, but that's because my camera just won't capture the pink tones in colors like this. The formula was excellent, like I'm used to from their other cremes, and the application was easy with the flat brush. So a great polish I'd say, although it's not unique. The first time I had Roskilde in my hands, it immediately reminded me of Essie Your Hut Or Mine which I also have. They looked so identical in the bottles that I didn't bother to compare swatches. They both have the same color and amount of the pink shimmer. And both need two coats to cover. Although I absolutely prefer Roskilde over Your Hut Or Mine appliaction-wise, since the latter tends to leave bald spots on me with the second coat.

W.I.C. Roskilde and Essie Your Hut Or Mine

Next up is Hollywood from the Wickedly Glamorous collection. Hollywood is a blend of small iridiscent and silver glitters is a sheer pink base. The formula is smooth and the glitters spread evenly, nothing to say there. It looks amazing in the bottle with the pink base, very princessy, though the pink will not show on the nails so I applied it over Roskilde. It looks so girly! ^^

All in all I think both polishes are nice to have, Roskilde in particular, though you won't need them if you've got something similar in your stash. What's your thought on 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. The products in this post were sent to me for review. This does not influence my opinion on the reviewed product.

Vintage clouds

Hi guys! For this post I have another request to show you. A little while ago I received an email from a reader who wanted me to come up with a funky mani for her informal dance soon. A few colors she liked were teal and coral, so I combined them in this "funky clouds" look. I like how simple this design is to achieve. Just pick three matching colors, one for you base color and two for the cloud shapes on top. The clouds are made by applying three strokes of polish next to each other, each smaller than the one before. My tip is to leave enough polish on the brush (but not too much!) so that when it touches the surface it will leave a nice, round dot as start point. This doesn't even need a lot of precision and you can just use the brush from your polish for this. And that's it :) Though I would advise using a fast drying top coat afterwards if you don't want to wait too long for your nails to dry, after all it's three coats of polish. (Four if you include base coat.) I like the way it looks here with plain cremes, but for a more festive look, a layer of (iridiscent) glitter can be added.

Below you can see the same look with China Glaze Midnight Kiss on the tips, which I made first. But after I took the pictures I noticed how Bella matched the rest of the polishes better so I just redid everything, for your viewing pleasure haha. Have a great night!

The polishes I used:
Essence - What Do U think? Version 1 (It looks less orange in real life)
China Glaze - For Audrey
Essence - Bella

Flame job

Hi everyone, I have a very exciting post for you today! I did this flame design a little while back, I already had the idea for some time but didn't know how to execute it yet. Then I saw Rebecca's gradient tutorial. Rebecca's famous for her awesome gradient animal print manis, she uses the sponging technique to create the gradient and then makes an animal print using stamping plates. Her sponging technique was perfect for my flame design so I bought a few make-up sponges and followed her tutorial. Unlike Rebecca, I only used two colors to create the gradient, but it worked :) First I applied a yellow base color, Color Club Almost Famous, then to make the transition to the red I actually used a pink neon (Color Club Warhol). Warhol was perfect for the job, because it's sheer but not too sheer, had a great, smooth formula and the neon brightness made the flames look even hotter. After I was done with the gradient, I freehanded the flames and filled in the background with black. Flame on!

Designs for Queen's day

Hi everybody, tomorrow it's Queen's day in the Netherlands. Queen's day is our national holiday when we celebrate the birthday of the Queen. This day is known for its free market, everybody is allowed to sell things on the streets, so it's a great day to (try to) get rid of your old crap and go treasure-hunting for someone else's :) Also people dress up in orange, as reference to the royal family (House of Orange-Nassau).

So for the big day I made some appropriate designs for my Dutch readers. On my pinky there's the plain Dutch flag, made with tape. Now some might say it's France's, but that just depends on what angle I'm holding my hands in :) Either way, making this pattern vertically is easier than horizontally, so that's what I did ;-) I started with the white and then placed a tape strip in the middle, after that I used a blue and red creme to complete the flag. As you can see I did the same on my middle- and ringfinger, but those are spiced up with gold accents: leopard print and a crown-shaped tip. The gold I used is 2030 from China Glaze. And people with less patients can do the fun layering-combo of an orange polish, layered with gold glitters. I used H&M Neon Orange and China Glaze Medaillon.
For a simple mani just pick one or two designs as accent nail. Or you go wild using all of them for a skittle mani. And if you're semi-lazy like me, you can go for taped flags on one hand and go full orange on the other.

I hope you like the ideas! I wish I could've posted these earlier but I just didn't have the time to. Anyway, enjoy tomorrow! And to the rest of the folks: I've got some nice layering combinations planned for the next couple of days! So see ya then! :)

Pooh's friend

Obviously not intentionally, considering Tigger's stripes aren't teal-cloured with glitters, (how weird would that be?!) But that tape pattern (same as Time to rock!) with that base color just looks an awfully lot like him, don't you agree? Oh well, on to the polishes!

The orange is Life Preserver from China Glaze's Anchors Away collection, I normally don't have a thing for oranges but this one's so pretty! It's slightly muted :) On top of the tape strips I used Trust In Fasion, and immediately after that Choose Me! Both from Essence.

Choose Me! is the Essence dupe of OPI Catch Me In Your Net, Orly Halley's Comet and Zoya Charla. On its own it's a tad sheer and more blue based, but it forms a perfect pair with Trust In Fashion.

Thanks for reading!