New best Friends

Recently I wore this really bright, super pretty neon orangy red, named Essence Beauty on Tour. At the end of a long working day it started to show a bit of tipwear, so I was looking for another color to add on the tips to recycle my mani. I was very surprised to end up with the color combination of red and pink on my nails. It's not a pair that I'm likely to go for, but as I found every other color than pink to be meh that day, I just went for it and I completely fell in love with it! Who would've thought a neon red and berry pink could be best friends?! It's bold and summery and just what I needed to brighten up the dark work outfit I was still wearing. The gorgeous pink is my ultimate go-to pink China Glaze Designer Satin and I used tape to create the diagonal lines.

Floral Bits and a Pink tribal Accent

The weather in the Netherlands has been really gloomy lately. So as a person who's very sensitive to the weather - happy with sunshine and very moody on grey days, I desperately needed a bit of summer here. Enter nail polish! I went for a bright tribal accent nail with flower bits on the rest of my nails. The pretty silver is Hema #845, the purply pink is China Glaze Purple Panic and the teal is China Glaze Custom Kicks. I freehanded both the tribal pattern and flowers with a striper polish and dotting tool.

It's still grey outside, but that's okay, I've got my nails done! It's funny, though. This mani actually reminds me of summer, as the two China Glaze polishes were bought on my last summer vacation in Spain. Ahh, good times. Oh, well. Thanks for reading!

Cool toned Color Blocking

Hello everyone and a happy 2016! After the many darker manis from december I really felt like doing something more bright and cheerful this time. So I've made these color blocking nails with tape and four lovely colors. The lighter pink is Essence Hola, Guapa from the limited Arriba collection, the neon purply pink is China Glaze Purple Panic, the turquoise is Age of Aquarius from Color Club and the navy is OPI Russian Navy. Some of these polishes are matt, so I added a layer of topcoat to make everything all shiny. I like how these turned out. ^^

WIC by Herôme - Sapporo

Hi everyone! Today I'm showing you Sapporo, the third polish from the Mystic Japan collection that WIC by Herôme sent to me for review. Sapporo is a medium periwinkle blue shimmer, with a nice formula and application, so two coats was enough for an even finish. The color of this polish was already my cup of tea, but it's that soft shimmer that makes it a unique polish in my stash. Hooray! There's a bit of pink shimmer in there too, though it's only visible in certain lighting. Unfortunately this was not the case in my pictures. But still I liked the idea of a touch of pink, so I decided to use it in my tribal nail art for some bright, neon highlights. Hope you like it! :-)

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 product in this post was sent to me for review. This does not influence my opinion on the reviewed product.

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.

31 Day Challenge, day 24: Inspired by a Book

Hi everyone! Seems like the last couple of challenges were a lot harder than I expected. With the previous two and today's book challenge in particular, it took me quite a while to get inspired. After lots of thinking I decided to go with the character Janneke of the Dutch Jip en Janneke stories by Annie M.G. Schmidt that I grew up with. Fiep Westendorp is the one who brought the duo further to life with her adorable and iconic illustrations in black and white. I absolutely love the simplicity of her drawings which makes the characters so easy to recognize and therefore also... perfect for on the nails! ;-) I paired my freehanded Janneke accent nail with a girly polka dot pattern, using a black creme and China Glaze Designer Satin for the dots. It wasn't the easiest job, but I'm happy with how it turned out. ^_^

Image source

Suzi Skittle

As my recent water marbling attempts for day 20 of the 31 Day Challenge weren't exactly succesful, I'll show you this colorful taped skittle from the vault instead. The grey shimmer is OPI Suzi Skis In The Pyrenees Suede. It dries with a matte finish but with some glossy topcoat it looks just as stunning! On top I did a fifty-fifty tape mani by covering up half of the nails with tape and painting the other half with the following polishes:

Essence - Bella
P2 - Groovy Etos - #118
Essence - Sending You Kisses
Bourjois - Jaune Cab (#85)

In the meantime I'll practise more water marbling, I really want to be able to nail it! See you nex time!

31 Day Challenge, day 19: Galaxies

Hi readers! Today I have my first galaxy nails to show you. I always get excited when I see them on other blogs, but somehow it took me this long to finally do them myself. Now that I have, I'm really happy with them. Look at all those colors! :-)

I started with two coats of OPI Russian Navy (in the bottle in the second picture you can clearly see the red/pink shimmer I'm so crazy about!) Then I balled up a piece of paper towel to randomly dab on OPI Extravagance and China Glaze DV8. Finally I added a few white dots as stars and a layer of iridiscent glitter with OPI Last Friday Night. That's it! Now this may seem like a lot of steps, but because they don't require much precision this mani is very easy to do. Hooray!

To achieve this galaxy look, I roughly followed the steps of Asami's helpful video tutorial. Asami was one of my blogging idols with her make-up and nail blog Nails By Asami, often featuring cute handpainted cartoon nail art. Unfortunately she quit blogging, but you can still find her old video's on Youtube and a few of her designs on Pinterest.

Thanks for reading!

31 Day Challenge, day 14: Flowers

Hi everyone! :-) This is day 14 in the 31 Day Challenge and today's theme is flowers. I have to say the whole mani is a little bit too tacky for me, haha, but being a tad different than most of my manis, I enjoyed working on it very much. I used my trusty cloud design method to draw the petals, first with a black, then with Essence Ultimate Pink. Then I added the blue, diamond-shaped glitters for a bit of contrast. I don't use loose glitters often, but I immediately fell in love with these from Essence, named Shine Like A Star!, which I bought about a year ago. It doesn't show on the pictures, but they're actually holographic, which makes them even more awesome. Can't wait to use them again. :-) Thanks for dropping by!

OPI DS - Extravagance

Hello everyone! Right now I should be studying, but I just had to share this beauty with you. It's OPI DS Extravagance that I wore a couple of weeks ago. I was looking for a chic polish with a twist and Extravagance was exactly what I needed: a deep plum with a scattered holographic finish. The application is great, I applied two smooth coats and topcoat, then the drooling could start! I already posted about this polish once before, but something this pretty should be seen more often! :-)

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!

'80s Accent Nail

Hi guys! After a day I decided to change the accent nail of my previous mani. Not because I didn't like it anymore, but because I just needed to play with my polish again (like a little girl with her dolls, haha). I went for the abstract '80s pattern that I showed you earlier this year in this post. It's so much fun to watch a new shape appear where the pink and mint green overlap. :3 I used OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui for the basecolor and Color Club Warhol and Orly Ancient Jade for the shapes on top. (The pink is Essence Sending You Kisses.)

Many of you had asked for a tutorial for this design, so I took this opportunity to finally make one. :-) It's coming!

Sending You A Lightning Bolt

Hi folks! I missed having pink polish on my nails and wasn't ready for my next challenge yet, so I'll be squeezing a couple of pink posts in between the 31 Day Challenge. For this mani I used two coats of my new favorite pink Sending You Kisses from Essence's limited Ready For Boarding collection. The silver is Essence Romeo, the shimmer version. Lately I've been really getting addicted to this 'new' form of a lightning bolt. I don't know why I particularly like lightning bolts so much. Perhaps it's the fierce shape, or the comic feel. Whatever it is, I'm not done with them yet! :-P Anyhow, unlike the lightning bolt French and double lightning bolt, this fellow has a vertical and diverting shape. So refreshing after having done so many horizontal ones. And yes, a tutorial is on its way. ;-) So stay tuned!

P.S. I didn't notice how cruel the title of this post actually sounds when I first came up with it, but I'm sticking with this silly wordplay anyway, hee hee.

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

South Africa?

Hello everyone! I'm interrupting the 31 Day Challenge for this colorful tape mani. The reaction that I heard most about this mani is how it looks like the South African flag. While it wasn't intended, I agree it kind of does. Not just the design, but even the colors are a bit similar. However, this mani was actually a result from adjusting and experimenting with an earlier design; the fifty-fifty mani. I had worn the corally pink color (H&M Wildflower) for a day and added the muted teal the next morning. And though I already liked how that looked, I had to do something that would cover up my slight tipwear, hence the purple chevrons which you see in the last picture. That was cute too but it wasn't quite finished until I added the little black chevrons. Amazing how much of a difference a bit of black can make. ^^

This mani was also a great oppurtunity to try out two new polishes from Etos (Dutch drugstore), #122 (teal) and #118 (purple). Etos recently released a whole bunch of new exciting colors and I'm thrilled about it, because both their quality and price are quite reasonable (€2.50 for 5ml/0.5 fl.oz). Thanks for reading!

Big thank you to my little brother for taking this picture for me. ^^

Delicious Stripes

You probably won't ever see me wear red and pink together when it comes to clothing, I think they clash more often than not, but somehow I think they make a pretty cute pair on nails. In this mani I'm wearing NYC Uptown with red stripes that I freehanded on top with striper polish #36 from brand Janet. Don't these nails look a bit like candy? ^^ I can almost smell a strawberry scent when I look at them... Have a great evening!

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.

Chic Chevrons

Hi everyone! For this post I have chic chevrons to show you, in a quite unusual color. I'm talking about my basecolor which is Heavenly from the Dutch brand Koh. Heavenly is a dusty pinktoned beige creme. It's one of the few nude colors I've ever worn. I know nudes are very popular these days, but I never really payed attention to them before since I like bright colors on my nails so much. Then Koh kindly sent me Heavenly (among other polishes) for review and I'm glad they did! I never thought I could like nudes a lot but I actually loved Heavenly, and wore it for several days which is quite long for me. Also the formula and application were really nice. Because of the light color I expected it to be chalky, but it applied like butter and covered in two coats.

After two days I decided to add nail art to my calm mani. I always think dusty pinks look really chic with a hint of black or gold, so I used both of them in these chevrons which I made with tape. First I made the outer black chevron, later I added the smaller gold one and then another smaller black one. The polishes I used for the job were Color Club Where's The Soiree? and China Glaze 2030, both dry extremely quickly which saves a lot of time when you're doing a tape mani. :) Thank you for reading!

Koh Heavenly was sent to me for review. This does not influence my opinion on the reviewed product.