Firework Nails

Hi everyone!

Today I have a firework design on my nails, very appropriate around New Year's Eve :)
(unfortunately, also not very original, but since it's my first time doing firework nails I'm considering them original for me anyways :p )

I used a lot of polishes for this design:

OPI - Nail Envy (my favourite base coat)
Sinful Colors - Black on Black
OPI - DS Lapis (Raw Granite)
Essie - Toggle to the Top
The Dazzling Starry Magical Multicolored Shell Glitter Nail Art Polish Varnish #4 from Bornpretty Store
Hema - 07 (pink)
Hema - 08 (purple)
Hema - 17 (light purple greyish)
Hema - 15 (light pinkish)
Hema - 11 (silver)
Essie - Let it Shine topcoat

The Hema polishes were a Christmas gift, so I really wanted to use them in a design to see what they looked like. I'm very happy I got them, they're so pretty!

These polishes have colours that I wouldn't buy myself (I like or very plain colours without any shimmer of glitter in them, or very obvious glittery special polishes, and these Hema polishes are the inbetween ones, they are all one colour polishes but have very subtle shimmer in them, if you know what I mean?), so it's great that I got them as a gift because this way I'm discovering some great new colours that, to my own surprise, I really like.

For these firework nails, I first painted my nails black with two coats of Black on Black.

Then I used a small nail art brush to make the fireworks. I just drew a lot of lines on my nails, I don't really have a technique to make these.

Do you have a special New Year's Eve manicure in mind? I'm planning on making a very glittery design tonight to start 2014 in a very (very) bright way!

Hope you all have a great end of 2013 and an even greater start of 2014!

Christmas Nails #2

Hi everyone!

These are the nails I wore for Christmas! I used gold and green colours, because they are incredibly Christmas appropriate :)

First I painted all my nails gold, and then I used a tiny brush to paint on the twirly things that are supposed to represent Christmas trees - can you see how they're supposed to look like a tree?

I wanted to do a gold accent nail, so I spent about half an hour placing gold glitter on my ring finger - which was so worth it! I had never done anything with glitter like this before, but honestly, I was so glad I had done this because it felt very rewarding when I was finished and saw the glittery goodness that was now on my nail :)

I'm sorry for the lack of posts lately - right now is a very busy time with lots of papers to write! But I already have a great New Year's nail art idea, so I'm definitely doing that soon!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas or just a great day (I know I did - so much food!).
Thanks for reading!

Abstract Christmas Trees

Hi everyone!

I finally got into the Christmas spirit and did some Christmas nail art :)

I chose to do abstract(ish) Christmas trees. 

I first painted my nails with a base coat and then with white, and then I drew little green triangles with a small brush. I then put two coats of the gorgeous Stop for an Ice Cream by Essence on top. This colour is a very sheer light green with lots of sparkles in it. Unfortunately it's not very visible in my pictures, but if you look closely you can still see it (right?). It also makes my white polish a bit more yellow.

Then I added some yellow rhinestones at the top of the trees on all my nails, and added some pink and greyish ones on the tree on my ring finger.

The colours I used are:

FM1 - D'Orleac

A Walk in the Park - Essence

Stop for an Ice Cream - Essence

I'm going to do some more Christmas themed nail art tonight, I'm looking forward to it!

Hope you have a great Christmas and thanks for reading!

Floral Print Nails (to match my dress)

Hi everyone!

I'm really happy about this floral design I did :)
I got a fancy black dress with yellow flowers at the top, and I wanted to match my nails to it :)


At first I wanted to do two accent nails with flowers on each hand, but I had spent a lot of time on the first two nail of each hand that I just didn't have the courage anymore to do it. But now I got the trick to making these flowers, so next time it will definitely go a lot quicker!

As you can see, I kept the rest of my nails very sober with black polish which I mattified. The bottom part of my dress is also black, so that matched as well. I made the flowers by creating swirl shapes (or half circle shapes) with yellow and brown polish.

I'm really happy with how this turned out :) I now know how to make these flowers, so next time I'll be able to do it quicker (hopefully)

Thanks for reading!

Colourful Leopard Print

Hello everyone!

Yes, I have another leopard print design for you today - sometimes I just get sort of addicted to a pattern and I want to make it in all different colours and variations, so that's what's happening here :)

I did a colourful leopard print for this one, but did something extra as well: on my ringfinger I used rhinestones to create the leopard effect. I used blue, green, pink and yellow rhinestones and then made lines around them with black nail polish. Shiny!

For those of you interested in the colours and how I made the design:

The colours I used are:
FM1 - D'Orleac
Miss Minty - Gosh
Lapiz of Luxury - Essie
Rose Libertine - Rimmel
Mate 01 - D'Orleac
85 - Bourjois Paris
Black on Black - Sinful Colors
Let it Shine topcoat - Essie

For this design I first painted all of my nails with two colours of white. I let it dry, and then I made the colourful parts of the leopard print.

I put some nail polish of one colour on my dotting tool, and made little spots with it on my nails. Make sure that the spots are a bit random, and not perfect circles. I did this for every colour, and made sure that I had a spot of every colour on each of my nails.

I waited until it was dry and then I used a small pencil to outline the spots with black polish. But don't outline the spots completely. And then I placed some random black stripes between the spots.

However, I didn't do this for my ring finger. For this nail, I chose some rhinestones with colours close to the colours of the polishes I had used.

I painted my nail white first, and waited until it was dry. Then I painted a top coat on, to make sure the rhinestones would stick. I placed the rhinestones on my nail in a 'leopard print' sort of way: not perfect circles, a bit randomish.

Then I covered it with an unbelievably massive amount of clear topcoat, and outlined the rhinestones with a small brush and put some small black stripes in between the spots.

And that's it! I really love leopard print a lot, I find it very easy to make and it just always looks good :)

The Group Critique - Beginning Blogger's Bootcamp

Hi everyone!

I just wanted to let you all know I'm taking part in The Group Critique of Will Paint Nails For Food's Beginning Blogger's Bootcamp (wow, that's probably a really confusing sentence but I don't really know how to simplify it).

Meghan of Will Pains Nails For Food is making a series of posts called Beginning Blogger's Bootcamp, where she gives a lot of tips about how to blog and what you should pay attention to.
Right now there's a group feedback session, so everyone can give constructive criticism on your blog 
(Here's Meghan's blogpost about it).

It's really helpful to know what things are good about your blog, and what things you could change. I myself have certain preferences in lay-out, style of writing and so on, but maybe other people are really bothered by some things so it's very handy to know that :)

If you have some feedback about my blog, don't hesitate to leave a (constructive) comment! I've already gotten some feedback and they said some things I've never had given much thought to, so it's great to get some new perspectives this way.

Here's some things you can give feedback on:

• Navigation: Is it easy to find things? Can you find out where to follow, leave a comment, learn more about the blogger, find past posts?
• Photos: Are they clear and in focus? Do you have any suggestions for how to improve them?
• Writing: Is the blogger's writing easy to follow? Do they write their posts in one long paragraph or do they break it into easy to read chunks of text?
• Layout/Design: Does the design go well with the content? How is the layout, are the components of the blog organized in a logical manner?

It's of course very handy if you have a comment about improving my blog, but it's also helpful to know if you think something about my blog of blogposts is very good which I shouldn't change, so you can definitely also leave a comment about that :)

Thanks to everyone who wants to give feedback, and I'll definitely check your blog out too if you're participating in the feedback session as well!