Summer of Guest Posts: Nerdy & Fleurty

Today I have another awesome guest post in my Summer of Guest Posts series!! This time Nerdy & Fleurty is up - she's a fellow Belgian girl and has seriously cute nail art on her blog.

For you all today, she made a design that is peeeerfect for this Summer series! It makes me want to go lie on a tropical beach with a jummy cocktail ;) So dear readers, enjoy!

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Shimmer Polish Nichole

*Disclaimer: this item was provided for review. All opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced by anything or anyone.

Hi everyone!

Today there's a little break from all the fun guest posts - here's a post of myself again! :D

I have a very patriotic polish for you today: Shimmer Polish Nichole! (or well, patriotic if you live in America at least - and I guess France and The Netherlands would work too!)

Summer of Guest Posts: FrankieHuntersNails!

Hi everyone!

Another Saturday, another amazing guest post in my Summer of Guest Posts series!

This time my dear friend Franzi from FrankieHuntersNails is up - and oh boys and girls, you will adore this design! I WANT THIS ON MY NAILS AND I WOULD NEVER EVER TAKE IT OFF AGAIN, that's how amazing it looks! <3 She brought lots and lots of pictures with her and you won't mind at all because it looks stunning!

So let's get started - Franzi, we're all ears!

Shimmer Polish - Kelly

*Disclaimer: this item was provided for review. All opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced by anyone or anything.

Hi everyone!

First up, sorry for my absence! I've started an internship (which will continue throughout the entire Summer) so life has become very busy for me! However, life also has become very fun because I love the internship a lot! :D I won't have as much time to post on the blog this Summer - but I have a masterplan that will make up for that! More about that coming soon ;)

And now, it's shimmy shimmer time again! And more specifically, green shimmer time!

Born Pretty Store Review: Funky Water Decals

*Disclaimer: some items in this blog post are provided for review. All opinions expressed  are my own and are not influenced by anyone of anything.

*Disclaimer: some items in this blog post have been previously received for review.

Hi all!

Today's post features some super funky water decals from Born Pretty Store - I love these!

Shimmer Polish - Jenny

*Disclaimer: this item was received for review. All opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced by anyone or anything.

Hi everyone!

Today's post features Shimmer Polish Jenny with a lovely bright blue glitter mix.

Born Pretty Store Review: Colourful Studs Variety

*Disclaimer: this item was received for review. All opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced by anyone or anything.

Hello everyone!

I have a Born Pretty Store review for you today. I'm reviewing these colourful studs. 

I decided to approach my reviews more systematically AND give you all the info at the start of my blog post instead of at the end. So here goes!

Mint/Pink Gradient for Spring!

Hi everyone!

I was so in the mood for Spring that I really wanted to do a gradient with bright colours. Then I saw this gorgeous gradient by The Lacquerologist, and I immediately knew I wanted to recreate it :D

Vampy Gradient with Shimmer Polish Eva

*Disclaimer: some items in this blog post were previously received for review.

Hi!!

I have a gorgeously sexy polish for you today!

I already swatched Shimmer Eva for you (here), I had really long nails then and I put Eva on top of another red polish. I also had a different lighting setup then, and that has improved a lot now so I wanted to show you Eva again. This time, I swatched her on her own, and Oh my.

Let's Get Vampy with Shimmer Polish Vanessa

*Disclaimer: some items in this blog post were received for review. All opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced by anything or anyone.

Hi! It's Shimmer time again!!

I have the seductive Vanessa  for you today, She has a clear base with silver and slate gray glitters as the primary colours. Of course there's also red, blue, and even some green glitters thrown in there!

Dark Magic Gradient

*Disclaimer: some items in this post have been previously received for review.

HIIIIII!!!

I am SO SO EXCITED about today's design!! I love it I love it I love it! And I hope you will too :D

I did a sort of halloween design, but not the typical one; I decided to create some vampy "dark magic" nails that a witch would wear on a daily basis ;) And well, since these look so magical in real life, I decided to have some *magical* pictures to match it! (meaning: aristicly waving my hands about on pictures lol)

Guest Post at Nerdy & Fleurty!

Yay I'm doing another guest post!

This time I'm helping out over at Nerdy & Fleurty - she doesn't have her camera for a few months so she asked me if I wanted to be part of her guest post series! I created this bright tribal leopard print for her - you can go read the blog post and see more pictures (including my right hand!) here! :D

I hope you like it, and definitely go browse Nerdy & Fleurty's blog too!

Tribal nails and purple ombre

 Hi everyone!

Today I have some tribal nail art for you on top of a (unfortunately very subtle) purple ombre.
The ombre is a bit more noticable in real life and in some of my pictures, like here:

Can you spot it?

For these nails I worked with acrylic paint - I used white paint to draw the tribal designs.
I made the ombre with polish: I used two Guylond polishes which are nameless, but came in an "ombre" pack with other purple and pink colours.

I used a sponge to make the ombre and I'm suuuper proud of how it turned out - there are no lines where the colours don't overlap properly, but it's super smooth and the colours just blend so nicely. Unfortunately I couldn't take pictures of it before I added the tribal design, so you'll just have to believe me on this. And: if I can make a good ombre once, I can make it again right?! Next time I'll try to take pictures of it first before covering it up with something.

I made the design myself - well, I googled pictures of tribal patterns and saw that some shapes occured very often so I used those shapes to make my own pattern. I quite proud of how it turned out - and it was also super easy to paint with the acrylic paint. I'm most proud of the design on my pointer finger and ring finger, I really like the three triangles I made :)

And you also get an awkward picture where my thumb is included:

My lines aren't always super straight (check out my middle finger!) so there's a lot of room for improvement, but I do like this already!

Can you spot the ombre? And which pattern do you like best?

Thanks for reading! :)

Valentine's Day Appropriate Leopard Print

Hi everyone!

I probably say this in every post here, but again, I'm super excited about today's design! :)

As you know, it's almost Valentine's Day! I don't celebrate it to be honest, but I did got a lot of inspiration out of it this year! I decided to create a design that was as Valentine-y as possible, with lots of pink and hearts! 

My weak spot is leopard print - it must be my favourite design ever, and it's a simple one to create as well :) I also love a good gradient, so mix those two together with Valentine's Day and you get this:

The colours I used for this design are:
FM1 - D'Orleac
Muchi, Muchi - Essie
Rose Libertine - Rimmel London
The Pinky And The Brain - Catrice
Black on Black - Sinful Colors

As you can see, I started out with a white and pink gradient that I created with a sponge. I used the first three colours from the list above for this:

Then I added leopard print with the Catrice pink. I made some spots in the shape of hearts (3 on each nail) and the rest are just random shaped spots. I used a dotting tool for this.

And finally I used a small brush to add the black lines around the spots and also some little black stripes inbetween the spots where I thought the design was too empty:

That's it! Quite simple but I love the way it came out.

I did find that Muchi Muchi was actually a bit too sheer to create the gradient with. It looks more gradient-y in real life, but the camera didn't want to capture the sheer pink. Next time I'll probably use another, a bit darker pink :)

I hope you like my design! Thanks for reading! :)

The Great Gatsby Nail Art

Hello all you great people!

I'm suuuper proud of today's design :D

I did The Great Gatsby inspired nails, and I love them a lot!
I always loved Great Gatsby nail art, I thought it was so elegant. But when the big hype about The Great Gatsby movie was around, I felt that I wasn't skilled enough to make such pretty nails.

But now I've decided that it was about time I tried them, and I'm very happy I did :)

I loved The Great Gatsby movie a lot - I even went to see it twice in the cinema - but I hadn't read the book until recently. I had to write a paper about the book so it had to analyze it in detail, and I fell in love even more with The Great Gatsby.

So I was convinced I had to make nail art based on the cover of the book and movie :)

The colours I used are:
11 - Hema
Goldfinger - Catrice
Black on Black - Sinful Colours

My design is based on Polly Polish' tutorial. I thought it was so fun that she first did a silver and gold gradient, so I decided to do that for my design as well.

I did this gradient using a sponge. I applied a fast drying top coat and then I used striping tape to create the design.

The design on my ring finger is based on the one by Polly Polish; the designs on my other fingers are my own creation.








I just put striping tape on my nails and made sure my nails were properly covered. Then I painted over my nails with black polish, and while the striping tape was still wet I took it off with tweezers.

And that's that really :)

Of course there were a few spots where a little black polish had come onto the gold and silver lines so I had to clean this up a bit, but overall this was a very succesful atempt at using striping tape - this was actually the first time I have managed to work this well with striping tape :D

Those of you who have read the book or seen the movie, you know to what light my green ring is referring to! :)

And a final shot with my Great Gatsby book! (yes, it's the Dutch translation because that one has the nice gold striped cover - I also have the book in English but with a completely different cover, so the Dutch one was more appropriate here)

What did you think of The Great Gatsby? Did you go see the movie or have you read the book?
I hope you enjoy my nails! :)

Thanks for reading!

Bright Pink Leopard Print With Gradient

Hi everyone!

I'm so in love with today's manicure! I did a light blue-green gradient with bright pink leopard print on top, as you can see.

The colours I used for the gradient are:
Lapiz of Luxury (Essie)
Miss Minty (Gosh)

For the leopard print I used:
Amazing California Love (OPI)
Black on Black (Sinful Colors)

I first created the gradient by using a piece of sponge. I waited until the polish had dried and then I did the leopard print on top. 

The green colour I used looks more baby blue in these pictures, as it does on my nails - the combination with the real blue colour just makes the green one look different, but I quite like this actually. I think these colours fit really nicely together :)

 I'm really liking this design, it's so bright and cheerful :)

Candy Coloured Gradient Nails

Today I tried a gradient for the first time, and here's the result:

I love how these colours fit together, they kind of remind me of an ocean sunset. They are really bright and cheerful colours, but not in a too flashy kind of way, if you know what I mean.

I made this gradient using a sponge: 
First you paint your nails in a base colour (the lightest colour of your bunch, normally).
Then you paint the colours onto the sponge, and dip the sponge onto your nails. Then you dip it a bit up and down, so the colours mingle a bit. After that, you put a topcoat on to make the colours blend even better.

Here's a tutorial I found, which shows very nicely what you should do :)