Royal Purple Stamping

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



Hi everyone!

I'll be showing you a new polish today, but first I have some life stuff to share with you! You'll probably remember my Summer of Guest Posts, where I had amazing guest posts on my blog on Saturdays during the Summer, because I was very busy with an internship at that time. Thanks again btw to the lovely ladies who helped me out!!

Now, the most amazing thing has happened: my intership offered my a job!! I loved working there during my internship, so I was super happy when I could stay even longer (and get paid for it, haha!) However, this means I'll only have time for nail art during my Weekends, so I'll probably be posting only once a week here instead of twice, like I used to do. On the bright side though: I have a job :D *insert ABBA 'Money Money Money'*

I hope you'll all stick with me while I'm still adjusting to this new work rythm, and well, I just wanted to share this really great news with all of you :)

Now, for the nail art!

Polish Swatches: OPI Blue Chips, Catrice Petrolpolitan, Essence Alice Had a Vision - Again

Good morning!

I have three pretty polishes for you today!

Sally Hansen - Satin Glam Taffeta & Teal Tulle

Hi!

I had such a busy week and didn't have time to post sooner or to reply to any comments yet - I'm kind of exhausted right now too so the comments will have to wait until tomorrow! However, I have just enough energy left too publish a quick post ;)

I mentioned in my recent haul post that I had picked up two Sally Hansen Satin Glams: Teal Tulle and Taffeta. Looking back I'm kind of bummed I didn't pick up the pink one too (Chic Pink) as it's such a pretty bubblegum colour! The same goes for Glam Go Gold, a gorgeous pinkish bronze colour.

But anyway, today I'm sharing my swatches of my two picks with you: Teal Tulle and Taffeta.

WingDust Collections - Funhouse

Hi everyone!

Remember when I told you about the six WingDust polishes I had won in this blog post here? Well, today I'm showing you my first pick!

In a Galaxy Far Far Away...

Hi everyone!

Today I have a galaxy design for you - and let me tell you, I am SUPER proud of this one!

I've been wanting to do galaxy nails for a long while now, and I actually tried it once but failed miserably. I always though it was very hard (it looked very hard!). But now, I can tell you: no it isn't! Well, with the right tutorial anyway it isn't :)

I found this really good tutorial by Lucy's Stash here. I also adored the colours she picked, so I decided to make a purple galaxy manicure.

For this design I used:

- Alpine Snow - OPI

- a purple nameless ombre set by Guylond

- another Guylond polish (soft blue-purple), also nameless

- white acrylic paint

I just followed the steps from Lucy's tutorial and at first, I wasn't really convinced this was going to look right. BUT: when I added the white dots and stars, it definitely looked really cool, and the shiny topcoat just made everything fit together and it looked perfect. So if it doesn't look good at first when you try it, no worries! :)

So first I painted my nails with two coats from the darkest purple (on the right in the picture above). When that was dry, I sponged on the pink and then the white, but I thought the white was a bit too white if you know what I mean, so I sponged over it with the light blue-purple polish. 

Then I sponged the darker purple and added some bits here and there. Finally I made the dots with Alpine Snow and painted the stars with acrylic paint.

I'm really glad it turned out like this! Of course Lucy's design looks ten times better still, but I adore mine and I'm now really confident to try galaxy nails out again, maybe with some different colours too!

I also still owe you one review for BornPretty Store - and I actually did something fun with this galaxy design for that! But that's for next blogpost, because I loved these galaxy nails on their own already so much that I wanted to show them to you separately :)

Do you like these? Did you try out galaxy nails yet? I'm sure many of you have, it's such a popular design and I'm really glad I finally found the courage to try it :)

Thanks for reading!

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! :)

Monochrome Geometric with a Splash of Purple

Hi everyone!

Today I have a this geometric design for you, along with a little secret about me!

I'm going to start by telling you my secret: I love socks. Yes, socks. Socks are amazing. But not just any socks - I love socks with weird or eye-catching patterns, with funny animals of fruit on them. I own a lot of socks, all of which are wonderful and a bit weird - I have socks with owls, with hedgehogs, with pugs listening to a walkman, and so on.

Hehe, okay, I'm not sure if loving weird socks is a bit crazy or if there are a lot of people that like funny socks - do you like them?

Now, why did I tell you that, you might think. And maybe you might have guessed it already: today's design was inspired by my new socks! I bought a bunch of socks a few days ago and one of them has this lovely geometric pattern on it - it's absolutely gorgeous!

Fun fun! When I saw it, I not only definitely wanted to buy these socks, but I also immediately knew I wanted to make this design into nail art.

The colours I used here are: 

Black on Black - Sinful Colors

Alpine Snow - OPI

Ate Berries in the Canaries - OPI

At first I thought to do the geometric pattern on all of my nails, but I quickly decided that sometimes, less is more! Plus less work, haha.

I started out by painting my pointer finger and little finger with three coats of Alpine Snow.

I also painted on two coats of Ate Berries in the Canaries on the rest of my nails. When that had dried, I painted two coats of Alpine Snow on my middle finger, but not starting at my cuticles of course, because I wanted to leave a spot of purple visible.

Then I added some triangle studs to my pointer and ring finger and voila!

I then started to do the geometric pattern: now I haven't copied the pattern exactly the way it is - on the socks, the black lines and triangles sort of meet, but I kept it a bit simpler. I just painted on the triangles, added some "teeth" to some of them, and coloured the other ones in with black.

The geometric design isn't as neat as I wanted it to be - I mean, some of the lines aren't very straight and the triangles aren't all the same size - but for my first attempt at this design, I'm very satisfied!

Plus I got compliments about these nails in real life - I mean, like someone from my class noticed my nails. I always think it's so fun when people in real life notice my nails - it's only normal that everyone here notices them because I put up extra large pictures of them on my blog :D And although in real life I'm often positioning my hands a certain way so people can see my nails (do you guys do that too?) it's always lovely when people notice them :)

And to finish, I have some more lovely pictures for you:

Are you a fan of funky socks? And do you like this design? I'm very proud of myself for keeping it so simple - sometimes I overdo a design and it becomes a bit too much, but this time I really kept it clean!

Thanks for reading! :)

Water Spotted Berry Potter

Hi everyone!

I am super pleased with how today's manicure turned out! I used the water spotting technique to create this design, and this is the first time water spotting actually worked with me! (yeey go me)
A few weeks ago I saw a gorgeous water spotted manicure by The Adorned Claw (here's her blogpost) and she said in her post that she used perfume for this technique. Now, I've tried a bunch of things for water spotting, but perfume wasn't one of them yet!

I had already tried to do it with lots and lots of hair sprays, but that failed miserably every time because the spray that came out of it was too much and just made one big hole in the polish instead of several small ones like it's supposed to.

I loved the manicure Ruth did, so I got inspired to try water spotting once more :) And it worked! I'm so glad she said she used perfume for it, because perfume is so perfect for this technique but I hadn't thought of using it myself.

The polishes I used here are:

Alpine Snow - OPI

Berry Potter and Plumbledore - Catrice

Yes, you read that right: Berry Potter and Plumbledore! This must be the awesomest name for a polish I have come accross ever! When I saw this polish in the store, I immediately grabbed it - I didn't even care about the colour or whatever, I just HAD to have that polish because of the name because I am a biiiiiiiig Harry Potter fan. Do you ever get that, that you really want to buy a polish because of its name?

Berry Potter is a purple polish with some blue-ish shimmer to it - you can see it a tiny bit in some of my pictures, but it's not super apparent here because of the water spotting.

So, I started out by painting two coats of Alpine Snow on my nails and then waited until it had fully dried. I put some scotch tape around me nails to avoid too much of a mess and too much clean-up. I then grabbed a small plastic cup, filled it with water (room temperature) and put in some drops of Berry Potter. 

Then I sprayed on the surface of the polish with some old perfume I never use anymore, and dipped my finger in where I liked the spots it had created. I waited until the polish on the surface had dried, cleaned that up with a toothpick, and pulled my finger out of the water - it's the same you do for water marbling, really.

The only downside to using perfume is that I had to air out my bathroom for two days and my nails smelled like perfume A LOT, but I guess there are worse things in life than having perfume scented nails for a few days :)

I re-did this design one time, because I didn't really like the spots that my first try had created - but since they are so easy and quick to make, it's not too much of a fuss to re-do it luckily!

Do you like these? I absolutely adore them, I'm so glad the technique worked!

And please, if you know any more polishes with amazing and funny names, let me know in the comments! I am really curious! I suppose a lot of indie polishes have amazingly creative nails, especially when a collection is based on some television show or something else from popular culture.

Thanks for reading!

Nimbus Nail Art (The Nailasaurus' technique)

Hello all!

For today's design, I recreated the Nimbus Nails from The Nailasaurus. Mine look a bit different from hers but I looooove how they turned out!
I used The Nailusaurus great tutorial, which you can find here.

Everything is explained very clearly in her tutorial, so I will not elaborate here on how I created these nails as I just followed her tutorial. I did however change one thing: instead of acetone, I just used nail polish remover to thin the polish (because I don't own acetone, to be honest).

I think that because of the remover, my design turned out a bit different: the layers of polish are not so thin as The Nailasaurus' layers are. I don't mind this at all however, because I adore how these nails turned out!

I used my new purple polishes fom Guylond, which unfortunately do not have a name - I bought them in a "create ombre nails" pack together. The one big polish on the left is nr. 12 from Hema.

I also added two gold studs because I like the combination of purple and gold :)

So, do you like these? They were definitely a lot of fun to make, so I will try to create these again with some other colours!

Thanks for reading!

Crayon Colours

I'm really proud of today's mani, because I used some materials that were new to me, and I think the result looks very cool: it doesn't look like I painted my nails with nail polish, but with normal paint, or even just wildly coloured on them with crayons. 

To create this look, I used a small paint brush with pig's hair (like this one, for example).
The nail polishes I used are:
D'Orleac - Mate 01 (this polish doesn't have a name)
Catrice - 400 Blue Cara Ciao
Opi - Ate Berries In the Canaries
Gosh - 600 Matt Effect Top Coat

First I put a base coat on my nails, and then I painted them white. 
After that, I started with the purple: I took the paint brush and put some purple polish on it. Then I sort of cleaned off the brush on a piece of paper, so that there wasn't a massive amount of polish on it. Then I just painted a small part of my nails with this purple polish. I then did the same with the blue and orange, and quickly after that I put on a top coat, so the still wet polish would mix a little and the lines between the colours wouldn't be as hard.

After that, I wanted the colours to pop out more, so I just repeated everything above (except for putting the white polish on of course). Then I put a matte coat on to make it look more like paint, and that's it!

I really like how this doesn't look like nail polish, but more like paint on my nails. It's supposed to be a bit messy, so that's also quite handy :)

I realised that my blue polish was almost the exact same colour as the sweater I was wearing, so of course I made a picture of that as well :)

I hope you like it, and thanks for reading :)