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!)

Let's Get Pink: Some Valentine's Day Designs

Hi everyone!

I finally decided to get to work on some Valentine's Day designs! I had a week of vacation after my exams and I spent it working on my thesis a bit, but also swatching A LOT!! It was so much fun and I'm really glad I was able to swatch so much and do some designs. I was also glad I was able to make a total garish collage :D

Today I'm showing you some Valentine's Day designs I came up with. They're simple but sweet, and above all they are pink ;)

New Polish & Nail Art Stuff!

Hi! :)

I have gotten the coolest and prettiest stuff in the past few months, but I didn't have the time yet to show you!!

So here finally goes :D

Born Pretty Store Review: Rhinestone Wheel

*Disclaimer: some of the products in this blog post have been received for review. All opinions expressed are my own and are not influenced by anyone or anything.

Hello everyone!

I'm back with another Born Pretty Store review! I have a nail art rhinestone wheel to show you today - you can see it here on their website.

Cuties for Becca!

Hello everyone!

A little bunny told me today is Becca's birthday! You might all know Becca from Not Your Average Nails already - I did a mani swap with her a few months ago! If you don't, get your ass over to her blog and be baffled by all her amazing designs.

Her friend Brit contacted me on Tumblr and asked me if I wanted to do some celebratory nail art for Becca's birthday. I'm always in the mood for this type of thing! Plus, Becca is super nice so she deserves some birthday love!

I didn't want to do something really birthday-ish with balloons because I had to wear these nails for a few days to work. So I decided to show Becca my love by recreating one of her designs!

Mermaid Nails! - BornPretty Store review

*Disclaimer: this product was provided for review. All opinions in this blogpost are my own and are not influenced by anything of anyone.

Hi everyone!

Today I have another review from BornPretty Store for you, together with this mermaid nail art! (If you missed my previous review, click here!)

The second item I chose to review for BornPretty Store are these golden sea shell studs. They are available in gold and silver, and in sizes 3mm and 5mm. You get 20 shells in a pack.

I chose the gold 3mm shells because I liked that size and colour :)

The most obvious thing to do with shell studs is of course something mermaid-y and since I hadn't done mermaid nails yet because I didn't have the right polish colours and studs, this was the perfect chance to try them out!

The polishes I used for this design are:

Spectral Green - Nocibé

Trophy Wife - Essie (I actually bought this polish with the excuse that it was perfect for mermaid nail art haha)

Vampire Vanity - Bourjois Paris

Goldbusters - Catrice

I also used some studs and rhinestones I bought in a local store, and of course the sea shells from BornPretty Store!

First I'll explain how I made the mermaid design, and then I'll give some more information about the studs.

Now, I started out with a gradient with Trophy Wife and Spectral Green:

Then I drew a half moon with white acrylic paint on my index finger and little finger. I then applied Vampire Vanity on those nails (but not in the little half moon part). I also painted some fish scales with acrylic paint on my thumb and ring finger. I do need to work on my fish scale painting skills though :/

And then finally I added all the studs and rhinestones:

 The sea shell studs were very easy to work with: they are a bit curved so they stick to your nail properly. They also don't stick off of your nail very much as they're quite thin.

I just applied them to my nail after I put on some top coat, and then I put some top coat on top of the shells to keep them in place.

The final judgement: I'm very happy about these sea shell studs. The only downside is that you only get 20 in a pack, but on the other side: I'm really not going to do some mermaid nail art every week so I'll be able to go a while with these. You can also re-use them if you don't remove them with polish remover, but try to pick them off your nail.

The price: These shell studs cost $2.78 at the moment.

Where can you get them: You can order these shells in 2 different colours (gold and silver) and 2 different sizes (3mm and 5mm) here on the BornPretty Store website!

Discount?: Like I mentioned in my previous review, I have a discount code for BornPretty Store that will get you 10% off on your order! Just use XDX31 when you order something :)

That's it for my second review! If you have any more questions, feel free to ask! :)

Thanks for reading!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

BornPretty Store website

New arrivals

Most popular

Blingy Ruffian Manicure - New Year's Eve Nails

Hello everyone!

I'm a bit late with posting this, but I wanted to show you the manicure I wore on New Year's Eve.

I first had a very different manicure in mind than the one you're seeing here: I wanted to cover my nails completely in gold glitter - but not just throw random glitter over them, but really place the glitter very neatly onto my nails. I started with my thumbnail, and by the time I got to my index finger I was completely sick of it. I just had to stop to preserve what was left of my sanity. I was quite bummed because I love glitter manicures (for example: Polish All The Nails does them all the time and they look so amazing), but I just couldn't bring myself to spending what was going to be 4 hours on it...

Here's a very bad quality picture of how far I had come: 

At first I didn't have inspiration for a new manicure, but then it came to me: a very simple silver and black ruffian manicure. With rhinestones of course, because I had to be blingy on New Year's Eve! ;)

I used my new Hema polish and Black on Black by Sinful Colors. 

I first painted my nails with the silver colour - two coats. Then I put on the black and just made sure not to start painting my nails at the base, but I left a little space so the silver would be visible.

I felt my manicure needed some extra bling, so I added silver rhinestones on my ring finger.

That's it!

I hope you all had a great time at New Year, I know I did! (lots and lots of food!)

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!

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 :)

Dry Marble with Essie's Lapiz of Luxury

I went on a little shopping trip a few days ago and bought three new nail polishes (hurrah!)
I got Essie's Lapiz of Luxury, which is a soft blue polish, Essie's topcoat Let it Shine, and Spectral Green by Nocibé, which is a sort of duochrome green polish. I'm excited to try that one out!

But first I tried out the Essie polishes. I thought the soft blue would make a perfect match with my mintgreen shade Miss Minty from Gosh, so I wanted to do a design with these two.

I actually wanted to do a watermarble design because I need some practice in that and I thought it would look great with these two colours, but Essie's Lapiz of Luxury is NOT a watermarble-proof polish AT ALL. When I put a drop of it in the water, it completely spread out, but not in the way it's supposed to: it just sort of dissolved in the water, it was very strange. 
I thought maybe I did something wrong or the water was not the right temperature, so I tried it again, but I got the same result. I hadn't tried watermarbling with Essie polishes before, so I don't know if it's something that is the same for all of them, but I knew that I couldn't watermarble with this one...

So I opted for a dry marble instead, because I really did want to do a design where the two colours sort of mixed, I didn't want to have hard, clear lines which seperated the two colours, I wanted flowy lines because these colours are very soft and I think flowy lines look great with soft colours :)

So as you can see, I did a dry marble on my middle finger and ring finger, and I painted the rest of my nails with Miss Minty. I then added a few rhinestone because I thought the colour of the rhinestones fitted so perfectly with the colours of the polishes :) 

I then added Essie's Let it Shine and well, look at the shine! I'm really happy with this topcoat, because it didn't smudge the design and it's so much shinier that my previous topcoat! Of course I still need to put it to an ultimate test (a black and white design), but for now I'm very pleased with it.

So, what do you think of this design? Has any of you ever tried to watermarble with Essie polishes and if so, what was the result? I'm quite curious to know if it's impossible to watermarble with the other Essie polishes as well :)

Thanks for reading!