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

Good morning!

I have three pretty polishes for you today!

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!

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Blue Shimmer Nails #2

Hi everyone!

Just a quick post for today! I did these blue shimmer nails a few days ago when I didn't have a lot of time to create an intricate nail art design. I had already done this design before (you can see it here) so it was easy to create again :)

For this design I used:
Black on Black - Sinful Colors
DS Lapis - OPI

It's very simple to do:

First I painted my nails black with two coats.
Then I put some DS Lapis onto a piece of paper and dabbed in it with some plastic wrap I had rolled into a little ball. I then just dabbed this onto my nails and added a shiny topcoat (because DS Lapis dries to a matte finish with sparkles in it).

I added some studs on my ring finger and that's it!

I hope you like it! And I hope you don't mind my recreating a design I did earlier - when I don't have a lot of time I just do something very simple or something I have done before and really liked. And I did realllllly love this design!

(plus, this post made me realize that I am getting better and better at taking pictures and editing them, right? I can really see the difference with the pictures from a few months ago)

Thanks for reading!

Maybelline Brocades - Knitted Gold

Hi lovelies!

I have a swatch of another great polish for you!

In one of my (many) recent polish hauls I got Knitted Gold from the Maybelline New York Brocades Collection. I had seen some gorgeous swatches of this polish and it was on my wishlist for some time now, until I finally spotted it!

Knitted Gold is a very sheer polish. It has an amazing golden shine and is packed with tiny light pink glitters. Absolutely gorgeous. I decided to pair it up with Muchi, Muchi because this light pink Essie polish seemed fitting.

I wasn't entirely able to capture the amazing gold shimmer of this polish, to my regrets. I took about a million pictures (okay, that's maybe a small exaggeration) but the absolute gorgeousness got lost a bit in every one...
I mean, you can of course see the gold shimmer in the pictures here, but from certain angles the pink polish underneath is just not visible anymore because the entire nail is gold shimmer - which is what I couldn't capture on camera.

I hope you'll forgive me, and next time I'm wearing this great polish I'll definitely try to capture its magnificence better! Thanks for reading!

Blue Shimmer Nails

I'm really in love with these nails, they look so nice and subtly sparkly, but at the same time they also look a bit though :)

For this manicure I used the saran wrap technique with Opi's Raw Granite DS Lapis (gorgeous blue!).

I thought that this manicure would look more like other saran wraps I've seen (if you google it you'll know what I mean by that): a lot of blue polish on top the black. 

As you can see, I didn't actually get a lot of blue polish. Instead, I got this gorgeous blue shimmer, and I'm suuuper pleased with it! 

I think that the saran wrap just didn't really pick up any of the blue polish and only got the glittery stuff, which resulted in this. I love the subtlety of this manicure - I've chosen pictures here that show off the blue very good, but in some lighting you can't really see the blue and get more of a silvery shine.

*EDIT: maybe I should specify how exactly I did the saran wrap, because I think it makes a difference in the effect you get. Some people put the second colour of polish onto their nails and then dab onto it with saran wrap, making the polish go off from the nail a bit. I, however, followed another method: I put some polish onto a piece of paper, dabbed the saran wrap in it and then dabbed the wrap onto my nails, creating this shimmer. So instead of making the polish come off like in the first technique, you just make the polish go onto your nails :) *

Now, as you might know, Opi's DS Lapis is a matte polish with glitters in it, and the bits of polish I actually did get on my nail were also matte. I didn't like this effect at all, since the black polish underneath it was shiny. So I put on a shiny topcoat, added a row of silver studs from BornPrettyStore, and this manicure was done!

I love how this manicure is very simple to make, but looks a bit different, sparkly and fun at the same time.
What do you think? :)

p.s.: I got nominated for the Versatile Blogger Award by The Nail Snail (hurrah!), so I'm going to make a post about that very soon!