LynB Designs - Galaxy We Call the Milky Way

Hi all!

Today I have a truly GORGEOUS indie to show you. If you read my haul post then you already know: I bought 9 LynB Designs polishes! I'll be showing them all on the blog one by one, and here's the first <3

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

Good morning!

I have three pretty polishes for you today!

Under The Sea

Hi!!

I 'm showing you a nail art that I am really really proud of today. I was inspired by this swatch of Starrily Sea Glass by Chalkboard Nails. I love how that polish looks, and I wanted to do a similar "sea-ish" thing.

I wanted the design to have a lot of depth, and make it look like you were staring down in a tropical ocean with all kinds of treasures.

Shimmer Polish - Jennifer

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

Hi polish lovers!

I have another gorgeous Shimmer Polish for you today! I'm showing you Jennifer, a glitter bomb with light blue pastels. Jennifer has a clear base and blue/silver is her main colour. But as always with Shimmer Polishes, there is an abundance of other colours in the glitter too which makes the polish a feast to look at!

Blue Galaxy Nails

Disclaimer: some of the products used in this blog post have previously been received for review.

GALAXY NAILS!! WHOOT! SPACE PARTY!!!

As you can see from my introduction, I'm quite enthousiastic about these. This is my second attempt at galaxy nails (you can see the first one here - and here is an added bonus!) and I decided to go with the classic space colour: blue.

Ice Queen

Hello everyone!

Today I have a water spotted manicure for you all!
I used a gorgeous blue Catrice polish as a base (unfortunately, the name on the polish has completely vanished because I've had it for so long) and did the water spotting technique with OPI's Push and Shove.

Love Doodles

Hi everyone!

Today's design was completely inspired by a new polish I bought: NYC Ink Stain.
When I bought it, a friend of mine said "Oh that's so cool, you could do like writing on your nails because the colour resembles ink!" And I thought that was a really good idea :)

I didn't want to do all writing on my nails - I wanted some doodles like I had distractedly drew random things on them. I decided on love doodles because I was in a childish/romantic mood :)

I first used three coats of OPI Alpine Snow, and then I painted on the hearts and words with a small brush.

I quite like how they turned out - it would have been better if I had thought more about the placing of the hearts instead of just jumping right in as I always do, but it's a lesson learned (or probably not actually in my case).

I hope you like my design and thanks for reading :)

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!

Blue Dots and Stripes!

Hi everyone!

I am suuuper happy with today's design - polka dots and stripes!
I adore polka dot designs, so I thought that the time was right to do one myself!

I used Essie's Lapiz of Luxury and FM1 by D'Orleac to create this design.



I started by painting the nails of my index finger, middle finger and pinky with three coats of Lapiz of Luxury and my thumb and ring finger with two coats of white.

I waited until everything had dried, and then I used a dotting tool to create the white dots.



After that, I did the stripes on my other two nails. I first used striping tape, but I had placed it quite badly so the stripes weren't very equal in size...
So I decided to just make them a bit thicker and more even by myself, without using striping tape.



I did this design on both my hands, because it was quite simple to do and I just loved how it looks! So cute :)

That's all! This was a pretty simple design, but it doesn't always have to be very complicated, right? Simple can look super cute, even if I say so myself :)

Thanks for reading!

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!

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 :)

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 :)

Duochrome

I told you a few days ago that I had bought my first duochrome polish - it's Spectral Green by Nocibé.
I was really curious to try it out. I had never used a duochrome polish before, so I actually can't really say anything constructive about this one because I can't compare it with any other duochrome polish.

That being said, I do love this one!
The colour shifts from bright green via mermaidish ocean blue to dark blue - my favourite colour of all these is the mermaid one :) (you can see it on the picture below, with a bit of the green colour as well - I sort of managed to capture the colour shift in pictures)

When you look straight at the polish on my nails, it just seems green. But if you tilt my hand a bit (or move your head, whatever works for you) the colour changes. I think I spent at least ten minutes in the bathroom looking at how pretty the colour shifted while brushing my teeth, haha.

It's really hard to get decent pictures of these polishes where the colour shift is visible. I have hundreds (and yes, I really do mean hundreds, it's not an exageration) of failed pictures of this on my computer. It's very frustrating when the colour shift is so obvious when you just look at your nails, but it's just not visible in pictures... However, I think I sort of managed to capture the colour shift in the pictures I'm showing you here (right?)

Do you have any duochrome polishes? Do you love them as much as I do? :)

*EDIT: I've made a gif to show the colour shifts even better!*

 Thanks for reading!

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!

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! 

Pink and Blue Watermarble

Watermarble!

This is in no way a contender for “best watermarble in the universe” and I envy people who can make crazy awesome watermarble designs, but I have improved tremendously with this technique so I’m actually quite proud of this design! 

I'm glad I finally found some polishes I can marble with, the others I've tried just didn't spread out in circles like they're supposed to. But these worked perfectly!

Now that I've done an okay watermarble design and seen so many other pretty watermarbles, I think I'm going to be practicing this technique a lot in the coming months. I can only get better, right? :)

Unfortunately, my top coat smudged everything a bit, so the pink isn't as clean as it was before. Lesson learned: buy new top coat.

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 :)

Watercolour Nails

Really easy, and really pretty!

I was inspired by a video by Spektorsnails and did watercolour nail art with a plastic bag. It's incredibly easy and your nails look very special, I think. The only downside to this method is the amount of clean up work that comes with it.

How to do it and what you need:
First, you choose what colours you want to use. I chose a minty green, dark blue and warm gold, because they look really nice together. You will then need a plastic bag to put over your nails. Sandwich bags will do nicely! I cut mine into small pieces, because this was easier to put over my nails.

Then, you paint your nails in a base colour. Mine was mint green. After that, you dab on blobs of nail polish onto your nails.

A trick is to dab on the colour you want to stand out the most, first, so it's a bit under the other colours you'll use - for me, this was gold. This is because the plastic wrap you will put over it (next step) will take away most of the top colour (or that was the case with me anyway). In the pictures at then beginning of this post, you can really see the difference: for the first picture (left hand), I put the gold colour first on my nails, and then the blue and mint green. The gold stands out nicely on my left hand. On my right hand, however, I put gold on as the last colour, and the plastic took away a lot of the colour.

Next step is, after you have dabbed blobs of all the colours onto your nails, to put the plastic bag over your nails. You then have to press on the plastic a bit, to make the nail polish spread out. Be careful not to move the plastic around too much, though, because then you could just get a huge ugly brown mess.

Then you take off the plastic.

Finally, wipe the excess nail polish off of your skin (yes, this technique is messy as hell). Put on a top coat and you're done!

Colours used:
Blue: Only You- 534 Stairway to Heaven
Green: Gosh - 597 Miss Minty
Gold: Sinful Colors - Show and tell

I always find it incredibly helpful to have some sort of video or picture tutorial, so here's a link to Spektornails video.

Thanks for reading!