Viva La Lightning Bolt

Hello dear readers! I'm still very busy with school, only two more weeks to go! I've still got a lot of things to do, but right now I just want to show you these nails. :-) Yesterday I wore a brandless plain white creme. It took three coats to get opaque and it took forever to dry, but it was totally worth it. Who knew I could like white nails this much! But sadly the polish already chipped after one short day, so today I added these lightning bolt tips with Essence Viva La Green. I hadn't done lightning bolt tips for a long time, I almost forgot how fun they are to make. ^^ Finally I added a bit of glam with OPI Spark The Triomphe. It's so sparkly! ♥

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Guest Post at Polish Chest

Hello dear readers! Last week was a very busy week for me, but I did manage to prepare a glamorous guestpost for the lovely Danny from Polish Chest. Please check out the full post here!

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Shocking

Hi everyone! :-) For today's short post I have this accent nail mani to show you. This afternoon I did a fresh mani with my favorite purple cream: OPI Funkey Dunkey. A few hours later I wanted to add a little eyecatcher, so it became this silver lightning bolt. It's a small addition, but just what I needed to complete this mani. ^^ Thanks for stopping by!

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Queen's Day 2012

Hello everyone, here's my belated Queen's Day post! On this national holiday everybody wears orange and sometimes with hints of the Dutch flag, so that's exactly what I did here. I started with the orange and then layered the red, white and blue on top, using tape for crisp lines. This mani took forever to make as I had to wait three times in between for my polish to dry before I could place the tape on my nails, but it was definitely worth it and I received many compliments on it that day. ^^

To show our country a little love on days like these, the Dutch brand Koh set up a little collection with 'Dutch' colors which I've used for my Queen's Day mani. Below are swatches of each polish.

Brilliant Red!. This is a classic red jelly with a hint of orange, it's very pretty and bright but not unique. It does have a great formula and application, like I'm used to from most jellies. This was two coats, and as you can see it still shows a tiny bit of VNL but strangely it doesn't bother me much in this case.

Crystal!. This was my second favorite polish from these four (and the only one I didn't include in my mani because it was too sheer). I honestly expected to hate it as it's a frosty white which looks very dated to me, but I ended up loving it! When you think of frosts, you think of brushstrokes, but fortunately Crystal! doesn't suffer from those with its easy application. :) It takes three coats to get full opacity, but it's totally worth it in my opinion. And I know it's not even summer yet, but Crystal! would be a great color for winter too, look at that pearly shimmer! I already start to feel Christmassy when I look at it haha.

Rock Chick!, my favorite from the bunch. ^^ This cobalt beauty is so bright that it looks like a neon in certain lighting, really gorgeous... And like Brilliant Red! this is a jelly with a perfect, rich formula. It covers perfectly in two smooth coats, love it!

And the last one is Dutch!. Like many other girls, I'm not a big orange fan when it comes to nail polish. But it is the perfect orange for Queen's Day or to show our team some support during the UEFA European Football Championship this summer! Pictured is three coats, once again the application was very nice.

Thanks for reading!

The products in this post were sent to me for review.

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Chic Chevrons

Hi everyone! For this post I have chic chevrons to show you, in a quite unusual color. I'm talking about my basecolor which is Heavenly from the Dutch brand Koh. Heavenly is a dusty pinktoned beige creme. It's one of the few nude colors I've ever worn. I know nudes are very popular these days, but I never really payed attention to them before since I like bright colors on my nails so much. Then Koh kindly sent me Heavenly (among other polishes) for review and I'm glad they did! I never thought I could like nudes a lot but I actually loved Heavenly, and wore it for several days which is quite long for me. Also the formula and application were really nice. Because of the light color I expected it to be chalky, but it applied like butter and covered in two coats.

After two days I decided to add nail art to my calm mani. I always think dusty pinks look really chic with a hint of black or gold, so I used both of them in these chevrons which I made with tape. First I made the outer black chevron, later I added the smaller gold one and then another smaller black one. The polishes I used for the job were Color Club Where's The Soiree? and China Glaze 2030, both dry extremely quickly which saves a lot of time when you're doing a tape mani. :) Thank you for reading!

Koh Heavenly was sent to me for review.

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Nude Zigzag

Hi everyone! How are you? I'm liking semi-nude manis more and more and they can be very simple too! Just like today's mani with zigzag French tips. Because there's no base color needed, you can immediately place tape strips on the nails. Apply a coat of Essence Chuck on top, remove the tape right away and you're done. Finally a layer of topcoat and edgy nails are born! :-) What's your thought on this funky French mani?

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Funky Easter

Happy Easter everyone! When I think of Easter nail art, I think of pastel shades and detailed designs. But after wearing soft colors so often lately, I wanted to have something brighter on my nails now! :) I started with H&M Wildflower as my basecolor, then I painted half of the nail turquoise with Essence Bella, using tape for crisp lines. Finally I added a few dots with Color Club Almost Famous and my funky Easter mani was done. :) Have a great day!

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A Broken Heart

Hi everybody! For this post I have a broken heart for you. Nothing to worry about though, I just thought it would be a cool design as I'm still experimenting with sheer polishes. :) I used my vertical lightning bolt design, then I painted the heart on top with a stencil I made from tape (like I used in this mani). I'm not sure if I like the colors I used, but I'm glad the idea I had in mind came out pretty much the way I wanted, yay! Thanks for reading! :)

Polishes I used:
H&M - Bella's Choice
Essence - Stamp Me! White
Color Club - Warhol

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A Fresh Version

Hi everybody! First of all: thank you so much for all the amazing comments you guys left on my last post, my abstract '80s mani. I seriously didn't expect so much feedback, thank you! Also I received many requests for a tutorial and I wanted to let you know I'll happily work on it soon. :-)
I liked the '80s mani myself a lot too, plus it's fun to do, so I made another version. Same idea but in fresher colors. :-) The basecolor is the classic China Glaze For Audrey, I love this polish! (It combines so well with different colors.) I used Color Club Almost Famous for the yellow and the sheer blue is Color Club Chelsea Girl. I really like the bright color of Chelsea Girl, but was so disappointed when I found out how sheer it was (4-5 coats for opacity, if you don't use a white base). However, that sheerness has a purpose from now on. :D What do you think of this blue and yellow mani?

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Abstract '80s

Hi guys, another tape mani for you today! Oh, how I love stationery tape. It's so perfect for making geometric shapes which I happen to love too. ;-)

After (re)discovering the layering possibilities of sheer polishes with my recent springy stripes, I used the same technique in this mani. My base color (H&M Polish Me Happy) was applied the day before, so I could immediately place tape strips on top to form the mint green shapes with Orly Ancient Jade. When that had dried I once again used tape to make the pink triangles with Color Club Warhol and I just love how new shapes are formed where Ancient Jade and Warhol overlap. Speaking of Warhol, it's such a great polish for this layering technique. It's sheer, but covers very evenly and the color is so unbelievably bold! (Also take a look at layered Warhol together with its neon friends in this crackle mani.) And that's it for this post, I hope you enjoyed it. :-)

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Springy stripes

Now that Spring is slowly starting to appear, I've noticed I like to wear pastels more often now. This week I'd been wearing China Glaze Lemon Fizz for a few days and when I got tired of it I spiced it up with a colorful tape mani. It wasn't my intention to make stripes though, after I did blue tips with China Glaze For Audrey I wanted to add geometric patterns in coral with Essence Think Pink. However, Think Pink was a lot sheerer than I thought, creating different tones of coral with the polish underneath. (The middle two colors are For Audrey and Lemon Fizz underneath Think Pink.) I was so pleasently surprised by this that I continued playing with this layering effect and ended up with these cheerful stripes. :-) Thanks for reading!

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Nude V-gaps

Hello everyone! For this post I've got nude V-gaps to share with you, I made them yesterday when I was going for a "dramatic" look haha. To make the V-gaps I used tape as usual, I cut out triangles with acute angles to make my nails seem a little bit longer. ;-) The polish to go with the design was Essence Fateful Desire, a vampy red jelly/creme. It did need two coats to cover, so I couldn't remove the tape immediately after one coat of polish, which I normally do for nice, crisp lines. But I kept both layers thin so in the end it still turned out neat enough. :) And since I wasn't wearing a basecolor, I could place the tape right away, which made this mani pretty quick to do as well, I like that! :-) What are your thoughts on this mani? Would you give this a try yourself?

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Windows

Hi everybody! I hope you all had a great weekend. My nails are still quite short, but I'm actually very comfortable with this length. I think they look edgy and also my polish lasts so much longer on these shorter nails! I've been wearing Color Club Where's The Soiree (the black) for three whole days now and there's not a single sign of tipwear. A year ago I wouldn't really have cared about the wearing time, since I changed my nail polish daily back then, but now that life's busy again I certainly don't have the time or energy to do that anymore. Anyway, after three days of black I really needed a change, so I went for a trusty tape mani. :) Nothing too difficult though, basically the design consists of one big and one smaller rectangle. First I used China Glaze Adore, a wonderful light blue metallic, then I made the smaller rectangles with Where's The Soiree again. So a quite simple design that reminds me of little windows when I look at my nails. ^^ Thanks for reading!

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Blog birthday!

(That's Kleancolor Blind Date in the background. ^^)

Hi guys! Today my blog is exactly one year old! I can't believe how fast everything went, time sure flies when you're having fun. ^^ Thank you all so much for visiting and sharing your comments, I hope I can do this for a long time. :-)

For this special post I made a blue and gold tape mani. I did have to file down all my nails because I had a deep tear in one nail. And though I don't like my nails this short, I decided to embrace my little nubbins anyway because how can I not share the nail art I made with you! ;-)
The lightblue with shimmer is called Top Of Emotion from a new brand called Anny. I'll have to make an individual post for Top Of Emotion some time, because it's so pretty! I was already wearing it for a day, so I could immediately start placing the tape strips for the zigzag pattern I was initially going for. I already liked the result after one zigzag with Essence Into The Dark, so I included a picture of that as well. :)

But I couldn't stop there haha, so finally I added a hint of gold with H&M Golden Treasure. As you can see, the end result is a bit different than my usual zigzag manis, instead of repeating the zigzag shape with the third polish, I just did a chevron so lots of the darker blue stays visible. :-) I hope you guys like it! And thanks for reading. ^^

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Nude with hearts

Hi guys! How are you all doing? :) I've finally finished all my exams for the first semester, so more time for blogging again! :)

For this post I wanted to share this semi-nude mani with you that I made last year. I wanted to make hearts on my nails by making a template with tape and this heartshaped paper punch that I have, but the punch had a hard time getting through the tape, so all I was left with was a little wrinkled, misshapen hole... So I cut out the shape myself from a fold up piece of tape and that's how I got to this design with V-shaped French tip. I still have to get used to nude nails, but I kind of like it like this. ^^ For the rest of my nails I was looking for a smokey purple, the polish that came nearest to what I wanted was Bourjois Bleu Asphalte. But I if I had Frederiksberg from WIC Herôme at the time, I certainly would've gone for that instead, I love that color so much! :)
So what are your thoughts on these nude nails? Would you wear them yourself?

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Nicki Minaj inspired nails

So many things to post and so little time! At the moment I'm in the middle of my exams, hence the lack of posting this week. But I've got plenty of fun stuff to share with you once things are slowing down. :)

Between all the studying I did manage to create a look for the OPI Nails 4 Life contest on Facebook. My entry had to be inspired by one of the four Nicki Minaj outfits provided by OPI. I chose the outfit she wore to Victoria's Secret and didn't have to think long about my choice, I was crazy about the fun graffiti style in vivid colors. Different techniques were used to achieve this look: sponging for the background, taping for the striped accent nail and a lot of freehanding for the stars, hearts and Nicki's initial, which took a lot of time to make but turned out pretty cute. ^^

If you like my entry, you can vote for me through this page. The prize is the entire OPI Nicki Minaj collection, plus an autographed copy of her Pink Friday album! Isn't that awesome?! I'm thrilled about the whole prize, so I'd appreciate it if you truly want to vote for my entry, though that's entirely up to you of course!

Did you participate in OPI's Nails 4 Life contest?

Source

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Diagonal crackle mani

Hi guys! For this post I have a diagonal tape mani to share with you. I just love those! They're so easy to make and a great way to combine polishes and different finishes. Today I didn't feel like spending too much time on my nails, so this was perfect. I applied one thicker coat of the navy creme China Glaze First Mate. Because it was just one coat it dried pretty quickly, so soon after I could place a tape strip on each nail. I knew I wanted a silver for the tips, but to add something special I picked a silver crackle polish: OPI Silver Shatter. It's so super shiny! Finally I added a fastdrying topcoat and my mani was done :) Thanks for reading ^^

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Glitter V-gaps

Hi everyone! :) For this post I have a glittery V-gap mani to share with you. As my base color I used two smooth coats of the lovely murky green China Glaze Westside Warrior. Normally I love to combine Westside Warrior with a gold like I did in this post, but this time I wanted to try something different so I picked multi-colored Rain Glitter from Amour for the V-gaps. It's a very suitable polish for tape manis, as the glitters are very dense, so just one coat was enough to cover the taped shapes.
In the bottles, Rain Glitter and Westside Warrior looked amazing next to each other, on the nails however I expected the glitter to pop more against the green so the V-shape would be more visible. I'm really enjoying Rain Glitter though, I have such a huge weakness for anything with lots of color, especially when they're this sparkly... But I'm sure many of you feel the same way ^^
What do you think of today's tape mani?

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Abstract Christmas tree

Here's a little bonus post that shows the design from today's tutorial "in action" :)

The green is China Glaze Mistletoe Kisses on top of OPI Jade Is The New Black and the gold is China Glaze 2030. Good night everyone!

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Tutorial: Abstract Christmas tree design

Hello everyone! Recently I posted my second Holiday tutorial, which shows you how to make a traditional Christmas tree shape. But for this tutorial I have an abstract take on the Christmas tree, for the more modern nail art fans who are looking for something different. All you need is two polishes, tape and something to act like your tree topper. I used a rhinestone, but you could also use one larger (star shaped) glitter, a sticker, a stamping design and so on. Be creative ;-)

First apply your base color (with a basecoat underneath) and let it dry completely. If needed use a fastdrying topcoat to quicken the drying.
I used a fine glitter as my base color to make it more festive, but you can also use a regular cream, a subtle shimmer polish or one with a foil finish etc. Just make sure it's not too dominating, because you want to keep the Christmas tree the center of attention.

Cut off two regular tape strips which you'll use in step 3, and a few small ones to make the garland in step 4. The best way for me to cut (fine) tape strips, is by cutting off a little piece of the tape roll first which I then stick on the scissorblade, like shown in the picture. I let it stick out on one side (right in de picture), depending on how big I want the strip to be. This allows me to make very thin but also straight strips with relatively little effort.
A tip: to keep multiple small strips the same size, use the thickness of the scissorblade as standard.

When the base color is entirely dry, place the two regular tape strips on your nail, forming a chevron shape.

Then place the small strips randomly accross the chevron to form the garland. Important is to remember the order in which you've placed them, for a quick removal and neat result afterwards. With opaque tape this shouldn't be a problem, clear tape on the other hand... To make it easier with the latter, you can place the tape strips per direction. So first apply the ones going in one direction (upper left for instance), then the strips going in a second direction (upper right). All you have to remember now are the ones lying on top.
When all strips are in the right position, press them down firmly and apply your layering color.

Then right away, carefully peel of all the pieces of tape. Try to remove them individually if you can, because this will create crisper lines. When you're done, give your design a little time to dry.

At last, finish your design with a sparkly tree topper and seal your work with a layer of topcoat. Tada!

Finally some useful tips:

• For my tape manis, all I use is regular stationery tape. (For this particular tutorial I used painters tape for better visibility.) But you might prefer something else, so just experiment with different sorts of tape to figure out what works best for you.
• For your base color you can use any polish you like, however one-coaters will allow you to place the tape much sooner because those are usually fast drying. Of course you can also quicken the drying of polishes that require several coats to cover, by applying a fast drying topcoat. (I use Seche Vite). 
• Your layering color(s) can be either a one- or two-coater. Because you've already applied a base color, most polishes that usually take two coats to cover now will do with one.
• Though I mention cutting the tape strips as step 2, I admit it is safer to cut before applying the base color. However, if you've learned how to cut the tape without having it touch your polished nails, it can save you a lot of time.
• You might want to leave the cut strips somewhere else than the edge of your desk/table, to prevent them from getting stuck to the surface while you're busy. You do not want to have to peel them off with your freshly painted claws!
• Apply your top color in one thin (but opaque) coat, this will create crisper lines.
• When you're removing the tape strips, try to remove them individually, if you can, because most of the time your design will come out neater this way
• Using tweezers to remove the tape strips can prevent your freshly painted nails from getting smudged.
• It's not always necessary to start all over if you've messed up your design, often a little touch-up with a nailart brush can solve the problem.
• If you want to use a matt topcoat, use a regular one underneath. My experience with matt topcoats is that they smudge the design very easily, even when it's completely dry. Applying a normal topcoat first will prevent that.
• Moisterize your cuticles afterwards, because the tape can really dry out your skin!
• You can practice this tutorial on your old mani that you applied a day (or more) before. That way it's certain that the base color is dry.
• Have fun and practice makes perfect ;)

I would absolutely love to see your attempt on my design, so feel free to leave a link to your creation in the comment section!

Polishes I used in this post are China Glaze Mistletoe Kisses and 2030.

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