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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Happy Skittle

A big thank you to the lovely boyfriend for taking this picture for me! :-)

Skittles! Pretty much the easiest form of 'nail art'. This time I went for a bright and funky color scheme with four (once again) Essence polishes:

Let's Get Lost

Viva La Green

Lime Up!
Ultimate Pink

I just love these Colour&Go polishes! Their formula is just perfect most of the times, they cover in two coats and yes, they're small, but also very cheap (€1,29 for 5ml/0.16 fl.oz.) so you won't have to hesitate on buying a back-up of your favorite shade.
I didn't know pretty nails could affect my mood so much, but looking at today's mani just made my day over and over again, haha. I'm such a dork. :-P
Thanks for reading, guys!

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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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Purples (and a pink)

Sometimes all you need for fun nails is color! Here I used a bunch of untried purples in a semi-gradient/ombre mani. I usually love my purples blue-toned, which is probably why I've never worn the three pinker colors before, but they look pretty cute together in a group. :) The polishes used from my thumb to my pinky:

H&M - Beauty Bandit (I love this name!)
Essence - Passion For Fashion
Essence - Break Through
Essence - Meet Me Now
Essence - Very Berry (Not so berry though!)

Thanks for watching everyone!

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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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Happy cloud

Hi everyone :) This is how I wore the cloud design after finishing the tutorial. I used Barry M Shocking Pink, China Glaze For Audrey and Essence Let's Get Lost and combined it with Essence Bella on the rest of my nails. I love how it turned out! It's so cheerful and kind of like the opposite of the more serious grey cloud I did last week.
Also a big thank you for all the lovely comments that you guys left on the tutorial, you're the best! It makes me so happy to know it helped or inspired you. And I've really enjoyed all the awesome cloud manis that you shared with me so far, so keep them coming! See you next time. :)

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China Glaze Designer Satin + Essence Blair

Hello everyone and happy New Year! :-) For my first post of 2012 I have this simple layering combination of China Glaze Designer Satin and the amazing glitter Blair from Essence. Both are polishes that I can't live without. Though there may be many other pinks like Designer Satin, it has a special place in my heart because it was one of my first China Glaze polishes. The deep, berry pink color is timeless and can be both sweet and girly, and funky or edgy (I like it a lot in this mummy tape mani). Blair is part of an Essence Nail Art Twin together with Chuck. The different sized hexagons in a dark silver make it a very special polish, which can be worn over about any color, great over brights but also softer, muted shades like I did in this skittle. Of course everything had to be mattified afterwards, you know how I like matte glitters ^^ Thanks for reading!

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Shine like a star

Hello everyone! I hope you're having a merry Christmas with your loved ones. This year I'm rocking this star pattern that I made with a new image plate from Essence. It's only available in a set including a stamper and scraper, which I already have, but I really wanted the star design. The star shapes I have on other patterns are quite small which makes them harder to work with and less recognizable. (And besides, €3 for the whole set is a pretty good deal!) I used Color Club Where's The Soiree as my black, as usual, and the gold is China Glaze 2030. This look isn't very Christmassy per se, but I love it anyway. So much that I might even wear it again for New Year's Eve ^^ Happy Holidays!

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Sweet Snowman

Hi guys! For this post I've made this chubby little snowman design by Rins from Simply Rins. I saw it on her blog just a little while ago and fell madly in love... I couldn't stop looking at all ten of them on her nails, because they're just too cute! So many, many thanks to Rins for this adorable design! Seriously, don't you want to hug it? ^^ I used acrylic paint to draw the snowman and the base color is Essence Viva La Green. I love the color because it's not that typical mint green that we've come across many times in the past few years. It's a bit darker and quite vibrant, although it doesn't really show in the pictures (where I'm holding OPI Spark The Triomphe as decoration heehee). Rins also made a tutorial for this design which you can find in the orignal post here. Make sure to check it out, as well as the rest of her blog, she's created plenty of other amazing (freehand!) looks, very inspiring.
Thanks for reading and see you soon :)

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Purple glitter fest

Good evening! As you may have noticed, I am feeling pretty glittery lately, for today I have a purple colored glitter mani to share with you. I remember not really being into purples at the start of this blog, but as time went by I got more and more used to them, to the point of even loving them ♥
In this post I'm wearing Essence Purple Magic, a beautiful medium blue-toned purple shimmer. (You can see swatches of it by itself here.) I decided to combine this little gem with my recently purchased W7 glitters and a champagne gold glitter, and I really like the outcome! The color scheme of purple, blue and pink has always intrigued me, and using it with glitter only makes it better ;-)

From left to right: W7 Blue Diamonds, W7 Purple Dazzle, W7 Pink Dazzle and Paris Memories #250

 And now you probably want to see the matte version right? Yeah, me too ^^
As usual, I used my favorite matte topcoat from Essence.

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Essence You're a Heart Breaker + Lynnderella Thank Blue

December 15, 2011

This is two coats of Essence (50s Girl Reloaded) You're a Heartbreaker. Then I added one (thick) coat of Lynnderella Thank Blue and one coat of top coat.

Then I stamped on the snowflake nail design with Bundle Monster Stamping Plate BM-14 and Red Angel stamping plate RA-119. Then added another coat of top coat.

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Essence Blue Addicted

This is one beautiful polish that is generally agreed to be a dupe of Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe.  Dark blue jelly with small square blue glitter and medium sized blue and green hex glitter.

I purchased two bottles of these as they are only small 6ml bottles.  I'm glad I did because I used three layers to achieve this look.  I wanted to use this colour on its own rather than layering with it, because I really wanted to have the depth of pieces of glitter suspended in the various layers of polish and overlapping each other.

Purchased from Target for $2.55.  Whoo Hoo.

This was Nail Tek II foundation, three coats of Blue Addicted, one coat of gelous and one coat of seche vite.  Look how smooth and glossy it is.  That's the gelous working for me!!

This mani totally rocked.  I wore it to work on Friday and the security guard at the front entrance noticed my nails and commented how cool they looked.  I love it when total strangers notice your nail polish!!

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Birthday Haulage

Whoo hoo, Happy Birthday to me today!  Boo Hoo, my husband is on the road with the Canberra Cavalry baseball team on the other side of Australia, in Perth.  Seriously he couldn't be further away unless he left the country.

So whatis there to pep up a girl?  Awesome nail mail.  The best thing about all this nail mail is that it wasn't even for my birthday, it just arrived in time for my birthday.

First is my Ludurana Aurora Boreal.  I did a swap for these polishes with the sweetest Rafa from Nails Ink.  They were wrapped in the beautiful way with purple bubble wrap and cellophane bags with hearts on them.  It really was like opening a birthday present.  Thank you Rafa!

I didn't get Espetecular, and I see that llarowe doesn't sell it on her site either. But looking at bottle pics it looks very similar to Fascinate.  Rafa also included a Risque polish that looks like a Chanel Paradoxal dupe.  Below are all the holos. Arrrgggggh *wipe drool from mouth*

Next, after seeing Stefs post about Essence being available in Target, I did some googling and discovered that as of Thursday they are now available in every Target in Australia, not just selected stores.  So I hauled arse over to the Canberra city target to check it out.  Canberra ladies, don't bother checking it for a week or two, the display stand was well and truly picked over, with less that 1/3 of polishes left. 

But the polish Gods must have been smiling on me, because there were still two bottles of Blue Addicted left.  Blue Addicted is the dupe for Deborah Lippmann's Across the Universe, which after seeing Carli's post about it, I had to have. STAT!

Sitting next to that is Nfu Oh #51.  I have been trying to get this polish for at least two years.  I had all the other Nfu Oh Flakes through Vivid Nails, but they were never able to get me this last allusive polish.  The most awesome Erina got me this bottle. Thank you so much!!

I received my Cult nails order.  The Superheros collection.  I can't wait to try them.  Clairvoyant. WOW. It may seriously be the most awesome polish ever!  There's a very cool looking duochrome one in there too - Mind Control.  It looks to be a very special collection.

Finally, I had a gathering with my family last weekend to catch up for my birthday and my Dad's, who's was the week earlier.  I baked a cake.  The ladies instantly knew what it was, but one of my brothers was scratching his head for a while.  Not my best decoration, but it did kinda looks like a metallic orange gold bottle of polish.  It tasted yummy too.

I just don't have time at this time of year to do swatching, so it will have to be NOTD for all those bottles above.

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Snowflakes

Hi everyone :) Today I'd like to share these silver snowflakes with you. I was actually feeling pretty uninspired the whole day, sometimes you just have those days when you feel like you've got nothing to wear, even though you've got drawers of polish that could easily color the nails of your entire neighborhood... Anyone recognizes this? ;-) So to make a choice anyway, I just picked two bottles from my collection, with my eyes closed. Those polishes became L.A. Girl Matte Blue Twilight and Essence Romeo (the shimmer version), luckily they formed a great duo and they instantly said 'Snowflakes!'. I only had to apply one coat of Matte Blue Twilight, because it's very opaque and the formula is so smooth. (I'm gonna have to use this one more often!) And because it's matte, it dries quickly too, so soon after I could draw the snowflakes with a nail art brush and finally add top coat for a glossy finish. I'd already finished all my nails before I realized I should've taken pictures in between to make a tutorial. So I'll make new pictures once I've enjoyed this winter mani for a couple of days ^^ Hope you like it too and see you soon!

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Vintage clouds

Hi guys! For this post I have another request to show you. A little while ago I received an email from a reader who wanted me to come up with a funky mani for her informal dance soon. A few colors she liked were teal and coral, so I combined them in this "funky clouds" look. I like how simple this design is to achieve. Just pick three matching colors, one for you base color and two for the cloud shapes on top. The clouds are made by applying three strokes of polish next to each other, each smaller than the one before. My tip is to leave enough polish on the brush (but not too much!) so that when it touches the surface it will leave a nice, round dot as start point. This doesn't even need a lot of precision and you can just use the brush from your polish for this. And that's it :) Though I would advise using a fast drying top coat afterwards if you don't want to wait too long for your nails to dry, after all it's three coats of polish. (Four if you include base coat.) I like the way it looks here with plain cremes, but for a more festive look, a layer of (iridiscent) glitter can be added.

Below you can see the same look with China Glaze Midnight Kiss on the tips, which I made first. But after I took the pictures I noticed how Bella matched the rest of the polishes better so I just redid everything, for your viewing pleasure haha. Have a great night!

The polishes I used:
Essence - What Do U think? Version 1 (it looks less orange in real life)
China Glaze - For Audrey
Essence - Bella

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Funky clouds

Hello everyone! I was in the mood for some funky nail art tonight but I didn't feel like spending too much time on it. And that's how I came up with these "funky clouds" you're looking at. I'm still no good at making up names for designs so don't make fun of me haha :P I started with two coats of OPI Funky Dunkey and then I applied Essence Bella on top in three quick strokes that form the cloudy shape together. After it had dried I repeated the steps a bit closer to the tips with OPI Silver Shatter, a layer of top coat and there you have it! I think it turned out pretty cute ^^ And I can't wait to use it with other color schemes. Hope you guys like it too! Good night :)

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