New best Friends

Recently I wore this really bright, super pretty neon orangy red, named Essence Beauty on Tour. At the end of a long working day it started to show a bit of tipwear, so I was looking for another color to add on the tips to recycle my mani. I was very surprised to end up with the color combination of red and pink on my nails. It's not a pair that I'm likely to go for, but as I found every other color than pink to be meh that day, I just went for it and I completely fell in love with it! Who would've thought a neon red and berry pink could be best friends?! It's bold and summery and just what I needed to brighten up the dark work outfit I was still wearing. The gorgeous pink is my ultimate go-to pink China Glaze Designer Satin and I used tape to create the diagonal lines.

Sci-fi chic Skittle

Hi everyone! Today I have this sci-fi kind of skittle to show you. This mani started with the two semi-nude accent nails that I made using tape and freehanded strokes of polish. After that I went through all my drawers like a crazy person to find polishes that would match the accent nails. The result is an unusual combination of colors, which in hindsight, I'm not sure whether I love or hate. Doesn't matter, I enjoyed the process of doing these nails nonetheless. :)

The polishes I used:

Index finger: China Glaze Tinsel Town on top of China Glaze Westside Warrior

Middle finger: OPI Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ

Thumb and ring finger: Color Club Where's The Soiree and Barry M Cobalt Blue

Pinky: China Glaze Sea Spray

Abstract Mistletoe

Here's a quick post to show you my Christmas nails and to wish everybody a merry Christmas! I hope you're all having a great time with your loved ones. Tonight I had to work, but the next couple of days I'll be spending some quality time with my family. On my nails I'm wearing classic red, accompanied by glittery pinkies and an abstract mistletoe accent nail that I made with tape. (What else?) The polishes I used were all three from China Glaze: Phat Santa, Party Hearty and Custom Kicks. Happy holidays!

Neon geometric Christmas nails

Hi everyone! I thought it would be fun to do a Christmas mani (Christmani XD) in neon colors. I already had the idea of building a Christmas tree and six-pointed star with see-through triangles using tape, and when I stumbled upon China Glaze Surfin' For Boys in my stash, I knew it would be the perfect color for the job. It's so incredibly bright! For these photos I used my iPhone5 camera, it's much more accurate with capturing the true color of Surfin' For Boys than my trusty old Canon IXUS 85 IS, but even in these pictures the brightness is nothing compared to seeing it in reality.

I combined the Christmas ornaments with random triangle shapes in neon yellow, teal and silver. The polishes I used were Orly Glowstick, Color Club Age of Aquarius and China Glaze Millennium. The 'white' basecolor (actually a super light grey) is Essence Enter Wonderland, a very pretty matt polish. To keep that lovely matt finish in the entire look, I finally sealed everything with matt topcoat. Hope you like it and thanks for reading!

Laurel Leaves

Okay, so technically these could never be laurel leaves, as they're pointed at the ends in real life, but hopefully you get the idea. :P I wanted to do a festive winter design on my nails, that doesn't scream "CHRISTMAS" per se. And I actually think this one fits that category quite well. Not that I don't like Christmas, but I like to wait just a little longer until I pull out my full-on Christmas nails.

This laurel design was pretty easy to make. You don't need much precision for it, which is nice. As you can see the individual leaves aren't exactly perfect, but that's okay, because with this design I think it's the whole that counts in the end anyway. I started with two coats of Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ from OPI for the red basecolor. Then I drew the stems with a silver striper polish and with a dotting tool I drew the leaves, I used Essence's Romeo for this.

So there's my take on a festive winter design. For this mani I used a red and silver polish, but I can already imagine it in tons of other color combinations to fit with an outfit or even another season. What do you like to wear on your nails around this time of the year?

As always, thanks for reading!

Rays of Color

Hi guys! My apologies for posting so little lately! I'm so busy with school at the moment, that I haven't been able to work on my next challenge yet. So instead I'll show you this second, slightly different version of my "divergence" mani, that I made some time ago.

The basecolor I used is H&M Deep Deep Water. It's such a simple yet pretty color, and the fact that it covers in one coat makes it even better! On top I made the red part with Essence Wild Thing (an oldie!), and the turquoise tips with Essence Bella. As usually tape was my little helper for those clean edges. ;-) Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you again soon!

31 Day Challenge, day 26: Inspired by a Pattern

Hello everybody! For today's nails I was inspired by my awesome knitted Pull&Bear sweater. It took me a lot of time to draw the pattern, but I love it so much that I'd be happy to do it again some time. Perhaps only on a few accent nails, then! :-) The red basecolor is Rimmel Riviera Red, and for the triangles I used my trusty striper Ink from China glaze that's actually a dark navy, but mostly looks black, just like the navy on my sweater. ;-)

31 Day Challenge, day 22: Inspired by a Song

Hey everybody! I'm at day 22 of the 31 Day Challenge, which means I had to pick a song as inspiration. I never thought this challenge was going to be easy, but man, it was so much more difficult than I'd expected! A lot of songs have abstract titles, which are really hard to capture into something recognizable on the nails. And I did want to make something that people were able to recognize, rather than something artsy and abstract that could actually be anything. So I hope you guys indeed saw that pictured on my nails is a train. ;-) The symbolic train of John Mayer's Stop This Train. I think it's a touching song and I especially love the live version of it from his album Where The Light Is.

I really wanted to portray the speed and enormous size of the train, so what better way to do that than making it in Art Deco poster style? :-) The red basecolor is OPI's Big Apple Red, and for the vehicle I used a couple of different polishes and stripers, plus a little sponging for the steam and lights. At last a layer of Essence Matte topcoat and it was finished. Hope you like it!

OPI DS - Reflection

This post I want to share a beauty from the vault with you: OPI DS Reflection! Oh, how I love this polish... I often reach for it when I'm in a hurry but still want something really pretty on my nails. There's corally red, there's scattered holo and a bit of gold shimmer. Doesn't it look amazing? I applied two smooth and quick drying coats, but it could do with one thicker layer too. Well done, OPI!

31 Day Challenge, day 17: Glitter

Ah, a new year has started. My first resolution? Finishing last year's 31 Day Challenge! :') I must be the worst participant ever! That's why I kept postponing starting on it in the first place. But at least I'm still having fun with it, and that's what counts, right?

For day 17 I did a glitter gradient. My first one actually and I must say I enjoyed it! It's so simple to make yet the results are pretty cool, I like. :) I used two coats of OPI Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ and dabbed H&M Confetti Kisses and a bit of China Glaze Silver Lining on the tips. Thanks for reading!

31 Day Challenge, day 9: Rainbow

Day 9! This time the challenge was to make rainbow nails. I was looking really forward to this challenge, even though I knew it was going to be challenging indeed. In the end I came up with this very simple look with colored strokes. Basically I used the technique I also use to make my cloud manis, only using a different color with each stroke. I really like the end result, all the colors together make me so happy! Maybe also because they remind me of a box full colored pencils. :3

If you like this look, I hope you try it out yourself too. It's a quite easy way to create that oh-so-lovely rainbow effect. ^^ Thanks for reading!

Polishes I used over China Glaze Snow:

Essence - Beauty On Tour
H&M - Peach Me Soon
Color Club - Almost Famous
Catrice - ACid DC
Safari - #100
Essence - Via Airmail!
China Glaze - Gothic Lolita
Essence - Sending You Kisses

31 Day Challenge, day 1: Red

That's right! I'm finally doing the 31 Day Challange! The task for day 1 is to make red nails and this is my attempt. Okay, so it's just as much grey as it is red. :-P But I decided to allow myself to have a little bit of freedom with this challenge, hope that's okay! ;-) For this simple fifty-fifty tape mani I started with a sexy red basecolor, #85 from Hema (a Dutch department store). When that had dried, I covered half of each nail with tape and painted the other half with a thin layer of China Glaze Concrete Catwalk and Tinsel Town. After removing the tape again, this is the end result; vampy and sparkly, can't say no to that! ^^

Because I'd like to enjoy the results of each challenge for more than just a day, I'm going to have to cheat a tiny bit with the original schedule of a challenge a day. As a compromise I promise to work twice as hard on each little project. ;-) Thank you for reading!

Delicious Stripes

You probably won't ever see me wear red and pink together when it comes to clothing, I think they clash more often than not, but somehow I think they make a pretty cute pair on nails. In this mani I'm wearing NYC Uptown with red stripes that I freehanded on top with striper polish #36 from brand Janet. Don't these nails look a bit like candy? ^^ I can almost smell a strawberry scent when I look at them... Have a great evening!

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. This does not influence my opinion on the reviewed products.

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?

Valentine's Day

Hi everybody, happy Valentine's Day! The boyfriend and I don't really celebrate it, but tonight we're going out for dinner together with some friends which should be really fun. :) But before that I wanted to share a few Valentine manis I made with you. I'd really wanted to post them earlier, but sometimes life just gets in the way. ;-) Let's see some nails then! I decided to keep the colors classic, using mainly red and black.

The first one up is this heart accent nail. I used China Glaze Phat Santa for my regular nails and went for OPI DS Reflection on my ringfinger for a bit of sparkle. Then I drew on the heart shape with a black creme and filled in the background. (I could've just drawn the hearts on top of the black since Reflection is actually quite opaque, but I discovered that after I'd already finished the first, big heart lol.)

Stripes go well with any occasion in my opinion, so Valentine's Day is no exception! :) I freehanded the random stripes with China Glaze Ink, as usual. Simple but I love it! ^^

I already did a lot of cloud manis lately, but I just had to include one in this post because it's so fitting for today and easy to do. :) Here I went for a single cloud layer which is even quicker to make. You can check out the tutorial for this design here.

I get a lot of my ideas by accident, that's why experimenting with nail art is so much fun. ^^ I noticed a heart shape in the cloud tips from the previous mani, so I outlined the shape with white (Essence Stampe Me! White) and drew a heart in it with black again. I find it pretty hard to draw thin lines sometimes, so by starting with the white and going over it with black, leaving a gap of white, it's easier to achieve the thin line I want. Like with the previous manis I used Phat Santa for the red.

In this post I'd also like to include a few older manis to inspire you (also to add some pink in here haha). You can view the complete post of each mani by clicking on the picture or the description.

Laced up

Vampy French

Guestpost for Ivana Thinks Pink

Cartoon hearts. (You can find the tutorial here).

China Glaze Designer Satin and Essence Blair

Nude with hearts

Cute funky French

Thanks for reading and have a great night!

Freehand '80s

Hi everybody! This is the nail art I made with H&M's Navy Cosmos as my base color. I was just playing around with my favorite nail art striper China Glaze Ink, looking for an easy freehand design. You all know I can't live without my precious tape when it comes to nail art, but let's face it, using tape can be quite time-consuming! So (easy) freehand designs are a nice alternative every now and then. :-) For this pattern that looks kind of '80s to me, I started drawing the zigzags on each nail. After I'd finished there was still something missing, so I used a dotting tool to fill in the empty spaces with big dots. I thought it turned out pretty cute in the end, but the best part was that the whole job was such a piece of cake. ^^ I used Essence Matt top coat for that ultimate matte finish, but below you can also see the glossy version that I just had to share with you. :) Hope you guys like it!

H&M - Navy Cosmos: part 1

Hi everyone! For this post I have the red part of H&M's Navy Cosmos to show you. Like with H&M Plum it wasn't so much the color that I fell for, but the super sweet bottle! I couldn't resist the red and blue with the polka dots in the middle, even when I actually hate these narrow bottles with a polish on both ends. They're difficult to store, difficult to polish with because of the extra weight at the top, but boy they sure look cute!

The red creme of this polish duo is very vibrant, almost neon-like I'd say. The formula was a little bit goopy, but still manageable, needing two coats to cover. I know it's not the most unique color out there, but I like it nonetheless. It's a lot brighter than I expected it to be and I can't wait to wear it for summer! ^^