Reddit Challenge - Week 11: Glitter

I've been looking forward to this week's challenge! I love glitter polish, though I don't have nearly enough, and I wasn't sure what to do for this week. I ended up with something simple, but very pretty and sparkly. You see, I keep seeing gorgeous nails with a nude base, and a glitter gradient at the tips, and I've always wanted to recreate that in my own way. And then I realized I have a very good glitter for that.

This has been my manicure for the past week. I didn't want to take it off because I was very glad with the result, even if it's kind of simple.

I used two coats of Essie Mademoiselle to give my nails a lighter but natural pink, because they're a bit orange tinted from all the nail polish I wear. Once this was dried I simply freehanded the tips and then used a sponge to make a fade effect. The glitter I used is a purple holographic one by Claire's, which doesn't have a name but is extremely pretty.

As a finishing touch I applied one coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust over all my nails, and I was done.

It also didn't chip at all, so I wore this for almost a full week, which does not happen often... mostly because I tend to get bored and change my nail polish before it even gets a chance to chip.

I hope you like it! :D

HEMA 826 - Super cheap holo!

I'm really excited for the polish I'm going to show you guys today! This was a completely unexpected find for me. A few days ago I was doing some gift shopping with my mom when we entered the HEMA to get some skin care products. I noticed they had a bunch of new polishes so ofcourse I went to take a look... wait, what is that? IS THAT A HOLO? Oh my gosh, it is!

Okay, it's subtle. But it's holographic! HEMA 826 is a gorgeous deep berry colour with a very subtle but still noticable scattered holo, and I am in love with it. And please understand my excitement, haha. In the two years I've been a nail polish addict, I've always been in love with them, but I have only found a total of three holographic polishes in drug stores around here. They aren't really that common to me. I'd order them off the internet, but most of the holos I want have ridiculous prices, which I can't afford. I found this one in the HEMA for the cheap price of €2,50.

The holo is more noticable in this picture. I love subtle ones - they are definitely my favourite kind of holo. This is two coats without a top coat. The formula is great, the polish is easy to apply neatly. It's not gloopy or thin, it's just right. I also really enjoyed the brush of this polish. I didn't need any cleanup. :) It dries up fast with a nice shiny finish.

Yep, this polish has made it into my top favourites, and I'm going to be wearing it a lot more often! I feel so classy wearing this on my nails. If you live in Europe and have access to a HEMA anywhere, I definitely recommend you take a look for this polish.

Reddit Challenge - Week 10: Winter

Winter has begun! As I am typing this blog post, it's snowing like crazy outside, so this week's theme in the Reddit 52 Week Challenge is very fitting: Winter.

Recently I've been seeing very pretty freehanded snowflake manicures on Reddit and other site, and I really loved them, so I wanted to do something similar. I am still awful at freehanding, however, so I used my stamping and dotting tools for my manicure.

Here is what I came up with. The blue base is Essence I Love Bad Boys, which has a subtle but very nice looking blue shimmer in it. I wanted to use a lighter base but I don't have that many blues yet, haha.

Then I stamped over it! I used one of the plates that I ordered from Born Pretty Store, and Essence Stampy Polish in white. I think I did a pretty good job at the stamping this time, even though it smudged here and there. With the same white polish I used my dotting tools to make snow flakes!

I felt like there was something missing, though. I wanted it to be more sparkly! So then I added some rhinestones, slapped a topcoat on it, and it was done. I think this manicure came out super cute, I hope you like it too! :D

Holo glitter gradient

Hey everyone! Today I have a pretty simple manicure to show you. This is the first 'wintery' manicure I have done this year. At least, I thought it was wintery. :)

I love glitter gradients. They're really simple to make and they always look good. I've been in a glittery mood lately, so I think it's safe to expect more glitter this month, since I have a bunch that I don't use as often as I should!

For this manicure I used Essence Absolutely Blue, which is a soft light blue colour. I've often heard people say this is a perfect colour for summer, but I think blues are perfect for winter, which is why I chose this colour. Temperatures are starting to get cold and The Netherlands has had its first snow already, so it was fitting. The glitter is Essence Hello Holo.

I love Hello Holo, as you can see in the bottle in the pictures, it's super sparkly! I have worn this one so often, it's definitely my favourite glitter that I own. It goes with practically every colour, plus it's great for jewelry making as well, in my opinion.

I definitely was happy with this manicure! What do you think?

Catrice - Dirty Berry

What do I do when I'm not in the mood to wear something bright and flashy but still want to wear an amazing colour? Well, I usually pull out the polish I'm showing you all today, which is awesomeness in a bottle.

I'm talking about Dirty Berry, by Catrice. I think I bought this one for a 2 for the price of 1 type of deal, because I wanted a different one I saw. I randomly picked Dirty Berry to make good use of the deal and I'm glad I did, because little did I know this is one of Catrice's most famous polishes. And with good reason!

The polish is a muted purple colour... and while the pictures don't show it, it's a holo! It has scattered and subtle holo. The weather has been gloomy and dark here, so I could not take better pictures, but the holo is very noticable in sunlight and it looks amazing. It looks great in shade too, though, because you can still see silvery shimmer.

As for the formula, I'm afraid I can't say much about that. I've had my bottle for a long time, and it's thickened just a bit. I can still apply it just fine though. I needed two coats for coverage.

Oh, and did you notice the different nail shape? I grew my nails out pretty long, and I wanted to try something new. I was curious how they would look with a more oval shape. My nails are short nubs again as I'm typing this but I still haven't figured if I like it more than my regular shape, so I don't know if I'll be shaping them like this again. What do you think? Let me know!

Nino Mont - 142

Hey everyone! How are you all doing? I've been doing quite fine myself. As of late I have been feeling pretty artsy and I have mostly been drawing and trying to give me nails a bit of rest, haha. I have a very nice polish to show today though, one that I'm very excited about!

This polish is by Nino Mont, a brand I had never heard of before. My boyfriend went on a holiday to Spain last month and he was sweet enough to buy me a few nail polishes, and this one is my favourite of the three I got!

The polish doesn't have a name but a number - it's labeled number 142. 142 is very, very pretty. It's a shimmery and deep red or berry colour, and to my surprise, it's even a duochrome! The polish shifts colours from red to orange, and I just love the way it looks on my nails.

See that fade effect? It's subtle but amazing. This polish is amazing. I like it a lot, so much that it might be a new favourite of mine. I know I'll definitely be wearing this one more often!

As for the application, I had no problems with it. The formula is pretty thin but easy to control, and I needed three coats for full coverage. It dried up very shiny and it lasted for a long time too. I wore this one on my nails for five full days before it chipped on one finger, which is pretty amazing for me.

So I guess it's pretty obvious how much I like this polish! It makes me want to go to Spain myself to get even more from Nino Mont. Thankfully this isn't my only one, I have another blue shade that I will be showing sometime as well. :)

Reddit Challenge - Week 6: Games

Hey guys! No, I didn't actually miss a challenge. I did do week 5, but I wasn't happy with the manicure at all. I did post it on Reddit however, so if you can find me there, you can have a looksie at what I did last week.

So I was pretty excited about this week's theme, which is 'Inspired by a game'. I'm not a hardcore gamer but gaming is one of my hobbies and you can often find me playing World of Warcraft, Minecraft, Pokémon games, or random games on my iPhone. I wanted to dedicate a nail art to one of these games, but I went for the most obvious choice for me: Pokémon.

Pokémon has always been one of my favourite things. I got Pokémon Yellow over 10 years ago and never really stopped loving it! I've finished most of the handheld games save for some of the newer ones. I admit, I have been a bit out of the loop, but that doesn't mean I don't like it anymore.

To portray this theme I decided to paint little Pokéballs on my nails. This isn't the most original nail art, but hey, it works. The original plan was to do a different Pokéball on each nail but I don't have the right colours for it. It's something I will definitely do in the future, though.

So here's how I did this: I started out by painting all my nails with two coats of Essie Blanc, a simple white creme. I applied a quick drying topcoat and let it dry for a while before taping half of my nail and adding a coat of NYC I <3 NY, for the upper red half of the Pokéballs. I taped it because I am really, really horrible at freehanding with regular polish brushes, haha. Then I added black lines with my black striper, and after that I used my dotting tools to add the black and white buttons in the middle.

One of my Poochyena figurines wanted to make a little guest appearance. :) I don't usually use props for pictures but I figured it would be cute for this one. Poochyena is one of my favourite Pokémon, by the way.

These nails were pretty simple to do but I think they turned out really cute. I love having little Pokéballs on my nails. I hope you like them too!

Reddit Challenge - Week 4: Gradient

I suck. I missed last week's challenge. I was busy with a bunch of other things and just never got to it. :( Seeing as I'm way too late to catch up with it I decided to just continue with the next challenge, even though it's quite late in the week already. :P

So this week's challenge was Gradient or Ombre. I still haven't gotten the hang of making gradients and I don't own enough similar colours to make an ombre manicure with. So I decided to do a glitter gradient with one of my newest glitter polishes.

And this is the result! The base colour is Catrice Welcome To Roosywood, which is a very elegant sort of dusty deep pink colour. I'm not very good at describing colours, and this one is pretty hard to describe! It is very pretty though. I was wearing this one on my nails for a day already which is why there is some visible tipwear.

So then I went through my stash to find a combination when I picked up Essie As Gold As It Gets and figured it might look very good with Welcome To Roosywood. Seeing as I was about to remove that from my nails anyway I decided to try it out. And it actually did look very nice! :) I ended up using it for the challenge and wearing it on my nails, haha.

I really love As Gold As It Gets. It consists of very tiny gold flakes and it's very pretty. It does seem to dry a bit slow for me, but that was nothing a fast drying topcoat couldn't fix.

Wish me luck for next week's challenge because the theme will be orange - my least favourite colour!

Pink Wednesday: 112

Hey guys! It's wednesday, so it's time for another pink manicure. Next week will be the last wednesday of October already. This month sure is passing by quickly for me!

Anyway, today I have for you a polish by a brand that is unknown to me. I think it's a Polish brand, and it is named Qltowy Kosmetyk. This nail polish doesn't have a name, but a number: 112, which happens to be the emergency number in The Netherlands, lol!

So 112 is actually a pretty nice polish! It's a cute shimmery, kind of dusty pink colour. I don't have a polish similar to this in my stash, so it's a nice addition and I have occasionally worn it already.

I only needed two coats for full coverage. The formula is a bit thin and runny though, so I did need quite a bit of cleanup around my nails. This is no biggie, though - the colour makes up for it.

And if you are wondering where I found this polish... my mom works at a local store where they were selling cheap nail polishes of unkown and foreign brands, so she picked some out for me to bring home. So I don't know if this is normally available in The Netherlands at all and I know next to nothing about it. All I know is that I like the three polishes I own by them! :)

Essie - Scarlet O'Hara turned holo

Hey guys! I have to apologize for my recent inactivity in both blogging, and checking and commenting on other blogs. That is partly because I forbid myself from purchasing any new polishes for at least a month, and with that, doing my nails hasn't been a big concern of mine. Today I do have something very pretty to show you guys.

I love holographic polishes and I love every colour of holographic polishes. However, I haven't seen a red holo yet that I actually adore, so when I was wearing Essie's Scarlet O'Hara I wanted to spice it up with two layers of Spectraflair top coat.

It turned out super pretty and sparkly, and I kept staring at it all the time, lol! Taking good pictures of it was pretty hard though, with how gloomy the weather has been around here. So forgive me for that.

So this is two coats of Essie O'Hara and two coats of Piper Polishes Spectraflair topcoat and it created an amazing looking red holo. I found out that Spectraflair is especially amazing over deep shimmery polishes and in my mind I have already been creating a bunch of combinations I will try out sometime.

And this is a picture of Scarlet O'Hara by itself, although this picture shows it lighter and brigther than it is. It's a deep shimmery red. Super pretty, easy to apply, and it looks classy!

Pink Wednesday: Sweets for My Sweets

Hello! Today is wednesday, that means I'm posting another pink manicure in honor of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

Today I have for you a super cute baby pink colour, Sweets for my Sweets by Catrice. I love the colour, but do I love the polish itself?

Answer: No, I don't. :( It's very disappointing. The colour is a perfect bubblegum pink and I love it, but the application was downright terrible. Maybe that is because my bottle is about a year old, but I've barely touched it. 

It needed three coats to be opaque, which in itself is not a problem, but the formula is. The polish was thick and gloopy and it was almost impossible to apply decently. Even with a quick drying top coat, it simply refused to dry, and I ended up taking it off soon after.

So while I love this colour, I probably won't be wearing this anymore. I'll be on a search for a similar colour with a formula that is much nicer, though. If you have any suggestions for me, please do tell me!

Reddit Challenge - Week 2: Blue

It's a bit late into the week, but oh well! Here's this week's post for the Reddit challenge I am doing. I did this one on monday, and the theme was 'Blue'.

This theme was nice and easy, and I wanted to keep it simple but I didn't want to simply wear a blue colour, so I painted them a pretty blue colour and took out my striping tape once again.

And this is the result! Simple, easy, but very nice looking,if I do say so myself. :) The blue is Catrice Blue's Brother which is very shimmery and flashes to green in real life, but I couldn't capture it on camera.

Then after it was dry I used my silver striping tape to apply some diagonal lines across the nail, and I think it looks really cute. Application of the striping tape went much better this time, because I got very tiny scissors to help me with cutting the strips.

Here is the colour all by itself. Like I said, shimmery! I don't have a lot of blues but I do love this colour, even if I don't wear it very often.

Next week's challenge will be a bit more challenging for a nail art noobie, wish me luck!

Pink Wednesday: Mod Squad and Fairy Dust

Hello! As most of you might know, October is National Breast Cancer Awareness month, an international health campaign that is organized to raise funds and awareness, and a bunch of nail bloggers decided to post pink manicures on each wednesday of this month. I sadly missed the first one, but I'll be posting pink today and the next ones, to show my support and in honor of survivors, or those still battling the disease.

Today I have for you two very recent additions to my collection, that I got thanks to an amazing friend of mine. This is Essie Mod Squad and China Glaze Fairy Dust.

Mod Squad is a gorgeous and bright blue based pink creme. The pictures make it seem more red toned than it is, but the last picture in this post is the most colour accurate one. It's a lovely colour that applied very nicely and reminds me of Barbie. It's perfect. I needed two coats for it to be opaque.

To make the manicure a bit fancier, I applied a coat of Fairy Dust on top. Oh, Fairy Dust. I can't tell you how happy I am to finally have this amazing glitter. It's been my lemming for a long time and now I have it and I'm probably going to use it a lot. Fairy Dust is a top coat with very tiny holographic silver glitters, and the name is perfect for it, because I definitely felt like I was wearing fairy dust on my nails.

What do you think? I think the two of polishes go very well together. I can't wait to try out more combinations with Fairy Dust. I definitely want to apply it over a gradient sometime!

Eyeko - Vampira

Hi guys! Today I have for you another very nice vampy colour. This one is by Eyeko.

If you're not familiar with Eyeko, it's a British company that focuses on eye makeup. However, they used to sell some very cute polishes as well. They were discontinued quite a while ago though, so I'm happy I managed to get my hands on this polish.

This is Vampira, and it has a black base full of amazing red glitter. The name is very fitting for it! I suppose this could be considered a dupe for China Glaze's LubuHeels, but Vampira seems a bit brighter. Also, the bottle is adorable.

The application of this polish is very smooth and on most nails I got away with two coats. In some places I still saw some bare spots an I used 3 coats. It also dries up rather bumpy because of the glitter in it, but a topcoat fixes that and gives it a real nice depth as well.

So all in all, I really like this polish and it's definitely a little jewel in my collection. Because it's discontinued I try to not use it too often because I don't want to use it all up! :P

What do you think? Do you own any Eyeko polishes?

Catrice - Genius In The Bottle

I love duochromes. In fact, I have a weakness for anything that can shift from one colour to another, especially with nail polish and jewelry. So today I'm going to show you one of my duochromes, Genius In The Bottle from Catrice.

I had some trouble taking pictures of this one. It's a lovely duochrome that flashes from a gold/bronze colour to a green that sometimes looks blueish. It's very pretty and it could be considered a dupe for Chanel's Peridot, which is nice because Chanel's price tag is way out of my league.

Application was also troublesome. I found that this polish was thick, runny, and overall a pain to apply, which is very disappointing because I do love the colour. I have had it for a while, though, and have barely worn it because of that reason. It's a shame. I'm hoping it's just my bottle.

Reddit Challenge - Week 1: Taping

Hi guys! As some of you may know I am a frequent Redditor. :) Yesterday I found out that the laqueristas on there are hosting a 52 week challenge. That's right, fifty two weeks, each with a different theme. And it seems very doable, even for a nail art noob like myself, so I decided to have a shot at it. I will try my best to come up with a manicure for each week, so hopefully every week I will have a challenge post for you!

The theme for week 1 is taping, which just happens to be my favourite technique for nail art. I often use scotch tape to spice up some manicures, but this time I decided to try out my striping tape. So far I have only used my striping tape as accents on my nails, but this time I used them for masking.

And this is my manicure for the first week! I started out with Essie Turquoise And Caicos as my base coat. Once that was dry I applied a lot of small strips of striping tape on my nails. This was such a hassle to do and it took me quite a long time. Anyway, once I was done applying the tape I went over it with a coat of Essence You Belong To Me and then quickly removed the tape while the polish was still wet.

I personally like the outcome a lot, even if it's sloppy in some places. Overall though, I think I did a good job, especially for a first attempt at using my striping tape like this! I also love the colour combination.

Here's a picture of Turquoise And Caicos by itself. It's a very pretty creme and for me it was opaque in three thin coats. You could probably get away with two coats if you have shorter nails, though.

Essence - Gold Old Buffy

It's been a while since Essence released the Vampire's Love LE, a collection inspired by, well, vampires! It reminds me of Twilight, which I am totally not a fan of, but I did pick up two of the polishes from this collection. Today I'm showing you my favourite: Gold Old Buffy.

This polish is gorgeous. It's full of golden shimmer and irregular shaped golden flecks. The base looks black, but to me it seems more like a very dark brown or olive colour. I'm not sure, but either way, I love it! I'm a sucker for dark shimmery colours like this one and I'm very happy I added it to my collection.

The formula is great too. It's fully opaque in two coats and the application is very nice. No complaints there.

I felt a little silly after swatching this. I wore it shortly after I bought it, but for some reason it just didn't appeal to me as much then. Good thing I gave it a second chance because it's an awesome polish and I'll probably be wearing it more often this autumn and winter. 

Sadly, this polish isn't available anymore, and hasn't been for a long time. I recently heard that Essence will be releasing another collection like this soon, though, so I hope that one will also come to The Netherlands!

Vampy Chevron Nails

Today I'm showing you another tape manicure. I really love to do these just because it's so fun and simple and it's easy to come up with awesome looking results.

So today I decided to do chevrons. I have done these as accent nails here and there but today I wanted to try my hands at a full chevron manicure. And I wanted it to be vampy, so I chose black and red as my colours.

I started by painting the red on my fingers, which is NYC I ♥ NY. Which is a gorgeous red, by the way! I've worn this one pretty often, and so far it's my favourite red I have owned. I also used only one coat for this picture, which is pretty awesome.

After that tried I went ahead and applied the tape to all of my fingers and then add the black. I personally prefer to do it in this order, but you can also start with the black and then add the red later. The black is also by NYC, it's called City Blackout. Again, lovely polish. My favourite black so far.

I really, really like the outcome of these nails! But, sadly, they got ruined about 5 minutes after I was done... I spilled nail polish in my carpet. D'oh! I was so glad I managed to shoot a few pictures before that happened. I'm definitely going to be remaking this manicure, though!

Essie - Bikini So Teeny

Hey guys! This will be a pretty short and simple post. Even though we are entering the colder months, I still love bright colours, and I will not stop wearing them on my nails.

Which is why today I'm going to show you a polish that I'm pretty excited about, and it's Essie's Bikini So Teeny from this year's summer collection. I happened to find this one with a 50% discount when I was looking around a drugstore with my sister, and well... how could I resist?

I love the colour. It's a perfect cornflower-like light blue. But when I saw the bottle irl I liked it even more.

 Honestly, I saw a bunch of swatches of this polish but never saw those teeny tiny little flecks in it. And I don't blame the people that did those swatches, it is very subtle and I can imagine it being hard to capture on camera. But for some reason, my silly little camera did a great job at capturing it, as you can see in the above picture!

Isn't it pretty?

The application was perfect and I had no trouble at all painting this on my nails neatly. I barely needed to clean up around my nails. The polish was opaque in two coats. And the colour is gorgeous and I love the way it looks on me. No complaints about this polish at all, I can definitely add this to my list of favourites.

Extra bottle shot to show the shimmer. Actually, I'd rather describe this as very tiny silver coloured glass flecks. It's a great touch!

Herôme Take Away 'Chique Red'

Autumn has arrived! I like autum and winter, because it means I get to wear darker, vampy shades. Wearing those in the summer feels a bit odd to me! Today I am showing you a polish I recently bought that I think is going to be one of my autumn favourites.

When I was at my boyfriend's house, we went shopping in a mall and in one of the drug stores I found a box with Herôme's adorably tiny Take Away nail polishes. I took two with me, a beige holo and this pretty red.

It's a brownish shimmery red that flashes to an interesting greenish shade in the bottle, but it's not noticable on the nails. I love the colour so much! It's perfect for this time of the year, so I'll probably be wearing it more.

The polish does not seem to have a name anywhere on the bottle, but after a bit of research I found out Herôme is selling these minis on their website, and this one might simply be named 'Chique Red'. Don't take my word for it, though.

...and then after a day I felt like doing some more stamping. And I think I did a better job this time! I picked out a rose design and stamped it on using NYC Platinum Card (I really love this silver). I really like how it came out.

Nail polish earrings

Hi guys! Today I want to show you some of the earrings I have been making recently. And yes - this is relevant to my blog because they were made with nail polish! I'm pretty sure that's not a new concept to most of you, but it's so much fun and there are so many endless combos you can make, I love it.

The first ones are made with one of my favourite polishes, Wet 'n Wild - Back Alley Deals. These earrings are super sparkly and pretty and I've worn them pretty often already. :)

Next up is a pair made with Essence - Blue Addicted. This polish is awesome and it's also amazing for earrings. The domed cabochons and the glitters give them a really cool looking depth!

These are fun too, and I made them with three different Golden Rose flakes. Unicorn Puke-esque, maybe? These are super sparkly as well.

I also decided to try stamping for the first time, and I ended up with these super cute zebra stripe earrings. I love love love these! I have a bunch more stamping plates on my way so once they get here I'm not only going to test them on my nails, but on my earrings as well. :D

Here is a pair that I made for a good friend of mine - who also follows this blog, hi Kyu! c: - I used the Spectraflair Topcoat for a gorgeous holographic effect over Stargazer 303. I will probably end up making a pair like this for myself at one point.

So what do you guys think, do you like my earrings? :D If you do, and you would like some for yourself, I am selling these! They cost between $8 and $12 and information about how to order them can be found on this page.