Essie - Escapades with a simple accent

The weather here has been very nice recently! It's finally warming up and I'm really enjoying it. Time to wear bright nail polish! Today I have an awesome bright red by Essie to show you guys.

I love this colour! Escapades is a very pretty red creme that is not quite as bright as the above picture, but it's a great shade for summer that really pops. I chose to wear this colour because I wanted to do something with some nail glitter I got as a gift a few months ago, specifically the hollowed out silver hearts, because I figured it would go well together.

And I think it came out cute! I originally planned to use just one heart, but then I found some smaller pieces hidden in between the heart glitter and I like this much better. The glitter stayed on my nails surprisingly well, though I did add an extra layer of top coat.

I also had no problems applying Escapades. The formula is a bit thin but it's easy to control and I only needed two coats for full opacity. It stayed on my nails for about 4/5 days before it started chipping, which is great. :) All in all, a lovely polish and a nice addition to my stash.

Essence - Modern Romance

Hello there! So, my computer stopped working for a few days which completely threw me off my posting schedule for a short while. Sorry about that! Though, my new gametime for World of Warcraft is also partially to blame... um... oops. :)

Anyway, today I am showing you another Essence polish from their Colour & Go line!

Modern Romance is a really cutesy peachy nude colour. I'll say it right away - the pictures show the colour much brighter than it is. I couldn't get it right for some reason! It's a pretty soft colour that shows a subtle pink shimmer in the bottle. Unfortunately, this does not translate to the nail very much, which was slightly disappointing for me.

I'm also not happy with the formula. It was very hard to paint neat, thin layers with it and even after three coats I was still seeing bald spots on my nails. :( The colour is very nice, but bald spots bother me so much! I'm honestly quite disappointed by this polish, which is a shame because I do really like the colour.

I have said this before, but Essence's nail polishes are often a hit or a miss. While I love the brand, this one was a miss for me.

Paint It Blue For Autism - Blue Flakies

Hi there! Today I have another blue manicure that I did to show my support for Autism Awareness Month. I sadly did not have time enough to do something creative like I originally wanted to, so this manicure will be pretty simple.

So today I have flakies! I'm a big flakie lover, and I love them in blue. I used Flormar 438 as the base, which is a simple blue creme that I actually like a lot. It applies very smooth, and it looked great on it's own. But just a simple creme was too simple for me, so I topped it with flakies.

For the flakes, I used Golden Rose Scale Effect 11. This is a topcoat with blue and green flakies, though my camera did a pretty bad at picking up the green. The flakes were a disaster to apply because the polish has gotten super thick. I really need to get myself a thinner.

The result with a blue and very shiny manicure. The thick base of the flakies made it a bit bumpy and it simply refused to dry, however, so I ended up taking it off soon after. Too bad. :(

Essence - Grey-t To Be Here

Hi guys!

Enjoying your weekend? I am! Today's post will be rather short but I am showing you an Essence polish from their Colour & Go line that I like very much.

Grey-t To Be Here is a light gray polish with a subtle but noticable pink shimmer in it. I am not one to wear gray polishes, but the shimmer in this is a really great touch, and makes this a really pretty polish. I'm very glad I bought this!

I'm not sure how well it works with my skintone, but I like how neutral it is.

The formula of this polish is fine. It covered in two coats and I did not have any issues with the application, so all in all I am quite happy with this polish and it's a perfect shade to wear for when I don't feel like doing anything flashy with my nails.

Tutorial: How to make nail polish jewelry

Hello everyone, and welcome to my first tutorial! So since I have already posted about the nail polish earrings and rings I make, I thought it would be fun to write a tutorial to show you guys how I make these. This is my first tutorial ever, so I hope it makes sense. If anything's unclear, don't hesitate to ask me!

Nail polish jewelry is so easy to make, and with only a few simple supplies you can create amazing and unique pieces of jewelry. I will show you how to make both rings and earrings in this tutorial.

Tips before starting:
- If you are like me, you will get nail polish on your fingers/nails. If you don't want to ruin your manicure, make the jewelry with naked nails.
- Be sure to make the jewelry on paper, or an easy to clean surface.
- Have nail polish remover and cotton wads/balls ready.

Tutorial after the jump!

Evanora inspired nails

Have you seen Oz: The Great and Powerful yet? I haven't, but I definitely have to see it sometime. It looks really awesome. Since the movie came out I have seen some manicures inspired by Evanora's 'claw' nails in the movie. I really liked the look and so I decided to recreate them!

The result is a pretty edgy, but awesome manicure. When I was wearing this I kept looking at my nails, because it really felt like I had claws!

As you can see in the screenshot I linked earlier, Evanora doesn't seem to have a base colour on her nails and her nail line is visible. I didn't like that all too much which is why I used a nude base. I used two coats of Essence Cookies & Cream for this with a fast drying top coat. After that was dry, I taped off the sides of my nails to create the claw shape, and went over it with a coat of Essence Black Is Back, a simple black creme.

And, instead of two gold lines on each side of the claws, I decided to go with one gold line in the middle. I used gold striping tape that I got off eBay, but as you can see in the pictures it started curling up just minutes after I applied it, which was quite a shame. I do like the end result, though, and I love seeing all the different variations people are coming up with.

What do you think of this 'claw' look?

Max Factor - Fantasy Fire

Okay, I know, I know... the hype around this nail polish has been over for a while now. But ever since I laid my eyes on it, it has been on my wish list. Multichromes, duochromes, holos... anything that shifts colours is my weakness. This does not only go for nail polish, but also jewelry and other things. I had to have it one day.

Well, a few days ago I was browsing a huge Dutch webshop known as Bol.com for a birthday gift for my boyfriend, when I got distracted and ended up on the sales page, and via the sales page I ended up browsing through their nail polish when I saw they had this baby stocked. I got super excited because I could never find it in the drugstore that sells it and the prices online were ridiculous. Ofcourse, I ordered it right away.

Fantasy Fire is an amazing multichrome shimmer to be used as a top coat. And basically, it's liquid magic.

It's similar to the famous polish known as 'unicorn pee', Clarins 230. While they are not the same, Fantasy Fire is a nice and affordable alternative for 230.

Sadly, I got it in a mini bottle. I would have liked a larger sized bottle but this is okay too. Not wanting to waste a drop, I used two coats of Fantasy Fire over Revlon Plum Night, a dark purple that works quite well as a base for this topcoat.

And just look at those colours! The shimmer shifts from red to orange, gold to green, and in certain angles it's blue, though I wasn't able to capture that on camera. It's amazing, and like I said: liquid magic. When I was wearing this I kept staring at my nails.

Yes, I am very happy I finally found this polish at an affordable price. It took a while, but that is one awesome polish scratched off of my wish list. :)

What nail polish have you been lusting after?

Nail Polish Rings

Hello everyone! Today I have something different to show you. If you have been with me for a while you might remember the nail polish earrings I have posted about before. A while after I made that post, I decided to look into rings as well, and I have made quite a few. I took pictures of some of my favourites, which I will be showing in this post!

Also, would a how-to for nail polish jewlery be interesting? When I looked around for tutorials, I couldn't find many helpful ones, so if you're interested in seeing a tutorial by yours truly, let me know!

Anyway, let's start, shall we? Purple is my favourite colour for nail polish, so it's no surprise that my most favourite rings are all purple.

1. This picture does not do it justice, but this ring is SUPER sparkly in real life. I made this one with Claire's Purple Holographic Glitter that does not seem to have a name or number.

2. This ring is made with one of my favourite polishes in the world: Wet n' Wild Back Alley Deals. Guys, it's so pretty. I backed this one with black because the glitter didn't fully cover the back of the cabochon.

3. I don't remember what purple polish I used for this, but I do know I used the Spectraflair Topcoat by Piper Polish to give it a holographic shine. Again, the picture does not do it justice, but it looks amazing!

4. This one was an experiment that just happened to turn out awesome. I stamped NYC Platinum Card on the back of the Cabochon and then backed it up with Catrice Poison Me, Poison you. I love the result.

And now for some blues.

1. Oooh, sparkles! I used Claire's nameless blue glitter backed with black. I wear this one pretty often!

2. I'll be honest... I bought Essence Mr And Mrs Glitter just because I wanted to make a ring with it, since I don't like it on my nails very much. I'm glad I did, because this ring looks awesome. I backed it with black.

3. This ring didn't turn out the way I wanted it to, but I like it nonetheless. This is Essence Glorious Aquarius, backed with NYC East Village.

4. The crackle hype is long over and considered 'lame' by many people nowadays, but it honestly works great for jewelry! This is Barry M's black crackle backed with Essence Choose Me!. I love this combination.

And some other ones, these had to have their pictures taken at an angle to show off how pretty they are.

1. Another crackle! This is Barry M's black crackle again, this time backed with Catrice Genius In A Bottle. My sister thought of this combination of colours and we both have earrings like this. Reminds me of tigers!

2. This was another experiment that turned out nice. I used Catrice Hot Or Not? for the hot pink, Essence Stampy Polish for the white, and Essence Sweet As Candy for the background.

3. This was actually the first ring I have ever made, and I used Kleancolor Chunky Holo Purple backed with black. Very pretty!

4. And ofcourse, this is Essie Leading Lady. It looks amazing enough by itself, so that is the only polish I used for this ring. I probably wear this one most often out of all my rings. :)

I have more, ofcourse, but this post would be much too long if I wanted to show them all. I do hope you enjoyed seeing pictures of them! Nail polish jewelry is so much fun to make and I'll definitely be making more, so expect more posts about this sometime in the future.

Paint It Blue For Autism - Jelly Sandwich

As you may already know, April is Autism Awareness month and today is World Autism Awareness day. Many nail polish bloggers have decided to join forces and spread awareness by painting their nails blue for this day, others have decided to do a weekly blue manicure. I will be doing the latter.

I'm not usually very open about this, but the reason I decided to join this awesome initiative is because it's important to me personally. When I was very young, I was diagnosed with an autistic disorder. I wasn't an easy child and it has been a long and sometimes very difficult struggle to get where I am today, but I'm proud of myself for how far I've come, and for how much I am still improving day by day. I know what it's like to be misunderstood and mistreated and that's why this month is so important to those with autism.

So, to start it off, I have pulled out all the blue nail polishes I own (which is surprisingly not a lot!) and for the first day I decided to do a blue jelly sandwich. I'm not familiar with these, and this was only my second ever attempt.

I really wish the pictures did this manicure justice. In real life it looks a bit darker, and it has a lot of depth. The holographic square glitter looks amazing squished in between the layers of blue.

The blue polish I used to create this sandwich is a nameless and brandless blue I got together with my nameless green a while ago. I actually figured out the bottle shape is the same as Safari's bottles, but the caps are different and the only label it has on it says '145'. I bought this one because I'm looking for a TARDIS blue creme. When I tried it out for the first time I was disappointed because it's a very sheer jelly-like polish. Not exactly what I wanted, but great for this manicure.

First I painted two coats of the blue, because it's really sheer. It has a thin formula so I had to be very careful not to flood my cuticles. I let the two coats dry for a while and then I added glitter. I used Essence's glitter topper known as Julia as the glitter in the middle of the jelly sandwich and then painted another thin coat of my blue jelly on top of it. The result is pretty awesome, but it feels very thick on my nails, and it's drying very slowly, despite me waiting a long time for each coat to dry. I'm still happy with the result, though! :D

Nino Mont - 154

A while back I showed you one of the two Nino Mont polishes my boyfriend got me on his holiday to Spain.  Today I'm finally going to show you the other one!

While 142 is my favourite out of the two, this is a beauty as well. I love royal blue polishes, because it's such a great colour, but also because I love anything 'TARDIS blue'. The Doctor Who fan in me definitely approves of this nail polish. 154 is a royal blue polish with gorgeous shimmer. I keep finding myself looking at my nails when wearing it.

I also think it works with my skin tone! Don't you?

Applying 154 was a breeze. I must say the formula is pretty much perfect to me. It covered in two coats and because it was so easy to apply neatly, I barely needed any cleanup. No comments there, other than that it's amazing, and a lot better than some of the better known brands out there.

If the durability is anything like 142, I will be able to wear this for at least 4 days without chips. I can't say anything about that yet, though! I'll have to try it out.

What do you think of this nail polish? Have you ever heard of Nino Mont, and/or do you own any polishes by them? I personally wish I had more.