Leopard mani with Bluesea bow review

Hi guys! Today I have another review for you. I already showed you the studs from KKCenterHk, but they also sent me some adorable 3D bow decorations by Bluesea.

These bows come in a ton of different colours and patterns but I personally decided to go with these with a white background and a pink and black leopard print because I'm a big sucker for leopard prints... I'm pretty sure I've said that before, though.

I made a matching nail art with them, using Essie Mod Squad as my base and NYC City Blackout with white acrylic paint for the leopard print. 

The bows are fairly small and should apply to every nail with ease. The site recommends you to apply them with nail glue. DO NOT apply them with topcoat if you intend to reuse them! I personally used topcoat, having no nail glue, and with removal of the bow I had to be very careful not to ruin it. Keep this in mind if you plan to order them. However, even with just the topcoat it stayed on an entire day before I removed it before going to bed. That's pretty great, in my opinion.

These bows retail for $4.00, which is a very fair price considering that these are intended to be reusable. They come in packages of two, which means you can use them for a cute accent nail on both of your hands. Yay!

Also, don't forget about my coupon code!

When ordering at KKCenterHk you can use the code POLISH-SMOOTHIE at checkout

to receive a 10% discount on your order.

Essence Sparkle Sand Effect - Hey, Nude!

Hey guys!

A while ago I posted about Essence's attempt at a 'rough' polish. I thought it was going to be a textured polish like the Liquid Sands we all know but I was slightly disappointed when I found out that wasn't the case. I've been dying to try out a textured polish but I haven't been able to get my hands on one yet.

Well, Essence recently came with actual textured polishes! I was very excited to try them so I picked them up. They come in three different colours and today I'll be showing you the nude variant.

Essence Hey, Nude! Is the Sparkle Sand Effect in an elegant nude colour. The base is a very light pink with silver shimmer and a few different sizes of silver glitter in it. As you can see, there is some VNL. It didn't bother me on my short nails so it's up to you if you like it or not. 

In the picture I'm wearing three layers, and let me tell you... if you are in a hurry and have to do your nails quickly, this is possibly the WORST polish to pick at that moment.My first attempt at swatching this polish failed horribly because every coat takes ages to dry. I probably waited 15~20 minutes for each coat to dry, and even then it stayed squishy on my nails and I got dents everywhere. :( It may just be this colour though, because I tried one of the other Sparkle Sands and it was absolutely fine.

If you have all the time in the world and don't mind having to wait a long time for your nails to try... this is a very pretty polish to have. I think it looked very elegant on my little nubs. I can't say anything about the wear though, because I took it off after a few hours... very, very disappointing.

Saran wrap and KKCenterHk studs review

Hello everyone! I am finally back. It took some time but, lots of rest and cuticle cream later, my nails seem to be back in shape. I'm not really sure what happened to them but for a while they were VERY brittle, kept breaking and overall looked too terrible for swatches or nail art. It sucked!

To start it off, today I have a simple nail art and a review. KKCenterHk was nice enough to send me two products for review and today I will be showing you the first one: some very cute studs!

I didn't want to use these studs for a plain manicure. Instead I chose to do a subtle one with pastels. I used Essie Lilacism as my base and a layer of Essie Bikini So Teeny to create the pattern with saran wrap. I thought it looked very cute. If you want to know how to do this, just do a quick Google search. It's a very simple technique and there are lots of tutorials to be found.

So, how about the studs? They are pretty tiny, dark coloured studs that I found were very easy in use. I had no problem whatsoever picking them up and placing them on my nails. They are rounded on top but their backs are flat and stay on the nail quite nicely. After applying them to the nail, use a coat of topcoat on top of them and they stay on like cement. They would be perfect for a dark, edgy nail art or manicure!

The studs measure 2mm in diameter and come in packs of 50, and the best thing is that these are reusable. Just take them off, clean them with nail polish remover and use them whenever you like. You can find them here, but I'd suggest also looking at their other studs because they have them in all shapes, colours and sizes! These retail for $4.23 and KKCenterHk offers free worldwide shipping.

And just for my readers, I have a special coupon code.
When ordering at KKCenterHk, use the code POLISH-SMOOTHIE at checkout to receive a 10% discount on your order!

It's my birthday!

Hi everyone! As you can read in the title, today is my birthday. I turned 21 years old, so I am really officially an 'adult' now. :P Which is why today I'll be showing you what I'm wearing on my nails for my birthday mani!

I think I am starting to get the hang of my new camera!

Here's what I did - a simple manicure with a half moon accent. It seems I always grab this particular polish when I want something pink. It's just a lovely shade with an awesome formula. This colour is NYC Perpetual Peony, ofcourse!

To make it even cuter I added some rhinestones I found while shopping a few days ago. Apparently these are meant for application on clothing and other things but they are fine for on nails as well! For the Dutchies that read my blog, these can be found for €1.99 at the Action in a wheel with a bunch of different colours. I also got some studs at the same place, that I will hopefully try out soon.

I love half moons because they look so classy! I'd love to do a similar manicure sometime, but with a lighter, soft pink colour. That's originally what I wanted, but I didn't have the right polish for it.

Anyway, that's it for today. I'll be spending my evening with my family... and cake! Yay, cake. Have a lovely day! :)

Delia Coral Prosilk 411

Has anyone of you heard of the brand Delia before? I know I hadn't heard of it anywhere until my mom brought some of these polishes home for me one day. Last week, I finally decided to try out one of them.

This is Delia Coral Prosilk 411. All three of the colours I have by this brand are matte cremes, and this is the red one. In my pictures it almost looks neon. While it is a very bright red with an orange tint, it's definitely not that! I'm always a bit hesitant with unknown brands because I don't know what to expect from the quality. So, how is it?

Pretty good, actually. I'm wearing two coats for full opacity, and the formula was a bit on the thick side but it wasn't hard to apply. Only minimal cleanup was needed.

This is a really cool colour! I liked the way it looked on my nails. It stayed on for three days without chipping, which I thought was pretty impressive as well.

Since I didn't buy these myself, I don't know where these are normally sold. But if you ever run into them, judging from this colour's quality, I'd say it wouldn't hurt to try it out. Would you guys be interested in seeing the other two colours as well?

Nubs with polka dots

Hello, readers! Things have been a bit quiet from my side because I haven't really felt like posting. This is why:

Yep. As you can see, my nails are short little nubs now. :/ I had a really dumb accident in the kitchen last week and the tip of the nail on my middle finger popped off completely. I had to file them all down. They are a bit longer now, but it sucks!

I thought I would make them look cute to distract myself from how short they are. Polka dots are always cute, right?

For the base colour I used H&M City. This polish actually belongs in a duo but it's a very nice pink crelly so I like to wear it on its own, too. For the dots, I used acrylic paint. I have been trying to use my acrylic paints for nail art, and so far I really like it. I only have a limited selection of colours, but I am thinking of getting more. :D

Essence - Mashed Berries

Hey guys! Today I have a really awesome nail polish to show you that reminds me of summer and smoothies. It was actually part of a collection from last year, but that doesn't make me love it any less now.

This is Essence Mashed Berries, which was obtainable from their Fruity collection from last year. There were three different polishes that looked similar to this one, but this is my favourite. They unfortunately have no names on the bottles, but I do know that this one is named Mashed Berries.

It's a very sweet pink creme with purple glitter in it. Because the glitter is tiny and dark, the polish totally resembles a smoothie. It looks delicious! It's not that noticable in my pictures, but the glitter does sparkle, you just need to be looking at it from the right angle. 

I used three thin coats for full opacity and I had no problems applying it. I'm very happy with this polish. It makes me want to eat my nails. :D

Pastel gradient

Hello everyone. This is going to be a pretty quick post. So I have done multiple (failed) attempts at gradients. I came to the conclusion that I just didn't have the proper sponges for it so I went on eBay and ordered some sponge wedges. The result was my first nice looking gradient!

As you can see, it's not perfect. But I thought it looked super cute anyhow. I used two coats of Essie Blanc as my base colour because I thought it would make the colours pop a bit more, but the white still shines through a bit. Maybe this would be fixed by using the lightest colour as a base instead of white? I suppose that's something to try another time.

I used NYC Lavender Cupcake and Essence That's What I Mint for the colours. I think they go quite well together, and gradients with cremes are usually my favourites.

All in all I'm pretty happy with how these turned out and from a distance, the gradient looked perfect. :D

Essence Floral Grunge - Black To The Roots

Hey everyone! I already showed you Madly Purpled, the matte polish of Essence's Floral Grunge collection, and today I'll be showing you the other polish I got.

This is Black To The Roots. It is called 'The Rough' one of this collection which is why I was very curious about it. With all the hype around textured polishes nowadays I thought that this might be Essence's version of the trend.

And it is. Sort of! Black To The Roots is a dark gray base with gritty silver glitter in it. This is definitely not a textured polish like the Liquid Sand collection for example. But there is texture in it, as you can see in the pictures. The base dries up with a sort of matte, almost rubbery finish, while the glitter leaves a gritty texture. I'm not sure if I like it or not, but it is definitely interesting.

The application was pretty bad. The formula is kind of weird and streaky, making it difficult to paint even coats. I used two coats for full opacity and no top coat to show off the grittiness. I definitely like Madly Purpled a lot more!

What do you think of this polish?

Blue fan brush mani

Hey guys!

So, I have had a set of nail art brushes for a while now and I realized I had never actually used the fan brush that was in it. I was unsure what to do with it until I saw some tutorials popping up. Turns out that you are able to create very cool looking manicures that are simple to do. Perfect for me!

After some fiddling around with colours this is what I came up with. Pretty cool, huh? Personally, I'm very fond of the effects that the fan brush gives. And like I said, it's extremely simple.

What I did was start out with two coats of a simple black creme, in this case Essence Black is Back. I left it alone until it was completely dry which is when I grabbed my fan brush. I made the hairs of the brush slightly wet and seperated them a bit. Then I dipped the tips in Catrice Blue's Brother. And swiped the brush across my nail.

You can kinda experiment with the brush. You can swipe over your nails just once, for example. But for most of my nails I did two strokes: one starting from the left side, to the middle of my nail, and the other from the right. It created this nice effect that looks different on each nail.

I only used one colour this time, but I can see this being very interesting with two colours! What do you think?

Wet 'n Wild - Back Alley Deals

Today's polish is one of my overall personal favourites. This was actually the first one I ever ordered off the internet - I just HAD to have it after seeing swatches from All You Desire a long time ago.

I mean, just look at it, because it screams 'me'. Purple, pink, AND glitter? That's definitely a Tess-polish. I love it. :')

This is Wet 'n Wild Back Alley Deals. An absolutely gorgeous glitter polish. It has a clear base that is packed with very small purple glitter, and slightly larger round pink glitter.

The glitter is very dense and it could be worn on it's own. But if you have this polish, please don't, because it looks even better if layered over a dark creme. Plus, you use less polish, so you can wear it more often. ;) Here I have one coat layered over Revlon Plum Night, a simple dark purple.

It does dry up rather gritty and dull. Even though that works really well for this polish, I prefer to use two layers of topcoat to make it shiny and sparkly. The formula for this polish is great! Even now it's starting to thicken a bit it was very easy to apply, and because the glitter is so dense you generally get an even amount of purple and pink everywhere.

For reference - this is a picture without topcoat. Still very pretty! Sometimes I wear it like this as well.

Essence Floral Grunge - Madly Purpled

 Hey guys! Today I have a nail polish from the Essence Floral Grunge collection. I bought two polishes from this collection, a matte and a 'textured' one. I'll be writing about the matte today.

This is Madly Purpled. It's decribed as 'the matt'. Matt? I've never seen it spelled like that. Maybe it was an intentional mistake? Stuff like that bothers me! :P Anyway, this polish is quite pretty. It's a pretty dark and gray-ish lavender which makes it, in my opinion, a very classy colour. I really liked the way it looked with my skin tone. It also has a nice subtle silver shimmer.

As you can see however, it can't really be classified as a 'true' matte nail polish. I'd say it dries up to more of a suede finish. If you don't like that, you can slap a topcoat on top of it and you'll have a pretty shiny lavender with noticable shimmer. I actually liked it like this.

The formula was good too. I used two coats and I had no problems applying it!

What do you think of this polish? 

Art De Lautrec 04B

Guys, it has happened again. I fell in love with another nail polish.

Today's polish is one by a brand that seems to be fairly unknown! I had heard of the name Art De Lautrec before and I was pretty curious about their nail polishes. So when I found them for sale at a Christmas Fair I visited back in december I got myself this one.

This beauty is 04B (I wish they had nice names!). It has a blackened base that is absolutely packed with gorgeous and very sparkly holo glitter. How pretty is that? I keep looking at my nails! 

I have painted one coat of it over Essence Black Is Back. It's apparently possible to wear it on it's own, but I haven't done that for reasons listed below.

So, I have one problem with this polish. My bottle has a very weird formula. It feels really gloopy and thick even though it's not that hard to apply. It is, however, impossible to paint thin layers with this one which is why I decided to layer it over a black creme. I do think this is just my bottle, so if you ever want to try it out, no worries! I probably just got unlucky. :)

It dries up a bit dull, but one coat of topcoat was enough to make it super sparkly. And despite the thick coat I had to use, it dried up very fast and looks very smooth and shiny!

I have never seen Zoya Storm with my own eyes, but if I look at the swatches of it, 04B looks like it could be a dupe.

What do you think of this polish? And are you familar with Art De Lautrec?

Lavender Stamping and a new layout!

Hey guys! I am back from my little break. I caught a nasty cold so it took a bit longer than I wanted to. I'm still not completely better but I did feel like fiddling around with nail art stuff, AND my blog layout. What do you think? I mainly wanted to change it so I could actually respond to the comments I get. I was starting to feel bad for not being able to interact with you guys properly. I hope you like the new layout. :)

So, I decided to try my hand  at stamping once again, since it had been a while. :D

Okay, my colour and plate choice was a bit random this time, haha. And as you can see, my stamping skills could really use some improvement. But keep in mind this is only about my fifth time doing a full manicure with stamping and that I have a lot to learn!

The base colour is NYC Lavender Cupcake, one of my favourite cremes. Since I don't have any Konad polishes (they have been on my wish list for a while now...) I rummaged through my stash trying to find a decent polish to stamp with. I ended up with Essence Unexpected Galaxy which is actually one of their colour changing nail polishes. I knew it was an opaque polish, though I wasn't sure what it was going to look like after I applied my top coat, haha Fortunately, it wasn't too bad!

I ended up stamping an image from one of my Born Pretty Store plates. This one is from stamping plate m65 and I thought it looked pretty groovy.

So what do you think? How bad of an attempt is this? Also, feel free to share any tips and tricks you might have for me!

Teeez - Gutsy 04

Today I have swatches of a polish by a brand that I am very unfamiliar with. The brand Teeez is sold by several places around here but the price is a bit higher than I'm comfortable with. A long time ago I decided to buy one of their polishes and it turned out to be quite nice.

This is Gutsy 04. It's pretty hard to describe this colour, but I'll give it a shot. I think of this as a dark base with multicoloured shimmer. It seems to have red, copper, and silver, giving this polish a very metallic and 'rusty' look. It's unique in my collection, that's for sure. I personally like it a lot!

The bottle reminds me a lot of Catrice, apart from the cap, which has a snake print on it. Awesome.

The formula was a bit thick, but I'm guessing that's because I've had this polish for quite a long time now. Apart from that I had no problems applying it and it needed two coats for full coverage.

Are you familiar with this brand?

Essence - Miss Universe

Hey everyone! Geez, it's may already. Time is going so fast. Today I'm showing you another nail polish by Essence and I believe this one has been pretty popular recently. I also got it as a gift from my boyfriend, so I thought today would be a good day to post this, since it's his birthday today!

Miss Universe is gorgeous! It has a dark base, full with blue and green shimmer. The blue is much more noticable, however. In the bottle it looks like a duochrome, but don't let that fool you - it really isn't. That doesn't make it any less pretty though... look at that depth!They picked out a good name for this one, because it's like staring into space and seeing pretty tiny stars everywhere.

And the formula? Well, they could have done better. I was surprised at how sheer this polish was, and I was worried when I painted on my first coat. It needed three coats to be opaque and I wasn't a big fan of the formula in combination with the wide brush Essence uses nowadays. Despite that, I love it very much and I am very glad to have it in my stash.

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?