NYC - Greenwich Goddess

Hi guys! Today I have for you an interesting nailpolish that I bought when I was shopping by myself one day. I hadn't planned on buying any polish that day, but I randomly came across this one and it caught my eye. I ended up liking it a lot more than I originally anticipated, which is always a nice surprise!

I'm talking about Greenwich Goddess by NYC. They don't sell this brand at the drugstore in my town anymore, which is a real shame, because they have some really great polishes in their product line. Their black creme, for example, is amazing and I've used up three bottles of it so far, and still have two bottles of it in my collection.

This nail polish is a white creme with black hexagonal glitter in two sizes. There were a number of similar ones (one was light blue with black glitter, for example) but the white was my favourite. And it really is quite nice. Look how pretty it is!

The formula is really great! I used two coats that applied on very smoothly. I had to dab my brush on my nails a few times to get a more even glitter placement, but that is pretty normal for polishes with big glitter, and it didn't cause any problems. I really, really liked how this looked on me so I actually ended up wearing it for 5 days before taking it off. By then, I only had a few minor chips at the tips, which is very good for such a cheap nail polish. I love it, and I will definitely be wearing it more often.

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.

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!

Nude + Pink taping

So it has been a while since I have done anything but a simple manicure with only one colour. However, I decided that I was in the mood to do some taping again, and I wanted to use one of my favourite new additions to my stash!

For this manicure I used Essence Cookies & Cream as a base colour. I used two coats on my index- and middle finger and my pinky, and three on my ring finger and thumb. This is a sandy nude colour with subtle shimmer in it. For some reason, nudes always look odd on my skin tone, but not this one! It's very pretty and I also like to wear it on my toenails because it gives a clean, neat look.

I added a quick drying top coat and after it had dried enough I used striping tape to tape off 4 lines on each finger. Then I painted over it with a coat of NYC Perpetual Peony, a simple pink creme, and quickly but carefully pulled off the tape. I smudged it in a few places... whoops! Nothing too bad, though. I think I'm getting better at it. :P

After that I added a silver rhinestone to my ring finger and thumb, just because I'm obsessed with my rhinestones. :) I really need to think of some new creative ways to use them! Anyway, then I topped it all off with another coat of fast drying topcoat and I was done. Even though it's a simple mani, I enjoy it a lot, and I think this colour combination works very well! I hope you like it too!

Lavender Skies

So this week I have been doing my nails a bit more often! I recently got a Helmer (which I am going to write a little post about soon) and have sorted out my collection which has definitely helped.

Anyway, when I did this manicure I was in the mood for something simple, but I didn't want to wear simply one colour, because that was TOO boring. ;) I always see people do all kinds of accent nails and I think they are super cute and a great solution if you don't want something too plain. So that's what I did!

For this manicure I used a really cute pastel nail polish by NYC. It's called Lavender Cupcake and it's a simple creme. The colour is really pretty and I like how it looks on my nails. It needed two coats and the quality is good. No remarks there.

The silver on my accent finger is Platinum Card, also by NYC. I kinda wish I had a nice silver glitter to add to this, but it looked good on it's own too! And, a while back I ordered some star shaped rhinestones from eBay. I thought they would go well with this manicure so I added some on all the other fingers.

I really liked this manicure! I hope you like it as well. :)

Seven Nation Army

Hey everyone! ... it's been a few weeks, I know. I haven't forgotten about you guys or my blog, but I guess you could say I was taking a little break. I promise I will try to make my posts more consistent, haha. :P

So today I want to show you a manicure I did a while back. It was done for the Reddit nail challenge, which I decided I won't be taking part in every week anymore. I just have not been doing my nails as often, and when I do, I want to do my own thing, and not be limited to that week's theme, or by my horrible art skills. So I'll do a manicure for the themes whenever I feel like it and have an idea I can use.

This week the theme was a manicure inspired by a song. And for me, it wasn't very hard to pick a song to use as my inspiration. I went for 'Seven Nation Army' by The White Stripes. It's an awesome song, that I have liked since I was a lot younger, and it has one of my most favourite music videos ever, which was the main thing that inspired me. I tried to translate the red/white/black shapes to my nails.

Also, I am sorry for the shape my cuticles are in. I ran out of Lemony Flutter and can't afford a new pot yet, and nothing else works well enough for weather like this. 

All the polishes I used for this are by NYC, and I did the manicure as follows:

First, I painted my nails with two coats of I <3 NY, a red creme that I seem to use pretty often for nail art. After this was completely dry I taped off a chevron shape and painted one coat of Platinum Card. I chose silver instead of white because I felt it fit the manicure better. Then, when that was dry as well, I taped off a smaller chevron and used City Blackout for the tips.

I enjoyed making this manicure and I thought it looked really nice on my nails, so I must say this is probably one of my favourites that I have done so far. I hope you like it as well, let me know what you think! 

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!

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!

Coral and silver french tips

 Hey guys.  Today I have something pretty simple for you. I was feeling a bit uninspired so I wanted to give myself some simple french tips which for some reason just wasn't working out. That's why I came up with some differently coloured and diagonal tips!

This is how it turned out. The coral is Essence - Off To Miami! I originally bought this colour just so I had a coral and orangey colour in case Iever needed one but I ended up really liking it. I let it dry for an hour and then I added the silver tips which is NYC - Platinum Card. 

So yeah, pretty simple but I think it came out pretty nice! I really need to practice with tape some more to get sharper lines. Good thing I have a ton of ideas for tape manicures. :)

Doctor Who nail art: Red Daleks

 Like it says on my Blogger profile, I'm a Doctor Who addicted girl. I'm a huge, huge fan of the show and I have watched all the episodes of the new series so far. I'm trying to watch the classics too, but they're pretty difficult to find on the internet. :( Nevertheless it's an awesome show. My family and some of my friends don't  understand my addiction at all and they think I'm completely mad when I try to tell them what Doctor Who is about. I don't blame them though, lol!

Anyway, to celebrate 'Asylum of the Daleks', the newest episode scheduled to air on september 1st, I decided to dedicate a nail art to the Dalek. Even though they do creep me out a little bit, they are my favourite villains in the show, plus my new rhinestones and striping tape were perfect to use for the idea I had.

There are a lot of varieties of Dalek but my personal favourite are the red ones. That is why I made a simplified Dalek on both of my ring finger nails, with their most widely recognised details.

For the base I used NYC I ♥ NY, my favourite red. For the eyepiece and the Daleks' hemispheres I used my rhinestones. The clear rhinestones work really great for the eyepieces, I think they look great! I had a bit of trouble with the black coloured ones, because not all of them were the exact same size and shape. There are supposed to be rows of 4, but obviously my nails are not long enough for that. It doesn't matter though, this still works! I then used two strips of silver striping tape to emulate the 'neck' area that seperates the head from the lower body.

Overall I think this turned out pretty awesome! It was very fun to do. I wanted to do all of my nails but I do plan on wearing this manicure until the new episode airs and I think so many rhinestones on every nail would drive me crazy. :) So for now I will have two mini Daleks to keep me company!

And, ofcourse... how could I resist?

What do you think, did I nail it? And are you as excited for the new episode as I am?

Also check out some other Doctor Who inspired nail art here! :D

NYC - Rock Muse

On friday I finally had a chance to go to town and get some things I needed. And while I was there, I decided to pick up some new polishes as well, because every brand seemed to have some new ones in their collection. I picked up 7 of them and today I am going to show you one.

This is NYC - Rock Muse. It's limited edition, and I think it's pretty similar OPI - Metallic 4 Life so I'm glad I managed to get this one!

This polish has silver hex glitter and micro glitter in a sheer dark grey base. It's actually a topcoat, meant for layering over other polishes. In these pictures I have layered one coat over black. Application wasn't that great. The formula seemed a little thick, and I had difficulty spreading the glitter on my nails evenly, which you can see by comparing the glitter on my pointer finger to that on my ring finger. That was a shame.

Even with a top coat it looked a bit bumpy and odd, but it did feel smooth on my nails. I do love the silver glitter on black, it really gives me a punk rocky feeling, which I always like!

Overall not a bad nail polish, and if you like OPI - Metallic 4 Life and want to own something similar, I'd definitely get this one. Considering how cheap it is, it's worth it.

Lavender French Tips

Today I was feeling inspired. I saw a lot of pretty french manicures on several websites, and I decided to try my own. I have these french tip nail guide stickers, but they were absolutely terrible, and I am horrible at freehanding anything except for dots. As a result, my first ever attempt at taping was born!

It's definitely not perfect, but also not bad for a first try. It was surprisingly easy, and I'm very happy with how it turned out! I'm probably going to try out different colour combinations.

As for the colours, I used Essence Pink Diamond for the stripes and NYC Lavender Cupcake for the tips. Topped it off with the Essence Gel-Look Topcoat. I think I would have liked silver stripes better, but I like this combination as well!

My first post.

Follow my blog with Bloglovin!

Hello!

My name is Tess and I'm a 20 year old girl from The Netherlands. My biggest hobby and obsession is nail polish and anything that has to do with it. This hobby started two years ago, and I have mostly done simple manicures. However, I'd love to start trying out new things.

I like sharing pictures of my manicures on Twitter and Instagram but I have decided to start a blog. I don't expect to get many followers at all, but it's something I enjoy that keeps me busy. So, if you do decide to follow me, I hope you will enjoy my posts!

To start off my blog, I want to share some of the nail polish earrings that I've made. :)

This is probably the favourite pair I have done. I used Golden Rose Scale Effect 11 on top of NYC City Blackout. They look like little gems!

More after the break!