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?

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.

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. :(

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.

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?

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!

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!