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.

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!

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.

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.

Essie - Mod Squad

Hello everyone! Since it has been ages since my last nail post, I thought it would be a good idea to start off with a polish of my favourite brand. Today I'll be showing you one of my favourite pinks in my collection. I have shown it before, but I decided it was worthy of its own blog post.

Mod Squad is a perfect bubblegum pink creme with a cool undertone. A colour like this is a must have for polish fanatics! I simply love polishes like this, and I personally like to wear this one when I'm in the mood for something simple but pretty. 

As (pretty much) always with Essie, the quality and formula of this polish was great, and I don't have much else to say about it. It applied smooth like butter and I only needed two coats for full opacity. I also wore it for several days without even a minor chip. I'm very happy with this polish and I'd recommend it to anyone who is looking for a pink shade like this one.

Essie - Leading Lady

So, I still haven't been painting my nails very often! It's not that I don't have the time to, I just don't really feel like it. However, my nails do look much better now - they're not as stained anymore, so that's a plus. :)

Anyway, I do have some pictures to show you from a few weeks back from an amazing polish by my favourite brand - Essie!

This nail polish is Leading Lady by Essie, from their winter collection of this year! If you visit a lot of nail blogs you've probably seen this one a few times already. I know I have! So when I saw it in store, I was really excited. I wanted to use gift vouchers I have to get it, but I wasn't able to use them in the store it was sold, and I couldn't afford it by myself... so then my boyfriend secretly grabbed it and got it for me! I have trained him well- I mean, he's a sweetheart. :D 

However, he told me I had to make a blog post about it, so here it is!

Leading Lady is a polish with a dark red jelly base full of gorgeous red glitter. Despite being so glittery, it has a very easy and smooth application. I needed two coats for full coverage. It dries up rather gritty, however, so to really bring out the sparkle I added a generous coat of topcoat.

The result is really squishy and sparkly nails, and I love it. There's so much depth in this one! I had a hard time choosing which pictures to use, because the polish is just so pretty there weren't any bad pictures, haha.

And here is a picture of it in a different light, to show you just how much glitter it has. I am in love. As for removing it... I'm not sure how difficult it is, as I personaly used my peel off basecoat. But I'm sure it's nothing the foil method can't handle!

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!

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: 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!

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.

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!

Essie - Pink Diamond

Even though I only have three polishes by them so far, I love Essie. I love their colour range, their brushes, their bottles... the only thing holding me back from buying them is the price.

Anyhow, today I'm showing you my first Essie polish. I got this one two months ago as a birthday gift from my boyfriend. He got me Pink Diamond, because pink is my favourite colour and everyone knows it.

Pink Diamond is an adorable light pink colour with kind of a frosty finish, and I'm in love with it. I don't always like frosty nail polishes but this one looks good on me and the finish doesn't bother me very much. This is three thin coats of it. It applies like a dream.

This colour is perfect for when I feel like wearing something simple and subtle. :)

The only problem I have with this nail polish is the minor bubbling because no matter what I do, I always end up with some bubbles when I wear Pink Diamond. I'm not sure why this happens, maybe I have a bad bottle? At least they aren't very noticable.