Hello Kitty Halloween 2.0

Hi everyone,

Last year I did my first Halloween mani and the theme was none other than my favorite: Hello Kitty! You can check it here.So this year I had to paint her again, which I did... Not only once, but 4 times!!!

I really love how the HK turned out. But I had 2 small issues: 

1 - I chose a way too dark blue shade for the gradient (Color Club Blue-topia). The black costumes don't really stand out. Too bad!

2 - The orange paint I have didn't really give me the opaqueness I was hoping for. As you can see the pumpkin costume (on my pinky), the dark base color is kind of showing thru the paint. This brings me back to issue #1 above.

Leaving those little issues out, my HK are pretty cute, right?! ;-)

Happy Halloween to all of you!!

Thanks for reading!

Penélope Luz - Lucky Fairy

Hi everyone,

look what I have for you today! It's another beauty created by Penélope Luz. If you are not familiar with Penélope Luz, let me explain it to you. Penélope Luz is a Brazilian indie nail polish brand that was created exactly a year ago (August 2012), but it was only recently that I've become acquainted to this brand, thanks to a wonderful lady from Brazil! (Pri, THANK YOU!!!)

So here it is: Lucky Fairy! I must say this picture does not do this polish enough justice... It's so much more sparkly IRL! It's gorgeous!!! For the gradient, I used Catrice Hugo Moss, Kiko #296 and Color Club Twiggie. I must say I was surprised that I did not have any shade of green in between Hugo Moss and #296!!! So this gradient isn't much what I expected. But hey, now I have a new quest: buy more shades of green nail polish!!! ;-)

Now back to PL Lucky Fairy... Look at this bottle shot! It's impossible not to like it, unless you don't like glitter at all... or green.... 

Lucky Fairy is a green jelly base with tons of different sized hexes in green, gold, black and some black squares in between. It's stunning! And it feels pretty smooth on the nails. I only applied 1 coat of INM Out the Door top coat and I'm good to go! 

If you like this Penélope Luz, I'm pretty sure you'll like these 2 others I've swatched before: Sarcasm and Tendresse.

Thanks for reading and 'til next time! XX

Mix & Match: Denim, Gradient and Leopard Print

Hi everyone,

I'd like to share with you another denim mani I did for a contest on IG. 

For this mani I applied that same denim technique I showed you before in this tutorial. And here's the tutorial for the gradient nails and leopard print:

1. Paint your nails with a white polish and let it fully dry;

2. Apply striping tape diagonally (or any way you like) to your nails;

3. Apply the pastel nail polishes directly onto the sponge. The polishes I used are Lime Crime Once in a Blue Mousse, Crema de Limon and Parfait Day;

4. Dab the sponge over your nails.

5. Remove the striping tape and let your gradient dry and add some dots of neon polish on one of the sides of the stripes. The dots don't have to be perfect. The polishes used here are China Glaze Towel Boy Toy, Kiwi Cool-ada and Pool Party;

6. With the brush and the black acrylic paint, outline the neon dots to create the leopard print. Apply top coat and voilà! 

Thanks for reading!

Denim Tutorial

Hi my lovelies, 

Remember my denim nails?! I received a lot of requests to make a tutorial on how to create that denim look. A few days ago I shared the tutorial on my Instagram and today I'd like to share them here too, so those of you who are not on Instagram can also learn how to create your own denim nails. 

1. You'll need: a dark blue nail polish (I used Color Club Blue-topia), a white nail polish (I used @chinaglazeofficial White Out) and a piece of texturized fabric. 

2. Apply one or two coats of your dark blue polish. You'll need to work fast from here on, so I recommend you do one nail at a time. 

3. Apply the white nail polish on the texturized fabric. 

4. Press the fabric over your nail while the blue polish is still tacky. Apply gentle pressure and peel it off slowly. 

5. If you want to have a texturized denim look, just let it dry and you're done. 

6. Otherwise, apply a matte top coat to your nails. Please note that this step will smooth out the texture. Decorate it as you wish. Here I used gold acrylic paint and metal studs to create the pocket. You could also apply a zipper water decal like I did on my original Denim Nail post. 

I hope you like it and if you decide to create your own denim nails, please share them with me! I'd love to see them! :) 

Thanks for reading!

[Review] Born Pretty Store 5 pc Nail Art Brush Kit - Part 2

Hello again!

Last time I showed you that super nice 5pc brush kit I received from BornPrettyStore.com. Remember? If not, then just click here!

So I've been playing around with my new brushes, but I'm still not quite where I though I'd be. This one stroke technique is harder than I thought.

But anyway, I came up with some Jack-o-lantern design, since Halloween is around the corner.

For these pumpkins I used brush size 2 from the 5pc brush set. Size 2 is the smallest in the set. I started painting these pumpkins using the one stroke technique, but my paint wasn't opaque enough. I added layer over layer to achieve full opacity. This, in turn, messed up with the one stroke looks. I have no complaints about the brush. It works as it's supposed to!

This 5pc nail art brush kit can be purchased from BornPrettyStore.com and it retails for $5.68. They offer FREE WORLDWIDE shipping. If you use my code AA7J61, you'll get 7% off of your entire purchase! 

Materials used:

Color Club - Blue-topia

Acrylic Paints

*** These products were sent to me for my honest and unbiased review. ***

Pretty & Polished Sand Art

Hello everyone!

Today's mani was inspired by this gorgeous mani from Colores de Carol. Carolina used the brush to apply Sand Art to create a very delicate gradient effect, but I used the sponge instead and loaded it with glitter, resulting in a rougher effect.

It's very hard to see in the pictures, but before applying Sand Art, I also sponged the tips with a darker green to create a gradient effect. 

Polishes  used:

Color Club Twiggie

Color Club Edie 

Pretty & Polished Sand Art

More gradient nails

Hi everyone,

I had to remove 2 blogs from my blogroll as they were hosting malware, which was causing the major browsers to blog access to my blog, as some of you may have noticed lately. But all is well again.

So, like many bloggers amongst us, I have also engaged in the gradient trend. Gradient nails are easy and fun to do, aren't they? Yes, they are! BUT, mistakes can still be made... Just check out what happened to my mani...

Do you see those white rims close to my cuticles? That's the little mistake I was talking about. How did that happen? Well, I wanted the colors to pop, so I first applied a white nail polish on my nails before sponging the green/purple gradient. Nothing seemed wrong until I started cleaning them up. The top layer of sponged polish shrank and started showing the white base. Bummer!

Has anyone else tried to use a white base for sponging and had a successful result? What did I do wrong?

Polishes used:
Misa Heaven White (base color)
Color Club Pucci-licious
Color Club Twiggie
Kiko 230 Sparkle Touch

A Year's Challenge - Week 10: Polka Dot Mani

Hi everybody,

the Internet has just been installed at my friend's new apartment, so I can finally post some mani for you!

I was kinda lazy with this one, so I opted for an accent nail. I must say that this design wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I wanted to make different colored dots, in different sizes, but I ended up doing dots over dots. I kinda like the way it turned out.

I used Essence colour&go Passion for Fashion for the base color and for the dots I used:
H&M Bella's Choice (turquoise)
Color Club Pucci-licious (purple)
Essie French Affair (light pink)
Essence nail colour 3 Shopping Trip in Soho (bright pink)

Since purple is a PITA to photograph, I took the first picture under artificial lighting and the second one under natural sunlight. The actual color isn't as warm toned as in the 1st picture (I wish it was!). It's more like the 2nd picture, but a little bit darker.

A Year's Challenge - Week 4: Plaid mani

Hi everyone,

for this week's challenge I had the Burberry check pattern in mind. So I checked YouTube and Google for some inspiration and I came across this tutorial, which I found very pretty. 

The idea was to do a full mani, but I was kind of impatient to paint all my nails like that. It may seem like a simple design, but it took me quite some time to do one single nail. So I'm sticking with the accent nail for this challenge. 

For the base I used Color Club Nomadic Nude and acrylic paints for the plaid design.

Galaxy Nails

Hello ladies,

I'm sorry for not posting any nail stuff lately. Some time ago I read a blog post from Attacked Astoria and I was amazed by the design. I never really dared to do it, cuz I thought it would take too much time and I'd probably suck at it anyway. But yesterday I decided to take on the Monday's challenge from PaA and I did this galaxy nails!

The polishes used:

• Catrice I Wear My Sunglasses At Night (for the base)
• China Glaze White Out
• China Glaze Happy Go Lucky
• Color Club Twiggie
• H&M Red Nail
• Orly Life's a Peach
• Orly Basket Case
• Orly Royal Navy
• OPI Last Friday Night
• Nubar 2010

China Glaze White Out + Color Club Covered in Diamonds

I was lacking some creativity the other day, so I just went for a simple mani. 

For the base I used 3 coats of China Glaze White Out. I could have left it with 2 coats, but some streaks were still visible. I was satisfied with the mani until I added a coat of Color Club Covered in Diamonds to my nails. The polish is just so goo-ish and the flakes were so chunky that the application was far from smooth. I added to coats of Seche Vite but the finish wasn't even at all. I was so annoyed by it that I ended up removing everything the next morning.