Shimmer Polish - Erica

Press Sample

Hello again my lovely readers,

today I have another Shimmer Polish beauty to show you: Erica.

  

Erica is a beautiful green/peridot glitter mix.  The mix consists mainly of hex glitters in different sizes. Application is great, identical to all the other Shimmer Polishes I've tried so far. You can easily get full coverage with a single coat.

Shimmer Polish can be purchased directly through Shimmer's website or through her Etsy store. Each Shimmer Polish shade sells for $12 a bottle + shipping. Worldwide shipping is available.

Thanks for reading!

BOHEM Nail Jewellery

Hi everyone,

today I want to show this beautiful nail jewellery by BOHEM, a UK-based studio that creates handmade nail jewellery made of sterling silver or gold in different sizes and styles. 

The one I'm wearing is called the "Butterflies" and it's made of sterling silver. I first ordered the "Butterfly" model, which has only one butterfly. But that was way too short for my nails. BOHEM's website is not very clear about the length of its nail jewellery. They do have a sizing guide, but that only shows the width of the nails and the size options are Small, Medium and Large. I ordered the large ones, but lengthwise it did not fit. So I contacted them, and they explained to me that I needed the "Butterflies" model instead of the shorter "Butterfly" one. So exchange was not a problem. Their customer service is really good! I just wished the website had better sizing info so other people wouldn't make the same mistake. It's not easy to judge the size of a product by just looking at pictures.

Polish used: Zoya Pixie Dust Vespa (3 coats)

You can order this and all the other nails directly from BOHEM's website. They're not cheap, but they surely add an extra bling to your mani!

Thanks for reading!

Shimmer - Nichole

Press Sample

This week I'll be showing you some more Shimmer swatches. On this first day of the Shimmer Polish swatch week, I'd like you to meet Nichole:

Polishes used: KIKO #336 Electric Blue, China Glaze White Out, Zoya Sooki 

Nichole has loads of red, silver and blue hex of many sizes in a clear base. Application is great and the glitters lay smooth on the nails. The swatch above shows a single coat of Nichole over China Glaze White Out. For full opacity, 2 coats will do! 

Shimmer Polish can be purchased directly through Shimmer's website or through her Etsy store. Each Shimmer Polish shade sells for $12 a bottle + shipping. Worldwide shipping is available.

Press Sample

St. Patrick's Day

Hello everyone,

I hope you had a great weekend and a nice St. Patrick's day! We don't really celebrate it over here, but I wanted to do a St. Patrik's Day mani to get into to the festive mood anyway.

Nothing fancy or difficult this time. All I did was a sponged gradient using Zoya Envy and Shawn, then topped with gLORIous 22K Gold Leaf top coat.

I hope you liked it and thanks for reading! 

Valentine's Nails

Hi everyone,

I know this post is quite late, but I want to show you anyways what I had on my nails on Valentine's Day.

This was the first mani I did a few days before Valentine's.

The accent nail didn't end up exactly how I planned, but most of the mani's I do don't quite end up the way I first planned them anyway. 

So on Valentine's day itself, I gave it another try and did another mani to match my outfit for the evening. :)

This mani was pretty much as I wanted it to be! Finally! :p I just wished the dark red polish heart would look dark red instead of almost black. But fine, it was all about the contrast anyway.

Thanks for reading and I wish you all a nice week!

Half Moon

Hello everyone,

the mani I have to show you today was inspired by The Daily Nail's Reverse Rockabilly. When I first saw the design, I knew I had to give it a shot! It's just so pretty and the color combo is perfect!

So here it is:

Polishes used:

Zoya Sooki (red)

American Apparel California Trooper (beige)

Essie Case Study (dark beige blobs)

Acrylic paint (dark brown)

[Review] Born Pretty Store Half Pearls

Hello lovely readers!

Today I want to show you some gorgeous half pearls I received from Born Pretty Store for review. They come in 3 different sizes, so you can use only one size at a time or mix all the different sizes and come up with innumerable designs! I opted for an accent nail and used all 3 sizes of pearls. 

Application is simple, pretty much the same way as you'd apply rhinestones or studs. Just apply some clear polish or topcoat on the area you want to add your pearls and you place them with the help of a dotting tool (or any other tool you prefer). Finalize the design with topcoat and voilà! 

The pearls come in a plastic wheel in 3 different sizes - 4mm/3mm/1.5mm - and retail for $4.14. Born Pretty Store offer FREE WORLDWIDE shipping and by using my coupon code AA7J61 you get a 7% discount on your entire purchase! 

Polish used:
Zoya Rory (2 coats)

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

A Year's Challenge - Week 15: Easter Mani

Hi everybody,

I hope you all had a very happy Easter! Did the Easter bunny bring you lots of eggs? ;-P

My post today will be very short since it's past midnight here in the Netherlands. My mani for this week's challenge wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Oh, wait! You might be thinking you've heard this before... Huh...Yeah... that's right! I've been changing my mind very often lately. I'm usually full of ideas, then I forget what I wanted and when I finally think I know what I want, I change my mind about it. Very complicated, this mind of mine...

Anyway, I wanted to paint a bunny or a chick, but I ended up just painting my nails as if I were painting easter eggs. Nothing fancy, not a lot of effort in it, just having fun with nail polish! :-)

A Year's Challenge - Week 3: Color Blocked mani

Hi everyone,

I'm kinda late, as I joined this challenge in week 3, so I totally missed the first 2. This is my first challenge ever and I'll be doing this for a full year (I hope!). If you want to know more about this challenge, check the original post here.

Here's my attempt at "color blocking". I must say I had to do a google search on this term. Then I found this beautiful design by Prabal Gurung from last year's spring fashion. I loved the color combi of the first 4 dresses and tried to put than on my nails.

The matte version:

With top coat:

Polishes used:

Zoya Phoebe (blue)

ManGlaze Butt Taco (dark orange)

L.A. Girl Matte Orange (light orange)

Are you curious what the other participants are doing? Just check their blogs out! Here's the list:

I'm Still Thinking
Polished & Not Quite Put Together
Addicted 2 Nails
Prncess Sarah 02
Polished Criminails
No More Nail Biting
Charlotte's Nails
Fun With My Nail Polish
Operation: Nail It!
Lauriestrodes Fun With Nails
Square Polish
Only Always Soccermom
Hurr Did, Nails Did
Olivia Writes
Nothing But Nail Polish
The Dragon Lady
Nails By Carol
polish, polish, polish
Tres Chic Nails
Glitter Obsession
Lissa's Nail Blog
NailsN'cupcakes
omgnoodles
Oje Sihirbazi (Wizard of Polish)
Nail Art by Joy Ella
Asa Nisi Masa Nail Spot
Emerald Sparked

Let it Snow!

Hi everyone,

I came down with the flu this weekend and haven't slept well since Saturday. This sucks big times! BUT, I spent one of my sleepless nights doing something fun: NAILS!!!! :-)

Even though the snow hasn't showed up around here, I felt like doing something winter/holiday-like, after all, it's december - the holiday season!

I started with a blue gradient. I used China Glaze Millenium as a base, then I dabbed Orly Royal Navy and Zoya Crystal with a sponge over it. To give it a little spark, I dabbed some China Glaze Fairy Dust too.

Next, I stamped some white snow flakes from Bundle Monster image plate BM14 and painted a penguin with some acrylic paints. 

It was my first time using acrylic paints and I must say it was fairly easy to work with it. The macro picture shows all the small imperfections, but they aren't as visible when seen with naked eyes on the nails. :-)

Zoya Mod Mattes

I was having a lack of creativity the other day, so I went crazy and did a Zoya Mod Mattes skittle. I received these polishes last week in the mail, so it's actually the first time I'm trying them. They were on my wishlist since they were released, but only now I managed to get my hands on them. I first ordered these polishes in june from an ebay seller, but she took my money (and other people's money as well), closed her store and never sent me the polishes.... Pffffff..... Thank goodness there's Paypal Buyer Protection! So I got my money back and ordered the polishes at nailetc.com. So here they are:

Mitzi was very easy to apply, 2 coats only. Phoebe and Lolly were, on the other hand, a pain in the butt to apply. Here I used 4 coats of each but the imperfections are still visible. Overall, I'm very pleased with these polishes. The colors are stunning! These pictures don't do them justice!

And just to make things different, I did some tape mani with Nicole Make a Comet-ment and no top coat added, as I wanted to leave the matte finish untouched.

XX!

Since Bundle Monster Contest started,  I've been playing around with my plates and trying to get something worth entering the contest.

With spring in the air, I wanted to do something fresh. Not too bright, not too dark either. So I started with 2 coats of China Glaze Agent Lavender (sorry for the very dry cuticles, I'm trying to get rid of the problem).

For the design I used Bundle Monster image plate BM02, stamped with China Glaze Grape Pop, Konad Special Stamping polish Psyche Pink and China Glaze Millenium. For the tips I used Zoya Savita.