Catrice - #380 Forget-me-not!

I just had to make a blogpost about this swatch! This purple shade is so intense, glittery and outstanding. I think this is the most outstanding colour I ever had.

I applied Catrice matt top coat over it because I found it TOO intense. Well, it's much better this way haha. I don't really like too outstanding colours but I think this is very suitable for Halloween.

Go for the Forget-me-not! if you want your nails to stand out!

Interrupted in the jungle

Hi! How have you been? I apologize for not updating my blog for the whole week. There happened a lot last week and I couldn't find the time to blog. Today is the first day I could do my nails again. It has been too long! How I did my nails today? I don't know how I came up with this design. While I was busy with them I thought 'okay, this is going to be such a fail ò___ó'! But to my surprise it's pretty okay.

Please leave a comment and tell me what nail art you love to see! With your help I can improve the content of my blog for everyone. Thanks!

Items used:
Essence - #38 Choose me!
Essence matt top coat
Essence matt black tip painter (I love Berlin collection)
Toothpick

Don't forget to enter my 50 followers giveaway if you haven't yet. Have a nice weekend (:

50 followers giveaway! (closed)

 

I'm happy to announce my first giveaway! A small giveaway to celebrate reaching 50 followers and to thank my readers for visiting & following my blog ♥

I know 50 isn't a big amount but it does mean a lot to me. My blog is only 6 months online now and I was afraid people wouldn't be interested enough in my blog because of the little blogposts. So I'm really happy with this amount of followers ♥ I hope my blog can grow as big as how some blogs are right now. Thanks for your support!

What are the prizes?
Because I mostly write about nail art some prizes are nail art related of course. The items are from my (current) favourite nail art brands/shops. And you can get little cute stuff too. I will choose 2 winners because it sucks to choose just 1 winner while probably many many people will enter the giveaway. So the chance to win is bigger!

First winner gets...

1. Born Pretty's nail art foil stickers, military print

2. Mini Hello Kitty comb

3. Essence nail art stickers

4. A small photo frame 

Second winners gets...

1. Born Pretty's nail art foil stickers, swirl-ish pattern in 2 colours

2. Mini Minnie Mouse comb
3. Essence nail art stickers
4. A small photo frame

What are the rules?

1. You must be a follower of my blog with Google Friend Connect. New followers are welcome! (+1)

2. Leave a comment with your name, valid email address and what you like to see on my blog.

What to do for extra entries?

1. Follow me with Bloglovin' and like this post. (+1)

2. Blog about this giveaway in its own blogpost and link back to this post. (+2)

3. Let people know about my giveaway using the photo (in the top of this post) of the prizes in your sidebar and link back to this post. (+1) 

Example of a comment
Name: Manli
Email address: manli.tang93 at gmail dot com

1. I'm a follower of your blog with GFC
2. I follow you with Bloglovin' and liked this post
3. I blogged about this giveaway and linked back to this post here -paste url-
4. Your giveaway is in my sidebar

I love to see more beauty related topics other than nail art.

The giveaway is open for all international readers and I will choose the winners randomly. You can enter till Friday 25 November and I will announce & contact the winners in the weekend.

Good luck!

This giveaway is NOT sponsored by a company. The items are bought with my own money.

Tutorial: Rilakkuma nails

My cousin showed my sisters and me her nails with this design and I found it very cute. It's also simple to do so I decided to do a tutorial for you!

Let's get started!

1. Choose a brown colour similiar to Rilakkuma and choose a yellow colour for the bird.

2. Make an oval with white nail polish for the Rilakkuma and use orange nail polish for the bird. Since birds have a beak you have to make it different than Rilakkuma's nose. I used a very thin brush to make a rough outline and filled it in.

3. Take your dotting tool and add the eyes. Stay close to the white oval!

4. Now use the small side of the dotting tool to add the nose. The bird has 2 dots. 

5. Use your thin brush again to add 2 little stripes under the nose of Rilakkuma. Finished!

Items used:
Paris memories brown nail polish (from the market)
Catrice - #010 Don't feed the birds
Catrice - #170 I scream peach!
Essence - #68 Perfectly true
Essence - #85 Galactic black
Long thin brush
Dotting tool

Review: Liese dark chocolat #2

A short review of Liese was the first blogpost I started my blog with. So that's why this is review number 2. It was more than a half year ago when I dyed my hair for the last time. I wanted to get rid of my black roots and I found my hair colour faded too much. So here is another review!

The package includes:
The hairdye (2 liquids to mix)
Instructions on how to use the hairdye in English, Chinese and Japanese
Gloves
Hair lotion for after dying and washing your hair

I used the same colour as the last time because I wanted to go for a natural colour. I didn't like how the colour faded so much lighter, it gradually became my old hair colour Liese - Marshmellow brown. But not all evenly over my whole haircut! It looked like this:

Ugly and weird looking! And I just don't know how it got like this ò___ó so it was time to dye my hair.

Before and after photos. Both made in sunlight. My hair got slightly darker. You can't see a big difference but it actually is a big difference when you look at my whole haircut.

The hairdye has a strong smell and it takes a few days before the water - you're washing your hair with - is clear. But beside that, Liese is a nice product to use.

Do you dye your hair too?

My sisters nails

A short blogpost! Both of my sisters did their nails today. My youngest sister chose to do the flag of the United Kingdom and my other sister... I don't know what she did. I think she did all her nails just random with random colours because she had no idea how to do her nails haha.

Tutorial: Nyan cat rainbow nails

Nyan cat is a game with a cat with the body of a cherry pop tart flying through space. I never heard of this until someone requested me to do a tutorial for this cute cat. I downloaded the game on my iPod touch and it's quite funny, but weird haha. Anyway, here is the tutorial! This is going to be a huge tutorial lol.

Let's get started!
1. Apply a dark blue on your thumb, don't use a blue which is too dark! We are going to use the thumb for the cat because this is the widest nail. 

2. Start off with the pop tart body; draw a rectangle with a nude/pink colour. Make a rough outline and fill it in.

3. Now make the kitty head. Be sure you use a brush which is thin enough! Make a rough outline and fill it in just like in the previous step. Add the legs and tail afterwards.

4. Add a darker pink in the middle of the pop tart. Don't damage the head! If you think it's easier, you can do this step before drawing the kitty head.

5. Add some little dots with another pink colour.

6. Now for the face! You have to be really really careful! If the face is ruined you can start all over again *_____* Draw little dots with a white colour and line it half with black. Draw the mouth and line the whole body including the legs and tail. It's optional to add a star in the top. The thumb is finished!

7. The 4 remaining fingers are going to be one whole rainbow.  I used 3 colours for each nail. Put some red, orange and yellow nail polish on paper and use the brush in this pic.

8. Sweep the brush in the nail polish like in the picture. You'll see the colours blend a bit into each other and when you're satisfied with this gradient you can apply it the same way on your nail as you did on paper. I applied these colours on my forefinger. Tip: If you don't want a pain in the ass, you should use tape to protect the skin around your nails :P

9. For the middle finger I choose yellow, green and blue. The reason that I use yellow again is that it will overflow a bit with the yellow on my forefinger. For the ring finger I used blue, purple and a nude pink. If all nails are done, remove the nail polish from your skin with a cotton swab.

10. Apply a topcoat and you're done! I used a topcoat with little glitters.

I personally think it was hard to achieve this nail art. The kitty was the hardest of course! Do you know how much time I spent on doing my nails? 4 hours. It was my first time using that brush for gradient colours, so I could expect things going wrong. But I think it's a nice tool to work with if you want nice gradient nails. I think you'll see more tutorials with this brush in the future :D

Items used:

 
Nyan cat

Essence nail art twins - #07 Chuck

Catrice - #050 Moulin Rouge Light
Maybelline - #135 Nude rose
Essence - #01 Love this city (I love Berlin collection)
Essence - #35 Movie star

Rainbow
MAX nails red (random swatch from cheap store)
Catrice - #170 I scream peach
Catrice - #010 Don't feed the birds
Catrice - #240 Sold out for ever
Wynie blue (bought from market)
Catrice - #130 Lucky in lilac
Catrice - #050 Moulin Rouge Light
Essence glitter top coat

Born Pretty's Twitter giveaway

Remember my post about Born Pretty having giveaways? There is a new giveaway already and there's a chance to win foil stickers! Born Pretty is going to host a giveaway on their Twitter on thursday 13 October. They are offering 1000 pieces of the foil stickers.

How to get the stickers?
1. Follow Born Pretty on Twitter and retweet this tweet about their giveaway.

2. Go to their website and find the foil stickers on the homepage.
3. Add the product to your cart and continue.
4. Choose non registered airmail which is free and paste the link of your retweet in the order comment.

5. Choose payment method (only Paypal available) and use the coupon FBREPLY2011. This coupon will be valid at 10 pm (New York time) 13 October. That's 4 am 14 October in the Netherlands and Belgium.

6. Check out. You don't have to pay anything! This is just to complete your free order.

Important: make sure you're one of the first 1000 people, cause they only give away to these first people!

Of course I'm going to enter this giveaway too! I already won the foil stickers once and I also tried them. But I failed ): I think this type of nail art can be very pretty once you applied them well. So I want to give it another try.

I hope you'll be one of the many 1000 people who are entering this giveaway too. Good luck!

Like them on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/BornPrettyStore2010
Follow them on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/bornprettystore
Follow them on Blogspot: http://bornprettystore.blogspot.com/
Subscribe them on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/bornprettystore

Tutorial: elegant half moon

I'm not going to write a life story first, just start with the tutorial!! :D

1. Take a shimmery light blue colour as a base colour or any other colour you want. Since I don't have a shimmery blue I first applied a blue colour and after that a glittery grey one. When applying the nail polish you don't have to do the lower part perfectly, since you'll be removing this part anyway in the next step.

2. When it's completely dry, take a cotton swab and dip it into your nail polish remover bottle. Make round movements with the cotton swab on the bottom of your nails. You now should have half moons like in the picture below.

3. Add 3 dots (with a dotting tool) on your nail like the picture.

4. Now the hardest part of all! *___* Connect them to the border of the half moon with two thin lines. Start with the dot in the middle. Make sure the lines aren't too thick. You want your nails to be elegant so they have to be thin. Tip: think of your nails wearing 3 necklaces.

5. Now connect the 2 other dots with the border.

6. Do the same with your other nails. Add top coat and you have elegant half moon nails now!

Items used:
Essence - #74 Sure azure
Golden rose - #39 (bought in Hong Kong)
Catrice - #650 Goldfinger
Dotting tool
Old tip painter for the lines

Tutorial: cracking parts

Yay, already the second tutorial this week! And you can expect a lot more in the future ghehe :D Yesterday I went to the drugstore and saw Essence got a new colour for their cracking nail polish collection: silver! It made me think of the Shatter from OPI so I bought it right away. The difference between those 2 is first of all: the price. Essence is much cheaper than the one from OPI. But it also cracks differently! It cracks with long strips - like all the other cracking top coats from Essence - while OPI cracks with slightly more horizontal strips. Anyway, I think crackle nail polish can get very bored after a while so I tried different ways to do crackle nail art. 

Let's get started!

1. Choose a base coat you want to combine with the colour of your cracking top coat. I chose a dark colour for the silver crackle.

2. Use tape to achieve straight lines. Make sure the tape doesn't stick too well! This might screw up your base coat, even when it's completely dry!

3. For my pink finger I didn't do much effort, just painted the top. I didn't paint it straight as usual, but I painted it crooked. I personally like this crooked effect for crackle top coats better. 

4. I painted the whole nail of my thumb with small crooked stripes. While achieving this style you have to use little nail polish on your brush.

I don't use my cracking top coats often, but when I do I always do it the diagonal way. Simply because the usual way got too bored! Would you try this?

Items used:
Catrice - #330 Absolutely chinchilly
Essence - #04 Crack me! silver
Tape

Tutorial: gradient nails

I used to do a lot of gradient nail art with glitters, because this is pretty easy to do. I found it really hard to do gradient with actual colours. But I found a easy way to do a perfect gradient! In this blogpost I'm going to show you how.

Let's get started!
1. Choose two (or more) colours. I chose two purple shades from Essence. Apply the lightest colour on your nails.

2. Take a sponge similiar to the size of your nails. Paint the highest part the same colour as you painted your nails, followed by a darker colour underneath. Use a dotting tool to mix the colours so the border fades. If necessary, test the sponge on paper if you think the colours aren't mixed well.

3. Pat the sponge on your nails a few times. Repeat this step until you're satisfied with the gradient. I did this step twice (waited till the polish dried and patted again). You can protect your skin from the nail polish if you don't want to get a bunch of mess on your skin.

4. Remove the nail polish from your skin and add a top coat on your nails. Finished!

I feel you have to do this with shades from the same colour. The outcome might be weird if you use colours which are too different from each other :p

Items used:
Essence - #42 Dress for a moment
Essence - #27 No more drama
Catrice quick shine & high shine top coat
Essence glitter top coat
Sponge
Dotting tool

What do you think of gradient nails?