Moustache nails

I still remember that I wanted to do moustache nails in Movember but I couldn't find the time for it. Today my younger sister did them! She used the moustache nails tutorial from Cutepolish at Youtube.

Items used:
Essence - #02 White secret
Essence - #20 Fatal
Essence glitter top coat

My first China Glaze babies!

Yesterday I turned 19 and I got these China Glaze swatches from my two girlfriends! ♥ Somehow, I didn't expect this at all but it made me soooo happy! I think they heared me complaining too much about how bad I wanted the Let it snow collection :p I don't care Christmas is over, the colours are gorgeous ♥

These are my first China Glaze swatches. I'm a real budget person so I never considered buying expensive nail polishes. I was so surprised when I saw the size of the bottles, they are so large! I always thought they were a smaller size. Lol, I'm such a noob.

I can't wait to wear all the coloursssss! My favourite colours are probably the greens!

Tutorial: Icicles nails

It's been a long time ago since I did a tutorial so here's a short one. I'm going to show you how to create simple icicles.

Let's get started!
1. Choose a blue nail polish as your base colour.

2. Take a silver nail polish which is opaque enough and polish your tips with it. Do it with your free hand cause it doesn't matter at all if you do it uneven. I polished my tips unevenly on purpose.

3. Gently draw the spikes. Remember to do this slowly! The spikes might become too large and wide because you go too fast. I just used the brush of the silver swatch and used a smaller brush to make the edges sharper. Of course you can choose to use the small brush to create the whole spikes but that will take some more time.

Done! I didn't create too much icicles because I don't want busy nails :p

Items used:
Wynie - Shimmery blue (from the market at The Hague)
Essence - #80 Icy princess
Small brush

Magnetic zebra traces

I am loving my animal print stamping plate by Essence! I used the stampy polish (by Essence too) which I always use for stamping purposes. The formula is extra thick so the prints are very clear. This nail polish is also inexpensive so if you don't know what nail polish to use for stamps.. Essence recommended!

What polish do you use for stamps?

Items used:
Essence nail art magnetics - #03 Magic wand!
Essence nail art stampy polish - #001 Stamp me! White
Essence animal print stamping plate

Sparkling lace champagne

Had this design in my mind for a few weeks already and now it finally turned into reality. I want to try this out with pink shades too. What do you think?

Do you have any nail design requests or anything else? :D Because I'm slowly running out of ideas!

Items used:
Essence crackling base coat - #01 Sparkling champagner
Gosh - #003 Groovy grey (special edition)
Born Pretty store's white lace stickers HL210
Essence glitter top coat
Tape

Nails feeling festive

I bought this glitter nail polish at a market in The Hague and it's lovely, giving my nails that festive feeling. Although I don't feel festive because it's tests week! Still more than three tests to go.. ):

Are your cuticles also suffering from the cold weather? My cuticles get dry so easily! I can't wait till Spring and the sun. And the new nail polish collections!

Items used:
Catrice - #350 Hip queens wear blue jeans
Paris Memories - Glitter polish (from the market)

Review: Born Pretty dry dried flowers

Here is the second part of the Born Pretty review! If you haven't read the first part about the lace stickers, click here to go to that post.

Dry dried flowers
When you order this you get 12 different styles and colours of dried flowers. They are in individual clear jars with screw-on lids. Easy to open, easy to close. Born Pretty store says the combination of the flowers are determined by random selection. The design of each package may vary per kit, but you will always get 12 different flowers. If you really want a specific colour or flower you can always try to mention this in the comment box before checking out. The price for the 12 bottles is $7.08. So you could say one bottle costs $0.59 which is pretty reasonable in my opinion.

As you can see I received two different kind of flowers. The flowers with large leaves and the ones with ultra-small leaves. Each bottle contains three till five pieces of dried flowers. I think you will need tweezers for the small leaves because it's pretty difficult to take them up with your fingers. I used my nails to take them up and it was annoying. I don't have problems with the large leaves though. The flowers are very thin and they actually smell like flowers!

The flowers can be applied on natural and artificial nails. Here I used the small leaves to decorate the black tips (Essence - #85 Galactic black) on my natural nails. I applied them when the nail polish was still wet. After I applied the leaves I finished it with adding a glittery top coat (Essence glitter top coat) to set them.

I recommend these dry dried flowers for anyone who wants to add an elegant and unique touch to their nails. The small leaves might be a little struggle but otherwise it is not difficult to use them. Totally recommended!

The universe, everything that exists

Thanks to that one person who inspired me to do another galaxy design, but purple. If you are reading this, you know I mean you ♥ It's incredible how large and beautiful the universe is.. It just freaks me out, really :/

And again I used the shimmery black (Essence - #85 Galactic black) as my base colour. Then I applied the darkest colour which is a bit taupe/purple-like (Catrice - #640 Grey's kelly) using a sponge. After that I applied a sharp purple (Essence nail art twins - #08 Gabriella) and a glittery purple (Essence - #380 Forget-me-not!) to it. Now I've got different kind of purple shades. To add more variation I applied a little bit of Catrice - #450 Sand Francisco. And lastly I added some stars with a toothpick using Essence's white stampy polish. There is no certain method of where and how you have to apply the sponge on your nails, just do it the way your feeling thinks it's the prettiest!

Items used:
Essence - #85 Galactic black
Catrice - #640 Grey's kelly
Essence nail art twins - #08 Gabriella
Essence - #380 Forget-me-not!
Catrice - #450 Sand Francisco
Essence nail art stampy polish - #001 Stamp me! White
A piece of sponge

Review: Born Pretty lace stickers

Yay, a review of Born Pretty store to start 2012 with! Born Pretty store gave me the opportunity to choose two items to review! I love nail art decorations but they have to be flat! I just can't stand 3D nails, I always tend to peel the 3D parts off my nails -___- So I chose white lace stickers and dry dried flowers. And today I'm going to review the lace stickers.

First of all I want to thank them for sending me these items! They are really kind and their service is great. Secondly, I want to compliment them because of the super fast shipping! I received the package in five days! I can tell you a shipping of five days from China to The Netherlands is really fast!

Lace stickers HL210
The price of the stickers is $3.66 which is totally inexpensive. First I thought it's $3.66 for one sticker sheet. When I opened my package I saw 10 pieces of stickers. I went crazy and thought: 'why do I get so many?!?' I went to their website and saw that it comes with 10 pieces in total. Lol, I'm so stupid that I overread that. So actually it's only 40 cents per sticker sheet. What a bargain!

At the back of the sticker sheet you can find a description in English and Chinese of how to use the stickers. You have to cut the stickers to fit your nails which might be a struggle sometimes. For me, one row is enough for four fingers. Too bad it's not enough for a whole hand but since it comes with 10 pieces I don't mind at all! In general they are easy to apply. But getting the stickers off might take more time. Overall I'm veryyyy satisfied with these stickers! Recommended!

Here I applied the lace stickers on top of Catrice - #450 Sand Francisco. They made my plain nails really more elegant! What do you think?

Click here to go to their store and here to go to this product. Follow me if you haven't yet and stay tuned for the dry dried flowers review!

To infinity and beyond

I thought a sort of galaxy nails would be suitable for this evening. The black base coat as the black sky and the other colours on my nails are the colours of the firework. You don't see it? No, I don't see it either hahah. Just felt like doing galaxy nails. This nail art made me think of something Buzzz Lightyear from Toy Story always says: to infinity and beyond! So that's how I named this post :p

After I applied the shimmery black colour I used a sponge to apply a green-like colour (Essence - #38 Choose me!). This one is really shimmery so after this step I actually wanted to finish my nails already. They looked like the galaxy already! But I wanted more depth so I applied some soft pink (Catrice - #210 Just married) and light brown (Essence - #33 Just in case) onto my nails. And to finish it I applied the Essence - #38 Choose me! one more time. Be sure the colours you use are transparent enough!

Items used:
Essence - #85 Galactic black
Essence - #33 Just in case
Catrice - #210 Just married
Essence - #38 Choose me!
Piece of sponge

I hope all of you are going to have fun today and tonight. Happy new year!

Imitating animal print

I love this effect with the crackle top coat! I think it's perfect if you want to imitate animal prints :D So if you're feeling lazy, just apply your crackle top coat and you have some awesome nails done! The method is to polish with small diagonal stripes. If you want the prints to be small, don't use too much polish on your brush. And if you want the prints to be bigger (as on the nail of my pinky), then it's okay to have a bigger amount of polish on your brush (:

Items used:
Essence - #33 Just in case
Essence cracking top coat - #01 Crack me! Black

The edge of the sea bottom

I hope all of you had a cosy Christmas time! :D Mine wasn't very special. Christmas is never a big issue in our family. Anyway, these are two Essence swatches I bought yesterday. Buy one and get the second item for half of the price at Kruidvat ^__^ I bought four swatches and I liked the combination of these two swatches. What do you think? I think the gold one is perfect for gradient effects since it's so transparent. This combination makes me think of dark mermaides or the bottom of the sea :p

Items used:
Essence - #77 In style
Essence - #67 Make it golden

Catrice - #550 Marilyn and me

Usually I don't really love red nail polish, but I thought this new shimmer red colour from Catrice was pretty so I bought it. I like how the formula with glitters is like :D

Did you know Catrice changed the brush of their new swatches? I compared the brush of #550 Marilyn and me with #450 Sand Francisco, which is longer part of their collection. The brush is a little bit wider and the edges are less sharp. I think this is a positive change since the new brush is more suitable for applying the nail polish in the area along the cuticles. The brush has round edges, just like our cuticles (: Usually I'm sloppy when I have to do my right hand but when I applied this nail polish on my nails it went pretty well! I hope they are going to apply this brush in more future swatches cause I noticed another new Catrice swatch I have has the 'old' brush.

Merry Christmas! Much love,
Manli, family and Fuji

Gradient crackle

Hi everyone! I felt like using my gold nail polish from Catrice and black cracking top coat from Essence. Using tape I did vertical crackled strokes. The widest at my thumb and getting narrower to the pinky. So... Tomorrow is Christmas already. How are your nails going to look like?

Items used:
Catrice - #650 Goldfinger
Essence cracking top coat - #01 Crack me! Black

Falling snow flakes

For this nail art I used a stamping plate from Born Pretty store.  I really like to use their stamping plates because they're easy and the prints are clear. Did you know they now offer stamping plates for only $1.55? Go visit their website here!

The time flies! I simply can't believe we're only one week away from Christmas. Too bad I haven't seen any snow in our country yet. Are you going to celebrate Christmas with presents, food and stuff? Cause I won't ):

Items used:
Gosh - # 547 Blue monday
Essence nail art stampy polish black
Born Pretty stamping plate m59

Tutorial: Snow runway

Tutorial time! You don't necessary have to call these Christmas nails, but it sure can give you the holiday feeling.

Let's get started!
1. Apply a base colour on your nails.

2. Take the brush in the picture below, a piece of paper and white nail polish. Put some nail polish on the piece of paper and dip the middle part of your brush in the polish (not too much!).

3. Apply the brush in the middle of your nail, starting from the top. While sweeping to the bottom you have to make little movements to left, right, left, right, left, right etc. Your nails should look like this:

4. Apply some colour glitters on the white part you want to pair up with the base colour and you're done.

Items used:
Catrice - #250 I sea you!
Essence tip painter white (the polish, not the brush)
Essence nail art twins - #06 Edward
Brush

Black scars on it

... It reminds me of Chucky O:

Items used:
Catrice - #320 Back to black
Essence matte tip painter - #01 Berlin story (I love Berlin collection)

Dark sky filled with stars

The pictures don't show it well but the glitters are actually gold! I love this combination of denim jeans blue and gold glitters. And it surprises me that the glitters are so easy to remove. Glitters usually are a pain in the ass if it comes to removing them -__-

Definitely going to use this special topper from Essence for Christmas themed nails. Stay tuned for Christmas & Winter nail art :D

Items used:
Essence - #04 Buddy bear
Essence special effect topper - #06 You're a gold mine

London's weather forecast

Lately I prefer one coloured nails with a special top coat (glitter, matte, cracking etc) because I simply don't have much time to spend on nail art boehoe T__T

The base colour I used is one of my favourites. It's a dark colour but it has a warm appearance.

Items used:
Catrice - #280 London's weather forecast
Essence glitter nail hardener