Pink & Purple Dotted Nails feat. Essie

I dug out my dotting tool! As my base color I used two coats of Essie - Full Steam Ahead (Naughty Nautical Collection 2013) a cute lavender with a tiny bit of shimmer. On top of that I added a lot of dots using various sizes of dotting tools and three Essie colors from the Neon 2013 Collection: Boom Boom Room, Bottle Service and DJ Play That Song. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

Candy Cane Water Marble Nail Art

Ho ho ho! I love everything candy cane related, so obviously there had to be some kind of candy cane nail art for this holiday season. I think water marble is the perfect technique to achieve those lines and this is my favorite marble look anyway. I was wearing three coats of Essie - Fiji the other day, so I thought I'd keep it simple and just marble over what was already there. I added Essie - Need a Vacation and Fishnet Stockings to the mix and they worked lovely together. I didn't use any top coat this time.

Sally Hansen Miracle Gel Review

Sally Hansen sent me seven colors of their new Miracle Gel* range and today I have my review ready for you. You've probably already seen the disaster on my Instagram, so you will know that I can only show you six of the colors. They come with the Miracle Gel top coat which in combination with the nail polish is supposed to make your manicure last for up to 14 days. We all know this never happens and these are no exceptions. Nonetheless and even if personally I don't bother wearing the same nail polish for more than 3 days, I wanted to try these colors a bit more thoroughly than I normally would. 

* PR Sample

I chose to use the color that's least likely to bore me after a day or two, which is the classic called Red Eye. It's a beautiful brilliant red and I really enjoyed wearing it for five full days. You're supposed to apply two coats without a base coat and then add one coat of the Miracle Gel top coat over it. The next day and in bright daylight I noticed that the top coat was unusually streaky and didn't look very appealing. My current top coat from Sally Hansen, Insta-Dri, gives a more perfect finish in my opinion. Have a look at the sunlight picture from Day 3 below to see what I'm talking about. Another thing about the top coat: the nail polish stained the top coat brush which is quite annoying. I wiped it off on a piece of paper before dipping it back into the bottle. That's one way of wasting top coat! After three days I started to notice some tip wear, which was more apparent on my middle and pointer finger from my right hand. All of the pictures show my left hand for practical reasons. On the fifth day I decided to remove the manicure. There was quite some tip wear but no visible chipped parts. 

I tried another color called Pink Tank for three full days and I didn't see a big difference to Red Eye. There might have been a bit more tip wear on Day 3. I didn't wear the other colors yet, but I swatched them on one nail each. I used three coats each, because I felt like they weren't as opaque as Red Eye and Pink Tank. But you might get away with two careful coats, if your nails are very smooth. 

My conclusion:

+ 5 days without chipping

+ nice choice of colors

-  don't last up to 14 days

-  streaky top coat

-  bleeding colors

-  rather expensive (sold together with the top coat for €17.95)

Sally Hansen Miracle Gel - Red Eye: Day 2

Sally Hansen Miracle Gel - Red Eye: Day 3

Sally Hansen Miracle Gel - Red Eye: Day 5

Sally Hansen Miracle Gel - Pink Tank: Day 3

3 coats each, from left to right:

Pretty Piggy - Pinky Promise - Bare Dare - Birthday Suit

Sally Hansen DE on Facebook

Sally Hansen DE on Instagram

MoYou London Kaleidoscope #04 feat. Essie - Fiji

I found the perfect color match: Essie - Fiji and H&M - Get A Rose 4 Me. I'm pretty sure the last one isn't available in stores anymore, but they might have a new one these days. I combined those two with my new MoYou London Kaleidoscope plate #04 which I think is really adorable. I used three coats of Fiji and then stamped with Get A Rose 4 Me. On top is one coat of Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri. 

Cut Out & Striped Nail Art

I've always been a bit reluctant to do cut out nail art since it either didn't look too good with stained nails or I didn't like the visible half moon of my natural nails. I decided to try again and kind of find a way around it by covering those two parts of the nail. What I love about this design that you can start to add striping tape onto the bare nails, which means you don't have to wait around for the base color to dry. So that's what I did, using my self-made striping tape kit and the 2 mm size tape. For the colors I chose Wet'n'Wild - Black Creme, KIKO - #389 Mint Milk & #295 Cerulean Blue and Essie - Peach Daiquiri. On top is one coat of Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri. I especially love the pinkie, middle and thumb nails and this is definitely something I keep on my list of designs to do again. 

Water Marble feat. Sally Hansen - Pacific Blue

Water marble time! I don't think I've ever tried this color combination before in a water marble and I do quite like it! I used p2 - Passion as my base color with one coat and then combined it with Sally Hansen - Pacific Blue for the marble. They both worked fine, but there were also some air bubbles which you can see on some nails. On top is one coat of Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri. Hope you like it! :) 

OPI Nordic Collection Fall/Winter 2014

After a few weeks of beautiful Mexican heat, I'm back in rainy Switzerland and ready for fall. Waiting for me on my return was the complete OPI Nordic collection for Fall/Winter 2014. Thank you Opi Swiss! The collection is available now in Swiss stores and each bottle is sold for CHF 23.90. As always these have a great formula and dry rather fast. I really like the general look of this collection which was inspired, well, by the northern countries. I would have expected a lot more blue instead of the brown shades, but then again I haven't seen too many brown shades in nail polish collections so far. My absolute favorite though, which is not surprising, is the mint color and you should definitely check out My Dogsled is a Hybrid if you're into mint nail polish. I swatched every color with two coats without base or top coat. 

Spring/Summer Splatter Nails

I haven't done splatter nails in a while and I thought I could include one of my new neons from the Maybelline Bleached Neons collection in a cute spring and summer neon splatter design. You can find out more about how I create splatter nails in my tutorial for DIY Decals. For this one I used Flormar - 400 as my base and then added Maybelline - Chic Chartreuse, Essie - Shake Your $$ Makers, Essie - Lights and Flormar - N006. The first pictures shows the design with a shiny top coat and in the second I'm wearing one coat of Essie - Matte About You on top. 

Scaled Gradient Nails

So I stumbled upon this beautiful design by Cristine from Simply Nailogical the other day and I immediately wanted to try it on my own nails. She calls it a scaled gradient and has already done some awesome variations, so you should definitely check out her blog! Cristine used nail vinyls as a guide for the gradient and I decided to make my own vinyls for this. As my base color I used three coats of Essie - Go Ginza and I actually prepared it the day before, since for this technique the nail polish needs to be completely dry. Then I did two gradients using Essie - Fiji and Bottle Service, letting them dry in between. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. I love this technique and there are so many possibilities! The only downside is the drying time. If the nail polish isn't completely dry, the tape will ruin the first gradient. I'm still thinking of a faster way to do this! Any ideas? :)

It's also a little bit messy...

My Instagram

Water Spotted Neon Candy Nails

I felt like doing some really colorful nail art the other day and this is what I came up with. I picked a few lovely neon polishes and created random gradients with a sponge on each nail. For this first step I used Essie - Boom Boom Room, Bottle Servive, DJ Play That Song and China Glaze - Highlight Of My Summer. To complete the design I thought about doing a water spotted pattern on top using first Layla - Metal Chrome and then Wet n Wild - Black Crème. To see how I create the water spotted effect, check out my recent tutorial. I think it turned out really cute and I loved wearing this design! On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

Bold Neon Stripes with China Glaze - Pool Party

I already posted these nails on my Instagram last week, because I felt like my phone captured the neon color better than my normal camera. I tried again later and I liked the result a bit better. Just imagine a very bright pink neon or if you own China Glaze - Pool Party, just imagine this one over white ;) I used striping tape as a guide for my lines because I wanted them to look perfect. There's one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss on top. 

Exurbe Cosmetics - Wrecking Ball & Uptown Girl

I had the opportunity to try some nail polishes of a rather new Swiss company called exurbe cosmetics. They're based in Zurich, Switzerland and offer a range of 50 nail polishes, which are sold in a few selected stores and in a "members only" online shop. The polishes are 5-free, cruelty free and vegan. 11ml are sold for CHF 21.- each which is quite expensive in my opinion. Then again they're based in Switzerland and I wasn't too surprised. What is pretty cool though is that they ship very fast (within a work day) and for free! At the moment they ship to Switzerland and Liechtenstein only. If you're interested in becoming a member, you can use this invitation link (this is not a paid link). 

I tried two quite ordinary colors. There's Wrecking Ball, a dark grey silver and Uptown Girl a classic raspberry pink. They're all named after songs, thumbs up for that! I used two coats for each picture and they dried fast, even without a top coat. I also did some striping tape nail art which you can find at the end of this post. 

Uptown Girl

(the color in the bottle picture above and the nail art pictures is actually more accurate than in these two) 

Wrecking Ball

(Piñata) Water Marble

Time for some water marble! This is one of those designs where I saw some bottles standing around on my table and felt like they would look cute combined. At first I wanted to add green to it as well, since I wanted to do something Piñata inspired. But the green didn't work for the water marble technique (check out my water marble basics here!) so I just used these three colors: OPI - Hey Baby, OPI - I Just Can't Cope-acabana and H&M - Car Paint Purple. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

Movie Nail Art: The Grand Budapest Hotel

Today's nail art was inspired by a movie that I saw recently: The Grand Budapest Hotel by Wes Anderson. I loved the movie and there were so many inspiring colors and patterns that I decided to do some movie nail art. If you didn't see the movie (you should though!): Mendl's is a pastry shop and they pack their sweets in those adorable pink boxes with a blue ribbon. I used two coats of China Glaze - Something Sweet as my base color and Essie - Avenue Maintain for the ribbon. Since the writing on the boxes is really delicate I decided to paint it just on two nails with acrylic paint. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

How to make a "courtesan au chocolat"

Flowers on Essie - Fiji

The recent Essie - Fiji hype made me grab my bottle and paint my nails as well! I own the old european version and not the new limited one though. This one needs three coats to get an opaque result, but I couldn't resist for very long and added some nail art on top. I chose Essie - Turquoise & Caicos plus Essie - Chubby Cheeks to paint on flowers with a nail art brush. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss.