Halloween Stamping: Scream

This is one of my favorite stamping designs on my Dashica Big Sdp D plate and it fits perfectly for Halloween. I wasn't sure about my color choice first and I tried a few with orange and purple, pink and black etc. but then I decided that a simple black and white would fit best for this design. I started with three coats of Essie - Blanc to get a very opaque base for my stamping. Then I added one coat of Essie - Good To Go to let it dry completely and to protect my base in case something went wrong with the stamping. After that I used Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme and the above-mentioned design to create the scary faces on my base. On top is one coat of Essence BTGN Top Sealer. 

I'm planning on doing two more Halloween designs this year, one tomorrow and one on Wednesday. I can tell you that Pusheen will be involved once again and hopefully some pretty water decals I ordered on Ebay. I really hope they will be here in time! After that I'm done with Halloween and will move on to snowflakes, reindeers and Co! Since we already had our first snowfall here I think that moving on to winter will be fine ;) 

Grey Water Marble with Dots

Today's design started out with a great idea and then ended up not too great. I planned on doing a Water Marble like I did here but with grey colors. But then I had to learn that Water Marble really is one of a kind and very unpredictable. It just didn't work out as I wanted it to and although I used the same black as with the previous Water Marble, this time the black kept on drying too fast in the water. Well, I managed to finish it somehow in a random look so I decided to spice it up with some dots. And it went from boring to way too much details, I couldn't stop dotting! I used p2 - Eternal, Catrice - London's Weather Forecast and Artdeco - 108 in the Water Marble and with the dots. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer. 

Today the voting for the Essie Girls contest has ended and with your help and a lot of begging I made it to the Top 10! The jury will decide next week which 5 girls will win the contest. Thank you for voting and wish me luck for the final round! 

Halloween Water Marble

And some more Halloween nails! The classic Halloween colors combined in one Water Marble. Before I started on my own nails, I tried three different purple nail polishes on a plastic nail. I tried Essence - Passion For Fashion which would have been exactly what I was going for - in the bottle. Through the marbling however it got really bright and almost sheer. Next was Catrice - Doris' Darling which worked fine for marbling but didn't fit with my orange. So I tried Manhattan - Acai Power Berry, a dark purplish blue which turned out to be the perfect fit. As a base I used two coats of Essie - Blanc and then started the marbling with China Glaze - Papaya Punch, p2 - Eternal and Manhattan - Acai Power Berry. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer

To see the marbling technique I used in this design, have a look at her video. 

Halloween Ruffian Nails feat. China Glaze - Ick-A-Bod-Y

I guess I don't longer need to apologise for being early with Halloween designs, since it is approaching fast now. So here is a very simple and fast Halloween designs including the perfect Halloween nail polish by China Glaze. I've just realised I haven't used this since last Halloween, shame on me! But then again the polish is kind of difficult to combine with summer or spring, even winter themed designs. Anyway, it is still in perfect condition and I decided to use it in a Ruffian design. I started with two coats of Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme and then did the bow with two coats of China Glaze - Ick-A-Bod-Y. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. I had the greatest idea and mixed my remaining drops of my old GTG bottle into my current bottle which is now coming to an end slowly. Then I added some drops of nail polish thinner (p2) and got an almost new Good To Go. I hope it won't influence the fast-drying formula, we'll see! 

As you can see I got into the spirit of bottle pictures with my Essie Girls Design! I really love the lighting with this hand position and I think I might keep it up in the future. Also, it is nice to see how the polish looks like in the bottle, I have actually no idea why I stopped doing that. 

By the way I am at the moment in the top ten of the Essie Girls contest! Thank you so much for voting and please vote some more if you can! 

Click here to vote for my nails:
http://www.facebook.com/essieSwitzerland/app_260985374013280

Have a nice weekend! 

Día De Los Muertos / Day Of The Dead - Sugar Skull Nails

I hope you're not bored with Mexican themed nails, because there's more where that came from! I wanted to do Sugar Skull nails since I first saw them. They're so colorful and that's always a good reason for nail art. Sugar Skulls are part of the Mexican holiday Día de los Muertos or Day of the Dead, which is honoring the deceased. 

I originally planned to go for full Sugar Skull nails but that would have been a lot of work, especially with my weak hand. So I just went for an accent nail with one Sugar Skull while leaving my other nails with a simple, matching design. The accent nail is done with acrylic paint on one coat of Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. My other nails are done with two coats of H&M - All Eyes On Me. Then I added striping tape and filled out the triangle with Black Creme. On top of each triangle I placed a single stud. As always on top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. 

Check out my Mexican tag, if you are interested in more Mexican related nail art! 

Thank you for reading!

Black & Green Glitter Arc

Remember the glitter supplies I got some time ago? I did some skittle nails with them, but I didn't wear this design for too long since it wasn't very durable. I chose green and black as my base colors and added two coats of Catrice - Run Forest Run plus two coats of Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. Then I added small green hexagon glitters on the black base and black glitters on my green base. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. Sadly the glitters started to fall off after 2-3 hours. It might be possible that I didn't push them strongly enough into the wet polish or maybe two coats of top coat would have been better to seal the glitter. I definitely need to experiment some more with glitter nails! 

Thanks for reading!

Nude, White & Black Stripes

For today some simple stripes with some simple colors. 

I used two coats of Essie - Blanc and then started doing the stripes with a nail art brush. First I applied the lighter color: Essence - Iced Latte and then the black stripes with Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. 

I still need to work on my freehand skills and stripes are a great way of learning how to use the brush. I've made the experience that the stripes look best when the whole brush touches the nail and I pull it fast from one side to the other. It is still a little shaky though, so I will continue practicing!

On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. 

2 Broke Girls Nail Art

I have recently discovered a new show on TV: 2 Broke Girls on CBS. I absolutely love the show and it actually caught my eye because Kat Dennings aka Max really reminded me of my dear Regina Spektor. Max is my favorite actress of the show, love her humour! Make sure to watch an episode someday soon to check if it's your kind of series as well! Season 2 will start on 24th of September.

So I decided to do some nail art based on the show. If you have seen it, you know that the dresses of the two waitresses are really eye-catching. That's why I decided to make them a central piece of the design. I used American Apparel - Summer Peach for the skin and yellow and red acrylic paint to do the dresses. I didn't dare trying to paint the boobs so it's not quite right... ;)

For my other nails I chose the show's logo composed of a white and a pink writing. Both are done with acrylic paint and it took my quite some time to get an even covering over my black base (Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme). Since Max and Caroline want to start a Cupcake Business, I decorated my thumb with a cupcake. This was actually my first time doing cupcake nails and I took Simply Rins nails as a guideline. 

I used Essence - White Stamping Polish as a base and then added the topping with China Glaze - Something Sweet. The cup is done with red acrylic paint and the sprinkles come from my new nail art glitters (check my Facebook to see what I got yesterday!). On top of every nail is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. 

Pretty Little Liars - Jenna Nail Art - Polka Dots & Ruffian

Are you a fan of Pretty Little Liars? On this week's episode I spotted some nail art on Jenna's nails, in the scene where she ate cherries in front of the school. I couldn't completely see her design but I figured it would look something like a pink ruffian with polka dots. I decided to recreate it for my blog, because it really caught my eye. 

I started with two coats of pastel rose China Glaze - Something Sweet. Then I freehanded the curve with one coat of Wet 'N' Wild - Black Crème which worked really good. After that, my most dreaded nail art technique, polka dots! I almost never succeed at dots with the same size on each nail. But at least I was able to place them in a regular pattern onto my nails. For the dots I used Essie - Blanc. 

On top there is one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat which smudged a tiny spot on my index finger nail. 

This was not the first time that I've seen something pretty on Pretty Little Liars and they do have some fancy nail art designs sometimes. So I'll keep my eyes open for the next one to come along, hopefully not on Jenna's nails since actually I can't stand her. 

What's your trick to create equal polka dots on each nail? 

Watercolor Nails (Plastic Bag Method)

Pinterest is always a great source of inspiration to me and once again I discovered an awesome tutorial for some nail art. The technique is called Watercoloring and there are two ways to do Watercolor Nails. One involves acetone and a brush and I failed big time. 

The other one is described by Polish and Pearls, check out her video and picture tutorials to see how it is done.

I used Essie - Blanc as a base and then added blobs of random black, grey and white nail polish. What I found to be most important is the amount of nail polish you use. Don´t be scared of flooding your cuticles, clean up won´t be too hard if you use a toothpick right away to clean up the edges of your nails. First I didn´t make the blobs big enough and you can see in the following picture how it looked like.

It just looks better with the right amount of polish, so the colors can blur on the nail. Drying time wasn´t too bad either, I expected worse. On top I´m wearing one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat. 

I decided to do a stamping on top with a silver stamping polish from Essence and Dashica Big Sdp D, what else.  I don´t like it too much though, it is not really my style. 

So how do you like Watercoloring? Did you try it yet or are you going to? 

I can tell you I love it and I have already done another color variation which will be up soon. Stay tuned! 

Ozotic - 529 & Sinful Colors - Pearl Harbor

Yay, malware warnings are gone! Sorry about that! I had to remove all my widgets and the blogroll. I think the problem was caused by a link in my blogroll, so I'm not gonna add a new one some time soon. The widgets will be coming back though, as soon as possible! Thank you for bearing with me and I hope you and your blogs are all fine! 

Well then, let's start again with something very pretty.

One coat each of Ozotic - 529 and Sinful Colors - Pearl Harbor over one coat of Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. I was pretty sure those two glitters would look amazing together. Well,  they do, but now that I compare my earlier pictures of 529 with today's result... there's not much of a difference actually. 

The one thing this combination changes is that there's light blue glitter involved as well. As always one coat of Seche Vite on top. 

And a weird bottle pic to give you an impression of what I was actually going for with this layering.  

Neon Straw Nails

For today a very simple but effective design... 

All you need is some nail polish and a straw!

I used NYX Matte White as a base color. Then I added a drop of black acrylic paint onto a paper and dipped the end of the straw inside the color. Then I transfered the color onto my nail with a rotating movement. Make sure there's not too much color inside the straw, because it's gonna mess up the fine line of your circles! Just press it onto paper first, before transfering it onto the nail. For my next round of circles I used China Glaze - Pool Party which works great with black and white! 

Wait long enough for the circles to dry completely before you apply your top coat. 

Black & White Water Marble

I haven't done a water marble design in a while, I guess just because I remember it as being a bit complex. Of course it takes a little more time to do a water marble design instead of just painting your nails. But if you prepare well you will be done much faster than with a lot of other nail art techniques! 

These are the things I prepare before starting my design:

• A glass of distilled water
• My nail polish selection 
• 20 pre-cut sticky tapes (2 for each finger to protect the skin from polish)
• Tweezers (to remove the tape without messing up my nails)
• A sheet of paper (to stick on the tape after use)
• A paper towel (to clean up my tools and get rid of waterdrops)
• A needle (to marble of course)
• Toothpicks (to remove the polish floating around my nails)

For today's design I have painted my nails the evening before with two coats of NYX Matte White. For the water marble I chose Catrice - Snow Motion (because I wasn't sure matte nail polish would work and because Snow Motion isn't too precious for me) and Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. I used one coat of Seche Vite on top.

Water marble is always a little bit tricky, since you don't really know how it's gonna look in the end. So I had my problems first with the black spreading too much and covering the white on my nails. You can see the grey on my pinky nail. I don't really have advice on how to avoid this. I guess water marbling is also a matter of luck sometimes!

Sinful Colors - Green Ocean

Today I have to show you one of the prettiest nail polish in my collection. And it just moved in two days ago! It's a green-blue flakie top coat from Sinful Colors called Green Ocean.

I added one coat of Green Ocean over a black base and I had no problems with application. As always you will need a good top coat with flakies though, to even the surface. I used Seche Vite. 

You have to add a little more green to the pictures in your mind, since the full beauty of this couldn't be captured with my camera. It's even prettier in real! 

I love green and blue flakies!

What We Saw From The Cheap Seats (Regina Spektor)

Due to a date I have been looking forward to for months - the release of Regina Spektor's sixth album - I decided to do another Regina design. 

Check out my Fidelity and Begin To Hope designs if you like Regina! 

This one is inspired by her outfit on the cover of "What We Saw From The Cheap Seats".

I painted my nails with NYX Matte White, except my ring finger nail which I painted with OPI Black Onyx. Then I added black stripes with acrylic paint on my white nails and a red 'ruffian nail' on my black nail with OPI 20 Min Friday.

To match the studs on Regina's shirt I used my nail art studs from eBay. Two coats of Seche Vite to make sure my acrylic paint doesn't come off and to even out the surface. 

Best Sence Glitter Polish - Black & Red

I'm done with my exams, so hopefully I'm back to regular postings now! For a start I have two glitter nail polishes from Best Sence. They were sent to me from KKCenterhk for review. I have swatched them both over NYX Matte White.

First up is Best Sence - "Black Big & Small Hexagon Glitter". What a name!

You're looking at "one coat". As much as I love those black big glitters, application was aweful. With one coat the only thing on my nail was the tiny silver glitter. But if there is black big glitters, I want black big glitters! So I had to put them on my nail with a toothpick. Works fine for me, but I'd prefer it otherwise!

Next up is Best Sence - "Red Small Hexagon & Dot Glitter". 

I love it! Red big glitters, smaller blue ones and tiny golden ones. Totally random but pretty anyway. But then again, same problem here. Had to use my toothpick to put the big glitters on my nail. This one actually didn't come in a clear base. It was tinted reddish which gave my white base a soft rose color. Which is why I made a glitter sandwich!

I added one coat of Essence - Sweet As Candy on top of my glitter. You can't really see it though, but it looked awesome!

The red one is actually sold out at the moment, but if you like to buy something at KKCenterhk you can still use my coupon code and get 10% off. 

Code: spektorsnails

End date: 31. January 2013

These nail polishes were offered to me by KKcenterhk for review.

Minnie Mouse / Polka Dot Nails

Minnie Mouse meets Polka Dots! 

Base color is Anny - South Beach. I added the dots with my dotting tool and white nail polish and the black french with my nail art brush. One coat of Seche Vite on top, which is one of my favorite top coats by now!