Dance Legend Enamel Glass - 1052 & 1054

Whoop whoop, back to square nails! They're not perfectly shaped yet, but I do like them so far. The next two colors from my Dance Legend package are from their Enamel Glass collection, a selection of glossy, kind of sheer polishes inspired by coloured glass. I like the idea and the dark red one looks pretty cool, but as you can see I had some trouble with the application. 1052* looks nice with two coats, but I couldn't get an even finish with 1054*. I'm wearing no base or top coat for the pictures. I think these could be cute for some watercolor/stamping nail art, but I didn't try that yet. 

Yay für die neue/alte Nagelform! Sie sind noch ein wenig schief, aber das kommt noch besser. Heute habe ich zwei Lacke aus der Dance Legend Enamel Glass Kollektion. Die Lacke sind halb durchsichtig, inspiriert von bunten Gläsern. Die Idee finde ich zwar toll, aber leider hatte ich Probleme beim Auftragen. 1052* gefällt mir gut und war auch deckend mit zwei Schichten, bei 1054* habe ich das nicht hinbekommen. Die Fotos sind ohne Base und Top Coat. Vielleicht sind sie eher was für Nail Art, das muss ich aber noch probieren. 

*PR Sample

Two-tone Studded Nails

So I finally took the time to do some nail art again! This was very simple and didn't take up too much time since I didn't bother using striping tape. All I did was painting a base with Zoya - Dree and then adding Essie - Lady Godiva on half of my nail using the brush from the bottle. To make it a bit more exact I used a striping brush and black nail polish for the centerline. On top of that I added some studs, which I received from bornprettystore some time ago. I then added one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss and I think something's wrong with this bottle. I used it once or twice, so I'm not sure what it is... it might be because I used it over Essie - Penny Talk? Anyway, please ignore the dust on top of the design. ;) 

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. 

Dance Legend: Wow Prism - #17 Road to Nowhere

It's time for the last one of my four Dance Legend polishes from the Wow Prism collection, which is #17 called Road to Nowhere. This one is a brownish scattered holo with brown and silver particles. Just like the other ones it has a fluid formula and needs two coats. I'm wearing no base or top coat. Wow Prism polishes are sold for 13$ each. You can buy Dance Legend in their online shop or in their partner shops, shipping is 10$ or free if you buy more than ten polishes.

Review for #15 Quiet Riot

Review for #26 Bullet for my Valentine

Review for #27 Poison

Deadly Sins Challenge - Day 4: Gluttony (Water Marble / Drippy Nails)

Skip your diet and paint something that makes your stomach growl! Today is Day 4 of the Deadly Sins Challenge and I painted something yummy on my nails! 

   Illustrations by: dahlig

I wanted to have some strawberry ice cream with chocolate drips on top and this is how I did it: I started with one coat of China Glaze - Something Sweet and then did a Water Marble with Something Sweet and Essence - Shopping Trip In Soho. This time I used the needle to paint a spiral in the water, which was quite difficult to achieve. On top of my marble I used Essie - Chocolate Cakes and a nail art brush to paint tiny drops of chocolate. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. I really like the Drippy Nails, this was my first attempt, but I'm sure I will try these again soon! 

Deadly Sins Challenge - Day 3: Gluttony (Sugar Spun Nails)

It's the second week of the Deadly Sins Challenge and this week's sin is Gluttony. The instructions of Day 3 say: Delight yourself with a Sugar Spun inspired manicure. This one was perfect for me, because I love Sugar Spun Nails!

Illustrations by: dahlig

I wanted to do a very realistic version of caramel spun on vanilla ice cream, which didn't really work out. So I just added some "chocolate" and describe it as "something sweet". I used three coats of Essie - Marshmallow and did the Sugar Spun with Essie - Tea & Crumpets plus Essie - Chocolate Cakes. 

Nails Inc. - Sugar House Lane

A dear friend of mine visited the US and brought me this beauty that I'm showing you today. It's Sugar House Lane by Nails Inc. and I really love it! It has a base color that reminds me of chocolate milk and a lot(!) of black and silver glitters in it. I used two coats and it dried really fast. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. I already had to remove it once because I did some Nail Art that didn't work. And removing this one isn't fun! The glitter was all over my hands... But it's definitely worth all the work!

Military Ikat Nails

A few days ago I stumbled upon this tutorial on my tumblr dashboard and since I really liked the look of those so called Ikat Nails, I searched Google for some images. And wow, I have missed a trend! I didn't know that these are so popular, but I wanted to recreate them anyway and let me tell you, that was not the last time! I love how they are so easy to do and look great from further away (and at close range). I decided to use my very first Zoya nail polish for this design and added two colors that I thought would match the military green. I started with two coats of Essence - Iced Latte and then added the first part of the Ikat design with Zoya - Dree and Essie - Eternal Optimist. Then I finished the design with Essie - Licorice and one coat of Essie - Good To Go.

Have you done Ikat Nails? How do you like this technique?

Essie Girls 4: Polka Dots

It's been quite some time since I uploaded a design for Essie Girls but I planned to add this design a while ago, so I will do that today. I chose three colors that I like a lot together and started my dotted design with the lightest color: Essie - Eternal Optimist. I just love this one, because it's a rare thing that a color like this fits my skin tone. On top of two coats I added the dots with Essie - Smokin' Hot and Essie - Chinchilly. To finish my design I used one coat of Essie - Good To Go.

You can find all my Essie Girl designs on this page.

I Love Nutella

Yes, I do! A few days ago I stumbled upon this picture. I think it's very cute and that's why I wanted to have it on my nails! I chose to use my only chocolatey color Essie - Chocolate Cake as my base color. I used two coats and then added the letter, the spoon and the jar with acrylic paint and a nail art brush. On top is one coat of BTGN Top Sealer which sadly smudged some of the lines because I wasn't careful enough. 

Do you love Nutella? 

Tricolor Brown & Blue Water Spotted Nails

Last week cutepolish did an amazing and very unique tutorial on how to do Water Spotted Nails. To be honest I'm usually not a big fan of cutepolish, but this one just blew my mind! I have no idea how she came up with this, but it is hands down brilliant. I'm a big fan of OPI Black Spotted, but there's no way I could get my hands on it. But with this tutorial you're able to do Spotted Nails in every color possible. All you need is the usual stuff for water marbling and hand sanitizer. I had some problems with this one at first, because I bought the wrong sanitizer. After seeing the very pretty tutorial by Nailderella I bought a bottle of Merfen spray, which I think is less stronger than the one I used before. With Merfen the tutorial worked perfectly and so I did two versions of those Water Spotted Nails, one in brown and one in blue. 

For the first one I used two coats of Essie - Eternal Optimist as my base color. Then I  used Essie - Master Plan for the first spotted coat and Essie - Smokin' Hot for the second spotted coat. On top is one coat of BTGN Top Sealer.

For the second one I used two coats of China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint as my base color. Then I added the first spotted coat with China Glaze - Cheers To You and the second spotted coat with Essie - Mesmerized. On top is again one coat of BTGN Top Sealer.

As you can see it is a bit difficult to do all the nails in a similar way. But just like with water marbling, I think it just takes a bit of practice and this will no longer be a problem. If it doesn't work for you try using a different sanitizer, this was my main problem. Now, how do you like this technique? Are you as excited as I am?

Gingerbread Candy Nails with Sugar Spun

Yummy, right? Already with my previous Gingerbread Nails I planned on adding Sugar Spun, but then decided against it. Now I got the prettiest rainbow glitter polish from Candy Lacquer and it seemed perfect mixed with some Sugar Spun and Gingerbread. So I started with two coats of China Glaze - Foie Gras and then added two coats of Candy Lacquer - Over The Rainbow. Over The Rainbow is a colorful glitter nail polish - really just like the rainbow - with round, square and hexagon shapped glitter and in between some hearts. The great thing about this one, just as in my previous post about Sugar Mama, the application is great, even the hearts come out of the bottle by choice. That's how you make a good glitter nail polish! After the glitter I added one coat of BTGN Top Sealer and let everything dry. Then I used an almost empty and quite gooey China Glaze - Snow to create the Sugar Spun. Voilà - candy nails!

Gingerbread Nails

Christmas without gingerbread is like no Christmas at all. Do I have to say it? I love gingerbread! These days almost everything in my environment smells or tastes like gingerbread: shower gel, hand lotions, pumpkin spice latte, brownies... So of course I had to do gingerbread nails as well. I will definitely try to improve these in the near future and maybe add some more details but for now I'm happy with how they turned out. I used two coats of Essie - Lady Godiva as my gingerbread base color. Lady Godiva is almost black but you can still see that it is not plain black polish. With a white nail polish and a dotting tool I added small dots around each nail. I wanted to do sugar spun nails at first but then thought it would look too messy and not like real gingerbread. So I went with the dots. With Essie - Mink Muffs I painted a tiny gingerbread man and a heart and outlined both with white nail polish / acrylic paint. Actually I switched to acrylic paint after the gingerbread man because it was really annoying to paint thin lines with nail polish. Then I wanted to add some color and used white acrylic paint to shape the remaining hearts and filled them in with red paint. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer.  

Do you like gingerbread as much as I do?