DIY Textured/Sand Finish - Green Glitter Nails

Back when the textured/sand finish trend came up I made a little tutorial on how to create the same effect with nail glitter. I never actually did this again after the tutorial so I think it's about time! I had a very pretty green glitter from Born Pretty Store lying around in my stash, that I have received as a sample quite some time ago, but never actually used. It's the #10 from these glitter powders. As my base color I used KIKO - #391 Grass Green and then I just sprinkled the glitter on top of the wet polish. Since it already looked really cute without the next step, I took some pictures without top coat. I wouldn't actually wear it like this though, since the glitter is gonna get everywhere! So you want to add a matte top coat onto the glitter for the textured/sand effect. I used Essie - Matte About You. Please look at the pictures below for a direct comparison with and without top coat.

Tip 1: Use tape to get rid of glitter on your skin and work space!

Tip 2: Wipe off the brush of your matte top coat before dipping it back into the bottle, glitter gets everywhere!

No Top Coat

Left: No Top Coat

Right: Essie - Matte About You

Essie - Matte About You

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. 

Video Tutorial: Breaking Bad - Heisenberg Nails

As promised, here is the video tutorial for yesterday's Breaking Bad - Heisenberg Nails. In the video you can see two of my latest techniques in action: the DIY Nail Decals and the Liquid Sand Nails. By the way, I did my Obama Nails with the same technique as I did Heisenberg. Hope you like it!

Color Frazzles

What I had in mind starting this design were some very colorful Aztec Nails. I prepared various decals the day before on a plastic bag and let them dry over night. My plan was to cut them into triangles and other shapes and then stick it onto a black and white base to create Aztec Nails 'the easy way'. 

As soon as I started to peel the decals off the plastic, they broke into pieces. So I decided to stick them on anyway since I had already done my base with two coats of Essie - Blanc and some stripes with Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. I peeled off all the decals and shaped them into tiny pieces with tweezers. Then I added one coat of clear nail polish and placed them onto the nails one by one. 

The colors I used for the decals are Essence - Bienvenido A Miami (Yellow), Essence - Naughty And Pink, Essence - Wake Up (Orange), Catrice - Run Forest Run (Green) and Essence - Walk On Air (Blue). Sadly most of them weren't opaque over black so I tried to place them mainly onto the white base. 

There is one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat on top. I experienced some bubbling on a few nails, probably because I applied too much of the clear polish underneath. Apart from that it worked quite good with the decals even if I wanted to shape them into triangles first. Maybe I let them dry for too long so they weren't soft enough for cutting in shapes. It probably would have worked with a shorter drying time. 

Essence Colour Arts Pigments: WOW It's Orange! & Broadway Starlet / DIY Nail Polish

Guess what I found today! The Essence Colour Arts Pigments! I really didn't expect to find them so soon in Switzerland, Usually we are way behind everyone else. So Essence had a great idea and released a bunch of pigments and bases to mix them into. I bought two pigments and one nail base. I guess you could just use a random clear nail polish, I don't think it is a special polish. 

You will need the following to create your own nail polish:

I'd recommend not using the brush from the nail base to paint your nails like it is written on the bottle. Just take a separate brush, this will keep your nail base from staining with leftovers from pigments. The process of painting your nails with pigments is very easy: Just add some pigments onto a paper and then add a few drops of the nail base, mix it together and paint your nails. 

So this is one coat each, applied with my separate brush, which means the application is not flawless. But that's nothing a good top coat couldn't fix: Essence BTGN Top Sealer! 

From left to right, two coats each: WOW It's Orange!, Broadway Starlet and a mix of both pigments.

 I didn't like the mix of orange and glitter so I decided to get my eyeshadow. Basically with the Essence pigments you're doing the same thing as I did in this video tutorial. This means you can mix the pigments with any eyeshadow you like. I chose p2 - Moonlight Glam, a dark purple with shimmer, mixed it with Broadway Starlet from Essence and applied it to one nail. I love it! 

So, I really like the idea of pigments and mixing your own nail polish. But considering the price of each pigment (I paid about 4 CHF for one color) I'm not gonna buy more pigments in the future. I guess I will mix my nail base with the rest of my Broadway Starlet to create a bottle of polish. 

Any ideas what to do with my orange pigments? Maybe add some glitter to it? How great would it have been if Essence released flakies to add to the pigments... yeah, one can dream, right? ;) 

Milani - Antique + DIY Decal

I've done some DIY Decals a while ago using Essie - Lapis Of Luxury as a base color and adding Essie - Mint Candy Apple plus a random golden nail polish with a straw. For this design I decided to cut the decals in stripes and add them onto one of my new blue tones: Milani - Antique. 

I didn't realise that Antique and Lapis Of Luxury are so similar. I think a more opposed color would have looked better. Maybe dark blue? I used Essence - Soft Touch as a matte top coat. 

And I will leave you with some scheduled blog posts for the next two weeks. I surely hope it will work as planned and hope you're all having the opportunity to go on holiday as well! 

Take care! <3

NOTD: Red-Black-White Splatter Nails

I love splatter nails! I did another color combination with the DIY nail decals technique, but this time I had some problems with the application. My decals were too thick because I started with two coats of white. As a result they were very stiff and difficult to handle. I'd recommend doing them as thin as you can, you can always add a base coat underneath! 

I used the usual black and white and for the red I chose Essie - Limited Addiction, one of my favorite reds! 

One coat of Essie GTG on top.