Leopard Ruffian meets Denim Jacket / Nail Art inspired by Fashion

Usually I don't care much about fashion and I mostly wear black clothes anyway. I run free in my nail art and I think that is enough ;) But recently I stumbled upon this pretty jacket on Pinterest and it inspired me to do my nails. Sadly I don't know the original source and I couldn't find it with Google so if you know the owner, please let me know! I decided to wear the jacket as Ruffian Nails because it is the easy way. So I did a base color resembling the light denim cloth with China Glaze - Sea Spray, China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint and Essie Blanc, using the sponging technique. On top I created the ruffian with two coats of Essence - Iced Latte and then started to do the leopard design with China Glaze - Foie Gras and Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. On top is once coat of Essie - Good To Go, as well as between the denim base and the leopard design.

Don't forget to vote for my Essie Girls design, you can vote every day until Friday and I'm delighted about every single vote! I promise I will go easy on the begging after this contest, but this time it is really important and I know I can count on my readers ;) Thank you so much!

http://www.facebook.com/essieSwitzerland/app_260985374013280

Essence Pigments - Broadway Starlet & Heart Accent Nail

Some time ago I did a little bit of mixing with my favorite Essence pigment: Broadway Starlet. I mixed Broadway Starlet with about the same amount of the p2 eyeshadow called Moonlight Glam. Together it gives an amazing purple with colorful glitter. The only bad thing about this is that you have to work pretty fast to get an even coverage on each nail. I did one thick coat on each nail and then added one coat of Essence BTGN Top Sealer. After it has completely dried I used a piece of tape punched with my heart shaped hole puncher on my accent nail. I filled out the heart with Anny - Absolutely Fuchsia, a beautiful dark pink glitter polish. Instead of taking off the tape right away like I usually do it, I waited for a few seconds because otherwise the polish would have smudged. Then on top again another coat of BTNG Top Sealer. 

I think it looks very simply but nonetheless fancy and I'm really in love with that pigment! Just look at that last macro shot, full of glitter! 

Galaxy Nails No. 2

Today is my birthday, so I decided to redo one of my favorite designs from the past. I chose the Galaxy Nails from last September because I really love this one. So why not recreate it on today's nails since - let's be honest - the shape (can you call it a shape?) of my nails was not too pretty a year ago. 

I chose the exact same colors but changed the yellow polish to Essence - Bienvenido a Miami which makes quite a difference! I added one coat of Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme as my base color and then added the following colors with a sponge:

Blue: p2 - La Rambla

Purple: Artdeco - 140

Dark Green: China Glaze - Emerald Sparkle

Light Green: p2 - artful

Light Blue: Artdeco - 93

On top is once again one coat of Essence - Blair. I like it better with the other yellow, but let's not be picky. ;) I finished with one coat of Essie - Good To Go, et voilà: Galaxy Nails. 

Have a great evening my dear readers!

Catrice - London's Weather Forecast meets Matte Flakies

Who doesn't love mattified glitter and flakies? I sure do!

These are two coats of dark grey Catrice - London's Weather Forecast. On top I added one coat of Essence - Stop For An Ice Cream. I think this one is still available, it is one of the double-sided nail polishes in their standard range and it comes with a green friend. I chose not to use the green one but go for dark grey because I love grey matte nails!

I used Essence - Soft Touch to get the matte look and passed on my usual top coats. Look at that glitter! 

Have a nice weekend! 

Purple Strokes

Today's nails resulted - as so often - from a failed attempt on water marbling. I tried marbling with those polishes but they didn't work as good as I hoped so I just made a change of plans.

The base color is one coat of Essence - Iced Latte. Then I made some random horizontal brush strokes with Essie - In Stitches and added the final touch with Essie - Velvet Voyeur in the same manner. I actually really like how these turned out especially since I didn't plan it like this. It's a really fast design and doesn't take a lot of effort.

On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go which smudged a tiny part on my ring finger nail. But I actually like the way that looks so maybe a design with some intentional smudging would be fun? :) We'll see!

I really love Velvet Voyeur and this was one of those moments when some regrets of having so many nail polishes popped up: I just can't use all of them a often as I'd like!  

Roses

I've seen this Blue Wave design by Simply Rins a few days ago and absolutely loved it. She said herself, that it reminded her of Roses and that's what I thought as well. So I decided to recreate it on my own nails with red colors to make the rose even more obvious. 

As you can tell, her design looks much more precise than mine does. Although you might think it's an easy design, I had my troubles with the lines. I used China Glaze - Something Sweet as my base color and then chose three red tones to create the rose. The first color is Essence - Better Late Than Never, the second one is Essie - Limited Addiction and the third one is Essie - Masquerade Belle.

On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. I can also recommend the tutorial by Simply Rins on how to paint with your non-dominant hand, she has some great tips!

Have a nice weekend! 

Dotted Flowers

Autumn is coming! You can tell so by the rainy weather and by the problems I have with the lighting in my photographs. Yesterday I tried doing a tutorial, prepared everything and started painting my nails when suddenly the blue sky turned to black and I couldn't see my own hands anymore. So I will postpone this one and instead show you some flower nails to say goodbye to summer. 

As always with white, I used Essie - Blanc as a base and then grabbed my dotting tool and started dotting. The colors I used are the following: Essie - Mint Candy Apple, Essence - Walk On Air, China Glaze - Something Sweet and Essie - Lilacism. 

I decided to leave the flowers very simple and just use three dots of each color to create them. Then added another dot in the middle of each flower and that's it. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go.

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. 

Nude & Pink Ruffian Nails

Today's design is something very clean and simple. I haven't done a lot of Ruffian Nails up until now so this is something different from the usual. 

I used two coats of Essence - Iced Latte as a base color. I love this nail polish, it's the best nude one I have. The Ruffian is freehanded with H&M - All Eyes On Me, a very old but still great nail polish in bright pink. 

I thought about doing the curve with french manicure tape but I didn't have the patience to wait for Iced Latte to be tape-dry. So I just proceeded with the pink polish as with a normal manicure, just leaving out a small part on top of the nail. On top is one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat on which I'm now getting onto the bottom of the bottle. I really liked this top coat in regard to the drying time. The formula was not too thick but it was alright to work with. I'm not gonna re-buy it though because it is too expensive in Switzerland and I couldn't find a cheap seller on Ebay. I decided to give Essie - Good To Go another try. 

I love Ruffian Nails, since they're really chic and make a fast way to get a pretty manicure. You need a steady hand though to do the curves or use stencils to create the perfect line. 

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? ;) 

Essence - I'm The Boss!

For today one of the new colors from Essence. They exchanged the whole nail polish range, which means new bottles and new brushes. I chose two colors and today I will show you a dark grey with glitter called I'm The Boss!

I'm The Boss! looks very pretty in the bottle, it's a dark grey and there's a lot of glitter going on. You can see blue, green and purple glitter flakies in the bottle! Well, that's it. The colorful glitter doesn't really transfer onto the nails. There's still glitter though!

These are two coats and one coat of Essence - BTGN  Top Sealer. 

Formula was alright and it dried rather quick. But then there's the brush. I'm somehow disappointed in this one and since I've already tried my second new Essence polish I think the brushes might all look like this one. Take a look at the picture below.

Yeah, forget about the perfect round cuticle line with this brush! It really looks like it's not supposed to be that way and they did it wrong, but I guess that's the way they wanted it to be. 

Besides the brush I love the polish and a dark grey like this one was missing in my collection up until now. 

Lightning Nails

So today's nails are inspired by the Lightning Storm Nails from Justtryinyournail. I've seen the lightning nails and I thought there's no way those are freehanded... well, they are! And I had to do them as well. So I just gave it a try. You can find her tutorial on how to do these here. 

I used the following colors:

Essence - Midnight Date

Essence - Passion For Fashion
Essie - Too Too Hot

Wet 'n' Wild - Back Alley Deals

Essie - Blanc

I'm not too happy with my result though and I think I'm going to re-do them, now that I have found the tutorial. 

Glitter Sandwich: China Glaze - Something Sweet / Essence - Circus Confetti / Essence - Sweet As Candy

Glitter Sandwiches are really getting on top of my nail art hit list! Especially light blue and rose are my favorite ones.

For this one I used two coats of China Glaze - Something Sweet, one coat of Essence - Circus Confetti and one coat of Essence - Sweet As Candy on top.

Circus Confetti looks awesome in a sandwich! Take a look at my light blue glitter sandwich as well. 

On top one coat of Seche Vite as always. 

And just to make you a tiny bit curious... I'm planning a giveaway since I've hit 500 GFC Followers this week! Thank you so much for your support! 

Let's just say, there will be a rainbow involved... ;)

Dipped In Gold (Essence - Iced Latte + Make It Golden)

Prepare for some sparkle! 

For this manicure I used three coats of Essence - Iced Latte and added golden glitter (from the craft shop)  with a fan brush while the third coat was still wet. 

(Bracelet by H&M)

Not enough sparkle for me! So I added some more: Essence - Make It Golden on the tips of my nails. 

(Ring by H&M)

Topped with one coat of Seche Vite. 

(Ring by SIX)

Love birds :)