Birthday Smooshattack Nail Art!

Yay for two posts in a row! Yay for my birthday! Obviously I wanted to have awesome nails for today and I tried something new, so I just had to show you right away. This is a technique invented by Elle from @with2l. I'm her biggest fan right now, her nail art is so beautiful and creative! The technique she invented is called Smooshattack and you basically use a stamper to smudge colors on your nails. She has a tutorial for it, which you can find with the #smooshattack. I'm amazed by the effect and how great it looks on the nails. This is my first attempt and I love it, so there's definitely more to come! I used OPI - Ski Teal We Drop*, Flormar - 400 and KIKO - #523 Royal Blue. On top are two coats of Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri. 

And now I'm gonna look for cake! <3 

*PR Sample

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. 

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. 

White Polka Dots

Sorry for the stained nails! ;) I just really liked the look of these, especially with this length. But since I broke two of my nails already, this is my goodbye to long nails (for now). I used base coat, then added dots with a dotting tool and Flormar - 400 directly onto the nail and finally one coat of Essence BTGN High Gloss. 

Striped Nails

I used two coats of Flormar - 400 as my base and then added stripes with a nail art brush and a lot of colors: Flormar - N006,  Essie - Mint Candy Apple, Essie - Avenue Maintain, OPI - AmazON...AmazOff and Sally Hansen - So-Nata Problem. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss.

Neon Splash

For today I have a simple design to show you, that I did a while ago. I used two coats of Flormar - 400 as my base and then painted on some random splashes and spots with China Glaze - Pool Party (Neon), China Glaze - Highlight Of My Summer (Neon) and H&M - U Must Have This. I did like the colors, but they do look a bit boring in the pictures. And I like the idea of splatter nails without the actual mess, so I might try this again with different colors. 

Gradient Salted Watercolor Nails

I decided to do another one of the salted watercolor nails, if you haven't seen my previous ones yet, you can find them here and here. The process is the same: base color, matte top coat, watery acrylic paint, salt sprinkled on top, let it dry and then wash the salt off carefully. I really love the effects of the salt and it kind of makes me want to buy a canvas and start doing this in the bigger version, we'll see! I used Flormar - 400 as my base, one coat of Essie - Matte About You and then added a mixture of six acrylic paints. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

Peppermint Nails - Merry Christmas!

I have one more Christmas design for you! Ever since I saw the Peppermint Nails video from HelloMaphie I decided to do something similar before Christmas is over. I love her combination with mint, so I combined two kind of peppermint swirls in one design. My base color is Flormar - 400 and all of the lines are painted with Essie nail polish. I used Really Red, Lovie Dovie, Mint Candy Apple and Mojito Madness. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss.

Merry Christmas and thank you for everything!

Zara Scarf inspired Plaid/Tartan Nails

There's quite a hype going on these days about the double-sided plaid scarf from Zara and even if my favorite plaid colors are blue & green, I decided to take it as an inspiration for some nail art. I used Sally Hansen - Perfectly Poppy and Flormar - 400 as my base colors and painted the pattern with acrylic paint and a nail art brush. I'm not too happy with the black & white tartan, but I didn't really know how to achieve the perfect look. (Also, I'm really out of practice!) On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

MoYou London: Christmas Collection 04

I tried my festive stamping plate from the MoYou London Christmas Collection with the number 04 and I'm really happy with this plate! So many possibilities! But I started with a very simple color combination: first two coats of Flormar - 400 and then the stamping with Sally Hansen - So-nata Problem, which is not the greatest stamping color but it works for me. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. You can find plates and other nail art stuff from MoYou London here.

Vivid Lacquer VL006: Snowflakes

A simple stamping design to start the Christmas countdown, using the Vivid Lacquer stamping plate VL006. I did this design a few days ago and forgot to write down the colors, sorry about that! It's either Essie - Marshmallow or Essie - Waltz and the white stamping color is Flormar - 400. On top I used one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss and one coat of Essie - Matte About You. 

Breaking Bad Nails #2 - Tread Lightly

I'm sad and excited at the same time because Breaking Bad is coming to an end tonight/tomorrow! I just had to do another BB design for the finale and I decided to challenge myself this time. My right hand and the index finger nail plus thumb of my left hand are done with the same technique I used for my last BB design. Everything else is done with acrylic paint. My favorite nail is the teddy bear which took me about 30 minutes alone... I wasn't sure I would be able to paint it first, but now I'm really happy with the result. I'm also quite satisfied with Heisenberg. Now about Jesse Pinkman: I painted him today, because I was too tired to finish the design yesterday and you can actually see that in the color change. I'm also not too happy with his facial expression but after trying several times I had to give up on getting it right. All nails are finished with two coats of BTGN Top Sealer to protect the acrylic paint from peeling off. So to all BB fans, enjoy the finale!

Watercolor Flower Nails

I recently stumbled upon a beautiful tutorial by Karine from Nailderella on how to paint watercolor flowers with acrylic paint. I've tried using real watercolors for nail art before, but it didn't work as desired. Karine suggests to use a matte top coat on top of the base color so that the diluted acrylic paint would adhere to the nail. This is actually really important, the color will not even slightly adhere to a non matte finish. So I used Flormar - 400 as my base and then added a thin coat of Essie - Matte About You. I added the flowers with white, pink and green acrylic paint and then finished with a coat of BTGN Top Sealer. This might actually be my nail art goodbye to summer! It's getting colder every day now and I've already seen a lot of fall inspired manicures popping up, which I really love. This is definitely my season! What about you, did you say goodbye to summer yet? 

Breaking Bad Nails

Breaking Bad is now officially my most favorite show on TV. There are only three more episodes left until the series finale, so it was about time to bring back the Breaking Bad nails! I already painted Heisenberg on my nails in January, including a video tutorial for the Heisenberg decals and the liquid sand glitter meth. Since my latest Watercolor Nails reminded me of the poisonous green smoke in the series intro, I decided to paint it on my nails this time. While experimenting with colors and plastic bags, Sarah from Chalkboard Nails created her awesome Midnight Smoke design for the 31 Days Challenge and I fell in love! I decided that this technique would look more realistic so I used Flormar - N006 & Essie - The More The Merrier to create a smoke effect on top of China Glaze - Holly-Day. I messed up my prepared decals with the chemical symbols, that's why I had to free-hand them with white nail polish. On top is one coat of Essence BTGN Top Sealer. And obviously my badass Heisenberg shirt had to be in the pictures as well. 

(The RV ♥)

Watercolor Nails - Video Tutorial

I want to thank everyone for the lovely feedback I got for my Blue & White Watercolor Nails! A lot of you asked for a tutorial on how I did these and I'm happy to do that today. Check out the short picture tutorial and the video tutorial below to see the easy steps for this design:

Blue & White Watercolor Nails

While doing my Water Marble for Sally Hansen, I noticed that the navy blue looked very pretty next to plain white. So for today's design I combined Sally Hansen - Night Watch with Flormar - 400 to create a Watercolor design. For this I added blobs of each polish and blended them together with a plastic bag. I love how the dark navy turned a bit lighter mixed with the white and it does remind me of a drop of ink dissolving in water, what do you think? On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer. 

Mint Studs & Polka Dots

I'm sorry for the sporadic posts these days and that it is not going to get better in the next weeks or so! Yesterday was one of the rare moments I had the time and inspiration to do some nail art. I received some beautiful mint colored round studs (#6) from Born Pretty Store and I thought about how to use these for days! My plan was to combine them with other pastel colors but somehow I didn't find the right mix. I decided to use a white base with Flormar - M103 and then added big polka dots with the round end of a nail art brush and Essie - Lilacism. I then added the mint studs in the full dots and some small round silver studs in the others. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer which gave my design a lot of bubbles, since I was painting it at about 30 °C. It's too darn hot! 

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