Matte Gradient Splatter Nails

A while back I saw a beautiful design by one of my favorite nail artists: Lady Crappo. She did a matte gradient with metallic splatter on top and I really wanted to have this design on my nails as well. I decided to go for the green gradient and I used OPI - You Are So Outta Lime! plus KIKO - 347 as my gradient colors. I then used Essie - Matte About You for the matte finish and added the metallic splashes with Essie - Penny Talk. She did a tutorial on how to do all of that.

Heute gibts ein Design von Lady Crappo. Den grünen Farbverlauf/Gradient habe ich mit OPI - You Are So Outta Lime! und KIKO - 347 gemacht. Für das matte Finish eine Schicht von Essie - Matte About You aufgetragen und dann die Spritzer darüber mit Essie - Penny Talk. Sie hat auch ein Tutorial dazu, in dem sie genau erklärt, wie das alles geht.

Green Glitter Gradient feat. KIKO

A few days ago I got myself two new KIKO polishes: 347 Dark Green and 532 Pearly Amazon Green. They look beautiful combined! I wore the glitter over the creme but didn't get to take pictures, because one of my nails broke off. So this time I tried it again, but with a sponged gradient. I loved it until I had to clean up the green glitter on my cuticles, but well that was my own fault. I generally think that gradients look better, if I place the glitter on the cuticle area and not on the tip of my nails. I used Essie - Matte About You on top which made the surface appear a bit uneven. I think it's always a good idea to put on a normal top coat first before applying any matte top coat, especially if you don't have the smoothest nails. That glitter looks awesome though! 

China Glaze Glitter Gradient: Midnight Mission, Cheers To You, Tinsel Town

Since I don't have a lot of time to do my nails lately, this is a design from a few weeks ago already. I guess I felt a bit Christmassy and I chose three of my favorites from China Glaze. As my base color I used Midnight Mission with two coats. Then I dabbed on a bit of Cheers To You and Tinsel Town on top with a sponge. Because matte glitter is awesome, I added Essie - Matte About You after my regular top coat. I love my Cheers To You memories, it's one of those bottles that made me fall in love with nail polish. (You need proof? My first blog post ever and there it is!) It's three years old but still as good as new. Cheers to China Glaze for that! 

Sally Hansen Beach Paradise: Searsucker feat. Blue Crush / Scaled Gradient

I received some samples for the new Sally Hansen Beach Paradise collection, which will be available in July 2014. Surprisingly so I chose the two blue shimmer polishes first, usually these are not the colors I go for. But oh, did one of them surprise me! I love Searsucker, the light turquoise blue with a bit of purple shimmer in it. It wasn't easy to capture on camera, but it is definitely really bright. I combined it in a design together with Blue Crush which I cannot recommend as much, since it stained my cuticles quite a bit. I was amazed at how awesome these look with a coat of Essie - Matte About you on top! For the design I chose my new favorite technique again, the scaled gradient. Learn how to do this over at Simply Nailogical. And find out more about Sally Hansen on their Facebook page. 

Scaled Gradient Nails

So I stumbled upon this beautiful design by Cristine from Simply Nailogical the other day and I immediately wanted to try it on my own nails. She calls it a scaled gradient and has already done some awesome variations, so you should definitely check out her blog! Cristine used nail vinyls as a guide for the gradient and I decided to make my own vinyls for this. As my base color I used three coats of Essie - Go Ginza and I actually prepared it the day before, since for this technique the nail polish needs to be completely dry. Then I did two gradients using Essie - Fiji and Bottle Service, letting them dry in between. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. I love this technique and there are so many possibilities! The only downside is the drying time. If the nail polish isn't completely dry, the tape will ruin the first gradient. I'm still thinking of a faster way to do this! Any ideas? :)

It's also a little bit messy...

My Instagram

Gradient Nails / OPI - AmazON...AmazOFF

I used OPI - AmazON...AmazOff plus H&M - Manhunter to create a gradient with a piece of sponge. Clean up was really annoying but I do like the combination. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. I think there is a pretty famous picture of a gradient like this, but I couldn't find it anymore. If you know where it's from, please let me know! 

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. 

Studded Berry Gradient

Today's design started out with a gradient and ended up with golden studs. I used three beautiful colors to create a gradient: Essie - Bahama Mama, Essie - Sole Mate and Sally Hansen - Night Watch. This already looked different from what I expected and I probably wouldn't really have needed three colors, but nonetheless I liked the result. I was waiting for the perfect opportunity to redo my fully covered studded nails from the Deadly Sins Challenge and this was it! With the golden round and square studs from Born Pretty Store I added the same pattern as before and finished with one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer. 

The New Black - Ombré Shades: Graffiti

In the review package that I received from The New Black, there were two Ombré Shades sets and today I will review the black one called Graffiti for you. If you read my last review, you know that I was a bit disappointed by their Typography set, mainly because of the price. And again, the Ombré set is sold for 29.95 Euro which is quite expensive since their bottles are tiny. In the Graffiti set there are 5 polishes which are supposed to be "carefully selected for perfectly gradated tones". Well, I think that is up for discussion: There is a plain black one, a black with silver glitter, a grey with blue shimmer, a chrome silver and finally a silver glitter in a clear base. I like all of these shades and the formula is great. I used two coats for each color, except for the silver glitter which looked better with three coats. If you follow me on my Instagram you might have seen the picture of the brush, which I added at the end of this post as well. The hair stuck out from the brush, I pulled it with tweezers and this is what happened. I've seen cheaper nail polish with better brushes! Of course this could just be "a lemon", the brushes in the Typography set were fine. The midi ring in the pictures is by H&M and (sadly) not included in the set ;) 

PS: I added a mouseover Pinterest button to my blog, now you can pin pictures by hovering over them and clicking the Pin Button, yay! 

Sunset Gradient with Essie Neons 2013

In the mood for something bright, I decided to paint my nails with a neon gradient using the perfect summer colors. Although I'm not a big fan of the Essie Neons 2013, they worked great for this gradient. I painted a white base with Flormar - M103 and then added Essie - DJ Play That Song, Saturday Disco Fever & Bottle Service. On top I added my square golden studs from Born Pretty Store and finished with one coat of BTGN Top Sealer.

Double Gradient & Golden Studs

I used a total of ten Essie polishes for today's design! The reason I only used Essie is that because I have so many of them, it does make things easier when choosing colors for a gradient. And that's what I did, more precisely something like a double gradient. At first I created green and blue gradient skittle nails which seemed a bit boring to look at. So I added a red gradient onto the green one and a purple gradient onto the blue one. (That's more of a quadruple gradient now, to be more accurate.) Then I added round golden studs from Born Pretty Store and finished with one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer. If you're interested, these are the names of all the colors I used:

Mesmerized, Avenue Maintain, Lapis Of Luxury / Flawless, Splash Of Grenadine

Mojito Madness, First Timer, Mint Candy Apple / Chubby Cheeks, Eternal Optimist

Etude House - Juicy Cocktail Gradation Nails: Love Violet & Mint Frappe

I really hope you aren't annoyed with all the reviews and swatches lately! I have a lot of stuff left to review and don't feel very inspired to do nail art at the moment. So for today what I want to show you is the second part of my Etude House ebay shopping. In addition to the If Story Nail Kit I bought two Gradation Nail sets, one in purple and one in mint. Compared to how much I liked the If Story Nail Kit, I wasn't too excited about these two. First of all I ditched both of the base colors because they were really sheer and looked very weird on my nails. I chose to do the gradient on a similar but opaque base color. Secondly I wasn't happy with the glitters in the mint set. So basically I paid about 15$ for six polishes of which I only liked two in the end.

Etude House - Mint Frappe

I used two coats of China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint as my base color and then added the first sheer glitter with a sponge. The second polish was only a clear base with turquoise glitter (boring!) and I had to add it directly with the brush. On top is one coat of BTGN Top Sealer.

Etude House - Love Violet

I used two coats of Essie - Lilacism as my base color and then added the both glitter polishes with a sponge. Drying time was alright, on top is one coat of BTGN Top Sealer. I'm sure you could create a pretty awesome look with just using the darkest glitter on top of a purple base color. I might try that in the future.

Candy Lacquer - Sugar Mama & Essie - Need A Vacation

On Black Friday the Candy Lacquer polishes were reduced to 7$ each, which is why I can now finally call three of those pretty ones my own. The first one that I want to introduce to you is called Sugar Mama and is a clear base with tiny pink, white and black glitters. I bought this because it seemed to be the pink little sister of Floam. And well, it is! Application is great, there's a lot of glitter on the nail and it looks just too cute! I decided to use it as a gradient over a lovely pink from Essie called Need A Vacation. This one needed three coats to be completely opaque, but drying time was alright. Then I added two coats of Sugar Mama for the gradient and one coat of BTGN Top Sealer on top.