Water Spotted Nail Art feat. Model's Own - Chrome Indigo

I used two coats of KIKO 336 - Electric Blue as my base color and applied some liquid nail tape around my nails to protect the skin from nail polish. Then using first KIKO 523 - Royal Blue and second Model's Own - Chrome Indigo I did the water spotted technique to create the spotted look. The matte finish was achieved with Essie - Matte About You.

My tutorial for water spotted nails and my most recent water spotted designs.

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.

Dance Legend Mortal Kombat - Rain / Thermal Flakie Polish

Dance Legend has sent me a package with a bunch of beautiful polishes to review and today I will start with one of my favorites. It's Rain* from their Mortal Kombat collection, which is a small but awesome collection of thermo polishes with flakies. Rain is the purple one of the three with orange red flakies. While cold the base is a very dark purple, almost black, but it will turn into a bright purple with increasing warmth. It has a matte finish, which I think makes it even more beautiful. I used two coats for the pictures without any top coat. It will probably not last very long, but since it dried very fast and matte flakies are awesome, that's okay with me. As you can see, I had trouble deciding on pictures, but I guess this one deserves the exposure. You can buy Dance Legend polishes through their website or their partner shops. Due to the Christmas break and the general slowness of the Russian post, this took quite a while to get to Switzerland, which is something worth considering. These are the small DL bottles with 6 ml and their sold for $8 each. I recommend having a look at the other two colors over at Anna Gorelova's blog, since I'm definitely going to get my hands on these as well. 

Dance Legend hat mir ein Päckchen mit vielen Lacken zum Testen zugeschickt und einer davon gefällt mir besonders gut. Es ist Rain* aus der Mortal Kombat Kollektion, die aus drei matten Flakie-/Thermolacken besteht. Jede Flasche beinhaltet 6 ml und kostet $8. Die Lacke sind bei Dance Legend und den Partnerwebsites erhältlich, allerdings dauert der Versand aus Russland ziemlich lange. Rain ist im kalten Zustand ein sehr dunkles, fast schwarzes Violett mit orangeroten Flakies. Je wärmer die Umgebung/Finger/Nägel, desto heller wird das Violett. Er trocknet matt und ich habe für die Bilder zwei Schichten ohne Top Coat aufgetragen. So hält er zwar sicher weniger lang, ich finde ihn aber umso schöner. Da ich mich kaum für Bilder entscheiden konnte, gibts jetzt eine wohlverdiente Bilderflut. Bei Anna Gorelova gibts zudem Bilder von den anderen zwei Lacken aus der Kollektion, die ich mir auf jeden Fall auch noch zulegen werde.

*PR Sample

Essie - Find me an Oasis / Mattified Glitter

Some very subtle nails for today! The base is the awesome Essie - Find me an Oasis with two coats. On top of that I added one coat of H&M - Blue Bliss, a beautiful glitter in a slightly blue tinted base. I'm pretty sure this one isn't sold anymore though. The matte finish is done with Essie - Matte About You.

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. 

Essie - Maximillian Strasse Her / Matte / Nail Art

Two coats of Essie - Maximillian Strasse Her plus some ornaments with acrylic paint. On top is one coat of Essie - Matte About You. I also added some studs and a shiny top coat later on, but I do prefer the matte version, don't you? 

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. 

Blue Saran Wrap Nails

Although I wasn't too happy with my recent Saran Wrap Nails, you really seemed to like it, which is a great motivation for me! Thank you for that! So I decided to try again, this time with blue. I used two coats of China Glaze - Sea Spray as my base color and then added Essie - Aruba Blue for the Saran Wrap technique. On top is again one coat of Essence - Soft Touch for a matte finish. I'm starting to like this technique! But next time I need to wait longer for the first color to dry, because I'm always taking away a bit too much color with my saran wrap. 

Thanks for reading!

Tutorial: DIY Liquid Sand Nails

It is definitely time for another tutorial! I love doing tutorials, but they are just so time-consuming that I don't do them often. These days the new nail polish trends are all over the internet: Catrice did the Brushed Metal Effect, Nails Inc. just released the Leather Effect Polish and OPI goes with Liquid Sand. Although I'm very curious about all these trends, I don't have the money to chase all of them. But especially the Liquid Sand Effect really caught my eye and I've seen two or three shades that I would love to try. Until then I decided to create this effect on my own with items that I do already own. If you want to know how you can achieve the Liquid Sand Effect for your nails, keep reading!

You will need a base coat to protect your nails, a nail polish color of your choice and loose glitter that matches your nail polish color (or the other way around). I bought my glitter on Ebay in a set of 70+ colors, so that might be an option for you, if you don't have any yet. In addition you will need a (fan) brush to add the glitter and a matte top coat. Start with the base coat and let it dry. Then, depending on the opacity of your nail polish, add one or two coats of your base color as neatly as possible. Do one nail after the other and add the glitter onto the wet nail polish. I use a small brush to take the glitter out of the jar and then hold the brush over the nail and dab on the brush until my nail is covered with glitter. After that I remove the excess glitter with a fan brush. Wait until everything is dry and then add one coat of your matte top coat. This will mattify the glitter but leave the uneven surface that is needed for the Liquid Sand Effect. Clean up and you're done!

China Glaze - Holly-Day + China Glaze - Emerald Sparkle

Time for some green! As promised, one of my new bottles. It is China Glaze - Holly-Day, one of the polishes from last year's Let It Snow Collection. It's a dark green, once again a little bit too dark actually. The formula was unexpectedly a little bit goopy which led to some application problems. And despite my top coat I messed up some edges later. Not good! 

Because I don't wear a single polish on its own most of the times, I added some glitter with China Glaze - Emerald Sparkle, one could say a classic. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go.  

And what do we do with glitters? Exactly, we add a matte top coat! This time I used my Matte Top Coat from Catrice which has an awkward tendency to leave a streaky finish and stains on the nails. Well, I like my Soft Touch from Essence much more. 

Have a nice weekend! 

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! 

White on Blue & Blue on White (Ebalay Matte)

I´ve rediscovered stamping! Today´s design is made with two matte nail polishes from Ebalay which I received for review. I decided to combine them in a design instead of just showing you the swatches. 

The white nail polish is Ebalay - White Matte. It would be a pretty good white relating to opacity but the drying time and the formula aren´t too good. It is rather clumpy and needs some effort to apply and then it doesn´t dry as quickly as I hoped. I had to use nail polish thinner on this one to receive a better formula.

On my ring finger I used Ebalay - Blue Matte which is an awesome dark blue and looks great on its own. Here I didn´t have any problems with the formula and it is opaque with one coat. 

The stamping is once again from my Dashica stamping plate Big Sdp D which you can find here. 

On top before and after the stamping is one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat.

Just to show you how pretty the Blue Matte is on its own, here is a picture I took some time ago. It looks purple though, but dark blue it is. 

You can find Ebalay nail polish at KKCenterHk and use my coupon code for 10% off.

Code: spektorsnails

End date: 31. January 2013

These nail polishes were offered to me by KKcenterhk for review.