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.

Neon Triangles

I started this design with two coats of Ebalay - White Matte and my plan was to do a water marble with some nice colors I chose the day before. Somehow the marbling didn't look as expected on the plastic nail, so I had to think of another way to add the colors onto my white base. I used striping tape to paint triangles with Essie - Saturday Disco Fever and some more striping tape and Essie - In The Cab-Ana to fill in the blank space. I like this design a lot, but the pictures don't do it justice! This neon orange is actually starting to grow on me, even if the formula isn't the best. On top of all of this is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer.

Essie - Neon (Summer 2013)

Essie Switzerland sent me the Neon 2013 collection as well and I didn't swatch this one until now because I wasn't very excited about this one. I read that a lot of people are disappointed with the formula of these six shades and I have to say that I am as well. Essie suggests that you wear a white base for all colors because it's going to make them brighter. It does indeed make all of them brighter and I personally don't like them without the white base. The only shade that I would wear without white is Boom Boom Room (light pink). But the thing is: white nail polish is the most annoying nail polish when it comes to formula. So why would I want to use a white base every time before I paint my nails? I don't want to! Also in my opinion this collection isn't a neon collection because the only shade that appears as an actual neon color to me is Saturday Disco Fever (orange). And most of the colors were quite thin and streaky and not a pleasure to work with. Nonetheless I found a way to enjoy this collection by combining all of them in a nail art design, which you can find at the end of this post. This is a long post again, so you can find all of the swatches after the jump.

Born Pretty Store: Miki Nails - Water Decals A 1-23

I wasn't sure about publishing today's post, because I don't feel very comfortable with how my nails look today. In a moment of madness I decided to change back to round nails. I had regrets soon after and I'm not sure I will get used to the new look in the near future. Nonetheless I decided to let them grow a bit and then decide what to do. 

Since my first design today didn't work out, I tried my new water decals from Born Pretty Store. Because the last ones I tried were quite bad, I was curious about how the design A 1-23 would look in reality. And since I have the opportunity to review these for free, I thought I would try them again and tell you about it. First: The colors are definitely better, I'm not disappointed. Of course they look super bright online and they are a bit less saturated in real, but I think they look alright. Then application was the usual, it took me quite some time and I'm not very happy with the result. I feel like I could paint this design faster and would be happier with the result, but maybe I'm just too spoiled. They do look cool from a distance though! I used one coat of Star Nails - Nail Art Finishing Sealer first and then one coat of Essie - Good To Go. 

Have a look at my giveaway for a 20$ Born Pretty Store voucher, if you didn't already join! You can use my coupon code DEL91 for 10% off at Born Pretty Store. 

Halloween Water Marble

And some more Halloween nails! The classic Halloween colors combined in one Water Marble. Before I started on my own nails, I tried three different purple nail polishes on a plastic nail. I tried Essence - Passion For Fashion which would have been exactly what I was going for - in the bottle. Through the marbling however it got really bright and almost sheer. Next was Catrice - Doris' Darling which worked fine for marbling but didn't fit with my orange. So I tried Manhattan - Acai Power Berry, a dark purplish blue which turned out to be the perfect fit. As a base I used two coats of Essie - Blanc and then started the marbling with China Glaze - Papaya Punch, p2 - Eternal and Manhattan - Acai Power Berry. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer

To see the marbling technique I used in this design, have a look at her video. 

Halloween Ruffian Nails feat. China Glaze - Ick-A-Bod-Y

I guess I don't longer need to apologise for being early with Halloween designs, since it is approaching fast now. So here is a very simple and fast Halloween designs including the perfect Halloween nail polish by China Glaze. I've just realised I haven't used this since last Halloween, shame on me! But then again the polish is kind of difficult to combine with summer or spring, even winter themed designs. Anyway, it is still in perfect condition and I decided to use it in a Ruffian design. I started with two coats of Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme and then did the bow with two coats of China Glaze - Ick-A-Bod-Y. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. I had the greatest idea and mixed my remaining drops of my old GTG bottle into my current bottle which is now coming to an end slowly. Then I added some drops of nail polish thinner (p2) and got an almost new Good To Go. I hope it won't influence the fast-drying formula, we'll see! 

As you can see I got into the spirit of bottle pictures with my Essie Girls Design! I really love the lighting with this hand position and I think I might keep it up in the future. Also, it is nice to see how the polish looks like in the bottle, I have actually no idea why I stopped doing that. 

By the way I am at the moment in the top ten of the Essie Girls contest! Thank you so much for voting and please vote some more if you can! 

Click here to vote for my nails:
http://www.facebook.com/essieSwitzerland/app_260985374013280

Have a nice weekend! 

Reasons Pusheen Loves Fall: Halloween / Fall Pusheen Nails

I know, I might be a little early for Halloween this year, but I am already in the mood for Christmas so time can't really go fast enough now. ;) 

The newest post on the Pusheen blog really caught my eye and I knew right away I had to do some fall/Halloween inspired Pusheen nail art. Check out my earlier Fancy Pusheen Nails and my Mexican Pusheen Nails as well, if you like that cat as much as I do! 

You can find the post I'm talking about here: Reasons Pusheen loves Fall! Too cute to be true. I used China Glaze - Papaya Punch as my base color, as always when it comes to orange. Everything else is done with acrylic paint and a nail art brush. 

If you're not too sure about my pinky and index finger nails, they're supposed to be leaves, as in the ones that Pusheen is sitting in and eating pie. I left out the pie though, since Pusheen was already sweet enough ;)

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? ;) 

Ozotic - 529 & Sinful Colors - Pearl Harbor

Yay, malware warnings are gone! Sorry about that! I had to remove all my widgets and the blogroll. I think the problem was caused by a link in my blogroll, so I'm not gonna add a new one some time soon. The widgets will be coming back though, as soon as possible! Thank you for bearing with me and I hope you and your blogs are all fine! 

Well then, let's start again with something very pretty.

One coat each of Ozotic - 529 and Sinful Colors - Pearl Harbor over one coat of Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. I was pretty sure those two glitters would look amazing together. Well,  they do, but now that I compare my earlier pictures of 529 with today's result... there's not much of a difference actually. 

The one thing this combination changes is that there's light blue glitter involved as well. As always one coat of Seche Vite on top. 

And a weird bottle pic to give you an impression of what I was actually going for with this layering.