Outlined Watercolor Nails + Watercolor Video Tutorial

Today's design started out as another attempt to make the most of the Essie Neons and they ended up as outlined Watercolor Nails. First I used two coats of Essie - Blanc to create an even, thick base for my watercoloring. Then I used Essie - Bottle Service and Essie - DJ Play That Song to create the watercolor nails. I filmed the process on one nail, so there's a short tutorial in the middle of this post!

I wanted to wear them like this first so I added one coat of BTGN Top Sealer. Somehow I managed to get a lot of tip wear in just a day, so that's why I used the technique of outlining once again, hoping to get better results this time. And I really like them so much more on round nails! And with a thinner line. Success! :) I used white acrylic paint and then another coat of BTGN Top Sealer to finish.

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.

Shimmer Polish: Liana, Jasmine, Cristina, Tammy, Alice

A few weeks ago Cindy from Shimmer Polish sent me 10 beautiful glittering bottles to review. I finally had time so start swatching and today I will show you the first five polishes, including Liana, Jasmine, Cristina, Tammy and Alice. All of the polishes are named after Cindy's friends, which is such a sweet idea! They come in bottles of 15 ml and are sold for 12 $ each at her Etsy store. You could even personalize a polish's name and color yourself for 15 $. Some of the colors are also available on Harlow & Co. Make sure to click on the pictures for an extra dose of glitter. This post contains three pictures per polish, so you can see more after the jump! 

Essie - Naughty Nautical Collection (Summer 2013)

Today I will show you another one of the 2013 collections from Essie. Essie Switzerland sent me five of  six shades of the Naughty Nautical Collection for this summer and since I think this one is not in stores yet, I decided to swatch these next. The shade missing is a dark turquoise called Naughty Nautical and I'm pretty sure it would have been my favorite! First off, I wouldn't have picked up any of these shades in stores, because they do look quite boring. Seeing them on my nails I changed my mind about some of them. They all have some silver shimmer in it, which is visible on the nails, except for The More The Merrier which is a light green cream color. I used two coats with every color and Essence - BTGN Top Sealer as my top coat. Make sure to click on the images to see the shimmer! The formula was alright for every shade, but they were a bit thin sometimes, so you need to be careful with application or use three coats. The Girls Are Out has a normal formula though. My favorite color is Sunday Funday, a coral-pink with a hint of neon which was quite difficult to photograph. 

Essie - The Girls Are Out

Essie - Full Steam Ahead

Essie - Rock The Boat

Essie - Sunday Funday

Essie - The More The Merrier

Essie - Madison Ave-hue Collection 2013 + Watercolor Nails

Essie sent me the complete Madison Ave-hue collection and I will show you two pictures for each shade. I used two coats for each color except for Hip-anema which only needed one coat to be opaque. The formula was alright for all of them, except for Go Ginza which was a bit thicker. But it is a very light color, so I'm used to pastel colors being difficult to work with. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN Top Sealer for each color. I used my favorite colors in this collection to do some watercolor nails and included the pictures at the end of this post. Enjoy!

Essie - Avenue Maintain

Essie - Bond With Whomever

Essie - Go Ginza

Essie - Hip-anema

(1 coat)

Essie - Madison Ave-hue

Essie - Maximillian Strasse Her

Watercolor Nails 

Go Ginza, Avenue Maintain, Bond With Whomever & Maximillian Strasse Her

Deadly Sins Challenge - Day 1: Lust (Aztec Nails)

I'm really excited today, because I was asked to participate in my first ever nail art challenge! Helena from Nail Wish and Alice from One Nail To Rule Them All decided to create a challenge on the subject of the Seven Deadly Sins, two days for each sin and one sin per week. I will try to do both days every week! Click on the picture to see a list of all the days:

Illustrations by: dahlig

Today is Day 1 (Lust) and the theme says: Be a bad girl and make something you have wanted to do soo badly. This probably doesn't make me a very bad girl, but I wanted to do an aztec design, inspired by this beautiful manicure by Coewlesspolish, for a long time now. Mine was also inspired by my new favorite jumper from C&A Clockhouse. I used two coats of Essence - Got A Secret as my base color and then painted the patterns with acrylic paint, which took me forever. Then I added two coats of Essie - Let It Shine, went to sleep, woke up with marks all over my design and added one coat of Essie - Good To Go to even the surface.

Besides the awesome theme there's another reason for my excitement: the other ladies participating in this challenge are amazing nail artists! You can see their designs below and come back at the end of this week to see the complete first part of the challenge:

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. 

Golden Studs feat. Essie - Angora Cardi + Born Pretty Store Giveaway

I fell in love with this stud arrangement by Pinpoint Polish as soon as I saw it on The Nailasaurus last December. It looks so pretty and makes the studs stand out even more! I didn't try it myself until today, because the square studs I had were to big for the arrangement on my nails. But I got a small bag of 2mm golden square studs from Born Pretty Store a few days ago and this design was the first thing I thought of. I used two coats of Essie - Angora Cardi as my base color and then added the square plus round golden studs. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go.

You can use my coupon code DEL91 to get 10% off at Born Pretty Store. Also Born Pretty Store offered to sponsor a giveaway for my blog. You can win a 20$ voucher for their online shop! I would like this to be a gift for my lovely readers, so please don't join if you're only here for the giveaway! There are two mandatory things to do: Tell me what you would buy with the voucher and why. Plus you have to like the Facebook page of Born Pretty Store. You can like my page for one optional entry. The giveaway is open for all international readers of Spektor's Nails and ends on Friday 26th of April 2013 at 12am (GMT+01:00). Various entries by the same person will be disqualified. The winner will be chosen randomly by Rafflecopter, contacted via E-Mail and has one week to respond. Good Luck! :)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Watercolor Nails

Feeling the urge of trying something new, I decided to go for watercolor nail art. This is a technique which is (from what I've seen on Youtube) very popular in classical nail art. It is done with watercolors and can only be painted on a base of acrylic paint or roughened nail polish. I tried this design twice: At first I used a base of white acrylic paint. But soon after finishing the design, it fell off in pieces, because water has reached under my top coat. I'd recommend using the acrylic base only for small watercolor designs and not for a full nail coverage. Update: The same happened with my second technique, so the problem seems to be somewhere else... After that I used two coats of Essie - Marshmallow and one coat of Essie - Good To Go and let it all dry. Then I used a buffing file to roughen the surface and painted on my design with watercolor. On top I used another coat of Essie - Good To Go. I'm aware that this is far from the beautiful watercolor flowers and patterns that are done in classical nail art. But still I'm really happy with my first try and it looks quite fancy from a little distance. :)

What do you think about using watercolor for nail art? 

Dance Legend: Sahara Crystal - #16 Amethyst

For today I have the last one of my four Sahara Crystal polishes by Dance Legend. After that I will continue with one post about a flakie top coat and a combined post about three glitter polishes. I think it is time to do some nail art again and I have a lot of other stuff to show you as well! So this one is called Dance Legend - Amethyst, a purple with pink glitter. I used two coats and again the formula wasn't great. This one chipped really fast. After a day, there were big parts missing already. I can't really tell if this is due to the quality of Dance Legend or if it is characteristic for liquid sand polishes.

 

Dance Legend will soon be available online with worldwide shipping. You can like their Facebook page to be up to date on the opening of their online shop! Dance Legend Sahara Crystal polishes are sold for 9$, shipping is 10$ or free if you order more than 10 bottles. If you don't want to wait to place your order, you can do it via E-Mail.