Cut Out & Striped Nail Art

I've always been a bit reluctant to do cut out nail art since it either didn't look too good with stained nails or I didn't like the visible half moon of my natural nails. I decided to try again and kind of find a way around it by covering those two parts of the nail. What I love about this design that you can start to add striping tape onto the bare nails, which means you don't have to wait around for the base color to dry. So that's what I did, using my self-made striping tape kit and the 2 mm size tape. For the colors I chose Wet'n'Wild - Black Creme, KIKO - #389 Mint Milk & #295 Cerulean Blue and Essie - Peach Daiquiri. On top is one coat of Sally Hansen - Insta-Dri. I especially love the pinkie, middle and thumb nails and this is definitely something I keep on my list of designs to do again. 

Rainbow Flakies

If you follow me on Instagram you might have already seen this one, since I couldn't resist posting it early. I used one coat of Wet N Wild - Black Creme as by base color and then added two flakie top coats over the nails. First is Kleancolor - Chunky Holo Black and second is Sinful Colors - Green Ocean. If you're a long-time follower you saw this exact combination in June 2012! :) 

Water Spotted Neon Candy Nails

I felt like doing some really colorful nail art the other day and this is what I came up with. I picked a few lovely neon polishes and created random gradients with a sponge on each nail. For this first step I used Essie - Boom Boom Room, Bottle Servive, DJ Play That Song and China Glaze - Highlight Of My Summer. To complete the design I thought about doing a water spotted pattern on top using first Layla - Metal Chrome and then Wet n Wild - Black Crème. To see how I create the water spotted effect, check out my recent tutorial. I think it turned out really cute and I loved wearing this design! On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss. 

Black Polka Dot Nails

Surprise, I did exactly the same thing in black! :) I like this on short nails as well, it's different but still pretty cool. I used Wet'n'Wild - Black Creme, my new go-to black and a dotting tool. On top is one coat of Essence - BTGN High Gloss.

My Favorite Christmas Nail Polishes

Today I want to show you my most favorite nail polishes for Christmas. Maybe you've already seen most of them, but I wanted to gather them all in one post so you might find some inspiration for the holidays. Of course there's a lot of glitter and a lot of red. I've included two swatches of each polish and I will add the number of coats used in brackets, so the post will not be too messy. On top is always one coat of Essence BTGN Top Sealer. Click on the pictures for a better view! Alright, let's do this! 

China Glaze - Holly-Day (2) + China Glaze - Party Hearty (1)

China Glaze - Ruby Pumps (2)

Catrice - Star Of The Show (3)

Essie - Leading Lady (2)

Wet 'N' Wild - Rockin' Rubies (2)

BeYu - 334 (2)

 

Essence - Time For Romance (2) 

  

 Does this in any kind match with your favorite Christmas polishes? Which one is going to be on your nails for Christmas?

Golden Leopard

Today's nails are once again Pinterest inspired. I found this Pin and I think this has to be an advertisement for nail stickers since I wouldn't know how to create such perfect golden nails otherwise. So I really dislike nail stickers because they never fit and always peel off very quickly. But I do love that Leopard look! So I decided to do it with nail polish. I used two coats of Lancome - 012 which is my best golden nail polish concerning the color. Application is not that great, it doesn't really dry and it leaves ugly brush strokes on the nail. But where are those strokes now? I found a very useful tip on Polish Art Addiction on how to avoid brush strokes with metallic colors. You just sponge the last coat of color with a simple kitchen sponge. It won't be perfect but it looks way better than without the sponging. And in addition it gave a very pretty pattern to my gold so I decided to wear this as it is for a day. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go.

But then I wanted to do the Leopard nonetheless. I added spots with China Glaze - Cheers To You and the lines with Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. First I did it just like in the picture with my ring finger and thumb nail in pure gold. But I didn't like that as much as I liked it in the picture so I painted all my nails with the Leopard pattern. On top is another coat of Good To Go. 

Have a nice weekend! 

Halloween Stamping: Scream

This is one of my favorite stamping designs on my Dashica Big Sdp D plate and it fits perfectly for Halloween. I wasn't sure about my color choice first and I tried a few with orange and purple, pink and black etc. but then I decided that a simple black and white would fit best for this design. I started with three coats of Essie - Blanc to get a very opaque base for my stamping. Then I added one coat of Essie - Good To Go to let it dry completely and to protect my base in case something went wrong with the stamping. After that I used Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme and the above-mentioned design to create the scary faces on my base. On top is one coat of Essence BTGN Top Sealer. 

I'm planning on doing two more Halloween designs this year, one tomorrow and one on Wednesday. I can tell you that Pusheen will be involved once again and hopefully some pretty water decals I ordered on Ebay. I really hope they will be here in time! After that I'm done with Halloween and will move on to snowflakes, reindeers and Co! Since we already had our first snowfall here I think that moving on to winter will be fine ;) 

Leopard Ruffian meets Denim Jacket / Nail Art inspired by Fashion

Usually I don't care much about fashion and I mostly wear black clothes anyway. I run free in my nail art and I think that is enough ;) But recently I stumbled upon this pretty jacket on Pinterest and it inspired me to do my nails. Sadly I don't know the original source and I couldn't find it with Google so if you know the owner, please let me know! I decided to wear the jacket as Ruffian Nails because it is the easy way. So I did a base color resembling the light denim cloth with China Glaze - Sea Spray, China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint and Essie Blanc, using the sponging technique. On top I created the ruffian with two coats of Essence - Iced Latte and then started to do the leopard design with China Glaze - Foie Gras and Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. On top is once coat of Essie - Good To Go, as well as between the denim base and the leopard design.

Don't forget to vote for my Essie Girls design, you can vote every day until Friday and I'm delighted about every single vote! I promise I will go easy on the begging after this contest, but this time it is really important and I know I can count on my readers ;) Thank you so much!

http://www.facebook.com/essieSwitzerland/app_260985374013280

Black & Green Glitter Arc

Remember the glitter supplies I got some time ago? I did some skittle nails with them, but I didn't wear this design for too long since it wasn't very durable. I chose green and black as my base colors and added two coats of Catrice - Run Forest Run plus two coats of Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. Then I added small green hexagon glitters on the black base and black glitters on my green base. On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. Sadly the glitters started to fall off after 2-3 hours. It might be possible that I didn't push them strongly enough into the wet polish or maybe two coats of top coat would have been better to seal the glitter. I definitely need to experiment some more with glitter nails! 

Thanks for reading!

Nude, White & Black Stripes

For today some simple stripes with some simple colors. 

I used two coats of Essie - Blanc and then started doing the stripes with a nail art brush. First I applied the lighter color: Essence - Iced Latte and then the black stripes with Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. 

I still need to work on my freehand skills and stripes are a great way of learning how to use the brush. I've made the experience that the stripes look best when the whole brush touches the nail and I pull it fast from one side to the other. It is still a little shaky though, so I will continue practicing!

On top is one coat of Essie - Good To Go. 

Color Frazzles

What I had in mind starting this design were some very colorful Aztec Nails. I prepared various decals the day before on a plastic bag and let them dry over night. My plan was to cut them into triangles and other shapes and then stick it onto a black and white base to create Aztec Nails 'the easy way'. 

As soon as I started to peel the decals off the plastic, they broke into pieces. So I decided to stick them on anyway since I had already done my base with two coats of Essie - Blanc and some stripes with Wet 'n' Wild - Black Creme. I peeled off all the decals and shaped them into tiny pieces with tweezers. Then I added one coat of clear nail polish and placed them onto the nails one by one. 

The colors I used for the decals are Essence - Bienvenido A Miami (Yellow), Essence - Naughty And Pink, Essence - Wake Up (Orange), Catrice - Run Forest Run (Green) and Essence - Walk On Air (Blue). Sadly most of them weren't opaque over black so I tried to place them mainly onto the white base. 

There is one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat on top. I experienced some bubbling on a few nails, probably because I applied too much of the clear polish underneath. Apart from that it worked quite good with the decals even if I wanted to shape them into triangles first. Maybe I let them dry for too long so they weren't soft enough for cutting in shapes. It probably would have worked with a shorter drying time. 

Pretty Little Liars - Jenna Nail Art - Polka Dots & Ruffian

Are you a fan of Pretty Little Liars? On this week's episode I spotted some nail art on Jenna's nails, in the scene where she ate cherries in front of the school. I couldn't completely see her design but I figured it would look something like a pink ruffian with polka dots. I decided to recreate it for my blog, because it really caught my eye. 

I started with two coats of pastel rose China Glaze - Something Sweet. Then I freehanded the curve with one coat of Wet 'N' Wild - Black Crème which worked really good. After that, my most dreaded nail art technique, polka dots! I almost never succeed at dots with the same size on each nail. But at least I was able to place them in a regular pattern onto my nails. For the dots I used Essie - Blanc. 

On top there is one coat of Revlon Quick Dry Top Coat which smudged a tiny spot on my index finger nail. 

This was not the first time that I've seen something pretty on Pretty Little Liars and they do have some fancy nail art designs sometimes. So I'll keep my eyes open for the next one to come along, hopefully not on Jenna's nails since actually I can't stand her. 

What's your trick to create equal polka dots on each nail? 

Lightning Nails

So today's nails are inspired by the Lightning Storm Nails from Justtryinyournail. I've seen the lightning nails and I thought there's no way those are freehanded... well, they are! And I had to do them as well. So I just gave it a try. You can find her tutorial on how to do these here. 

I used the following colors:

Essence - Midnight Date

Essence - Passion For Fashion
Essie - Too Too Hot

Wet 'n' Wild - Back Alley Deals

Essie - Blanc

I'm not too happy with my result though and I think I'm going to re-do them, now that I have found the tutorial.