essence - forget-me-not plus glitter

Hi everyone!

Remember when I wrote that my router died and I didn't have any access to the internet? That's when I was going through my pictures and worked on a few of my oldies to finally publish them. Today, I want to show you one of those manicures... basically from the vault, because I don't even remember when I did this manicure. March, maybe?

Anyway, I remember that I picked a polish from my growing stash of untrieds: essence forget-me-not from last year's spring collection. At first I wasn't very fond of the collection, except for the yellow (love it!), but I ended up getting the whole collection later on. Around Christmas I also bought a lot of glitters that were just as "untried". So here's a combination of forget-me-not with an iridiscent glitter.

The glitter is basically white but depending on the light it looks lilac or teal. I though why not try it over a purple polish. The pictures actually don't do it any justice. It looked awesome, though I have to practice the application of loose glitters like that. My pinky got a bit overloaded, hehe.

I remember that this mani made me think of mermaids a lot. Probably because the glitters looked like fish scales. I need to see if these glitters are melting in polish or not. They might be nice to franken.

And one more... a somewhat unfocused close-up, just because it looked so sparkly.

That's it for today~

Spring Challenge 7: Glitter Tips

So I finally got around to write a new blog post... I don't know where time is running of to lately... I never would have guessed that taking care of six bunny babies would be this exhausting. We are doing it for about two and a half weeks now. Which means, two and a half weeks of planning every day around the bunny babies feeding schedule. I still got my job to do as well, so as much as I love doing nail art, I just couldn't find enough time. So today's manicure is actually from April 30. That's when I felt like spending time on nail art the last time...

And yet, it's not even real nail art, in my opinion. I just layered polishes. This kind of mani works well with the feedings, because I could just pause inbetween.

Anyway, I had a lot of ideas for this one and actually did another one before it. I'm going to show it at the bottom of this post. I'm just not really proud of it, haha. For some reason, thinking of "glitter tips" made me think about candy too, so I decided to do something pink and glittery. Also, I decided to take "tips" as my whole nails, not just the tips of my nails. It was just easier that way.

indirect daylight

shade

direct sunlight

The materials I used include
- essie Marshmallow, 2 coats
- Canmake 05, 1 coat
- essence Candy Kiss, 1 coat on half of each nails
- essence Space Queen, 1 coat on top of Candy Kiss
- BW Anc 591C, 2 coats on the tips only
- Kleancolor Aurora, 1 coat

I finally used Aurora... I had it on my desk for a while now and always wanted to use it, but I never did... I love the little stars in there. I just wish they were a bit more flat. If you enlarge the pictures, you can tell that they are bent... My beloved essence BTGN Top Sealer took care of that, but still, I think it would look even better. Also, I noticed that my favorite glitters tend to be Japanese polishes. I only used two for this mani, but I was pondering to use another Japanese one instead of Space Queen. I have been neglecting the latter though.

It was very sparcle-licious! I felt like sprung right out of a princess movie for little girls. The whole mani was incredibly thick on my tips and due to that reason, didn't last very long. It didn't chip or anything, but the tip wear was just very visible, if you know what I mean. You could even tell the layers apart. I found that funny though.

And finally, my first attempt on the glitter tips. I decided to re-do the theme because it's just not meant for spring. I loved the look, but the colors are too dark. I only wore it for a day. And those glitters were a pain to remove! The princess mani was nothing compared to this beast, even though there was twice the amount of glitters to remove.

For this one, I used p2 rich, mattified it and then applied the glitter, OPI Sparcle-licious, on the tips. I tried to do a drip mani here. I'm glad I took pictures right after finishing it. When it was completely dry, it looked only half as good!

Gilded Cherry Blossoms

A few days ago, I decided on a nail design that was actually not part of the Spring Challenge. I just had to do a cherry blossoms design. I love cherry blossoms so much and their time for this year is almost over. So I decided to do this instead of the next Spring Challenge theme.

Also, I decided to enter a nail art contest with this one. If you like it, I would be more than happy if you would head over to Mada from Happy Nails and vote for my design. It's Number 8, btw.

First of all, the picture I sent to Mada to enter her contest.

Instead of a classic pink and white design, I decided to use one of my newly bought polishes, essence Mojito Green, as my base color. Then I applied this beautiful gold glitter polish I bought in Japan. I wish the glitter was a bit more dense, but it's meant to create a gradient, so I guess it's fine. Using white and pink acrylics, I painted my flowers. At first, I attempted to do them using the one stroke technique, but that didn't work as I wanted it to. (Hence the weird flower on my ring finger) After one coat of essence Better Than Gel Nails Top Sealer, I applied some microbeads in the center of the flowers.

I took the above picture before the second coat of top sealer, because I anticipated that they would start bleeding again... Well, they did. But this time, I actually liked the effect. It's like subtle yellowish gradient around them that blends quite well into the pink.

This is a picture of my right hand. I just thought it turned out quite pretty as well, so I took some pictures. I'm slowly getting better at painting with my left hand. This, too, was taken before the second coat of top sealer.

Only sad thing was the weather. All rainy and dark, so I didn't get a chance to take color accurate pictures. Both pictures above were taken under my desk light.

But! This very morning it's sunny outside! And actually super hot already. So here's a picture under sunlight. Excuse the tip wear please, as this was taken on day 4!

Mojito Green appears a little bit to light in this picture. Just imagine it a little more intense and that's what it really looks like. Very pretty color in my opinion. I'll show some proper swatches soon.

Ok, of to work now~ Have a great weekend!

Spring Challenge 3: Glitter Sammy

Theme Nr. 3 of our Spring Themed Manicure Challenge is creating a glitter sandwich. I haven't done one in a while, so I was really looking forward to this theme. I just didn't think I'd do Theme 3 so fast. But... I didn't like my ladybugs so much, so here is my glitter sammy...

I really love blue glitter sandwiches... but since I have done one before and I knew that Hannah would also do a blue sammy, I thought about what to do about that. When I do a blue glitter sandwich, I always have to think of a starry night sky. So to me it was obvious to think about a variation of that theme.

What I came up with might not even be a real glitter sandwich, but it was fun to try and I love how it turned out.

I tried to do a very early sunrise mani here. So first I sponged my sunrise using a yellow polish that I watered down using some clear polish, a light turquoise and my two favorite blue jellys. This turned out okay, but I had to sponge twice. Otherwise, the colors would be too light. On top, I applied a generous layer of a silver holo glitter polish from Japan. Man, that one got really thick over the years. I really need to finish that bottle soon! On top of the layer of glitter polish, I applied a coat of a light blue jelly that I mixed myself using clear polish and a baby blue. My "sunrise" became a little foggy that way, but fog is something we have here a lot lately around sunrise.

The placement of the glitter could have been better on pinky and pointer, but all in all, I'm quite satisfied with my glitter sammy. Can you see the belt of Orion!? xD

What do you think? Does this still qualify as a glitter sammy? The jelly polishes loose some of their "squishy" jelly qualities when spongend, so it doesn't have as much depth as before...

The next theme is going to be April Showers. Hm... need some inspiration here. Since I like my current mani quite a lot, I'll have a few days to think about it~

Please take a look at the other girls' manis. Here's a list of who has completed Theme 3 so far:

Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More!
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish 
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine at Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Hannah from Polished Prisms
Sarah from All This Polish
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails

Girly-Girl Nail Art Challenge: Day 2, Gimme That Bling

Yay~ finally done! I had sooo many ideas for today's mani and a  really hard time to decide on what I wanted to do in the end... Well, here it is:

This is actually the first time I worked with loose glitter. What a mess! It's a really nice pink holo glitter and I wanted to use this for a while. I just painted my nails with a clear polish and applied the glitter while it was still wet by pouring it out of its little tube. It's a very hungry glitter that needed 3 coats of topcoat to be smooth. But it's so sparkly! The pictures do this sparkling no justice, honestly!

On the other nails I did a check pattern using essence Purple Cherry, essence Wanna Kiss?, Manhattan 51K and some white acrylic paint. And some more glitter of course.

I took all of my pictures under simple lamplight. They are not really color accurate... a little bit too pink. I hope the sun will be out tomorrow. I'd love to try catching the sparkliness on a few more pictures. I really can't wait for summer to come. The pictures turn out soooo much better.

And lastly for Jenny... some penguins :D I did this before taking off my previous manicure!

Ah, almost forgot out growing list of participants! Make sure to check out the other girl's blogs. They did some really nice blingy manicures! <3

Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog

Ashley of Follow The Yellow Polish Road

Stephanie of A Little Polish

Kelly of DevilishPolish

Jodi of Captivating Claws

Danielle of Lacquer Lover

Elly of Polishable

Olivia of Unprofessional Nails

Kate of This Charming Kate

Bethany of  A Plethora of Nails

Lizzy of The Do It Yourself Lady

Eugenia of Talon-ted

Amanda of Nox Nails

Ashley of Smashley Sparkles

Sarah of See Sarah Swatch

Emily of The Lacquerologist

Jess of LuvMyLacquer

Tressa of O' Natur Nail

ChiChi of I'm just me...ChiChi 

CR of Color Me Silly

Amanda of Berry Polished 

Robin, Erin, and Anna of Polished Cousins

Bonny of Over Stuffed 

Taylor of REJOICE! 

Jess of Nearly Natural Nails 

OPI Jade is the new Black glitterified

The same day I bought the Color Club Foil Set, I also stumbled upon a few OPI polishes on sale. I got me some shades and the first I decided to wear is Jade is the new Black.

It's a beautiful green shade leaning towards blue. It applied well, but for some reason I experienced some shrinkage. Well, that didn't bother me much, because I had decided to finally use my other Claire's glitter polish. I have it in my collection for several month and never used it - even though it's so pretty. But I thought it would look pretty over JitnB - and it does! But I failed miserably at taking pictures. Only one turned out well enough... :(

The Claire's polish doesn't have a name, sadly, but it seems that most don't. The polish I used here consists of a clear base filled with large hex glitters in gold, pale green and pale pink, as well as tiny hex glitters in the same colors. So pretty. I think, price per ml-wise, this is one of the most expensive polishes I own... 4€ for a small Claire's bottle... but I had to get it!

And some pictures of Jade is the new Black on its own~

I really like this shade... I'm glad I got it. Can't say no to an OPI polish at 3€, tehehe.

My Christmas mani

On the last day of the Christmas holidays here in Germany, I want to show my Christmas manicure that I have been wearing on the 24th and the 25th. Yep, I already changed it. (Too much inspiration these days)

I bought myself a new dress on the 23rd and decided that I would wear it on Christmas Eve, the big holiday here in Germany. I only celebrated with my parents, sisters and grandparents, but I still felt like dressing up a little. The dress is white and taupish satin, so I had to think of a new design. But since I was running out of time, it's just a layering of some glitter polishes. I still liked the outcome a lot though. It really matched the dress.

Here's what I used:

* Microcell 2000 Nail Repair (base)
* Catrice Be my Millionaire
* Canmake 05
* Canmake 70
* essence BTGN Top Sealer

All polishes I haven't used in ages! Be my Millionaire is among my first Catrice polishes, but well, my collection started growing exponentially and I never got around to wear it again. Same goes for the glitters. Canmake is a Japanese brand, by the way.

Be my Millionaire on its own. To sum it up: beautiful color, but streaky as hell! I doubt I will ever wear this one solo! This is two coats which applied effortlessly and dried quite quickly, too.

Doesn't this one look like I mattified it?

One coat of each of the glitters on top and then finished with one coat of BTGN Top Sealer. It looked really pretty and sparkly. Canmake and the Top Sealer don't like each other apparently. Even though it dried for several hours, I still got sheet marks on my tips where I applied the glitters. Meh.

Nail (Art) Collage

Hm, this is the first time I'm doing a collage of different nail designs I have been wearing at some point. I did this, because I feel that most of these are not nice enough that I want to write a whole post for them... some, I just didn't have pictures that I would want to post. So here are six manis I have been wearing in the last ~6 weeks that didn't pass my "single blog post requirements", haha.

• The two in the top row are basically the same mani. I just added one of the new p2 crackles (red volcano) on top. because I thought it would look nice together. It did, but when I edited the pictures, I just didn't dig the crackle anymore. I still wish they would make red volcano a regular non-crackle polish. The brown is a very beautiful shade though.
• Next is a tape mani. It was a lot of work (for me) but somehow... I didn't like the result.
• Followed by a stamped mani. This is China Glaze GR8 with a stamped bamboo pattern. Somehow, it looked weird. Like some failed crackle mani.
• Next is essence Gold Old Buffy from the Vampire Love LE. I love this polish, but my pictures were all weird. I will wear this again soon enough. I will try to take better pictures.
• I really wanted to do this violett-to-silver gradient. But the polishes I chose wouldn't blend properly. Also, for the first time I experienced extensive top coat shrinkage which ruined my pictures. It wasn't noticeable from a normal distance though. I only noticed on the pictures.

What do you think? Would you have posted even one of those in a single post?

Also, I'm looking for a nice rather dark blueish violett creme polish. Suggestions?

essence - The Dawn Is Broken (Vampire Love LE)

Today I want to show you one of the two polishes I got from the current essence LE called Vampire Love. There's five nail polishes, but (so far) I only got two.

04 the dawn is broken / 01 gold old buffy

Those two seemed to be the most unusual colors to me - not necessarily the most beautiful. :) I actually wore 01 gold old buffy the night I bought it, but the color is really hard to photograph for me... I don't now, but my camera doesn't like dark colors at all. The missing daylight lately makes it even worse.

Anyway, here is 04 the dawn is broken. It's a weird color and hard to describe. It's grey, but it has a somewhat silvery-beige shimmer to it, as well as violettish dots. Those dots give it its weird gritty feel too, but luckily that disappears with top coat. I actually really like this color. It applies okay, you could even get away with one thick coat, but two thin coats look a lot better!

I added one layer of Blair from the essence Nail Art Twins to it and mattified it afterwards. This is the first time I mattified glitter xD It looked very pretty, but I was not careful again and managed to smudge my left middle finger twice. Thus... a rare picture of my right hand:

But since there was some sunlight the next day, I ended up taking some more pictures and most of them of my left hand with... well, ignore the dent...

What do you think of this color? Did you get some of the Vampire Love polishes?
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Glitter Sandwich in Red

Since I finally found a few jelly polishes here in Germany, I had to try more of those sandwiches, that I got to love so much... especially while the weather was nice and a jelly could really glow!

One of my newest jellies is essence - Call it Fame from the now discontinued multi dimension series. It's a really nice bright red. Red is a color I haven't really been wearing so far. I own a few reds, but none as bright as this one. I prefered darker red shades. But Call it Fame really screamed 'buy me', so I bought it, haha. I got it while the essence polishes were on sale.

 

The first two pictures show the polish in direct sunlight, the latter at the window in my room.
 As much as I avoided bright reds so far, I love this one! I wasn't really bothering with clean up here, because I would be layering anyway :D

This time I actually remembered taking pictures before layering ^^; But that was partly due to me being stunned by this beautiful red...

Anyway, I still wanted to do my glitter sandwich. I decided on essence - make it golden, the new golden glitter polish and essence - 04 carrie, a pink glitter topper from the nail art twins that has been discontinued as well. Finally, I finished my sandwich with one coat of OPI - Y'all Come Back Ya Hear? - I really love this one. I love orange polishes :D

It's kind of busy looking, but I like it. My sister hated it. She kept being noisy all week while I was wearing this. I basically like the combination, but I'm not sure I like the fine golden glitter in make it golden. I might have to buy another gold glitter that's not too golden, when you know what I mean.

Hm, I think I might have liked this with my dress today. ^^

What do you think? Do you wear bright reds like these?

And again a Glitter Sandwich

A few weeks ago, my friend went to the USA to visit her boyfriend. I was really lucky that she offered to bring me some stuff. So I ordered a few things and had them sent to her boyfriend's place. When she returned, she brought me a lot of nice polishes. Among them two of the jelly polishes from the OPI Texas Collection.

Well, I immediately had to try a glitter sandwich with them. Basically, I ordered these polishes specifically to try a glitter sandwich, hehe.

This is one coat OPI - Guy meets Gal-veston, topped with one coat of OPI - Teenage Dream. I finished it with another coat of Guy meets Gal-veston. Top Coat is essence BTGN Top Sealer.

I loved how juicy it was looking. Sadly, I only had the chance to take pictures in the sunlight after a few days of wear, which explains the tip wear. I was very pleased with this combo. ♥

From the color in the bottle I didn't expect the OPI jelly to be so pink though. But I love it! I'm pretty sure, I'll even wear this exact combo again.

Hah, jelly sandwich mission accomplished! :D

Under the sea

Lately I'm really in love with green and teal shades. Basically, I'm in love with them since I won Sarah's giveaway that contained two awesome shades by models own. Looking at them I had this idea of an aquatic design. It took me a while to get around doing it, but I was really satisfied when I finally finished it. Especially because it was the first time in a few weeks that I actually did some nail art.

I have this habit of painting my nails so it looks right for me... but it always turns out to be hard to photograph in the end. So, I rotated this picture...

I used both the teal shades I got from Sarah, as well as every single teal and green shade I own. I first painted my nails with the darker of the two models own polishes (Slate Green) and then sponged the other colors on. That was the point when I first realized that the design I had in mind couldn't be done with the polishes I have. The difference of the shades is just not big enough to really pop. I imagined a nice sponged background and then stamp it with the metallic blue, green and silver shades I have. Like layering them. But well, won't do. So I decided on doing what I could and make it pop using glitter. Luckily, I had some blue and silver glitter sitting around as well as the holo polishes from Tera, that I also used in the end.

It doesn't look like what I wanted to do, but I still loved it. It was all sparkly, shiny and glossy. I'm satisfied with it because the colors are harmonizing. It was also very fun to do.

One thing I noticed: I barely had any tip wear even after one week of having this design on my nails. It could either be that models own polishes and my nails get along. On the other hand, I'm currently trying to get my nails in a more or less square shape. So maybe the new shape doesn't cause me so much tip wear while working. Please ignore my index finger nail though... couldn't get it into square shape that day :D

I wish there was some sun... those are all indoor pictures and none of them really show how pretty it was. :S