WIC by Herôme - Sapporo

Hi everyone! Today I'm showing you Sapporo, the third polish from the Mystic Japan collection that WIC by Herôme sent to me for review. Sapporo is a medium periwinkle blue shimmer, with a nice formula and application, so two coats was enough for an even finish. The color of this polish was already my cup of tea, but it's that soft shimmer that makes it a unique polish in my stash. Hooray! There's a bit of pink shimmer in there too, though it's only visible in certain lighting. Unfortunately this was not the case in my pictures. But still I liked the idea of a touch of pink, so I decided to use it in my tribal nail art for some bright, neon highlights. Hope you like it! :-)

The W.I.C. Mystic Japan collection will be available in May 2013, in the Herôme online shop for €7.50 per bottle of 0.7ml/0.2 fl.oz., or €12.50 for two. Shipping is worldwide.

WIC by Herôme - Yokohama

WIC by Herôme kindly sent me their new limited collection Mystic Japan for review! I love all the cheerful colors in it, which I'll happily wear when it finally gets more springy here in the Netherlands.

For this post I picked Yokohama to show you. Yokohama is a medium lavender purple creme (less blue than in the pictures), with a very, very subtle shimmer. I applied two smooth coats and the formula was excellent, as was the opacity. As you can see in the first picture, I added some nail art too. I painted half of my nails with Essence Chacalaca and then added a few gold stripes in the middle with Janet #115. Not very Japan I must say, but cute nonetheless and fun to do! :-)

I'll show the other polishes of the Mystic Japan collection individually as well, paired with nail art like today, so there's a little bit more to see than a swatch! ;-) Thanks for reading!

The W.I.C. Mystic Japan collection will be available in May 2013, in the Herôme online shop for €7.50 per bottle of 0.7ml/0.2 fl.oz., or €12.50 for two. Shipping is worldwide.

Lace and Buttons

I keep thinking everything at school will eventually slow down so I can blog more again, but I don't think it ever will! Yikes. Good thing I discovered a couple of old pictures on my memory card, such as today's. ;-) I totally forgot about this mani and I'm happy to have found these pictures again, because I personally think it's so cute! ^_^ The basecolor I used is China Glaze First Mate (probably my favorite navy creme polish) and on top I made a simple lace design and three tiny buttons with a white striper and a dotting tool. Hope you like it!

OPI DS - Glamour

I was going for something plain on my nails, but ended up wearing the most special polish I own: OPI DS Glamour, on top of two coats of Orly Royal Navy. No need to say it's an absolute stunner, look at that! Though it looks even better in real life. I still can't believe how intense the (slightly scattered) holographic finish is, even in the shadow! Sadly this polish is discontinued too, as you might know. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to own it someday. But I must've done something right, because last year I was very lucky to get my hands on one bottle through a swap. (Thank you so much, Viktorija!) It felt like winning the lottery... :3 What's the most special polish that you own?

Rays of Color

Hi guys! My apologies for posting so little lately! I'm so busy with school at the moment, that I haven't been able to work on my next challenge yet. So instead I'll show you this second, slightly different version of my "divergence" mani, that I made some time ago.

The basecolor I used is H&M Deep Deep Water. It's such a simple yet pretty color, and the fact that it covers in one coat makes it even better! On top I made the red part with Essence Wild Thing (an oldie!), and the turquoise tips with Essence Bella. As usually tape was my little helper for those clean edges. ;-) Thanks for stopping by and I hope to see you again soon!

31 Day Challenge, day 26: Inspired by a Pattern

Hello everybody! For today's nails I was inspired by my awesome knitted Pull&Bear sweater. It took me a lot of time to draw the pattern, but I love it so much that I'd be happy to do it again some time. Perhaps only on a few accent nails, then! :-) The red basecolor is Rimmel Riviera Red, and for the triangles I used my trusty striper Ink from China glaze that's actually a dark navy, but mostly looks black, just like the navy on my sweater. ;-)

31 Day Challenge, day 21: Inspired by a Color

Hi everyone! This is day 21 of the 31 Day Challenge and this time I'm supposed to be "inspired by a color". Like many other participants of the challenge I'm a little confused about what exactly is meant by that, so I chose to be inspired by the name of a polish, like fellow blogger Sarah did from Chalkboard Nails (do check out her blog!).

My inspiration, that I just randomly grabbed out of my Helmer, became OPI's Midnight Blue Glitter, pictured below. I instantly liked the name of it and already had an idea of what to make. But instead of using the polish itself for the look, I decided to only use the name as theme, because I really wanted my mani to scream: "BLUE GLITTER!". :3 And although Midnight Blue Glitter does contain beautiful blue (and turquoise and pink) bits here and there, the overall color is clearly charcoal. So I picked OPI Absolutely Alice (on top of Orly Sweet Peacock) to be my blue glitter. Which means my ring finger is indeed symbolizing midnight, with a classical Roman twelve in a clock, freehanded over China Glaze 2030. Hope you like it! :-)

OPI - Midnight Blue Glitter

Foil Water Marble

I'd never thought I'd be able to do, let alone love, water marbling, but here I am with another marbled mani. This time I wanted to do a darker one, using H&M Kiss Goodnight and Orly Sweet Peacock, which is the sparkly blue.
From my last water marbling attempts, I've learned that not every polish is suitable for it, so I wasn't surprised when that was the case with Sweet Peacock. It was hard to draw neat, controlled petals in the polish. But that actually didn't bother me at all, as my nails were left with these beautiful, more natural  swirls of polish instead.
Clean-up, however, was less beautiful! Despite having taped my fingers before dipping them in the polish, it was almost impossible to get them clean. So I took these pictures the day after, when most of the foily shimmer was finally gone after a long and hot shower. ;-) Thanks for stopping by!

31 Day Challenge, day 20: Water Marbled

They say practice makes perfect, and I couldn't agree more. I once tried water marbling just after I started this blog: I looked up a few tutorials, prepared the stuff I needed for it and then failed miserably. "Never again." I thought to myself. But since the technique is included in the 31 Day Challenge, I had no choice but to give it another go. So last week I failed again, and again, and again. And again. But I learned from it. And now I can proudly say I can do it. Weeee!
Things I had the most trouble with were finding the right polishes (some dry too quickly), drawing the designs in the water (maybe from using the wrong polishes) and preventing air bubbles. Though I have to admit I completely forgot to follow tutorials first this time, so I ended up rediscovering some handy things that I vaguely remember from the first time I did it. Clever me! :') Guess I was just too excited to get busy.
The polishes I used for this mani are Sea Spray and Four Leaf Clover, both from China Glaze. They were excellent for water marbling, but next time I'll be experimenting with my stash of too-crappy-for-normal-application-polishes. Because let's face it, water marbling uses up a LOT of polish. Thanks for reading!

Suzi Skittle

As my recent water marbling attempts for day 20 of the 31 Day Challenge weren't exactly succesful, I'll show you this colorful taped skittle from the vault instead. The grey shimmer is OPI Suzi Skis In The Pyrenees Suede. It dries with a matte finish but with some glossy topcoat it looks just as stunning! On top I did a fifty-fifty tape mani by covering up half of the nails with tape and painting the other half with the following polishes:

P2 - Groovy

Etos - #118

Essence - Sending You Kisses

Bourjois - Jaune Cab (#85)

In the meantime I'll practise more water marbling, I really want to be able to nail it! See you nex time!

31 Day Challenge, day 19: Galaxies

Hi readers! Today I have my first galaxy nails to show you. I always get excited when I see them on other blogs, but somehow it took me this long to finally do them myself. Now that I have, I'm really happy with them. Look at all those colors! :-)

I started with two coats of OPI Russian Navy (in the bottle in the second picture you can clearly see the red/pink shimmer I'm so crazy about!) Then I balled up a piece of paper towel to randomly dab on OPI Extravagance and China Glaze DV8. Finally I added a few white dots as stars and a layer of iridiscent glitter with OPI Last Friday Night. That's it! Now this may seem like a lot of steps, but because they don't require much precision this mani is very easy to do. Hooray!

To achieve this galaxy look, I roughly followed the steps of Asami's helpful video tutorial. Asami was one of my blogging idols with her make-up and nail blog Nails By Asami, often featuring cute handpainted cartoon nail art. Unfortunately she quit blogging, but you can still find her old video's on Youtube and a few of her designs on Pinterest.

Thanks for reading!

31 Day Challenge, day 18: Half Moons

Hi everybody! I'm on day 18 of the 31 Day Challenge and today I'd like to show you half moons, something I haven't shared on this blog before. Not surprising given the fact I've only done half moon manis twice so far. Time to change that, because working on it this time reminded me of how fun it is!

With this challenge I also rediscovered my love for OPI Russian Navy. It has that subtle red/pink shimmer which gives this navy polish a nice something extra to look at. I used two coats of it to freehand the half moon gaps and then I filled in the bare gaps with pieces of silver glitter using a dotting tool. I know they're just plain silver glitter, but from a distance I swear they're like little diamonds. Almost like jewellery on my nails and it actually makes me feel a bit posh, haha!

Have you tried half moon manis yet?

Art Deco Sunburst

Closing this year with a big bang, on the nails. :-) Like my last post this mani features elements from Art Deco, a style introduced to me by my father. It took me a while to like it, as I was so in love with and used to the curvy and organic lines of its predecessor Art Nouveau, but now I can't get enough of both. ♥ Deco has these slick and stylized shapes, making it look so grand! It just keeps wowing me everytime.

For the nail art I used the explosion design and a gold striper to freehand the little chevrons. All this on top of two coats of the blue Never On Sunday from Only You (house brand of Ici Paris XL).

Heading off to family to celebrate New Year's Eve now. I wish you all a happy and healthy new year!

Smudges

Remember my animal print post? I'd drawn little animals with a Steadtler permanent marker on a matte polish. Because I wanted to keep the matte finish, I didn't use topcoat over it. Still I wondered what would happen if I did. Well, turns out topcoat doesn't exactly work well with that marker, or does it?

These pictures you're looking at are from my first attempt on the delicate print challenge. I used the same marker on top of Catrice New York and later added topcoat, causing it to smudge like crazy! If you look good, you can still see the letters. But, I actually really liked the smudged effect. It made the letters look a bit graffiti-like. Or like a quick and bad paint job, in a good way, heehee. That's what I love about experimenting: that it can lead you to things you'd never come up with otherwise. What do you think of this smudged mani?

31 Day Challenge, day 14: Flowers

Hi everyone! :-) This is day 14 in the 31 Day Challenge and today's theme is flowers. I have to say the whole mani is a little bit too tacky for me, haha, but being a tad different than most of my manis, I enjoyed working on it very much. I used my trusty cloud design method to draw the petals, first with a black, then with Essence Ultimate Pink. Then I added the blue, diamond-shaped glitters for a bit of contrast. I don't use loose glitters often, but I immediately fell in love with these from Essence, named Shine Like A Star!, which I bought about a year ago. It doesn't show on the pictures, but they're actually holographic, which makes them even more awesome. Can't wait to use them again. :-) Thanks for dropping by!

31 Day Challenge, day 13: Animal Print

Hello readers! For this post I'd like to show you my attempt on challenge 13 of the 31 Day Challenge: a very literal animal print. It was a bit of an experiment as I used other materials besides nail polish: a Staedtler permanent marker and an Edding Deco Marker in white. Once the blue basecolor was dry (nameless polish from Claire's), I freehanded the curious animals on top. The markers seemed to attach well on the matte surface, the polish just needs to be completely dry before you can draw on it.

The animals in this print were supposed to be cats, but with a little imagination they can be any animal you like... Dogs, mice, pigs, ferrets... If you squint your eyes, they can even be the little black soot creatures from Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Oh, yeah, definitely going for the squinting. Love that movie! ♥

31 Day Challenge, day 12: Stripes

Hello readers! It's time for my 12th challenge of the 31 Day Challenge, which is stripes! I super love stripes, they make such an incredibly simple but effective graphic pattern. For this challenge, however, I didn't feel very inspired, so I went for trusty random stripes that I made with a striper polish; Janet #119). The design isn't new on this blog, but in the end I was surprisingly happy with the look. I could just stare all day at these nails, just because of the combination of two different finishes... Oh, well, at least I know some of you guys can appreciate that as well! ;-) The lovely matte basecolor is Orly's Purple Pleather, which I used two to three coats of. Thanks for reading!

31 Day Challenge, day 11: Polka Dots

Hi lovely readers, welcome to day 11 of the 31 Day Challenge: polka dots! I think polka dots are amazing; they automatically make a mani look sweet, plus they look great in almost any color combination. Still I don't wear them often because I'm either too lazy to make them by stamping or with a dotting tool. But I was up for this challenge and decided to use the latter technique. And apart from the weird looking blobs on the pinky, I'm actually quite satisfied with how my dots turned out. :-D Three base colors were used for this skittle, polka mani:

H&M - Wildflower

Essence - Via Airmail!

Essence - Bella

For the silver dots I used Essence Romeo and finally I mattified my look with a matte topcoat from H&M, to make everything somewhat calmer as there was so much going on with the pattern and all the colors.

So how do you feel about polka dots? :-)

'80s Accent Nail

Hi guys! After a day I decided to change the accent nail of my previous mani. Not because I didn't like it anymore, but because I just needed to play with my polish again (like a little girl with her dolls, haha). I went for the abstract '80s pattern that I showed you earlier this year in this post. It's so much fun to watch a new shape appear where the pink and mint green overlap. :3 I used OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui for the basecolor and Color Club Warhol and Orly Ancient Jade for the shapes on top. (The pink is Essence Sending You Kisses.)
Many of you had asked for a tutorial for this design, so I took this opportunity to finally make one. :-) It's coming!

31 Day Challenge, day 9: Rainbow

Day 9! This time the challenge was to make rainbow nails. I was looking really forward to this challenge, even though I knew it was going to be challenging indeed. In the end I came up with this very simple look with colored strokes. Basically I used the technique I also use to make my cloud manis, only using a different color with each stroke. I really like the end result, all the colors together make me so happy! Maybe also because they remind me of a box full colored pencils. :3

If you like this look, I hope you try it out yourself too. It's a quite easy way to create that oh-so-lovely rainbow effect. ^^ Thanks for reading!

Polishes I used over China Glaze Snow:
Essence - Beauty On Tour
H&M - Peach Me Soon
Color Club - Almost Famous
Catrice - ACid DC
Safari - #100
Essence - Via Airmail!
China Glaze - Gothic Lolita
Essence - Sending You Kisses