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 - Shizuoka

From top to bottom: WIC Shizuoka, Nagoya and Yokohama, and P2 Artful on the right.

Hi everybody! Today I want to share this easy-peasy nail art with you, that I made with a couple of new  WIC by Herôme shades from the Mystic Japan collection. The pink basecolor is called Shizuoka, a typical Barbie pink with a subtle shimmer. I noticed this polish caused dragging sometimes, but fortunately a thicker second or third coat was able to fix that.

I made the nail art by painting a few partly overlapping strokes in different colors. Simple as that! A nice bonus is you don't need extra tools for this, as you can just use the brush that the polish comes with. Hope you'll give it a try too! Goodnight. ^_^

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!

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 25: Inspired by Fashion

Hi everyone! :-) Today's nails were kind of an experiment. When I saw this super cute Modcloth dress, I couldn't wait to capture the edgy neckline with the starry mesh fabric on a semibare accent nail. I used an image plate (that I bought here) to stamp the star pattern, and later I added the rest with the help of tape for nice and crisp lines. It didn't turn out as awesome as I hoped it would though, the stars made the sharp edges of the 'neckline' fade a bit. So next time I try this, I'll probably leave out the stars. What do you guys think about my fashion-inspired nails?

My inspiration: 'Written in the Stars Dress' from Modcloth

31 Day Challenge, day 24: Inspired by a Book

Hi everyone! Seems like the last couple of challenges were a lot harder than I expected. With the previous two and today's book challenge in particular, it took me quite a while to get inspired. After lots of thinking I decided to go with the character Janneke of the Dutch Jip en Janneke stories by Annie M.G. Schmidt that I grew up with. Fiep Westendorp is the one who brought the duo further to life with her adorable and iconic illustrations in black and white. I absolutely love the simplicity of her drawings which makes the characters so easy to recognize and therefore also... perfect for on the nails! ;-) I paired my freehanded Janneke accent nail with a girly polka dot pattern, using a black creme and China Glaze Designer Satin for the dots. It wasn't the easiest job, but I'm happy with how it turned out. ^_^

Image source

31 Day Challenge, day 23: Inspired by a Movie

Hi everyone! For day 23 of the 31 Day Challenge my nails are inspired by the movie My Neighbor Totoro. It's impossible not to love all the cute characters in it! :3 So on my ringfigner I made the giant totoro. First I applied three coats of China Glaze Recycle (which I'm also wearing on the rest of my nails), then I used a striper polish in black to outline the head and ears. Finally I added the eyes, whiskers and other details and my cutie was complete. ^_^ Thanks for reading!

31 Day Challenge, day 22: Inspired by a Song

Hey everybody! I'm at day 22 of the 31 Day Challenge, which means I had to pick a song as inspiration. I never thought this challenge was going to be easy, but man, it was so much more difficult than I'd expected! A lot of songs have abstract titles, which are really hard to capture into something recognizable on the nails. And I did want to make something that people were able to recognize, rather than something artsy and abstract that could actually be anything. So I hope you guys indeed saw that pictured on my nails is a train. ;-) The symbolic train of John Mayer's Stop This Train. I think it's a touching song and I especially love the live version of it from his album Where The Light Is.

I really wanted to portray the speed and enormous size of the train, so what better way to do that than making it in Art Deco poster style? :-) The red basecolor is OPI's Big Apple Red, and for the vehicle I used a couple of different polishes and stripers, plus a little sponging for the steam and lights. At last a layer of Essence Matte topcoat and it was finished. Hope you like it!

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!

31 Day Challenge, day 17: Glitter

Ah, a new year has started. My first resolution? Finishing last year's 31 Day Challenge! :') I must be the worst participant ever! That's why I kept postponing starting on it in the first place. But at least I'm still having fun with it, and that's what counts, right?

For day 17 I did a glitter gradient. My first one actually and I must say I enjoyed it! It's so simple to make yet the results are pretty cool, I like. :) I used two coats of OPI Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ and dabbed H&M Confetti Kisses and a bit of China Glaze Silver Lining on the tips. Thanks for reading!

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!

Holly Leaf

Hi everyone! For this post I have another Christmas themed design to share with you: a holly leaf accent nail. :-) I've always loved the shape of holly leaves, so imagine  my excitement when I found out how easy it could be to have that shape on my nails, just by using a design that's familiar on this blog: the cloud design! You can see I didn't have to add much to make it look like a holly leaf. But those who still want a little more detail of how to make the design can use the tutorial that I'll be posting next. :-)

For the accent nail I used OPI Jade Is The New Black, Color Club Artsy Crafty, a blue striper polish and P2 Fever for the berries. And last but not least, that gorgeous gold on the rest of my nails is Orly Solid Gold with a layer of topcoat. It has an amazing matte fisnish on its own, but adding topcoat makes it so sparkly! Perfect for the holidays. I also did a series of Solid Gold manis a while back, you can find them all here. See you next time!

Arrow Tail

There wasn't a lot of nail painting for me this week, school work took up most of my time. I did do another "arrow tail" design which I came up with while improvising for the tribal print challenge in my last post. There's just something relaxing about drawing the design that makes it such a fun task to do.

This time I used Orly Viridian Vinyl as my basecolor and I truly fell in love with it again. It only needs two smooth and fastdrying coats for opacity and the color's just fantastic! Finally I made the arrow print with a white striper. No topcoat was applied, because the satin-matte finish of Viridian Vinyl is too pretty!

31 Day Challenge, day 16: Tribal Print

Hi everyone! Today's it's time for tribal nails with Hema #844 as my basecolor. I was just improvising with a gold striper polish (Janet #115) and this was the result. Not sure if they look tribal per se, though I did recognize an arrow tail in the design when I was done. And that's pretty tribal, right? ;-) The print was really fun to do, and quite easy as well, as it basically just consists of seven straight lines. I can't wait to try it again with bright colors!

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 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? :-)