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  Darling Diva Nails

Pastel Floral Bouquet Nails

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.

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!

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!

Mint Winter

Hello, dear readers! Here are pictures of my first winter mani this year, on my shorter nails. Stress made me bite every single of them. :-( That didn't happen in years! I still like my nails a tad longer, but that doesn't stop me from painting them. :-) The lovely basecolor is Catrice's I Sea You and on top I drew the bare Christmas tree from my last tutorial, plus cute snowflakes that you can practice yourself with this tutorial from last year. Have a great day!

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 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? :-)

31 Day Challenge, day 10: Gradient

Hi everybody! :-) It's about time that I continue with the 31 Day Challenge, so here you have my attempt on day 10: gradient nails. And what a terrible attempt it is... I tried so hard and so many times to get the gradient smooth, but so far this was the best I could do. I do like the colors though, and from a distance it doesn't look too awful. So with a lot more practice, I hope to show you a better gradient next time. ;-) I used P2 Funky as my basecolor and used a fine make-up sponge to dab on Essence Sending You Kisses on the tips.

My next post will be featuring polka dots, hope to see you again then!

'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!

South Africa?

Hello everyone! I'm interrupting the 31 Day Challenge for this colorful tape mani. The reaction that I heard most about this mani is how it looks like the South African flag. While it wasn't intended, I agree it kind of does. Not just the design, but even the colors are a bit similar. However, this mani was actually a result from adjusting and experimenting with an earlier design; the fifty-fifty mani. I had worn the corally pink color (H&M Wildflower) for a day and added the muted teal the next morning. And though I already liked how that looked, I had to do something that would cover up my slight tipwear, hence the purple chevrons which you see in the last picture. That was cute too but it wasn't quite finished until I added the little black chevrons. Amazing how much of a difference a bit of black can make. ^^

This mani was also a great oppurtunity to try out two new polishes from Etos (Dutch drugstore), #122 (teal) and #118 (purple). Etos recently released a whole bunch of new exciting colors and I'm thrilled about it, because both their quality and price are quite reasonable (€2.50 for 5ml/0.5 fl.oz). Thanks for reading!

Big thank you to my little brother for taking this picture for me. ^^

31 Day Challenge, day 2: Orange

Day 2 of the 31 Day Challenge! This time the challenge was to do orange nails and it was truly a challenge. I had a hard time coming up with something with orange as the main color instead of an accent color. Finally I decided to go with trusty clouds (tutorial here) combined with two shades of green, as I find orange to combine best with certain greens or blues. The lovely pastel orange is H&M's Peach Me Soon, in the middle you see Orly Ancient Jade and I've got Essence Bella on the tips. I look forward to my next challenge: yellow nails! See you soon. :-)

Divergence

Hello lovely readers! For this post I have this colorful divergence mani to show you. In the pictures I'm holding China Glaze Life Preserver, a dusty orange creme. Orange is probably my least favorite color when it comes to nail polish (next to browns), but I actually really like Life Preserver in this mani! It adds that bit of warmth to the whole. The other polishes you see in this tape mani are Diamond Cosmetics Don't Teal My Heart Away (absolutely smitten with this polish ♥) and China Glaze 2030, the gold chrome. Thank you for reading! :-)

Fifty-Fifty

Hi everyone! How are you? School's done, so I can FINALLY get back to blogging about nails again, yay! I can't believe how long it's been since my last post. So let's see some nails then!

For this fifty-fifty tape mani I used Orly Solid Gold as my basecolor. I rarely wear gold polishes on their own, but I just love to combine them with other colors. The same goes for Solid Gold. The color on its own just looks a bit weird on my skintone. But I do love the matte, shimmery finish. Plus it dries very quickly so it's a perfect tape mani basecolor. :-) After waiting just a few minutes after applying Solid Gold, I put tape strips vertically on one half of my nails. Then I used the turquoise polish Essence Bella on top, removed the strips and that's it! No topcoat afterwards, because I like the contrast of matte and shiny together. What do you think of today's nails?

Viva La Lightning Bolt

Hello dear readers! I'm still very busy with school, only two more weeks to go! I've still got a lot of things to do, but right now I just want to show you these nails. :-) Yesterday I wore a brandless plain white creme. It took three coats to get opaque and it took forever to dry, but it was totally worth it. Who knew I could like white nails this much! But sadly the polish already chipped after one short day, so today I added these lightning bolt tips with Essence Viva La Green. I hadn't done lightning bolt tips for a long time, I almost forgot how fun they are to make. ^^ Finally I added a bit of glam with OPI Spark The Triomphe. It's so sparkly! ♥

Guest Post at Polish Chest

Hello dear readers! Last week was a very busy week for me, but I did manage to prepare a glamorous guestpost for the lovely Danny from Polish Chest. Please check out the full post here!

Happy Skittle

A big thank you to the lovely boyfriend for taking this picture for me! :-)

Skittles! Pretty much the easiest form of 'nail art'. This time I went for a bright and funky color scheme with four (once again) Essence polishes:

Let's Get Lost

Viva La Green

Lime Up!

Ultimate Pink

I just love these Colour&Go polishes! Their formula is just perfect most of the times, they cover in two coats and yes, they're small, but also very cheap (€1,29 for 5ml/0.16 fl.oz.) so you won't have to hesitate on buying a back-up of your favorite shade.

I didn't know pretty nails could affect my mood so much, but looking at today's mani just made my day over and over again, haha. I'm such a dork. :-P

Thanks for reading, guys!

Funky Easter

Happy Easter everyone! When I think of Easter nail art, I think of pastel shades and detailed designs. But after wearing soft colors so often lately, I wanted to have something brighter on my nails now! :) I started with H&M Wildflower as my basecolor, then I painted half of the nail turquoise with Essence Bella, using tape for crisp lines. Finally I added a few dots with Color Club Almost Famous and my funky Easter mani was done. :) Have a great day!

Happy cloud

Hi everyone :) This is how I wore the cloud design after finishing the tutorial. I used Barry M Shocking Pink, China Glaze For Audrey and Essence Let's Get Lost and combined it with Essence Bella on the rest of my nails. I love how it turned out! It's so cheerful and kind of like the opposite of the more serious grey cloud I did last week.
Also a big thank you for all the lovely comments that you guys left on the tutorial, you're the best! It makes me so happy to know it helped or inspired you. And I've really enjoyed all the awesome cloud manis that you shared with me so far, so keep them coming! See you next time. :)

Blue and turquoise glitter cocktail

Hello everybody :) This is a layering mani I made with China Glaze Concrete Catwalk as my basecolor and a blend of blue and turquoise glitters on top. It was hard to capture how this looked in real life, it was quite pretty. All the hues kind of blended into one undefinable color, full of sparkles ^^ But under the direct light of the lamp which I took this mani under, it's not visible because of the bigger contrast between all the colors. It's still beautiful, but very different.
The bottom picture was taken in daylight the next day, it shows the blended effect a little better. (Excuse my tipwear :)) What do you guys think about this combination?

The glitters I used on top: a nameless blue and turquoise glitter from Claire's and Essence Edward ♥

Art Deco chevrons

Hello guys! First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who wished me a happy birthday in my last post, it was very nice to hear, but I just celebrated my birthday last month, haha. The birthday nails were specially made for a reader who requested a birthday mani for her own special day ;-) So no birthday presents to share with you, but I do have these elegant chevrons in Art Deco style. The pictured bottle of polish, which I used as my base color, is M91 from a new cosmetics brand called Make-Up Studio. They carry a huge, colorful collection of eye-shadows, lipsticks, blushes, brushes, fake lashes etc. and... nail polish :) They just opened a brand new store in our local shopping mall, so last week I went for a look and M91 was one of the products I came home with. It's a dusty green creme which is close to Mint in Wikipedia's List Of Colors. The formula was pretty nice but the best thing is it covers in one coat ^^ I own quite a few dusty, grey-ish greens/mints, but none of those is similar to M91. So I'm happy to have yet another one in my stash! It's a shame though, that Make-Up Studio didn't give their polishes a real name, instead of just a number. They've got quite a few unique babies in their collection that truly deserve more identity. I admit they do cost a lot (€12.90 for 12ml/0.41fl.oz.) but as I said, some are really unique and worth the money, if you want to spoil yourself :) Anyhow, the day after I added the first chevrons with tape, using China Glaze's Jitterbug. The little chevrons at the tips were made with China Glaze Ink. It's a striper polish with a perfect covering formula, the thin brush is perfect for making stripes but also for freehanding, like I did here. It came in really handy, because I felt way too lazy to wait for another coat of polish to dry, like I would've if I used tape again. Finally a layer of Essence Matt top coat and tada! Thanks for reading :)