Bath Duck: Cake & Nail Art

Do you guys remember my ladybug cake? I made it for a little girl's first birthday. Well, this little girl is a big sister now! I made this 'bath duck' cake for her baby brother. Of course I have matching nails for you to look at (this is a nail blog, after all). 

Thanks for watching! :h

products used

- blue: Catrice - Blue Cara Ciao (I've given up on getting colour accurate pictures of this one *sigh*)

- white: OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls

- yellow: Catrice - Don't Feed The Birds

- orange: Essence - Andy, You're a Star  

- silver: China Glaze - Millennium

- bath sponge from Kruidvat ^^

Rainbow Candy Cane Nails

A rainbow candy cane, that's what this mani reminds me of.. just perfect for a sweet tooth like me! The base colour I used is OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls and the design is from Bundle Monster plate BM-301. I wanted a gradient look for the stamped lines, below you can find a little how-to.

1. Pick two colours and paint two stripes on the image. Leave some space between the stripes.

2. Swirl the colours together with a toothpick.

3. Grab a scraper and scrape the excess polish off. 

4. Place the stamp on the design, check if it transferred well and roll it over the nail. Work fast or the polish will turn too dry to stamp with. Some parts of the design are missing on my stamp because I had to take pictures. ^_^

Thanks for watching!

products used

white (base): OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls

red: Essence - Hot Red

orange: Essence - Andy, You're a Star

yellow: Catrice - Bye, Bye Birdy!

green: NYC - High Line Green

blue: Barry M - Cobalt Blue

purple: China Glaze - Grape Pop

stamping plate: Bundle Monster BM-301

Skittle Nails with Tribal Print

Let me begin by expressing my love for the new Bundle Monster stamping plate set! I love stamped nails and all those new and fun designs are very, very inspiring. Today I used the tribal pattern from plate BM-315, is that a cool pattern or what? ♥ I'm not sure what to think of this mani though. I find black as a stamping colour often too overpowering and the nails with crooked stamps don't make me happy. I do like the idea of using a tribal print on skittle nails!

Thanks for watching! :)

products used

orange: Essence - Andy, You're a Star

green: NYC - High Line Green

beige: OPI - Did You 'ear About Van Gogh?

blue: Catrice - Blue Cara Ciao

black: Konad Special Nail Polish in Black

Neon Orange Glitter Fest

Is that bright or what? 8) Neon nail polish can be very unflattering on me (that doesn't stop me from wearing it, neons are just too much fun!), but the polish I'm showing you today actually IS flattering. This neon orangey colour is You Got Soul-Ar from Color Club. I hoped my orange nails would help our football team win the second match of Euro 2012 last Wednesday, but no.. we lost again, grr! Later I added one coat of OPI - Pirouette My Whistle (love it). I think it looks great with the non-sparkly light glitter from You Got Soul-Ar!

Thanks for watching and enjoy your weekend!

Queen's Day Nails

First of all: thanks for all the lovely comments on my last post. I knew you guys would like it as much as I did, lol! Today's Queen's Day, a national holiday in The Netherlands. Our national colour is orange, so orange nails it is! I can't say I'm a fan of orange, but hey.. once a year I can make an exception. :) I'm wearing two coats of Essence - Andy, You're a Star and for the crown I used China Glaze - 2030 and image plate BM-215. I also thought it would be nice to add a rhinestone for some bling.

Thanks for watching!

Rainbow In The Air

I'm SO excited about today's nails. I wanted to do some kind of rainbow nail art for ages and now I finally did it, yay! My first attempt was a mess, so I took it off and started again. Believe me if I say that this requires patience and a super steady hand. Oh, and it's FUN to do! :D

A few tips: • Let the polish dry before you add the next colour (I started with the purple stripe, I added the blue when the purple was dry and so on). • Use tape if you don't have a steady hand. • Use pigmented polishes or white polish as a base. • Don't worry when the lines don't look crisp straight away, you can always do touch-ups with a nail art brush. • Wait till everything is completely dry before you add your top coat to prevent smudged lines.

image source

Thanks for watching!

products used

light blue (on most nails): Catrice - Up In The Air, two coats

red: Essence - Hot Red

orange: Essence - Andy, You're a Star 

yellow: Catrice - Bye, Bye Birdy! 

green: NYC - High Line Green

blue: Barry M - Cobalt Blue

purple: China Glaze - Grape Pop

Coral & Orange: Speciallità - Afrodite & Deméter

Mmm, this pinky coral shade makes my mouth water. Speciallità - Afrodite reminds me of candies, yum! Don't worry, I'm not going to take a bite, but it sure looks delicious. Although the prismatic effect isn't very strong, I think it's still super pretty. An unexpected favourite! The formula was good, I used two coats.

And this is Speciallità - Deméter. An orange I would wear! Too bad my camera freaked out (I hate it when that happens, grr!) and made it look too orange and way too bright. It's actually a soft shade, more like Afrodite, and less yellow-toned than my picture shows. A very unusual nail polish, I like that! Nice formula, two coats.

Just a couple of days left to enter my Speciallità giveaway, don't forget to enter! :)

Thanks for watching!

*The product(s) in this post was/were sent to me for reviewing purposes.

For more information, check out my Disclosure Policy.

Guest Post at Ivana Thinks Pink

Please check out my guest post at Ivana Thinks Pink.

Dear Ivana, thanks for this opportunity, it was so much fun to do! :$

My Love For Prints

Prints. Love them. Colourful prints? Even better! In case you haven't noticed: (colourful) tribal prints are a hot trend right now. I've seen some pretty nail art designs with tribal prints on the web, which inspired me to create a cool design on my own nails. Well, on one nail actually. As you may know I love accent nails, it's interesting enough to look at and not too much for me. Besides that, doing one nail costs me quite some time and I have other things to do besides painting my nails (crázy, I know! ^^). I think the end result looks pretty cool! Oh, and it's great to wear Kristi from Zoya again, definitely one of my fav polishes. This gorgeous red looks more blue-toned in real life though, my camera let me down a bit.

Below you can see some more prints: my awesome warm winter slippers (I'm actually wearing them right now, it's so cold in The Netherlands.. this is NOT what I call Summer) and on the right my favourite bedding (excuse the crinkles, lol). Enough proof for my love for prints? ;)

Thanks for watching!

The nail polishes I used:

red: Zoya - Kristi, blue: Catrice - Blue Cara Ciao, orange: Essence - Andy, You're A Star, jade green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black, black: Essence - Fatal, white: Catrice - Snow Motion!

LOVE: Nfu Oh 51

I have to agree with Michèle, Nfu Oh 51 can't get too much attention. I need to wear it more often and if you have it: so do you! I could not have the heart to remove the pretty Lady of the Lake from a england (still looking good after almost six days of wear!), so I used it as a base for Nfu Oh 51. The lady doesn't mind, she loves it. :)

I applied one coat of 51 and a top coat. This layering combination is very photogenic, I took a million pictures. It was hard to make a selection for this post, I hope you guys like it!

Look how the flakies glow in sunlight... ♥

Thanks for watching!

Color Club: Wicked Sweet (Part III: green) + Kleancolor - Chunky Holo Teal

I have one polish from Color Club's Wicked Sweet collection left to show you, a green neon called The Lime Starts Here. The finish of this one is something between a jelly and a creme. I can certainly appreciate a good green neon on my nails and this one is hot (and looks much brighter in real life)! After trying the lemon scented highlighter yellow from the same collection I was afraid I wouldn't like the scent, but it's not bad at all. *phew* :)

The formula was great, I had no trouble with applying this one. The only downside is the sheerness, this is how it looks after applying three coats. 

Overall, I think this is a fun collection from Color Club: summery colours, different finishes and for me the scents really add something (the sour ones weren't my favourite, but that's taste related). Some of the polishes aren't the easiest to apply and you have to keep in mind most are sheer and require at least three coats.

I wanted to use one of the Chunky Holo's from Kleancolor, so I applied one coat of Chunky Holo Teal over the vibrant green. It would probably look better layered over a darker colour, but I really like the little pops of colour on top of The Lime Starts Here. Don't get me started on the scent though, the fruity scent of the Color Club polish mixed with the beloved Kleancolor smell: not good! ;)

Thanks for watching!

*The product(s) in this post was/were sent to me for reviewing purposes.

For more information, check out my Disclosure Policy.

Color Club: Wicked Sweet (Part II: the shimmers)

Today I'm showing you swatches of the three shimmery polishes from Color Club's Wicked Sweet collection (you can find Part I here).

The highlighter yellow coloured polish with green shimmer is called Get Your Lem-On. This is my least favourite. I dislike highlighter yellows, it was extremely sheer (this is four coats) and the sour lemon scent was a bit nauseating. For the highlighter yellow fans out there: try layering it over a white polish.

On the pinkie nail I'm wearing I Always Get My Man-Darin: a light, bright orange with green shimmer. What an interesting contrast! If you like orange nail polishes you should definitely take a look at this one. Sadly it doesn't go well with my skin tone and I didn't like the scent at all. I wouldn't call the scents of the Wicked Sweet nail polishes overpowering, but the sour scented ones give me a headache. :| I Always Get My Man-Darin was also sheer, I applied four coats.

On my ring finger nail you see Wicked Sweet, a turquoise coloured polish with green shimmer. Aah, this one is a stunner, look how it glows! It's Zoya - Phoebe's shiny sister, with a sweet and fruity scent. This is summer in a bottle and summer on the nail. I decided to wear it as a full mani and I love it! Thankfully Wicked Sweet was more pigmented than the yellow and the orange one, three coats were enough for an opaque result.

The formula of these three wasn't the best. They were quite streaky, I needed at least three coats to even out the worst streaks. I recommend waiting a couple of minutes between each coat to keep the streaks to the minimum and avoid cuticle drag. The drying time was longer than average, but a fast drying topcoat could solve that problem.

Thanks for watching!

*The product(s) in this post was/were sent to me for reviewing purposes.

For more information, check out my Disclosure Policy.

Rubik's Cube Cake + Nail Art

I want to show you guys another cake I made, an edible Rubik's Cube this time. I made this cake for my brother's birthday (in case you're wondering, I have three brothers, I'm the only girl :) ). This was the hardest cake I've made so far, it costed me blood, sweat and tears, but the end result made me forget all of that. I filled the cake with lemon curd and lemon cheesecake bavarois, it was scrumptiously delicious!

Needless to say, this cake inspired me to do some nail art: fun times! (If you want to see more cake inspired nail art posts you can click here). I used tape and free handed a bit. I started with the different coloured blocks (colour blocking to the max I say!), I waited for them to dry a little and added a layer of topcoat. Then I applied the black lines. After doing some touch-ups with acetone and a small nail art brush to create crisper lines I added another layer of topcoat. Doing one nail took me quite some time, luckily I'm a big fan of accent nails. ;) On the rest of my nails I applied Jade Is The New Black from OPI.

Thanks for watching!

The nail polishes I used:

jade green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black, blue: Barry M - Cobalt Blue, red: Zoya - Kristi, orange: Essence - Andy, You're A Star, yellow: Catrice - Don't Feed The Birds, white: La Femme Beauty - White, black: Essence - Fatal.

OPI - Movin' Out

A while ago I spotted a beautiful polish on two great blogs: here and here. But somehow I forgot about it (crazy, I know!). Recently the same polish popped up on some other great blogs that I follow, here, here and here. I was intrigued. Then I saw it on Kirsten's blog about a week ago and that was it, I was lost. I hád to get my hands on this precious polish before it would be too late (or too expensive *cough* Clarins 230 *cough*). Luckily, I found a seller on eBay who was willing to ship a bottle to me, after I paid for it of course. :i I'm presenting you: OPI - Movin' Out. My preciousss...

Movin' Out is quite boring ehh.. I mean ladylike on its own. And sheer. Which makes it great for layering. And the layering results can be pretty awesome (you should really check out all the links above to see how great it looks over different polishes). I decided to layer one coat of Movin' Out over Zoya - Veruschka and I'm in love. Turns out it's not a boring pinkish purple, but multichrome heaven! And do you see those orangey gold specks in the bottle picture? Especially in bright light it looks like these specks are dancing on the nail surface, nice! 

I have nothing more to say :L        ...besides, thanks for watching!

Colour Block Inspired Nails

Colour blocking (combining blocks/areas of different solid colours) is one of the trends for spring / summer 2011. I've seen a lot of pictures from fashion shows with the most beautiful colour combinations. That must look awesome on nails too, so I decided to make colour block inspired nails. You can keep it simple and make skittles (painting each nail in a different colour), but for some real colour blocking you can use different colours on one nail, for example by making funky french tips. I'm not sure what to think of the french tips I did, doesn't it look a bit too ehh.. funky? :i The fun part is that you can use whatever colours you want, but don't be shy, the bigger the contrast the better!

The nail polishes I used (the 1st picture is the most colour accurate btw):

green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black

berry: Catrice - Just Berried!

blue: Catrice - Blue Cara Ciao

orange: Essence - Andy, You're A Star

Thanks for watching and hey.. a big welcome to all my new followers! :D