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). 

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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. ^_^

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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

a england - Princess Tears

I can totally see why this delicate polish is a england's gem of the month, it's a lovely shade for spring! Princess Tears is a lilac coloured polish with a strong lilac flash ánd an awesome and strong prismatic effect. At some angles it also flashes a subtle yellow-green, you can see a hint of it in my last picture. Princess Tears is kinda like Ascalon's lighter, lilac coloured sister! This polish has what we can call the typical a england formula: excellent. I used two coats, no top coat.

Princess Tears is part of The Legend collection. This fabled collection is available (with free worldwide shipping!) on the a england website.

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

For more information, check out my Disclosure Policy.

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

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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

Polka Dots

Last week I was doing two of my favourite things: drinking tea and nomming M&M's. Easter M&M's to be precise! They're so adorable. And delicious of course.. I ♥ M&M's! I wanted to use this colour combination on my nails. Now, I don't have the exact same colours (see? You can never have enough polishes ^^), so I picked four polishes in the same colour range. I think they look awesome together! As you can see I also covered all nails with white dots (a polka dot mani was on my to-do list for ages). I love how this looks! Gives quite an 'Easter vibe' don't you think?

Normally when I'm doing a skittle mani the nails of my right hand get the same look, but this time I used the colours more randomly. It looks very playful, try it some time. :)

My right hand debut on the blog!

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products used yellow: Catrice - Bye Bye Birdy!; pink: Barry M - Bright Pink; light blue: Models Own - Bloobloo; green: Catrice - Run Forest Run! (2nd version); dots: Catrice - Snow Motion. 

Nubar - Indigo Illusion

I'm not in the mood for writing a long post, so I'm keeping it short today. Indigo Illusion is too awesome for words anyway. :) I applied three coats, no top coat. Love, love, LOVE it!

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Catrice - Pool Party At Night & BM-224

Today everything seemed to go wrong. Right after my nails were done a wandering rhinestone managed to stick to the wet layer of top coat and I couldn't get it off without ruining half the nail; of course my camera battery died and it started to rain like crazy. But after redoing the ruined nail, the battery was half charged ánd the sun was shining. Happy end. :)

I'm so glad I fixed that one nail instead of removing everything, 'cause I love how this looks! I applied two coats of Catrice - Pool Party At Night and stamped with Konad Special Polish in White and a pattern from Bundle Monster plate BM-224. I also added a couple of yellow rhinestones and a layer of top coat.

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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.

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*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.

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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.

Bee Happy

It was time for some nail art, don't you think? :) And I wanted to show you a(nother) yummylicious cake! Below you can see one of my birthday cakes I made a couple of months ago. I am a sucker for chocolate and m&m's, so it wasn't too hard to decide what I wanted on my cake. Oh, it was delish! The cake inspired me (again) to do some nail art, so I ended up with a bee on my ring finger nail. The brownish taupe colour I used is OPI - You Don't Know Jacques, for the yellow bee body I used Don't Feed The Birds from Catrice. I added some wings with China Glaze - Millennium and two silver rhinestones for the eyes.

Accent nails are so much fun, I don't think I would've liked it as much with all my nails transformed into bees. What do you think?

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Spring! Nail Art Inspired By a Cake

Remember the cherry blossom and ladybug posts I posted a while ago? Well, today I have another cake inspired mani for you! A month ago my grandma asked me if I could make a big cake for her birthday and of course I said yes. :) She loved the result and it tasted like heaven, yum! The cake inspired me to do some nail art. I used two coats of China Glaze - Caribbean Blue as the base colour. I created 'grass' with an image from plate M73 (but you can also place some random stripes with a small brush) and Konad Special Polish in Apple Green. For the dotted flowers I used a random white nail polish and Don't Feed The Birds from Catrice for the dots in the flowers. A nice layer of topcoat over it and it's done! Doesn't it scream Spring? :D

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Essence - You've Got The Art

Essence just released a limited edition collection called Whoom! Boomm!!! (can it get any louder? :brow) with some new make up products and something I'm more interested in: four new nail polishes. I got one of them, the other three were kinda blah to me. It's called You've Got The Art and I would describe it as a pastel yellow creme with a hint of green. I grabbed this colour 'cause I wanted to step out of my comfort zone for once, lol. It's só not me... give me a good purple, red or pink and I'm as happy as a kid in a candy store, but this colour: nope, not for me (thankfully it wasn't too expensive, €1,79 for an 8 ml. bottle). Anywayz, I can always show you the swatch, right? You've Got The Art reminds me of Fiercely Fiona from the OPI Shrek Forever After collection, but I'm not sure how much they're actually alike.. I don't have FF and the swatches I found of it were very dissimilar.

About the application; it was everything you can expect of a yellow pastel creme: a complete streak-fest. I must say I was prepared, so it wasn't thát bad, but I still needed three coats to get rid of those awful streaks.

Maybe a bit of stamping could make it work for me? I used imageplate M74 and Konad Special Nail Polish in Apple Green. I was a bit disappointed by the opaqueness of that one, but what can you do about it? It's a fun, springy look for sure, but still: so not me. :) What do you think?

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OPI - Green-wich Village + Dainty Daisies

I wanted cheer-me-up nails today. If I think cheery, I think green. When I started my collecting nail polish madness one of the polishes I wanted really really bad was Green-wich Village from OPI . So I ordered it. Like a year ago. Still untried. :o I'm ashamed. But.. today is the day for this wonderful bright yellow-toned green creme. I love it even more than I expected! And don't tell me it's not cheery, because it IS. The formula of Green-wich Village is quite sheer, but it applied nicely in three coats.

I decided to apply some more cheery happiness: daisies! Ok, actually they're just flowers with the same colours as daisies, but you know what I mean, right? :O I used a dotting tool and some old white polish and yellow acrylic paint. I luv daisies!

(Quick note: The first picture gives the most colour accurate representation of Green-wich Village. As soon as I was done painting the daisies it was so dark and gloomy I had to use lamp light for photographing.. )

Thanks for watching and following!! :h