Essie - The Girls Are Out

I have one of my all-time favorite nail polish to show you today. I am so obsessed with this color!!

Essie - The Girls Are Out (Taken with flash)

Essie - The Girls Are Out (taken with flash)

Essie - The Girls Are Out (indirect sunlight)

This is Essie - The Girls Are Out from the Summer 2013 Collection and it is STUNNING. It's not really as pink as shown in my pictures with flash. The third picture, however, is a more accurate depiction of the color.

I usually keep up with new collections through posts from nail bloggers but while I was in the US, I was too busy to check my feed so I completely missed out on any news about new collections. So when I went to Target (I could live in Target, no kidding) and headed over to the nail polish section and I saw this polish, I knew I had to have it.

It's a beautiful shade of soft fuchsia with a touch of silver sparkle. The formula is wonderful, the polish just glides on easily and dries glossy. I used 2 coats in the pictures above for full opacity. The dry time is also faster than other polishes I own. Removal wasn't too bad - some silver shimmer on the skin.

Overall, it's shimmery and whimsical and feminine - I LOVE it!

Do you have The Girls Are Out in your collection or are you going straight out to the store to get this right now? You can only pick one, heehee! 

Thanks for reading!

Party glitter all over Essie - Play Date

Hey everyone, today I have some really cute glitter toppers to show you. Sadly I do not own any of them but I got to try them on my nails and that was good enough for me.

I don't have the names of any of these glitters :( I walked into a store randomly and they had a nail polish testing section (awesome!) so I layered them over my nails that were painted with Essie - Play Date and they turned out brilliant.

Taken in sunlight

Taken with flash

• Little finger: a black and white glitter mix (bar, square, circle and hexagonal glitter)
• Ring finger: red and purple bar glitter
• Middle finger: a mix of glitter in multiple shapes and colors (red, blue, purple, silver, turquoise, white in squares, circles, bars and hexagons)
• Index finger: a mix of red, dark and light blue, purple bar glitter and a rare gold hexagon.

I love them all; I can't seem to pick just one! Also, isn't Essie - Play Date the best color to layer glitter over?

Which is your favorite glitter mix?

Thanks for reading!

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter and Bloglovin!

Hotdog condiments nail art

Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of updates. I've been blogging on my main blog for the past few days and I'm not used to juggling blogs yet but I'll get the hang of it. :)

So today I bring you nails that you might not want to wear to a baseball game for fear that you might mistake your nails for the hotdog that you're sinking your teeth into. ;)

This design was completely random. I didn't even know they were going to turn out looking like mustard, ketchup and relish. When I was done, I kind of looked down and went, what did I just do with these three colors?!

Taken with flash (I clearly need a lightbox or a better camera but until then, these pictures will have to suffice)

I started out with 2 thick coats of The Face Shop - Papaya. Since I don't own any striping tape, I had to cut tiny strips of Scotch tape. It is no joke, I tell you, to cut strips of tape while making sure that it's as straight as it can be.

I stuck them randomly onto my nail after the base color dried and painted the un-taped parts with China Glaze - Salsa and Sally Hansen - Mint Sprint. The trick here is to not wait for the polish to dry before peeling the tape off. Peel it off about three seconds after you've painted over it. Once, I left the tape on thinking that it was the clever thing to do and the tape ended up breaking and I had to use tweezers to pinch them off the wet polish. -_-

You can tell from my index and middle finger that I messed up and some polish got smeared. I tried to fix that by covering up the smears and you can judge for yourself how well I did that:

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

Taken in natural sunlight

At first I didn't like the vertical lines so I decided to do horizontal lines for my ring and little finger instead. In the end I didn't quite mind the vertical lines...

What do you think? Vertical or horizontal? Do these nails remind you of hotdog condiments or something else or nothing at all??
If you would like to see a tutorial, feel free to ask.

Thank you for reading!

Don't forget to follow me on Twitter (for my random ramblings) or Tumblr (where you can find me liking all things pretty) or Pinterest (where I do the same) or Bloglovin (which is becoming one of my favorite ways to catch up on blogs that I love)!

P.S: Should I make an Instagram account?

Jane Porter from Tarzan nail art (with tutorial, sort of)

After my mermaid nails, I didn't think I could ever do nails that I love more. I was wrong, at least partially. Today I delved fearlessly into the messy world of painting to draw Jane Porter from Tarzan on my nail.

Jane is a total sweetheart. Who could hate her? She's a little bit careless, adventurous, compassionate and she likes to read. Oh, and she's got gorgeous hair! A Disney girl after my own heart.

Image from Google

I totally meant to do Lego nails and I already knew what I was going to paint but at the last minute I changed my mind and did this instead. I have always loved Tarzan and I feel that nobody ever gets too old for Disney. Here's a little tidbit about me: there are usually always scenes in Disney movies that make me bawl like a baby and Tarzan is no exception haha!

Anyway on to the nails (this is a picture heavy post but that depends on what you call picture heavy). To make it easier to understand, this is how it's going to be - I'm going to show you the first design then tell you how I did it then move on to the other nails and talk about how I did them.

Taken indoors (Brush 1)

Taken indoors (Brush 2)

These are the two brushes that I used for all the designs. I didn't use any other brushes. Let's name them Brush 1 and Brush 2 accordingly.

Taken indoors

Taken indoors

Taken indoors

Taken indoors

The finished product:

Taken indoors under yellow lighting

 How I drew Jane:

1. I painted one coat of Love & Beauty - pale blue (it is a one-coater and I didn't want the base to be too thick) and waited for it to dry.
2. I used Brush 1 and Love & Beauty - milky white to do a basic outline of Jane's face. You can see that it was a patchy shape and I didn't bother to cover up the holes. That's because...
3. I mixed China Glaze - Kalahari Kiss and Love & Beauty - milky white to get a close-enough skin tone for Jane. After mixing, I used Brush 1 again to go over the face shape, this time making sure to cover any blank patches.
4. Next, I used Brush 2 to create the outline of Jane's hair and filled it in with The Face Shop - BR802.
5. Using Brush 2, I used The Face Shop - BR802 to draw the eyebrows.
6. Then I used Orly - Liquid Vinyl, China Glaze - White on White, and a mixture of The Face Shop - BL602 and China Glaze - First Mate to draw the eyes. I used a random pale pink polish for her eyeshadow.
7. As you can see in the picture above, Jane's mouth turned out okay but I messed up her nose a little. It wasn't as near left as it should have been and it was too dark. What I did to correct this was cover it up with the skin tone color.
8. After I covered the mistake, I used China Glaze - Kalahari Kiss to draw the nose again. It still wasn't quite right but I couldn't afford to redo it because my eyes were getting tired.
9. I used The Face Shop - (I'll fill this in when I have time to check the polish's code) to outline the lips and China Glaze - White on White to draw the teeth (well, if you can see them).
10. I totally forgot about the neck (the blank blue space in the picture above) so I had to remix the colors to paint the neck and used Love & Beauty - milky white to draw the collar of her dress.
11. Sealed the design with Seche Vite and I was good to go... Yeaaah, the process took an hour... ~_~

I hope you got all that. I'm still trying to perfect the art of writing nail tutorials but I hope the pictures help. :S If you didn't get any part, you can always ask me to rephrase my explanation. And if you have any tips on how to improve my tutorial, please tell me. I don't want you to read this and be like, pshhh that was rubbish and never come back because you think I'm rubbish. :(

Taken indoors (index finger)

Taken indoors (middle finger)

Taken indoors (ring finger)

Taken with flash

From left to right: The top half of Jane's dress, bamboo shoots, the bouquet of flowers Tarzan handed to Jane, and the hem of her dress.

How I did the rest of my nails:

• Index finger:

1. I used The Face Shop - YL702 to draw the V-shape starting 1/4 inch from the top of my nail.
2. I used a white nail art pen to draw the collar.
3. Using Brush 1 and Orly - Charged Up, I drew the little tie.

• Middle finger:

1. I used Sally Hansen - Lickety Split Lime as my base.
2. Using Brush 2 and Sally Hansen - Mint Sprint, I drew the lines of the bamboo shoots.

• Ring finger:

1.  2 coats of China Glaze - White on White as the base.
2. Using Brush 2 and Sally Hansen - Mint Sprint, I drew the stems of the flowers.
3. I used Orly - Charged Up, The Face Shop - PP401 and The Face Shop - YL702 to draw the flowers.

• Little finger: 

1. I used 2 coats of The Face Shop - YL702 as the base.
2. Then I used a white nail art pen to draw on the hem.

Sealed everything off with Sally Hansen - Insta Dri Top Coat (surprisingly there wasn't any bubbling!)

Taken with flash

Taken indoors under yellow lighting

Taken in natural sunlight

Taken in natural sunlight

Collage

Image from disneyyandmore.tumblr.com

This is the picture that I used as reference. Hmm, my Jane looks a little sadder (the eyebrows I think) and the hair is a bit messier but other than that I think my one hour of work was worth it!

Sorry for the super lengthy post. Shortening sentences is not my forte. ~_~

What do you think? Do you like these nails? Do you think I'm nuts for spending so much time doing just one nail? Have you ever tried doing nails like this before? I'd love to see them. I also look forward to any constructive criticism that you might have for me.

If you made it to the end of the post without skipping any paragraphs, THANK YOU for reading! Love you guys!

Image from Tumblr

P.S: Should I make an Instagram account??

Orly - Charged Up

Who loves jelly polish? I do! Isn't jelly polish the best?! I wish I had more.

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

This is Orly - Charged Up. It's a purple jelly polish that is so stunning and lovely. This would also be my first real jelly polish so I was pleasantly surprised when I put this on and realized that it was jelly. Mmm, squishable-looking polish. Here I'm wearing 2 coats of Orly - Charged Up - first coat was streaky, the second cleared that right up.

The photos were taken with flash and somehow the bottom two came out brighter than expected. The more accurate color for Orly - Charged Up would be in the first and second picture. It's not too dark even though I saw other people's swatches of this and the color seemed darker.

Love Orly's rubberized grip bottle cap - makes the painting process so much steadier. Not too sure I like the brush though.

I'm officially a fan of purple jellies. Are you? Here are some nail designs that I did with Orly - Charged Up: saran wrap nails, rainbow drip nails and my beloved Parachute nail art. 

Thanks for reading! :)

Rainbow drip nail art (with tutorial, kind of)

Hey everyone! Today I have a super fun nail design that was inspired by Karla. I saw her drippy nails and decided to do my spin on it this week.

Taken indoors at my poorly lit table where I do my nails :P

Here's a picture of the colors I used - only the dots; the swatches were done a while ago. From red to purple:

• China Glaze - Salsa
• A random orange polish
• Orly - Glowstick
• Sally Hansen - Lickety Lime Split
• Essie - Naughty Nautical
• Orly - Snowcone
• The Face Shop - BL602
• Orly - Charged Up

How I did these nails (I did them a little differently from Karla):

1. Use a base coat (please, it's important to use a base coat if you want to protect your nails from ugly staining)
2. Paint two coats of white polish; I used China Glaze - White on White.
3. Put a blob of polish (you might be thinking, what a waste and yes, it is kind of a waste) on a piece of scrap paper/hard paper/cardboard/whatever you want to put it on.
4. Use a dotting tool/toothpick/end of a pen/end of a skewer/whatever qualifies as a dotting tool and create a random dot on your nail.
5. If there isn't enough polish on your dotting tool, dip it into the main blob and create a downwards line from the small dot. You don't have to drag it all the way down to the tip of your nail. Now you have a 'spore' (think enoki mushrooms).
6. Make another 'spore' beside your first spore at a different height.
7. Connect the two spores at the base, making sure to make a U-shape connector and fill in the polish at the tip of the nail.
8. Make however many spores your nail can fill and finish with top coat.

Here is my, um, attempt at showing you how it's actually done on the nail... using Paint. Haha, I'm sorry, I should have done a step-by-step like Karla did.

(My sister claims that my tutorial is cool... Well... if you say so, haha!)

Taken in indirect sunlight

Taken under sunlight

Taken with flash

You can't see Glowstick because Orly wasn't lying when they labeled it as neon. It's blinding. I'm sorry for the terrible flash pictures. I need to build myself a light box stat!

Taken indoors under yellow lighting

I've always wanted to do these nails but some other design would always distract me and steer me away from doing this. So glad I saw this on Karla's blog.

How do you like my drippy nails?? Ever done them yourself? What color combos did you use? Would you try this? Inspired to do this for Halloween?

Thanks, as always, for reading! :)

Shades of red nail polish

Hey guys! So I used to think that red polish looked kinda tacky because I used to see a lot of people wearing chipped red polish (why, I don't know lol). Well, I take that right back... or rather, I'll amend my statement. Red polish is awesome!

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

• Thumb: China Glaze - Infra Red
• Index: China Glaze - Ruby Pumps
• Middle: China Glaze - Salsa
• Ring: China Glaze - Strawberry Fields
• Little: Essie - The Girls Are Out

Taken with flash

Taken with flash

Taken indoors

Taken indoors (poor lighting, I'm sorry)

Hmm, Strawberry Fields looks a little orange in these pictures but I assure you that it's as pink as pink can get.

Taken with flash

Some blurry goodness, anyone?

Which is your favorite polish out of these five? Red nail polish - yay or nay?

Thanks so much for reading!

China Glaze - Infra Red and Elephant Walk

I bring you my first ever holographic polish and a fall favorite of mine.

Taken with flash

Taken in natural sunlight

I've probably got you thinking, why is she holding two bottles of polish that aren't even the colors that she's wearing?! Sorry there, I was actually trying to swatch four colors at one go and I grabbed the nearest two bottles which happened to be the other two colors I was swatching.

Anyway, I'm wearing 2 coats each of China Glaze - Infra-Red and China Glaze - Elephant Walk. Unlike Impeccable Greys which is the other grey polish that I own, Elephant Walk is a much subtler grey and has just the finest shimmer in it. I love it. It does have this yellowish pigmentation if you leave the polish in the bottle for too long without shaking it so remember to give it a good shake before applying. Elephant Walk applies smoothly and reaches full opacity in just 2 coats. Great color for fall.

Infra-Red is not as holographic as I expected it to be so that was a bit of a let-down. It is a nice fuchsia though. I have tried layering it over black polish (not pictured here) and it definitely looked snazzy so you could try that with other holographic polishes.

I do wish I had picked another China Glaze holographic polish off the shelf... I was checking out at Sally Beauty in the US and the display of holographic polishes caught my eye. I think they were going at $5.95 and I couldn't resist. I'd already seen the swatches of the collection online and I don't know why I convinced myself that Infra-Red was one of the stronger holos of the collection. :S Blergh, oh well, I guess I have to wait till I get to travel again to get my hands on other CG holo polishes.

Do you own any holographic polishes? Which ones? What do you think of holos anyway? What is your go-to color for the fall or do you not have one?

Thank you for reading!

P.S: I am now on Polyvore! Thanks to Grace (love her blog!) who convinced me in a heartbeat that it's easy to use. Haha, my mom actually asked me to join it months ago but I was convinced that I wouldn't know how to use it.

I'm all for sites that I don't have to mess around with for hours before figuring out how to work it. Needless to say, once I get the hang of Polyvore there will be no stopping me from making sets all day long.

If you're into fashion, you can also check out my main site which now mainly consists of fashion posts though once in a while you will see posts on music and other stuff.

Frosted tribal nail art

I actually did these nails quite some time ago (when I was a semi-newbie at nail stuff) which would explain the lack of clean up so please excuse that.

Taken with flash

I used all Love & Beauty polishes for this design except for the black polish which came from a black nail art pen.

Love & Beauty doesn't actually give their nail polish names - well, you can see names on the Forever21 site but these came in a set - so I'll just name them myself.

On my thumb is a Frosty Peach polish and the other polish on my other nails is a shade of Pearly Oyster. Both are very sheer and would probably require 4 or 5 coats (!!) to reach any kind of opacity so I layered them over white.

In the picture above, I'm wearing one coat of both polishes and you can tell that it's streaky.

Taken with flash

Now here I'm wearing 2 coats of both polishes. The pearly finish has obvious brushstrokes but I don't mind that so much.

I wasn't - and still am not - too crazy about either color since neither complements my skin color. It just makes my skin look washed-out or at some angles, darker. It wasn't working for me but I thought it would be a waste to remove after layering on the polish so carefully... So this is what I did:

Taken with flash

At first, I used Love & Beauty - Pale Blue, Pale Pink and Pale Orchid to do some random stripes. Suddenly the color didn't seem so bad and I found myself reaching for my nail art pen to fill in the blanks with dots and arrows.

Taken with flash

I took the pictures before I put on top coat so if you're wondering whether I was going for a textured look, I wasn't.

This might not be one of my best nail designs but it was spontaneous and I ended up figuring out a way to jazz up the poor base colors. So if you have a nail color that you don't like on you, you could probably try something like this.

I LOVE all things tribal print. Do you?

Thanks for reading!