essie - cute as a button & button stamping

Hello Sweeties!

Happy Sunday! I hope you had a lovely weekend so far and can enjoy the rest of it. Today I want to share with you essie - Cute As A Button (73).

This gorgeous coral creme has an excellent formula and is fully opaque in two coats. It applies smoothly and dries quickly. I love the flat brush that comes with most essie polishes. It allowes easy application and in most cases there is absolutely no clean-up required. 

That was no different with Cute As A Button. What I love about this polish, next than reminding me of watermelons, is its glossy finish. I did not use a topcoat for these swatches.

To underline the cute name of this polish I decided to do a little stamping on top. I picked a pattern that fits the name perfectly: BUTTONS! :-D

I used my black stamping polish for this manicure. I have no idea what the name of the stampingplate is. There is nothing engraved, but the number 05. I ordered a bunch of plates online a while back, but there never was any mention of the producer.

Here is a quick look at the pattern I used for my button manicure.

I really love the combo of Cute As A Button and the button stamping. 

How do you like this manicure? Doesn't this underline the polish name perfectly?

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• off to miami!
• Sunset Gradient
• Easy Tape Mani

Dotted Gradient & Ombre Top Coat

Hello Lovelies!

I am back from Austria and I bought new polishes! I will show them to you in a few days when I had a chance to take some pictures. Today I want to show you another gradient manicure wich I totally love lately, but this time it is not a sponged gradient but a dotted one.

As my base for this manicure I used p2 - sashimi ship and added these other p2 shades.

before sunrise - lovely madness - dress + go!

First I made some dots with the larger side of my dotting tool concentrating in the tip area of the nail and then used the smaller side to make little dots and let them fade out going farther down. This creates the gradient and is really easy.

Make sure to let each colour dry a little before applying the next. You want to overlap the dots and they should not get all mixed up.

To blend all my colours together perfectly I added a layer of Seche Vite. I love how glossy the manicure looks now.

I then added the Ombre Top Coat by catrice. But it did not work as well as I was hoping. The colours I used for this manicure are to dark to see the effect properly. If you look closely there is a difference between my thumb (where I did not use the topcoat) and my pinkie (with four layers of the top coat). My pinkie is darker. This is manily visible on the rosy dots of lovely madness.

This topcoat actually is a cool way to do an ombre manicure, but you have to use pastel colours in order for it to show the best results.

Left: indoors with a flash. - Right: outdoors in natural light, no flash.

In my opinion this is a fun and super easy way to make gradient nails and it is a good alternative to a sponged manicure especially for shorter nails where sponging can be quite messy.

I hope you like this manicure! Have you ever done a dotted gradient?

You may also like:

• Sunset Gradient
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• Dotted Daisies

p2 - Color Victim - sashimi ship

Hello Beauties!

It is Friday already - Yay! Today I want to show you another colour from my p2 Color Victim Collection. This is sashimi ship (980)

I was not sure if I'd like the colour on my nails, but as it turns out I love it! Sashimi ship is a wonderful summery coral colour, that reminds me a bit of shrimps. And I think it looks fabulous on shorter nails.

Also the formula is fantastic. It is very easy to spread and applies smoothly. You could get away with using only one coat, because this polish is highly pigmented, but I used two just to make sure the pictures look perfect too. And it is so glossy! Do you see the reflections on the nails? Especially in the sunlight pictures below it looks great.

The picture with the white background was taken in natural light without a flash and you can see the landscape behind me. There are tall trees at the end of the garden. Oh, how I love that shine...

p2 polishes are fantastic! They are very inexpensive, have a wonderful formula and a seasonal colour selection. Can you tell I am a huge fan?

Have you ever tried p2 polishes? And how so you like sashimi ship?

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Maybelline - Rose Poudre & Easy Tape Manicure

Hello Sweeties!

Happy Friday! Today I want to show you an easy way to get fancy manicures using sticky tape and a pair of scissors. Before I do let me show you Maybelline Forever Strong - Rose Poudre (130) wich I used as my base colour.

Rose Poudre is a pinkish nude polish with an amazing formula. It dries quickly and is easy to apply due to the flat brush. It is opaque in two coats and can be worn on its own or would make a wonderful base for a french manicure. In that case one coat would be enough.

Once my polish was perfectly dry, I used some sticky tape and some scissors with a serrated blade to cut it in half. I then put it on the back of my hand to take of some of the stickiness before applying it to my nails.

You can apply them any way you like, but for my mynicure I decided to use them like shown above. I then painted over one side of my nails with Max Factor - Diva Coral. I used two coats and removed the tape carefully immediately after applying the second layer.

With a dottingtool I added some polkadots along the waves, applied some topcoat to smooth out any edges and I had a fantastic and super easy manicure.

I really love those two colours together! 

How do you like todays manicure? Have you ever done a tape mani?

You may also like:

• Color To Diner For
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OPI -Schnapps Out Of It! & comic nail art

Hello Sweeties!

Another great Saturday lies ahead of us and I want to show you some comic nail art inspired by a youtube video I recently watched. But lets get started with a short introduction of my base colour.

This is OPI - Schnapps Out Of It! (NL G22) from the fall 2012 German collection. It is a terracotta creme polish leaning towards a coral shade and has a wonderful hidden silver shimmer that is hardly visible on the nail, but in certain lighting you can catch a glimps of it. I took my pictures late at night and didn't have any sunshine left so it is almost impossible to see in these shots.

As most OPI polishes Schnapps Out Of It! has a fantastic formula that is almost opaque in one coat. For these swatches I did use two coats without a topcoat. And now let's get to the fun part:

I used NYX - White and Wet 'n Wild - Black Creme to create this design. Check the video tutorial by cutepolish on youtube if you want to try this yourself. 

My black conture is not really perfect, but I think those nails look so fun. Especially if you only take a short look. They could be directly from a comic strip.

And because I always experiment on my nails I added a little silver glitter to one side of my nails. For this I used Yves Rocher - Argent givré (91.). Yves Rocher is a French brand and the name means Icy Silver. I have to remember to use this in winter and for some Christmas manicures. It is really pretty and sparkly!

I only used one coat of glitter here and I like the density a lot. Very shiny!

I hope you like my animated cartoon nails as much as I do and have fun watching the tutorial.

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