kiko - Pearly Red & Fall Stamping

Hello Lovelies!

Happy Friday my lovely readers! I hope you are well and had a good start into the new season. I am feeling much better today too and am almost back to normal. So today I want to show you a manicure I created last friday and wore until Wednesday. I usually don't wear my manis that long, but this one was so pretty and I didn't feel like playing around with polish anyway. I guess another reason that it lastet this long is that I was too weak to use my hands for anything else than reading or handeling the remote controle... :-)

But before I go into details to the finished manicure let me take you there step by step and show you swatches of my base colour first. This is kiko - Pearly Red (492).

Pearly Red is not really a red polish. In my opinion it is a wonderful and intense orange (leaning towards vermilion) crelly polish, with lots of micro flakies in it. I find it quite hard to describe, but as you can see it is very sparkly and shiny. The colour is perfect for fall.

The formula of Pearly Red is fantastic. The first coat is quite transparent, but with the second coat it is opaque. The polish applies smoothly and spreads evenly. There was hardly any clean up to do.

I then used a make-up sponge to apply kiko - Vino Perlato (493) to the tips of my nails and create a gradient with it.

Vino Perlato is very similar to Pearly Red only in a deep red tone. This colour is amazing and I have to show it to you another time by itself.

To get an even finish I applied a layer of Seche Vite over my gradient.

I then used a black stamping polish and the heart design from the plate shown above to stamp on all of my nails. I tried to place the center of the design randomly across my nails to give the design a more natural look. The hearts remind me a bit of leaves.

To finish this manicure I applied another layer of top coat to my nails and added a small clear rhinestone to the center of my stamping. 

I love this look. The gradient and the design go so well together and the clear rhinestones add a little brightness to the manicure. After taking the pictures I did add another coat of Seche Vite to seal in my stones too.

I wish you a very happy weekend and hope you like my fall design. Do you like the colours for this season?

You may also like:

• Autumnal Gradient
• BPS Holo #12
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flormar nail enamel - 236

Hello Beauties!

How are you today? I am glad the sun is out again after a couple of rainy days. It is still quite cold in the morming, but that is fine. I just don't like the grey weather. It makes me want to stay in bed all day long! So today I am going to show you a manicure to weak everybody up (myself included!).

This bright orange creme polish is 236 by flormar. I have searched a lot for the name, but unfortunately I didn't find anything. I still love this polish. Look at that colour! It pops right into your eyes when you get a glimpse of it and when you look closely you can see the beautiful golden shimmer. The formula is excellent and similar to the other flormar polishes I've used so far. It is almost opaque with the first coat, but for perfect coverage I needed two. 

236 applied smoothly and required absolutely no clean-up. I love this summery and bright colour. It is even lovelier on the nails than it looks in the bottle. In direct sunlight this orange polish is so sparkly and reminds me a bit of a fire by the beach.

How do you like the combination with the tribal accent nail? Do you remember the other two variations with auburn and light blue? (I promis this is the last combination you will see!)

Isn't this a fantastic orange nailpolish? How do you like this colour?

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• Summer Flowers
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Born Pretty Store - Holographics Set

Hello Lovelies!

How was your weekend? Are you ready to start into this new week? A while back I showed you my Born Pretty Store Haul. Unfortunately there were a few items missing. I finally received my set of 12 holographic polishes. They are numbered 1-12.

1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 - 10 - 11 - 12

The first thing I did was naturally to put them on a display to see how the colours look like. Aren't they gorgeous? I can't wait to try them all. They are so damn sparkly.

Here are some more detailed looks at the bottles:

1 - 2 - 3 - 4

silver - pink - baby pink - red

5 - 6 - 7 - 8

orange - apricot - gold - blue

9 -10 - 11 - 12 

purple - light blue - violet - moss-green

How great are these colours? Do you own any of them? Wich one would you like to see on my nails soon?

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• Holo My Hand
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Summer Flowers

Hello Sweeties!

How was your weekend? To make your Monday a bit sweeter let me show you this colourful flower manicure. It took me quite a while to do it, but I think it was totally worth the effort.

Unfortunately I only have two of these stampers so I wasn't able to make the decals for all my nails at once. I transfered a mixed flower design on both ends of my stapmers and filled them in with different colours. I used all catrice polishes, but I did not write each one of them down. (I think I used about 10 or 12 different shades from yellow to purple.) Last but not least I added a few dotted purple lines to fill in some gaps.

Once that had dried for a few minutes I painted on a clear coat and let it sit there for the night. The next day I peeled them off and did the same thing again. While the second batch was drying I painted my nails white (catrice - Isle of White).

I then started to measure the first decals to my nails (I had four for five nails!) and cut them into shape. Once I've placed them on my nails and cleaned up any excess I sealed them in with Seche Vite. By the time I was done with that the second decals had dried sufficiently and I repeated the last few steps on my other hand.

I usually don't post pictures of my right hand, because I am never 100% satisfied with the outcome, but in this case I'll make an exception. Don't they look super cute?

They also look lovely with my orchids...

I hope you had a wonderful weekend and are up for a whole new week. Stay tuned for my monthly favourites coming later today!

How do you like this colourful design? Do you like flower nails?

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claire's - Neon Polishes & Advanced Stamping Accent

Hello Lovelies!

And a very Happy Friday! Today I want to show you a summer manicure that is perfect for the hot and sunny weather we are having again right now. For this manicure I used only polishes I bought in Berlin and shared with you yesterday (Day 2), plus a black stamping polish.

First let me show you how I created my accent nail: I used the advanced stamping technique wich means that you transfer a pattern to your stamper and then fill it out with your desired colours. Once that is dry you paint on a topcoat and peel it of 30 minutes later (or the next day. Just make sure everything is dry!) I also included a layer of white to make the neon polishes stand out even better. But I would not recommend doing that. It is better to paint your nail white before placing the decal on. In my opinion this makes the cleanup easier and prevents white borders.

Once you placed the decal on your nail in the right position press down gently and remove any excess. You can cut it down with a pair of scissors or remove it with acetone or polish remover. What I like to do is to press down against the side walls of my fingers with an orange stick and break off the excess. This only works with a very well dried decal so be patient! :-)

Once you're finished with cleaning everything up seal in your decal with top coat. Don't use too many brushstrokes or you might smudge your beautiful design. I used Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat wich in my opinion is the best top coat ever. It gives a wonderful glossy finish and dries rapidly. It also almost never smudges a design.

I painted my other nails with different neon shades. On my thumb I used the orange Stormy Day, on my pointer Cobalt. The pink on my middlefinger is called Rave and the green polish on my pinkie is Pinball. All the polishes required three coats to be opaque. The formulas were all very similar and very good. I had no trouble with the application and they dried fast.

For my decal I also used the other neon shades I purchased. The yellow California Girl and the purple Electric. Furthermore I used an apricot neon shade by the name Pastel Neons. I bought this one a day later so you will see it in part 3 of my Berlin series.

I topped off all of my nails with Seche Vite. I really love how this manicure turned out. I was not sure that I liked neon polish on my nails, but this manicure proofed me wrong. Maybe a full set of neon in one colour would be too much, but this way it is perfect for me.

I also love how the polish seems to be glowing in direct sunlight. The colours look so intense and are just beautiful to look at. On the polish bottles it says 'fluorescent'. I am not sure if that means they'd glow under a black light. Do you have any experience in that department?

Have a great weekend everyone and enjoy the sun! I sure will.

How do you like this neon summer manicure? Would you wear it like this or do you prefer in in one colour?

Oh, I almost forgot to mention wich stamping plate I used. It is the BP-31 plate from my Born Pretty Store Haul. I do have quite a selection of stamping plates but only a few of them have such great full nail patterns. I definitely have to get more of those! Any suggestions?

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• Zipper Mani
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Butterfly Water Decals

Hello Sweeties!

How are you doing today? On this lovely Tuesday morning I have a short but colourful post to share with you. I used some of my new water decals to create this manicure.

I started my manicure with two coats of Wet 'n Wild - Frenche White Creme and let that base dry very well. In the meantime I prepared my decals by cutting them into nail sized pieces.

Then I soaked them in water one by one and applied them to the nails. As a last step I sealed them in carefully with Seche Vite.

I really like these decals. The butterflies are beautiful, but in my opinion a full manicure with them looks too unsteady. I'll try and do only an accent with these beauties next time to emphasise them even better.

What do you think of these water decals? Would you do a full set with them or use them as an accent? 

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• Caribbean Sea & Fimo Sticks
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