Apricot Gradient & Desert Stamping

Hello Sweeties!

How are you today? I am sitting at my desk right now, looking outside at the beautiful trees that are changing their colour, a blue sky with some little white clouds and listening to the birds singing their songs. My cup of tea smells fantastic and I am happy to be typing again. So here is todays post. The apricot colours I used are lovely for spring and summer, but I also think they are gorgeous for a sunny autumn day like today.

I painted my nails with one coat of Rival de Loop - pastel look and then sponged on a gradient using pastel look (02) and sunny look (03). Without a topcoat it looks a bit gritty, but after I layered over some Fairy Dust from china glaze I really liked the result a lot.

The top coat always helps bringing together the colours and blends them to a wonderful gradient. The pastel apricot and the peachy shade look lovely as a gradient, don't you think?

I then decided to use my Born Pretty Store stamping plate BP-31 to do a little stamping on my nails, but first I created two accent nails, that reminded me of sand and totally underlined the egyptian theme I was planning to do. I removed the polish from my middle and index finger, applied a white base and used the golden/apricot holo polish #6 from my BPS Holographics Set.

To get the colourful design I used multiple stamping polishes that I all bought from Born Pretty Store recently. (Check out the full haul.) For the palm trees I mixed together some black, green and a bit of yellow as well as a metallic green stamping polish. My camel is yellow with some white and the pyramides are black with a touch of yellow, wich looks like there is sand sprinkled all over them.

I am super happy with my manicure. Only my middle finger is a disappointment. I waited quite some time before stamping and still the polish got smudged horribly. I still wanted to share it with you, because I think the colourful design is very cute and I wanted you to see the beautiful motives from the BP-31 plate I haven't used before. I actually bought this plate for the full nail designs in the middle, but as it turns out the otheres are wonderful too!

And here is one last look at my thumb nail. Here you can see the metallic green stamping polish I used. It looks a bit blue in this picture, but it's not. It actually has a lovely golden shimmer. When you remove the polish and swipe over with a cotton ball, the green colour vanishes first and leaves the golden paticles behind and you can still see your design. I will show you this stamping polish in a separate post. It is totally worthy of that!

How do you like my egyptian stamping design?

You may also like:

• Neon Polishes Advanced Stamping (BP-31)
• Blackstar Red (BP-31)
• Lady Look

Dandelion Stamping on essie - Avenue Maintain

Hello Sweeties!

I hope you're having a fabulous Sunday! Today I want to show you a simple stamping manicure, that I did a while back when I first swatched essie - Avenue Maintain.

I used the design from my #10 stamping plate and some white stamping polish to create this dandelion design. It looks like one of these blowballs that I had so much fun with when I was a kid. I loved plucking them, blowing in and watching the seeds fly away with the wind. Did you do that too?

To give my design a little more colour I added some yellow dots with Wet 'n Wild - Sunny Side Up to the center of each flower. I like those little flowers a lot, but unfortunately the polish didn't transfer too well on my ringfinger. I still think it's cute!

How do you like this manicure? Do you like stamping on short nails?

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kiko - Dark Carmine Red & Aloha Shirt

Hello Sweeties!

I hope you are allright and had a good week so far. Today I want to show you another summer themed manicure that I wore last weekend. It was so warm here I totally felt like it and today it is going to be a sunny day too so I am posting this manicure that reminds me of an Hawaiian shirt.

The base colour I used for this manicure is kiko - Dark Carmine Red (287), a deep, luscious magenta creme polish. In some lighting it looks like a pinkish red, in other more like a dark pink. I would say it is something in between. There is also a little bit of shimmer in this polish. It doesn't sit on top like a pearl finish, but is embedded into the polish like microglitter.

The formula of Dark Carmine Red is excellent. With two coats it is perfectly opaque and it applies smoothly. I didn't do any clean up at this point in my manicure and as you can see there is only a little bit of staining on the sidewall of my ringfinger, no running, pooling or smudging. On its own DCR has a slightly glossy finish, but I would use a topcoat to make it even glossier, because I personally prefer that.

Once that was completely dry I added a layer of Revlon - Holographic Pearls (765) to my ring- and middlefinger. I will tell you a bit more about this polish in one of my next posts. Only so much: It was an odyssey for me to get it!

I then stamped on some hibiscus flowers from my DER-31 plate with white stamping polish. (Check out what's on this plate in my beautiful Purple Gradient with Pansies manicure.)

Initially I only wanted to do my pinkie, but it looked so gorgeous on the magenta base colour, that I had to go on and even add little flower accents to my glitter nails. I am 100% in love with this manicure!

I hope you like it too! Look how sparkly that glitter is! I can not stop looking at these pictures...

Are you a fan of flower nails? How do you like this combination?

You may also like:

• Neon Manicure
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Leadlight Flowers - Stained Glass

Hello Sweeties!

Today I want to show you a manicure I've been wanting to do for a while now. I've seen so many gorgeous designs online and finally got to trying out the Leadlight or Stained Glass technique myself. Previously that had fallen through because I didn't find a proper stamping motive to use, but now I am quite happy with my choice.

I started this manicure with a layer of Wet 'n Wild Protective Basecoat and one coat of claire's - Cloud. I then applied two coats of flormar - Holographic Silver (395). Let me show you some swatches of that beauty before heading to the manicure.

Holographic Silver is a fantastic glitter polish packed with lots and lots of iridescent microglitter. It reminds me of china glaze - Fairy Dust, just more dense. As you can see it is almost opaque in two layers. I Bet it would look amazing over a dark blue or black too!

In my opionion the name is a bit misleading. It is not really a holographic glitter, but an iridescent one. Even though it shimmers beautifully in all the colours of the rainbow it is still missing the real holo effect. Nevertheless it is insanely gorgeous. Look at all the sparkles:

I purchased a set of twelve stampingplates online a while back. You've seen me using some of them before. I really don't know what brand it is so I can only show it too ou and tell you I've used number 10 for this manicure.

With black stamping polish I transferred the flower design in the lower left corner to all of my nails. Look how you can still see all the lovely glitter!

Once that was dry I started filling in the design with various jelly polishes. I've used most of the OPI sheer tints and some homemade jellies in green, orange and red (wich appears quite pink). I then sealed it in with Seche Vite.

In the pictures you can see, that the orange jelly I mixed was a bit milky and stained my black polish a little, but in real life that was only minimal and hardly visible. It also was a lot sparklier than it appears in the pictures. I had trouble looking away from my nails. In the brurry parts of my last picture you can get a glimpse of it (Pointer).

I am so happy I finally tried this technique. It is so simple yet elegant and super effective and doesn't take hours of prep time. I am a little bit disappointed with the pictures though and my poor choice of orange polish to mix my jelly ( I think I've used Maybelline - Couture Orange.). I bet I have better ones in my stock! I'll know better next time...

How do you like this manicure? Have you ever used the leadlight technique?

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Watermelon / Wet 'n Wild - SaGreena the Teenage Witch

Hello Lovelies!

Happy Saturday. Anything special planned today? I still am pretty much chained to the sofa. My foot still hurts and I can only walk on my toes wich looks actually quite funny (if it didn't hurt so much...).

Today I want to show you a manicure I did last week while it was still extremely hot, but even though autumn is slowly finding it's way back and it is getting cooler I still want to share this summer manicure with you.

The green I used for this manicure is Wet 'n Wild - SaGreena the Teenage Witch (E226C). It is a luscious emerald green with a soft metallic finish. The formula is excellent and leaves only very little visible brushstrokes. I used three coats for full opacity, wich dried very quick and were super easy to apply. 

For my accent nails I used this stamping plate (sadly I don't know a make and model. It's simply called 05). I transferred the watermelon design in the left cormer to my stampers and coloured it with SaGreena the Teenage Witch and OPI - Dinner At Sunset. I also added a little bit of Wet 'n Wild - Blazed to the tips of the slices.

I added a clear coat and let that dry before I peeled it off to place it on my nailes that I covered with two coats of claire's - Cloud. After trimming off the excess I added top coat to my nails.

I did have a few melon slices "leftovers" that I decided to add to my green nails to make this manicure perfect. I think it looks delicious and absolutely mouth-watering. I could really take a bite right now! :-D

I like the watermelon design a lot, but the pattern didn't transper perfectly. The seeds are so tiny they dry extremely fast and it is nearly impossible to get them all transferred perfectly. That is the only thing I don't like about it, so let's just say I stamped on seedless melons! :-D

How do you like this fruity manicure? Isn't this a lovely green?

My friend Andrea from Colour Your Life suggested that I should use bigger pictures for my posts. So this is what I did here. Please give me some feedback and let me know how you like the new picture size. Should I stick with it for the future, or should I try it one step smaller?
Have a wonderful weekend!

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• Strawberries
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Purple Gradient with Pansies

Hello Lovelies!

After showing you the polishes I bought on my first day in Berlin earlier today, I now want to show you a manicure I did using a couple of them.

I started my mani by applying a base coat and then added two layeres of catrice - LE Travel De Luxe - Isle of White (C01). While that was drying I applied liquid latex around my cuticles that I recently bought from Born Pretty Store.

Once everything was dry I applied a purple gradient to my nails using a make-up sponge and then stamped some black pansies on. I actually was planning to only do an accent nail, but as you can see I ended up stamping a few flowers to all my nails.

I then picked out some glitter hexes from a silver polish (I don't know wich polish I used. I just grabbed one from my table...) and added them to the center of each flower. To bring everything together I added Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat and sealed in my design. For clean-up I simply had to remove the latex with some tweezers and clean the edges with a flat brush and some acetone.

Here is what I used to create this manicure:

• Black stamping polish
• Yves Rocher - Iris (34)
• Catrice: It's Time For A Lovender (64) - CadiLILAC (71) - Isle of White (LE)
• Stamping Plate DER-31 plus a stamper & scraper
• Glitter nailpolish and a toothpick
• Base & Top Coat
• Liquid Latex, flat blush and nailpolish remover

I am totally in love with this manicure! I love how the colours look together and am happy with my stamping. The gradient even reminds me a bit of a french manicure with the white tips.

And it does fit perfectly with our balkony flowers! I would wear this for a summer day anytime as well as for a girls night out. The few sparkles add a little elegance, don't you think?

How do you like this flowery manicure? Do you like pansies?

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