25th March, 2013
Today I’m bringing you my weekly piCture pOlish swatch. I seem to go on about the weather in all my recent posts, but it feels like we’re still in the middle of winter right now with all the snow we’re having. This bright shade definitely feels like Spring on my fingertips!
Meet piCture pOlish Coral Reef, a stunning bright coral creme. It glided on like butter and was perfectly smooth and opaque in two coats. I have a real weak spot for coral shades. They’re really cheerful and bright and easy to pull off. Coral Reef dries super glossy too!
I decided to add a mini nail art accent nail to spice up my Coral Reef mani. I saw this design by Anna Stimson appear on my Facebook feed and I simply had to try it. I used my It’s So Easy nail art stripers for this design and added some top coat to finish off.
Finally the bottle shot and tagline, “Close your eyes and you’re there!”. That’s definitely appropriate right now. While writing this, I’m sitting next to my window, with the sun shining in. Even though it’s below freezing point outside, it almost feels like Summer if I close my eyes hard enough. 
You can find piCture pOlish Coral Reef for AU$10.00 on the piCture pOlish website. Make sure to check out the piCture pOlish network page to find an online store near you that carries this shade. If you are in Belgium or the Netherlands, you can take a look at PrettyPolish.nl!
18th March, 2013
I have an incredibly exciting post to share today! I’m not sure if you remember, but a while ago I created six nail art manicures with the Estée Lauder Beyond Black & Metal Mania collection for It-Girl. For each nail polish collection, Estée Lauder creates “Nail Art Pairings”, suggestions for nail art using the collection shades.
For this Spring season, Estée Lauder released five new polishes, the Pure Color Heavy Petals collection! I was lucky enough to get my hands on all the shades to create some exciting nail art for you. I recreated the three Estée Lauder Nail Art Pairings, and like last time, came up with three of my own! Let’s take a look.
From left to right: Narcissist, Lilac Leather, Coral Cult, Dilettante, Absinthe.
First up are the three Estée Lauder Nail Art Pairings.
I’m with the Band: Brush nails with Coral Cult. Add a broad horizontal stripe of Absinthe across middle of nails.
I really love these two colours together! I ended up making the horizontal stripe slightly curved so it follows the natural curve of the nail. A fun and simple design that doesn’t require nail art brushes or special tools.
“Pretty Naughty: Paint nails with Insatiable from the Pretty Naughty Collection. Then add Chaos in a half “moon” on the right and left sides of each nail, base to tip.”
I didn’t own Insatiable from the Pretty Naughty Collection so I ended up using Dilettante paired with Chaos. I loved how these two look together! This is such a beautiful design, I’ve never seen it before. It’s very feminine yet powerful.
“Purple Moon: Stroke Lilac Leather on nails. Brush Smashed on moon area only.”
Half moons are always stylish in my book. I like to use my half moon colour first, so I started with Smashed, then painted on Lilac Leather. Lilac Leather is a really lovely and opaque pastel purple.
Next up are the designs I created.
Geometric Triangles: Using Estée Lauder Narcissist and Dilettante.
This is my favourite design I created! I usually see this type of design done using tape but I simply used a striping brush. I never seem to have successful results using tape, I guess I’m too impatient. I think the end result of this looks really fun, it almost has an eighties vibe to it, while still being young, current and fresh.
Thumb Accent: Using Estée Lauder Coral Cult and Absinthe.
One of my favourite things to do is use my thumb as an accent nail. It’s quirky and different! I prefer it to using my ring finger as an accent nail. Only while editing my pictures I noticed I used Coral Cult and Absinthe twice as a pairing. They just look so great together! Like they were made for each other.
Pastel Union Jack: Using Estée Lauder Dilettante, Coral Cult and Narcissist.
For my final design I created a fun pastel Union Jack. I’m not sure why I ended up doing this design, but the three shades together somehow worked perfectly to create a Union Jack.
I hope you enjoyed these nail art creations. Please let me know which are your favourites, I’d love to find out which ones you prefer! In Belgium, you can find the Estée Lauder Heavy Petals collection exclusively available at the Brussels location of Galeria Inno. For international availability, please check with your local Estée Lauder counter, or head over to the store locator on the Estée Lauder website.
13th March, 2013
A few days ago three friends and I decided to try the new waterspotted technique! This technique is similar to water marble, but rather than adding different colours and creating a design with a toothpick, you simply spray liquid that contains alcohol denat (e.g. hairspray, hand sanitizer, etc) on top of your polish! Pretty amazing right?!
I was inspired by Lex’s Turquoise Stone nails for this design. When I saw her nails I instantly knew I had to try this technique! As I mentioned, a few friends and myself decided to try waterspotted for an Instagram tag, #bestietwinnails. You can find my friends at @gorjessnails, @razonmeg and @leyamonster on Instagram and check out their design. 
I started by applying a base colour, then adding random dots on top. Then I did the waterspotted effect using black and for the finishing touch I added some gold spots on top. These are the polishes I used:
- China Glaze Sunday Funday
- piCture pOlish Sky
- piCture pOlish Jade
- NYC City Blackout
- Barry M Gold Foil Effects
- HITS Amélie
On my accent nail I also added a large stud which you can find at Born Pretty Store.
I really enjoyed trying the waterspotted technique but I would say it’s trickier than I thought it would be. The height from which you spray your hairspray (in my case) makes a huge difference. It pays off in the end though, I think the effect looks absolutely amazing!
Let me know in the comments what you think about the waterspotted technique and if you’ve tried it yet.
2nd March, 2013
This week I wanted to do a simple design using some of the China Glaze Avant Garden nail polishes. I went for a gradient leopard look, using 5 out of 6 colours from the Pastel Petals set. I really loved how this turned out. Simple but really fun! It’s been a while since I did a leopard design so it was about time I did one again. I don’t think I will ever dislike a good leopard manicure!
These are the polishes I used for this look:
- China Glaze Keep Calm, Paint On
- China Glaze Fade Into Hue
- China Glaze Tart-y For The Party
- China Glaze Pink-ie Promise
- China Glaze Life Is Rosy
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in black
- China Glaze Fast Forward Top Coat
Make sure to check out my swatches on the China Glaze Avant Garden collection if you haven’t seen them already! I love Spring collections and Avant Garden is definitely one of my favourites yet. It’s full of unique and interesting shades. Hope you like these leopard nails!
21st February, 2013
Sorry for my absence during the past few days… I’ve been sick in bed, I still am while writing this. Pretty frustrating since I had so many exciting posts planned! I guess you’ll just have to be patient with me for a little longer!
Anyway these are some really simple but fun nails I did last week. I used one of the new Born Pretty Store nail polishes from the BK Crystal Sand collection. I ended up wearing this mani for almost a week, it lasted 4 full days on me before it started to chip. Needless to say I was hugely impressed with the wear of this BK polish!
I used two coats of the BK Crystal Sand polish in #17, it was pretty much a one-coater though. Mine did need a bit of polish thinner but that’s not the end of the world. It was nice and opaque which I enjoy in black polishes. It has a beautiful silver shimmer to it, it almost reminded me of stars in the night sky. Very pretty! It has a matte and slightly gritty finish but I added plenty of top coat to make sure it was nice and glossy.
On the accent nail I added a bow using 2mm round studs and gold heart studs. I saw this idea on Liquid Jelly‘s blog and loved it, so I simply had to try it myself! Simple nail art can often be the most effective. I really loved wearing this! I hope you like it as well.
Don’t forget to use my coupon code if you order anything with Born Pretty Store, EMILYW21 gives you a 10% discount on your order.
6th February, 2013
Today’s manicure is dedicated to someone special! I’m sure you’ll be able to guess who from taking a quick glance at my nails. Who else can it be other than Minnie Mouse herself?!
I was asked to create this adorable “Minnie-cure” for the occasion of the Minnie & You campaign. Disney are putting a special spotlight on Minnie Mouse with the Minnie & You campaign, celebrating her style and fashion sense.
I used two beautiful OPI shades from the Minnie Mouse collection for this “Minnie-cure”. I painted my nails with OPI The Color Of Minnie which is a beautiful red with pink shimmer and OPI Nothin’ Mousie ‘Bout It which is the famous and beautiful heart glitter!
On my middle finger I painted the M of the distinctive Minnie & You logo using nail brushes and a dotting tool for the polka dots. On my ring finger I individually placed some of the heart glitters of OPI Nothin’ Mousie ‘Bout It. This glitter is so adorable! It has beautiful pink and gold flakies, I can’t wait to see what it looks like over black. On my pointer finger and pinkie I used a dotting tool to add a fun polka dot print over OPI The Color Of Minnie.
And finally, I had to add a bow to my thumb! When you think of Minnie, you think of polka dots and of her beautiful bow of course. I find bows so tricky to paint, but I am pretty happy with how this one turned out! I hope I’ve made Minnie proud.
I hope you enjoyed my “Minnie-cure”. I had so much fun creating it! Please let me know what you think in comments below.
31st January, 2013
I’m back with some nail art today! I wasn’t even planning on sharing this one on my blog, but as I got so many compliments on them I thought I’d share them with you.
For work I like to keep my nails simple as my nail polish chips really easily from washing my hands a lot and rummaging through boxes. Doesn’t mean they have to be boring though! I definitely like to have a fun design, but nothing too intricate that will make me sad when it chips.
When I was painting my nails for work, I picked an unused polish from my stash. An OPI mini, Did It On ‘Em from the Nicki Minaj collection and decided to add a fun accent nail. I remembered this really beautiful geometric design I saw on the blog Lucy’s Stash and decided to recreate it. I used China Glaze Snow as a base and used my It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in Black to create the pattern. Lucy’s Stash has a great and easy to follow tutorial on this design so make sure to check out her post!
This design is so effective. It almost looks like a nail wrap, but actually it’s been carefully painted by hand! It looks tricky but it’s actually fairly simple to do. Those are my favourite types of designs! Hope you like it too!
19th January, 2013
I promised you I would be doing more nail art in the future, and I meant it! I already have some more nail art to show you today, though you will have to head over to my dear friend Alice’s blog to see it! Her blog is called One Nail To Rule Them All, which is undoubtedly one of the best names ever for a polish blog.
Make sure to take a look at my guest post to find out more about these nails! Simply click on the picture above to be taken to her blog. Thanks for looking!
18th January, 2013
Guess what I have for you today? A nail art post!!! Yay! Finally! Sorry for not posting any nail art for so long… It’s taken me a few weeks to get my nail art mojo back but I hope it’s back for good now!
Anyway these are some uber sparkly nails I did! I saw Candice share a picture on Instagram featuring some awesome glitter placement nails she did, and how they helped her to feel better. I figured this was the perfect time to try these! It took me roughly under an hour to do all 10 fingers. They are so mesmerizing! They are so sparkly in person, I admit I did zone out of several conversations because I was staring at my nails. Oops!
The base colour I used is an old Essence limited edition shade from the Denim Wanted collection, it’s called I Love My Jeans. It’s a charcoal black with silver shimmer. Then I used a thin and non-quick drying top coat to make my nails sticky and individually placed the hex glitters using a dotting tool. Finally two coats of ProNails Seco Seco (similar to Seche Vite!) to smooth everything out.
These are the glitters I used for this manicure! They are a set of 12 colours of hex glitter. I got these from Born Pretty Store. This set is just $6.45 for all 12 colours! The box I keep mine in is not included but I also got that from Born Pretty, you can find it on their site here.
I ended up putting one scoop of each colour (except for the translucent white and silver) in an empty jar. This way I could easily grab random colours each time. Btw, how pretty does that glitter look?
Anyway I hope you like these! I had a lot of fun doing them, it was actually less time consuming than I thought so that was good. And these are definitely a good solution to distract your mind, you need a lot of concentration placing each glitter on one by one. Fun fact: I made a rough calculation and it took me around 400 hex glitters to cover all 10 nails!
26th December, 2012
Today I have a review on some gorgeous purple studs from the online store KKCenterHK. They only recently started selling studs so this is one of their new arrivals. They have so many amazing colours and shapes to choose from so make sure to check out their range if you love studs!
The purple studs come in a ziplock bag and each bag contains about 50 pieces. Prices range between $4-5 per bag. Not the cheapest studs I have tried but these are really beautiful and unique.
Here you can see a close-up of the studs! How gorgeous are these?! They’re purple but have a beautiful sparkly geometric design on them. I’m not really sure how to describe it, but it’s almost like a holographic rainbow effect. The rainbow shifts when you move them around. Really pretty! The size of these studs is 3mm so they are about medium sized.
Here’s a simple look I made with the purple studs. The base colour I used is a beautiful lavender shade, China Glaze Light As Air. Studs are probably my favourite nail art decoration. They are so easy to use but look really awesome. Perfect for people who are nail art beginners too! They require no skill and they always look great!
Make sure to check out the KKCenterHK website to see the full range of studs as well as other awesome nail art supplies. If you decide to order with them make sure to use my coupon code, “VERYEMILY” gives you 10% off your order! Yay!
Do you like using studs on your nails? Make sure to let me know in the comments!
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