15th May, 2013
One of my other passions besides nail art and make-up is knitting and crochet. I grew up around yarn since my grandmother and mum have been avid knitters all their lives. I briefly tried knitting as a young girl but I never really got into it. Then I rediscovered crochet a few months ago and found myself hooked (excuse the pun 
). Since crochet was becoming less challenging for me I decided it was time to start knitting!
For some strange reason that still isn’t clear to me, knitting came extremely naturally to me. I thought I’d never be able to knit since I always found it so difficult. Then suddenly I found myself tackling projects that are intermediate or even highly challenging skill levels with ease. Lace knitting, entrelac, stranded colourwork, etc. That last one is the technique I used for the pillow you see above. I’ve only been knitting for two months so I’m pretty proud I’ve accomplished so much in so little time!
I found the pattern for the pillowcase in a Filati Home magazine and I simply had to make it. Why? Because it immediately reminded me of a nail art design. I used my favourite cotton yarn to make this pillow, Schachenmayr SMC Catania.
I decided to merge two of my passions so that’s what inspired these nails! I used the same pattern and colours that I used in my pillow. I painted it by hand using very thin nail art brushes and I used BK Hello Kitty nail polishes in shades #01, #29, #27 and #25. For the black I used OPI Black Onyx and I also used China Glaze Below Deck.
I really hope you like how these turned out! I love them so much because they were inspired by my pillowcase. I’ve noticed there are many nail bloggers that also love knitting and crochet! It’s so exciting to see people that share your passion. If you love knitting and crochet like me, make sure to add me on Ravelry! What are your hobbies besides love for nail polish and nail art? 
Let me know in the comments!
13th April, 2013
By now, I think we’ve all seen or tried textured nail polish. Where most of us found ourselves opposed to the idea of having gritty nails, I think we welcomed textured polishes and found ourselves falling in love with the trend of textured finishes. China Glaze is the latest to jump on this bandwagon, or so it seems. For Summer 2013 they released their very own Texture collection featuring six creme shades with a soft sandy finish. Let’s take a look!
China Glaze In The Rough – This is a lovely pastel lime green texture polish. All of these shades are creamy and don’t contain any shimmer or glitter particles.This one covered nicely in two coats. This texture finish is slightly different than the OPI Liquid Sand shades. Application is also a little trickier.
China Glaze Toe-Tally Textured – This is a bright orange creme texture polish. All shades are really bright and bold and dry to a matte finish, though it does take a while to dry properly. You want to take things slow with these polishes and not apply the second coat until they are “settled in” and have turned matte.
China Glaze Itty, Bitty & Gritty – This is a cute coral pink shade. I wish China Glaze made a non-texture dupe for this because it’s a really lovely colour! Application was nice and even with this one. You do need to make sure to shake your bottles thoroughly though.
China Glaze Bump & Grind – This is a bright magenta creamy texture finish. It’s not quite a red, but not quite pink either. I really love this colour. As you can see it’s still slightly shiny in some parts. The true matte finish takes a few hours to show up. Once all the texture particles have settled in they feel quite soft to the touch and not gritty at all.
China Glaze Unrefined – This is a lovely pastel pink creamy texture polish. Application was a little trickier with this one as it was slightly thicker. I found that the density of the texture particles varied per polish but this can also be down to how well they are shaken.
China Glaze Of Coarse! – And finally a bright pastel blue creme texture polish. This is a really pretty blue shade. This did have some bare patches but once again, could be down to not shaking up the bottles enough.
I’ve actually been dying to share my swatches with you! I’ve been playing around with these for months (since last year!) but couldn’t share my pictures until the official press release was sent out (yesterday, finally!). My first response to the texture finish was definitely apprehensive, but after trying these I really fell in love with them! The names are super cute too! They don’t feel as gritty as they look, they feel quite soft and pleasant. They also don’t catch on things and are fairly long-lasting too. They are unique and definitely worth trying!
What do you think of these Texture polishes? Do you prefer the matte creamy finish or the shimmery and glittery finish for texture finishes? Let me know in the comments!
11th April, 2013
I have a really cute Spring-appropriate post for you today. For a few weeks I had this idea in my head to create nail art inspired by those amazing floral studded iPhone cases I kept seeing around. The lovely people at KKCenterHK sent me some gorgeous studs so I figured this was the perfect time to try out this design!
These are the nail polishes I used:
- OPI My Vampire Is Buff
- OPI Suzi’s Hungary Again
- China Glaze Budding Romance
- OPI Black Onyx
- China Glaze Snow
- China Glaze Fast Forward Top Coat
And these are the gorgeous 2mm studs I used! They are available at KKCenterHK for $4.74. Above is the total amount you get which is around 50 pieces. I do find these a little pricey for the small amount of studs, but they are really stunning and nice quality. These in particular are a beautiful warm orange-toned gold and are completely smooth and round which I thought was very pretty.
I’m really pleased with how these nails turned out! They turned out almost exactly like I had them in mind. I am really excited I finally got to try out OPI My Vampire Is Buff as a base colour for a nail art design. It’s such a wonderful shade! Floral nails are one of my favourite designs to do and I think the studs compliment them beautifully.
I hope you like them! Let me know in the comments.
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!
25th February, 2013
Pastel shades are by far my favourites, that’s definitely no secret. Spring collections never fail to get me excited. I was in love when I saw the first sneak previews of China Glaze Avant Garden! No swatches or collection previews prepare you for how beautiful these shades are in person though. All of these blew me away when I first swatched them. They are so unique and wonderful!
China Glaze Avant Garden holds twelve shades in total, six Pastel Petals and six Blooming Brights. Let’s take a look at the Pastel Petals first!
From left to right: Life Is Rosy, Pink-ie Promise, Tart-y For The Party, Fade Into Hue, Keep Calm Paint On, Dandy Lyin’ Around.
China Glaze – Life Is Rosy: This is a beautiful dusty rose creme. I love shades like this! Some would call this an old fashioned shade, I’d call it vintage! Haha! This one did dry slightly darker than how it looks in the bottle. I used 2 coats.
China Glaze – Pink-ie Promise: Vintage Barbie eat your heart out! This is a beautiful pale dusty pink, it’s soft and delicate. Girly but still mature. I don’t usually gravitate towards pink but this one’s really nice. This was 3 thin coats.
China Glaze – Tart-y For The Party: This is a stunning periwinkle purple. I’m head over heels in love with this one! That’s saying a lot coming from someone who doesn’t wear purple. I know I said the same thing about piCture pOlish Wisteria, but you could call this the pastel sister of Wisteria. Definitely one of my favourites! This was 2 coats.
China Glaze – Fade Into Hue: This is a beautiful dusty periwinkle blue. It’s almost like an acid wash jeans colour. This was really sheer at first, but the second layer evened it out. I’d call this a mix between a jelly and creme finish, it definitely has best of both worlds! You get a squishy and shiny colour, and an opaque finish. I used 3 thin coats.
China Glaze – Keep Calm, Paint On: Ah, a mint green! You all know how much I love minty shades. This is a beautiful pale mint green with a soft silver shimmer. I wasn’t expecting the shimmer so it was a real surprise when I tried this on for the first time. It’s very pretty! How could I resist a mint green?! This was 3 thin coats.
China Glaze – Dandy Lyin’ Around: This reminded me of China Glaze Knotty, but a white version. It’s a white shimmer with subtle pink and green shimmer. Somehow this made me think of morning dew drops! Delicate and beautiful. This was 4 coats.
So far for the Pastel Petal shades. Next up are the six Blooming Brights shades!
From left to right: Mimosa’s Before Mani’s, Passion For Petals, Snap My Dragon, Fancy Pants, Sunday Funday, Budding Romance.
China Glaze – Mimosa’s Before Mani’s: A gorgeous coral with subtle shimmer. I always love coral shades and this one is particularly pretty. It’s bright and fun! The shimmer definitely makes it more unique. This was three coats.
China Glaze – Passion For Petals: This is a pretty dusty magenta. Not sure how else to describe it! It’s a red that softly leans towards pink, but still has a dusty quality. This one is very opaque! Almost a one-coater, though I did use two coats.
China Glaze – Snap My Dragon: This is a sexy vibrant blue-based red with hot pink shimmer. I really loved this shade! I seem to recall China Glaze having done a few reds with pink shimmer in the past, but they always do colours like this really well. The pink shimmer is a lot more vibrant in person, I sadly wasn’t able to capture it very well. This was two thin coats.
China Glaze – Fancy Pants: This is a beautiful dusty blue with pink shimmer. Yes, pink shimmer! It’s so cool! Such a unique shade, definitely one of the highlights of the collection. You can kinda see the shimmer in my picture, but it’s a lot brighter in person. I love the name, and the colour, and it was nice and opaque too! I used two coats.
China Glaze – Sunday Funday: This is a beautiful true turquoise blue. It’s so vibrant! I know it looks bright in my picture, but it’s times ten in person! I have nothing like this in my stash, and that’s saying a lot! This was two coats.
China Glaze – Budding Romance: We’ve arrived at the last and (in my opinion) awesomest shade of this collection. Budding Romance is a jelly olive green. It’s weird and wonderful! I love quirky shades like this. It’s so weird and unique, I absolutely adore it. Not something you see often! This was four coats.
Overall a great collection by China Glaze! My favourites are Tart-y For The Party, Budding Romance, and Sunday Funday. There honestly isn’t one shade in this collection I didn’t like. They’re all really great and the formula was flawless across the board. Which of these shades would you love to add to your collection? Let me know in the comments! I’d love to hear what you think about China Glaze Avant Garden.
14th February, 2013
I’ve barely found the time to blog this week, I’ve just been so busy! However, I do have some pretty exciting posts to share on here soon, so make sure to watch this space. In the meantime, here’s a recap of a few things I shared on Instagram the past few weeks. There’s also a question for YOU at the bottom of this post. So make sure to leave me your feedback, I’d love to hear your suggestions!
Follow me on Instagram: veryemily.
Left: When I saw this heart at Action for under $2 I simply had to buy it. It was being sold as a display for greeting cards, but in my head I immediately saw my necklaces dangling from the beautiful little hearts. I’m so glad I picked this up! It’s definitely one of my new favourite items in my room. Score!
Right: It’s been a few years since I bought a new duvet cover and I figured it was time for a change. I’ve wanted a Union Jack duvet cover for a while and when I was googling I found that 3SUISSES had the perfect one. I picked this up during their sale, it came in at around $50 including the four pillow covers. I love how it has a different design on the inside!
On 28 January, I had the most epic nail mail day ever! One of my bestest friends Alex (aka Algae Veronica! Please check out her blog, she’s an amazing nail artist) absolutely spoiled me with the most amazing package filled with goodies. I wish I knew what I did to deserve such kindness! My new piCture pOlish shades for my weekly swatchathon also arrived that day. I was, and still am, overwhelmed with all the beautiful polishes I was blessed with that day!
On 1 February my boyfriend and I celebrated our four year anniversary. I’m so blessed to have such an amazing, supportive and awesome boyfriend. I wouldn’t know what to do without him!
MUA Cosmetics was having a sale on their website not too long ago. All of their products were 50% off, and they were having a free international shipping deal. Given their products are so cheap already, this definitely was too good to pass up! So these are the goodies I picked up during the sale. Would anyone like to see reviews on some of these items? Let me know in the comments!
Left: Last weekend I had a haul at Action and Kruidvat. Action is quickly becoming one of my favourite stores, it’s basically like a Poundland or a Dollar Store. Everything is so cheap and the items they sell are awesome! They have a lot of great make-up products and cosmetics too. As you can tell from the duplicates, these goodies are not all for me! I also picked up some items for a few dear friends of mine.
Right: This is the Essence Popul-Art blush from the Vintage District limited edition. It’s so beautiful! I almost don’t want to use it. The gold is an overspray so I haven’t touched it yet. The effect is too pretty to ruin!
Meet my first ever decoden iPhone case! I got it at Born Pretty Store, it comes in a set with a clear iPhone case, large decoden pieces, rhinestones and pearls, glue and a nifty pencil for picking up rhinestones. I also used some other rhinestones I had lying around. I definitely went a bit overboard with the bling. I love it so much though! Especially the little nail polish charm. It’s just the cutest!
Left: Behold my very own OPI Euro Centrale display! When I saw the first previews of Euro Centrale I knew I had to have the full collection. I’ve never bought a full collection before but I simply had to have it, the shades were SO me! My friend Alex was able to hook me up with this, so a huge thanks to her.
Right: A little sneaky peek of my three favourite shades from the Euro Centrale collection. But more on that in my swatch post which should be going up this week or early next week!
And finally, here’s the new Born Pretty Store glitter polishes! I will be swatching these on my blog very soon! But this is where you come in… As they are mostly layering glitters I’ve been debating which colours I should layer them over. As there’s so many, I will only be able to show one layering combination. Either I can use the same colour for all glitters (white or black?) or I can pick a shade that I think works best with each shade. Please let me know what you’d prefer and what you would like to see me do with these!
Hope you enjoyed this post! Thanks for watching and reading!
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!
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!
18th December, 2012
First of all, thanks so much for all your kind words on my previous post. It’s greatly appreciated!
As promised, I am showing you the China Glaze Tranzitions collection today. It’s a six piece collection, and what’s special about these nail polishes is that they change colour when you add top coat. Sounds interesting right? I was definitely tickled when I first saw the press release and already started thinking about fun designs to create with this collection.
I haven’t done any nail art in almost a month so I am definitely feeling a bit rusty. It was quite tricky to create designs using clear polish but I hope you like what I created! First let’s take a look at the colours.
From left to right: Split Perso-nail-ity, Modify Me, Duplicity, Altered Reality, Metallic Metamorphosis, Shape Shifter.
As I mentioned earlier, adding top coat will change the colour of these polishes. I did a few trial tests with all my top coats to see which worked best. In the end I chose China Glaze Strong Adhesion Base Coat. Yes, base coat! Surprisingly enough, this gave me the strongest and smoothest effect.
Split Perso-nail-ity – First up is this beautiful dusty pink shade which changes into a beautiful plum colour. I chose to do a houndstooth design. The more clear polish you add, the stronger the effect is, which does make doing nail art slightly tricky. You have to pile on at least two thick coats of clear polish for the effect to be strong enough.
Modify Me – This is a gorgeous periwinkle blue which changes into a deep blue. I did this simple triangle design and added an accent nail where I put top coat over the entire nail. I had to redo this nail several times as it’s very tricky not to smudge and smear. Unfortunately, tricky is definitely the key word when describing the Tranzitions collection.
Duplicity – A beautiful mint green which changes into a teal. Obviously I like this one a lot! I did a geometric design with this one. I think it turned out pretty nice!
Altered Reality – This is a metallic teal which changes into a slightly darker colour. This one was a little disappointing as it barely showed a colour shift.The colour on its own is very pretty though!
Metallic Metamorphosis – This is a metallic grey which changes into a dark gunmetal. The colour shift in this one was pretty nice. I did a simple leopard print with a dotting tool. Easy but effective!
Shape Shifter – Finally a dark, slightly purple metallic shade which turns into a deep bright purple. Stunning! I love this one a lot. The colour shift is really beautiful. I thought this was such a classy shade, I simply had to go for a half moon design.
I know there’s been a lot of debate about this collection. I decided to reserve judgement until after I tried them and even though I do like this collection, there’s sadly a few imperfections. I thought I’d sum up a few pros and cons for you!
Pros:
- Pigmentation! These polishes are all one-coaters. They are so opaque! This is typical for these kinds of polishes, the Essence Colour And Change collection shows the same signs.
- Easy Application! These applied very smoothly and they are easy to work with.
- Fun! I think these are great fun to play around with, there’s a ton of possibilities. You basically get two colours in one!
- Gorgeous Colours! All these shades are super pretty in my opinion. Especially the cremes!
Cons:
- Chalky. Even though they are opaque, the consistency is somewhat strange, almost chalky. Not exactly matte, but not as glossy and smooth as the regular China Glaze formula.
- Subtle Colour Change. I was hoping the colour change would be more dramatic, sadly it’s a little on the subtle side.
- Tricky. Creating a design isn’t easy, it’s difficult to work with a clear top coat since you can barely see what you are doing.
- Streaky. Adding top coat over the entirely nail is difficult to achieve without it streaking completely.
Overall, not a huge win, but definitely a fun and interesting collection. Though if I’m honest, I would love these a lot more if they wouldn’t be colour changing. I’ll take the flawless China Glaze formula over this “novelty formula” any time! What do you think about this collection? Let me know in the comments!
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