24th October, 2012
I have six polishes from the upcoming China Glaze Holiday Joy collection to show you today. As with most holiday collections, there’s lots of sparkle and mainly reds, golds and silver. I really love how there’s so much glitter in this collection, though I would love to see a more unconventional Holiday collection. Something out-of-the-box! Wouldn’t that be awesome? Anyway, let’s take a look at the shades.
From left to right: Blue Bells Ring, Glitter All The Way, Angel Wings, Pure Joy, Red Satin and Merry Berry.
Blue Bells Ring – This is two coats of an icy metallic blue. It has what you’d call a frosty finish. I honestly love this shade, even though I usually stay away from frosty shades as much as possible, this is a true beauty. It’s incredibly opaque, you could honestly get away with just one coat, and it’s very smooth, hardly any brush strokes. Utter perfection!!!
Glitter All The Way – Isn’t that the coolest name? This awesome glitter polish has multi-coloured glitters. You’ll find green, red, purple and gold glitters. Three coats gave me almost full opacity.
Angel Wings – This is three coats of a gold micro glitter with holographic glitters. I loved this when I first saw swatches of it, but I did have some issues with it. It’s a bit goopy and tricky to apply, and when it dries it’s a little gritty. You’ll definitely need multiple coats of top coat to even it out. I want to love this one but the application issues make me love it slightly less. It’s hard to resist though, it definitely looks gorgeous on the nail!
Pure Joy – This one throws me straight back to last years Eye Candy holiday collection. It’s very similar to China Glaze Love Marilyn though instead of silver glitter it’s got gold glitter thrown in. I would love this one twice as much if it didn’t have the gold glitter. This applied a little unevenly and was hard to get to full opacity without leaving bald spots. I think this was three coats.
Red Satin – This is a stunning red jelly. It’s super squishy and soft, it just looks yummy! I’m not usually a big fan of reds but this looks really nice. It applied very smoothly. I think this was two coats!
Merry Berry – This is a darker vampy red. This was three coats. Not hugely in love with this one, though the name reminds me of Mary Berry (from The Great British Bake Off!!! One of my favourite shows).
Overall a nice Holiday collection, but personally I would liked to have seen more unique shades. There’s a few real stunners though, Blue Bells Ring definitely being one of them. I also have my eye on the green glitter called Winter Holly and Pizzazz, another multi-coloured glitter. What are your thoughts? Will you be picking up anything? Let me know!
21st October, 2012
Today I did some nail art featuring gold leaf and gold striping tape. I’ve had gold leaf lying around for a while now but this was my first time using it. It’s very delicate but great fun to use, and I love the effect! The “negative space” nail is my favourite though! The products I used for this manicure are:
- China Glaze Strong Adhesion Base Coat
- OPI Mourning Glory (Black Onyx)
- Essence Exits On Your Right
- Gold Leaf
- Gold Striping Tape
- China Glaze Fast Forward Top Coat
I laid out the gold leaf and carefully pulled off piece by piece using a dotting tool, then placing it on a wet nail. I got both the gold leaf and striping tape at Born Pretty Store. I believe they have two different sets for gold leaf, and the striping tape comes in singles or a set of 12. Hope you like it!
16th October, 2012
Today’s post will be more personal, featuring some of the recent Instagram pictures I took! If you’d like to follow me, my username is “veryemily”. Hope you’ll enjoy this post!
Ikat nails I did this week! Whenever I’m in need of a super quick manicure, I go for this design. I was going to take pictures for my blog but my mani chipped at work so this will have to do. 
I used a different colour scheme on each hand which I thought looked pretty fun. On my left hand I used OPI Mermaid’s Tears and China Glaze Peachy Keen, on my right I used OPI No Room For The Blues and OPI The “IT” Color. The black and white are my It’s So Easy Stripe Rites.
Behold, the amazingly awesome Kryolan palette I found at work. 
They are a professional make-up brand (yes these aren’t watercolor paints!) used in stage make-up. I’ve always dreamt of owning a palette by Kryolan but don’t have the budget for it, so I was pretty amazed to find this at work. I managed to snag it for under $1. SCORE! Review coming soon!
With the cold weather we’re having in Belgium, there’s nothing like some hot soup to warm you up! This is my favourite instant soup from Cup-A-Soup, Spicy Tomato. Of course I had to have some baguette slices with butter on the side. Yummy!
The awesome giveaway prize I won over at Elisa’s blog Memorable Days. A super kawaii Rilakkuma lens case, Mimi Apple Green lenses (review coming soon) and lashes! Thanks Eye Candy Lens and Elisa!!!
Our neighbours have a super silly kitten called Elmo who loves to climb in trees. He’s always dangling from the top branches, such a show off! I love him though, he’s so sweet and cuddly.
Glitter gradient on my mum’s nails! I used China Glaze Blonde Bombshell, It’s Alive and Some Like It Haute. I obviously used a peel off base coat.
New season of Merlin started recently! I seriously love this show! Are any of you fans?
And lastly, nail mail I received from my amazing friend Alex, aka Algae Veronica. She’s an amazing artist and seriously the sweetest person I know. She was kind enough to send me some halloween gifts! You can see both OPI’s in the top image as I used them for my ikat mani, and the China Glaze glitter called It’s Alive from the crackle set I used for my mum’s nails. Thank you Alex!
9th October, 2012
Today’s nail art features the sugar spun technique I saw over at my friends’ blogs Chalkboard Nails and Just Tis Ems. It’s a tricky technique but very fun to do! Emmie made a really great tutorial for it which you can see here.
My result looks very 3D which is something you either hate or love. I’m quite fond of the end result, even though I wish my lines turned out thinner. I definitely need to practice more!
I’m really in love with the colour scheme, the matte nude base with the neon lines and studs works really great I think! Finally I had the perfect manicure for which I could use my pink neon studs from Born Pretty Store. They were sitting in my Helmer drawers for weeks waiting to be used. They are a lot more neon in person, I highly recommend them, they are super awesome!
These are the products I used for my manicure:
- Catrice – Nude (from the FeMALE limited edition)
- China Glaze – Love’s A Beach
- Pink Neon Studs
Yes that’s right, no top coat! This technique looks a million times better without top coat (in my opinion) so make sure to resist the urge! Hope you like it!
23rd September, 2012
I know I don’t usually post more than one picture of a new nail art manicure. I loved these so much I couldn’t narrow it down to one picture, so I went with four. Really hope you’ll like these as much as I do!
These are my galaxy drip nails! I saw Christina from the blog Starlett Approved do galaxy drip nails and I was in love, I simply had to make a manicure inspired by hers! Christina is a close friend of mine, I hugely love her and her nails, definitely take a look at her blog!
I started with a white base coat, using my trusted BK white polish from Born Pretty Store. Then I painted the drips with China Glaze Purr-fect Plum, using the nail polish brush inside the bottle. Then I used the corner of a make-up sponge to create the Galaxy effect, I used China Glaze Rich & Famous (hot pink), China Glaze Spontaneous (purple) and China Glaze Light As Air (lavender).
With a thin brush I added small dots and stars using BK white. I added a layer of China Glaze Fairy Dust over the drips and the entire accent nail to make it more sparkly and finished off with Essence Colour Arts as a top coat.
I am in love with the effect. I seriously cannot stop staring at my nails! I also love how the colours turned out, though I have to say the blog Coewless Nail Polish also inspired me with her amazing purple galaxy nails!
Thanks again to Christina for showing me this awesome design. I love it so much! Hope you girls like it too 
17th September, 2012
Naming these nails gave me a headache! I had no idea what to call them! In the end I chose Turquoise Gem nails since the rhinestones and glitters really pull this look together.
For the watercolour nails I used a sponging technique similar to this tutorial. I love using that sponging technique, as it works with pretty much any colours. After sponging I brushed over these nails several times with my topcoat, basically smearing the design on purpose. This really blends the colours more together and created a really dreamy finish.
The glitter framed nails were inspired by the amazing Sammy from the blog The Nailasaurus!
This is what I used to create this design:
I really love how this look turned out. Hope you like it too!
23rd August, 2012
It’s summertiiiiime! The weather has been so hot in Belgium the past few days! Last weekend we had a full-on heatwave. I love summer but it was definitely a bit too hot, especially with no air conditioning in my bedroom I was boiling at night! There’s a few things I do to try and keep cool though, one of which is make my own ice pops/lollies using freshly squeezed fruit (my favourite: grapefruit!).
I figured it would make for a pretty fun manicure, popsicle print! I really love how they turned out. Don’t you just wanna LICK them? I even added some fruit-scented topcoat as if the design didn’t tempt me enough!
These are the polishes I used!
- White, Black, Green, Yellow, Purple and Red nail art pens from Born Pretty Store.
- China Glaze Classic Camel
- Essence Fruity Top Coat
- BK White as a base (not pictured)
21st July, 2012
As promised, here’s the nail art I created using products from Phoenix Beauty Lounge. The four polishes I used were staring at me and I felt a sudden burst of inspiration which resulted in this manicure. I really love how it turned out, the teal blue shades really compliment each other. I also really dig the accent nails with the silver rings. The nail art wheels from Phoenix Beauty Lounge are really cool and full of awesome stuff. They contains lots of different items (instead of the usual one size of the same thing), so you can get lots of use and experimenting out of them!
These are the products I used in this manicure:
Don’t forget to check out the Phoenix Beauty Lounge webstore, if you order with them you can use my amazing 15% coupon code EmilyVIP!
17th July, 2012
The weather has been so-and-so in Belgium (rainy and cold, eugh!) so I was in dire need of something bright and fun! I always love doing aztec nails and it’s been forever since I did any, so here we are. I used the neons from the China Glaze Poolside collection, probably my all time favourite polish collection.
- BK White
- China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy
- China Glaze Sun Worshipper
- China Glaze Kiwi Cool-Ada
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in Black
- Essence Sealing Top Coat
Here’s a poolside picture, it really shows how crazy bright these neons are! Are you having nice weather where you live?
14th July, 2012
Today I have swatches for you of five polishes from the China Glaze On Safari collection! I know it’s early for fall collections, but with the weather we’re having in Belgium it almost seems appropriate.
I used three coats for all of these swatches. I had some trouble with application, I prefer using thin layers when painting my nails but these polishes required slightly thicker coats. I felt they were slightly patchy and uneven with two layers so I added a third for perfect coverage. The China Glaze formula dried fast as always so they just need a little extra attention when applying.
Kalahari Kiss – I know this colour isn’t for everyone but I love it! On its own it’s a tricky colour to pull off but for nail art this is perfect! It’s stunning as a base for leopard (see my Safari Leopard Nails!) or for other designs. It’s a gorgeous sandy beige creme.
Exotic Encounters – This is a straight up teal, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before but it’s still very beautiful. I wish it was a bit lighter as it’s slightly darker on the nails than in the bottle. Can never go wrong with teals in my book!
Jungle Queen – This is a greyish purple shade with bright purple shimmer. It’s definitely reminiscent of Chanel Paradoxal. It’s hard not to compare them since it’s so similar. I wish they would have added a different colour shimmer to make it more unique and less like Paradoxal, there’s so many dupes of that one out there already. It’s still a stunning shade though!
Purr-fect Plum – A vampy dark plum shade. This one also dries darker than the bottle. It’s a very classy sort of shade, without being old fashioned. When wearing it and looking at it, I felt like it was a shade most older women would appreciate as well as younger girls. I can’t put my finger on it exactly but it’s got something extra, the muted part of this shade makes it unique. Really pretty!
Prey Tell – This is one of those almost-black-but-not-black type of shades I adore. It reminds me of China Glaze Naughty And Nice, one of my favourites from the 2010 Holiday collection. The first layer is a very bloody red, then with each layer you add it turns into an almost-black burgundy red. Stunning!
There’s 12 shades in total in this collection so make sure to check out the others as well. I’m definitely still keeping my eye open for Elephant Walk, Man Hunt and Desert Sun, also the two glitters look very interesting. Are you picking up any shades from this collection? Let me know!
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