6th September, 2012
Today’s nail art is inspired by The Illustrated Nail. I hugely admire Sophie’s designs, she has such amazing attention to detail. Her work is pretty much out of this world! When I read that she uses a lot of nail art pens, I set myself the challenge to try and use them to recreate one of her designs. I have a lot of nail pens lying around but I’ve only ever used the brush-sided end. Time to try something new!
The design I decided to recreate was a Hawaiian floral design featuring Hibiscus flowers. I really love how they turned out. My favourite nail designs are when you stare at your nails from a distance and they almost look like wraps. This was definitely one of those designs! I’ll be so sad when I have to take them off.
These are the polishes I used! I used Dearlee – 034, my go-to black polish, covers in one coat! And the nail art pens are also from Born Pretty Store. You can get them in a set of 24 or 60. They’re two-way pens, if you twist them open you’ll see a brush and when you pull off the cap it reveals a pen. The pen is what I used to create the design you see above! They are trickier to use than the brush but the results are definitely worth it!
Do you like to use nail pens? Let me know in the comments below!
20th January, 2012
These were inspired by Mr.Candiipants on Tumblr. She recreated the nails from NCLA that were featured in a “tutorial” on Lucky Magazine. I came across the NCLA nails on Tumblr as well but was also disappointed the so-called tutorial was nothing more than “attach these nail wraps to your nails”. Especially since the design was so beautiful and unique. Oh well, we can do better than that and paint them ourselves!
These are ikat prints, ikat is a dying/weaving technique like tie-dye and is still used in many countries and cultures.
The polishes I used were these, Dearlee 07, Catrice I Scream Peach! and Models Own Nail Art Pen in white and black. The trick with these nails is to paint in thin strokes. It’s a very fun and quick pattern since you don’t have to be perfect. And funnily enough, this is one of the few designs where if you paint your topcoat too quickly and smear the black, it will add to the effect!
7th January, 2012
Today a review about one of the nail polish brands Born Pretty Store sells, it’s called Dearlee (what an adorable brand name!) and the bottles are sold for about $4 a piece. The pastel colours are sold in sets of 6 or 8 which will save you a few dollars. Even though these are quite cheap the quality is surprisingly really good, they really impressed me! The pastels I would compare to Models Own and American Apparel in terms of formula, they’re highly pigmented and all of them dry very quickly. I’m also happy to add they last very well and don’t chip very fast. The bottles are shaped like OPI’s but the caps are crackled grey, and they hold 15ml. I don’t think these are 3-free but I can’t be sure as they don’t have ingredients on them.
Unfortunately they don’t have names, the numbers for these are from left to right:
- 30, 18, 19, 08, 17 and 20.
- 029, 22, 07, 016 and 027.
Don’t they look gorgeous? I am a sucker for creme finishes so these are all right up my alley! Here’s my swatches and thoughts on each polish.
Dearlee 30 – This is a bright jelly yellow. It’s definitely one of those yellows most people will find hard to pull off. I love yellows so I didn’t mind this colour at all, I think it’s beautiful! This was three coats and went on very smoothly. As it’s a jelly there’s a bit of visible nail line.
Dearlee 18 – This is a pastel yellow which is by far easier to pull off than bright yellow but formula is hit and miss. I have two similar shades in my collection already and one is very opaque while the other needs coat after coat and won’t dry properly. The formula on this polish I’m happy to say was easier to work with albeit a little on the thicker side. This was three coats.
Dearlee 19 – This is a beautiful pastel coral. I’m absolutely in love with this shade! It’s so cute! I find it’s a really flattering shade, it makes me long for summer even more than I already am. This will look gorgeous with a tan! It took three coats to get perfect coverage.
Dearlee 08 – This is a french manicure pink, it’s very sheer and sort of the odd one out in this bunch as all the others are very opaque. I have tons of these colours already and I never use them which is a bit of a shame! This was three coats, I guess you could go up to five so it’s more opaque and there’s less VNL.
Dearlee 17 – This is a pretty bubblegum pink! Excuse the somewhat yellow cuticles as I swatched number 30, the yellow, before this colour. Oops! 
It’s very pretty and cute. Nothing else to say!
Dearlee 20 – This is a pretty lilac shade. It’s extremely pigmented, I only used two coats but if you weren’t taking macro shots of your nails you could definitely get away with just one. Really gorgeous!
Dearlee 029 – This is a really unique colour, my camera really wasn’t able to capture its beauty! It’s a sort of muted greyish purple, my camera just showed full blown purple so you’ll have to take my word for it. I hardly ever wear purple but this is such a beautiful shade I look forward to using it. It covered in two coats.
Dearlee 22 – This colour was also quite hard to capture. It’s more green-ish and muted in person, it’s such a beautiful colour! I think I recommend this polish the most out of all of them, it’s a one coater as well but beware of staining! Use a base coat when you wear this as it’s highly pigmented. Excuse my sloppy application, this was the last one I swatched, and as the light was fading quickly (damn you dark winter days!) I had to be fast.
Dearlee 07 – This is a pretty baby blue! I love colours like this, I’m a sucker for blue nail polish. This was three coats.
Dearlee 016 – This is a really awesome pastel green! I’ve not come across nail polish colours like this often, I don’t have anything in my collection to compare it to so I’m very excited by this shade. Unlike the other polishes this one did smell quite strong for some reason. This was three coats I believe but looking back I should have used a fourth.
Dearlee 027 – This one reminds me of a brighter Nars Zulu. It’s a gorgeous dark green, it looks like camo green in the bottle but it comes out a bit brighter on your nails. It’s honestly really amazing, very good coverage as was the case with all of them, I believe this was two coats.
I was kindly sent these products by Born Pretty Store to review. I am not in any way affiliated with this company nor am I being paid by them! All opinions stated are honest and my own, as always.
