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!
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! 
30th October, 2012
I have some nail art to show you today! Usually when I do nail art I have an idea in my mind before I start, often I’ll even sketch it out with my iPad. This nail art came about when I was trying out a different design, and since it wasn’t working, I grabbed my nail polish remover and tried something else.
I’m pretty pleased with how these turned out! Even though they look a million times better in person than they do in pictures. But that’s always how it usually goes with nail art…
I really love the colour scheme and vintage feel of the design. I used the one stroke painting technique for the flowers. For the pinstripe nails I added a black line along 1/3 of the teal lines and silver glitter to spice it up a bit. From a small distance they look like gradients! These are the polishes I used:
- HITS – Julie
- Catrice – Jade Is Not My Name
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite – Black
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite – Silver Glitter
- Acrylic Paints
Hope you like it!
3rd September, 2012
Todays nail art was inspired by Fafinette, more specifically this piece. I hugely love Fafi‘s work, it’s cheeky, feminine and bold. I created these for Kattleya, she is holding a contest on her site so I decided to give it a shot and enter! I hugely admire Katt and love her work, please check out her website kattclaws.com!
If you are wondering why I am holding a lightbulb, this was Katt‘s brilliant idea of telling if the entrants created a new manicure specifically for the contest. I found this cute tiny lightbulb at my boyfriends house, isn’t it adorable? My favourite nail has to be the little cat, it’s just so cute! These are the polishes I used for this look:
- Nails Inc – Peach Sorbet
- Catrice – Havana Drum
- Catrice – Take It Mint
- Sweet Color – 005
- New Look – Reef
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in white
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in black
Please keep your fingers crossed for me!
9th August, 2012
Today I have a very cool manicure inspired by a playsuit from New Look. I love doing nail art inspired by fabric prints or clothing, it’s probably one of my favourite things to do! I loved the mesh-like pattern with sewn on studs and felt inspired to recreate it on my nails.
Here’s how it turned out! I think it looks really awesome, some of my friends even called these sexy haha! It’s definitely something different than what I am used to but I love how they look. This is what I used:
- OPI Coney Island Cotton Candy
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in Black (I love the It’s So Easy stripers so much! You can find them at Sally Beauty in the US)
- 2mm gold studs from Born Pretty Store, for a chance to win some studs of your own, take a look at my giveaway!
- Essence Top Sealer
Have you ever done nail art inspired by clothing or fabric prints? Let me know!
8th July, 2012
A quick post before I leave on holiday to Rotterdam for the week! A few months ago I came across these leopard nails by Lisa’s Nails, they quickly became one of my favourite leopard nails ever. I’ve been meaning to try them out and I needed a quick nail art fix before I left. The perfect occasion arose!
I used quite a number of polishes for this. Including one of the China Glaze On Safari collection, swatches should follow soon!
- China Glaze Kalahari Kiss
- China Glaze Dress Me Up
- Illamasqua Load
- Illamasqua Swinger
- China Glaze Lighthouse
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in Black
- Essence Sealing Top Coat
Hope you like it! I still like her originals a lot more than mine, I especially love how they look so different. I definitely need to try them again!
14th June, 2012
A quick but fun nail art mani today! I am hugely in love with Ami V./El Salonsito‘s spray paint nails so I did them again. I just couldn’t resist! They are so quick and fun but really gorgeous. A really thin striper or brush is the key to these. Just blob on the colours and then add the drips!
These are the polishes I used:
- China Glaze Midnight Kiss
- Catrice Absolutely Chinchilly
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in Black
- Dearlee 034 Black
For the two accent nails I used 4mm gold square studs from Born Pretty Store. The black polish is also from BPS, it’s opaque in one layer and glides on like a dream. One of the best black polishes I’ve tried!
18th May, 2012
Now the weather is slowly but surely getting better I can finally start practicing acrylic (sculpting) again. Acrylic monomer has a strong smell so I need to be able to sit outside or open a window to vent my room, which is why I haven’t practiced acrylic in a while! To ease myself back into it I started with these simple but fun roses, which I made with the help of a mold.
If anyone is interested I could make a how-to post on how to get started with acrylic, which supplies you need, what the pros and cons are and explain the basics of the technique. I always love trying new nail art techniques and when I first read about acrylic sculpting I knew it was something I would love. It requires a lot of practice but you don’t necessarily need expensive schooling to try your hand at some fun and simple 3D pieces. I wouldn’t recommend full nail sculpting without extensive research and lessons or help from a professional though.
Here’s a list of the supplies I used for this manicure:
Please let me know if acrylic 3D art is something you’d like to read more about! And don’t forget to enter my giveaway if you haven’t already! It’s open until May 22.
2nd April, 2012
I always love doing mix & match nails and since it had been a while I went for a black/white + mint green combo. I did a leopard nail inspired by Dominique Renee, zebra with cross, mint green union flag, a stud nail and diagonal stripes.
Polishes and supplies I used to create this:
- Illamasqua Nomad
- Dearlee 034
- China Glaze Snow
- China Glaze Midnight Kiss
- It’s So Easy Strip Rite in White
- It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in Black
- China Glaze Strong Adhesion Base Coat
- Essence Studio Nails Top Sealer
- Gold 4mm Square Stud
I also wanted to show you guys this! When I do nail art I often make sketches so I have an idea of what I am going to do. If I don’t make sketches, it takes me a few hours and several tries to come up with something I often still don’t end up liking. I make mine with Adobe Ideas for the iPad. When I got it this was still a free App but it’s about €7.99 or $9.99 now which is pretty pricey! There are several free drawing Apps as well though so this one isn’t a must.
Do any of you make sketches when you are doing nail art?
22nd February, 2012
Recently American International Industries (who distribute China Glaze amongst others) acquired a new brand called It’s So Easy! It’s a line of high quality nail art products, stripers, glitters, rhinestones, brushes and many more. In short, all the basic tools you need to create nail art.
I was kindly sent a few items from their range to try out and show you! I had so much fun playing with these items, the quality really impressed me. I also came up with a quick nail art design using the items I was sent, I think I must have started over four times before I came up with something I liked! You can see my result at the bottom of this post. Anyway let’s take a look!
Nine Stripe Rite stripers, three glitter jars and a rhinestone kit. I was also sent a brush which I forgot to include in this image, there’s a picture of it down below.
Here’s an up close image of the stripers! There’s a turquoise blue, periwinkle, hot neon pink (LOVE this one!), yellow, orange shimmer in a sheer base, white, black, silver glitter and gold glitter.
And a close-up of the brush! The brushes inside of these bottles are of such high quality! They are very springy and fine and so much fun to work with. I was super impressed with these since I was able to compare them with the generic eBay stripers and the Models Own WAH Nails stripers which I already owned. I have to say, hands down, It’s So Easy is of way superior quality. I genuinely love all the colours too, especially that neon pink, the glitters are great too since they are very fine and dense! There’s 8ml of product in these stripers.
And these are the glitter jars! Look at that holo glitter on the left! Ahhh! In the middle there’s beautiful flakies and on the right gold glitter. I used the holo glitter in a nail art design at the bottom of this post! You get 2g in these jars which might seem little but the jars are quite large and jam-packed full of glitter. There’s a protective plastic sheet at the top when you unscrew them so there’s little risk of spilling.
And this is the rhinestone kit! You get 450 rhinestones in this box (I have Box A) and the perfection that is called a Pickerr Upper! The pink tool that comes attached with this set has a rubber pad at each end of the stick which makes picking up rhinestones a piece of cake! It’s made my life so much easier already! (The brand totally lives up to its name! ) The rhinestones that come in this set are hearts, ovals, 2mm circles, squares, 3mm circles and tear drops. On one side you get all the coloured rhinestones and on the other side the clear ones. The colours are absolutely stunning! They come with so many shades I haven’t seen rhinestones in, really beautiful!
And this is the brush I forgot to include in my main picture. It already claimed its spot alongside my other nail art brushes! It’s got a clear handle with a thin brush on one side and a small dotting tool on the other! Again, same thing as with the other items, amazing quality! Plus I love how that clear handle looks!
And this is the nail design I created with the black and white stripers and the holo glitter! I also used China Glaze Snow and Dearlee 034 as base colours. I was inspired by Mel from prettynailswag (check out her blog she does awesome nails!). I got pretty exhausted after the fourth failed nail design so I settled for this. Incorporating both the stripers and the glitter.
All in all I am super impressed with It’s So Easy. I became familiar with the range before I ever saw anything in person and I am truly blown away by the quality. I sound so biased but I honestly didn’t expect it to be SO great but it really is! Thanks so much to Alanna for allowing me the opportunity to review these items! And definitely don’t forget to take a look at the It’s So Easy facebook-page.
I was kindly sent these products by AII 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.
