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!
3rd June, 2012
If you know me a little, then you know I have a weakness for everything British. I’m a huge Anglophile, always have been for as long as I can remember. I love going to the UK, it feels like going home to me. This weekend it’s the Queens Diamond Jubilee. It’s been 60 years since Elizabeth II was crowned Queen! A reason to celebrate because it’s a very unique occasion to have a monarch with such a long reign.
I simply had to create nails celebrating the Queen! I admire her a lot, she’s a strong and incredibly bright woman. An inspiration to many! I created these on nail tips since I wanted to keep my design, I now have all the nails attached to a display hand in my room so I can look at them every day! Really proud of how they turned out.
Here’s what I used for each nail:
- Pink Finger “Union Flag”: BK White, China Glaze Hey Sailor, China Glaze First Mate, Glitter Stripers in Red and Blue, Essence Sealing Top Coat
- Ring Finger “Cameo Nail”: BK White, It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in White and Black, 2mm silver rhinestones, Essence Sealing Top Coat
- Middle Finger “Diamond Nail”: Illamasqua Swinger, BK White, It’s So Easy Stripe Rite in Silver Glitter and Black, Essence Sealing Top Coat
- Index Finger “Crown Nail”: China Glaze Phat Santa, 2mm gold rhinestones, 2mm and 3mm red rhinestones, red elliptic rhinestones, silver steel balls
- Thumb “Union Flag 3D Nail”: China Glaze First Mate, 2mm and 3mm red rhinestones, silver steel balls
My favourites are the index finger and thumb. The index finger was inspired by the St Edwards Crown, the one she wore during her coronation. The thumb definitely pops out the most in person, it’s so in-your-face! I love it!
Here’s a close-up of the thumb. I think this one took me the longest since I had to apply all the gems one by one. This is probably the longest I’ve worked on a set of nails! Definitely worth the effort though. 
I hope you liked my Jubilee nails and for those celebrating, have a wonderful weekend!
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.
13th September, 2011
I have another Born Pretty Store review to share today. This one is about a product (or set of products rather!) I am particularly excited about! These are the items I received:
All of these items come in one set: Rhinestone Kit, and are sold for $12,24 – €8,90. Yes, that is for all of these items!!!
- 10 orange sticks
- 5 different sized dotting tools
- 1 nail wheel with heart-shaped rhinestones
- 1 nail wheel with star-shaped rhinestones
- 1 nail wheel with round rhinestones
- 4 bottles of nail glue
Rhinestones are honestly a must-have if you love nail art! Unfortunately they can be very expensive. I usually see them locally priced at €10 a wheel with very little rhinestones inside of them. Here you get 3 full wheels, dotting tools, glue and orange sticks for less than €10. Safe to say it’s a bargain! I can honestly recommend this set to anyone, you get really great items for the best possible price.
Here are a few images of the nail wheels up close, I added a macro image of each of the rhinestones you get inside of the nail wheels. This way you can see the colours more clearly.
From left to right: Red, Orange/Gold, Pale Green, Light Green, Khaki Green, Light Blue, Blue, Purple, Lavender, Pink, Silver and black.
These colours are so beautiful in person! They’re all very bright, my camera really couldn’t capture the beauty of the colours. Especially the purple, blue and red, they’re so deep and bright! The rhinestones are 2mm and there’s 1800 of them, 150 for each colour. You really do get a lot of rhinestones, the wheel is 8cm (3 inches) in diameter if that gives you an idea.
From left to right: Silver, Pink, Lavender, Purple, Blue, Light Blue, Green, Light Green, Orange/Gold, Brown, Red and Magenta.
Same with the round rhinestones, very pretty colours! These are slightly bigger than the round rhinestones at 3mm and there should be 1200 pieces.
From left to right: Dark Green, Bright Green, Light Green, Orange/Gold, Light Pink, Hot Pink, Lavender, Purple, Blue, Turquoise, Light Blue and Silver.
All of these are very bright, only, there’s no red! Such a shame, instead of three blues and three greens there should have definitely been red hearts to complete the colour wheel. These are also 2mm and there are 1200 pieces in total. They’re very pretty.
These are the five dotting tools and they come in pretty colours with a nice swirly design. These nifty little things are a very useful tool to have in your nail art kit. They are double sided, the other side is not pictured since they’re all the same, somewhere in between the darkest blue and yellow. You can use dotting tools to create dots (ahem!) and to pick up rhinestones which is why they come in this set. Do you remember the entire range of dotted manicures I did a while ago? I used a dotting tool for that! If you would like to buy these but already have rhinestones, Born Pretty sells them separately too!
Four bottles of nail glue and ten orange sticks. The orange sticks are very useful to remove nail polish if you accidentally get some on your cuticles. They’re useful to have lying around but I personally don’t use them that often but they are a nice bonus. I have not used the nail glue yet but I look forward to trying it. Usually I attach smaller rhinestones just with clear nail polish but for larger rhinestones or steel balls, glue comes in very handy to make sure they don’t accidentally come off.
And last but not least, the manicure I created with the rhinestones! I used all of the different shapes, hearts, stars and round rhinestones and I used a few steel balls as well which I also got from BPS. The base colour is China Glaze Innocence layered over Catrice Snow Motion (white). Isn’t it cute? I really love it!
Overall I’m hugely in love with this rhinestone set. It’s such an amazing deal I honestly think every girl should get it! Rhinestones are useful not just for nail art but decoration and creative make-up looks as well. I was going to order this set with my next order (which will hopefully arrive this week!) so I’m very grateful they kindly allowed me to write a review on this. It doesn’t change my opinion in any way, I love it and I would happily (re)purchase! If there’s one comment I could make it’s that I would wish instead of hearts and stars there would be 3 sizes of round rhinestones. I won’t use the stars and hearts as often as the round ones, but that’s just me.
If you order with Born Pretty Store do not forget to use a coupon code to save more money! I have two codes for you to choose from just like last time, you can either get 10% off your entire order with the code: EMILYJ61 or you can get $4 off if you order $30 or more with the code: EMILYL73. And of course there’s worldwide FREE shipping!
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.
