Smurfs for you?

This is my very first attempt to paint with acrylic colours on my nails! It isnt perfect but it certainly is very fun to do!

I painted with my Kleancolor Concrete Gray as a base.

It does not lean to blue as much as China Glaze Metro collection's Concrete Catwalk. I should do a grey comparison soon! Applies nicely, 2 coats for a good finish, if not one can make it too... Just be careful.

Sigh, I filed my toes one evening and clumsy me filed some nails here. Hence the marks. 

Still not too careful with my brush! The black lines got a little too thick that what I needed and I also diluted the white too much on one instance!

The grey coincided a bit with the black. I could have chosen a brighter base and maybe even enlarging the drawings too! After I was done I googled to see how others have interpreted the Smurfs on their nails and boy, I felt a little ashamed HAHA!

More practise is needed! Any suggestions on what to paint next? :D

<3

Sparituals: Sacred Ground, Howl, Blue Moon and Spirit Child

Sacred Ground and Howl

Blue Moon and Spirit Child

These lacquers applied beautifully as usual. 2 coats needed to get to bottle colour and these are without topcoats. Already shiny and they even out very well too!

I had to alter the colour a little to get the correct red. The sunshine on the lacquer made it shiny and freaked out my camera =.=

You should be able to detect some golden shimmer amidst the red, making it very sparkly under the sun.

Definitely not a usual red shimmer. I quite like this against my skintone too... 

Howl and Blue Moon

Blue Moon is not a simple blue. Look at that! Purple, gold, brown-ish shimmers. These are micro shimmers to be exact. Unlike the ones in Break of Dawn or Strength (the Zoya Faye lookalike)

*faints*

Howl

Gorgeous dark chocolate base with copper shimmer. 

The colours in Howl remind me of China Glaze Metro collection's Midtown Magic! And perhaps there's no direct correlation but... :/ 

Sacred Ground

Gorgeous greyish colour. This isnt gritty at all! Applies like a polish laden with multi coloured shimmer. With a greyed base of course. 

Very special to me. And compared to Hard Candy's Mr Wrong, this is like sparkly in the sun and has no purple base. 

one last look at them without topcoat- all glossy and shiny...

With Essie's Matte About You topcoat.

Spirit Child mattified

Blue Moon mattified

Howl mattified

Sacred Ground mattified

How do you liked them matted?

the California Gurl manicure!

Kristen came over to my place one evening as I had promised to work some magic on her nails! Well, truth be told, I was never certain if I could perform some gorgeous look on her nails! :P She had wanted a fruity manicure and the only stuff I had were fimo pieces of little fruits. However, I havent tried them on myself hence did not want to try it on her... What if they didnt last?! And I wasnt sure if I had the colours to hand paint some fruits on her nails...

So after rummaging through my ever-expanding stash (my Kleancolors, 40 of them, arrived just a few days before!), we came up with some colours that caught her eye and I helped coordinate them by swatching on a card.

Here it is, after cuticle remover, shaping of nails and the real deal with some China Glaze Peppermint Cuticle Oil...

Kleancolor Iridescent Fuschia topped with Kleancolor Chunky Holo Candy.

Orly La Playa topped with Sally Hansen DVD.

Added some rhinestones in turquoise, pink, purple, blue and silver little balls... for accent on middle and thumbs.

Sorry for the blur photos :( The chunky holo candy added some sparkly orange bits with a neon pink jelly texture to the base colour.

I liked how the pink and blue came together. DVD was gorgeous with the duochrome shine. And the pink did not disappoint as the chunky holo bits added a different texture as well. 

You may check out Kristen's post on this :) 

Thank you, Kristen, for trusting me with your nails :D It was so much fun albeit I was still pretty nervous :P The rhinestones and little balls kept slipping out of my tweezer!

<3

Etude House new (to me) glitters!

I am showing you two Etude House glitters I have picked up over the last month. They are a Pink PK021 and a Blue glitter BL019. They cost me 11.90SGD each. 

I use them to layer over similar colours.

On the left is a green creme layered with BL019. 

Beside it is a finger in a red creme layered with PK021.

The last finger here is in SpaRitual Break of Dawn.

This is PK021 upclose. It has silver, pink, blue and hexagon glitter all in different sizes suspended in a magenta pink jelly base. One coat is great to layer over any polish for more pizzazz. :)

This is one coat of BL019 over a dark green creme. It has various sizes of blue, silver hexagon and hold glitter suspended in a blue base. A base much like the colour of OPI Absolutely Alice blue.

Which one do you prefer? 

I love both as much, they are pretty special glitters and their jellyish base makes for good building up and also allow the glitter to have more depth on my nails :)

Look at the blue...

And the pink...

Please click to enlarge the view. They are gorgeoussss.... :)

Faux gel nails for you?

Nope, I am not jumping on the gel nails band wagon yet. But I do get compliments that my nails look like gel nails sometimes.

I figured, if you would want your nails to be mistaken like mine, try this:

1. Grow them long and thick. I was blessed with thick nails so I havent had to succumb to nail treatments :P

2. Shape them as you like. For me, the choice is obvious! Squoval! ;)

3. Do a good base coat to protect them.

4. Cover your nails in a healthy sheen of French manicure base colour. A jellyish beige or pink will be nice. This is especially good for nails like mine which are actually yellowing from excessive use of polish!

5. Apply silver glittery polish like Mei Mei Signature's Suesha series on the white tip of your nails. (Or yellow tips, for me).

6. Use a multi glitter striper, like the one I have from Precision or a dark blue nail enamel pen from Daiso and doddle some stripes on the tips.

7. When they dry well, coat the whole nail with Seche Vite for a thick glossy shine or even Out the Door Northern Lights Silver or Gold Holographic Top Coat.

8. Do clean-ups if you like! And enjoy your faux gel nails.

Disclaimer: These are not meant to last as long as 21 days like Gelish does. But I am sure these add glamour to any outfit and make you feel feminine ;)

Essie Footloose + Elianto Opal Glitter + Love&Beauty purple glitter

I sold my Essie Demi away. It wasnt such a good choice, on hindsight as I love the lacquer very very much. For its colour, tone, wear and finish! Oh well...

So, I got myself Essie Footloose and I thought, well it might make up for it.. But no, it is still not the One I wanted and saw in Demi.

My Demi.....

This is how I wore Essie Footloose.

Layered with Elianto's Opal Glitter, which is essentially a blue iridescent glitter with the occasional hexagon silver glitter.

Then I layered Love&Beauty purple glitter over. Love&Beauty is a forever 21 brand of polish... Got it in a giveaway prize last year :)

Glitters always look better in real life when their dazzling goodness is captured in our eyes.

Love the blue and purple combination of glitters over the Footloose base. 

More glitter tips coming your way!

I graduated!

Last Friday was my Convocation Ceremony. It was a tiring affair and I had my 'entourage' consisting of my parents and my boyfriend who followed me wherever I went, except up on the stage :P

Here are my special nails for the event!

CLASS OF 2011

My sash is crimson while the rest of the robe is blue, more navy that what I chose. 

I wanted the contrast of red and blue to stand out so I chose China Glaze's Mommy Kissing Santa and OPI's Swimsuit... Nailed It! and a white acrylic colour for the letters and numbers :)

Added blue, red and transparent hexagon plastic bits on the respective lacquered parts of the nail. This added more texture to the nail, as if there are confetti thrown over them :P 

This set of nails isnt' perfect, like all of my others, :) but I thought it was much fun! It garnered quite a bit of attention from my mates, both male and female!!!! :D It was a great day, being in the company of my dear friends and batch mates... 

I didnt manage to catch some close up shots :P But it was a fun try with my acrylic paint after my first try at writing my name on my nails :) 

P.S If you are still waiting for news about SpaRitual in Singapore,

hang on a little bit more, I have a lot to share with you! I have photos of the Fall and Seasonal collection to share in the upcoming posts! :) 

Click here to like the Official Facebook page!

some crackle and some flak(ie)

Took out my MeiMei Signature's crackle and played again, this time its the ash brown one!

The dark patches are what it is supposed to look like with top coat on as the shimmers can then be seen. I used my Quick dry oil from Star Like nails after they cracked. The oil seeped into the edges and gave that 'wet look'. Hmmm. 

I tried the horizontal way of painting the crackle on as well as the normal nail bed to tip method. See the difference? Pretty cool. 

I used a non Seche Vite top coat on the right side of the nail, and it gave the shimmer look better than using SV on the left. 

Matte look of the crackle before my top coat experiments :) Also experimented with thickness of coat of lacquer.

I used Orly's La Playa as a base for all the nails. For this, I used Glisten up! by Essence for the flakies anda green shimmer look to the navy blue. Then I added Make Up Store's flakie called Linnea (another brand that names their lacquers on female names) to increase the flaki-ness. Glisten Up! adds greenish flakies but MUS's flakie was more red-orange-yellow...

It looked like there was rusted iron on my nails hehe. I quite liked it but am looking forward to my Nubar 2010 from a mega swap! :D I hope it arrives in time for my birthday heheheheeh <3

Im at the last lap of my thesis paper... I will survive! 

Ill be back!

my Valentine's Day nails :D

This is super backdated, but worth a look, huh? :P

For the hearts, I used Etude House's petit polish that has colourful hearts floating in a murky, base with silver glitter... and I used a few blues layered over for the base. Used Daiso's white nail art brush to do the clouds :)

I like this look over the various pinks and reds. Guess I wasnt feeling for those colours since it was also Lunar New Year :D

peek-a-boo: I have some pretty special announcements to make soon plus some haul posts that make me swear I'd never step into a shop again. :D