Nail Art Challenge

Welcome again! So here’s the extremely exciting post I announced Wednesday..

 

A lovely gal called Eva from the blog Infinity (Dutch) posted a request for people to collaborate with on a nail challenge! (see here)

Since I’m always up for a bit of a challenge, so I responded! Another girl responded too, Tessa from TessieeBeauty, and together we picked a theme: Rainbows! There were some other suggestions too, but a randomizer picked this lovely colourful theme 🙂

So, we all got to work, and all came up with a lovely nail design ❤ I really love all of them!

Please vote for your favourite design over HERE; just click the one you like, and then click ‘Enquête Indienen’!

Once the voting is done, we will reveal the winner, who made which design, and how to recreate them 🙂

NOTD: Stripes and dots

Oh dear, oh dear.. I haven’t posted again in ages! I’ve got tons of deadlines and am very close to finishing my bachelor’s degree! I also already started my masters so I got too much to do and too little time to do it, while still trying to keep my sanity 😛

Anyway, I’ve got a post coming up on Friday (I already scheduled it!!), and it’s a very cool new project, which involves nails! I hope you’re as excited as I am! ❤

To keep the wait a bit more bearable, I made a nail art for you today 🙂

 

I used two coats of Catrice’s ‘Sing: Hey Dirty-Lilac’, then with a striper brush and some old black stamping polish that got waay to thick and some polish remover I made the thick black matte stripes, and with Catrice’s ‘No Snow Petrol’ and a toothpick I made some dots on/between the lines 🙂

 

Let me know what you think, and stay tuned for my new post on Friday!

 

WINNING #5: MoYou image plate

Ok, I have a few other articles I actually needed to do first, but I haven’t finished the photos for those yet, so I’m going to show you my lovely new MoYou Imageplate!

If you follow MoYou on Twitter, you might know they have regular trivia contests, where you answer a series of questions and they pick 5 winners! I answered 5 questions about famous internet cats (LOL!) and was allowed to pick one of their Kitty plates 🙂 I’m a fan of full nail images, but the Kitty plates didn’t have them unfortunately. I’m still very happy with my 04 plate though!

PI always get so excited when I get something in the mail..

..and especially if it contains such a gorgeous item! The packaging is a sleek matte card stock, with a lovely vintage-y print!
And when you slide out the image plate…

..you find a gorgeously large image plate, mounted on a thick plastic backing, with 32 cute designs!

A closer look at the designs:

Ah, don’t you just love these? After this it was time to check the stamping quality, of course! I took my trusty stamper I got from BornPrettyStore, and used a card to scrape off the polish. I used Essence’s LOL as a basecoat (the green) and stamped using a red polish (can’t remember which, but no special stamping polish), and this was the result:

I kinda need to work on my placement, but you can see how crisp all lines are! Some designs were a bit small, but that was to be expected, and I don’t really mind at all 🙂

And at only 5 pounds per plate, I think these are a great deal!

 

 

 

NOTD: Holidays!

Just a little NOTD I made on the 17th of July. I wrote this in advance because I’m going on holiday for a while, so I won’t be posting/commenting/reading anything!

This’ll probably have worn off when this comes online, and some of you might’ve seen it on twitter/instagram already, but I still wanted to share it with you 🙂

The polishes I used are (from dark to light) Rimmel Out of the Blue, Fizz (some cheap polish from the Action) and NYC’s Blue Sky. The decoration is from the gift box I won at MissPinkyNails 🙂 It’s from Essence but I don’t know the exact name.

So, are you going on a holiday, or have you been away already? Please share!

NOTD: World Championship and Birthday!

Hello all! It’s the 23rd of June, one of the longest days of the year, and lucky me: also my birthday! I’m not really doing anything special today, but tonight I’m going to watch football, since the Netherlands are playing against Chile.

I also got an early birthday gift on friday, when I received the colourful nail polishes I won from IOnTrend!

Here’s the lovely set! I’m sorry for the camera phone pic, I haven’t gotten around editing the pics I made with my proper camera yet. I’ll do a review/swatch of the polishes later on! But first, I want to share my World-Cup-ready nails!

On my left hand I painted my pink and thumb with the gold (which has little orangey gold flakies!), and my middle finger with a bright in-your-face neon orange. For the flag, I sponged a red-white-blue gradient on my ring and pointy finger.

On my right hand, I did the same for my pinky, middle finger and thumb, and tried something different on my ring and pointer. You’ve probably heard of- and maybe tried- the dry brush technique. You wipe off most of the polish on the edge of the polish bottle, wipe it some more on a piece of paper, and make light strokes over your nails so you get a little bit of polish on your nails. It’s easy to layer since it dries quickly because you barely put any polish on your nails.

I finished this mani with the top coat that came with the set. There was some minor chipping/tip wear, but with some touch ups, I got to wear it since friday already!

Are you and your nails ready for the World Cup?

NOTD: Hup Holland!

I’m not a big football fan, but I do enjoy watching games of my national team with a group of friends. But the most fun is to paint my nails in the national colours! Since I’m a Dutchie, I went all out with red, white, blue and orange!

(I’m holding a van Persie poster by the way :p)
Blue: Rimmel 844 Out Of The Blue; white: Rimmel 703 White Hot Love; red (over white): Hema Longlasting 185; orange: Max (action) rainbow set.
For the accent nail (if you can call it such, since all nails are different!) I topped the orange with a multicolour glitter polish (Milano Alternative Design M08, bought at the Wibra for 1.29) which has red, silver, blue and gold/orange glitters!

Isn’t it perfect? And the Netherlands winning with 5 to 1 from Spain was quite cool too, though I didn’t particularly care about that :p

I’ve worn this mani since Friday (it’s Sunday as I’m writing this) and it’s holding quite well! Even without top coat, because I forgot to bring it.. The blue had some tip wear but that was easy to touch up. I had to redo the ring finger of my right hand because I picked at the glitters too much 😦 but, with those touch-ups, I’m hoping to wear this until the next match on Wednesday!

Have you wathed any of the World Cup matches yet? Who are you supporting and did you do anything special?

Ps. I wrote this from my phone, please tell me if you spot any typos or if the lay out is messed up!

Another Wedding!

A lack of updates, I know. Busy going to parties, studying, and moving the bf in his new home! I wanted to share this little bit with you, although I didn’t take nearly enough photos.. Another cousin got married, and I was invited to the evening party 🙂

I wore a simple red dress, with a dark blue belt around my waist and a bolero jacket. I wore the shoes I wore at my previous wedding too 🙂

For my nails, I went for a stripey blue/red mani:

I used Catrice’s Be Indiglow! and a polish from Hema (the red). I got my striping tape from BornPrettyStore in a ‘Lucky bag’.

I again didn’t take a picture of my eye/face look (and this time it didn’t get smudged by some tears :P) but I wore a black eye liner with a wing (Essence) and a combination of eyeshadows on my lid. In the corner I wore a shimmery light yellow, then a bright bronze on the entire lid, and Essence Metal Glam in (I think) Steel-ing the Scene in the outer corner and crease. On my lips I wore a bright red matte lipstick from Hema.

I apologise for the lack of posts and pictures, but I hope my words painted a picture for you 🙂

 

Budget haul pt. 2: The swatches

A few days ago I told you about my recent haul of budget polishes. I promised swatches, so here they are!

Instead of regular swatches, I used every polish I got (I think) in a nail art and posted them to Instagram! At the end of this post I also got the book swatches for you too, to see all colours independently.

Essence 138 L.O.L. (the green) and Rimmel 703 White Hot Love from the Rita Ora collection

Both are opaque in 2 coats, and have a great texture! You can’t tell from this picture, but the white has a really fine shimmer in it!

On ring finger: NYC 320 Blue Sky, stamping with Rimmel 844 Out of the Blue and BPS stamping plate. On the rest of the fingers: Essence Blue Jeaned (liquid sand and slightly matte!)

Also all are opaque in 2 coats. Blue Jeaned could do with one coat, but two really bring out the colour. It’s also really easy to touch up if it chips a little because of the liquid sand structure 🙂 Blue Sky has a bit of a weird formula, but the second coat evens the polish out perfectly. I wanted to add a matte top coat over the ring finger (and I did later) but I don’t have a good pic of it 😦

The blue and yellow from the Action set, and my very first OPI polish (a black shatter)

The set of the yellow and blue polishes also came with a wheel of rhinestones, which I’ll use later this month! They were only €1.19 for the set, so it couldn’t go wrong. Well, I was still surprised. Both were one coaters! I did use quite thick coats, and the yellow could’ve used a second, but for this price?! Wow! I applied the OPI shatter coat over two of the nails to see how it looked, and I left my pinky bare since it’s pretty badly damaged 😦

Wedding guest outfit

A few weeks ago, my cousin got married to her boyfriend of 5 years! Even though I’m not very much of a girly-girl, weddings always make me very excited! Of course I love the happy people, the beautiful bride and groom, the gorgeous cake (did I mention I love cake? :D), the incredible food, the great atmosphere, seeing family again.. And being able to go all out on a cute outfit, matching nail art and awesome make up! I went shopping with my mom for a summery dress, because most of the wedding would be outside. I originally wanted to go for something in a pastel shade, but the yellow-white striped version of this dress just wasn’t as gorgeous as the one with dark blue stripes!

We visited quite a lot of shops, but in the Zara they had a billion of adorable dresses! I picked up this beauty for about 28 euros, so I guess this would fit most budgets! I’m also not a very skinny person, but this dress made me look quite fabulous! The body is quite tight, but riiight where my belly starts, the dress flares out 🙂 I haven’t made any pics with the dress on, but this is what it looks like on the hanger:

Isn’t it pretty?! I’m still in love with it!

Since we were invited for the wedding all day, I didn’t think wearing heels would be a good idea. I did have some bright red Vans, which I initially wanted to wear, or my mom’s pastel yellow ones. Both wouldn’t be a very good match for this dress, so we went into the Van Haren (Dutch budget shoe shop) and these great fake Vans were pretty much screaming at me!

Just look at how the insoles match the pattern and colours of my dress!! Plus, they were only about 10 euros, and very comfortable, so I just HAD to get them.

On my nails I decided to go with a white to dark blue gradient. Luckily, the dark blue Catrice polish from my recent blog sale haul was the exact right blue shade. Unfortunately, I think I forgot to take proper pictures (if I find them, I’ll add them of course!) so you’ll have to do with this snapshot I took with my phone:

 

I used Catrice Sing: Hey Dirty Lilah! as a base coat, since it was the lightest shade of polish I owned at that moment. I then sponged on the LE White and Seek and Be Indiglow!

Unfortunately, I didn’t take ANY pics of my eye/face look, since I was kind of hurried. I especially loved my eye look (which kind of got ruined due to a very emotional moment.. *sigh*). I made a bold black cat eye, with a bright blue eyeliner above that. I lined my lower lash line with two shades of blue eyeliner pencil (just subtly) and added a regular mascara. I also tightlined (like, drew on the upper waterline, if that makes sense) my eye with an intense black. Again, if I find pictures (or recreate the look) I’ll tell you! For the rest of my face I stole my mom’s bb cream and a translucent loose powder, and a rose/glittery lipstick. I don’t remember any of the brands unfortunately xD

And, I have another wedding tomorrow! Not sure what I’m going to wear yet, it’s only the evening party this time, so I’ll probably wear a less summery look. Might even go for heels if I dare!

 

 

 

Budget haul

I read on many blogs that a Dutch drug store (Kruidvat) was doing a 1+1 free sale on all nail polishes! My mom got me some (I still don’t know exactly which ones), but I had to check it out myself too. I didn’t stray far from my comfort zone, because when I was finished, I had 3 blue and 1 clear polish in my hands! Oops.. But before I went into the Kruidvat, I went to the Action to spend even less money (ok, I did spend more, but I bought quite a lot!). I had read most of the polishes from this great budget store were pretty decent, plus they had Sally Hansen and other A-brand polishes in store for extremely low prices. Now, onto the pictures! That’s everything, on display on my bed! So, at Kruidvat I got these polishes: Yup, blue, blue and blue again! Also a clear polish which I’m going to turn into a matte top coat (I think) 🙂 I spent a total of €5.79, so that’s a real bargain! I got the Jeans Sugar because DoorMariska blogged about it and it looked so great! The other polishes are Rita Ora Out of the Blue, NYC Blue Sky and a clear polish by Catrice. The problem with my previous DIY matte top coat is that the corn starch separated from the clear base. Since Catrice polishes have these little balls in them, when you shake the bottle it mixes the polish really well!

And for the Action haul:

Two bottles of polish with rhinestones (€1.19), OPI (OMG MY FIRST OPI) shatter in black (€1.79), tiny trash can (€0.79), lunch/freezer bags (not interesting), MAX eye-liner gel and brush (€0.98), face wipes (€0.79) and a lash curler (€0.69). I’m not expecting much of these products, so it can only be better than expected! I’m aware that shatter polishes are already old-fashioned, but I just couldn’t leave the OPI there and I don’t own any shatter polishes yet!

Well, that’s it for now. I’m going to review some of these products for you later 🙂 Oh how I just love shopping with the idea ‘I can make a post out of this’ 😀

 

Which items would you like me to review, or which ones have you tried and what did you think about it? (if you blogged about any of this, tell me and I’ll add your link!)

 
Edit: my mom got me these!

It’s Essence 138 L.O.L., Rita Ora’s 703 White Hot Love, Essence nail whitener/hardener and Essence All Eyes On Me mascara! ❤