[Nail Look of the Day] Lace, florals, and polka dots; who wants a tea party?

I was inspired by a photo I found on Pinterest (if you want to see the original, you can sift through my nail inspo board here) and decided to recreate the look. I think the flowers turned out really well (I used a different blend than usual to make my petals) and I was really pleased with my pinky-peach base color.

Unfortunately, I can't really share what nail polish I used to get the base pink-peach color because I actually used two sheer nail polishes to create it. I started with a coat of a peach nail polish that had too much orange undertones for my liking (it's an Asian brand - The Face Shop - if you're interested but I doubt it's still in production). It's relatively sheer so I let it dry and then did one super thin coat of Revlon Pink Cafe nail polish (I've used this a couple of times in previous nail looks). This nail polish starts off being pretty sheer and "jelly" like (if that makes sense) which allowed me to layer the two colors without having one totally block out the other. I'm definitely pleased with the end color.

Once I let my base color dry, I created half moon shapes with my a pale pinky white nail polish. In retrospect, I would have done this layer first THEN painted on the pink-peach color because it was pretty hard to make the rounded curves this way around especially because my pale pink-white nail polish brush (a Julep polish) was super fat and not made for tight corners. I think a white would have made this layer stand out more (I actually did use a white polish for my pink nail which you can see in the photo above and it made that layer look like BAM so much more obvious. It depends on the look you're going for I suppose. While this layer was drying, I used a dotting tool dipped in that same pink-white lace color to draw half circles to create that "lace" look adn then used aother dotting tool dipped in white nail polish to create polka dots around the half circles or on the pink-peach base area. This part was tricky because I tried making some dots INSIDE the half sphere space but it wasnt very large so not sure if it made the look better or worse.

After that, I just drew on the flowers by having a small puddle of a hot pink (Sally Hansen Hot Magenta) and light pink (Sinful Colors Easy Going) and using a dotting tool to mix the too a little before placing the tip on my nail and creating a circle of swirled color that looks like a rose. Using a toothpick or a thin dotting tool, I used a green color that I created by blending Essie Mojito and Sally Hansen Emerald Express. I wouldn't suggest this and would advise just getting an actual dark green color because Emerald Express is a glitter polish but it was the only dark sort of green color I had and I wanted to tone down Essie Mojitio.

Anyways, I'm not sure if this post was terribly helpful but hopefully the pictures were inspiring or fun to look at if anything. Please excuse the dryness and wrinkliness of my cuticles and palms by the way! :) Feel free to leave a comment below with any questions, suggestions, or requests!

Get the [Nail] Look: Floral Friday

Sorry I haven't been posting for a while and apparently all my photos got removed because I think I accidentally deleted the album of photos connected to my blog. So if you notice any posts with broken photos, please bare with me as I am trying to fix them all! It is taking me quite a while to find all the photos again -sigh-.

Without further ado, here is my rendition of my most recent Pinterest find.

 I started off by painting all my nails with Revlon Minted. I let that dry completely before putting 2 coats of the slightly transparent white-pink polish from Julep. I have 3 Julep polishes I got from a free trial for their Maven Box and have to say, they're really quite good! The brushes are a bit fat but the polishes themselves have a really nice gel-like quality. After getting a good semi-opaque coat of the light pink, I let it dry and started drawing on the roses and leaves. I made the roses by mixing two shades of pink and swirling them in a circular motion to make them look like roses. I then used a somewhat smaller dotting tool to make the leaves. I actually used 2 green nail polishes to create extra depth but only listed one below. I let everything dry enough so that I could apply the gold striping tape without lifting up all my hard work if I needed to reposition it.

The nail polishes I used are as follows (from left to right):

-Revlon in Minted
-Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Punk Pink
-Sinful Colors in Easy Going
-Essie in Mojito Madness
-Julep in Ava Bombshell
Overall, this nail look is one of my favorites. It definitely looks detailed and complex but it's really not that bad! All the techniques are quite simple and it just takes some time to let each layer dry. I would suggest watching your favorite TV show or movie while doing this to help the drying phase pass by. I took me less than 2 hours to do this and I finished it off with my favorite Seche Vite top coat. I hope you guys all try this out and let me know how it goes in the comment!

Nails on Nails: The Signs of Freedom

As many of you know, I recently was in Hong Kong for bout 2.5 months doing research in a lab as well as visiting my relatives and of course, seeing the sights of the country. I also got to spend time with a lot of my aunt's friends, one who was quite skilled in the art of doing nails ;D So we got together and today, I wanted to share one of the designs she created on me. We chose to use the combination of a pink and nude beige nail polish (from the brand 3CE which is a popular Korean high-ish end brand - I'm planning on doing a review of their nail polish as I picked up a good amount of them!). I've listed pictures of them both down below for your reference if you want to pick them up (the numbers/names are #BE02 and #PK08) ^__^

Anyways all of the birds are hand drawn and I love how the white birds contrast the beige background and the extra bling at the bottom of my nails also added the glamor of the nails. Please excuse my terribly dry cuticles in the photo, we had just removed a previous set of gel nails so my nails needed some TLC. What do you feel about this design? I hope it gives you some inspiration if you were looking for some sort of bird or feather designed nail art. Let me know if you have any other designs you want me to recreate and I might do a tutorial on it! Till next time xx.

NYC New York Color Big Bold Gloss Review

Woohoo, once again Influenster swoops in and let's me try a new awesome product. Or well somewhat awesome. I received my Varsity Voxbox a little while back but didn't get to fully try out all the products till now. One of them that I got was the lip gloss by NYC called "Big Bold Gloss". The shade I got was 467, Pleasantly Plump Pink which was a nice peachy pink with some coral hints and shimmer in it. The first thing I noticed when I opened it was how big the applicator is. It's definitely not your average lip gloss doe shaped or footed applicator but more like one you might see on the concealers that are slanted foam brushes that have the product come out from the middle of the applicator? Does that even make sense haha. Anyways, the large applicator isn't too big of a problem for me and my medium sized lips but I can see some problems for people with less full lips. It distributes the product well, but I think I would prefer a typical doe shaped applicator like the Loreal ones as those are better at staying in the lines and precisely outlining your lips.

The product itself is actually quite decent. Normally I'm iffy about NYC makeup products since I had a bad experience with one of their mosaic palettes, but I was pleasantly surprised with this one. It is a bit gloopy in the tube, but when you apply it on, you can get a nice color coverage without it being too sticky. You definitely need to be careful about putting on too much (which is pretty easy with the large brush) and it's better to smooth everything out by spreading the product around using your lips or fingers (hopefully that doesn't sound too weird -_-). There is also actually a nice sweet vanilla scent that I really liked, but if you're not into fragrances then I wouldn't recommend this. The lipgloss has a nice glossy finish that makes your lips look fuller without being disgusting and sticking to everything and I would recommend ya'll to give it a shot if you're looking at trying a new lip gloss product on the market!