Halloween - Spooky-licious Mani

I know it's rather early for Halloween nails, but since I'll be heading to Taipei for work next week (I can't possibly show these nails to my partners!) and most likely won't have the time to do up Halloween nails, I reckon this week is the best period. Thought of the designs for very long, hovering in my mind for weeks before i really lay them down onto my fingers.

Frankly speaking, this is my 1st attempt at total freehand nail art on my nails, not to mention 5 different designs on my 10 fingers. Quite a feat! As a result, I am quite satisfied with my work!

There it is! My very 1st Halloween nails, all done by myself! Took me almost 2 hours to complete the designs on all 10 fingers but I am really happy with the result! Love it, and so proud of my achievement/improvement ^^.

Last but not the least, Happy Halloween everyone!

Sand-Storm Nails

Am trying the new mobile blogging app i've gotten recently to replace WordPress (kinda sucky) so if alignment seems weird to you, please pardon me!

Today, the nail design i'll be posting is kinda impromptu design for my birthday week. I know it should be designs of balloons or candles but unfortunately, it didn't register into my mind at that point of time., hahaha! Using Etude House's minty green and FaceShop's shimmer nail polishes, I freehanded my 'sand-storm' waves!

No balloons, no candles! Though i may not have painted those for my bday, i may just as well do it for a other occasion!

Yellow, yellow...I like you, do you like me?

It was my 1st attempt at yellow lacquer and....I have no idea whether it suits/suited me or not. Tried a full yellow manicure prior to this manicure below but it just sucks to the core a.k.a UGLY! So, I had no choice but to remove them and redo again...

Used both FaceShop and Etude House nail polishes for this set of manicure. Though I quite like the turnout, I am still very unsure if yellow suits me at all.

What do you think?

Dual French Tips/4th July Mani...

Hehe...I'm not from the states, but I do like to attempt themed nails sometimes. With 4th July here, how can I resist the temptation?

I didn't really want the usual 4th July nails where they are mostly flag and stars designs. Hence, I tried a more non-conventional design where some may beg to agree on this. My manicure/nail art for 4th July is mainly circling around the color combination, that's all.

This time, I made dual french tips on my nails with Etude House's Chilli Red as 1st french tips, followed by China Glaze's Midnight Mission as 2nd french tips. 1st french tips were done using tapes, while the 2nd french tips were painted freehand. After-which, I covered my freehand-painted tips with dots.

Midnight Mission is on the darker side of the blue family thus it looks kinda blackish under warm light. I know this may not look really like the traditional 4th July nail art but it is my own work with 4th July color scheme.

Some told me they look like castles, some said they look like zippers. What do you think?

Polka Dot, Blue French Tips~

I love french manicure, I love french tips. Such designs never seem to bore me and I simply love it to the core.

In this manicure, I used quite a few brands of nail polishes. For my base color, I used The FaceShop's pearl sheer-based nail polish for all my nails. For french tips, I decided to break the traditional white tips and resort to blue instead. I also used tapes to make my french tips ^^. This blue comes from Etude House Luci Darling series, named Indigo. As for the polka dots, they come from China Glaze's White on White.

If your area has Etude House shop, I will URGE you to grab EVERY single bottle of its Luci Darling series cos they simply ROCK! Formula is wonderful no matter which color I swatch! Gotta admit, maybe I do have a little problem swatching  yellow ones....

Nail Polish Hauls from Seoul~

Ho Ho Ho! Being away for business trip didn't give me any excuses NOT to grab any nail polishes! :D Since I was already in Seoul (beginning of June), I might as well add more colors into my nail polish wardrobe ^^.

Left to Right:
1st 2 belongs to Nature Republic, White, glitter & pink belongs to FaceShop.
Orange & yellow comes from Etude House, gold glitter from Skinfood.

And yes, I literally went into ALL the local beauty shops that are popular from my area & bought them off the shelves! Could have bought more but thought I already bought far too much. Hell NO! After I came back then I realised I could have bought more! They were really dirt cheap in Seoul...

Nature Republic: 1,000 won each
FaceShop: 3,900 won for the ones with black caps, 1,000 won for the pink nail polish
Etude House: 3,000 won each
Skinfood: 3,000 won

Must make sure to grab them in a more daring manner next time, haha.

Pedi Nail Art~

Blogger was having issues for the past 2 days, literally ruining my blog layout (It got 'rollback'), not to mention unable to post at all during that period.

So, this is a dated post which I should have posted days before but well...Anyway, just some time ago, I did my very 1st nail art on my feet. Was amazed at myself for being able to come up with such a design which practically gushed through my mind at the very last minute!

Not exactly a very complicated nail art but the following was what I used to complete this nail art:

1) Nail Polish - Etude House unnamed (it's peachy-pink)
2) Silver Glitter Nail Art Polish from PR International
3) Fimo Art Slice - White Flower
4) Nail Art Pearl Beads
5) Transparent Rhinestone (placed on top of the Fimo Flower), recycled from Lubu Heels Manicure Nail Art

This is definitely my 1st on the feet, and I hope I will have more inspiration to do a better one after this...and beyond!

Strawberry Nails Tutorial

Oh well, It's time I start blogging back my obsession of the moment! This time, I attempted something daring and honestly speaking, it's my first detailed nail art - Strawberry Nails!

I'm not one who is very good at drawing, thus, I decided to use another method for the strawberry leaves instead of drawing them. That's it, Tape! It's really an alternate way to get the look of the leaves other than drawing them!

Used an art knife to cut the triangular shapes instead of a scissors. It works better ^^.

I deliberately cut more than what I think my nails can take so as to avoid any mistakes when I am in actual progress. It will really be a headache if your nails are already painted then you realise you still need to do further tape cutting. But yes, I did all these tape designs before I did anything to my nails :D

After all the tape designs for all my 10 nails were completed, I started painting my nails. First, paint your base color! Since this is Strawberry Nails, the base's naturally gonna be RED. For this red color, I used Etude House's chili red nail polish which is unnamed but termed RD103. Love the smooth application!

Next, wait for them to dry a little and applied top coat on them. For me, I used Seche Vite Fast Dry Top Coat precisely due to the fact that it dries my nails in a god speed manner. A ridiculously good companion for nail art & tape manicure! After SV has been applied, wait for a brief 2-5 mins and get your tapes on your nails for a fun tape manicure session , hehe.

Well, this photo's slightly blurred but I think it still shows how I placed the tape on my nail. Since it's gonna act like a strawberry leaf, it really doesn't matter if you want to place the tape just the way I place mine, or you want to place it at the tip. It all depends on which angle you want to look at your strawberry nails. If you look carefully on the photo, on my index finger, you will see how it will look like after you coated the un-taped area with green color. For me, I used Eilanto's cheery green which contains slight shimmering. Once again, it is unnamed with a number. Remember, peel the tape away the moment you have finished painting the un-taped area. DO NOT wait till it's dried or the applied lacquer will peel along with the tape.

Once all nails are taped and applied with green lacquer, it's time for dotting fun! In this tutorial, I did not take any photos of the dotting as my hands were all full :( Nonetheless, just DOT away with fun as the dots are meant to act as the 'seeds' of the strawberries on your nails! Last but not the least, apply Seche Vite (SV) on your finished product a.k.a your 10 yummy nails.

There you go, 10 yummylicious Strawberries on your very own nails!

It was my first attempt thus, there's definitely flaws somewhere in the midst of doing this piece of nail art but I am definitely proud of myself for being daring enough to attempt it, much less to see that it's quite a fine piece of art on my very own nails!

This nail art had lasted me for at least a week. Being a clumsy person I always have been, it's pretty lasting already! If you are careful enough, I believe they can last you for more than a week for sure :D

Hope you enjoyed the tutorial on Strawberry Nails. More to come soon :D

Happy Easter Day!

Happy Easter Day everyone!

Although I do not really celebrate Easter Day, I was inspired to design a DIY Easter Manicure for myself now that I am so into DIY manicure, hehe.

Initially, I wanted to create Easter Egg Manicure on my nails. You know, those that have many different colors of easter eggs with polka dots on them. However, it seems that many people are already adopting that idea, or rather, using multiple colors to represent easter, and so, I decided on another design instead.

For this design, I did not use any China Glaze or OPI nail lacquers. Just FaceShop and Etude House's nail lacquers - PP401 and GR606. Other than that, I also used a silver glittery nail polish that comes with a thin brush from PR International to draw boundary lines between my 2 colors. I didn't plan on a tutorial for this manicure as the colors were changed on a last minute basis where I originally wanted to match yellow with GR606 (green) but the yellow lacquer was too hard to apply (streaky). Adds on to my hate for creme-based lacquers, arghhh. Oh, and I added Fimo slices on them too. How can I forget my fimos, hehe!

The finished product of my Easter Manicure ^^. Although it's not very Easter (I think), I feel that the color combination along with my fimo slices (Thanks to my colleague for sharing her Easter Egg fimo cane with me!) do make this manicure a success :D Honestly speaking, this design looks kinda sweet on my nails :P

After this, I gotta rest my nails for a day or 2 to give them some treatment before I proceed to my next manicure. Can't torture them for the sake of beauty right?!