Mirror mirror

A few weeks ago, I received a package I have been excited about for a long time: a nail polish that is supposed to give your nails a mirror-like effect. It comes with a special nail file with two different sides. Both sides are used before polishing, but have to be used in a specific order. After that, the polish can be applied. Using a top coat is a possibility, but the polish reflects more light without a top coat.

Naturally, I only learned all this information from watching a forever-taking, but really clear Italian video, in order to get my facts straight before I wrote this blog. Since I didn't know all this when I used the polish myself, of course  I did it completely wrong. I used one side of the file before applying polish and the other one after, so my 'mirror' does not reflect as well. However, the design did turn out rather nicely!

Inspired by the mirror-polish, I decided to make actual little mirrors on my nails. Not very diffcult, but very cute. I wanted to make all of my nails the same, so I did not make a design for an accent nail.
I just painted a silver stripe on the base colour of all of my nails, then made them into a circular shape by adding dots around them in two different colours. Then, I put a slightly smaller dot, using the base colour, on top of the white ones. Ultimately, I did use a top coat, so don't be as foolish as me!

The colours I used are:

- a base coat (and a top coat..)

- L'Oréal Marie Antoinette

- Layla Mirror Effect Metal Chrome

- OPI Alpine Snow

- China Glaze Sweet Hook

Ladybugg'd

This time, while I was trying to figure out what design to create next, I was thinking about doing something with the famous Mondriaan colours and lines or with the wonderful flowers designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. However, I realised that a lot of those nail art designs are already available, so I decided to execute an idea that I have been wanting to do for a long time now: a ladybug-leaf design. Inspired by Mackintosh's stained glass window art, I did want to give the whole thing an abstract, stained glass-look.

I made two accent nails per hand for the ladybugs, on the other fingers I made an ombre of three greens (for the list of colours used, see the bottom of this page). The nerves on the leaves would resemble the thick black lines used in the ladybugs, but I gave the nerves an extra matte topcoat, to make them pop more for the stained glass effect.

This is what the design looked like without the matte top coat...

 ... And this is it with the matte top coat.

In the end, I personally did not really like the thick black lines on the leaves, so I changed the design up a bit and just used one of the greens on the leaf-nails. I added the matte top coat and, after that, some black dots to bring the design together. I still think the variation of matte and shiny polish gives everything a nice effect. Which of the two do you like better? Let me know in the comments!

The polishes I used are the following:

- base and top coat, matte top coat

- Rimmel Red Obsession

- Rimmel Black Out

- OPI Alpine Snow

- China Glaze Exotic Encounters (towards the cuticle)

- Rimmel Round and Round the Garden (middle section, also the green used in the second design)

- L'Oréal Wasabi Hint (top of the nail)

Penny Polish

Time for a Big Bang Theory-inspired design! Who doesn't love the adventures of Penny, Sheldon and the others? Remember the episode where Sheldon helps Penny to set up her own little company of making the cute barrettes she called Penny Blossoms? Well, these are no Penny Blossoms, but they are certainly just as cool!
I have always liked the sweater/cardigan that Penny wears in the Cooper-Hofstadter Polarization episode. It always makes me happy, with the rainbows and the coloured clouds.

Right? So some time ago, I thought, why not make a nail art design out of it? It was very easy to do, it took me only a couple of dotting tools and 7 polishes (this depends on how detailed you would want to make the rainbow). The colours I used are the following:
- base coat and top coat, of course
- OPI Alpine Snow
- Rimmel Ready, Aim, Paint!
- L'Oréal Sky Fits Heaven
- L'Oréal Lush Tangerine
- L'Oréal Banana Pop
- L'Oréal Wasabi Hint
- L'Oréal Flashing Lilac

And the result was this!

 

Very happy and summer-like :D