The Nightmare Before Christmas!

With Halloween just around the corner, the only appropriate thing would be to show you a Halloween inspired nail art design. To be honest, I'm not a huge fan of Halloween maybe because in Greece we don't celebrate it. But The Nightmare Before Christmas was one of my favourite movies growing up as a child and I thought I'd give it a try.

I don't really have much to say about this design. I used a black and grey polish as a base for all my nails, a glitter top coat for my thumb and I topped them all with a fast drying top coat. Then I used acrylic paint that I got from the craft store, to paint all the characters and sealed it with fast drying top coat again.

This was the first time I've ever done nail art with acrylic paint and I found it a bit difficult to manage. It did't come out as smooth as I would like it to be. I don't know if the paint I used wasn't so good, if I did something wrong while using the paint, or if that's just how acrylic paint comes out on the nails. I would like to see if any of you have tried acrylic paint for nail art, and if you have any good tips. :)

All in all, I'm very satisfied with the final look of this design. I'll definitely try more nail art with acrylic paint and I hope that I can do another Halloween design before it's too late.

Polishes used:

Beauty Secrets Base Coat

Essence - Black is Back

Essence Glitter Topper - Black Dress and White Tie

Seventeen - 270

Rush 60 Second High Speed Top Coat

Breast Cancer Awareness Nail Art

October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month, an annual international campaign organised to increase awareness of the disease. So, I decided to do my part to spread awareness, by doing an easy inspired nail art design.

Learn all you need to know about breast cancer here and don't forget it's all about prevention. Always remember to check yourselves regularly ladies!

Now, on to the nail art design! I used a thin brush to draw the pink ribbons on my thumb and ring finger and a dotting tool in different sizes to do the dots on my index. On my middle finger I used a sponge to apply the glitter polish (a little trick I've seen from The Nailasaurus in the past), to get full coverage. Finally, I used some clear polish to apply the rhinestones (which I bought from ebay) on my nails.

Polishes used:

Beauty Secrets - Base Coat

Seventeen - 10

Seventeen - 17

H&M Glitter - Pink

Rush 60 Second High Speed Top Coat

Orly Sand Castle Simple Nail Art Design

In the previous post I promised you a simple nail art design and...Ta daaa!!!

Since I already had Sand Castle on my nails, I figured it would look really nice with black details. So, I tried to keep things simple, yet very chic and elegant.

I used a striping tape (from ebay) to make the lines on my index, middle and ring finger and painted on top with a black polish. I decorated my thumb and pinky with black rhinestones (from ebay), 3 on each nail.

I know a lot of nail bloggers/artists say it's better to take the striping tape off immediately before the polish dries, but it doesn't really work for me. I prefer to take it off once the polish is completely dry, to get a crisp line. Which in this case didn't happen, because I wasn't patient enough and my lines got a little smudged!

Normally my "ocd" would kick in, but instead of removing everything and starting all over again...I decided to be brave, touch it up and show it to you anyway. So, please be gentle!

And for all of you who would like to try this, I would suggest trying to take off the striping tape both ways, to see what works best for you. If things go wrong, no big deal! Practice makes perfect and let's not forget that it's all about being creative and having fun!

Polishes used:

OPI - Nail Envy Maintenance Nail Strengthener

Orly - Sand Castle

Essence - Black Is Back

Essence - Better Than Gel Nails Top Coat

Orly Sand Castle Swatch

A few days ago, I visited Orly to get some nail polish and boy was I in trouble...There I was standing in front of all the polishes, staring at them like a little kid in a candy shop! Which one to choose? I wanted all of them! I tried to think of the colors in my collecton and cross out any similar ones...

So, I chose Sand Castle and here I am with a swatch for you.

This is a nude frost shimmer according to Orly. As you can see it's a beautiful rose gold color,

or coppery pink as some might say. Its formula is great, although you have to be careful when applying it. Too many brush strokes can leave noticeable lines, something that happens to most of the polishes with this finish. It is a 2 coater, but I used 3 coats just so it would show up as accurate as possible on camera.

So, take a look for yourselves and please ignore the bubbles on my nails. My top coat suddenly decided it was okay to act up!

Polishes used:

OPI - Nail Envy Maintenance Nail Strengthener

Orly - Sand Castle

Essence - Better Than Gel Nails Top Coat

P.S. Stay tuned for a simple nail art design done with this beauty! Coming very soon...

Muir Muir on the Wall Swatch

 In the previous post I promised you, I would do a swatch for OPI's "Muir Muir on the Wall" and I'm a girl who keeps her promises...Soooo, here you have it!

Now, I can't even find words to tell you how much I love this color! It's a black based metallic polish, that goes from plum to gold/bronze depending on the lighting, same as "Peace & Love & OPI". In the bottle I can also see a green tone, but my eye doesn't really catch it on my nails. Oh well!

On to the formula. Compared to "Peace & Love & OPI", I found it to be a bit more sheer and a little more tricky to apply. If you're careful enough you can definitely get full coverage with 2 coats, but just to be sure I did 3 thin coats.

All in all, I think this is a drop dead beautiful color!

What do you think?

Polishes used:

OPI - Nail Envy Maintenance Nail Strengthener

OPI - Muir Muir on the Wall

Essence - Better Than Gel Nails Top Coat

Peace & Love & OPI Swatch

 Recently, I was going through the sales counter at Sephora and I found OPI's "Peace & Love & OPI" and "Muir Muir on the Wall" polishes from the San Francisco Collection for Fall/Winter 2013. Truth be told, when the collection was originally released I wasn't really into duo/multichromes at all. But now...I don't know what got into me!

I don't know if it was Fall, that was just around the corner, the way that the colors were glowing through the bottle, the price...Or even all the above...I just had to have them!

I thought I'd start with a swatch of "Peace & Love & OPI" and in another post I'll show you "Muir Muir on the Wall". Now, I know I'm pretty late on doing this swatch and that there are already plenty of swatches out there...But I just loved the way it looked and I really wanted to share it with you.

While I was taking pictures of the polish, I felt like I was playing a guessing game. Trying to guess exactly what color it is. And believe me, that was tricky! So to me, "Peace & Love & OPI" is a beautiful metallic grey based polish that goes from blue, to purple, to green depending on the lighting. Others say that it shifts between blue and purple, green and purple, or even teal and mauve. Maybe that's a better way to describe it, I don't know. I'll leave it up to you, to decide...

As for the formula, I was expecting it to be pretty sheer. But it's not! It has full coverage with two coats. And although the brush strokes are quite noticeable, with a top coat everything evens out.

Finally, I believe there are a couple of dupes for this, such as "For the Twill of It" by Essie and "Chic Reloaded" by Essence. I can't say that for sure because I do not own them, but they look almost identical to me, at least from the swatches I've seen.

Polishes used:

OPI - Nail Envy Maintenance Nail Strengthener

OPI - Peace & Love & OPI

Essence - Better Than Gel Nails Top Coat