Neon Pink Houndstooth Nails

Let's continue with the goodies I got from Born Pretty Store. I already told you I'm into neons lately and I really need more of them in my life. So when they offered me to try some things from their store, I immediately knew what I want to try out this time. :D

CH Nail #14 is a part of their neon collection. I picked this one, because I wanted something bright and pink. ^_^ I didn't know what to expect but when I tried it, I fell in love with. It's highlighter neon pink. <3 I really like its brush, because it's more on a flatter side, which makes application even easier. Formula is great, you can easily get away with 2 coats. I didn't use a top coat on the picture below, so you can see it has some kind of this plastic finish.

Essence Nail Art - Protecting Base Coat

CH Nail - #14 / 2 coats

I'm really happy with this polish and I'll be definitely wearing this one through the whole summer. I have no idea if these are B3F, because the ingredients aren't listed on the bottle, but this one doesn't stink like polishes with Formaldehyde, DBP & Toluene. It's $4.99 per bottle and the bottle contains 15 ml (with a cuopon code you get a nice deal :i ).

And because I also got this Double Sided Stamper I had to try it out too. I tried this pink houndstooth dress in H&M months ago, which I really loved, but it looked horrible on me so I didn't get it. :D But I really loved that black & pink combination, so I decided to recreate it with this neon pink. :D

Essence Nail Art - Protecting Base Coat

CH Nail - #14 / 2 coats

Stamping: Wet n Wild - Black Créme & Konad m63

Beauty Secrets TC Fast Finish Polish Dryer

And I'm still wearing this manicure, because I love it so much! :L What do you think?

So I tried this double sided stamper for the first time and so far I'm loving it! It's much easier to hold it in hands and transfer the pattern from the plate to my nails. I also got the regular stamper from BPS and they're same size, the only difference is that the double stamper is smoother but it still picks the pattern perfectly as the normal one. Double stamper has a green smaller stamper for smaller patterns but I don't know if I'm ever going to use that one, because I'm really not a fan of smaller patterns. :D It comes with a metal scraper and I prefer credit cards more than metal scrapers, because they easily scratch my plates.

Don't forget to use code J10X31 to get 10% off on your order. ;)

Let me know if you already tried any of these! Do you like Houndstooth nails?

Xoxo,
Ivana :k

*Some of the products in this post were sent to me by Born Pretty Store! For more information read my disclosure policy!

Step by Step: Gold Glittery Zebra Print

I'm seeing Easter nails everywhere but I must say I'm not in Easter mood at all, probably because I still can't believe it's already April. :/ Well, I ate already tons of chocolate eggs. :$ I hope I'll make an Easter mani till next week, when we're celebrating an Orthodox Easter. :) 

My nails really make me sad for months now and I can't find a reason why are they peeling so much, so of course I filed them down to nubs again. I have some peelies down to the nail bed so they need to grow out but even when they grow out, they start peeling on the same place. Annoying! :)

Oh well, when I'm having nubs, I tend to use something really neutral or when I'm in the mood, I do something crazy and fun and make them at least prettier with a design. :D So, I had this lovely combination in my minds and it turned out just perfectly.... Just like the title says: Gold Glittery Zebra Print. <3

They look so good on picture. :D It looks like I spent hours on doing them, but I was done so fast - just a fun layering and stamping and you get nails like this. :) It's very similar to the first Purple Sparkly Zebra Print I did months ago. :) I took pictures of all steps so I'm posting them here as a Step by Step "tutorial", but this is far from a tutorial, because it's really really easy. :D But in case someone who doesn't have an idea how to achieve nails like this, I posted all pictures, so more after a click. 

Blue & Purple Zebra Print

I don't know what's with all animal prints going on my nails. :D I got super exciting news yesterday about passing an exam that I was sure I failed miserably. :$ So I decided to make another manicure with animal print to make my day even more special. :P I made quite similar combination on Veri's nails and I loved it so much so I had to try it on myself.

I started with 2 coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Pacific Blue, this is probably my favorite blue ever (its dupe is H&M - Blue my Mind). Both of them are soooo hard to photography, they're always too bright. :/ Color on the last blurry picture is probably the most color accurate. :) Then I sponged Nicole by OPI - I've Bieber Fever on diagonal half on my nails and over whole nail a bit of Nubar - Petunia Sparkle. I stamped zebra pattern from BM-223 and Wet n Wild - Black Créme. :)

Here's the final result. &lt;3

Nail Tek - Foundation 2

Sally Hansen - Pacific Blue / 2 coats

Nicole by OPI - I've Bieber Fever / sponged

Nubar - Petunia Sparkle / sponged

Wet n Wild - Black Créme & BM-223 / stamping

Beauty Secrets TC Fast Finish Polish Dryer 

Steps to achieve this look are quite similar as I showed you in Zebra Print Tutorial I made a while ago, I just sponged the colors a bit differently. :) You can pick whatever color combination you want, just be creative. :) I really love how the purple glitter is peeking under the zebra pattern. &lt;3

BTW... I'm having problems with updating my Blog roll, so if you're not there, please don't think I removed you. :) Everytime I want to update and save it, it keeps saving and nothing happens. I think that must be a blogger bug, because I'm not the only one with this problem. :)

I hope you're having a wonderful and relaxing weekend and thanks for reading! :rainbow

Xoxo,
Ivana :k

Leopard Print

Time flies by just too fast. :/ I don't have a lot of time for nails but I finally took some time to remove my previous manicure and make something quick but cute. :) I'm in a brown period lately so I wanted to have something brown on my nails too and what's better than leopard print? :) 

I started with one coat of BS and Essence - Zulu (light gray creme with plastic finish) just to give my nails a color. I decided to sponge Desert Fox (greyish brown), also from Essence, and Warm & Fozzie (brown copperish duochrome) from OPI to get a little shimmery look. :) I stamped leopard pattern with BPS M57, as I already told you that the patterns are small so I had to double or triple, but I didn't have problems with placing the pattern to look like I didn't have to stamp twice. :) I added some dots with 2030 from China Glaze - gold metallic color and a layer of TC to finish my whole manicure. 

When I made it yesterday I wasn't sure if I like but as soon as I saw it on sun, I love it! :)

Sun

Daylight

Nail Tek - Foundation 2

Essence - Zulu (TE Into the Wild) / 1 coat

Essence - Desert Fox (TE Into the Wild) / sponged

OPI - Warm & Fozzie / sponged

Wet n Wild - Black Créme & BPS M57 / stamping

China Glaze - 2030 / dots

Beauty Secrets TC Fast Finish Polish Dryer

What do you think? I will probably wear it for whole this week. &lt;3 Do you like wearing animal prints? Which one is your favorite? Mine are probably leopard and zebra. :)

Thanks for reading and have a lovely day! :rainbow

Xoxo,

Ivana :k

Holiday Guest Post #9 & Swap: Polish Amor ♥

Yay, first post in 2012. :e

We're having Iris from Polish Amor ♥ here. &lt;3 I found her when Iris contacted me for swap so we started talking through e-mails and I always love to check her posts, especially when she's showing us her son D. &lt;3 This post will probably be so long but let's see what she has prepared for us first. :e

 

Hello Ivana readers :)

First of all I want to say thank you Ivana for including me in your Holiday Guest Post Series, I was thrilled when I received your email and I am super excited to be posting here today! I love your blog, your PINK manis are the BEST!!!

I had originally planned on coming with some kind of pink in my mani, but things didn't go as planned :( So today I will show you a New Years Eve mani, this was quite simple. I love sponging, you can never go wrong with that, so thats what we have here. Enjoy!

This is 2 coats of Color Club Gingerbread Man, sponged with Wet n Wild Black Cream and that special little sparkle is Essense Blair, which I got in a swap with Sweet Ivana :)

Ivana, thanks for having me here today! Hope your hand is completely better now :) Can't wait to see new manis.

Happy New Year!!!

XoxO to you and Bebo

 

First I thought you add black glitter then I read you sponged the black. It's so sparkly! I love it! &lt;3 It's so special, I think I didn't see anything similar till now. Thanks for making a post for me Iris, means a lot. :)

What do you think about her lovely manicure? In case you don't know her blog, check Polish Amor ♥ and show some love, she deserves it! I love her twinsies post with Maria from Nails Made Simple, so cool! :e

Me and Iris did a swap recently so I just have to share all the goodies I got from her. She spoiled me too much! &lt;3 If you want to see all goodies I got from her, click read more. :)

Step by Step: Pink & Black Half Moon Manicure

I always wanted to try half moon manicure but I never made it perfect to show you the final result. I thought that I could make it free hand just like ruffians I tried before but I'm not that good at it at all. xD

I made almost perfect half moons with reinforcement rings, I just wish my nails were longer for this look. Next time I'll try to make half moons smaller. :) You can use reinforcement rings, you can try to freehand it or use a small nail art brush... As you wish. :)

I used a lovely purple holographic Catherine Arley with number 677, which I got in a swap recently from lovely Nina from Women's Temptations and classic black creme. :) I'll show you swatches of the holographic one next time, first I wanted to share my first half moon try and a quick tutorial. :P

All pictures below were taken under daylight bulb and black background. 

Catherine Arley - #677 / 2 coats

Wet n Wild - Black Créme / 1 coat

Beauty Secrets TC Fast Finish Polish Dryer

I decided to make a step by step tutorial with smaller half moons as I did them on the pictures above. :)

All you need is a base and top color, reinforcment rings and top coat. I used these polishes:

Catherine Arley - #677

Reinforcement rings

Wet n Wild - Black Créme

Beauty Secrets TC Fast Finish Polish Dryer

Step 1: Start with a base color you want. It can be bright or dark, anything you like. I suggest that you try to do a half moon manicure on a day or more old manicure, because you don't have to wait base color to dry. That's how you can also hide a tip wear or any chips that happen in days and get new manicure with an upgrade.
Step 2: Place reinforcement ring where you want your half moon to be when the base color is 100% dry. If you want smaller half moons, place it more towards cuticle and reverse. I always use just half of the ring, because I can have 1 ring for 2 nails. Just make sure you rub the ring a little hard, to make sure that ring is completely down.
Step 3: Add a layer of top color all over your nail and a little over reinforcement ring to make a half moon line. 
Step 4: Remove the reinforcement ring right after you apply your second color when it's still wet. You can make some tiny correction with the brush after you remove it if the line isn't perfect but if you're satisfied with the half moon, finish the whole manicure with a layer of top coat and you're done.

I'm not the first one who made this manicure like this but I still wanted to do a tutorial if you didn't know about it. :) What do you think about Half Moon manicures? What's your favorite color combination? How do you make your half moons look perfect? :)

I just broke my daylight bulb and I almost throw down my lap top. Thankfully my lappie is in one piece but I need to get another daylight bulb soon. :) I'm also seeing the anesthesiologist in the morning so he can tell me when I'm having a tiny surgery on my wrist to remove ganglyon cyst. I have a big lump on my wrist now and it started hurting me when I'm using my right hand so I had to do something. Wish me luck! But a great news is that I won a giveaway at Cristina's blog Pee Before Polish (awesome name 8) and it's so true!).Thank you Cristina for making my week! :h

Thank you for reading and stopping by! I hope I'll be back to blogging soon. :)

Xoxo,
Ivana :k

Glitter Sandwich

 

I just had to take a picture like this. xD Everytime I think of glitter, jelly etc. sandwiches I imagine this. ^_^

Anyway, I obviously made a glitter sandwhich but on my nails. :D I wanted to go with something more pink as one of the glitters is and I didn't want to use Show it and Glow it from OPI, so I took another purple glitter.

I applied 2 coats of each, changing OPI - Sparkle-icious & Wet n Wild - Glitz for each coat. Combinations is soooo beautiful. <3

Daylight

 Close up. :brow

Sun - blurry

Daylight

 Nail Tek - Foundation II

OPI - Sparkle - icious / 2 coats

Wet n Wild - Glitz / 2 coats

What do you think? Do you ever tried glitter sandwich like this?

More after a click. :)

Swap with blondie711 from MUA

It's Suuuuuummmmmmmmeeeeeeeerrrrrrrrr timeeeeee. :L My favorite part of the year. :e Yay! :)

I'm toooooo nervous to study and at the moment I hate my faculty with all my heart! Why? You know when you're asking and nobody doesn't know anything and they're sending you from one to another? Yes, I hate that, if they don't know, who'd knew? And it's easier to make yourself stupid. xo xo xo Anyway.... It's not the first time that's why I'm angry even more. xo

Anway, instead of studying I decided to calm myself with taking pictures of my new babies. :) Which I still have on my desk and I got it quite a while ago. :D

This is my first swap on MUA and blondie711 is the nicest I met there. :D There is plenty polishes available for swaps, but some doesn't reply to your msg or they're not interested, some of them are totally nice but she's the best. :D I's hunting down some China Glaze from Tronica, which I wanted badly, because I still don't have all I want from OMG and thanks to blondie711 I have some of them now. :D Usually swaping for some HTF polishes is really hard, but she's so nice to send me even one from OMG collection, how cool is that? :$

Okaaay, here are the pictures :P :

  China Glaze

 Hologram
Virtual Violet 

Hyper Haute

108 Degrees

Señorita Bonita

2NITE

 

China Glaze - Lightning Bolt
Orly - Bubbly Bombshell

Essie - Knockout Pout

Sally Hansen - Starry Starry Flight

Petites Color Fever - Zodiac
Wet n Wild - Wild card

Wet n Wild - Black Creme

NYC - Teal Til the End

 

And last but not least is Nail Tek Foundation II, which I'm using lately insted of Intensive Therapy 2.

See, I got lots of pretty polishes. :L Some of them I already wore and still need to upload pictures and I can't wait to try more of them soon. :h Thank you so much! :k Not just for this babies but all your kind words too!

Xoxo,
Ivana :k

Black Extravagance Ruffian

Boooo, I can't sleep! And I don't have energy to study so here I'm writing a post - perfect timing. :) I watched halftime of Barca:ManU and then I did my workout Insanity tranining during the second halftime (btw these workouts are really insane but interesting - if you want to know more about, just let me know :))... When I's finished, I saw that Barca won! Yay! So confusing, I'm the biggest fan of Real Madrid but I'm happy that Barca won today, because I really don't like ManU. :D I'm sure Abby is having her best dreams today. :P

Anway, I'm sure I already told you that I LOVE Ruffian manicure. It's so pretty, elegant and definitely something new to everybody here. :) I got Wet n Wild - Black Crème in my latest swap with blondie711 from MUA (note to myself: Take pictures of goodies you got  from her asap!). I never wear black on my nails, black is way too dark for my nails though. But... When I saw how opaque it is, I realized that it would work great for ruffian. I had OPI - DS Extravagance on my nails since Saturday so I wanted something new... And here it is... My new try of ruffian mani. :)

Black Crème is a perfect black creme one coater. If you need a black creme nail polish, I'd strongly recommend this one, application is amazing. :)

The weather here is sooo horrible, it's so hot lately but yesterday was sooo cold. I really hate those temperature differences. So, I don't have any sunny pictures for you. Booo! I'm sure Extravagance would look stunning now. :) I hope it'll be sunny tommorow! :$

I just realized I posted 3 almost same pictures with different backgounds. :$ I guess my hand is always prepared in this pose for taking pictures. :i

 

Daylight

Because my phone isn't great for filming details, no video tutorial from me. :) But then I remembered that Nihrida (I'm sure you all know her, her stunning nails and her awesome blog :L ) filmed it a while ago, so I'm posting it here so you could take a look if you didn't saw it.

When I tried it for the first time after seeing this tutorial my manicure was a mess. Later I tried totally spontaneously with Wild at Heart I immediately fell in love with. I'm becoming even better with my right hand! :D

I would suggest that you add a layer of TC after applying your base color, because if you mess up something after applying a second color, you can still fix it with a brush soaked into nail polish remover. :) It's also way more easier if you pick very opaque polish, because you don't have to add 2 or more coats. :)

What do you think? Like it or not? Did you already try to make Ruffian? If so, what colors did you pick? Share some photos. :h

That's it for now from me, this weekend was all about my blog so I'm off to books from tommorow morning!

Xoxo,
Ivana :k

Houston We Have a Purple with Prancer

Instead of doing my term paper I'm posting this. :i I showed you matte version yesterday because I loved it so much and definetely more as this glossy version.

I got Prancer from Carolina a while ago but I never used it till then. It's a red hexagonal and small glitter in a clear base.

I added one coat over OPI Houston We Have a Purple, for more glittery look I should add one coat more. It gives a totally another dimension to Houston. :)

 

Sun

Which verison do you prefer more - glossy or matte? :)

Term paper is waiting for meee.... xo

Xoxo,
Ivana :k

Houston We Have a Purple with Prancer Mattified

Hiya! :) 

I'm still wearing and enjoying my Funky French Skittles so I'll have to show you something else. I showed you Houston We Have a Purple few days ago but I decided to upgrade it somehow. :i I's seeing mattified glitter all around so I wanted to try it out and that's why I'm posting matte first although I wanted to show you shiny version first. :D

I added 1 coat of Wet'n'Wild Prancer (red hexagonal and small glitter in a clear base)  and 1 coat of Essie - Matte About You. 

Daylight

Weak sun

Mattified glitter looks sooooo amazing! And flakies too but I need to try that one day too (probably when I get my hands on some Nfu.OH flakies). :i

That's all for today, I'm sooo sleepy so I'm going to take a nap for an hour or two. :)

Xoxo,
Ivana :k

Valentine's Day ♥

It's a Valentine's Day today! Hope you're spending a nice time with those you love!

I made this manicure yesterday for this special day. It's not just a Valentine's day for me, every 14th in the month reminds me that I'm one month longer with my BF. Today we're 2 years and 10 months together... Love you honey!

Let's start with my manicure... I couldn't decide what color should I wear.. I didn't want ending with red, so I picked all these color and made pink-a-lilac creme skittles.

Essence - No More Drama

Essie - Lilacism

Orly - Lollipop

China Glaze - Something Sweet

China Glaze - Rich & Famous

I added 2 coat of each and 1 coat of Essie G2G. I didn't have any problems with applications. Here's one picture, but I forgot to include my thumb.

Sorry for the bad picture, it was so grey outside!

Then I started thinking what should I do now.... I searched for inspiration at many blogs and then decided to do this... Mix and match...

I was just holding Pure Ice for taking pictures, I didn't use it for this manicure. It's the only bottle I have at BF's.

Daylight, cloudy day

From L to R:
Essence - No More Drama stamped with Essence - Stamp me! White & Confetti - Vava Voom + BM02
Essie - Lilacism stamped with Essence Stamp me! White + m73
Orly - Lollipop sponged with Wet n Wild - Glitz
China Glaze - Something Sweet stamped with Essence Stamp me! White & Confetti - Vava Voom + BM02
China Glaze - Rich & Famous stamped with Essence Stamp me! White + m79

I tried sponging for the first time and I really like it how it turned out. What do you think? It's not classic red&white manicure, but it's so me. I spent an hour for this and then half hour just for my pinkie. I was perfectly done with both hands and then I ruined my pinkie... I decided to start at the beggining and ruined it again... And again... And again... And finally made it.

I won't be posting this week, because I'm having an exam on Thurdsay and I have to study. I also forgot all my polishes at home.

Happy Valentine's day girls!

Xoxo,

Ivana