A England Gradient & Summer Swap

Hi girls!

This week-end I received my last order from A England which is Bridal Veil. Now I have all the colors I wanted ! This one id my favorite. I love how this black sparkles.

I also love love love Lady of the Lake so I decided to do a gradient with these two colors !

I love the result! I think I'm also going to try a gradient with dear mister Saint George!!

Also I received my summer swap which was organised by Andreia.

I had to send my swap to Ninanthea who had to send hers to Cocoberry who had to send hers to me.

So here's what I got :

She did a pretty good job! She completely understood that I was totally addicted to nail polishes. I love everything single thing of this swap!
Here are more pictures :

And here are the swatches of the polishes : 

As you can see I already have some ideas on how to combine all of these pretty colors!!
This first swap was very cool and I can't wait to do another one!!

xoxo

The Sunday Nail Battle - Ice & Candy

Hey there!

Ready for this week's Sunday Nail Battle?

Andreia and Odile decided that it was going to be an "Ice & Candy" themed manucure. The deal is to have as much glitters as possible and to decorate our nails with some sweet things such as cupcakes, ices, candies....

The one color I had to use for this battle was Teenage Dream by OPI. I love the glitters in it, it sparkles a lot, and I love to wear it alone, it makes me feel like a princess !

To make the pink side of the polish pop a little bit more, I always put a white base before applying Teenage Dream to my nails. It gives it more dimension :)

Honestly, I loved it this way but just to be in the theme, I decided to add a little black stamping with the BM-306 plate!

Isn't that cute ? And it's so simple to achieve!

Big kisses and I hope you're enjoying your week-end ♥♥♥

Olympic Nails

Comme ceci : C’est en français

Hey there!!

Most of you may know that today is the day of the opening ceremonies of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. And I couldn't let my nails blank for such an occasion. I first got to tell you that's not the kind of mani you'll wear everyday at work. And it's not the kind of thing I'm used to do. Clearly, I love straight lines, I love parallel lines, I love when circles are perfect circles, I love everything geometric. And for this mani I did everything with a freehand style. The opposite of what I usually do, as I'm more likely to use striping tape for this kind of mani.

So here are my nails :

And here's one with my iphone case bought in Jersey for only 1£ :

Ok it's not perfectly perfect but I'm pretty happy with the result. And I already have some other ideas on the same theme.. :D

So now I think my cat is bored by me doing my nails, he'd rather have some hugs... I can tell it from the way he's looking at me!

Enjoy your day girls <3

The Sunday Nail Battle - Summer Nails

Hello girls!

Summer Nails is the theme for this week's Sunday Nail Battle thanks to Andreia and Odile. We had to use at least one of these three colors : yellow, orange or coral.

My favorite color for summer is definitely coral, and I don't know why but I never really applied a corally color to my nails until recently. But now, I'm in love with this color!!

I first wanted to add some grey, but I finally went for black, which was more contrasting.

I saw somthing similar on Pinterest, and I definitely wanted to give it a try! So here it is :

My hands are a little dry, sorry about that! 

I hope you'll enjoy this mani!

xoxo

Graffiti Nails

Today I wanted to try to recreate a design that Algae Veronica has done. She's a nail-artist doing some really great things. She's so creative and I absolutely love everything she does. Even if I judge some designs not wearable on my nails, she has really great ideas and I love how she plays with colors, how she mixes them and how she matches them.

Her Graffiti Nails are really cool, so cool that she did a tutorial on how to achieve this nail art on Youtube here.

So here's me trying to do the same on my nails :

I absolutely love how it looks. All these colors make me so happy, and it's not that complicated to do. Doing my right hand was a little bit more tricky, but the result is quite symetrical !! So I'm good with that!

I also wanted to show you something that I've bought at Sephora that I thought would be great to try, but that I eventually regretted buying.

It's supposed to help you when you put your polish on your nails. Well, I tried to use it but I ended up doing one nail with it, and finishing my other nails without it. I can't find the right position, and when you have short nails it's not pracitical at all. So not that useful after all. This thing cost me 4,95€.

Today I'm so proud to show off my nails, and I can't wait to know what my co-workers will think about them ;)

xoxo!

A England - Lady of the Lake

I recently ordered two A England polishes that I've been wanting for a while. One of them is Lady of the Lake, probably my favorite one. As purple is my favorite color, wanting this one was predictable. What I love about these polishes is that you can wear them alone on your nails, they really stand for themselves. They're so pigmented, and reflect the light so well that two coats of polish are enough to have really nice nails.

These pictures don't completely show off how they shine, but I'm preparing a post with swatches of my A England polishes, and the pictures will be better :)

I couldn't resist stamping something on my nails. Some will think that it's a sacrilege, but I don't.

I used one my Mash stamping plates and here's the result :

I think it's nice and simple.

Did you get some of the A England polishes? What's your favorite color?

See you!

The Sunday Nail Battle - Sublimation

Hi there!


I'm back for the Sunday Nail Battle!

Andreia & Odile Sacoche decided that this week we would have to use the one color in our polish collection that we don't like.

I immediately knew which color I was going to use. It's been in my drawer for almost two years now, and I used it only one to try it on. This color is Simply Smash-Ing! from OPI.

This color was sold in a duo-pack with the black shatter in the OPI & Serena Williams Glam Slam collection. I don't know if it's the hint of green in it that doesn't make me feel good about it, but clearly I don't like it at all!

Obviously, this color is perfect for the theme!! So here's what I decided to do to try to make this color look good on my nails :

Even paired with black, I still don't love this color. But now that it's out of my drawer I think I'll give it a try and pair it with some other colors. Any idea is welcome!

What is the color you don't like at all and you sometimes regret buying? Or you least favorite one?

xoxo <3

Thursday, it's Ok!

Last week I already showed you a black & white stamping and I decided to try it again this week!

And today I didn't have to remove everything because I wasn't completely pleased with my nails.

What's really great in working in the IT domain is that even if you sometimes have to deal with some withdrawn people or narrow-minded people, you also have the chance of working with very open-minded people that will encourage you to be creative and won't judge you just because you like to spend time painting your nails!

What I like even more is to be complimented by some men who usually think that doing your nails is just a waste of time. Not that I don't like when the compliments come from women, but it feels a little different!!

So let's go back to this stamping! After putting a base, I put 2 coats of Essie's Blanc, a pure white. I put a matte top coat and then I stamped with my black Konad polish. I found this design on the plate BM-221.

I really like how the black flowers show up very well on the white base. And I didn't mess my forefinger so everything is alright!! I'm all prepped for work now!

Lately I've been focusing on stamping because when I'm travelling it's really easy to bring what I need to stamp. But promise, next week I'll try my best to show you something different!

xoxo <3

Colorful Stamping

This is going to be a really quick post, like most of them recently, but I'm just overwhelmed at work!! I'm writing this little post from my hotel room in Paris, where I had to go for professional meetings.

My idea was to do something really colorful to stand with the black and the white that you have to wear when you go to such meetings.

So I decided to go for some stamping as it's pretty easy to do for a really nice effect. I chose a design from the BM-319 plate.

I'd like to tell you how sorry I am for how my forefinger is looking. I really don't like posting such bad pictures, but as I don't have everything I need to clean up my nails like I should, I didn't manage to recover a nice nail. Plus, when I'm stamping with black polish, my forefinger is the most difficult finger to clean. The black sticks into my cuticules and it's such a mess... Even when I'm using a brush with pure acetone.. I don't know why! But if you have some tips on how to remove the excess of black polish when you're stamping, I'd be very grateful!!!

To be honest with you, I was so obsessed with how bad this finger looked that I removed the entire mani, and went for 2 simple coats of Saint George. Fast and classy. Perfect!!

xoxo from Paris <3

The stamped water marble

One of the designs I was the most excited about in the new BM plates was the one on the BM-320 which looked like a water marble. 

I used a pink base and I stamped with a black polish. And the design clearly looks like a water marble. Except that it took me less time to do it, and it was easier that water marbling!!

You can see that the difference between a real water marble and this design is difficult to find, unless you're really an expert :)

Unfortunately, I had some troubles with this design because it was correctly shaped and some flaws appeared when I tried to stamp it. When I took a closer look to my other plates, I notices that 3 of them had also some little flaws. So I decided to contact the support of Bundle Monster, and I have to say that I was impressed by their efficiency. I sent an email with the pictures of the flawed plates, and they answered me only a few hours after. They told me they were sorry and that they were going to send me back the 4 plates at no cost. This is one of the most efficient after-sale service I've ever known, and I'm so grateful!! 

Here are the pictures of the flawed plates I sent to BM :