Naturally Nails: Pink glitter accent nails

Hey hey

Once again, my favourite day of the week is finally here. IT’S SATURDAY! I don’t like Fridays because it’s still a school day and Sunday = school tmr so SATURDAY IS DEFINITELY THE BEST. If I could help it, I’ll have a 4 day work day and 3 day weekend. That would be my ultimate goal in life. I hope it comes true! Evertually I wanna find some way to make my money grow itself without me doing anything. Ahhh… that would be the life. Then I’ll go travel the world sampling great from all over the world just like ladyironchef! HAHA! Dreams

Got myself a very interesting nail “accessory that I couldn’t wait to try out. Here’s what I did with it!

Etude house: Matte pink
LA splash Daytona beach

The breakdown:
1. Use a matte colour of choice (etude house matte pink)
2. Choose accent nail and paint another coat of base polish over. 
3.While polish is still wet, dip nail into glitter of corresponding colour (LA splash Daytona beach)
4. Dust off excess with brush and tap off excess glitter
5. Top accent finger with top coat (if not glitter will fall out)

OMG I’m seriously loving how this turned out. I intentionally chose a matte polish to accentuate the shine of the glitter. It’s like the star of my nails right now! Look at it twinkling like little stars in the sky! You can NEVER achieve this with any ole glitter polish. Even OPI’s teenage dream doesn’t come close. The only down side? The glitter can make your nails look super chucky because it forms such a humongously thick layer.

Oh! I have to complain about the formula of the etude house matte polishes. It’s really bad. While I have never worked with any other matte polishes, I still feel that this one is REALLY bad. I think it dries too fast, there’s no time to create an even coat because it sets. It’s TERRIBLE. It’s ok on my fingers because the surface area is small but can you imagine my thumb. I redid it 3 times and still….. extremely streaky. I had to use thinner to improve the consistency. =(

Here’s a close up of the lash splash glitter. NOTE, this is NOT safe for the eyes. Nonetheless, this glitter really surprised me. I had expected a chunky, gritty texture but NO, dipping my finger into this pot transported me to coasts of Australia! The glitter was so smooth and soft it reminded me so much of the gorgeously fine sand of Australia! Lovely Lovely! Ok so Daytona beach is mainly a soft pink studded with sliver, purple and blue glitter. The colour combi is really pretty. I love this shade of pink as well. Not too hot, not too light. JUST RIGHT *Noms on porridge just like goldilocks* LOL

Alrighty, I’m off to enjoy my well deserved Saturday. Fatigue, you shall not hinder me from my happening life.

~END~
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Naturally Nails: Neon French Tips

Hey hey,

Omg, I’ve been missing for 2 weeks already! Apologies cause I’ve been super caught up with school. Yes yes the same old excuse but at least it’s TRUE! >.< Would you also blame if I said I wanted to leave my butterfly nail design on longer as my feature post?

Just like that, March is upon us. This is a super belated post that I have wanted to post since CNY but never did. But, but, all is not lost, afterall, better late than NEVER. Today’s post features my SISTER’S nails. *applause applause please*

Base: TFS WH001
Tips: Butter London Trout pout

How conservatively spring/ boldly winter appropriate don’t you think? Besides the fact that it’s freaking summer all year round here. I’m melting in my chair as I blog. Why is it so unbearably hot and sunny over here!!! >.<

The breakdown
1. Paint your nails with a sparkly/glitter white polish of your choice (TFS WH001), the shinnier the BETTER
2. Carefully top your nails with French tips using a crème neon colour of your choice (Butter London trout pout)
3. Top coat of choice (Poshe)

There’s all there is to it. How simple is that?! I totally failed on the French tip shape again, ended up looking like 1 straight line. Ughhh… I will master it I WILL MASTER IT!  

Anyways, totally love the pop of colour that trout pout brings to this look. It’s so glam yet subtly in your face at the same time! Esp since the crème texture of the French tips totally balances out all that jazz going on proximal to it (LOL just had to use that word, I meant to say the sparkly goodness of the white base polish shining brightly further down from the tips)

Here are some other look/swatches of the colours 
TFS WH001 – winter wonderland 
Butter London Trout pout - Swatch

Kudos to my sister for keep her fingers in a rather photographic manner. Did much better than me when I first started off. Of course it was thanks to my marvellous OCD-ness. Ok I shan’t claim the credit. If you are wondering about the reason for the random feature of my sister’s nails? Well, it happens to be an annual affair. Since she’s still schooling in a rather strict environment if you get my drift coupled with the fact that she has sports training everyday including the holidays, there are only so many other days where she can don on prettily painted nails. One of those days happen to be CNY! She’s taken a serious liking to manicures now. I’m so proud of her *tears of joy*. NOT TO MENTION, one of my first ever nail post was also featuring her MANICURE! So you could say, she was the one who got me started on blogging! That was some serious years back. Wow, we have come really far haven’t we?!

This is still however, only the beginning. To more awesome nail-tastic posts to come!

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Naturally Nails: Butterfly wing ombre

Hey Hey

Happy Belated Valentine’s everyone! Hope you had a great one with friends, family or special other half. I had a whale of a time helping my friend chase a girl for vday! Mine was spent rather quietly at my other half’s humble abode. We prepared our own army stew pot and basically dumped all kinds of delicious goodness into the stew. HAD A SUPER HEARTY MEAL! And a great time cooking it as well. We never like celebrating Vday on the day itself because everywhere is too damn crowded. Even terrible restaurants sprout ridiculous queues. Yup, just becomes a super turn off even if we had pre booked seats. Imagine Vday when we hit 6.9milion. WOW. I don’t even wanna think about it.

Nonetheless here’s what I did on my nails to celebrate the coming of my recess week! WHOO to being able to leave my nail colour longer than 2 days! =)

Base: OPI The IT colour
Gradient: OPI the IT colour à OPI I eat mainely lobster à China glaze ruby pumps
Design: TFS black, Etude house white

BAM! I am so proud of this design, so proud that it brings tears to my eyes! Real tempted to change my thumbnail now. Can you tell that they are butterfly wings? Specifically it is modelled after the Monarch butterfly! Drew inspiration for 2 vids on YT and put my own gradient spin on it. This is by far, my most ultimate, intricate, awesome nail design ever that took FOREVER to finish. The sheer amount of work that goes into painting on the wing design really takes a toll on your concentration. Nonetheless, the effort is totally worth it. LOOK AT THE END RESULT! A show stopping design IMO. I, obviously love this design the MOST! AMORE! Can't wait to show it off! *Breaks into song* "Oh I just wanna show you off to ,y friends, making them drool down their chiny chin chins"

Fair warning, this design is not the easiest and requires a heck load of patients and a crazy amount of OCDness to achieve

The breakdown

1. Paint a yellow/light orange base colour over the nails (OPI the IT colour)
2. Create your gradient on a sponge and dab all over nails making sure to blend blend blend (Best gradient nail tutorial by nailasaurus     HERE)
3. Wait for polish to completely dry and in the mean while clean up the edges of your nails
4. Using a stripping brush, dip into black polish and draw on the butterfly wings meticulously. This step takes the longest. (Pssst: A good tip is to draw the lines away from you as this makes the brush much easier to control. Sometimes, moving your fingers while keeping the brush in the same place also works)

NOTE: Round out any sharp edges esp where the lines intersect. – This is the part where you need to be very OCD about the edges if not they won’t look real. I couldn’t do them at well as I wanted to but still OK

5. Using a dotting tool/ toothpick, randomly dot on some white dots but rmb to add some where the vertical lines and horizontal tip meet.

6. Add rhinestones as you wish. Use SMALL ones so they look more intricate
7. Wait at least half an hour or more before applying top coat. You do not want to smudge your design after you’ve gotten this far. Patience, patience, PATIENCE!

Tada you are done! And I just lost my train of thought… ok OK right got it back. Basically you want to be very patient with this design. Definitely works with other colours as well. Just model them after the colours of butterflies to make them for realistic. Bear in mind thought that dark colour will not make the black wing design stand out.

Hallelujah! I have successfully made OPI the IT colour work. Terrible colour SOLO but gradient when used with other colours. Added in rhinestones for the fun of it, afterall rhinestones never fail to glam up anything it’s put on. 
Ugh, some of my lines aren’t as crisp as I had wanted them to be and some edges aren’t as round as I wanted them to be but hey, nobody can seem them from afar right! Super proud that I could achieve the same design on my right hand, drawing with my left hand really tested my hand dexterity max. Well right brain, you have served me well!

Swatches:
OPI the IT colour 
OPI I eat mainly lobster
China glaze Ruby pumps

Here’s a narcissistic picture of my thumb on which I think the wing design looks the best on! Probably because there is a bigger surface area to work with so I can draw more lines!

Totally can’t stop looking at my nails now. Imma continue to gaze bimbotically at them through the week and marvel at my work of art! I am not an artist and drawing ain’t my biggest forte, it fact it’s probably one of my worst so being able to pull this off really amazes me. Ahhh there ain’t no better art than nail art. It’s so unbelievably therapeutic. ESP when the you reap the fruits of your labour at the end.

Anyways, CHEERS to the coming of my recess week. This week shall be spent wisely!

~END~
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Naturally Nails: Festive CNY nails

Hey Hey

So Chinese new year is upon us! So far it’s been a blast for me! I don’t have a ton of visiting to do because my family gathers at 1 place and it’s overkill! Ang Pao heaven! Which makes it really dangerous for any other guests to wander into our realms. People have before and their losses were huge. Could almost hear the sigh of despair from the outside when they saw how many shoes were outside my grandma’s house.

Since it’s the oh so covet CNY, what better way to celebrate it than with super festive nails!! Here’s what I donned on CNY. I was super red this year to please my dad. He was a happy happy dad. Could say that my outfit almost mirrored my nails, just that the darker red was burgundy instead. EVEN WORE RED SHOES

Without further ado!

Base: Etude house pink jelly polish
Tips: China glaze ruby pumps

FESTIVE HUH! Not as gaudy as I imagined which is good! I quite like the combination! The touch of red really changes up the look IMO. Can I just exclaim how much a love the jelly polish which also happens to be my favourite kind of finish. Looks super opaque in the bottle but when you apply it to the nails, it turns out to be a beautiful jelly instead! Best thing is that it pretty darn opaque for a jelly~. Nonetheless, I always couple it with a french tip just to make sure my nail lines don’t show through esp in the sun. Appalling how many time I have used the word jelly LOL.

Unfortunately, etude house revamped its nail range entirely so I don’t think this colour is in the line anymore =(

Anyway if you wanna check out a swatch of ruby pumps, you can find it here! (click here)

Notice any difference in my tips. Went to file them the next day to make em straighter. Think they look a better like that, more angular! I realised the problem with frenchtips. If you want them to look more crisp, a thin level of polish will suffice. I tried to make my tips look more opaque and ended up with globs for tips hhaha!! Can totally tell how rough I am with my nails. This is 2^ND day nails. Check out my third finger. Took the greatest dmg.

And the last picture for the post. Non reflective post to “reflect” the true colour of the polishes.

Ah yet another rainy afternoon, this is probably the first in a very long time that it’s raining on CNY. No matter, the rain doesn’t change anything. Those ang pows will still be mine! LOL ok jokes aside, the best part of CNY for me is ofcourse the FOOD. So much sin in so little time. The best dish ever? Grandma’s and mum’s ngoh hiong. OMG to die for. Sis and I snapped up about half of it before my mum realised the degree of our gluttony and snatched it from our grasps to keep it out of sight TT. Could have eaten more seriously! Argh, there will be so much dmg control to be done after this week is OVER. OMG hahaha

Nonetheless HAPPY CNY EVERYONE. Apologies that my post is so BELATED. V’day is coming up as well but I do not think I will be in time for a Vday nails post so, perhaps this can double up as vday nails as well xD.

~END~
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Naturally Nails: Ocean reminiscence

Heyhey,

It's FEBRUARY already. OMG people, how time flies - before we know it it'll be CNY, Good friday, April fools, labour day, Mother's day, Vesak day, my birthday, Father's day, Hari raya puasa, National day, children's day, teacher's day, Hari raya haji, Halloween, Deepavali, Thanks giving, christmas eve and christmas DAY OMG! That was a mouth full.

I was feeling particularly inspired this week esp because I've been wanting to try out blue ombre nails for the LONGEST, LONGEST TIME. Put on this design the moment I recieved my newest addition to my polish collection in the mail. 
CHECK MY NAILS OUT!

In descening order of darkness: Canmake No.50, Essie coat Azure, OPI what's with the cattitude, OPI liquid sand Get my number. 

I swear, the pictures don't do this justice at all, this design is one of my best designs EVER. G.O.R.G.E.O.U.S not just IMO but in my friends' and family as well, got quite a few compliments ^^ The way the blues transition into one another and the way that the liquid sand sparkle in the sunlight just give me the image of the ocean. Not talking about the green waters here in Singapore but the crystal clear blue waters of other coasts. Heck, this doesn't even need the afternoon sun to do it justice, it twinkles so beautifully indoors as well. It's got this whole inner glow thing going on. All in all i really LOVE this one. Beautiful MAX.

Rmb how I was saying in my last gradient post (click here) that I would try out the whole paint a base layer on nails first and then create the gradient on the sponge including the base layer itself to create a more natural blended effect. WELL I did it here and boy were the results awesome. Achieved the most natural ombre EVER you could barely see where the colours end.

Here's how I did it

The breakdown:1. Using the darkest blue of your gradient (Canmake No.50), apply a base layer to the nails
2. Using a sponge, paint the colours in descening order of darkness on the sponge and quickly transfer to the nails. Use a dabbing motion and make sure to move the sponge up and down the nails to blend the colours better. Do not over do the dabbing (don't want muddy looking coloours) and be sure to work quickly as dry polish will stick to the sponge as you dab and remove itse;f from your nails
3, Apply glitter coat of your choice to make the transition look that much more seamless. (make sure that your glitter coat is sheer enough for the colours below to peek through, for obvious reaons. Don't want to waste that gorgeous ombre you just created on your nails of course)
SEE 3 simple steps and your done. It doesn't take long at all to do but looks like you spent hours and hours on it. 

Tip: if you feel that you lost some of the colours through the blending process, just add the corresponding colour to the sponge and dab in the deficient areas. I call this "spot dabbing". For those of you who are perfectionistic like me. xD

Can I just say again how I think this combination is awesome. THIS.IS.AWESOME! 
Thank goodness I can keep this combination on my nails for longer than usual =) More time to show it off to the world! Ok joking I don't really flaunt my nails but it still feels good when people notice it. C'mon they are blue for crying out loud, how not to see!
Warning: This is however, not very CNY appropriate so please do not rock this look if your family is extremely traditional.

Here's a picture of under the light of the evening sun.


Here's how they look under the sun. The camera cannot capture the shine of them but I don't blame the camera cos I think even the best of cameras may not be able to capture it. You can't focus on the glitter yet capture the "refraction" of light from the glitter piece. Just doesn't work that way.
Yes yes went a little overboard with the photo spam but can you blame me?

Anyways, if you ever try this out, totally link me in the comment below. would love to see them!

Ok got a test coming up this Monday so... I gotta hit the books before I sink into an abyss of no return. One of my friends posted a very wise post: One has to suffer 2 types of pain in life - the pain of discipline, or the pain of regret. Very true, VERY TRUE. I am a very free spirited person and consequently have no discipline so.... I probably always go through the latter. Sigh....
On a brighter note. I'm done with my CNY outfits. Got my 2nd outfit online. How convenient it that! xD

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