The Digit-al Dozen Recreates First Blog Posts - Salt, Pepper & Sophistication

Hello lovelies!

This month, The Digit-al Dozen's challenge theme is recreating our first blog posts. How fun! My first post however, was a snowflake mani and since I am still in denial about it being the end of summer, I decided to skip that one. For my first post I decided to celebrate my first milestone: The First Mani That Was Ever Shared On Social Media By Someone Else!

BPS Ultra Thin Starry Nail Decoration

Hello lovelies!

I received some ultra cool metal nail decoration from Born Pretty Store! I will show you how to quickly spice up a simple manicure with them. They come in all kinds of shapes, but I have the awesomest: stars!

Infinititely studded with W7 "Space Debris"

Hello lovelies!

A quicky post this Saturday. I recently purchased a new shade of W7, "Space Debris". I created this mani with it, using tiny studs I bought on ebay. It is inspired by my ring (see second pic):

Space Debris is a hot pink shimmer jelly with lots of tiny holo glitters. It applied nicely, though it was not very opaque. This it 2 coats, but if you want to wear it alone, you might need 3 coats to reach full, non-VNL opacity. I like it, but more in the bottle than on my nails...

xoxoxo

Captain

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Black to Blue

Hello lacqueristas!

After a two-week hiatus, a little blogging here! I wore this to work the other day, because that night we all went bowling:

Nautical Nails

Hello lovelies!

Today I want to show you the mani I did for my weekend of sailing :) One of my dear friends is a sailing expert and she took me sailing on the Frisian lakes :) That called for an appropriate mani:

It is inspired by The Nailasaurus. I used striping tape for the lines, my first time using striping tape! It is amazing stuff... I used Rimmel "My Denim" for the blue,  Essence "Fame Fatal" for the red, W7 "White" for the white base and NYC "Full Metal Jacket" for the gold. I freehanded the anchor with a nail art brush and dotting tool. 

What do you think?

xoxoxo

Captain

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Green Fizz Fun!

Hey lovelies!

The other day, I googled "Bourjois Green Fizz" and found that google showed my swatches! This of course made me do several dances in my living room ;) I also found an awesome mani with Green Fizz, that I simply HAD to recreate. It needed two polishes, namely Green Fizz (doh) and W7 "Cosmic Green". I did not own the latter yet, and had not give myself permission to buy it yet either! But last week, The Lieutenant and I decided to go budget shopping, and she bought a pair of lovely shoes. Then we found this clothing store in which the highest priced item was 5 euros! I found 2 awesome knits and The Lieutenant found a bold belt :)

One of the knits happened to have the exact Green Fizz colour, so there I had my excuse to go buy Cosmic Green to create the mani, so that I could wear the new shirt with the mani to the department's barbecue. Sadly, it was really cold, so after an hour I really needed to wear my jacket, but suffering the cold for an hour was totally worth it. So without further ado, I give you Green Fizz Fun!

With the lovely knit and my bracelet:

This is two coats of Green Fizz on my thumb, middle finger and ring finger, and one coat of Green Fizz with two coats of Cosmic Green on my index finger and pinky! Cosmic Green is a lovely glitter bomb with gold and blue glitter, creating a green illusion. I used my dotting tool for the dots.

What do you think, do you love it as much as I do? It sparkled so bright, it was fantastic!

xoxoxo

Captain

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Swatch-It Sunday: Essence "Prom Berry" & "Cool Breeze" and W7 "Cosmic Purple" swatches & review

Hello hello!

Today we have 2 new polishes from Essence: "Prom Berry" and "Cool Breeze". Prom Berry is a deep dark purple polish with a little shimmer. And you can totally get away with just one coat, which makes it a true "colour & go" lacquer. I hereby show you 1 coat (in direct sunlight, which truly brings out the gorgeous shimmer) and 2 coats (in daylight):

Now on to Essence's Special Effect Topper! Cool Breeze looks amazing in the bottle, all those iridescent glitters, whoaaa! But it is not as well packed as it seems. However, it does really look beautiful over this purple. This is one coat:

You gotta apply this a bit more carefully, because otherwise the glitter won't cover the whole nail, but it is not hard. Just dab the brush where you want glitter. As you can see, it has both micro and macro glitter in there. It does give it a cool breezy feel.

Now I wanted to try out W7's "Cosmic Purple". This is one coat over Prom Berry:

Cosmic purple isn't actually purple! It's a glitterbomb of fuchsia and blue microglitters, which makes it appear purple. It's really nice and sparkly and applies really easily. And it's cheap :) 2 pounds in the UK, 2.50 euros in the Netherlands (available at Op=Op). In the UK you can also order them online.

That's it folks! The nail art I did with these is part of another post, that I will probably post next week, it is something really different that I am really excited about!

So stay tuned and don't forget to follow via GFC, Bloglovin' and Facebook, so that you won't miss a thing!

xoxoxo
Captain

Friends on Friday - Fun with Friends

Hi dearies!

Sometimes I bring my nail polish to my friends and paint their nails. I especially like to do dotticures, because it's fast and fun! Also, it does not make a whole lot of mess, nor does it require too many tools, so I only need to bring minimal supplies ;)

Ok today I show you the first mani: 

I used 2 thin coats of W7 "Mosaic", and put 3 stripes with my white striper from Etos, and then placed dots with white long lastin nail polish from Etos. I then took another W7 polish, "Shirley Temple" and placed little shimmery dots in the white. So there you have it, a party mani ;) And blue, for it is Autism Awareness month, after all!

Thanks to my friend, who lend me her hands!

And don't forget to enter our giveaway!

xoxoxo

Captain

Swatch and nail art with the new Rimmel

Hello beauties!

Got a swatch of a  new Rimmel polish for you, together with a little simple nail art, that of course could not be omitted. This is Rimmel "Hot Chick" form their Fire Cracker Collection. In artificial light (below), it photographs very red, but in reality it has a pink undertone. Pomegranate coloured, I would say. It is a jelly polish and below there are 2 coats over a base coat:

It is a nice bright and catchy colour, that is very good for the upcoming summer. Below is a photo taken in daylight:

One can see that even though I used 2 coats here, one can still see some VNL (visible nail line), but that is not a big deal for me right now, since I want to do something to the tips anyway. If one were to wear it on itself, one would need 3 layers. The colour on its own does make me feel like fruit and sweets and it makes me hungry ;) . The polish applies really easily and it dries relatively fast. 

Here's the 'art' part:

I needed the blue. I thought it would enhance the brightness of the colour and it did. I just sort of freehanded this, since I didn't feel like taping. I used Miss Sporty nr. 320, and W7 silver to do this. The last picture shows the colour of "Hot Chick" best, I think.

This mani was nice and colourful an I enjoyed it a lot. What do you think?

xoxoxo

Captain

ManiMania in Paris Part 1

A Good Friday to y'all!

When in Paris, I had the pleasure of polishing some nails :) I had very limiteds supplies, only about 10 polishes, but here goes! The first mani I got to do was on the hands of the cutest 4-year-old ever (my friends' niece):

I used Essence "I'm Bluetiful" as my base, and then drew the lines with my silver striper. Then I added the flowers with a bobby pin, using Essence "Shopping trip in Soho" (pink) "A walk in the Park" (green) and HEMA nr. 19 for the yellow. 

Then walked in a friend of my friend, who is now also my friend, and since we only had about 10 minutes, I decided to do a simple design on top of her already (albeit somewhat chipped) read nails, with my black and silver striper. 

These are the hands of my friends mom, to whom I am so grateful for taking me in for 4 days. She was so sweet and cooked all these delicious dishes for me; I was in heaven :)

I used Essence "Shopping trip in Soho" and created the gradient with the accompanying "Party all night long". Then with W7 "silver",  I added some flowers to the accent nails, and some black for the centres. 

Tomorrow I'll show you what I did on my friends nails, in part two of the mani mania :)

xoxoxo

Captain

Lava Flow Swatches and Nail Art

Hi dear followers!

Today I want to show you this beautiful polish I picked up the other day, W7 "Lava Flow". It is, like "Salt 'n Pepper", a white jelly with glitters, but this time, not only black, but also red ones! Small black and red hexes and some larger red hexes as well. Here it is:

Lava Flow in direct artificial light

Daylight

Daylight

Then, I decided to mattify it with HEMA matte top coat. It's even better then! Look:

Matte, artificial light

LOVE IT! All of a sudden, it looks so much smoother! Of course, after that, some nail art needed to be done, so I took out my striper and freehanded this:

Left: Artificial light. Right, Daylight

Daylight

Let's call it Lava Flow Deco. I love how the glitters look when mattified, and home the glossy black accents spice it up! It looks very sophisticated, all of a sudden :)

What do you think?

xoxoxo

Captain

St. Paddy Skittle

Hello beauties,

And happy Tuesday!

Everybody is doing St. Paddy's Day designs, so even though we don't celebrate that, we thought we'd give it a shot. After all, green is fab ;) So here's the skittle:

We used Catrice "King of Greens" (dark green), Essence "Ice Crystals on My Window", W7 silver, Etos Quick Dry (light green) (which was then topped with Essence "Stop for an Ice Cream") and La Femme (white drawings). The glitter on the pinky is a gold topper from HEMA. The upper photo is the mani with a glossy finish, the lower one has a matte finish (also from HEMA).

Captain needs to work on her clovers. But still, it's a happy bunch of fingers!

xoxoxo

Lieutenant & Captain

Ticket to The Show and Caviar to go!

Dear followers,

Happy Wednesday! Just did my presentation, it went well. Haven't slept much, but will survive. Here's the quick mani I did yesterday!

Without topcoat over caviar

I used one slightly thicker coat of Essence "Ticket to The Show" on all nails. This is a gorgeous black creame with multicoloured glass flecks that show up especially in  artificial light. Can't stop staring at it! It's part of the Colour 3 collection of Essence, it comes with a goldenblack topper. And it is opaque in one good coat, wich is perfect for a quick mani like this :)

After this dried properly, I added topcoat everywhere, and immediately poured W7 "Black Rain" nail caviar on the accent nail. I didn't want it to fall off, so after letting it dry, I applied another layer of topcoat to the caviar nail:

With topcoat over caviar

It looks ok, but not as pretty as without the topcoat! But I needed it to stay on my nails for at least a full day and to survive washing my hair in the morning, and I succeeded. So, I'm  happy!

Can't wait to do this with other nail polish colours and caviar colours... Catrice will soon have some Caviar in their next Limited Edition... CAN'T WAIT! NEW COLOURS! DROOL! 

Do you like or dislike the caviar look?

UPDATE!
Added some glitter, it was chipping already but didn't want to redo the mani, nor do another one. Will do a new one tonight. This is the result!

This photo was taken in sunlight. The gold glitter is a topcoat from HEMA, the gold specs are from the other end of the "Ticket to The Show" duo polish, namely "Front Row Or Backstage?" and I applied it in a gradient. The loose pink glitters are from Essence Vintage District Nail Decoration Kit 01 "something g-old – something new" and the swirls were done using Essence "Metallic Champagne" striper. Now it's a skittle!

xoxoxo

Captain

Hestia

Hiiiii!

We're back with another goddess. It's Hestia, goddess of home and hearth. The first offering at every sacrifice in a household, went to her. Her symbol is, surprise, fire. Hence fire is on my nails now!

This picture was taken in diffuse daylight.

I started with a layer of Bourjois "Rouge in Style", and on the accent nail, I also applied one coat of W7 "Red Dazzle", as can be seen here:

This picture was taken in artificial light.

Then I saran marbled with Miss Sporty Clubbing Colours gold. With my striper from Etos, I freehanded the outline of the flames on my accent nail, and since it is my right hand, that is shown here, I had to do it with my left (which still has Hygieia on it, with the pretty snake, that I just could NOT remove yet ;) ). I'm sorta proud of my left hand for drawing this while shaking BADLY! 

Then I added some more Red Dazzle to the accent nail, in the center of the flames, to make it more fiery!

And that's it :) We'll continue the Goddesses until the end of February (so Thursday) :)

xoxoxo

Captain

Hygieia

Dear followers,

Sorry for not posting yesterday, I didn't get to finish my mani yesterday! It's done now, and I hope you like it! 

This mani is inspired by Hygieia, Goddess of Health, Cleanliness and Sanitation. As you probably see, this is where we got the word 'hygiene'. She was one of the daughters of Asclepius, god of medicine. She is often depicted with a snake, symbol of health (which is still visible in many signs of pharmacies, health care institutions and so on..). 

When I think 'clean', I think 'white' and 'silver'. So I started off this mani with a white base, using white long lasting polish of Etos, which is like white-out on your nails, it's awful. Then I saran marbled with W7 silver polish. I finished the design with some W7 caviar, arranging it in a snake form. I used some gold glitter from my Essence Nail Art Kit.

It ended up like this!

Comments and suggestions are very welcome!

xoxoxo 
Captain Lothwen

Athena

Whoohoo! Athena's here!

Athena, or Pallas Athena, goddess of wisdom and art and law and war strategy. The wise owl accompanies her on her many journeys.

With wisdom, my mind springs to blue. And being just and strategic screams silver to me :P So here it is!

I first started with a layer of Essence "Midnight Date". It is opaque in just one layer :D Well done Essence! And it's such a gorgeous colour... Bright blue, with a greenish shimmer (that sadly wouldn't be captured on camera). 

Then I saran marbled (for a video tutorial, check out Kat's most recent video!) with W7 "Silver".

It came out all gorgeous and shimmery :D Of course her favourite animal cannot be left out, so I used my pink striper of Janet to draw it on, and I used two little rhinestones from Essence for the eyes.

What do you think?

xoxoxo

Captain