Remember when I told you I had previously been traumatized by water marbling? I promised to give it a try during this year and seems like that happened sooner than I thought it would :D I also decided why not try more than one method while I'm at it? So I ended up using the regular water marbling technique as well as the water spotted technique.



Water marbling (the regular way) - I have no idea how you guys can get beautiful and symmertical shapes on the water, but i wasn't going for those this time, so these irregular shapes were more than ok! I used yellow, orange, pink and purple polishes for marbling, changing the color combo a bit for each nail to get a lively result.

I didn't use any base color before marbling, so they came out slightly transparent but I don't think it looks bad at all. After marbling I applied a coat of pink shimmery top coat to give it a little sparkle. The top coat smeared the marbling a little, but luckily that's only visible in pictures.



Water spotted - this marbling technique is a bit different and usually only uses one color. I guess you could do it with more than one color too, but I haven't seen anyone do that (yet). Anyway, after dropping a few drops of polish on the water surface, gently spray a little hair spray to it to get distorted shapes like this.

I didn't use this technique on the nails itself, but I figured it would be a great way to make pearls look like turquoise stones! I only had small ones and couldn't find any big ones in stores, so I had to make them myself.

It was a bit hard to dip the pearls in to the water, but I figured the best way to do that, was to apply two-sided tape on an ice cream stick and stick the pearl to it, paint it with turquoise nail polish and then dip it into the water.



Would you guess the bigger stone is actually a DIY one, when you see it next to the smaller factory made ones? I'd say I nailed it pretty well 8-)



Here's all the polishes I used! I don't think I've ever used this many polishes for one set of nails (I usually stick to 2-4 colors).

I also tried out the new Glisten & Glow latex barrier and I fell in love with it right away! It made the cleaning up after marbling sooo much easier!



What do you think about these nails? An okay result for a second first proper try? Feel free to share your thoughts!
Here's my inspiration for these nails btw ↓
 

バーチャルデザインスカルプ。 作品撮りの時の♩

Kuva, jonka Ayaka Shinohara (@wiznail.brazilianwax) julkaisi 21. 05ta 2015 klo 11.01 PDT

Here's a list of products that I used:

• O.P.I: Do You Have This Color In Stock-holm? (purple polish)
• Color Club: Kapow! (pink polish)
• Ciaté: Hopscotch (orange polish)
• Color Club: Almost Famous (yellow polish)
• Color Club: Pearl-spective (pink shimmer polish)
• Color Club: All In (turquoise polish)
• A England: Camelot (black polish)
• Art Club Liner: Silver glitter
• Glisten & Glow: Ctrl-Alt-Del (latex barrier)
• Big pearls from craft stores (these are from Hobby Point)
• Small turquoise stones
• Nail art studs
• Seashell shaped studs from Donki
• Konad: Silver nail art deco chain
• Swarovski crystals in different sizes

Btw, I joined Snapchat a while ago and post stuff almost daily! Feel free to follow me! Here's what I posted while making these nails:

Whoops, accidentally took a little break from the blog, but here I am again!

Back in April, I got invited to a CND Shellac/Vinylux press event to check out the new summer collection! The event was held at Blue Lagoon beauty salon in Kamppi and as the nail freak I am, it was so cool to get to check out all the new colors is person! A few pics from the event above.

I was familiar with Vinylux since we have it in our selection at CesarsShop, but Shellac is (unfortunately) available only for those who have had their training by CND.

Anyways, I got a giftcard for one Shellac treatment, so I thought why not as well use it! Never have I ever had my nails done by someone else, so it was an interesting experience as well :D The giftcard only consisted gel polish treatment, so the nails are still sculpted and decorated by me.



Here's me getting my nails done! :D The lamp was smaller than the tunnel lamp I have at home, so I could barely fit my nails in it but well, it worked anyway haha.

I wanted to have a milky white, slighty transparent color on each nail, so we used 2 coats of Shellac Studio White (semi-sheer white) and one coat of Shellac Negligee (sheer pink/blue shimmer). The shimmer is really subtle though and visible only in direct sunlight. Check out the last pic in the post for reference. The whole thing took about 45min to do.

The nails looked pretty crazy with only the white gel polish on them, so after I got off of the studio, I went to buy some big pearls and other nail deco stuff and headed home to do the decorating part. Let's see how that turned out!



Tadah! What do you think? I think they're pretty different compared to my previous nail designs and this is probably the first time ever when I have same color on every single nail :D I kept the color scheme simply white & gold and I think I'm ready to welcome the summer with these!

Also.... turns out the big pearls on my middle fingers are too big to fit any rings on those two fingers :'D Oh well... This was the first time this has happened btw! But I think they look a lot better than when I tried to do a similar design with smaller pearls, so I guess that's okay lol.

I don't know what I was thinking when applying the finishing gel though, because I applied it over the Swarovski too and they ended up looking like random blobs... And I only noticed it after I had finished the nails, so... :'D I guess it doesn't look too bad.



Here's how the gel polish looks like in sunlight! You can see it has a small blueish pink shimmer to it, which gives it a luxurious feeling, hihii. Thank you Blue Lagoon!

Please let me know your thoughts if you have any! Also let me know what kind of nails you prefer for summer?


Here's a list of products that I used:

• Shellac gel polish: Studio White (semi-sheer white)
• Shellac gel polish: Negligee (pink/blue shimmer)
• Golden nail art tape
• A lot of different pearls from craft stores (Hobby Point, Askarelli, etc.)
• Nail art studs
• Seashell shaped studs from Donki
• Gold micro pearls
• Swarovski crystals in different sizes

Aaaaah, I feel so much more like myself after getting the long nails back. I kinda ditched the idea of doing another short set in oval shape (that I was talking about in my previous nail post), because the longer I had to live with the short nails, the more I missed my long stilettos. Maybe I'll do the short oval nails the next time I have to start from scratch.

As usual, I didn't have any specific plans when I started to do these nails, I just knew I had to have something blue in them. I was pondering between 5 different blue shades, but decided to go with Forget Me Not by Picture Polish!



This is the blue polish I used for these nails! I love the small holographic shimmer in it and the quality is just amazing. I used 3 thin coats to get opaque finish.



I was actually planning to do water marbling with these nails at first, but I have a huge trauma from 2008 when I first tried it and only managed to make a huge mess.  I haven't tried water marbling since then :--D For some twisted reason I came to the conclusion that these very detailed graphics would be easier to paint by hand, than attempt to do water marbling so I went with that idea.

Well, I guess I nailed it pretty well, but it made me feel a bit silly, because water marbling should be much easier to do, right? :'D I promise I'll try to overcome my fear and try it at some point during this year! My skills have radically improved since 7 years ago, so it should be easier now... atleast in theory.



The black and white nails weren't that hard to make actually, because if you don't get it right the first time, the white lines are easy to fix with another art liner in black until you're satisfied with the result.

Ofcourse you need to have a steady hand when painting them, but that much is obvious :)



I'm really happy with the result! I liked the overly blinged nails I had during last Christmas, so I did two similar nails in this set also and decorated the other nails with similar colors.

It might not be noticeable in these pics, but these nails are still a bit shorter than what I've had before, so it's okay if they grow a bit between the monthly fix ups.

I also tried to make them a bit thinner than before and put less mass on the stress point, in order to make them look more slender. It's funny because you yourself get kind of "blind" to this kind of things and don't notice them as easily. Anyhow, I can see the difference now that I actually made the shape a bit thinner.

matching #nails make me happy!💅🏻💙

Kuva, jonka VIIVI V▲NESS▲ R. (@kisumaikuchuuru) julkaisi 24. 04ta 2015 klo 5.56 PDT

I liked the blue polish so much I painted my toe nails with it too! The toes got silver studs instead of gold though. I wish I can start wearing sandals soon and show off my toe nails as well :D

{…~♪。#nails

Kuva, jonka 恋一 (@appetizing_pig) julkaisi 18. 03ta 2015 klo 22.27 PDT

What inspired me to do the black and white designs on my nails, were these nails that Koichi (who is a bassist from one of my favourite bands, MEJIBRAY) had a while back! Obviously I had to improvise a bit because my nails are so much longer, but you get the point :D

I like Koichi's style a lot in general and I think it's awesome how a man can have such cool nails all the time haha.

On other note, would you be interested in a post about my sources for nail inspiration? I follow a ton of nail accounts on Instagram and I was thinking I could share some of my favourites here if you like!


Here's a list of products that I used:

• Picture Polish: Forget Me Not (blue polish)
• A England: Camelot (black polish)
• Art Club Liner: NA1 (white)
• Art Club Liner: NA2 (black)
• Nail art studs: wheel1, wheel2, golden spikes
• Nail art pearls in different sizes
• Swarovski in different sizes
• Odyssey Nail Systems: 8mm V-shape crystals
• Square black charms
• Konad: golden ball deco chain

I don't know if anyone paid any attention to my nails in the previous posts, BUT THEY'RE SHORT. I CHOPPED THEM OFF AND I DON'T KNOW HOW TO LIVE ANYMORE. Okay, I didn't "chop" them off, I used a file and they're not exactly short, but they're short according to my standards.

The reason why I decided to have short(er) nails this time, was because I would've had to file down the length anyway and rebuild them, because they were starting to get crooked (this is something I do every three months, because I want to have my nails straight, so they don't give off a witchy old woman -vibe, being so long and everything).

So I thought, why not try something new while I'm at it? I could do shorter nails without removing everything just yet. And here's what I came up with.

I wanted to try the square shape, because I've never had that before and something about the C-curve fascinates me (but I totally forgot to take pics of that...). Anyway. Good practise, but I think I won't be doing this shape again for a while. I filed off 3cm of my previous length so these feel really short to me, but what makes the most difference, is the shape.

I'm so used to having stilettos and have zero problems dealing with them and the main difference between these two shapes, is that it is so much harder to focus my touches with these! Because stilettos are pointy, you have one tiny "sharp" area you use when touching things, these on the other hand, have a much larger "touching area" or whatever I should call it.

So it makes me feel a bit clumsy at times. Doing my hair feels especially weird, because I use my long nails for combing it, parting my hair and it feels good to be able to touch my scalp. With these I can't and it does feel weird, when you're used to basically having combs and brushes as your hands instead lol. Does that sound weird?

On the upside though, picking up coins from my wallet is faster, but I think that's mostly because of the length, not the shape.



I finally got to use Pay Day! It's sooo pretty and I had to paint my toe nails with it too, haha. So sparkly. The other colors I picked were Look, Don't Tusk, an off-white creme by Color Club and Camelot, a black creme by A England, which has been seen often in this blog before too.

For decorations, I used some water decals, silver nail art tape and studs. I wish I would've had bigger pearls to use, so they would've looked more like this, instead of what ended up on my nails...

For some reason, to me these look like they could be wedding nails... I don't know, what do you think? Too bad I don't have any upcoming weddings to attend!



I don't know if I will return to my usual shape and length yet.. I'm kinda tempted to try an oval shape of this length, with really simple and plain decorations next. I kinda have a vision in my head but we'll see!

The long stilettos are what I'm most comfortable with, but atleast you don't get to say I never try anything new :D



Here's a list of products that I used:

• Color Club: Look, Don't Tusk (off-white polish)
• F.U.N Lacquer: Pay Day (platinum mirror glitter polish)
• A England: Camelot (black polish)
• Blue Sea: silver water decals
• Nail art studs
• Nail art pearls
• Silver micropearls
• Silver nail art tape

Okay, here's the second set of nails in the series! I know I said a while ago that I don't particularly enjoy theme nails, but if it's a character I like, then it's okay.

I've seen japanese nail artist use a lot of Barbie -themed nail decorations and when I came across these stickers while visiting the Barbie store in Harajuku, I couldn't leave without buying a couple sheets.

I bought one sheet with cartoon Barbie designs and another one with more realistic, photograph like designs. I had hard time deciding which one I should get, the regular Barbie/Ken -sheet or one where Barbie had pastel colored hair. In the end I decided to go with the regular Barbie/Ken one!

Because these nails had a Barbie theme, pink was obviously one of the colors I had to use. The rest of the colors choices I just based on the stickers.

The pink hearts are sculpted with clear acryl and then painted pink with nail polish and the color block -designs on my middle finger, ring finger and thumb are handpainted btw. I just added nail art tape over the outlines to make it look more clean.

The sticker on my thumb nail was so huge it made me wonder if anyone else besides me could have even used it... Well, good for me! I wish I could find bigger stickers/decals like these more often.


Here's a list of products that I used:

• Color Club: Sugarplum Fairy (silver glitter polish)
• China Glaze: Neon & On & On (pink polish)
• Essie: Blanc (white polish)
• Color Club: Almost Famous (yellow polish)
• Nail art studs
• Silver heart charms
• Heart shaped studs
• Star shaped studs from Donki
• Silver nail art tape
• Konad: silver ball deco chain
• Barbie nail stickers from Barbie store in Harajuku

Oh btw, I should get a new laptop today, so I can finally answer the comments you've left on my previous posts! Writing replies on iPad sucks, so I've kinda avoided that.... See ya!

I hope you're not sick of me talking about Lime Crime yet. Altough, this one won't be a review but some thoughts I've had about the current incident with the personal information losses with those who purchased from their site and the about Lime Crime as a company in general.

Many of you have probably read this post, that was published earlier this week by a fellow Finnish blogger, Rose Shock. It's a very good post, so if you haven't, I suggest you go read it first. But I still felt like I had to put my two cents in.

I've always been an "I believe it when I see it" -kind of person (stupid? maybe), so even though I was aware of the rumors surrounding this company when I purchased from them, because none of my friends or none of the people I actually know, had had any problems with them, I saw no reason not to give them a try. (But I later found out that Malle, who ordered her black velvetine at the same time as I made my order, had experienced cracking with the product).

The products seemed great to me and that's how I decided to make an order (16th of Jan). The unicorn lipsticks and the velvetines I bought, were my first purchase and experience with them product and company wise.

can lime crimes shipping be any slower i want my stuff like now
— VIIVI V▲NESS▲ R. (@kisumaikuchuuru) 3. helmikuuta 2015

3rd of Feb: I was anxious to get my stuff, because I hate waiting lol. The shipping was delayed with a week from the purchasing date because they had a huge number of orders to fullfil or what-so-ever. Turns out my order arrived two days after I complained about it...

Anyway, though the shipping took agonizing 3 weeks (which in my books is a long time), I was happy with the products (also, please keep in mind that my posts only reviewed the products themselves and not the company behind them).

Even if I was lucky and everything went pretty much as it should, some people weren't and have had serious problems with the company, having their credit card info stolen etc. Luckily I used PayPal and therefore was unaffected by it. The damage caused by the incident is not to something to be ignored and I feel so sorry for those who lost huge amounts of money and to whom it may have caused dramatic changes in their lives.

What bothers me, is I don't really know what Lime Crime is doing to fix the situation?? Except for changing their webshop platfrom and sending the letter below to their customers, but is it enough to regain a customer's trust?
 

Who is this Mark person anyway, I thought Doe was the president?

  I also got the letter because I shopped at their store during the said period of time. I don't know what it would've said if I was affected though... Has any of you got their credit card info stolen? I hope not, but if so, I'd like to know what has happened after that.

These things are serious and it has definitely given me a good lesson to be careful when shopping online, because things like this might happen! I'm more than sure I'll continue paying with PayPal because I want to be safe.


Anyway, getting your money stolen is way more serious than my problems, but there's something that caught my attention and made me feel scammed and pissed. Wicked is the product I've used the most since recieving them and I just noticed something weird. Take a look:


I've honestly used it like 5 times and this is how much I have left!! I decided to check the site, but the info about the quantity of product in each tube is nowhere to be found. Next I checked the packaging and there's the TINIEST EVER print that says 2,6ml, which a normal person can't really even see without a magnifying glass. So, I've literally paid $20 for a few drops of lipstick PER PRODUCT. This is what makes me angry. For comparison, the liquid lipstick by Jeffree Star has 5,6ml for $18.

I decided to check the amount of product in the unicorn lippies too. 3,5g for $18. Okay, that sounds more reasonable, because for example MAC has 3g and NYX has 4,5g and a regular lipstick runs out much slower anyway.

BUT! While taking a closer look, I noticed something weird in these too. Take a look below:

Both have been applied twice, but I feel the amount of product is really uneven in these, and this is something I didn't even notice until now. I really doubt they're both 3,5g.


After all, I feel a bit disappointed with the company. I really liked the products, but I also know, there's a lot of people who will judge you if you show any kind of support towards them and I don't really know how I should feel about that. I don't want fingers pointing at me, calling me a bad person for purchasing a makeup product. I personally don't see anything wrong with it if you want to buy a lipstick that works and have a way to be safe when getting it (buying from other seller and/or using PayPal), even if it's kind of supporting the company.... idk. Many of you might feel differently about it. I still think the judging fingers should be pointing at Lime Crime, not the customer.

I've been drooling over LC's Venus palette for a long time, but haven't gotten my fingers on it yet, because it's constantly out of stock. And there's no way I'm paying 200€ for it in eBay. When finding out the amount of product in these lipsticks, I started thinking what if the Venus palette is also something you can use like five times and then run out? This is making me reconsider dupes for it because I know those exist, but I was kinda hoping to get a whole palette and not having to buy separate eyeshadows... I don't really know what I should do about it.


ANYWAY, long story short: stolen credit card infos and other problems suck, small amounts of product for expensive prices suck, people trying to guilt other customers who use their products also suck ass big time. I was happy about the quality of the products and no, I won't throw them out and I will keep on using them until they run out (which might be sooner than I'd like). Then I'll probably try out some other brand and hope it will be better.

Yosh! Finally it's the time to review the second part of my Lime Crime order. In my previous post, I reviewed the Velvetines and now it's the Unicorn Lipsticks' turn.

As you know, the Velvetines are liquid to matte lipsticks, and these are... wait, what are these? I mean, we all know they're regular lipsticks, but LC's site doesn't say if they're matte, satin or what. It only says they're opaque lipsticks, loaded with pigment and according to the pics the finish looks semi-shiny atleast.

Let's take a closer look!



Here's the slighty darker and warmer shade of pastel purple, Airborne Unicorn! I like this one a lot, but even though it's definitely a purple shade, my hair is such a different shade of purple (well, it's almost blue), so in some lighting it makes the lipstick look kind of pink and I'm not so sure what to think about that.

Applying was easy and it was really opaque as promised, but this one stained my lips pretty badly and I had to reeeaally scrub it to get everything off. But I've heard sometimes this kind of staining happens when a lipstick is heavily pigmented, so I guess that must be it. MAC's Heroine has the same problem for example.

Airborne Unicorn has a scent to it, which is similar to MAC lipsticks.


And here's Chinchilla, which is a mix of lilac and grey and I must say it's pretty damn close to my haircolor! Chinchilla is a bit more matte than Airborne unicorn, I think, but both apply smoothly and are long-lasting.
Chinchilla has a sugary sweet scent to it.

I was able to get these on my lips without using a liner, because I obviously don't have lipliners in these colors. I might need to use a brush in the future when the lipstick loses it's sharp edges, but we shall see.

I must say I'm a bit surprised about this, but I think I like Chinchilla a bit more, even tho I thought I'd prefer Airborne Unicorn. I changed my outfit back to the first, all-white one after taking these pics and I thought Chinchilla looked even better with those clothes. Funny how your choice of clothing can change how the lipstick looks like. While wearing the black cardigan, it made me look a bit too pale, haha.


So, what do you think? Which one you prefer?

Ah, I finally got rid of the horrible nails I had earlier. I didn't learn to like them at all, so I was happy to recieve the F.U.N polishes and getting a reason to remove them a couple weeks before their time. This time, I like the result a lot more!

The first one of the F.U.N bunch which made it to my nails, was King! I kinda wanted to use Pay Day first because that was my favourite one, but I felt like King -being gold and all - went better with the purple polish, Imperial by Picture Polish, because it has gold glitter in it as well.


Each nail blog I follow, has been all hyped up about Picture Polish -polishes lately, and I can finally see the reason why. The formula is ah-maaaaziiiing! Even with super long nails like mine, Imperial still applied smoothly, evenly and gave an opaque finish with only 2 coats!! I'm impressed and I want more.

Imperial is the most gorgeous shade of purple I've ever had on my nails and if you know me, you know I have a thing for purples. Along with the gold glitter I mentioned earlier, it also has blue shimmer in it, which is not that visible in my pictures but anyway, there is some. This is also a first for me, because I usually like cremes and glitters only, but this one, being something like both of those, also makes my heart go ba-dump, ba-dump.


Now. Can we talk about the sparkle that King has?? The picture above is taken with flash, so you can really see the holographic sparkle. And I can assure you it's as gorgeous in person too, if not even better.


My favourite black polish is Camelot by A England, and that's what I used with these nails as well. It applies
like a dream and is opaque with two coats.

I decorated the black nails with some golden nail art tape and iridescent silver transfer foil, which I bought from Mosaic's booth at I Love Me -expo last Fall. To finish the look, I added various nail art studs and some charms in complimentary colors.


So, what do you think of these? Are they better than the previous set? If you have any thoughts, please share. They are very much appreciated.

The title of the post is a little wordplay of the polishes' names btw :D It was like they were meant to be used together, having names with a similar theme, hihi.

Here's a list of products that I used:

• Picture Polish: Imperial (purple polish)
• A England: Camelot (black polish)
• F.U.N Lacquer: King (gold glitter polish)
• Mosaic transfer foil + foil glue (Ciaté)
• Nail art studs
• Nail Metal Charms from Donki
• Purple swarovski crystals
• Gold nail art tape
• Camé & diamond charms