Sunday 22 August 2010

Floral prints and airbrush colours!

If you follow me on Twitter, you would have seen this set of nails when I tweeted them on Saturday. :D


Floral prints are really lovely on a white base. The pink and yellow colors are airbrushed on to create the dreamy effect.


Closeup on the airbrushed colors.... Pretty eh? This set of nails is done entirely in gel (except for the painted floral prints) and this explains why the airbrush colors, painted roses and crystals are super lasting cos a layer of gel is coated over to protect them. :)

Floral prints and airbrush colours!

If you follow me on Twitter, you would have seen this set of nails when I tweeted them on Saturday. :D


Floral prints are really lovely on a white base. The pink and yellow colors are airbrushed on to create the dreamy effect.


Closeup on the airbrushed colors.... Pretty eh? This set of nails is done entirely in gel (except for the painted floral prints) and this explains why the airbrush colors, painted roses and crystals are super lasting cos a layer of gel is coated over to protect them. :)

Jelly pink tips with airbrushed black lace


Pretty or what?! Love the contrast of the colours! I purposely did not put the "tiny sparkles" so you girls can see how glossy and shiny the crystals n gel are!

Jelly pink tips with airbrushed black lace


Pretty or what?! Love the contrast of the colours! I purposely did not put the "tiny sparkles" so you girls can see how glossy and shiny the crystals n gel are!

Bullseye!


I was watching TV today and though I don't recall what show/movie it was in, I remember seeing a dartboard, and I thought to myself, "Self, that would make a fun nail design!". So there you have it, dartboard nails! Who here wants to challenge me to a game of Cricket?!


I used American Apparel California Trooper as a base, with Nubar Forest for the green sections, Nubar Sexy Red for the red sections, American Apparel Hassid for the black sections, and China Glaze Millennium as the metal separating the sections. No room for the numbers, sorry. :-D Last, I topped everything off with a coat of Essie Matte About You.

Weird thing is, I play better darts when I'm drinking than when I'm sober. What's up with that?!

I LIKE IT, I LOVE IT, I WANT SOME MORE OF IT!

Everytime I have leftover glitter pieces or mylar that I'm too lazy to put away I put them in an extra drawer I have. On these nails I took out all of my "leftovers" and put them randomly onto black acrylic. Soooo fun! I may have to do this more often. You just never know what you're going to get.

This is an opi gel polish design. I layered Happy Anniversary over Russian Navy. I also added little silver glitters for some bling. Everyone loves a little bling!

This client wanted red, white, black and fun. We both have a wild crazy creative side. So this is what we came up with. It is the perfect nail marriage. Thanks for saying, "I do!"

This client told me she's not too crazy about red after I did her nails.... oops my bad. Hopefully she still likes them. I must try harder to remember what each client likes and dislikes.

These are my nails. I didn't do them but hey they are fabulous so I still had to show them off!

On these nails I used xxx white acrylic from Young Nails. No marbling with the white at all which I loved! Anything to make it look like I'm a better nail tech than I really am. I added clear sequins and little clear glitters all over. They are very bling! Love them.

A crazy design for a crazy client what more can I say? LOL

Have I already posted a picture of this same design? I don't know I have done too many nails! I wanted to show the light lavender dots that I have just incase I haven't shown them before. They are from oaktreedollshouseminiatures.com

This is a design I did with gel polish. The flowers are stickers and I painted the polka dots on.

I love a white french manicure with a little surprise... a litte twist.

Summary of the survey results!

Hi guys! First, huuuuuge thanks to all of you who took the time and effort to fill in my survey. I appreciate this so much, you have no idea. A blog is nothing without its readers really! The main reason I put up the survey was to get some feedback on blogging, I understand we can't please everyone, and that's not really something I'm after because I do realize this is impossible. But, feedback is always an excellent way to find out how one can improve yourself. I'm also hoping some of you might find this information helpful as well! I'm incredibly thankful for all your input. In return, I promised a little overview, so here it is!

There were 1002 (!!) entries and at that point I had to shut it down, because I had to process some information manually, haha. Most charts really speak for themselves but I'll try to add some of my thoughts here and there.

What's the most important thing when it comes to a blog?


When we're looking at this outcome, we can see that the amount of swatches and reviews are considered quite valuable. It's a lot about the products!

What makes a good review?


When it comes to reviews, pictures tell a lot! I guess pictures will always attract more attention than text, so this confirms what I already suspected. I usually post 1 or 2 pictures with a review, but after seeing this outcome I might add some more from now on!

What makes a good picture?

Color accuracy and good lighting are considered almost equally important. It's definitely something I always try to keep in mind, but it's good to find out about the importance of these things.

What would you like to see more?

Now I was most curious to see the answers to this question. I thought it was so awesome that the majority of you asked for more how-tos because I really really like doing these! If you have how-to requests pleeeease let me know and I'll see what I can do.

The second thing that scored really high was swatches of entire collections, this is something I eventually would LOVE to do, but for now, it can be very hard since I cannot buy them all and I don't blog full time, haha! Definitely something I'll keep in mind though.

What do you expect from the person behind the blog?

I was really curious about this outcome too. I mean, I do the best I can, while staying true to myself, so I was wondering what everyone's answers would be to this question.

Do you want the blogger to respond to your comments?

This is something I struggle so hard with, you have no idea. Ideally I would like to reply to every single comment I get, it really bothers me when I can't. And lately stuff has come up and I just wasn't as present in the comment section as I used to be. I was really relieved to see your opinions on this, however, I do want to try replying more, because I appreciate all your words so much.

What brand(s) do you wish to see more represented?

To my big surprise the responses were all over the place. Someone said "a blog should be about what you want to represent, not what we want to see" and while that's true, there are times when I just don't know what to do next, because there are so many awesome brands and products to choose from, it's overwhelming really!

A LOT of people requested easy to get/drugstore polishes. Since my visitors mostly come from the US, Brazil and Europe this is almost impossible to do. In contrast, a lot of people asked for unique, unknown brands as well. Another big group of people requested cheaper brands, while others requested more swatches from high end brands.
I got a lot of requests on doing more China Glaze, Zoya and Orly, and I did see that coming since I never really covered these before (without reason really!), but I'm really looking forward to post more about these in the future. Other than that, I guess I will just keep posting whatever pop ups in my head, but if you're in dire need of something you can always let me know :-).

Before I forget, there is one thing I can't or won't do and that's showing brands like Rimmel, Sally Hansen, Maybelline/Colorama, L'Oreal and Essie... A lot of you would love to see these brands covered, especially since they're so easily available, but since they're not cruelty free (or owned by not cruelty free companies), I just can't do it.

Please list your top five of favorite nail polish bloggers

Now, this question wasn't about who's the most popular, even though it might look that way, but I was really curious to see what blogs everyone likes to read, especially since every blog has its own style and set of cool features. I left myself out of the end result, but I want to thank everyone that wrote such sweet words about me! I couldn't believe it!

In total there was a grand total of 248 blogs being mentioned, how awesome is that. I found out about quite some new blogs too!
So anyway, here's the top 10 that I gathered. Maybe the results would've been completely different if this was asked on another blog, but I think it's a pretty cool list :-D. If you haven't heard of one of these blogs, make sure to check them out, because they're wicked cool!

votesblog
353Scrangie
287All Lacquered Up
130Vampy Varnish
077Polish Hoarder Disorder
073The Nailphile
059The Lacquer Files
056Little Music Boxes / Nihrida
046Dr. Frankenpolish
044The Daily Nail
036All You Desire

Conclusion

Conclusion is I'm veeeery thankful for all your input and I enjoyed reading all of your messages you left me in the survey. There were some really sweet, interesting, hilarious and random notes, VERY NICE :D. For me, it's so nice to have this overview and I hope there will be some interesting or helpful things in it for others as well, who knows!