Laquerlicious Polish Review!

Reviving my blog for swatches & reviews of five fabulous Laquerlicious handmade indie polishes!

Please click on images to enlarge :)

First up we have "Supreme Queen", part of the Laquerlicius shimmer collection.

This is 2 coats, over Essie "Where's My Chauffeur?" and Seche Vite topcoat.

This color is beautiful!  I got many compliments on it.

 Hard to describe - almost like a light grayish blue.  Kinda reminds me of a robin's egg!  

There are tons of beige, royal blue and teal shimmery glitters in a blue-gray base.

Here is "Emerald Glaze", part of the Laquerlicious glaze collection.

This is 2 coats, over OPI "Cuckoo For This Color" and Seche Vite topcoat.

Despite looking very opaque in the bottle, Emerald Glaze is actually quite sheer!

It's jam packed with gorgeous green, teal and purple tiny glitter in a green base.

The purple glitter offers an amazing pop of color against the green/teal.  

I absolutely loved the way this looked on my skin tone :)

This lovely color is "Divine Doll", part of the Laquerlicious shimmer collection.

2 coats, over Essie "Play Date" and Seche Vite topcoat.

I have become a purple addict, so this polish was right up my alley :)

A beautiful shimmery combination of purple, beige and a hint of teal.

This is the perfect polish for anyone who loves a cheerful purple!

This gorgeous glitterbomb is "Bottle of Bubbly", from the Laquerlicious New Year's 2014 collection.

This is one generous coat, over Spoiled "Visually Slimming" and Seche Vite topcoat.

An incredible mixture of silver and gold holo glitters in a clear base.

There are all sorts of shapes & sizes in this polish!

Round, hex, micro, stars and bars just to name a few.

Application of this polish was a dream, didn't really have to dab at all or fish for glitter!

Definitely have plans for this baby as New Years Eve mani.

Last but not least, "Countdown to Midnight", also from Laquerlicious New Year's 2014 collection.

1 generous coat, over China Glaze "Stone Cold" and Seche Vite topcoat.

This glitter bomb is made up of varied sizes of round white, black, pink, purple and teal glitters in a clear base.

This is a super fun, playful polish.  I really enjoy the contrast between all of the colors.

This is the type of polish that would go well with just about any color as a base, so the possibilities are endless!

Application was fairly easy, although I did have to dab and fish a bit, but that doesn't bother me at all.

Final verdict is that these polishes were fantastic.

I fully believe in supporting indie polish makers and really I loved the unique glitter color combinations that Laquerlicious has to offer! 

They dried super quickly, application was a dream and Michelle (IG @creativenailchick) was a pleasure to work with.

I will be using many of these polishes again in the future.

All of the polishes that were reviewed are currently available for purchase at www.Laquerlicious.com :)

Springtime Watermarble!

As you may know, I've always struggled with the water marble technique.

I wanted to practice, so here's a little something I did the other day!

Colors used:

Essie "Mint Candy Apple"

Essie "Off The Shoulder"

Essie "She's Picture Perfect"

The colors are very cute together & remind me of Springtime!

I think I am getting a little better, but no matter what I try I can not perfect it!

Fashion Inspired: "Neon & Nude"

 I typically hate nude colors on myself but..

I was inspired by a recent post by my BFF Cassi over at the fashion blog The Granny Treatment!

She was discussing the fashion trend of mixing nudes and neons, and it just so happens to be a fabulous combination!

image via

She also mentioned that if you don't want to dedicate your entire outfit to this trend, it could me really cute as a mani!

Well here is what I came up with.

Colors used:

Nude - "Sand Tropez" by Essie

Purple - "Dream On" by Sinful Colors

Yellow - "Yell-Oh!" by Color Club 

Blue - "Aquamarine" by Sinful Colors

Pink - "Fusion Neon" by Sinful Colors

Orange - "Orange Knockout (Neon)" by China Glaze

Tried to do it as a tape mani but it was not cooperating so I ended up hand painting the chevron -_-

I absolutely LOVE this color combo!

 It's totally perfect to get into the mood of springtime :)

Would you rock nude & neons?

Theme: Thanksgiving Water Marble!

I am really awful water marble nail art.

If you are unfamiliar with water marbling, you can read about it here.

Basically, you put drops of polish into water and it spreads on the surface and you swirl the colors together.

I have tried for hours at a time... but for some reason, it never works out very well for me!

I wanted to give it another shot using some Thanksgiving colors.

After 2 attempts tonight, here are the results:

Not too great, but I do like the color combinations.

Colors used: Essie "Sew Psyched", "Orange It's Obvious" & "Very Structured", Avon "Sunshine" and LA Colors "Hot Blooded"

I noticed that the Essie polishes did not really enjoy being put into water, and were very resistant to spreading on the surface.

I think next time I water marble, I will try to avoid Essie.

Fashion Friday: Oscar de la Renta

 Due to last week's Fashion Inspiration post being a huge success..

Me & my fashion blogger bff Cassi from The Granny Treatment have decided to do a weekly collaboration called 

"Fashion Fridays"!

Since she is the fashion savvy one, she will be choosing the designer and collection.

I will then choose 5 different items from the collection and recreate them as nail art :)

This week's inspiration is Oscar de la Renta's Fall 2012 Runway Collection

 Here are the swatches I used as my inspiration:

 

 Fall 2012, Look #48

 

Fall 2012, Look #3 

 Fall 2012, Look #13

 

Fall 2012, Look #17

 Fall 2012, Look #24

If there are any runway collections you'd like to see turned into nail art, 

leave a comment for me here or for Cassi over at The Granny Treatment!

Pattern: Argyle!

Argyle patterned kawaii style nails with 3D acrylic bow :)

I did these using Essie "Lilacism", black acrylic and striper brush & glitter nail art striper.

Tutorial Tuesday: Blood Drip Nails (Perfect for Halloween!)

This week's tutorial is for Blood Drip nails.

I wanted to do something simple yet spooky so you can try it out for Halloween.

These nails are popping up everywhere, and I can see why!  They are the perfect combination of scary & sexy.

I've seen them done dripping down from the cuticle or dripping from the tip of the nail.

I chose to do it dripping from the tip of the nails so it looks like I just clawed someone :)

How To Choose Colors For This Design:

I've seen this commonly done with clear coat as the base color and only using red polish, but I chose to use a neutral base color.  Either way, it looks great.

Suggested Materials:

ANY brand is fine, listed below are the ones used for this particular mani

- Base coat - Seche Clear

- Top coat - Seche Vite

- Base color - Essie "Sand Tropez"

- Any brand of red nail art striping brush - I used red acrylic paint & striping brush
- Nail dotting tool (optional)

- A clean, small paintbrush or cotton swabs, for cleaning the cuticles afterwards (optional)

- Nail polish remover (optional)

Before You Begin Painting Your Design:

These steps are optional, but definitely recommended!

- Put down some paper towels in your work area, in case of any spills.

- Be sure to remove any old nail polish.

- Gently file nails into desired shape and remove any ridges with a buffer.

- Push back cuticles with a cuticle pusher or orange wood stick and trim if desired.

- Apply a base coat to protect from potential staining from color polish; wait for it to dry completely.

 Step 1:

Apply 2 coats of base color and allow to dry.

 Step 2:
You have a few options here.
You can either use a nail dotting tool, the edge of a regular polish brush or a nail striping brush.
Using any of these methods, make a few large dots across the top half of your nail.
Varying sizes works best!

 Step 3:
Using the nail art striping brush, begin to round out your dots and pull them towards the end of the nail, making an elongated teardrop shape.
Try to keep these lines fairly thin if you can.

 Step 4:
If you are comfortable enough working with the nail art striping brush, you can make smaller teardrops in between the larger ones.
If you're not great at using the striping brush, you can skip this step :)

 Step 5:
Using the nail art striping brush, begin to connect the elongated lines of the teardrop shapes.
I did this by making a U shape that connected from line to line.

Step 6:
 Fill in the rest of the tip of the nail with red.

Step 7: (Forgot to take a picture!)

This final step is completely optional, but it will really help to achieve a neat & clean looking mani.

You can use either a small paintbrush or cotton swab, dip it in nail polish remover, and use it to remove any excess polish on your cuticles and skin.

Be careful not to use too much remover, otherwise you will risk ruining your design.

Finish off with your favorite top coat and you're done!

For all past Tutorials click here!

Theme: Super Kawaii!

I did these nails last night for a contest on Instagram (btw, follow me! @BadLuckBarbie)

The theme was Super Kawaii!  Kawaii actually means "cute" in Japanese ^_^

I did my favorite Sanrio characters!

I used nail polish and acrylic paint with nail art brushes.  They took about 4 hours.

Say hello to Keroppi, Monkichi, Badtz-Maru, Hello Kitty and Pochacco!!

I love them all!

Which one is your favorite?

Fashion Forward: Shoshanna

My best friend, Cassi, is really into fashion.

 We were recently talking about all of the awesome nail art that was seen during this year's New York Fashion Week.  She works for a department store clothing label, and she had the great idea to take some of the fabric prints from their Shoshanna Fall 2012 collection and paint them on my nails!

I used a combination of nail polish and acrylic paint, matte & glossy topcoats to do these designs.
Here's what I came up with:

 I cropped small swatches of the patterns I used, so you can see for comparison:

Sandra dress

 Heidi dress

 Double Crepe Trina dress

 Janelle dress

Sequin Tara dress

I personally am a big fan of fashion-inspired nails. 

Especially since I don't own any fashion forward clothing, at least my nails can be trendy!!

Tutorial Tuesday: Half-Moon Mani

This week's featured tutorial is the half-moon mani.

The half-moon manicure actually was very popular from the 1920's to the 1940's and has recently made a comeback.  Who doesn't love a modern twist on a vintage style!?

This was my first attempt, and even though these colors are so not something I'd typically choose, I'm happy with the outcome.  Very fall-like. 

The half-moon mani is done in a very similar fashion as last week's tape mani, except instead of scotch tape, we will be using the small circle paper-reinforcement stickers.  They can be found at any office supply store.

How To Choose Colors For This Design:

You have a lot of artistic freedom with a half-moon mani, since nothing really has to coordinate.  

You can do similar colors, you can do completely different colors, use the same color but matte and glossy, neons, neutrals, glitters.  In the 1930s & 40s it was very popular to leave the half moon of the nail natural, and only paint the tip. There's lots of options!

Suggested Materials:

ANY brand is fine, listed below are the ones used for this particular mani

- Base coat - Seche Clear

- Top coat - Seche Vite

- Top color - Essie "Sew Psyched"

- Half-moon Base color - Essie "Love and Acceptance"

- Circle paper-reinforcement stickers

- A clean, small paintbrush or cotton swabs, for cleaning the cuticles afterwards (optional)

- Nail polish remover (optional)

Before you begin painting your design:

These steps are optional, but definitely recommended!

• Put down some paper towels on your work area, in case of any spills. 

• Be sure to remove any old nail polish.

• Gently file nails into desired shape and remove any deep ridges with a buffer

• Push back cuticles with a cuticle pusher or orange wood stick and trim if desired.

• To make things easier to find (and because I'm super neurotic) I always set up my polishes in the order that they will be used.

• Apply a base coat to protect from potential staining from color polish; wait for it to dry completely.

Step 1:

Take a circle sticker and stick it to the palm of your hand.  Remove it, and re-stick it 4 or 5 times.  

This is to reduce the stickiness of the tape and makes it much easier to peel off of your nails later on.  

Step 2:

Apply 2 coats of the base color and allow to dry.

If you are using a light and dark color for this mani, try to use the lighter color as the base.  Most light colors tend to be less opaque and will not cover a dark color very well!

Don't worry too much about being super neat, you can remove excess polish from your cuticles later.

**It is VERY important to allow all polish to dry before applying the tape over it, otherwise the polish will get stuck to the tape and come off**

Step 3:

Gently  apply the circle stickers.  

Place the top half of the circle over the bottom of your nail and cuticle, and the bottom half of the circle should be over your finger. (You can click the photo to enlarge & see it better.)

I aimed to cover approximately 1/4th of my nail length. 

You can do more or less, depending on how big you want your half-moons to be!

The nail naturally curves, so the sticker might need to be adjusted a bit near the cuticle.

*Try to avoid any bubbles near the edges of the tape and cuticle, because the top color could get into the bubble and you'll have to start all over!*

Step 4:

Beginning at the outermost edge of the circle sticker, paint 1 or 2 coats of the top color over the base color.

It's better to paint a tiny bit over the sticker this way your edge will be clean.  You can click the photo to enlarge & see a little better.

Step 5:

Gently  peel the tape off once the top color is mostly dry.

Be very careful not to rip it off too quickly, or the polish could come right off.

Also, be careful if the polish is still very wet on the top of the sticker, it could get onto your base color.

Step 6:

This final step is completely optional, but it will really help to achieve a neat & clean looking mani.

You can use either a small paintbrush or cotton swab, dip it in nail polish remover, and use it to remove any excess polish on your cuticles and skin.

Be careful not to use too much remover, otherwise you will risk ruining your design.

If you opt for the brush, be sure to use brushstrokes in the same direction; don't "swish" the brush around because it tends to spread excess polish around rather than remove it.

Finish off with a top coat, and here's the final product!

I feel like a classy lady.

I will definitely be trying other color combinations with this, since it was so easy.

For all past Tutorials click here

Tutorial Tuesday: Tape Manicure (Requested)

I've officially decided that I will have "Tutorial Tuesday" as a regular feature on this blog, so you can learn something new to try with your nails each week :)

This week's Tutorial Tuesday will feature the tape manicure.

Last week my lovely friend & fellow blogger Michele of shortgirllongisland.com requested a tutorial for an easy way to do thick stripes.  In my opinion, the easiest way to achieve thick stripes is by doing a "tape manicure" which means using tape to block off the colors and then painting over it.  

For more intricate designs, some people use blue painter's tape and Exacto knife, but I'm keeping it simple so just regular scotch tape and scissors will do.

How To Choose Colors For This Design:

You have a lot of artistic freedom with a tape mani, since nothing really has to coordinate.  

You can do 2 similar colors, you can do 3 different colors, you can leave your natural nail showing and just paint certain sections, you can do the same color but matte and glossy.  There's lots of options!

Suggested Materials:

ANY brand is fine, listed below are the ones used for this particular mani

- Base coat - Seche Clear

- Top coat - Seche Vite

- Top color - Opi "Glitzerland"

- Base color - Essie "Bikini So Teeny"

- Scotch tape or blue painter's tape

- Small scissors or Exacto knife

- A clean, small paintbrush or cotton swabs, for cleaning the cuticles afterwards (optional)

- Nail polish remover (optional)

Before you begin painting your design:

These steps are optional, but definitely recommended!

• Put down some paper towels on your work area, in case of any spills. 

• Be sure to remove any old nail polish.

• Gently file nails into desired shape and remove any deep ridges with a buffer

• Push back cuticles with a cuticle pusher or orange wood stick and trim if desired.

• To make things easier to find (and because I'm super neurotic) I always set up my polishes in the order that they will be used.

• Apply a base coat to protect from potential staining from color polish; wait for it to dry completely.

Step 1:

Take a piece of tape and stick it to the palm of your hand.  Remove it, and re-stick it 3 or 4 times.  

This is to reduce the stickiness of the tape and makes it much easier to peel off of your nails later on.  

You can also now cut the tape to accommodate your nail length & width.

Step 2:

Cut out your shapes!

Simple shapes work best, so I went with thick stripes & a zig zag just for fun.

Try to cut these as evenly and straight as possible, so your stripes will be uniform in thickness.

You can cut a bunch of pieces just in case they rip, get messed up, etc.

Once they are cut, I like to stick them half way onto the edge of the table, with the end of the tape hanging off.  

This way they won't get lost or stick to each other and will be easier to find. 

Just don't stick it completely on the table or get it stuck to your clothing otherwise it'll be ruined.

Step 3:

Apply 2 coats of the base color and allow to dry.

If you are using a light and dark color for this mani, try to use the lighter color as the base.  Most light colors tend to be less opaque and will not cover a dark color very well!

Don't worry too much about being super neat, you can remove excess polish from your cuticles later.

**It is VERY important to allow all polish to dry before applying the tape over it, otherwise the polish will get stuck to the tape and come off**

Step 4:

Gently  apply your tape strips.  

Try to make sure the space between the tape is about equal to the width of the tape itself, this way your stripes will be nice and even.

The nail naturally curves, so the tape will curve with it.

*Try to avoid any bubbles near the edges of the tape, because the top color could get into the bubble and you'll have to start all over!*

Step 5:

Paint 1 or 2 coats of top color over the entire nail, making sure you have even coverage.

The best way to ensure even coverage is to paint in the same direction as the tape strips (vertical, diagonal, etc)

I chose just 1 top color, but you can use as many as you want.

Each section can be painted a different color if you'd like!

Step 6:

Gently  peel the tape off once the top color is mostly dry.

Be very careful not to rip it off too quickly, or the polish could come right off.

Also, be careful if the polish is still very wet on the top of the tape, it could get onto your base color.

As you can see, I did a different pattern on each nail; horizontal, vertical, diagonal, zig zag and random.

You can definitely re-use the tape strips, if they are still sticky enough and the polish has dried. 

More intricate designs, such as the zig-zag, might rip when it's being peeled off and can not be re-used.

Step 7:

This final step is completely optional, but it will really help to achieve a neat & clean looking mani.

You can use either a small paintbrush or cotton swab, dip it in nail polish remover, and use it to remove any excess polish on your cuticles and skin.

Be careful not to use too much remover, otherwise you will risk ruining your design.

If you opt for the brush, be sure to use brushstrokes in the same direction; don't "swish" the brush around because it tends to spread excess polish around rather than remove it.

After finishing off with a coat of Seche Vite topcoat, here's the final product!

If you'd like to request a nail design for Tutorial Tuesdays please leave a comment and let me know :)

For all past Tutorials click here