Choi's nails

I'm still trying to work this Nikon DSLR camera out but it randomly rotates my photos and made me realise the side pose doesn't look too bad. I've tried changing my hand poses and doing all that photo rotating myself but it just ends up with one word, awkward. The whole thing just looked awkward.




For this manicure you'll need:

• One coat of your preferred base coat (I used Essie's Protein base coat)
• Two coats of a lilac base colour, here I used Essie's Lilacism. Two coats would be ideal but Essie's Lilacism really needed about 3 to keep it from looking obviously patchy.
• With a Barry M's Sugar apple which is a pastel minty green, on one side of the nail. Give it about 10-15 minutes before moving on.
• Using random parts of the design from Moyou London's Mother nature 02 plate, stamp all the nails. 
• Apply a thin layer of Color Club's Million dollar listing shimmery top coat.
• Seal with your preferred top coat (I used INM's Out the door top coat)

Hope everyone enjoyed reading this post. I hope to bring you guys more posts and designs once I get back into painting regularly.

What's your favourite Spring type of manicure? Any suggestions on what manicure you'd like to see next?

The base is two coats of Barry M's matt white with Essie's Lilacism as the pastel lilac creme and China Glaze's Spontaneous being the darker purple. The leaves are painted with Essie's Going incognito.

I've been pretty fond of the Color club Million dollar listing gold shimmery top coat lately. It even sits on my desk top for close reach during a manicure session. It's showing up more subtle under the camera lens as I see less shimmer here than in person. I think zooming in a little gives you a better look at its pretty shimmers.



I keep wanting to recreate this in different shades, which colour should I do it in next? Blue? Green? ^^

London calling being a little neon wasn't really what I was expecting from it so in the end I wasn't planning to keep it on for very long. If that's the case now's the right time to practice some nail art and here is the hairspray water marble technique. Well, for this one it's more like the perfume water marble technique. I'm not a hairspray user so there wasn't any around the house. I quite like the whole dark and light colour contrast so I purposely picked Models own's Turquoise gloss to be splattered on top.



I'm not very into the ending look so this definitely wasn't missed. Hopefully I'll make a better choice of colours next time.

GNP 19 Huckleberry

GNP 19 Huckleberry

GNP 19 Huckleberry

GNP 19 Huckleberry

GNP 21 Sugar apple, a pastel minty green shade. No surprise when my camera decided to capture the colour looking less green and a little blue. The formula of Sugar apple is runny compared to that of huckleberry so a streaky first coat was expected. The second was better but look out for those streaks. No top coat.

GNP21 Sugar Apple

GNP21 Sugar Apple

GNP21 Sugar Apple

GNP21 Sugar Apple

GNP 20 Rose hip, pastel pink. The formula of this one was very similar to the other two. A thicker second coat would be good for this one but three thin ones seem better to me. This is one of the very few pastel pinks I have or maybe the only one that makes my skin look slightly darker but it does dry fast.

GNP20 Rose hip

GNP20 Rose hip

GNP20 Rose hip

GNP20 Rose hip

Overall these are good basic pastels to have and good for those who skip the top coat step as it finishes off with a nice gloss and drying time.

Have you picked up these pastels already? Which one is your favourite?

Here’s Swiss cottage with pastel chevron tips!

Using China Glaze’s Refresh mint, a must have shade for spring and Color club’s Endless I free handed the design by painting the corners of each nail letting CC’s Endless overlap CG’s refresh mint. It’s surprising how this just turned things around; I love it much more than before.


I'm so over the rainy and cold weather already, can't wait for the cool spring breeze to be blowing my way. How's everyone coping? Ready for spring yet? Even if you're not thanks for reading, hope this post was enjoyable for everyone :)

Mix and match nails. Light box photo.

What I used on my nails:

• Two coats of China Glaze's Something sweet as base on the index finger
  The criss cross lines are done using Barry M's white nail art pen
• Two coats of China Glaze's Refresh mint on the middle
  One coats of China Glaze's Snowglobe layered on top.
• Three coats of Essie's We can do it pink on the ring finger.
  Color club's Flamingo for the roses, CG's Refresh mint for the leaves and BM pen for the dots.
• Two coats of CG's Something sweet for the pinkie.Essie's Blanc for the stripes painted with a freehand using a striping nail art brush and BM pen to patch things up.

This was actually my first attempt at freehand stripes on my own nails and it was actually very easy to do. Goes to show that you don't know what you can do until you try to do it.

Mix and match nails. Outdoor photo

Before going ahead with the design I did a few samples first to see how things would look. They seemed to look better there than on my nails even though it's literally a copy of the samples. 



This is how things looked before everything else was added and it doesn't look bad on its own. Wouldn't mind wearing it out like that too.

Before adding the design. Light box photo.

Outdoor photo.

All four polishes used was from the Models own scented fruit pastel collection of which I've done a seperate post of with swatches of the whole collection. You can check it out HERE. Please bear in mind that that post was done before I made myself a light box so the photo quality isn't going to be impressive.

I admit that the picture quality of these ain't so great. My photo box lighting went and washed out the pastel colours making them look even lighter but they're acceptable, right?


The base is two coats of MO's Grape juice and after waiting for it to dry properly, I painted a stripe of the following polishes in turn:

• Strawberry tart
• Banana split
• Apple pie

They all smelt yummy mixed together though that I could've almost eaten them!


Here's a photo of the fish braid design on just the accent nail before I thought it might have looked even better as a full manicure but I actually prefer this before look.

So that's all from me then. What do you guys think? Which one do you prefer? The fish braid accent or as a full manicure? :)

L-R: Banana split, Strawberry tart, Blueberry muffin, Grape juice, Apple pie

Here's a shot of all the stickers on the bottle caps except blueberry muffin which didn't come with one, it most probably got picked off before I got my hands on them. If you give the stickers a little scratch it gives off a fruity scent. Must say I was impressed that it actually worked and smelled quite nice. I didn't want to play with it too much though just in case all the scent disappeared before I've tried the polish.


Banana split. This is a lovely light pastel yellow and by far the best yellow I own. This one has a runny formula and is pretty streaky especially on the first coat. On my index and middle finger I applied two layer but three on my ring and pinkie. Having a third coat is much better and I'd say stop there because the nails were starting to look kind of thick.


Strawberry tart. Very straightforward pink pastel creme. Like banana split this one was also slightly runny and streaky. Here I'm wearing two coats and even so you could see that it's still a little streaky. Three coats would've been better but don't remember why I just decided to stop there.


Blueberry muffin. Pastel sky blue. The formula, streakiness and application is just like that of the two above. I ended up with two coats here.


Grape juice. Pastel purple creme with a little hint of pink to it. Runny and sheer but everything looked fine with two coats.


Apple juice. Minty pastel green. Same formula as above and I'm wearing two coats in the photos.

This is a lovely collection for Spring. All swatches were taken without top coat. Since they're scented having a top coat might affect how much scent you'll get out of each wear and they do smell pretty nice. Dry time is average and only after it has fully dried will you be able to smell the scent properly. I wore apple juice for a little while longer and realised the smell starts to fade after a day which is good enough, after all I do eat a lot of finger food which means washing my hands frequently.

This is the first time trying Models own polishes, their brushes are thin and light. I guess that's to do with the  plastic bottle cap which reduces the weight. All the ones in this collection had a runny formula and require at least two to three coats. Thankfully the polish is self leveling so you don't have to worry about it looking smooth or not.

As for the streak on the left side of my ring finger, that has nothing to do with the polish itself. I just have a ridge there which tends to show as a streak. Don't mind the marks on the pinkie in some swatches too. It's what happens a lot of the time when start picturing my nails when they're not fully dry.

I realised some of the swatches in term of the paint job and lighting definitely isn't great but it'll have to make do. All photos were taken indoors but I'm considering making a light box once I gather the right materials.I could use the awesome light my sister purchased but I'm missing a cardboard box. We actually don't have a spare one lying around the house and I need to figure out a way to keep the light hovering above since it doesn't have a stand.

Do you own any Model's own polishes? What's your favourite? Will you be purchasing any from this collection?