My Favourite Products

Hi dear reader!

I wanted to make a blogpost about my new amazing hand butter but after taking pictures of it I decided I wanted to share my favourite products with you. One warning though: this post is long and pic heavy! ;)

Acetone Free Polish Remover

Okay, so there are a bunch of nail polish removers available out there but the best for me are the ones that are acetone free. Using remover that contains acetone gives me superdry cuticles and that makes me bite them. So that's a no go. On the picture you see P2's Soft Nailpolish Remover that contains Thai green coconut oil (yeaaaa...). It smells really good and, what's funny, it has a push button so now I can't spill my remover on my laptop that easily haha.

Cuticle Remover

Yay! This is the best cuticle remover I've ever used. It does what it promises! I apply this once a week, starting at my right pinky and work to my left pinky. After that I use my cuticle pusher to get rid of the excess skin. Works like a charm!

Files

I haven't used the P2 file yet but a file like this is great for removing ridges on your nails. Do keep in mind you only use a buffer file once a month and don't buff the nail surface too strongly because it reduces the thickness of the nail. The other file is my travelsize Herome Glass File. I always file my nails with a glass file to prevent my nails for tearing easy on me. Some glass files are cheap but after using these for a few weeks the surface of the file becomes smooth and they don't work proper anymore. Mine was pretty expensive for a small file but it lasts looooong. Btw I'm not telling you cheaper glass files don't work, only my experience with the cheaper ones isn't that good. :)

Cuticle Treatments

In the back you see my cuticle and nail oils. One is a drugstore brand and the other one is from Herome. They both work fine but the Herome has such a sweet smell, it smells like oranges! I use cuticle oil once a day. In the front is my new cuticle cream from P2 with a delicious apricot smell and to be honest I love this already. It's really soft and hydrates my cuticles really good.

Base Coats

Orly Bonder definitly kicked the OPI ridgefiller and base coat off their thrones. With Bonder my polish chips a lot less quicker and my nailpolish chipped really quick. I've heard that Bonder can give you staining (orange/yellow nails) but this never happened here so I'll keep using this baby.

Top Coats

Currently I have three top coats I use the most. I want my top coats to dry quick and these three are the ones that do: OPI RapiDry, 'David' and Nubar Diamont. I've used Seche Vite but that one gave me shrinkage and I could peel the polish right off so I threw it in a corner. Nubar Diamont is the one I mostly use for chunky glitter polishes, OPI for cremes and David for the rest. They all work fine but OPI dries the fast. I don't know why I have this special use for my top coats, I'm a little crazy I think.

Hand lotion

This is my favourite hand lotion. I always have three of them open: one in my bedroom, one downstairs and one in my purse. After washing my hands I use my hand lotion and my hands feel soft again. This one is the best I've tried and I'm sticking to this one for now. It does contain Macademia nut oil - if you're allergic to nuts this probably is a no go.

My Awesome New Hand Butter

Here it is. The product that started this post. This is P2's Ultra Intense Hand Butter with shea butter, white tea essence and sunflower oil. It smells really good. The cream is less thick than Lemony Flutter (also a great thing). I use this when I'm going to bed, I apply it quite thick on my hands and when I wake up the next morning I have superduper healthy looking cuticles and amazingly soft hands. This truly is my NEW LOVE. I love it more than Lemony Flutter. I love it more than sex. Okay no, that was a joke but this hand butter is really really good and I recommend everyone that has acces to the P2 brand to buy it and try it!

There, you have it. My favourites! What are your favourites?

Michelle

Striping Tape Part 2

Hi dear reader!

How was the start of your weekend? Mine started with a nail polish hunt in Germany, Oberhausen to be exact. I've spent my day in CentrO with Michèle and Daph and scored some nice goodies!

I've also tried something else with the striping tape. I've got a few tips and after spending a little time with it, this is the result:

The base colour is OPI's Ogre-the-Top-Blue and the striping tape is from Dollar Nail Art. I've also placed one baby pearl in the centre of each nail because I like baby pearls haha. My second try worked out a lot better but it's still not perfect. I'm a terrible picky person and I'd hate it when the striping tape is cut off too short, so now it's a little too long for my nails. I'm still trying to succeed having the perfect length of tape on my nails!

About Ogre-the-Top-Blue: perfect bright medium blue. Application was fine - at least better than Shrek and Fiona! Those were very streaky and I needed four (!) coats to even it all out. I'm wearing three coats in the picture. I'm also having a top coat issue, my OPI RapiDry gets all bubbly. :(

That's it for today. Have a great weekend!

Michelle

Who the Shrek Are You?

Hi dear reader!

Today I'm going to post a picture of a polish that absolutely stole my heart. It's OPI (omfg!!!) and I received it a few days ago. I'm not going to talk about it because everyone does that now so here's a picture:

Whooohhh, pretty! I wanted to do some nail art on it but I couldn't pick a colour to go with it so that's something for later. And that's it for today - nothing to tell, just wanted to share. :)

Have a nice day!

Michelle

Swoopdawoop!

Hi dear reader!

Happy fifth of May! In the Netherlands we celebrate the end of the second world war and there are festivities and concerts in the whole country.

Today I'm rocking a swoop mani. I did one before using three colours but I wanted to do it slightly different and used more. All polishes I used are from Models Own. The base colour is Beth's Blue, a gorgeous pale blue, I used three coats. After that I used Slate Green, a dustier green, creating a half circle. The colour in the green circle and the half circle is Feeling Blue, a brighter blue. After that I used Emerald City for the bling!

The dots are created with my friend the dottingtool and Lilac Dream. I also used Tickled Pink for my dots and again for some bling: Magenta Divine.

This is what I got:

Last time I wrote about MO's Mixed Up, I didn't like the application of it. I can tell you that it's really different with the creme polishes, they apply really smooth!

Thanks for visiting!

Michelle

Striping Tape?

Hi dear reader!

Today I want to talk to you about striping tape. The tape I own comes from Dollar Nail Art - Natasja didn't used it so I took it because I wanted to try so bad. Everytime I see art with striping tape my heartbeat races, it can look soooooo good!

I've read about this on numerous sites and they all told me it was easy peasy. So I thought nothing could go wrong with clumsy me! Guess again... It's not because I'm clumsy or impatient, it's the tape that ruins it all! I seriously needed three coats of top coat to make it stick and after that it still looked kind of weird. Here's the result:

I used China Glaze - Liquid Leather as my basic black and the gems come from the Essence Nail Jewels set. It looks okay. The striping tape looks pretty good after the trouble I had from it but the gems are a little too much for me.

Do you have any experience with striping tape? Any tips or suggestions?

Have a nice evening!

Michelle