Hi Divas

Before this year comes to a screeching halt, I want to share some of my nail art designs with you. These were done from late 2018 to 2019. I have done many designs in this time frame, but these are the ones I love the most. To see all my nail designs you can follow me on Instagram here. As I mentioned before, nail art is a wonderful way of expressing my creativity and challenging myself. There are still so many designs I want to do and nail art techniques I want to achieve. It takes a lot of time, patience and dedication to create pieces of art for your fingertips. I am slowly but surely getting there. As you can see below, I love colour and am not afraid to wear it. If you are afraid of colour and want to be bold, nail polish is a great way of achieving this. I find that nail art is so much more than just a pretty manicure. It truly represents your personality and mood for that period in time. I hope you find inspiration from my designs and let me know what look you love the most in the comment section below. ;)


Christmas Sparkle Nails
I wanted to step away from the traditional Christmas nail designs consisting of red and green. My goal was to have soft festive nails with a touch of angelic sparkles. I decided to use pastel purple and pure crisp white to achieve this. For the purple polish I used Sorbet in Berry Special and Wet n Wild in French White Creme. To top it off I added jolly stickers and purple rhinestones for extra sparkles. I loved this design as it was playful, angelic but still captured the Christmas spirit.

Summer Tie-Dye Nails
When I was painting this nail design, I honestly didn't expect the great response for it on my Instagram. Everyone was in love with this manicure. It is funny how you are busy creating something and it looks so mundane and foolish at first. Then, once everything comes together, you can finally see the beauty taking shape. This is exactly how I felt when creating this pattern. The Tye Dye was really easy to do too. I used three bright nail colours in #11 and #70 by Etude House and Walking on Sunshine by Tip Top (discontinued), and Wet n Wild French White Creme for the middle finger. I randomly brushed colours on my nails in tie-dye shaped patterns. The important part is to not make it look stylized or well placed. It needs to look a little messy and random the way tie-dye naturally looks. The results came out better than I expected. I added green and gold rhinestones along with stickers for a diva signature look.

Soda Orange Pop Nails
My inspiration for this design was actually the fact that I hadn't worn bright orange nails in a long time, and I noticed my nail polish was getting old. I honestly hate wasting and will use something till the last drop. I decided to show my neglected nail polishes some love and the shade Salsa Pop by Tip Top was one of them. This brand is discontinued but you can use any bright orange nail varnish for the look. I used my trusty Wet n Wild French White Creme for the ring finger and added gold stickers along with silver shapes for the ring finger.

Oriental Pink Birthday Nails
For my birthday I wanted to use my favourite colour pink of cause and a whole lot of shimmer. My inspiration was oriental embroidery along with ancient royal jewellry. The mood was pure regal opulence inspired by the East. I love the contrast of two different shades on one nail as well. The illusion is amazing and looks very elegant. The gorgeous bright pink varnish is Etude House in #11. The white sparkles are iridescent nail glitters which I glued on using a clear nail base. I added diamond rhinestones and stickers for an extra glow.

Purple Marble with Stripes Nails
I have been dabbling in marble techniques for a while now. These are really tricky to do and time consuming. They can sometimes come out really great or be an epic fail. Thankfully I had one good attempt with this design. For the purple base I coated my nails with Essence Purple With Purpose from the Merry Berry collection. To create the marble effect, I used a foil nail polish by Nails Inc in Kings Road. For the index and middle finger, I placed the same purple polish on half my nails and used purple nail strips to create the stripe designs. I topped off the look with rhinestones and cute gold bow stickers.

Fun Pastel Easter Nails
As the Christmas manicure, my desire was to create festive nails but without the traditional Easter eggs and bunny designs. I decided to stick with pastel colours as what is Easter without pastels, right? For my thumb and ring fingers I coated them with Etude House #8 pink lacquer and added gold nail strips to resemble an Easter egg wrapper. My index finger is Wet n Wild French White Creme topped with a yellow feather nail decal to represent the cute Easter chicks. My middle finger is Sorbet Jaded and my pinky finger is Etude House Red Rocks from the Merry Berry collection. I wanted these two nails to be bright and colourful with stars and glitters to resemble Easter chocolate packaging as well.


 *****
For all my nail designs I use the Sally Hansen base coat in Complete Care 7-In-1 and the top coat is Sally Hansen Mega Shine. I have used these two products for years and can highly recommend them to protect your nails and make your manicures last. One thing, I would like to mention is that I do not run after trends and buy every new shade of nail polish on the market. I have lots of nail lacquers from collections past. I sometimes use polishes that are discontinued or may not be readily available. You can use any nail colours of your choice. You don't have to constantly go out and purchase the latest things. Use what you have in your collection and you will be amazed at what you can create. I use Pinterest as a source of inspiration for all my nail art creations. There are so many tutorials and techniques shown there too. You can explore and spur on your creative juices to do your own nail designs with your unique style and touch.


Thank you so much for reading. Hope you found this post helpful
Divalicious Kisses
Xxxx

Easter 2016 Diva Bunny

Hi Divas, HAPPY EASTER!!!

I feel like we just celebrated Christmas and now it's Easter! Guys, I cannot keep up with the world. Did an angel press the fast forward button on the universe? Anyway I am not complaining because this gives me an excuse to eat chocolate like a crazy person and I don't have to feel an ounce of guilt. Whoop! ;-D As usual I decided to do a fun Easter manicure. To be honest I always do fun Easter manicures because I haven't found any sophisticated Easter designs yet. To me the feeling of Easter is all about pastel blues, polka dot pinks and little yellow ducks with cute bunnies hopping everywhere. So I think every year at this time I will bring out the 4 year old in me. Lol! 

This is actually my second attempt at this manicure. The first time I did it my bunnies looked like they were possessed by demons and I was like, this is not how my Easter look is going to go down. I think I drew the eyes too big and they ended up looking like monsters. As Jesus is the reason for the weekend,  I don't think He would have been happy with me walking into church with demon bunnies on my nails. I seriously need emoji's for that sentence, haha. Any way I think my bunnies turned out pretty cute the second time round ;-)

For my manicure I painted two bunnies on my thumb and ring finger. The middle finger has a broken egg duck face design and the index and middle fingers have polka dots with blue rhinestones. I used dotting tools and toothpicks to draw on my bunnies, duck face and polka dots. For the nail polishes I used Etude House #70 for my pastel blue base, #8 for my baby pink base and inside of my bunny ears and noses. For the polka dots on my pink base I used Etude House #4 which is a very light creamy pink. Tip Top Black Forest was used for the eyes on both the bunny and duck faces along with Tip Top Cream Puff used as a white base on the middle finger and the bunny faces. I used Tip Top's Salsa Pop to draw the duck nose. For my base coat I used my trusty Sally Hansen Complete Care 4 in 1 Treatment and my favourite top coat of life by Sally Hansen called Mega Shine Top Coat.
 

Hope you enjoyed this post and feel inspired to do some fun Easter manicures too. I am pretty happy in the way my nails turned out. I will be eating my mom's homemade pickle fish and chowing yummy hot cross buns with tea this weekend. These are all South African Easter treats for my international readers out there ;-) Will you be joining an Easter egg hunt or like me already have your chocolate stash ready to be devoured? Let me know below!

Have a wonderful Easter weekend.

Lots of love. 

Xxxx

Easter Diva Bunny

Hi Divas!

I hope you are all having an amazing week. As you know Easter is coming up this weekend and I thought I would do a little post to celebrate this holiday. Easter means much more to me than the Easter Bunny and all the delicious chocolate treats. Besides eating tons of yummy Easter eggs and hot cross buns, I will also be going to church to honour my Lord and Saviour. My mom made two big bowls of Pickle Fish, which is a traditional dish to eat in Cape Town during the Easter period. I will be devouring that in the afternoons too. As most traditional holidays at my house are spent eating and spending time with family ;-) Sounds good to me! For this post I have dressed up as the Easter Diva Bunny to spread some love, happiness and ideas to get us all excited for this weekend. I have a manicure and some yummy treats to share with you. Hope you enjoy!


Oh look! It's the Easter Diva Bunny ready to drop off cupcakes at your door! Big Kisses to my mom for helping me with the cupcakes and taking this pictures! ;-)




Easter Manicure

For this manicure I used 5 nail polishes, 4 of which are from my favourite nail varnish brand called Tip Top. Sadly this brand has been discontinued in stores though. For my Bunnies, I used Tip Top Cha Cha Cha as my blue base coat. I then drew on the bunny heads with a dotting tool using the white nail polish Cream Puff by Tip Top. For the ears and nose I painted it pink with Get the Party Started by Tip Top. To draw on the whiskers and eyes I used a nail art tattoo pen by Essence. For my index finger I painted the lavender colour On a Trip by Wet n' Wild and drew on colourful waves and white dots to resemble Easter egg designs. I did the same for my middle finger except I used a pink base coat this time which is Get the Party Started. For my pinkie finger I painted it yellow with the shade Walking on Sunshine by Tip Top and drew a cross using my nail art tattoo pen. I then added a gold rhinestone in the middle. I sealed my designs with the clear nail varnish base coat by Sally Hansen called Complete Care Extra Moisturizing 4-In-One Nail Treatment. Once that was dried I used my favourite top coat of life also by Sally Hansen called Mega Shine.

Easter Cupcake Basket

These cupcakes are perfect for Sunday tea time. They look so pretty and festive. Bake your favourite vanilla cupcakes. You could use a ready made cupcake box mix. Once the cupcakes are done baking and have cooled mix some colourful icing sugar together to swirl on the cupcakes. You can choose as many colours as you want or keep it plain with vanilla icing. To decorate the cupcakes Easter style, place some delicious speckled eggs on top. As you can see my vanilla cupcake in the photo above, you could even sprinkle some pieces of flake chocolate on the cupcake first and then add the speckled eggs to resemble a birds nest  Once the speckled eggs are secured take some colourful sweet strips/ belts (you can use thin strips of licorice too), twist and fold them so that they start to resemble basket handles. When they are done being twisted, secure them firmly to the inside of the cupcake so that the cupcake starts to look like a little basket. You can use some of your leftover icing sugar and secure the sweet twist strips firmly to the cupcake. When they are done they will look so amazing and taste delicious too ;-)



I want to wish you all a very Happy Easter!!!
Lots of love!
Xxxx

(BH Cosmetics That's Heart Palette Winner Announced)

Hello Divas!

Hope you all are having an amazing week. This will be quite a short post on the blog. I wanted to share some of my manicures and nail art designs with you. These have been done over the course of about two months. I am becoming more confident in doing nail art and much more creative with my nails. I am no where near being an expert or nail art guru. There are many techniques I want to perfect and designs I still want to do. As they say practice makes perfect so I am documenting my little journey with you. I said before nail art requires tons of patience. If you don't have the virtue of patience you will usually learn it when doing your nails. I am still struggling with nail stamping. My designs are always filled with smudges. Sigh, the struggle is real people! Any way, I will let you know in up coming posts if I have mastered the technique or not. I will keep on with my smudgy stamping attempts.

 Let me know what your favourite designs are below. Until next time, have a fabulous week Divas!
 

 Nail Polishes used starting from top left to right: Tip Top in Speck-Tacular and Love that Shine; Catrice in Get the Blues; Tip Top Get the Party Started and Wet n' Wild On a Trip with Sephora Glitter polish.

 

Middle left: Tip Top in Peach Crisp; LA Girl Color Pop in Tantrum and Nostalgic; Tip Top in Black Forest and As the Beat Goes On with Sephora gold glitter polish.

 

Bottom left: Tip Top in Walking on Sunshine and Sinful Colors in Fig topped with Sally Hansen in Strobe Light glitter polish; Rimmel Salon Pro in Britpop; Tip Top in Cha Cha Cha and Innisfree in No.3.

And the Winner of the BH Cosmetics That's Heart Palette is.... 
KHOLOFELO MALATJI !!!!
Big congrats, darling! *Look out for another exciting giveaway soon ;-)*

Much love!

Divalicious Kisses

Xxxx

Hello Beauties!

 

I thought I would do a manicure post this week. I absolutely love wearing nail polish and I actually feel quite naked if my nails are bare. I love painting my nails as it relaxes me and puts me in a good mood. I tend to do one manicure a week and alternate different nail colours and designs. I hardly ever blog about my weekly manicures so I thought I would do one big post every month about my diva creations. Now I am in no way a nail art expert or manicure guru. Most of the time I just experiment and freestyle in the hopes that my manicures will turn out good. I still have a lot to learn and need to improve my techniques drastically. I am getting there slowly. One thing I do need to invest in is a big nail art brush kit. I have a few brushes but not enough to create more dramatic looks. If you have any suggestions on where i can purchase more nail art brushes and accessories let me know below!

My top nail polish brands that I swear by are Tip Top and Sally Hansen. I tend to gravitate to these brands the most as they have excellent colour choices and top quality nail varnishes. Their polishes do not chip easily and are very versatile to work with when doing nail art. Sally Hansen has the best top and base coats. They keep my nails strong and my manicures last for ages. I really love them and haven't used any other top and base coats since I discovered hoe awesome Sally Hansen's ones are. I have also been using more nails Inc, Mavala and Revlon polishes. Some have been awesome and some quite disappointing. I will elaborate more about that below. I love to shop at R5 stores too as I get all my nail art stickers from there. Nail art stickers are always fun to use and brightens up any manicure.

My recent manicures from left to right:

First attempt using nail art brushes: 

While I was overseas I bought my first mini set of nail art brushes at H&M. They came in hot pink so I just had to purchase them. It came with a nail file, and three nail art brush tools. Below is my first attempt with the nail art brushes. I think it came out good. As I said I really need to practice and steady my shaky left hand. :-)

Have a fabulous week.
Xxxx