Nailz Craze: The Beauty Buffs

Hellooo ladies! Today's post is very special and kind of exciting for me! This is the first post in a series of a blogging challenge group posts that I will be making with a few fellow bloggers - The Beauty Buffs.
This group was recently founded by the very lovely Nory (you might know her from Fierce Makeup And Nails blog) who had this idea of gathering a few talented and creative bloggers in the nail art, beauty and fashion community from around the globe, and together create themed posts twice a month. I was super excited when Nory offered me to join this group and I think it's a great opportunity for me to challenge myself and bring a bit more interesting content to you, my readers, and also a great way for you (and me) to get to know some new and awesome bloggers!

The first theme challenge was Pastels! Oh what a great theme, so trendy and fun!
For this post I decided to create simple a nail art for spring with pastel colors, and this is what I came up with. Keep reading to find more about this fun spring manicure.

For this nail art I chose three pastel shades from the new China Glaze City Flourish collection which I purchased recently (along with a few more colors from this collection, which I will be showing you soon on the blog). I simply adore pastels and I can't get enough of them, especially in spring time!

I started this nail art with a white base, then sponged the pastels a few times on the nails until I got a satisfying coverage.

The colors I picked for this nail art are Spring in My Step (a warm pastel pink), Lotus Begin (lavender) and At Vase Value (fresh pastel mint) from China Glaze City Flourish collection.

To make things a bit more interesting, I decided to add a some texture and sparkle to this pastel manicure - I applied two coats of Dance Legend Top Sahara, a special effect top coat that creates a textured finish over any color. I think it added a really nice touch to this manicure, and the sparkle was so nice over these soft colors.

I got the Dance Legend Top Sahara top coat from Hypnotic Polish store (read more about Hypnotic Polish here) just last week and I was very anxious to try it. When I first heard of this textured top coat I was pretty amazed. You have to admit, this is kinda genius - a top coat that will create a textured effect over any color pick. How come no one came up with it before? :)

I though that this could also be a great way to achieve a textured gradient look without working too hard on blending textured colors (which I did before here and here, and trust me - that wasn't as easy as you might think).

Dance Legend Top Sahara contains tiny shreds of iridescent and transparent particles and dries with a clear textured finish. You can apply it over light or dark colors, cremes or metallic finish, basically over anything you can think of, and it will create a textured effect.

The textured effect that the Top Sahara creates is relatively subtle but sill noticeable, and it also adds a some sparkle to the texture thanks to the iridescent particles.

I think that the textured effect is stronger when you apply it over a completely dry nail polish or over a thin layer (or two) of nail polish. When I applied it over my manicure it was a bit more smooth, but you can notice the effect is stronger when I applied it over the pastels on their own (top picture).

This effect is really beautiful and totally wearable, unlike many other textured polish brands that are just way too gritty and harsh to the touch.

For me the Top Sahara was a great innovation, and I just love that I can now turn any polish that I own into a textured polish. I'm pretty sure I will be spending lots of time experimenting with this top coat!

The Dance Legend Top Sahara is available for purchase at Hypnotic Polish online store.

So this was my fun pastel nail art for The Beauty Buffs group post. I really hope you enjoyed this post, I would love to hear what you think!
Also be sure to check the amazing ladies who are participating in this group challange and see what they came up with for the Pastels team challange.
Thanks for reading and have a fabulous day!