Little Strokes of Metal

Hi guys, for this post I have these silver strokes to share with you. I just had to do some art deco linework again. I like how elegant it looks, plus painting those thin lines with a striper brush somehow has a very therapeutic effect on me.

The striper polish I used is Janet #201. It's not very opaque, which causes each line to look different in terms of coverage. But I actually like that, I think it makes the look more dynamic. The smokey purple basecolor is How I Matt Your Mother from Catrice. It dries with a semi-matt, so-called "brushed metal effect", which isn't really visible in the picture, but I just loved the color and the formula is great. That was it for today, thanks for reading! :)

Mint Winter

Hello, dear readers! Here are pictures of my first winter mani this year, on my shorter nails. Stress made me bite every single of them. :-( That didn't happen in years! I still like my nails a tad longer, but that doesn't stop me from painting them. :-) The lovely basecolor is Catrice's I Sea You and on top I drew the bare Christmas tree from my last tutorial, plus cute snowflakes that you can practice yourself with this tutorial from last year. Have a great day!

Smudges

Remember my animal print post? I'd drawn little animals with a Steadtler permanent marker on a matte polish. Because I wanted to keep the matte finish, I didn't use topcoat over it. Still I wondered what would happen if I did. Well, turns out topcoat doesn't exactly work well with that marker, or does it?

These pictures you're looking at are from my first attempt on the delicate print challenge. I used the same marker on top of Catrice New York and later added topcoat, causing it to smudge like crazy! If you look good, you can still see the letters. But, I actually really liked the smudged effect. It made the letters look a bit graffiti-like. Or like a quick and bad paint job, in a good way, heehee. That's what I love about experimenting: that it can lead you to things you'd never come up with otherwise. What do you think of this smudged mani?

Solid Gold Stripes

Hi guys! Today I'm showing you the third and last look I made with Orly Solid Gold. The polish dries fast and combines great with many other colors. For these stripes I applied two coats Solid Gold, then I placed two small tape strips on each nail, close to the tips. Finally I applied Catrice New York on top, removed the strips and added a layer of topcoat, voilà! So which one's your favorite? The fifty-fifty mani, the fierce French or today's stripes? ^^ Thanks for reading!

Pyramid tips with Essie Fair Game

Hi everyone! These pyramid chevron tips were made with Catrice Raspberry Fields Forever and Essie Fair Game. Both polishes are amazing to work with. Raspberry Fields Forever is a bright folly red, which has a pink hue that's much better visible in real life. It has the great formula and easy application that I'm used to from most of Catrice's creme polishes, I only used two coats and a layer of Seche Vite, shiny! Because Fair Game has that hint of blue that makes the polish so special, I thought it would look nice next to the pinkish Catrice. I just love the combination of pinks and blues, no matter how subtle ;-) I've never worn Fair Game as a full mani and question if I ever will, because as much as I like it, I just think it works better as an accent next to other colors. At least, on my skintone that is, I bet it would look gorgeous on people with a nice tan!

Sporty French

Hi everyone! A short post today, since I'm still not feeling very well. A little while ago I showed you a beautiful green from Catrice, Run, Forest, Run! (LOVE the name and movie by the way). Today you can see how I upgraded the mani to a sporty French with a simple stripe design. The look instantly reminded me of sportswear, hence the name. The black polish I used for the stripes is Color Club Where's The Soiree?.

Catrice - Run Forest Run!

The other day I ran into this green pretty, I instantly loved it and needed it! Which was really surprising, because I remembered not liking it the first time I saw Run, Forest, Run!, so what's up with that? After reading The Polished Perfectionst's post about this polish, I knew what was going on; Catrice has two versions of this polish! The older version is a tradtional forest green, while the new one is a much lighter, muted green with a tad of blue which makes it lean towards emerald. Besides the color I also fell in love with the perfect formula and application. Just two smooth coats and you're good to go, a winner.

Price: €2.49 for 0.34 fl.oz./10ml

Interestingly dirty

Good morning everyone! Yesterday I posted Catrice's Welcome To The Jungle and today I layered it with Gosh Rainbow. I thought the flashes of orange in Rainbow's flakies could look interesting against the green gold shimmer of Welcome To The Jungle. And interesting it is, the outcome is a strange and dirty, but intruiging blend of colors, I haven't figured out if it's in a good or bad way, but it's got my attention for sure. Of course I couldn't just leave it without a layer of matt topcoat, the curiosity was way too big and now that it's mattified I'm actually kind of starting to like it, though I probably won't be repeating this look very soon. What about you guys, would you wear this?

Catrice - Welcome To The Jungle

Hello everyone! For today's post I have Welcome To The Jungle to show you, it's from Catrice's limited collection Papagena. Next to the lipsticks and eyeshadows, there were four nail polishes to choose from, but I only bought Welcome To The Jungle because the rest looked very familiar to me.

Welcome To The Jungle is an olive green gold shimmer, a very interesting shade which definitely suits the jungle theme of Papagena. Though it also reminds me of dusty antique store finds, like miror frames, candle holders or tools for the fireplace. Gosh, that sounds cosy. Anyhow, the formula was good, not too thick or thin, and I was able to get it opaque in two coats. I'm not sure if I like it on my nails, but the color and finish are so intriguing that I can look at it forever...
What do you think of Welcome To The Jungle?

Price: €2.49 for 0.33 fl.oz./10ml

Malificent lightning bolt

Hi guys! Today is another way too gloomy day. So I've got something from the vault for you. This is a lightning bolt mani I did a while ago. The combination of colors I used looked so dark and mysterious so the whole look instantly reminded me of Disney villain Malificent from the Sleeping Beauty. Man, I just love her. I think she's the most stylish and elegant from all the female Disney villains. As a kid I never realized how cool she was, but after all she was the bad guy, so I guess it's not that strange.

The polishes I used: the base color is Essence Where's The Party?, the purple foil (so gorgeous!) is Forget-Me-Not! from Catrice and the black Color Club Where's The Soiree?, as usual. I also added matt topcoat in the end, but I think that was a mistake, the true colors with a glossy finish would have been prettier. Oh, well! Thanks for reading!

Mint mummy

Hello guys, happy Easter! Last post I showed you a gorgeous muted green, #82 from Hema. The formula was quite disappointing but the pretty color makes up for that. Though the color isn't a true mint, 'mint' formed such a nice alliteration with 'mummy' :) And the color matches very nicely with Catrice's I Sea You!, so I used that on top of it, using the mummy tape pattern. These pictures were taken a little while ago, but since they're so appropriate for Easter, I waited till today to show you guys. So for today an Easter mummy, in soft, dusty green. Hope you like it!

Vampy French

Hi everybody, how's the weekend? The mani you're looking at is my vampy French, which I made quite a while ago, I don't know why I didn't post it before, for some reason I was waiting for the right time. Anyhow, this design was inspired by the brogue's wingtip. My first attempt to create it pretty much failed, the black tips were freehanded and therefore a bit wobbly and uneven. So for the second attempt, which is the one on the pics, I used tape. Oh, precious tape, I couldn't live without it! Haha. I started with a red creme base (the discontinued Catrice from the Mickey mani), then I cut heartshapes out of tape to place on top and finally I finished it with a black creme for the tips.

What's funny is that when you focus on the red parts, you'll see sweet hearts, but when you look the black tips you'll notice the fierce batman-ish shape. So this mani could've been named 'The batman French', but 'vampy' just sounded... uhm... vampier! Thank you for stopping by :)

Kiwi pattern

Hi dear readers! Such a lovely, sunny day calls for a suiting mani, so for today a kiwi pattern! Why not?

I had this desire to do a fruity design, but I wanted to use a fruit which was less likely to be picked. So no strawberries, no watermelons but an ode to the kiwi!

This pattern is freehanded with a new set of nailart brushes that I bought from Born Pretty, before I only had my one little paintbrush, so I'm happy to have more sizes to pick from now. I started with two coats of Essence Check Me Out (the bright green one), which is discontinued by now but I guess you can use any vivid, grass-green. Then I picked Sir! Yes, Sir! from Catrice's new collection to draw the round kiwi-shapes and filled in the spaces in between. After that I applied little blobs with China Glaze Lemon Fizz for the centers and black, teardrop-shaped seeds around them. Finally I outlined the fruits once more with black and I was done... Okay, I have to admit that was a lot of work, but don't they look delicious?! Haha. And if I'm feeling lazy I'll just cut it down to an accent nail :) Enjoy your day!

Preppy plaid

Hi guys, for this post I have a new tape mani to show you. It's a doubled crosspattern which creates a preppy plaid-pattern. The colors I used are Catrice London's Weather Forecast and a classic red creme, also from Catrice from the discontinued Nail Couture collection.

I absolutely love the preppiness of this look. You can go for a bold look with combining two bright, contrasting colors, or create something more sophisticated with different shades of greys or taupes.
For this pattern I've used four thin tape strips on each nail. If you want to recreate this look, try to keep your tape strips as even as possible for a tidy result. And when placing the strips, start with the first two in the same direction, and the second two in the other. Because of this it's easy to remember the order in which you've placed them which is useful for the removal afterwards. One last tip: don't make your strips too short or you won't have anything to grab on when removing them, about 1 inch/2,5 cm is fine. And if you've never worked with tape before it might be useful to take a look at my tutorial first, click here to see it.

Hope you like it and thank you for reading!

Vintage green

Hello dear readers, today I want to show you a vintage green version of the Ménage à trois mani that I did a week ago. I love all muted, dusty colors, specially when they're blue/green, so this mani is a favorite. Another thing I like about this look is the ton-sur-ton thing that's going on. (Meaning a combination of two or more shades of the same hue.) Polishes I used: first up is a polish from Catrice's Ultimate Nail Lacquer collection named Sold Out forever, which is supposed to be the Chanel Jade of the collection. It's a beautiful light, dusty green with a subtle green shimmer. The green in the middle is I Sea You from the same collection, it's such a gorgeous color! It's one of my favorites all time, a color that I think everybody should own and the price is really nice too: €2,49 for 10 ml/0.34 fl.oz. And it matches so nicely with Sold Out Forever! Last but not least is L.A. Girl's Matte Alpine Green, which is obviously matte, but that finish wouldn't fit in with the rest so that turned all nice and glossy after the topcoat :)

So which one's your favorite? The original below or this version?

Pink!

Red polkadot + Mickey accent nail

Hello everyone! I was in a cute mood when I did this mani and the polkadot pattern is a great way to achieve cuteness! I used Konad imageplate M79 and China Glaze Millenium on top of a classic red creme from Catrice. (Don't know the name or number, I pealed off the sticker back in the days when I didn't know that could be useful... )

I wasn't aiming for the Minnie Mouse-look doing this mani (maybe more of a pin-up look), that's why I used silver and not white. But how can you not think of her seeing this classic pattern. So I drew a little Mickey(!)-symbol on my ring finger. Now why Mickey are you wondering? Because he's more recognizable :)

Speaking of cute, I've got another cute mani planned for this week, with someone who's a recurring character on this blog...

See ya :)

Mickey!

Japanese flowers

Hello dear readers, when I saw pictures of the yellow/green Japanese mani at Another Bottle of Polish, I knew I had to try it myself. The flower design was done so neatly, it was just perfect. So thank you to ABOP for the inspiration for this mani.

The background color is Catrice's I Sea You, a beautiful dusty turquoise. I picked H&M's Moody Model and a regular black creme for the flowers. To add a bit of spice I layered Galaxy Girl (Orly) over the black. Now I have to say this mani was a LOT more work than my usual (tape) manis, but it was going to be worth it. But after I had finished the flower design like was done at ABOP, it was just still missing something. It didn't stun me like my inspiration mani did, my nails looked so blank. That's why I drew gold lines around the flowers to fill up the gaps, also it looked more oriental now. As a finishing touch I also dotted the centers of the flowers with gold, the polish I used for this is China Glaze 2030. And now I actually like the result, it reminds of origami paper. Thanks for your time!