Neon geometric Christmas nails

Hi everyone! I thought it would be fun to do a Christmas mani (Christmani XD) in neon colors. I already had the idea of building a Christmas tree and six-pointed star with see-through triangles using tape, and when I stumbled upon China Glaze Surfin' For Boys in my stash, I knew it would be the perfect color for the job. It's so incredibly bright! For these photos I used my iPhone5 camera, it's much more accurate with capturing the true color of Surfin' For Boys than my trusty old Canon IXUS 85 IS, but even in these pictures the brightness is nothing compared to seeing it in reality.

I combined the Christmas ornaments with random triangle shapes in neon yellow, teal and silver. The polishes I used were Orly Glowstick, Color Club Age of Aquarius and China Glaze Millennium. The 'white' basecolor (actually a super light grey) is Essence Enter Wonderland, a very pretty matt polish. To keep that lovely matt finish in the entire look, I finally sealed everything with matt topcoat. Hope you like it and thanks for reading!

Lacey Christmas Nails

Hi everyone! For this Christmas themed post I want to share this green mani with lace accents with you. Although lace isn't something Christmassy per se, I feel like it suits this time of the year well. The fine details - especially in white - remind me of a cosy crochet tablecloth at Christmas dinners, or a crochet rug that goes under the Christmas tree with all the presents on top, or dresses with crochet Peter Pan collars. So yeah, Christmas/crochet associations all over the place! Or maybe that's just me.

Anyway, to make this mani I started with two coats of the green, which is Orly Lucky Duck. I then used a white striper polish from the brand Janet to freehand the lace. I already liked it with just the green and white, but just to add a highlight color I made the little red cross. (Which is obviously a tiny bow. If you squint.)

That's it for today, I hope you like it and thanks for dropping by!

A little Surprise from the Vault

Hi everyone! Recently I reorganized all my old nail pictures and I came across a bunch of never posted manis, including this lovely tape mani from literally years ago. Brown has never been my favorite color when it comes to nail polish, but I actually think it works well with the colors I used here. The gorgeous matt taupe is OPI You Don't Know Jacques Suede and I believe I used China Glaze 2030 and Orly Sapphire Silk for the unusual chevrons. No topcoat, because that would ruin the different finishes in all the layers. ;) Thanks for reading!

OPI DS - Glamour

I was going for something plain on my nails, but ended up wearing the most special polish I own: OPI DS Glamour, on top of two coats of Orly Royal Navy. No need to say it's an absolute stunner, look at that! Though it looks even better in real life. I still can't believe how intense the (slightly scattered) holographic finish is, even in the shadow! Sadly this polish is discontinued too, as you might know. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to own it someday. But I must've done something right, because last year I was very lucky to get my hands on one bottle through a swap. (Thank you so much, Viktorija!) It felt like winning the lottery... :3 What's the most special polish that you own?

Foil Water Marble

I'd never thought I'd be able to do, let alone love, water marbling, but here I am with another marbled mani. This time I wanted to do a darker one, using H&M Kiss Goodnight and Orly Sweet Peacock, which is the sparkly blue.

From my last water marbling attempts, I've learned that not every polish is suitable for it, so I wasn't surprised when that was the case with Sweet Peacock. It was hard to draw neat, controlled petals in the polish. But that actually didn't bother me at all, as my nails were left with these beautiful, more natural swirls of polish instead. Clean-up, however, was less beautiful! Despite having taped my fingers before dipping them in the polish, it was almost impossible to get them clean. So I took these pictures the day after, when most of the foily shimmer was finally gone after a long and hot shower. ;-) Thanks for stopping by!

Gold Ornament

This mani is from a few weeks ago. I was just getting in the mood for the December holidays and added this simple tribal-ish pattern with a striper to go with the rest of my dark nails. I sure have a soft spot for black and gold. ♥

Below are a couple of older manis in black and gold. I thought it would be fun to show these lined up together to compare, isn't it a versatile color duo? ^_^

Fancy triangles, one of my first posts!

Shining like a star on Christmas '11.

Nude clouds for New Year's Eve.

Fierce French

And my recent Art Deco linework. :-)

And for those who are interested: the black creme I use is Color Club's Where's The Soiree?. It dries with a satin-matte finish, but I don't mind since it dries very quickly because of that, and I can always add some glossy topcoat. Another thing is it's a one-coater, so it covers perfectly but therefore can also leave stains on the skin. So I have to be extra careful with the application. Despite of this, it's still my favorite black so far.

Thanks for reading!

Holly Leaf

Hi everyone! For this post I have another Christmas themed design to share with you: a holly leaf accent nail. :-) I've always loved the shape of holly leaves, so imagine  my excitement when I found out how easy it could be to have that shape on my nails, just by using a design that's familiar on this blog: the cloud design! You can see I didn't have to add much to make it look like a holly leaf. But those who still want a little more detail of how to make the design can use the tutorial that I'll be posting next. :-)

For the accent nail I used OPI Jade Is The New Black, Color Club Artsy Crafty, a blue striper polish and P2 Fever for the berries. And last but not least, that gorgeous gold on the rest of my nails is Orly Solid Gold with a layer of topcoat. It has an amazing matte fisnish on its own, but adding topcoat makes it so sparkly! Perfect for the holidays. I also did a series of Solid Gold manis a while back, you can find them all here. See you next time!

Arrow Tail

There wasn't a lot of nail painting for me this week, school work took up most of my time. I did do another "arrow tail" design which I came up with while improvising for the tribal print challenge in my last post. There's just something relaxing about drawing the design that makes it such a fun task to do.

This time I used Orly Viridian Vinyl as my basecolor and I truly fell in love with it again. It only needs two smooth and fastdrying coats for opacity and the color's just fantastic! Finally I made the arrow print with a white striper. No topcoat was applied, because the satin-matte finish of Viridian Vinyl is too pretty!

31 Day Challenge, day 12: Stripes

Hello readers! It's time for my 12th challenge of the 31 Day Challenge, which is stripes! I super love stripes, they make such an incredibly simple but effective graphic pattern. For this challenge, however, I didn't feel very inspired, so I went for trusty random stripes that I made with a striper polish; Janet #119). The design isn't new on this blog, but in the end I was surprisingly happy with the look. I could just stare all day at these nails, just because of the combination of two different finishes... Oh, well, at least I know some of you guys can appreciate that as well! ;-) The lovely matte basecolor is Orly's Purple Pleather, which I used two to three coats of. Thanks for reading!

31 Day Challenge, day 2: Orange

Day 2 of the 31 Day Challenge! This time the challenge was to do orange nails and it was truly a challenge. I had a hard time coming up with something with orange as the main color instead of an accent color. Finally I decided to go with trusty clouds (tutorial here) combined with two shades of green, as I find orange to combine best with certain greens or blues. The lovely pastel orange is H&M's Peach Me Soon, in the middle you see Orly Ancient Jade and I've got Essence Bella on the tips. I look forward to my next challenge: yellow nails! See you soon. :-)

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!

Fierce French

The black part in this picture reminds me of the M of Maroon 5, love them! ^^

Hello everyone! In my last post I used Orly Solid Gold in a fifty-fifty tape mani. I liked Solid Gold so much that I prepared two more looks with it and today's semi-nude look is one of them. I first started with a zigzag in black (tutorial here) and when that was dry I added the gold chevrons with Solid Gold. It dries with a matte finish as you could see in my last post, but this time I went for glossy by adding topcoat. I'm not sure which finish I like most - the edgy matte one or the sparkly glossy one. They're both so cool! :-) What do you think? Thanks for reading!

Fifty-Fifty

Hi everyone! How are you? School's done, so I can FINALLY get back to blogging about nails again, yay! I can't believe how long it's been since my last post. So let's see some nails then!

For this fifty-fifty tape mani I used Orly Solid Gold as my basecolor. I rarely wear gold polishes on their own, but I just love to combine them with other colors. The same goes for Solid Gold. The color on its own just looks a bit weird on my skintone. But I do love the matte, shimmery finish. Plus it dries very quickly so it's a perfect tape mani basecolor. :-) After waiting just a few minutes after applying Solid Gold, I put tape strips vertically on one half of my nails. Then I used the turquoise polish Essence Bella on top, removed the strips and that's it! No topcoat afterwards, because I like the contrast of matte and shiny together. What do you think of today's nails?

Abstract '80s

Hi guys, another tape mani for you today! Oh, how I love stationery tape. It's so perfect for making geometric shapes, which I happen to love too. ;-)

After (re)discovering the layering possibilities of sheer polishes with my recent springy stripes, I used the same technique in this mani. My base color (H&M Polish Me Happy) was applied the day before, so I could immediately place tape strips on top to form the mint green shapes with Orly Ancient Jade. When that had dried I once again used tape to make the pink triangles with Color Club Warhol and I just love how new shapes are formed where Ancient Jade and Warhol overlap. Speaking of Warhol, it's such a great polish for this layering technique. It's sheer, but covers very evenly and the color is so unbelievably bold! (Also take a look at layered Warhol together with its neon friends in this crackle mani.) And that's it for this post, I hope you enjoyed it. :-)

Christmas scene

Hi everyone :) For this post I have another Christmas mani. Since I haven't made any Halloween looks this fall, I'm planning on catching up some holiday manis with this year's Christmas ;-) Anyway, this week's been terribly busy, so I've been wearing Essie Your Hut Or Mine for the last three days. But today's weekend, yay! So I finally had time to update my mani. I added a Christmas tree for my accent nail, using tape. You know, if you think about it, a Christmas tree isn't that different from a lightning bolt! I mainly used tape triangles which I placed underneath each other on each side of the tree to create the zigzag lines. For a little sparkle I added silver glitter on top and a larger piece of glitter as my tree topper. On the rest of my nails I made "funky clouds", representing a snow scenery and later I added the "snow" with a dotting tool. In retrospect, I think the dots are a bit too much, so I doubt if I'm going to keep this mani longer than a day. But oh well, that means I can do my nails again tomorrow ^^ Thanks for reading!

Polishes I used:
Essie - Your Hut Or Mine
Essie - Lion Around
Orly - Pure Porcelain
H&M - Confetti Kisses

Guest post for Oooh Shinies

Hello everyone, I'm proud to tell you that the lovely and talented Bregje from Oooh Shinies has asked me to make a guest post for her blog, of course I said yes! :) So head over to Oooh Shinies for the complete post or click here.

Orly zigzag

Hello everyone! Since I didn't have much time to do my nails this week to post something, I decided to dig in the vault, look what I found! It's a zigzag tape mani I did in the summer with China Glaze Recyle for the grey and Orly's Viridian Vinyl and Purple Pleather for the tips, they were amazing to work with for the taping by the way. I expected the colors and zigzag pattern to pop more against the grey, but it became quite subtle actually. Still I like the matte and glossy finish combined in this mani :) What do you think about it? Thanks for reading!

Gameboy nails

Hi guys, guess my nails! I'm not even sure if you can say that. And the title might've been a big hint haha... but they're gameboy nails :D I made these for a reader who is going to dress up as gameboy for halloween, how cool is that? I thought it was such a fun theme and was beyond excited to work on them. My base color was Essence Got A Secret and I freehanded all the gameboy features with a tiny brush. For the glamorous index finger I used Orly It's Not Rocket Science, it's supposed to be the screen. The screen's kind of green, right? ;-) Anyway, hope you like them and goodnight everybody! :)

Other polishes I've used:
OPI - Dim Sum Plum
China Glaze - Concrete Catwalk

Aztec tips and a comparison

Left Orly Lucky Duck, right OPI Jade Is The New Black
(Completely on the left is Konad Solid Pop Green)

Hello everyone :) Last week I attempted my first aztec nails, or should I say pixel nails? The nice green you see is Orly Lucky Duck, it had an amazing formula, a bit in between a jelly and a creme, which made it very easy to apply. So you'll end up with a glossy and opaque finish after two coats. On the swatches of it online, it looked more turquoise, that's why I loved it so, but in real life it leans a lot more towards green. Still very pretty, though I don't think I needed it, since I now find it very similar to a polish I already had: OPI's Jade Is The New Black. They're not dupes, JITNB is a bit dustier than Lucky Duck as you can see, but still I think they're so similar, that you probably won't need both. They both have a great formula and cover in two coats, also the drying time of the two polishes is pretty good, so the big difference must be in the brush/cap (or price). I like both the rubberized cap of Orly and OPI's Pro Wide Brush, but you might not agree with me ;)

About the nail art, I used tape strips to make the aztec pattern, what else, right? ;) The white is Essence Stamp Me! White and the red is OPI's Big Apple Red. Yes, it took me forever to make, haha, but I'm quite patient when it comes to nail art, so I'd do it all again in a heartbeat. Though using it as an accent nail would be a nice compromise, like the polished perfectionist AmyGrace did here. Accent nail FTW, right! She's awesome. And that's it for this post, good night!

V-gap and OPI Gold Shatter

Hi guys! Yesterday I showed you my post with Orly Sweet Peacock, today I have the V-gap I made with it. First I mattified it with Essence Matt topcoat, which made it look stunning. Sweet Peacock is so sparkly that even with a soft, matte finish it still sparks like a gem. For the V-gap I placed triangles to cover up the blue and I applied OPI Gold Shatter on top. Gold Shatter is another new polish that arrived in my mailbox this week and I couldn't wait to try it out. Though blue and gold is always a win in my book, I'm not exactly crazy about this look. I like the colors but maybe there's just too much going on. Oh well, next time better :) What's your opinion?