Inspiration manis for New Year's Eve

I can't believe New Year's Eve is already tomorrow! Time sure flies. But since 2016 has yet to come, I thought it would be fun to do a couple of New Year's Eve manis in one post to maybe give you some last-minute inspiration on what to wear on your nails. I've got a lot of pictures, so let's get cracking.

Semi-nude nails is something I tend to do more often lately. I'm not sure what it is, but there's just something about that bit of blank space that I find interesting. For the mani above I placed square pieces of tape at the top of each nail (at the cuticles) and painted the tips black. Then I filled in the gaps with gold linework, using a striper polish from Janet (#115). I really had a hard time deciding on how to fill those V-gaps, because the possibilities are just endless. You could fill it with a (stamped) pattern, a glitter polish, or with geometric shapes like in my last Christmas mani here, and even with nothing in the gaps, I think it still looks pretty neat.

For this one I used a dotting tool to make a firework-like pattern. I started with making a circle of six dots and then I added a line of dots after each dot. (Are you still with me?) It's a simple and fast way to create a fairly detailed design on the nails, plus you can easily combine it with an exciting glitter/shimmer/holographic/multichrome/etc. polish for the basecolor. Here I've opted for golden oldy Wild At Heart from Color Club.

Champagne! I like to combine this design with a shimmery blue, in this case Dorothy Who? on top of First Mate, both from China Glaze. You might've gotten a glimpse of this mani already if you've seen my new tutorial. If you haven't, go have a look at it here if you like it. It's easy-peasy to achieve!

Lastly I'd like to include my nude clouds mani from New Year's Eve 2011 to this inspiration post. For this mani I used my trusty cloud design. Again, an easy way to quickly spruce up your nails with just two or three colors. I can enjoy spending lots of time on my nails, but sometimes - especially in the hectic holiday season - a simple but effective design is very welcome! You can find the clouds tutorial here and the full post of this mani here.

I hope you all enjoyed this post and that it may have given you some inspiration for tomorrow night. Since I won't post until the new year, I'm wishing you all a very amazing and healthy new year in advance! See ya! :)

31 Day Challenge, day 4: Green

Hi guys, time for some green nails! :-) This week I had a party for which I did simple, stunning, silver glitter nails to match my red dress. I used China Glaze Millenium and a coat of Silver Lining on top, also from China Glaze. I didn't have an idea for my forth challenge yet at the time, but when I saw the dense silver glitter sparkle on my fingertips I just couldn't wait to combine it with a bright green. So the next day I made these V-gaps with Barry M's Spring Green. I love, love, love the color. It's so vibrant! Almost like a neon. I didn't manage to capture its true color in the pictures though, where it looks a bit turquoise. In real life it's more like a Hulk-green, wild and strong. ^^ What do you think of today's green nails?

Tutorial: Studded V-gap

Hi everyone, it's time for a new tutorial! :-) This time I'll show you how to make the studded V-gaps I used in my third day of the 31 Day Challenge. What I like about this design, is that it goes well with both subtle and bold shades, adding an edgy element. Plus it's pretty simple to make. What you need is roll of tape, scissors, a dotting tool, and of course a couple of nice nail polishes.
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31 Day Challenge, day 3: Yellow

Yellow nails! These took a long time to get done because of the design on my ringfinger, so I made studded V-gaps on the rest on my fingers, which I actually liked better in the end. :-) The yellow basecolor is H&M's Lemon Tree. This was three to four coats which I admit is a lot. But the formula is great to work with, very smooth and no dragging, making it my favorite yellow next to Color Club Almost Famous. The silver I used for the dots/studs is Essence Romeo and the black is Color Club Where's The Soiree? as usual. What are your thoughts on this yellow rock look?

Nude V-gaps

Hello everyone! For this post I've got nude V-gaps to share with you, I made them yesterday when I was going for a "dramatic" look haha. To make the V-gaps I used tape as usual, I cut out triangles with acute angles to make my nails seem a little bit longer. ;-) The polish to go with the design was Essence Fateful Desire, a vampy red jelly/creme. It did need two coats to cover, so I couldn't remove the tape immediately after one coat of polish, which I normally do for nice, crisp lines. But I kept both layers thin so in the end it still turned out neat enough. :) And since I wasn't wearing a basecolor, I could place the tape right away, which made this mani pretty quick to do as well, I like that! :-) What are your thoughts on this mani? Would you give this a try yourself?

Glitter V-gaps

Hi everyone! :) For this post I have a glittery V-gap mani to share with you. As my base color I used two smooth coats of the lovely murky green China Glaze Westside Warrior. Normally I love to combine Westside Warrior with a gold like I did in this post, but this time I wanted to try something different so I picked multi-colored Rain Glitter from Amour for the V-gaps. It's a very suitable polish for tape manis, as the glitters are very dense, so just one coat was enough to cover the taped shapes.

In the bottles, Rain Glitter and Westside Warrior looked amazing next to each other, on the nails however I expected the glitter to pop more against the green so the V-shape would be more visible. I'm really enjoying Rain Glitter though, I have such a huge weakness for anything with lots of color, especially when they're this sparkly... But I'm sure many of you feel the same way ^^

What do you think of today's tape mani?

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?

V-gap experiment, part 2

Hi guys :) Good morning. Today I'm going to show you part 2 of my previous V-gap experiment. I added a lot of silver (China Glaze Millenium) to the design, but that just didn't work, haha. So I added a tiny bit of red to make it better. I used a jelly for it, that's why you can still see the silver V-moon underneath. Finally a layer of matt topcoat et voilà... Thanks for watching!

Before

V-gap experiment, part 1

Hi everyone! I hope you are all doing fine. As you may have noticed, I haven't been posting daily anymore. It's because I've just started with my bachelor Communication and Multimedia Design, which will be my main priority from now on, so I won't be able to spend a lot of time on nails or post as much as I used to. I'm sure going to miss working on this little blog but I will keep posting, just not as often as I'd like to. So that was my little announcement. Now let's show some nails :)

This is a mani from the vault. I was experimenting a bit, trying to find a new design, with the V-gap as my starting point. I used China Glaze First Mate as the base color and the turquoise is Essence Bella. The finished V-gap could use some shimmer so I added China Glaze Jitterbug to the tips, which made it look more spectacular :) After this I updated my nails again, hence 'part 1' in the title, how part 2 became will be shown tomorrow... ;) Going to bed now, have a great night!

Variation on the V-gap, part 2

(This is a scheduled post, I'm on vacation!)

Hello guys! When I posted this mani a while ago, I never showed you the rest of the experimenting, I completey forgot I had these pictures! In total I already had two V-shapes in my design, but that wasn't enough for me so I added yet another V, upside down, which left some space for me to place a rhinestone in. I normally don't like rhinestones very much, because they can easily look tacky in my opinion. But in this case I thought it might add that little bit of oomph to the whole, what do you think of it? And what are your opinions on rhinestones in general? Have a nice one :)

Before the rhinestones

More V-gap + temporary goodbye

You guys! It is so late right now. I've been packing and setting up scheduled posts for you all day, because tomorrow I'm on vacation! Hense the temporary goodbye thing, nothing big to worry about though :) So I'll miss you guys a lot! I'll be gone for about a week and in the meantime you can enjoy the scheduled posts. But I'll really miss not being able to share those live with you

About the nails, I made this V-gap mani using China Glaze Millenium and First Mate, the same colors I used in the first mani I shared with you here, as a little tribute. I guess I was a bit proud of Nailside haha :) Anyhow, I just love those two China Glazes together and I think they're meant for each other. Period.

So I'll miss you! I hope you'll have a great week as well and I look forward reading your comments when I get back. Love!

Variation on the V-gap

Hi guys, since the vampy V-gap look from a little while ago, I've been doing more V-gap designs lately and today's post is one of them. I love the simplicty and elegance of V-gaps and how easy they are to achieve. The way I make them is by using triangle shapes cut out of tape but I think doing them freehand is quite doable too, though I've never tried. So either you want to practice your freehand or taping skills for the first time, I think the V-gap design would be a great one to start with.

For the pictured look I made a variation on the standard V-gap by adding two lines along the gap, creating a second V-shape. I used OPI Russian Navy as my base color and Essence Romeo for the top color. My boyfriend's opinion on these nails? "Oooh, they look like Transformers!" Lol, I love him :)

Thanks for stopping by again and enjoy the rest of your day!

V-gap

Hello everyone! For this post I'd like to show you another tape mani I did this weekend. I was wearing OPI Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ and the next day I wanted to spice it up, so this is what it became. It's not Sophy Robson's famous V-gap, but still a V-gap right? ;) It wasn't an easy choice finding a color other than black to suit the burgundy red of Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ, but then I remembered saying in a previous post how China Glaze Jitterbug just goes with any color, so this was my chance to prove it, haha. I think Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ looks really pretty with Jitterbug and that the whole design looks kind of editorial. I also mattified it to see what it would look like and I still haven't decided yet which version I like better... Help me out! Haha.
Thanks for reading! :)