triangle manicure

Now that the Blogger Challenge PINK is over, we can go back to normal I’m done with pink for the next days, that’s for sure! It was great fun, especially meeting all the participating ladies, and I hope you all enjoyed it too.

I’ve committed to another challenge though, one that I’m happy to participate in: the 30 days of untrieds! I’ll start tomorrow, but for today I have something else for you: Essie Smooth Sailing. What comes to mind when one hears “smooth sailing”? An ocean spread out in front of you, no wind to stir up waves, just a light breeze to cool off? Well, I had that association when I read “smooth sailing”, and I have to give Essie credit here – they made a polish which looks like the feeling I get when I think about smooth sailing.

Smooth sailing is a mid blue colour, with a hint of lavender in it, and a pearly-silver shimmer finish. I like this shade of blue a lot! Shown here are 3 coats.

 I guess you all have seen Smooth Sailing on its own, so I decided to play around with it and add a little twist. I didn’t just want to layer over it, because I like the base colour of Smooth Sailing, so I decided to go for a tape experiment. Having failed at tape manicures many times, especially the ones where I tried to give myself a French manicure, I decided to try triangles. A half-moon manicure would be way above my skills, but two straight stripes of tape couldn’t be too difficult (or, so I thought)? Well, what you see here is the work of a couple of hours. I liked this manicure so much, that I decided to practise, so I hope I’ll be able to show you more of that in the future.

Base colour: Essie Smooth Sailing; triangles: Zoya Charla.I was so excited that I managed to produce some nail art, that I made pictures everywhere!

 What do you think about my nail art skills? Do you like this manicure?

Blogger Challenge PINK: Day 7 – The Final Challenge

Nail Polish Blogger Challenge

If you aren’t yet following my facebook page, here’s the link – there are picture albums of my swatches and I heard a little bird sing that there’ll be a giveaway soon!

Today, for the final day of the challenge, I wanted to really, really, really challenge myself. Those of you who have been following my blog for a longer time will know that I’m at war with tape manicures. They never really work for me, maybe because I’m too impatient, or maybe because I just don’t do it right. As this is a challenge, I decided that my last post has to be one with a tape manicure, to prove to all of you that I really was challenging myself!
Well, enough with all the talk, here is 2 coats of “my” pink, OPI Do you think I’m Tex-y?, with some scotch tape design over it. The black I used is Illamasqua Scorn, because it’s a one-coater and it dries quick (because it’s matte).

You can see that my index finger worked out really ok, while I had some struggles at the middle and ring finger… And since I’m a very precise person, I had to do something about that, because I kept on being annoyed with myself that it didn’t work out like Chloe’s tape manicures! So I added one coat or OPI Rent. I like that much better!

artificial lightdaylight

And then my head went crazy and I wanted to see how it would look like if I put crackle polish over it, so I grabbed my Pure Ice Crackle in Hot Couture, and here is what that looked like:

I think that looks rather wild. I wanted to show you the result, but this is not a submission to the challenge, as you can’t really see “my” pink anymore, and that was one of the rules! I should have left it be anyhow, because OPI Rent over the Scotch tape manicure looked quite nice.

What do you think about tape manicures? Did you enjoy the 7 day PINK Challenge? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the challenge, as I do feel up for another one in the future (with a different colour though – I never thought I’d say that about a Pink, but I’m happy to wear something else tomorrow!!).

Last day, and all the ladies are giving their best!

Ulmiel from Did someone say nail polish? uses Finger Paints Give Pink A Chance
Sarah from Lucky Lacquers uses W7 Shocking Pink
Rebecca from Rebecca Likes Nails uses Color Club Peppermint Twist
Sidrah from beauteous blog uses sally hansen pink blink
Inge from Polish Sis uses Hema nr 84
Maestra from parokeets uses essie knockout pink
Gejba from  parokeets uses essence Love This City
Leslie from Polish Art Addiction uses China Glaze Laced Up

 

Blogger Challenge PINK: Day 6 – over the top

Nail Polish Blogger Challenge

If you aren’t yet following my facebook page, here’s the link - there are picture albums of my swatches and I heard a little bird sing that there’ll be a giveaway soon!

Since it’s Saturday, and Saturday is going-out-day, I decided to go over the top with today’s manicure. I started of with 2 coats of OPI Do you think I’m Tex-y?, which is my pink challenge nail polish, and then stamped over the whole nail with a design from my essence stamping plate. As a stamping colour I used Nicole by OPI Positive Energy, which my friend Marcy recommended for stamping. It really works very well!

I’m still very new at stamping, but exept for a tiny bald spot on my middle finger I think it worked out very well.  I hope you’re satisfied with my stamping skills for now, as this is obviously not the end of my manicure! When I mean over the top, I do mean very much over the top! So I added another coat of OPI Do you think I’m Tex-y?. Since it’s a jelly and very sheer, it works perfectly for all layering adventures one can think of. I just wish there was a green version of it!

Anyhow, after that I added small pearles and rhinestones from another essence nail art kit that I bought in the spur of the moment. I don’t usually go for rhinestones – actually, never – but I felt that since it is challenge week, why not try?

with flashdaylightartificial light

What do you think of my stamping & rhinstone & little pearls that look like water drops manicure?

Be sure to see what the other pink ladies are up to, because there are some great inspirations for pink manicures!

Ulmiel from Did someone say nail polish? uses Finger Paints Give Pink A Chance
Sarah from Lucky Lacquers uses W7 Shocking Pink
Rebecca from Rebecca Likes Nails uses Color Club Peppermint Twist
Sidrah from beauteous blog uses sally hansen pink blink
Inge from Polish Sis uses Hema nr 84
Maestra from parokeets uses essie knockout pink
Gejba from  parokeets uses essence Love This City
Leslie from Polish Art Addiction uses China Glaze Laced Up

Blogger Challenge PINK: Day 5 – Beginner’s Luck

Nail Polish Blogger Challenge

If you aren’t yet following my facebook page, here’s the link - there are picture albums of my swatches and I heard a little bird sing that there’ll be a giveaway soon!

Good morning and welcome to a new day of the PINK challenge! You all know how much I love pink, so wearing pink for a week hasn’t been as hard on me as it may have been on other challenge participants – but we’re all happy that we picked pink for this month is breast cancer awareness month!

I love the look of water marbled nails, but I tried once before, and it was a mess. I didn’t have problems regarding the polish sticking to my nails, my greatest problem was to pick polishes that won’t just drip into the water and sink to the bottom. I found it immensely difficult to get the polish to make rings so I could attempt some kind of design. Frustrated, I gave up and decided, we were not made for each other.

Dry water marbling hasn’t worked for me either. I’m to impatient to wait for the design to dry on the plastic and cut it out! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, leave me a comment, and I’m willing to make a “How to NOT do it” tutorial. I’m very, very successful in failing all kinds of nail art.

This nail art however, let’s call it “needle marbling” for a lack of a better name, is as easy as it can get. Here is what I did  – just have a look at the pictures and decide for yourself if it worked for me or not!

with flash

I painted my nails white, and waited for that to dry completely. Then I chose 2 additional polishes to my OPI Do you think I’m Tex-y? – I wanted something funky, so I chose Illamasqua Collide and ANNY Yellow Cab Flash. I then painted 3 lines on my nail, one of each colour; make sure you use excessive amounts of polish, otherwise you’ll just end up with 3 stripes on your nails. You’ll have to work rather quickly, otherwise the polishes won’t marble nicely! Take a needle, and start your design. I just went from left to right and back again through the polishes, but when I’m doing this again, I’m going to try hearts and other designs! Do one nail after the other, and once you’re done with all, apply some quick drying topcoat. It is a good idea to not apply the topcoat immediately, because it might smear your design.

So, before I bore you with my “instructions”, here are my first needle marble designs!

Daylightartificial lightdaylight

here are close-ups of my nails. The pictures didn’t turn out all perfectly and sharp, but I wanted to give you an idea….

Right now I’m busy designing the nails on my other hand, I wonder how that turns out, since I’m right-handed…! Wish me luck, and be sure to comment with your experiences on marbling!!

Have you already seen what the other participants are up to?

Sidrah from beauteous blog uses sally hansen pink blink
Ulmiel from Did someone say nail polish? uses Finger Paints Give Pink A Chance
Inge from Polish Sis uses Hema nr 84
Sarah from Lucky Lacquers uses W7 Shocking Pink
Maestra from parokeets uses essie knockout pink
Rebecca from Rebecca Likes Nails uses Color Club Peppermint Twist
Gejba from  parokeets uses essence Love This City
Leslie from Polish Art Addiction uses China Glaze Laced Up

Blogger Challenge PINK: Day 4 – Glitter & Ice

Nail Polish Blogger Challenge

Good morning, dear readers!

After several more layering attempts, I decided that OPI Do you think I’m Tex-y? is a great layering polish, and I can show you several more layering options for this polish, but it would be boring after a while – so I’d like to show you something that even somebody as untalented for miniture painting (what else is it what you do on your nails!) as I can easily achieve. Gee, that was a long sentence! In short: I’d like to show you my favourite nail art, sponging.

I started off with 2 coats of Do you think I’m Tex-y? , “my” challenge polish. You’ll want to wait until your base colour is dry, because you have to use a small bit of a make up sponge to dab the other colour(s) on your nail. If you dab at your nail and the base colour isn’t dry, you’ll have everything sticking to your sponge instead of the nail!

Here is the first layer I did; I used OPI Cozu-melted in the sun for the first gradient sponging.

After I let 2 coats of Cozu-melted in the sun dry, I used OPI Teenage Dream for some glitter at the tiops. I find it hard to sponge Teenage Dream, and next time I’ll use another glitter polish for the tipps (I have used sucessfully so far: SOPI What’s your Poison?, butter LONDON Rosie Lee and China Glaze Shooting Stars)!

artificial lightwith flashwith flashdaylight

Luckily I only made way too many pictures of this! I wanted to wear this much longer, but I had to come up with some more ways to wear Do you think I’m Tex-y?, so I had to remove this awesome manicure. I’ll wear this again soon, because I really loved it – it reminded me of sugar icing and winter on my finger tipps.

Do you like sponge nail art? Have you ever tried?

Have you seen how creative the other ladies are??

Inge from Polish Sis uses Hema nr 84
Sarah from Lucky Lacquers uses W7 Shocking Pink
Maestra from parokeets uses essie knockout pink
Rebecca from Rebecca Likes Nails uses Color Club Peppermint Twist
Ulmiel from Did someone say nail polish? uses Finger Paints Give Pink A Chance
Gejba from  parokeets uses essence Love This City
Leslie from Polish Art Addiction uses China Glaze Laced Up
Sidrah from beauteous blog uses sally hansen pink blink

Blogger Challenge PINK: Day 3 –

Nail Polish Blogger Challenge

For today, I decided to try OPI Do you think I’m Tex-y? over a slightly darker polish. I had already tried it with yellow as a base colour, so I went for a very sparkly purple: OPI Grape…Set…Match. This is Grape…Set…Match by itself:OPI Grape…Set… Match in natural light, 2 coats.

I then layered 2 coats of Do you think I’m Tex-y? on top:

above: natural light, below: artificial light

I felt that while this is a fun way to ‘revive’ a perfectly fine manicure, especially after having worn one colour for some days, it was still a little bit boring. So in my stast I dived, and what do you think I chose to use to spice up the layering process? China Glaze Shooting Stars (and another coat of Do you think I’m Tex-y? of course).

above: daylight, below: artificial light

I love that from a purple-blueish base, this manicure turned out to be a pink-brownish colour with immensely much depth. While I’m not such a fan of browns, I’d definitely wear this combination!

 Be sure to tell me if you liked this combination, and visit the other girl’s blogs too for more inspiration!

Deniz from Emerald Sparkled uses Flor Mar #29
Leslie from Polish Art Addiction uses China Glaze Laced Up
Inge from Polish Sis uses Hema nr 84
Rebecca from Rebecca Likes Nails uses Color Club Peppermint Twist
Ulmiel from Did someone say nail polish? uses Finger Paints Give Pink A Chance
Gejba from  parokeets uses essence Love This City
Sidrah from beauteous blog uses sally hansen pink blink
Sarah from Lucky Lacquers uses W7 Shocking Pink
Maestra from parokeets uses – we don’t know yet!

Blogger Challenge PINK: Day 3 – expect the unexpected

Nail Polish Blogger Challenge

Good Morning everyone!  For this fourth really challenging day of the Blogger Challenge, I started my manicure with this:

I understand if you’d find that a weird start for a pink manicure, but let me explain! While I was trying to come up with super creative for the challenge, I thought I’d be fun to just try out various layering combinations. Most of them did not look the least bit as I imagined them. And then, I was swatching butter LONDON Cheeky Chops with OPI Lemonade stand by your man on top, and I thought, I’d just put Do you think I’m Tex-y? on top and see what happenes. Well this is what happened:

above: daylight, below: artificial light

Fascinating, isn’t it, how one coat of a pink jelly can transform the yellow manicure to a sparkly tomatoe red?! Well, I didnt leave it at that, because I wanted my manicure to be a little more on the pink side, and also, I felt the need for more glitter! This is what I chose to do: I layered 1 coat of Sephora by OPI Only Gold for me topcoat under another coat of Do you think I’m Tex-y?. What do you think?

above: daylight, below: artificial light

So, what do you think about my layering combination? I have to say, I’m head over heels for this subtle, but pretty glitter sandwhich. The yellow base colour adds an imense glow to the whole combination!

Don’t forget to check out the other participant’s blogs to see what they’ve been up to!

Deniz from Emerald Sparkled uses Flor Mar #29
Leslie from Polish Art Addiction uses China Glaze Laced Up
Inge from Polish Sis uses Hema nr 84
Rebecca from Rebecca Likes Nails uses Color Club Peppermint Twist
Ulmiel from Did someone say nail polish? uses Finger Paints Give Pink A Chance
Gejba from  parokeets uses essence Love This City
Sidrah from beauteous blog uses sally hansen pink blink
Sarah from Lucky Lacquers uses W7 Shocking Pink
Maestra from parokeets uses essie knockout pink

Blogger Challenge PINK: Day 2 – cherry with a cherry on top

Nail Polish Blogger Challenge

Good morning! For this first really challenging day of this blogger challenge, I decided to get out my beloved Inglot flakie polish: 202. Sounds boring, is in fact super exciting: 202 is a clear base filled with small orange and golden flakies. Heaven! I used one coat of the flakies over 2 coats over OPI Do you think I’m Tex-y?, which is ‘my’ pink for this challenge.

The Inglogt flakies look their best in natural (day-)light, and I could’ve stopped there and called it a layering success, but I wanted to see how far I can go!
So I put another coat of OPI Do you think I’m Tex-y? on top: 

Again, it looks best in daylight (hence no artificial light picture). The flakies reflect natural light best I think. And then, I needed to try something I had been postponing out of fear for a long time: Holo Topcoat over flakies sandwich. For this combination I decided to use Hits Hefesto. Hits is a Brazilian brand, and I got this one from my friend Samantha. Can you believe how awesome it is to have a rainbow on your nails and those flakies peeping out from underneath!!!

above: natural light, below: artificial light

Again, I couldn’t leave this be. I decided to layer another coat of Do you think I’m Tex-y? over the holo topcoat. In natural light you can see both the flakies and the holographic topcoat better than in artificial light.

above: natural light, below: artificial light

I don’t know what you  think about this heavy layering, but I love it every step of the way! The enresult looks like glass on fire I think. I never thought that layering flakies and holographic polishes could work, as both flakie and holographic polishes are somewhat of a cherry on top. So layering them over each other really is a cherry with a cherry on top!
What do you think about this combination?

Make sure to check out the other girl’s posts to see what they have come up with!

Deniz from Emerald Sparkled uses Flor Mar #29
Leslie from Polish Art Addiction uses China Glaze Laced Up
Inge from Polish Sis uses Hema nr 84
Rebecca from Rebecca Likes Nails uses Color Club Peppermint Twist
Ulmiel from Did someone say nail polish? uses Finger Paints Give Pink A Chance
Gejba from  parokeets uses essence Love This City
Sidrah from beauteous blog uses sally hansen pink blink
Sarah from Lucky Lacquers uses W7 Shocking Pink
Maestra from parokeets uses – we don’t know yet!

Blogger Challenge PINK: Day 1 – Introduction

Today I have something exciting for you, dear readers! Me and 9 girls from all over the world have decided to start a blogger challenge! The challenge is to pick a pink nail polish and wear it in 6 different ways (on the first day we show you the polish by itself). There is one major ”rule”: the pink has to be visible – meaning, you can’t just layer a black nail polish over it!

So, I’d like to show you which nail polish I chose: OPI Do you think I’m Tex-y?, one of the jelly nail polishes of this years’ Texas collection. The colour of this polish is (depending on coats and light) somewhere between bright pink and deep fuchsia. I couldn’t for the life of it find a way of photographing it so it would look the same in every picture!
I chose Do you think I’m Tex-y? because I love the jelly finish of this polish. It basically looks as if you painted your nails with super glossy lipgloss! There is a ‘downside’ to this polish though, as you won’t be able to build it up in such a way that there is no more VNL. I don’t mind it regarding Do you think I’m Tex-y?, because it is such a vibrant colour, and let me say it again, I love the finish!

For these pictures I used 3 coats.

 I made those pictures under artificial light. It is incredible how red the polish looks here!

See how the nail polish looks bright pink in indirekt day light? I hope you’re happy with my choice of pink, because I sure am, and I have found some great combinations to wear this in different ways!

And these are the other girls and the nail polishes they chose!

Deniz from Emerald Sparkled uses Flor Mar #29
Leslie from Polish Art Addiction uses China Glaze Laced Up
Inge from Polish Sis uses Hema nr 84
Rebecca from Rebecca Likes Nails uses Color Club Peppermint Twist
Ulmiel from Did someone say nail polish? uses Finger Paints Give Pink A Chance
Gejba from  parokeets uses essence Love This City
Sidrah from beauteous blog uses sally hansen pink blink
Sarah from Lucky Lacquers uses W7 Shocking Pink
Maestra from parokeets uses – we don’t know yet!

Be sure to check in tomorrow!

A by-gone aera

After all my failed layering experiments, I decided to give my Kleancolor Metallic Aqua a spin. I knew I wanted to layer China Glaze Tarnished Gold over it, which I decided was the safest choice. Blue and Gold are a safe combination I think.

I started off with once coat of Metallic Aqua. It is really completely opaque in one coat, which is great. The colour is extremely vibrant and shimmers wonderfully. It is, so to say, a picture book metallic. Depending on the light the colour tends to look more teal or more blue, which makes this polish a real keeper!

To stop by spree of layering fails, I added a coat of China Glaze Tarnished Gold. As I predicted, this is a good combination. The metallic crackles are opaque crackles, so the blue base only shines through between the cracks. I only wish the gold was a little more pronounced in Tarnished Gold, because, just like Haute Metal, the colour looks a little duller than in the bottle.

What do you say, have I set an end to my period of layering fails?