Sea Breeze, Winter Mint and Classic reds

Here's a neglected post of a neglected polish: I had this polish in my untrieds for at least a year, and this manicure photographed for at least another year. But here it comes now!!

 The base polish to all nails is Attitude Sea Breeze, which is a perfect pastel creme! It applied like butter, no bald spots..

 On middle and ring fingers I added two coats of Revlon parfumerie Winter Mint

I loved the scent – it was so hard to resist licking the nails!!
Did you know you can freshen up the scent of the polish by painting on a layer of top coat? I didn't!

The result was pretty, but still a bit bumpy after two thick coats of Seche Vite.

I added french tips with Revlon's Revlon Red and China Glaze Ruby Pumps.

And as an accent, a teardrop with Revlon Red using the wax paper technique.

(Basically you just paint a few coats of polish on a wax paper/cooking sheet, let it dry, and cut it as you wish)

Why a teardrop? No idea... Maybe I could promote donating blood with these :D

GOT Polish: Purple

I did my golden oldies purple manicure to honor the greatest purple polish on the surface of earth: Zoya Aurora! 

It's special for me, because bought this on a trip to Chicago - where I landed a day late being at first stranded to the Netherlands, and had a room booked in a 12-bed dorm at a hostel.... Oh, those sleepless nights... But it paid off when I could haul both Storm and Aurora released in the same collection!

You may disagree, but I just love the holo glitter on this, the application, the opacity.... all of it!

The base in this manicure is two coats of Astor Pop Color 141.
Over it I used China Glaze Crackle Luminous Lavender - plus some tape and Zoya Aurora - the awesomest purple polish there is..

An InLinkz Link-up

TPC: Flashy Green & Blue

As you might have noticed, I was away last week, but as a compensation I've got an awesome feature coming up this week... just wait and see...

 Meanwhile, here are my first Green, blue and purple Tri polish challenge nails:

 The green polish I'm also holding in these pics is Kiko 441 from the Digital LE.

After the first coat I was disappointed, but after three coats I was happy I purchased this holo glitter beauty. It's so flashyyyy..... And it has actually got bar glitter! How awesome is that?!

To meet the challenge, I sponged the tips with China Glaze Water you Waiting For, plus added some

stamping with Konad black from BM305 (flashes) and Pueen 09 (peacock feathers)

I hope I had caught the holo sparkle in the Kiko polish better... But I loved these so that I wore them all last week in Jerez de la Frontera – and I was thinking of you, my dearest readers :)

An InLinkz Link-up

TPC: Tweedy

So here comes my last Tri Polish challenge manicure with February colours brown, pink and gray. In this respect the mani is a bit funny - you'll see...

The inspiration for this came from the amazing blog The manicurator.
Please look up her version! My own looks like it's done by a two-year old, in comparison...

Base three coats China Glaze Digital Dawn (I got this in a goodie bag in a meeting).
I added those tweedy lines with Color Club Beyond and Wild & Mild Diamond Roosevelt Avenue mixed with Gosh Silver.

The accent fingers feature stamping with:
Gosh Silver + DRK-A (mini houdstooth) Beyond + BM316 (lines in the left ring finger)
beyond + BM322 (large houndstooth in the right ring finger)

The funny thing with this manicure is, that I'm not really sure which colour is which - regarding the challenge. Which is the grey? Which is the extra black or the silver? Is the base really brown or pink?
Keep guessing, while browsing the wonderful work of other participants!

An InLinkz Link-up

TPC: Grayscale Water Marble

Another water marble for the Tri-polish challenge this year – wow, I've been adventurous :)

I've actually found out, that I like water marbling! Who would have thought that after my first disastrous attempts?! I see water marbling as THE legitimate reason to just sit an entire hour by my desk and "do nothing", maybe browse a few nail blogs, maybe shop some nail stuff, but doing nothing productive.

The  February colours are gray, brown and pink, and only brown is missing here... Luckily this is allowed in the challenge rules!

I started out with a white base, and used Wild&Mild Rockefeller Center, Models Own Mushroom, NYX Girls Perfect Gray (giveaway score) and China Glaze White on White for marbling.

On the accent finger I added a touch of pink: Essence Multidimension Most Wanted.

This is maybe not the best water marble I've made, but I spent a lot of my precious time doing it, so I'm going to like it! Ever felt the same??

An InLinkz Link-up

GOT Polish: Blue Pirouette

The blue themed post in the GOT polish challenge is dedicated to a non-blue polish – one of the prettiest glitter toppers ever: OPI Pirouette My Whistle. If you own it, this is the kind of manicure you're going to do, sooner or later. And, believe me, it pays off...

 I paired it first with a blue jelly polish.

I proceeded like this:
a coat of Essence Cool and the Gang
a coat of OPI Pirouette my Whistle
a coat of CatG
dabbings of PMW
a coat of Seche Vite

Just admire the depth!! Such blue! Very jelly! Wow!

I couldn't stop myself here - although I maybe should have. I added an accent finger with iridescent glequins in the left hand, and China Glaze Snow Globe in the right.

I'm useless in glitter placement, sorry! I need some more excercise...

Finally, I aimed for some kind of a seabed effect with the stamping. The pattern is from the DRK-A plate, stamped twice: first with Essie Fair Game, and then with Orly It's Up to Blue.

Some more Seche Vite, and I was ready (to regret I didn't stop earlier..)

An InLinkz Link-up

Tri Polish Challenge - Gilding the Lily

And here, ladies and gentleman, we have the last Tri Polish Challenge post with April's colours: pink, orange and turquoise:

The pinky and pointer got three coats of ChG Turned up Turquoise spiced up with some saran wrap and Barry M Gold Foil.

Ring finger was done kind of vice versa with two coats of Gold first, and then a saran wrap technique with Sinful Colors Cream Pink. Isn't it odd how difficult it is to tell afterwards, which colour was put on first and which was saran wrapped? At least for me, that is...

The middle finger was the officially decorated one in this manicure, with two coats of Cream Pink and stripes in Gold foil and ChG Papaya Punch made using striping tape.

I kept the thumb simple with two coats of Cream Pink. (What do you mean 'was I busy'?!? I have been packing all our things up for a removal, but I've arranged myself plenty of time to do my nails and kept everything strictly under control... cough cough... as if...)

I noticed some other bloggers too have decided to combine gold with the challenge polishes today. Let's see them and many other talented participants!

Tri Polish Challenge: Foaming Sea and Flip Flops

Bright summery trend continues here with the Tri Polish Challenge. The weather has been really inspiring here for that kind of manicures - plus what else could I do with three bright neon polishes :)

 The base in this manicure is China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise, except on the ring finger where I used Sinful Colors Cream Pink. Over the turquoise I did a drag marble using white (Wild and Crazy Montana) and turquoise.

 To compliment the beachy look I added some stamped flip flops with BM 309 and Konad white. To get to use all of the challenge polsihes (although it isn't required in the challenge), I coloured some of the flip flops with ChG Papaya punch.

This is one of the "new" Bundle Monster plates I hadn't used before. Why oh why?? Now that I peeled the plastic off and can really see the patterns, I want to stamp each and every one of them! I need to get my act together and use all the plates in this series soon anyway, because I've made a promise I'll only order a new set of plates when I've used all I already own at least once. Do you ever make these kinds of "promises to self"? Do they work for you?

Now let's have a look at the other participants of this challenge:

Tri-Polish Challenge: Monarch and Other Butterflies

It's the second day out of four in this months Tri-polish challenge, and I'm still on schedule! Yay for me! Keeping up with schedules is not my strongest point - at least if it's only me who benefits/suffers. I very extremely seriously sincerely hope, I'll get better on it... Any procrastinators out there, who know how bad it can make you feel?

What?!? You did come to my blog to see pretty nails, not to read a random rant???!! Alright, here's some prettiness for you.

The base here is, again, China Glaze Papaya Punch. On it I stamped some butterflies from m40 with Konad black special polish and coloured them using a toothpick and the other two challenge polishes: ChG Turned up Turquoise and Sinful Colors Cream Pink.

 On the accent finger I went for a monarch butterfly design: sponged gradient on the orange with Cream pink, painted black sectors using a Mavala Black polish and nail art brush, and added white dots covered with turquoise.

 The thumb got a simple design: a line of dots in alternating colours. (In a hurry? me?!?)

Let's see what others have created today:

Tri-Polish Challenge: Sunset Beach

I know I'm still in the middle of the ABC challenge, but I ran into another, simply brilliant one in FB and I just had to join it.

The challenge is run by Debbie at The Crumpet, and it's called the Tri-Polish Challenge.
The idea is to pick three polishes of the colours given in each month's challenge, and post four manicures using those polishes on the last two tuesdays and thursdays of each month. In addition to the chosen polishes, we're allowed free use of white, black, gold and silver (which really is a blessing!!)

 The colours of April are orange, turquoise and pink. I let out a little yay, because I've really been needing some brights in my life. So my polish picks are China Glaze Papaya Punch, China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise and Sinful Colors Cream Pink. Guess how many naughty words I had to use when I noticed all of these polishes were extremy hard to photograph on the nail...

And when I say hard to photograph, this is what I mean:

Kaboom!!! For the rest of the pics I had to grab my battery charger to get some white in the pic. It helped my poor camera a little..

Anyways, for this first day I made a base with Papaya Punch, and then proceeded to wet sponge gradient with all the three colours.

 The palm trees are stamped with Konad Black special polish and BM-315. I freehanded the lovers using black polish and a toothpick, and then stamped the hearts from m59. Lastly, I filled out some of the hearts with a toothpick and CP. A coat of Seche Vite set it all perfectly.

Now, let's see what all the other talented participants have been up to: