Dotty Dot Dot... Pastel Flowers

The Spring is here!! That simply calls for a flowery, pastel-y manicure!

 I shopped some Essence colours on clearance a while ago. I had read a tip about If I were a boy - and I'm glad I took it! The best pastel blue creme I've seen!

When I came home I noticed that I happened to have bought a green, a blue and a purple in matching tones! Combining them was a must.

This manicure is made with:
Essence
If I Were a Boy (blue)
Oktoberfest LE Mauserl (green)
Oh My Glitter (purple)

I took inspiration for these flowers from Misscelinas pic I saw in Pinterest. I tried to find a link for you to the corresponding blog post, but didn't find it. Go check her awesome blog out anyways - just click her name above!!

TPC: Spun Sugar and Dots

Here comes -at last- the Tri polish Tuesday manicure from last week. This has been a crazy week!

The base here is Barielle Make it a Latte – the only clearly brown polish I've got with me.

First I added some spun sugar with Barielle The Pink of Fashion. The polish worked extremely well for this technique - and it's a pink - so a total winner for spun sugar!

I also did a couple spins with OPI Skull and Glossbones - and used the two polishes for double dots. All the pics are without top coat - although I did add some later on for wearability..

An InLinkz Link-up

GOT Polish: Springtime Flowers

Is it a bit early for springtime flowers? Well, I don't care!
This is my green mani for the GOT polish challenge

The base polish here Essence Fruity LE "Kiwi". I had to paint four coats, but the result was really nice with the glitters peeking through the polish.

The ring finger is the accent finger again, with Essie Navigate Her and sponging with Color Club The Lime Starts Here.

And then I added rhinestones to a flower shape. What a cutesy-flowery style! Although I could have used a thinner topcoat... ahem...

 On other fingers I added stamping with Konad white and DRK-A, and then some yellow dots with Orly Spark.

The pics didn't turn out too well – lobster hands, bubbling top coat, cuticles in bad shape and all that... But I really loved this manicure! I'll have to give this style another go soon, maybe even with more murky colour palette or jewel tones... Hmmm...

An InLinkz Link-up

GOT Polish: Blue Matte and Holo Dots

This GOT polish dots themed manicure features an oldie glitter topper and some play with matte and sparkle.

Essence Hello Holo sat in the untrieds for a LONG time. And if I say a long time, it's not about days or weeks, rather months or years... Somehow I thought nothing much about it, but it really is a nice and sparkly topper.

 I begun the mani with two coats of Catrice How I Matt Your Mother.
In accent fingers I added some dots with Essence Nail Art topper in Hello Holo.
The thumb got a coat of Hello Holo, topped with Essence soft touch top coat.

This manicure was inspired by some other blogger - and I'm so bummed I can't find the design anymore!! Please shout out if you have done something similar in the past! I'd love to give you the credit!

 I like to wear dark colours when I occasionally file my nails down to nubbins. I feel the dark plums, deep burgundys and blackened colours look too heavy on real talons my nails so often are - I'm a bit lazy in keeping them short :)

An InLinkz Link-up

TPC: Dot dot dot

And here comes my second take on January Tri Polish colours. I'm still going strong with the only yellow polish I have in my travel stash...

For todays challenge I made a simple dotticure ombre - which turned out a bit controversial.

The base is Rimmel Fruities Lemon Drop, and the dots were made with Revlon Red gradually mixed with Lemon Drop.

I had high hopes the mix would become the orange creme I don't have here with me. I have never been so wrong! You should have seen my facepalm, when I saw the mix was turning into pink!!

I hope this is still passable for the January Tri polish challenge, where the colours were red, orange and yellow! I mean, it's still made with yellow and red polishes only! What do you think?

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:

M - Mermaid's Tears

With this post I'm halfway through the ABC -challenge. Yay!!! I'm already planning for manicures I'll do when I'm "free"..

This dotticure is the result of one of those times, when you just happen to glimpse at two polishes side by side on your desk/rack/in a drawer, and suddenly see they have to be used together in a mani.

 Here the match made in heaven was OPI Mermaid's Tears & China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy. To the prettiest greyed out jade of MT I just added an accent nail and some randomly placed, random sized dots, and that was it.

 

Yes, these are simple and yes, these got a lot of love - mostly from me :)

Green Monarch

This is one of my better manis, and I couldn't stop snapping photos.. Imagine me trying to pick out six from tens of pics, and still thinking they don't do justice to my ten little babies...

The base here is Kiko 396, three coats.

 It was a really amazing duochrome on the nail (just take a look at the bottle!), but I seemed to catch mostly the green tones with my camera. Well, believe me, there is a lot of blue and gold, too.

 On the base I added random sponging with Essence Holografics Blue Ray - which is not holographic, as you know, but a pretty duochrome-ish polish after all.

 I decided at last to give the Monarch butterly mani a try - inspired mainly by the butterfly image on a new Bundle Monster plate.

 I painted the lines with konad Black and dotted the dots with Konad white. These special polishes aren't the best for line drawing, but I didn't have anything else at hand. Don't try this at home, if you don't have to!

Oh, and the stamped butterflies come from BM307.

 I wore this manicure a whole week -a crazy busy week, that is. I was in the organization of a festival, and had absolutely NO time to do my nails. I came home at night, collepsed into my bed, and woke up next morning to the sound of my telephones ringing. Exhausting and intensive but incredibly fun and definitely worth it. And, even better, my nails lasted with me the whole week - except the bit of a tipwear you see in these pics. That's how I like my manicures!

Red Ombre

Sometimes you feel your life is totally out of your hands. All the big things go to ass's arse, and the more you try to do about it, the more mess you make.

 Then it's the perfect time to take out your swatchsicles (or stamp collection, or whatever makes you tick). You organize it once again, marvel your collection, play around with it and get to organize everything again. And bit by bit you forget all your bad stuff -at least for a moment- and start to think everyhting is organizable if you take it in small enough portions.

 This is one of my best ever ombre manicures, created on one of those days full of swatchsicle therapy. I love the effect, how the polishes were almost the same colour unless you followed the whole colour change from pinky to thumb or the other way round. I'm sure I left a few people wondering, if they saw what they thought...

 The polishes from pinky to thumb are:
Essie Orange, It's Obvious
Essence Colour&go Wake Up!
China Glaze Pure Torture
OPI Off With Her Red
Essence Circus Circus Applause Applause red creme

To approach the fine world of "nail art" I added some somple white dots with Mavala white. I felt like Minnie Mouse! :)

I liked being dotty, but it was a shame the dots hid most of the ombre effect. In this case, I couldn't have it all.

Yellow and Blue

Another cutesy-daisy -mani for you, this time in yellow and blue.

Accent finger was painted with four coats of Essence Urban Messages Wall of Fame, the others with Essence 50's girls You're a Heartbreaker. The dots and the bow were painted (or rather, dotted) with a dotting tool.

 Both took three coats for perfection, but application was easy with both of these. And the layers dried fast.

 I wore this when we moved house last time (a month ago - I'm a bit behind here..), so some tipwear is included in the pics. Hope you don't mind, but like the colour combo as much as I did! And see the shimmer in both of the polishes?

Interlocking Glitter Skittle

Again a manicure for getting to play with my swatchsicles and getting some polishes out from my untrieds.

The base is two/three coats of Catrice I Wear My Sunglasses at Night. I was a little disappointed with the glitter effect on the nail - or the lack of it. It is much more visible in these pics than IRL, even if you place your nails right under your nose.

I went on to paint interlocking diagonals with (from pinky to thumb, left hand):
Orly Vip
Essence Circus Circus Cotton Candy glitter
Nicole by OPI My Sleigh's in the Shop
Milani Purple Gleam and
China Glaze Skyscraper.

And this is the right thumb:
Milani Silver Dazzle

As always, the greatest fun was organizing my swatchsicles, choosing the colours and just fooling around.

There you can see the ones I chose and also the ones that didn't make it.
The two Milanis were the worst topcoat eaters, propably because they are so dense that the glitter pieces sit on the top of each other. Well, there's nothing that three coats (!) of Seche Vite couldn't handle..

 Generally I loved the most the Nicole by OPI and Milani Silver Dazzle. I'd say it's because they have the clearest contrast with the base. Which brings to me an idea of interlocking mani with contrasting colours.. hmm...

Funny how these glitter polishes remind me of those glitter glues we used to buy before christmas to decorate christmas cards, and which were totally equally useless every time..

I had marvelled at these interlocking manis before in some blogs, and making my own was really quite easy. I used scotch tape to line out a diagonal section for the glitter, and then a dotting tool to make the "interlocking" lines of dots.

By the way... I love saying glitter skittle.. :) Try it!