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 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

P - Pink-A-Boo

The ABC Challenge is still going strong... Well, maybe not strong (it's been a while since my latest post), but going anyway.

 My P polish is a sweet one with a sweet name from Essie: Pink-A-Boo. A beautiful glass flecked baby pink polish, I knew I'd have to get from the moment I first saw it. How perfect would it be, if it just wasn't this sheer!! (and this pic is with underwear!!)

 This is a mani I wore to the Cosmobelleza beauty event under the gaze of hundreds of beauty enthusiasts – so it had to be perfect. And I was really quite happy with it.

My manicure is two coats of Essie Pink-A-Boo with underwear, which is two coats of Sally Hansen Complete Peachy Keen. I also did two accent fingers, left pinky and right pointer with two coats of Essie She's Picture Perfect.

Next I freehanded a camo using the polish brush and dotting tool for final touches, with NYX Girls Perfect Gray and Catrice Lucky in Lilac.

Left pinky was matified with BeYu Mat Top Coat, and I glued on a silver stud. Left pointer got some striping tape and a sponging of Milani Purple Gleam. Right pinky was coated with a generous dabbing of Yes Love D11, a 75 cent polish from a chinese bazaar. Right pointer got stamping with Gosh Silver and DRK-A -plate. And, at the end, all nails except the matified one got a good coat of Seche Vite.

And here are all the polishes. Phew!! I've never used this many tags in a single post before!

N - Navigate Her

My N polish of the ABC Challenge – Essie Navigate Her – is one I considered buying a million times: from an airport in Sweden, from a supermarket in Finland, from a beauty supply in Spain... You name it. 

And for once I'm happy I didn't buy it when I had it right under my nose. In all of the above this polish would have set me back for something like 15 euros. But on my latest trip to the US this beauty was waiting for me on the shelf of one innocent beauty supply for $3,50. 3,50!!! Seriously!!! That's like 2,70 euros, which is more than 5 times cheaper than here in Europe.

Ok, this is a first world problem, but sometimes the world is so unfair!! (It feels less unfair when I think of my free university degree and health insurance, though...)

I started out this manicure with two coats of Essie Navigate Her. Then I added a gradient sponging with Essie Absolutely Shore & AS mixed with white.

Finally, I added some stamping with Barry M Gold Foil.

All other patterns are from DRK-A, except the lightning bolts in the ring finger from BM305.

I loved this manicure, because it combined soft hues and sponging with bold patterns. Yet the result was somehow classy. One of my bestest friends once claimed, that you can't go wrong with reds, you can get a fun and sexy mani with blues, but green just looks odd on nails. Well, it doesn't!!

E – Excuse Moi!

The E-post of my ABC-challenge is almost all E's: Essence, Essie and Excuse Moi!

 I started out with Essence peel off basecoat, which was a disappointment. The peeling part did not go well with my gel nails, and I ended up accidentally peeling off some of my gels.. Ouch.

But the fun part of this manicure was the sandwiching: first a coat of Essie Movers & Shakers (a beautiful pink jelly, though I'm not quite 100% sure about the name, as this came without the tag), then a coat of OPI Excuse Moi!, and then repeating the two as necessary. One thick coat of Seche Vite was enough to smooth down all the grittiness.

 But of course I couldn't leave it to that, even though the result was so fruity and blingy...

I went on and matified the manicure with BeYu Mat top coat. And almost ate my fingers as candy... Omnomnom...

Happy New Year to all my readers!!! I hope this year will bring you more solutions than troubles, more joy than sadness, more love than insecurity, more peace than fear! And I hope I'll finish the ABC-challenge this year...

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.

Toothpick Tips

It's two days left to throw in your guess at my guessing game / mini giveaway here!
Meanwhile I've got some needle (or, rather, toothpick) marbling to show you.
This manicure idea is in no way my own, although I haven't seen this out in the blogging world lately. This was inspired by an ad I saw in a salon I frequent.

This one ows a lot to the tuto made by Liz at Liquid Jelly. Also this manicure by Jacki from Adventures in Acetone was a great source of inspiration.

First I freehanded a french tip using China Glaze White on White. It needed two coats, and if I hadn't known I'll be adding some nail art I would've made it three.

Next I brushed on two coats of Essie My Way - almost the perfect french polish. The perfect one would have just a tad more pink in it.

After adding a coat of SV and letting the base to dry out thoroughly, I put on one more, very thick thick, layer of My Way and dabbed some Essence Colour&Go Rock It Baby! on the very tips.
Then, using a toothpick, I drew some swirly lines, dragging the wet purple polish over the white french and over to the nude base.

On the next day I decided to add some bling by dabbing NfuOh 50 flakies onto the tips. I liked this mani a lot, both without and with flakies. In a few days I faced the familiar dilemma once again: I wanted to paint my nails, but I didn't want to remove my current mani. Does that ever happen to you?
And, as always, here are the polishes I used:

I remember buying the Essie My Way for certain grand festivities last spring, where I needed to wear something classic and neutral. And I remember using some baaad words when, painting my nails at the hairdresser's that morning, I noticed it's so sheer it needs a hundred coats and I don't have my Seche Vite with me. After that, I've only used it for layering and french manis two or three times, so almost all the polish you can see missing from the bottle went onto my nails on that single occasion... A love-hate relationship...

Nobody Else Butt You!

I wanna be loved by you, just you, nobody else butt you... Boop-boob-a-doop!

This valentine's mani was inspired by this heart fishtails mani in Chalkboard Nails. Sarah, the lovely blogger there, also calls the top of the heart the "heart's butt" - because that's what it looks like to her (and to me, now that she said it!). So that's why the title..

I wanted to copy her mani, but have the colours to be closer to each other. So I resorted to my new, handy and beloved swatchsicles. You can guess, how many polishes I have swatchsicled altogether! Just throw in a guess, you don't even have to be a polisher to participate! Follow the link at the end of this post.

By the way, I can't say "butt" without seeing this hilarious xerox scene from the movie Despicable Me in front of my eyes. I watched it once on a transatlantic flight. I must admit I know so much better ways to spend time on them...

First I tried to paint all nails in a similar colour combo starting with a base of Sally Hansen I Pink I Can, but I was too lazy to move from the sofa to my desk, painted my nails in bad lighting, and ended up with a patchy base. So I started again and decided to make it a kind of skittle, alternating the order of the colours.

The polishes used were Sally Hansen I Pink I Can, Revlon Bubble Gum, Essie Movers & Shakers, Nicole by OPI Pink Different and Orly Terracotta. As a base all were one coaters, except IPIC and M&S.

 You still have a few days to throw in a guess at my guessing game/mini giveaway! Go ahead!

Blue Boa

I never intended to do a snakeskin mani, but that's how it turned out to be. I just wanted to do something blue for a change, perhaps something that matches my blue/gray secondhand dress I feel at home in.

There's two coats of Essie Fair Game here. Stamping was made with Nivea Color Dynamite Blue Harmony and obviously the BM215. Stamping is not even near perfect but with this pattern it's not so obvious.

 And here's the dress - or at least a part of the pattern.

Finally, these are the polishes I used. You wouldn't recognize the Nivea from the mani - it's so much more grey there. Finding a polish to stamp on this Essie was a hard job. I wish I had some bottles of the China Glaze Romantique collection. Their finish seems to be near perfection for stamping. If anyone has extras.... (No, I didn't think you would.)