Musical Month: Ingrid

The musical month continues with the new song Niina chose for us.
Today's inspiration is Johanna Kurkela's beautiful song called 'Ingrid'

The lyrics (of the chorus – no way I'm translating the whole song!!) in English would be something around these lines:
""Today I'm cheerful, look at me -
doing my work with a smile on my lips.
And you're so blind to see
how I'm exhausted down till fingertips.""

I wanted to illustrate the dark and the light side we all have in us – and I definitely wanted to add a dash of hope in the form of wheat stalks. I believe we all have the seed for good in us, which we can foster and let grow to something beautiful – and also nourishing for others – with the right people  and love around us. The album cover was also clearly shot on a field, so maybe that's where the crop idea came from...

The base colours were picked from my oldies – as I have already packed my fave new polishes and shipped them to Spain where we are going to move shortly. The dark polish is Essence Urban Messages Nightline (it's definitely more blue IRL than in these pics), and the light peach is Nicole by OPI Persuasive Peach. They both needed four coats Now I remember, why I didn't pack them...

I picked the colours, and the idea for sponging, from the cover art of the album, which I really appreciate in so many ways. That's exactly the kind of landscape I watch from my desk at home, ever changing with the turn of the seasons, and I love it!

For the dark stamping, I mixed Konad's shimmery blue and Mundo de Unhas black stamping polishes. The bronze stamping polish is Kiko mirror 629.

The wheat stalk image came from Born pretty plate BP-L007, and the swirly image from BM-314. The latter is one of my most trusted stamping templates. It seems to save every manicure heading for disaster..  I actually have to stop myself to putting it on every other mani I make. Do you have those images, which just simply call your name every day?

But enough about me! The other girls have made awesome nails, too! Go and see at least Janina's art at her blog "Never grow up"!

Musical Month: You Learn

Nail art community is a wonderful thing – and dangerous in a way! How many times you have emptied your wallet because of a fellow nail maniac? How many times you have jumped onboard a crazy challenge without knowing where it might take you? And how many times have you enjoyed the ride immensely?

 Well, the latter two are what I did just recently. With a few Finnish nail artists we decided to go for a music related challenge this month. Basically, everyone picks two songs – an oldie and a new favorite – to inspire the nail art of others, all weekend. And this weekend is mine! :)

My "oldie" is Alanis Morissette's You Learn from the album Jagged Little Pill. It might just be THE comfort&motivation song for the girls in my generation. I still drive around with the CD in my car, and pop it in when I need uplift and want to sing my lungs out like no one's listening (and I make sure no one is..)

 I took my inspiration partly from the song itself, and partly from the album cover:

 And, of course, I made a holo version. Holo all the things!!! :D

I used Color Club Harp On It as a base, and sponged on other holo pretties: Girly Bits Too Hot for Pants, A England Tristam and A England Saint George.

I chose to stamp from the plate BP-71, with A England Saint George.

You live you learn
You love you learn
You cry you learn
You lose you learn
You bleed you learn
You scream you learn

 You grieve you learn
You choke you learn
You laugh you learn
You choose you learn
You pray you learn
You ask you learn
You live you learn

These wise lyrics were written by 20 year old Alanis Morissette. Now there's a benchmark :)

My new musical favorite coming up tomorrow! Meanwhile, check out the other girls' nail art!

Links coming soon!

Coral Nails (Not Including Coral Polish)

The other night I asked the Hubby THE QUESTION!

(No, it's not 'Will you marry me'  It's: 'How should I paint my nails')
:D

 And he answered: 'Paint corals!'
I have absolutely no idea, where that came from. We have never seen corals. We are not planning a diving holiday. We haven't even watched a documentary with corals on it.
But corals he said, and corals it was.

I painted a base with two coats of Zoya Wednesday, and sponged on a slight gradient using Wednesday, Sinful Colors Cinderella and a random white polish.

The stamping was made with Mundo de Unhas 13 which is a Reddish orange stamping polish, and DRK-A plate.

To top it all, I chose from my untrieds the Liquid Sky Lacquer Great White. You see one coat over Wednesday in the index finger - and some dabs on the other nails. Just watch the gorgeous shimmer!! The Great White fits in perfectly to the theme! ... This coral reef isn't safe anymore.... Watch out you little fish.... Duunn dun... dunnn dun...

GOT Polish: Rays of Light

This is my most fitting manicure ever to post for the GOT (golden oldies thursday) polish challenge, where the theme today is 'stripes'.

 

 I had the base polish in my untrieds for a year or so before using it for this manicure – and then I forgot all about the manicure and the pics, so that all the material you're seeing here ha been lying in the vault for a year or so. Definitely an oldie!!

The base is two coats of Essence Crazy Good Times Candyction – an awesome jelly-ish brightest red with glass flecks. Why on earth did I let this polish stay untried for so long?!?

 

I then sponged on some random spots with Primark unnamed neon yellow polish (stinky as heck!), did a cris cross pattern with striping tape, and topped them off with Finger Paints Winter Sky. I used a coat of SecheVite to smooth out the surface.

It may not be the prettiest manicure I've ever done, but it's definitely one of the most... hmm... original? Interesting? Personal?

An InLinkz Link-up

GOT Polish: Pink Barbed

Another challenge for me this year is participating in the Golden Oldies Thursday a.k.a. GOT polish challenge. The idea is to show some love to our golden oldies, polishes that we've had for a long time. You can read more at the Crumpet. My participation also has something to do with me moving temporarily out of the country and having to choose only a fraction of my collection to carry with me. But you will hear more of that soon...

The first theme in this challenge was 'Pink'. Lucky me! This polish (and her sisters – I had to buy the whole line) are ones I've had for a looooonnngg time. Every time I use them, I love them, but then I somehow forget about them. Shame on me, because they_are_awesome!

The pink here is Manhattan 51k. It glides on like butter, with absolutely no streaking, running, bubbling or anything like that.

Why do we start taking these perfect and faithful polishes -and sometimes people- for granted, forgetting to be thankful for their existence?  That stops right here! Thank you, all you lovely readers, lovely polishes and all my dearest ones, just for being there!

Ok, back to the business!  For this manicure I stamped on barbed wire from BM323 and used a kitchen sponge with Mavala white to the tips. Voilà! Now let's see what the others have been up to..

An InLinkz Link-up

Orange in a Sandwich

One of the projects I've got for the new year is to catch up again with the Tri polish Tuesdays run by the Crumpet. And here is my first manicure in January colours: red, orange and yellow.

I started out with two coats of IsaDora peel off base coat. Then I painted on two coats of OPI Y'all Come Back Ya Hear and sponged on with a moist sponge some Revlon's Revlon Red. This phase looked delicious!

 Then I added a coat of a yellow glitter topper: Formula X for Sephora Mind Blowing.

Lastly I sandwiched the glitter between coats of Y'all Come Back etc. And added two coats of Seche Vite. So altogether there was 10 coats of polish on my nails! Wow! No wonder they felt a bit thick...

 This was fun, I posted it in time, and I am happy. I've deserved some Lindor while I look what the others have done this Tuesday :)

V - VIP

Look who's doing another ABC challenge post! Only five letters left...

Today I'm going with Orly VIP for the letter V.

I have to admit I had difficulties with this one - that is, I almost didn't find a V polish in my stash until I ran through the minis. And there it was, this sweet little bottle of glitter.

The base polishes I used here are Gosh Diva in pinky, middle and thumb and Color Club Miss Bliss in ring and index fingers.

Then I added a sponging of Orly VIP on pinky, index and thumb; striping tape stripes on pinky with VIP; and stamping from Pueen 05 with Kiko mirror 616 onto the middle finger.

I have been loving the textured polish trend lately, so I left the glitter stripes without a top coat. You can really see the texture in this pic - and I liked it! How about you? Do you prefer to feel the polish or are you a smooth operator?

We Have a Winner!!

Remember the giveaway I had?

We have a winner - And she is:

Katariina

Congratulations!!
She has been sent the prize, and hopefully she has already received it and is now messing around with these topper goodies..

Thank you for all my followers, old and new, for sharing your polish shopping tips and other thoughts with me in this giveaway! I can't tell you how much the interaction with you means to me!

Here's a pic of a mani I wore recently to keep your interest up :) I used a Manhattan polish, Mavala white polish sponged on the tips and stamped on the barbed wire from a BM plate.
There is more to come - in the nail art front as well as the interaction front...

Event Nails in Gold, Silver and Black

First and foremost I'll have you know, that you still have almost two days leave your entry in my 100 FOLLOWERS GIVEAWAY ! Get on and win some awesome top coats!

And then to some more nail fun! Recently (or, ahem, a month ago) we had a reunion of local nail enthusiasts at Pirkanmaa region, Finland,  where I live at least for the summer. We had raffles, voted for the prettiest nails, got to know each other, ate well and generally had a BLAST!

This is how the table looked before we really got off...

...and this is how it was post- goodie bags and polish exchange.. :D This chaos spells out F-U-N to me!

 Here are the nails I did for the event. I was one of the prettiest nails prize winners, by the way... The base is Barry M Gold foil - except on the accent fingers I used Black Bird, Seppälä by Tiia Vanhatapio.

You can't really see it in the pics, but I did a sponging over gold with Mercury, Seppälä by Tiia Vanhatapio, which is a silver foil polish. But on the nail it just disappeared.. The stamping is done  with Konad black and BM-309.

Accent nails have some Orly Sashay My Way and gold glitter from Essence Circus Circus My Sparkling Acrobat. The silvery glitter is Lacquistry I Wear My Jewelry on my Nails, with some random rhinestones from eBay.

In the next post I'll tell you in some more detail about all the goodies we got..