Z – Zoya Ziv

To end the year of polishing and the ABC challenge, I've got the most beautiful golden polish for you: Zoya Ziv.

This manicure also sports OPI Red Shatter. I was soooo over and done with crackles, until I tried out this one (my first OPI shatter). Now I'm in love again! It looks so fab over white on my swatchsicles, too! I want to try it on every colour. How about a bright blue next?

On the thumb and the ring finger I sponged Lacquistry Devil's Dandruff, some red glitter from Essence Applause Applause (from the Circus Circus collection) and some Wet'n'Wild Fergie collection No Place Like Home. I also added a tear shaped rhinestone (probably from eBay).

The manicure turned out quite Christmass-y - appropriate for the season, although a bit late :)

This is it, then, my dearest readers! The ABC challenge finally over, I've got new awesome nail challenges and projects in store for the next year. Happy New Year to all of You!!

Gutter Snow

The first layer of snow this winter has landed! Somehow it's horrible and marvellous at the same time... I don't know what made me want to to celebrate it - with a manicure, of course.

I've had this polish waiting for quite a long time. Mainly because it's clearly a layering polish, but I couldn't decide which colour and tone I should layer it on. It could look fab over darker colours (the iridescent glitter!!), but then the black glitter wouldn't show. And if i choose something in between, what colour should it be...?  Does this ever happen to you? I really wish I had a personal manicure design assistant at home...

 Then it struck me! I'll layer it over an ombre!!

As the base I made an ombre from grey to black. The polishes used were (from pinky to thumb)
OPI I Vant to be A-lone Star
Essence Twins Romeo
A England Dorian Gray
Essence 50's girls You're a Heartbreaker
Essence Circus Circus My Sparkling Acrobat black creme

Each nail then got a warm winter coat of Lacquistry Gutter Snow. And what a beauty it is!! Just look at the iridescent tiny glitter over any of these base colours! Jenna, the creator of this and other fab Lacquistry polishes can really be proud of herself!

The black hexes took some fishing, but otherwise the application was a breeze. And all it took to even out was a single coat of Sehe Vite.

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..

Q - Frozen Queen

The ABC challenge is still alive!

 I didn't own any polishes starting with the letter Q. I considered of buying one, but I didn't find anything at the stores that I really liked. Hello, polish companies!! How difficult would it be to make a gorgeous beige blingy polish and name it "Queen of the Desert"?

Anyways, I had a polish which at least has the letter Q in its name. Here you see three coats of Essence Colour&go Frozen Queen.

 

I added a coat of Wet 'n' wild Fergie collection New Years Kiss on all the other fingers, and gave the ring finger a dab of Lacquistry I Wear My Jewelry On My Nails with some random rhinestones.

This manicure is one of those that made me love my nubbins. This might have been a bit trashy on my usual talons, but on nubbins this leaned more on the sweet side. Do you feel there's a difference on designs for longer and shorter nails?

H - Hunt Me if You Can

My H polish in the ABC challenge is Essence Hunt Me if You Can. It's a great black shade with silver and multicolour shimmer. This is two easy coats.

For this cutesy-pie manicure I decided to combine two of the designs I've got on my Awesome Manicures board at Pinterest. Thank you Nailasaurus for the splatter idea and Kayono for the penguin!

To all fingers but the ring finger I did a splatter with Gosh Silver and Kleancolor Metallic Orange.

 The ring finger got a penguin design with the same colours. The penguin was really easy to make, please google for a tutorial and make your own!

On the thumb I made a tape manicure using Lacquistry Cosy Fire and OPI Pirouette My Whistle

And of course I had to matify with Essence Soft Touch topper.

By the way, Kleancolor Metallic Orange is almost a one coater and looks great on its own. Awesome quality for a dollar! It stained my gel nails a bit, though, so be careful with this one.

This manicure is one of my favourites for a long time. Plus it was fun to photograph it matified, without having to worry about reflections. This mani, especially the "who, me" penguin, made me smile many times, and I hope it did it for you, too! Sometimes, when your life is a mess, such a small thing can make a difference for a moment: a fun memory or, say, a penguin on your nails.

No H8!

Lately I've seen a lot of posts against bullying in the nail blog world and a bunch of beautiful no hate manicures, and I had to add mine.

 Actually I really felt the urge to do this manicure and post it after reading Veronicas post at her blog "Gorgeois". 

She shares her story of being bullied in a way that is very touching, extremely mature plus totally brave. I really admire her for that, and I relate to her post more than I would actually want to.

 Basically, her idea (and mine) is that you don't win hate by creating more hate. You can choose to act against bullying if you have the resources, you can choose to concentrate on the good things in your life, you can let people know they're making a mistake or acting thoughtlessly (as we all do from time to time), but fostering hate does not get you anywhere.

Alright, end of rant and onto the polish...
The base polishes I used for this "Love, no H8" manicure were Essence Show your feet Purple Magic and China Glaze Señorita Bonita.

On the pinky I stamped a partial image from BM209 with Gosh Silver. On the ring finger of my right hand there's the No H8 logo with the polishes mentioned in this post together with Mavala Black, and left hand has a flower sort of thingy. Middle finger boasts Lacquistry Lilacquistry.

And the pointer is coated with the lovely Nfu'Oh 50, plus a black heart stud. I felt the heart stud was really appropriate - to exclamate love in all its richness and variety of forms, to leave behind any hate cycles that could entagle us all.

I Wear Anything I Want On My Nails

The title of this post is, obviously, a bad pun from the Lacquistry polish name "I Wear my Jewelry on my Nails". But seriously, I do wear anything I want on my nails. At work, at funerals, visiting relatives, washing the dishes, lifting weights, working at our house construction site...
And I like it!!!

Of course, other peoples' opinions and feelings matter, but I'm the one who decides what is appropriate. I feel so lucky right now, when I know there are so many talented, fun and beauty-loving ladies out there in the world, who aren't allowed decide for themselves, for their dress or love or nails. I can't even say, if I'm more pissed off or sad...

Ok, end of rant, onto the polish.
The polish on my three fingers here is Color Club Pardon My French topped with a coat of Lacquistry I Wear my Jewelry on my Nails.

Then I created a fugly glitter sandwich on ring fingers with Essence Fruity Peach Beauty
and Essence Nail Art Twins Blair (By the way, who is the twin of this one? I've never seen it in the stores..? The only Blair that comes to my mind right now is Tony Blair, the British ex prime minister...)

It's an odd polish, this one. When you look at it in the bottle, you're sure there is some black/charcoal glitter mixed in. Or at least the base is kinda smoky.. But no, it's "just" different sizes of silver glitter and a bunch of tiny holo glitters in a clear base. Odd! But beautiful!

Sweet Hook for Marbling

Today I've got a sweet lilac water marble for you.

Water marbling was really frustrating at first, but now I've learned to love it. Of course the result can be awesome, but I particularly love the process itself: taking my time on a peaceful sunday afternoon, testing different polishes, crowding the dining room table with all my nail stuff, doing one nail at a time and making everyone marvel it...

I liked this a lot, although some of the nails came out a little wonky. (Don't look at my left middle finger..) I feel the most difficult phase in marbling is the dip, and it's easier to do with the right hand, so it's usually the right hand which comes out better. That's what happened here, too.

The base is two coats of China Glaze Sweet Hook - one of the three polishes I decided to get from the spring collection. You've propably seen a million swatches of that, so none of them here.

I did the marble with SH, Flormar U15 and Essence Show your feet Purple Magic. As I've written before, the Flormars are great for marbling. The only problem with them is that they sometimes bleed to some other colours. So some testing is required before the real marbling can begin - as always.

As the final touch I decided to give the ring fingers one coat of Lacquistry Lilacquistry. I love the name almost as much as I love the polish! I want to try that on every colour!! I've got in my mind an awesome purple-teal combo, for instance..

 And here are the polishes I used for the marble.

China Glaze Sweet Hook
Flormar U15
Essence Show your feet Purple Magic

And as the sweet end, I'd like to promote the Just Add Polish's sweet giveaway, where US participants could win the either the Zoya Beach or Surf collection. And there's an option for us internationals, too - any two NfuOh's for example!! Go and participate!

The Girl Who Was (by the cosy) Fire

I'm a little late with this one, but today's mani is my take on The Girl Who Was in Fire nails. I saw a lot of those when the movie premiered, and some fine hand painted mockingjays, too! So I decided to take a different course...

I woke up to the existence of The Hunger Games books only when the polish collection from China Glaze came out, had just run out of easy reading for the train trips, and decided to download the books on my iPad. Yes, they seemed to be directed to teen audience, and yes, I stayed up reading until 3 o'clock one night when I couldn't put the book down.

The base is two coats of Catrice Bring Me Terra Copper (what does this polish name refer to, anyway?), a dead dupe for Essence Colour&Go Be Optimistic from the same manufacturer. This isn't the first time this has happened with Catrice and Essence...

I had the Lacquistry Cosy Fire still in my untrieds (shame on me!), and of course I had to use it for this mani! I sponged it near the cuticles, and topped off with Seche Vite.

On the accent nails I did a water marble with Borghese Notte Black, BMTC and OPI Bling Dynasty. I'd say the water marble turned out ok. I went through a lot of polishes though, and was desperate because none of them seemed to spread well and not blend with each other.

Here are the polishes:

Lacquistry Cosy Fire
Catrice Bring Me Terra Copper
Borghese Notte Black
OPI Bling Dynasty