Thanksgiving Marble

I hope you've all had a fantastic start for the holiday season, whether it's national, religious or all holidays you're celebrating!

This is a mani I wore for thanksgiving. We don't really celebrate that here where I live. But, personally, I have adopted it as the day to be conscious and thankful of all my loved ones, family and friends – and to say aloud how much I love and appreciate them. And I don't need turkey for that, although I tend to show love with cooking :)

The base in this manicure is three coats of Orly Revere. It's pretty, but I'm still looking for the perfect orange shimmer with opacity in max. two coats... Suggestions, anyone?

I added some simple dry needle marbling with autumn shades:
Revlon parfumerie Autumn Spice (the dark brown one)

Orly Reflection (the golden one)

Orly Radiant (the red one)

Don't know if I should say this, but this was one of the manicures that didn't look this good in person. Well, for once it was that way round...

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:

Christmas Baubles

This is the absolutely last and final Christmas mani this year. Promise! Actually I should be posting the day 31 of the challenge, but I decided to take this mani first before it's waaay too late.
This mani was made for a nail art contest in a Finnish nail blog called Pastel Dreams (my sorry translation, the original is "Pastelliunelmia"). It was the fist time I take part into one and guess what! I won! Woo-hoo! There are some nail goodies in the mail just for me. Meanwhile, you all can go and check out the most pink, fun and girly nail art blog there is!

My idea for the Christmas-themed contest was a Christmas tree and a close-up of the Christmas baubles. I started out with festive base colours and layered different shimmers on them. Then I outlined the shape of the baubles with different shades of green and added roundess with a swipe of glitter. 

For the accent finger I drag marbled the Christmas tree with some rhinestones as the mini baubles. The idea for the Christmas tree was from this drag marble tuto by Colette from My Simple Little Pleasures. I'd seen Colette doing it in the vid with reverse colours, and remember thinking: "Wow, that would look just like a Christmas tree if the colours were the other way round".

And here's a list of all the polishes I used:
Blue: Sally Hansen complete salon manicure Fairy Teal, Orly It's up to Blue and Revlon Blue Mosaic
Red: Alessandro Virgin Temptation, OPI Love is a Racket, Nicole by OPI Orna-ment for Each Other, China Glaze Love Marilyn
Silver: China Glaze Devotion, Gosh Silver, Essence Nail Art Twins Julia
Gold: OPI Bling Dynasty, OPI Pros and Bronze
Greens: Color Club Artsy Crafty, a bit of China Glaze Westside Warrior and Color Club Nouveau Vintage

The next post will be the end of the 31 Day challenge - "recreate your favourite challenge". Lo and behold: the end is near! (Both for the challenge and this year!)

Day 14: Dotting Tool Flowers

Today's flower design is just some simple dotting tool flowers I made to match a blouse I wore for work.

I still don't own an opaque pale pink polish. For this mani I used three coats of Crisnail French Lacquer to achieve some kind of a pink base. I've seriously got to get my hands on some Zoya nudes soon!

I dotted some dots in flower shape with a medium sized dotting tool, and then dragged the dots towards the center with a smaller one to form petals. A kind of dry marble, that is? Polishes used were Essence Colour&go Fabuless and Nivea Color Dynamite Blue Harmony.

Not one of my favourites, but went well with the blouse. :)

Drag Marble Study

I was testing out polishes for drag marbles the other day. Drag marbling is my favourite instant oomph for a mani, really versatile and fast to create. Base colour here is the Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl in all of the nails, and I went through most of my cheap yet pigmented polishes rack on the top of it.

Basically you dab three dots of one colour with the nail polish brush on the side of your nail, and add two dots in between them with another colour. Then just get swirling with a dotting tool, toohtpick, bobby pin, or whatever you've got. Besides the colour combination, the important thing are the consistency and amount of the polish. Too thin polish or too much of it, and you end up with a swirly mess like the yellow and green attempt on my middle finger. Too dry dots and you're left scraping the base off, like with the orange and red on my index finger.

I almost ran out of nails before I found my favourite combination, here on my left thumb. The colours are Sinful Colors Cream Pink and Essence Colour&go Fabuless.