Black Lace

I was pestering my husband the other day asking for nail art ideas. At the end he told me to go paint on some black lace and call it "Black Lace". So that's what I did.

The base on most of the fingers is two coats of Essence Colour&Go Wake Up!, and orange/red very opaque creme and a dupe for Essie's later shade "Orange, It's obvious". I've used it before in my rainbow mani, but it had to wait this long to be worn on its own. It really was almost one coater, and the application reminded me of smooth cream. These little paint pots are amazing!

On the accent finger I painted two coats of China Glaze Papaya Punch. Application was a lot trickier with this one, some pooling and dragging was definitely involved.

The needed lace pattern came from m57, stamped with Konad black special polish.

I also tried a taped stamping on the accent finger with BM 225, but didn't like the result too much. Meh. But here are the polishes:

China Glaze Papaya Punch
Essence Colour&Go Wake Up!

Day 25: Inspired by Fashion

It's time for a somewhat embarassing statement: I don't really follow fashion. At least fashion as in designers, runways, collections, trends and so on. I just go to a store, preferably vintage/secondhand, and buy what I like. Yes, I'm a simple mind.

So todays challenge is not featuring "my favourite designer" or anything from the "2011 fall/winter collection" (except a polish maybe..). I was just instantly inspired with this fun bra I almost bought during a fun visit at Victoria's Secret.

(I'm not in the pic, BTW) (See more of this and other styles here in the Victoria's Secret website)
This mani is as simple as two to three layers of China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint, the accent finger stamped with Konad Princess Special polish in dark violet and Konad plate m57. In between of two coats of Seche Vite I added some clear rhinestones (from eBay).

Accent finger. Ac-cent fing-er. Ak-cent fing-ger. ['æksɛnt 'fɪŋgər]. You've gotta learn that word if you're gonna stick with this blog! You'll be seeing it a lot...

Does it happen with your rhinestones, that they kind of lose their shine when you put topcoat over them? Is it because they become more round and the light has less reflecting surfaces? Or does the plastic somehow react with the topcoat? It's annoying when it happens..

Day 6: Violets are White

Today's design is shamelessly copied from the ever-awesome Emily's Nail Files. See Emily's perfect design here!! And if you like her blog, go vote her in the Cosmopolitan Blog Awards - link in Emily's blog.
Now onto my take on the subject..

Planning my violet nails started with finding out what does "violet" actually mean. It seems that it's generally meant to be a blue-toned purple, withwavelength of 380-450nm and frequency of 800-715THz. See more here. Thus there are a lot of different violets out there, but a true violet is not just any purple and it's cousin, noo-o.

I chose my violet to be OPI Planks a Lot from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection. And I had to add an accent nail of OPI Mermaid's Tears from the same collection and my recent haul.

Planks a Lot took three layers to be opaque, and there still was some lighter patches. I wonder, was it because I only have the mini and the brush is not so perfect in them? Mermaid's Tears was almost opaque with one coat. I loved everything about it, the formula, brush, colour, everything. I'll have to wear it as a whole mani some day..

I dabbed some NfuOh 50 to the tips. For the stamping I used Konad Special polish in pearl white and m57. I tidied some of the flowers up with Essence Nail art pen in silver white. For the vines&leaves I tried to use the same OPI polishes as for the base colours, but Planks a Lot was too thin for it. So I picked up a purple Konad Princess special polish.

When I compared my version with Emily's, I felt that my own needed some more glitter. (I also felt like a complete freehand noob with two left hands.) So I slabbed on some Essence Nail art twins Edward, which is a clear base with holo microglitter, medium blue and green round glitter and large green glitter rectangles.

 And finally, here are all the polishes I used. I absolutely love the Nfu'Oh bottle with the corset cap!

By the way, I changed my template and added a Wishlist&swaps tab. Any thoughts? Please vote in the poll in the sidebar!