Little Strokes of Metal

Hi guys, for this post I have these silver strokes to share with you. I just had to do some art deco linework again. I like how elegant it looks, plus painting those thin lines with a striper brush somehow has a very therapeutic effect on me.

The striper polish I used is Janet #201. It's not very opaque, which causes each line to look different in terms of coverage. But I actually like that, I think it makes the look more dynamic. The smokey purple basecolor is How I Matt Your Mother from Catrice. It dries with a semi-matt, so-called "brushed metal effect", which isn't really visible in the picture, but I just loved the color and the formula is great. That was it for today, thanks for reading! :)

Inspiration manis for New Year's Eve

I can't believe New Year's Eve is already tomorrow! Time sure flies. But since 2016 has yet to come, I thought it would be fun to do a couple of New Year's Eve manis in one post to maybe give you some last-minute inspiration on what to wear on your nails. I've got a lot of pictures, so let's get cracking.

Semi-nude nails is something I tend to do more often lately. I'm not sure what it is, but there's just something about that bit of blank space that I find interesting. For the mani above I placed square pieces of tape at the top of each nail (at the cuticles) and painted the tips black. Then I filled in the gaps with gold linework, using a striper polish from Janet (#115). I really had a hard time deciding on how to fill those V-gaps, because the possibilities are just endless. You could fill it with a (stamped) pattern, a glitter polish, or with geometric shapes like in my last Christmas mani here, and even with nothing in the gaps, I think it still looks pretty neat.

For this one I used a dotting tool to make a firework-like pattern. I started with making a circle of six dots and then I added a line of dots after each dot. (Are you still with me?) It's a simple and fast way to create a fairly detailed design on the nails, plus you can easily combine it with an exciting glitter/shimmer/holographic/multichrome/etc. polish for the basecolor. Here I've opted for golden oldy Wild At Heart from Color Club.

Champagne! I like to combine this design with a shimmery blue, in this case Dorothy Who? on top of First Mate, both from China Glaze. You might've gotten a glimpse of this mani already if you've seen my new tutorial. If you haven't, go have a look at it here if you like it. It's easy-peasy to achieve!

Lastly I'd like to include my nude clouds mani from New Year's Eve 2011 to this inspiration post. For this mani I used my trusty cloud design. Again, an easy way to quickly spruce up your nails with just two or three colors. I can enjoy spending lots of time on my nails, but sometimes - especially in the hectic holiday season - a simple but effective design is very welcome! You can find the clouds tutorial here and the full post of this mani here.

I hope you all enjoyed this post and that it may have given you some inspiration for tomorrow night. Since I won't post until the new year, I'm wishing you all a very amazing and healthy new year in advance! See ya! :)

31 Day Challenge, day 22: Inspired by a Song

Hey everybody! I'm at day 22 of the 31 Day Challenge, which means I had to pick a song as inspiration. I never thought this challenge was going to be easy, but man, it was so much more difficult than I'd expected! A lot of songs have abstract titles, which are really hard to capture into something recognizable on the nails. And I did want to make something that people were able to recognize, rather than something artsy and abstract that could actually be anything. So I hope you guys indeed saw that pictured on my nails is a train. ;-) The symbolic train of John Mayer's Stop This Train. I think it's a touching song and I especially love the live version of it from his album Where The Light Is.

I really wanted to portray the speed and enormous size of the train, so what better way to do that than making it in Art Deco poster style? :-) The red basecolor is OPI's Big Apple Red, and for the vehicle I used a couple of different polishes and stripers, plus a little sponging for the steam and lights. At last a layer of Essence Matte topcoat and it was finished. Hope you like it!

Double V

Hi guys! I haven't been able to do much nails lately, so I have something from the vault to show you. This mani was made with my new favorite to-go polish: H&M Deep Deep Water. It's been sitting in my drawers for ages, just waiting to be discovered, and now it has been. Pictured is only one coat. One coat of perfectly pigmented, blurple metallic polish. And it dries fast too. ♥ But as pretty as it is, I like my manis with a little extra. ;-) So later I added the triangles with tape. I started with a gold triangle, and when it was dry I made a black one inside, and repeated these steps at the cuticle area. Slowly building everything up with layers. You can imagine this took a while, with so many triangles to dry. But if you're watching your favorite TV show at the same time, there really isn't much patience needed. ;-) Thanks for reading!

Gold Ornament

This mani is from a few weeks ago. I was just getting in the mood for the December holidays and added this simple tribal-ish pattern with a striper to go with the rest of my dark nails. I sure have a soft spot for black and gold. ♥

Below are a couple of older manis in black and gold. I thought it would be fun to show these lined up together to compare, isn't it a versatile color duo? ^_^

Fancy triangles, one of my first posts!

Shining like a star on Christmas '11.

Nude clouds for New Year's Eve.

Fierce French

And my recent Art Deco linework. :-)

And for those who are interested: the black creme I use is Color Club's Where's The Soiree?. It dries with a satin-matte finish, but I don't mind since it dries very quickly because of that, and I can always add some glossy topcoat. Another thing is it's a one-coater, so it covers perfectly but therefore can also leave stains on the skin. So I have to be extra careful with the application. Despite of this, it's still my favorite black so far.

Thanks for reading!

Art Deco Sunburst

Closing this year with a big bang, on the nails. :-) Like my last post this mani features elements from Art Deco, a style introduced to me by my father. It took me a while to like it, as I was so in love with and used to the curvy and organic lines of its predecessor Art Nouveau, but now I can't get enough of both. ♥ Deco has these slick and stylized shapes, making it look so grand! It just keeps wowing me everytime.

For the nail art I used the explosion design and a gold striper to freehand the little chevrons. All this on top of two coats of the blue Never On Sunday from Only You (house brand of Ici Paris XL).

Heading off to family to celebrate New Year's Eve now. I wish you all a happy and healthy new year!

Art Deco Line Work

Merry Christmas, dear readers! Here's how my mani looks like this year. Not very Christmassy per se, but liking it anyway. :-) The gold in my hands is Essence A Piece Of Forever from the Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 collection. I was only swatching it, but ended up wearing it after liking it so much with the improvised line work, for which I used my trusty striper Ink from China Glaze. Since I'm not confident enough to make such detailed work with my non-dominant hand, I kept my right hand plain black. But it actually looks nicer like this, more balanced I believe.

Until next time then! Have a great time with your loved ones. :-)

Chic Chevrons

Hi everyone! For this post I have chic chevrons to show you, in a quite unusual color. I'm talking about my basecolor which is Heavenly from the Dutch brand Koh. Heavenly is a dusty pinktoned beige creme. It's one of the few nude colors I've ever worn. I know nudes are very popular these days, but I never really payed attention to them before since I like bright colors on my nails so much. Then Koh kindly sent me Heavenly (among other polishes) for review and I'm glad they did! I never thought I could like nudes a lot but I actually loved Heavenly, and wore it for several days which is quite long for me. Also the formula and application were really nice. Because of the light color I expected it to be chalky, but it applied like butter and covered in two coats.

After two days I decided to add nail art to my calm mani. I always think dusty pinks look really chic with a hint of black or gold, so I used both of them in these chevrons which I made with tape. First I made the outer black chevron, later I added the smaller gold one and then another smaller black one. The polishes I used for the job were Color Club Where's The Soiree? and China Glaze 2030, both dry extremely quickly which saves a lot of time when you're doing a tape mani. :) Thank you for reading!

Koh Heavenly was sent to me for review. This does not influence my opinion on the reviewed product.

Fancy clouds

Hello dear readers :) This post I'd like to share this cloud mani with you. The red I've used is China Glaze Phat Santa, I bought it last Christmas in a set with Jolly Holly and Party Hearty, which I now happily own! (For some really strange reason I thought I didn't need Party Hearty when it came out in 2010, so weird, because it's so pretty!) I'd worn Phat Santa on its own for a day, but the next day I already had subtle tipwear on some nails, so that's when I applied the layered cloud look to cover up things. Another reason why I love this design ;-) The silver and black are China Glaze Millenium and Color Club Where's The Soiree? respectively, two of my most often used polishes.

I've received many requests for a tutorial for this cloud design, so you can expect it soon :) In the mean time you can read how I make the pattern in this post. Thank you for reading!

Nude clouds for New Year's Eve

Hello everyone! Here's a quick little post on my New Year's Eve mani. Initially I wanted to do the festive star pattern again that I wore for Christmas, but in the end I decided to go for something quick and simple instead. I don't like my nails naked, but this semi nude cloud look I like ^^ I used H&M Golden Treasure and Color Club Where's The Soiree? for the clouds and finished with a topcoat.

Have a great New Year's Eve and I'll see you in 2012! :)

Art Deco chevrons

Hello guys! First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who wished me a happy birthday in my last post, it was very nice to hear, but I just celebrated my birthday last month, haha. The birthday nails were specially made for a reader who requested a birthday mani for her own special day ;-) So no birthday presents to share with you, but I do have these elegant chevrons in Art Deco style. The pictured bottle of polish, which I used as my base color, is M91 from a new cosmetics brand called Make-Up Studio. They carry a huge, colorful collection of eye-shadows, lipsticks, blushes, brushes, fake lashes etc. and... nail polish :) They just opened a brand new store in our local shopping mall, so last week I went for a look and M91 was one of the products I came home with. It's a dusty green creme which is close to Mint in Wikipedia's List Of Colors. The formula was pretty nice but the best thing is it covers in one coat ^^ I own quite a few dusty, grey-ish greens/mints, but none of those is similar to M91. So I'm happy to have yet another one in my stash! It's a shame though, that Make-Up Studio didn't give their polishes a real name, instead of just a number. They've got quite a few unique babies in their collection that truly deserve more identity. I admit they do cost a lot (€12.90 for 12ml/0.41fl.oz.) but as I said, some are really unique and worth the money, if you want to spoil yourself :) Anyhow, the day after I added the first chevrons with tape, using China Glaze's Jitterbug. The little chevrons at the tips were made with China Glaze Ink. It's a striper polish with a perfect covering formula, the thin brush is perfect for making stripes but also for freehanding, like I did here. It came in really handy, because I felt way too lazy to wait for another coat of polish to dry, like I would've if I used tape again. Finally a layer of Essence Matt top coat and tada! Thanks for reading :)