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 14: Flowers

Hi everyone! :-) This is day 14 in the 31 Day Challenge and today's theme is flowers. I have to say the whole mani is a little bit too tacky for me, haha, but being a tad different than most of my manis, I enjoyed working on it very much. I used my trusty cloud design method to draw the petals, first with a black, then with Essence Ultimate Pink. Then I added the blue, diamond-shaped glitters for a bit of contrast. I don't use loose glitters often, but I immediately fell in love with these from Essence, named Shine Like A Star!, which I bought about a year ago. It doesn't show on the pictures, but they're actually holographic, which makes them even more awesome. Can't wait to use them again. :-) Thanks for dropping by!

31 Day Challenge, day 2: Orange

Day 2 of the 31 Day Challenge! This time the challenge was to do orange nails and it was truly a challenge. I had a hard time coming up with something with orange as the main color instead of an accent color. Finally I decided to go with trusty clouds (tutorial here) combined with two shades of green, as I find orange to combine best with certain greens or blues. The lovely pastel orange is H&M's Peach Me Soon, in the middle you see Orly Ancient Jade and I've got Essence Bella on the tips. I look forward to my next challenge: yellow nails! See you soon. :-)

Happy cloud

Hi everyone :) This is how I wore the cloud design after finishing the tutorial. I used Barry M Shocking Pink, China Glaze For Audrey and Essence Let's Get Lost and combined it with Essence Bella on the rest of my nails. I love how it turned out! It's so cheerful and kind of like the opposite of the more serious grey cloud I did last week.

Also a big thank you for all the lovely comments that you guys left on the tutorial, you're the best! It makes me so happy to know it helped or inspired you. And I've really enjoyed all the awesome cloud manis that you shared with me so far, so keep them coming! See you next time. :)

Tutorial: Freehand cloud design

Hello everybody, welcome to this tutorial! This time I'll show you how to make the freehand cloud look. All you need for this quick and easy design is three pretty polishes and the brushes that come with it, so there's no extra equipment needed. Use this layered look on accent nails, for a full mani or... to cover up tipwear from an old mani. :) Continue reading »

Grey cloud

Hi everyone! For this post a grey cloud mani to match with today's weather. On my accent nail I used China Glaze Recyle, a black creme and between those China Glaze Concrete Catwalk, which is what I'm wearing on the rest of my nails too. It's the best grey creme I've got. Just two smooth coats for an even, glossy finish. ♥

I don't wear greys on their own very often, usually I just need some color to go with it. You know, to brighten things up. However, I think today's mani is cute in all its greyness :) Do you wear greys a lot?

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! :)

Christmas scene

Hi everyone :) For this post I have another Christmas mani. Since I haven't made any Halloween looks this fall, I'm planning on catching up some holiday manis with this year's Christmas ;-) Anyway, this week's been terribly busy, so I've been wearing Essie Your Hut Or Mine for the last three days. But today's weekend, yay! So I finally had time to update my mani. I added a Christmas tree for my accent nail, using tape. You know, if you think about it, a Christmas tree isn't that different from a lightning bolt! I mainly used tape triangles which I placed underneath each other on each side of the tree to create the zigzag lines. For a little sparkle I added silver glitter on top and a larger piece of glitter as my tree topper. On the rest of my nails I made "funky clouds", representing a snow scenery and later I added the "snow" with a dotting tool. In retrospect, I think the dots are a bit too much, so I doubt if I'm going to keep this mani longer than a day. But oh well, that means I can do my nails again tomorrow ^^ Thanks for reading!

Polishes I used:
Essie - Your Hut Or Mine
Essie - Lion Around
Orly - Pure Porcelain
H&M - Confetti Kisses

Vintage clouds

Hi guys! For this post I have another request to show you. A little while ago I received an email from a reader who wanted me to come up with a funky mani for her informal dance soon. A few colors she liked were teal and coral, so I combined them in this "funky clouds" look. I like how simple this design is to achieve. Just pick three matching colors, one for you base color and two for the cloud shapes on top. The clouds are made by applying three strokes of polish next to each other, each smaller than the one before. My tip is to leave enough polish on the brush (but not too much!) so that when it touches the surface it will leave a nice, round dot as start point. This doesn't even need a lot of precision and you can just use the brush from your polish for this. And that's it :) Though I would advise using a fast drying top coat afterwards if you don't want to wait too long for your nails to dry, after all it's three coats of polish. (Four if you include base coat.) I like the way it looks here with plain cremes, but for a more festive look, a layer of (iridiscent) glitter can be added.

Below you can see the same look with China Glaze Midnight Kiss on the tips, which I made first. But after I took the pictures I noticed how Bella matched the rest of the polishes better so I just redid everything, for your viewing pleasure haha. Have a great night!

The polishes I used:
Essence - What Do U think? Version 1 (It looks less orange in real life)
China Glaze - For Audrey
Essence - Bella

Funky clouds

Hello everyone! I was in the mood for some funky nail art tonight but I didn't feel like spending too much time on it. And that's how I came up with these "funky clouds" you're looking at. I'm still no good at making up names for designs so don't make fun of me haha :P I started with two coats of OPI Funky Dunkey and then I applied Essence Bella on top in three quick strokes that form the cloudy shape together. After it had dried I repeated the steps a bit closer to the tips with OPI Silver Shatter, a layer of top coat and there you have it! I think it turned out pretty cute ^^ And I can't wait to use it with other color schemes. Hope you guys like it too! Good night :)