Fancy Friday #45: Acid Wash

A totally new technique for me in this week's Fancy Friday challenge - and boy I struggled with it. I really need to figure out how to get the proper random look translated to my nails.

I applied one layer of GOSH Misty Mauve at the bottom, and then layered with Lavender Love, Miss Minty and Berry Me - also GOSH polishes.

I love how these four colours look together:

           Berry Me                    Miss Minty               Lavender Love               Misty Mauve

But I really couldn't figure this one out. I used a brush for this result though I'm not sure whether I would get a cleaner look with a q-tip or not.

I followed the step-by-step guide the lovely Miss Crumpet published last summer, but this looks nowhere near as clean as her lovely manicure.

I must say I like the idea but I am not crazy about the execution here. But as any thing else nail art I guess it is just a matter of trial and error. So if at first you don't succeed then try and try again ;)

 

 Make sure you check out the rest of the girls and their Acid Wash Manis :)

Fredagens udfordring var Acid Wash og mand det kæmpede jeg godt nok med. Jeg fulgte The Crumpet's tutorial men det blev jo ikke halvt så pænt som hendes :D. Jeg er helt vild med farvekombinationen men er MEGET ambivalent i forhold til selve udførelsen af den her acetone afvaskning...Men det er jo bare at prøve det igen. Jeg har efterhånden fået lært at det der nail art er ligesom alt andet i livet: Øvelse gør mester ;)

Golden Oldie Thursday #7: Chevron Fail

If you're a regular reader of this blog you probably know about my tendency to share my nail fails on a fairly regular basis. This is one of those days...

My nails have a fairly deep c-curve which can make stamping a bit challenging at times - in particular if you don't have a squishy stamper and the design itself need to be very straight, like chevrons. At the moment I use an XL stamper that has a more firm silicone head which gives me slight problems to say the least. I didn't really realise how bad the problem was until this mani. But I'll return to that in a moment.

Most of my Illamasqua polishes are more than a year old because ever since that awful debacle with Royal Mail last year their shipping prices have gone up considerably so I've found myself only wanting to purchase when they have sales - and then I still only buy make-up AKA I haven't bought them in more than a year. So off I went and dug into my Illa polishes for this week's challenge.

Illamasqua Elope       Illamasqua Nomad     GOSH Forest Floor       BarryM Gold Foil

And since my freehand Chevrons sucks big time I decided to try stamping them instead - as if that would make any difference :D

The base for this mani is a "circle gradient" where I applied the polish in a circle like a layer cake diagram and then pressed it on the nails, making sure to get a smooth transistion by moving the sponge in all directions when I applied the polish.

As you can see the chevrons are all wobbly due to the c-curve. When I stamp I can't push the head down enough to get a perfect transfer so instead I have to roll the stamper, which results in these very much curved sides on the chevrons...a loose-loose situatuation.

Hopefully my next stamping session will go more smoothly - and my next GOT challenge for that matter ;)

Remember to check the other awesome manis:

Golden Oldie Thursday #3: Blue

Well I'm a blue kinda girl so I have a lot of polishes in that colour spectrum in my stash - and also some that are more than a year old...and some that are untried...

It's been ages since I last wore any of my butter Londons so I thought I'd show it some love here.

I really love doing tape manis but at the moment it is really hit and miss for me. It was slightly off today once again but I really liked the end result so I didn't want to change it. Though I doubt I'd ever get it as crisp as Sarah from Chalkboard Nails who inspired these nails with this mani.

So here it is with those slight faults that I ended up with.

butter London Blagger

Illamasqua Nudge

GOSH Attitude

Are you also a fan of blue polish or does it leave you cold?

And remember to check out the rest of these wonderful blue manis :)

Challenge Week 39: Dry Water Marble Mani

This challenge was fairly easy for me since I have been making decals for quite some time - I tend to make them when I realise how hard I will fail on free hand nail art :D

I poured a couple of drops of each of the following polishes on a zip-lock bag: RBL IKB:2012, China Glaze Dorothy Who?, GOSH Blue Ballon and...I really need to start writing notes on my swatches, I can't remember what the fourth polish is.

Then I took a needle and made spiraling patterns in the wet polish, let it dry for a couple of hours, and peeled the piece off. I then took my nail scissors and cut it in pieces that fit my nails - and lo and behold: Dry Water Marble nails ;)

Challenge Week 29: Rockstar Mani

I looked at this one for a loooong time, I was trying to figure out what Rockstar Mani could possibly cover. Then I did a search and found out that it is a brand that is used for doing gels and acrylics - but I also found a tutorial on how to do a home pedicure that could be something I could make use of:

Rockstar Toes tutorial

And I immediately thought of my GOSH nail glitter!! So I simply did a layer of base coat, sprinkled on a generous layer of my nail glitter, applied a layer of gelous and nails inc. caviar top coat - and thought meh...this needs to be blinged out :D

And then I brought out the blingiest nail polish I own: Lynnderella Shape Shifter. And holy wow it blinged the c*** out of it.

So how do you like these rockstar nails? Totally awesome or just not doing it for you? I'd like to hear your opinion.

Challenge Week 20 & 21: Bow Mani and Fruit Mani

So another couple of challenges went past and here they are:

My bow mani got done when the good weather got absolutely marvelous with days and days full of sunshine and that made me get in holo mood. I chose to stamp the bows and pulled out my Essence plates for this. I still need a lot of practice stamping, but I find it loads of fun when I do it even though fails are the order of the day.

Base colour is China Glaze DV8 and stamping is GOSH Holographic. I used CND Stickey as base coat and decided to try with top coat since DV8 was a bit gloopy and there fore dried a bit uneven. I think it took some of the oooompfff out of the polish but I got some good wear from it.

Definitely not as oooomphy as Nubar Reclaim

I took ages for me to decide on the fruit mani but in the end I took a relatively easy design: Strawberries and Kiwi. As per usual I did my mani in the evening though this time it wasn't until 1 in the night and therefore a somewhat tired polishaholic that did her nails. The leaf on the strawberry should have been made with a nail art brush. Instead I decided in my tired state to use the polish brush instead which made the leaves a tad more...strange. The Kiwi was just...*decides not to go into details about it*.

This is how the non nail art nails looked.

I used China Glaze Phat Santa, Essie Pretty Edgy, a-england Camelot, Sinful Colors, nails inc. Floral Street - with Cult Nails base and top coat.

Thanks for looking, hopefully you enjoyed it!!

Challenge Week 10 & 11: Polka Dot Mani and St. Patrick's Day Mani (picture heavy)

So there seem to be a trend forming now: I have very little time to post, so I do two challenges at a time :D. Well it works for me this way at the moment so I won't beat myself up about it more than necessary...

I love doing dots on my nails, it is a very simple design that looks very intricate and as if you used a lot of time on it. It can make a manicure go from good to WOW depending on colour choice, which is something right up my alley, haha.

Recently I did my first polish swap with Sheila from Pointless Café and was lucky enough to get my little hands on the two Dior Spring 2012 colours Waterlily and Forget-Me-Not. They are rose scented, but not heavily so, and I have been able to enjoy the awesomeness of the two colours.

According to some people in the know, Waterlily is a close dupe to Chanel's Jade so if you have been wanting that for a long time you may feel satisfied with this one. I myself don't own Jade so I can't say for certain. I love my Waterlily I think it is ABSOLUTELY stunning. Forget-Me-Not is close in colour to Dior's own Purple Mix, but F-M-N is lighter and less dusty in tone. If any of you feel like it, I'll be happy to do a comparison post...

I had something in mind with the polka dots, but it didn't manifest itself the way I'd pictured it.

The application was a little bit tricky with Waterlily, it is surprisingly thick, but I managed ok with two coats, and it is worth the hassle in my opinion. Forget-Me-Not was a dream to work with in the usual top notch quality of a Dior creme.

Waterlily is almost colour correct in these pictures even though they are taken with flash, please note the awesome shimmer in it:

In my mind's eye it made all sorts of sense to mix small and large dots, but when I got to my middle finger it just looked messy and not at all cute!!

Unfortunately I was not as lucky with Forget-Me-Not, it photographs darker than it really is:

The minute I realised the small dots weren't working, I dropped them, haha.

Then the other hand looked like this:

This looks much more composed and elegant somehow...

I actually have gotten remarks on this mani, a guy at a ticket booth thought it looked very complicated...I hearted him so much in that moment :D

I need to make a light box or flash reflector - I am getting annoyed with heavy shadows and colour incorrect pictures ;)

I was really pleased with this mani since I got a great design out of very little effort, something that looked really good and noticeable. And the colours are to die for!!

For my Week 11 mani, St. Paddy's day, I have chosen two lovely colours in a layering combo. One is a dusty, dark, forest green polish from GOSH's LE collection called Forest Floor and Lynnderella All Hallow's Eve, a "transparent" green base with golden shimmer, green, gold and black hex glitter in different sizes and square gold glitter. At least that is what I have seen so far...

Recently Lynnderella announced All Hallow's Eve will be discontinued which I think is such a shame. This is green gorgeousness in a bottle and really shows off what is so great about her polishes: Deep, complex and filled with an incredible amount of different glitters in all shapes and sizes. Feast your eyes on these relatively okay pictures:

Hopefully you enjoyed watching these pictures, I sure enjoyed doing these swatches.

What do you think about glitters and Lynnderella? And more importantly, what did you do for St. Patricks Day?