Nail Art Challenge #2 - When Colours Collide: Mint, pastel pink and gold

5th of July was the next date for the When Colours Collide challenge and I was going to go outside my comfort zone 'cause I don't wear pink or gold that often. Besides that I of course had to throw myself into an entirely new nail art technique.

I have seen fluid nail art on occasion in my instagram feed and since I also shop extremely frequently at Polish Pickup I have also seen that Baroness X has started to make polishes to use specifically for fluid nail art. But I do not own any polish that will make this challenge any easier so I started to research and found out that Kyong Lee has a youtube channel where she has all sorts of fluid nail art tutorials. There I found she has created her own clear polish to use mixing a clear nail polish with Garnier Fructis Sleek and Shine Anti Frizz hair serum. And somehow I instantly knew this would not be available here in Denmark - so I did an ingredients search to see which components in the serum would match any of my own hair products. The two main ingredients in the product are cyclopentasiloxane and dimethiconol both are types of silicone. And I am happy to report that I had a product with both as main ingredients: Inecto Smooth Me Coconut hair serum.

I followed the instructions in her video and within a couple of minutes I had a working fluid art clear nail polish. And then I started to play with it. It took me a couple of tries before I got it to make cells that were visible, I just kept on adding drops of my fluid nail art polish to the drops of the other colours. I used a piece of acetate to mix the colours on and ended up with enough to make several decals. Then I cut them out with patterned scissors and painted my nails in base colours to match the decals.

Base colours: 

Mint Green: Pretty Serious Bunny Foo Foo (for some reason it draws blue insted of green in my picture)

Pastel Pink: Paint Box Polish Fragola

Gold: Guerlain Divinora 00

Fluid Art Colours:

Mint Green: Morgan Taylor Mint Chocolate Chip

Pastel Pink: nails inc. oxford circus

Golds: Guerlain Divinora 00 and YSL Manicure Couture nail polish duo 03 (the gold polish)

And the collage where all the manis are collected together:

I was really happy with the outcome of this and will probably do fluid nail art again soon. I have bought some Baroness X fluid nail art polishes from the Girly Bits preorder in June so those will be arriving some time in September - I have a PPU rewind order on hold with Pam and will have a enormous shipment coming this way then, haha. Be sure to keep an eye out for that post.

See you soon.

Golden Oldie Thursday #32: On White Base

As soon as I saw Ms. Osborne in this dress I knew I wanted to do some nail art inspired by it - and then I realised that one of the August GOT challenge manis were going to be On a White Base...

Here is what I came up with - using nails inc. floral street as undies for Sealore Polish Beluga Blizzard. I free handed the time glass shape on my middle and ring finger and then taped the lower part. Then I put some black polish on a makeup sponge and just dapped away gently.

I cut out some triangular shapes that I taped on my little finger and dapped with a sponge applied with black polish.

On my index I used the "other" side of the triangular shapes I cut out, so my entire nail was covered with tape, except for the triangles - and dapped some black nail polish there as well ;)

Lastly I made a sort of yinyang swirl - it sort of seemed appropriate...

Hope you enjoyed these - I had a blast making them ;).

An InLinkz Link-up

Golden Oldie Thursday #29: Holographic

So here is the first of my many challenge manis that I just kept postponing.

Yay!! One of my favourite polish finishes was part of the GOT polish challenge!!! Too bad I was holidaying in Sweden and totally forgot to bring an old linear holo polish. I did bring Essie Carnival though so after the initial annoyance I got going with the polishes that I've actually brought.

I decided to use nails inc. hyde park gate as base for this and then glitter topping it all :D

I stamped my index finger with Vivid Lacquer plate 019 - I used a Konad lilac polish that I've had for a long time, but it really didn't give the colour pay off I was hoping for. I ended up finishing it off with a layer of Carnival.

I topped my middle and ring finger with Lynnderella Bibbety Bobbity Boo Blue and then topped it up further with Carnival :D.

And in order for thumb and pinkie to not feel left out I did two layers of Carnival for good measure :D

And an out-of-focus version to underline the holographic glitters:

Stay tuned for more challenges ;).

Fancy Friday #64: Cloud Mani

When you google: Cloud nail art, you will most likely find pictures and tutorials for the type of mani that I have done in this post - but this week's FF challenge was actually free to interpretation...perhaps I should have done something else for this mani is at best very basic...

Oooohhh, Bubbles!!

My middle finger suffered a break before we went camping in week 28 - luckily I was able to tame it for almost two weeks. These were done last week and it wasn't until Sunday I removed this mani and then cut my nails down. The bumpy lump on my middle finger nail is where that particular break was...

Essie Mojito Madness, nails inc. hyde park gate and Sinful Colors Dream On made for a quite interesting combination.
 

Though I did get compliments for it I am not very happy with this mani, but I do know that it will be recreated together with my Hubbie's grand niece - she will be joining us here in Sweden tomorrow and we have decided she needs to try this (she still doesn't know) ;)

Fælles Fredag er i denne uge Cloud mani. Ved en hurtig google søgning finder man min type mani vældig godt repræsenteret - der har dog været fri fortolkning, hvilket i også vil kunne se hos nogle af de andre bloggere :)

An InLinkz Link-up

Fancy Friday #58: Ice Cream

This was a fun challenge and since I have the Ice Cream polishes from BarryM I sure knew which colours to use here :D.

YSL Rich Coffee, nails inc hampstead gardens, BarryM Berry Ice Cream, Strawberry Ice Cream, Mint Green, Blueberry Ice Cream, Leighton Denny Indulgence

Did a french tip with hampstead gardens, and then used a thin striper brush dipped in YSL Rich Coffee to do the waffle pattern. And used a dotting tool to create the scoops, sprinkles and jam.

 

I am not totally convinced about the HK Girl top coat, it acts very strange if the mani is uneven in it's structure - and I don't always get the high shine effect that is raved about...

Hurry over to see what the rest of the Fancy Friday girls have come up with ;)

Is, Is, Is, Is...det er hvad der er på bloggen i dagens anledning. Jeg har alle BarryM Ice Cream lakkerne så de er taget i brug her ;). Jeg blev en smule issyg da jeg så dem da de var færdige...

An InLinkz Link-up

Golden Oldie Thursday #5: Green

So here is my GOT polish post for this week. One of these greens here is actually one of my very old polishes.

Illamasqua Rampage is from 2009 I think. Back when Raindrops was released, I'd read about the three polishes made by fans of the brand at Scrangie's blog - and she had a promo code, so naturally I bought those plus some others, Rampage among them.

For the leafy pattern on my thumb and pinky I used nails inc. emerald street which I got through a lucky dip at their home page two years ago...thank you my british mules for being helpful back then before the horrendous Royal Mail scandal.

I decided to stamp on top of Rampage and to make it pop I picked out my Nubar Reclaim, my first ever Holo back before I really knew what a holo was. And I got it for real cheap at BeautyBay at a time where they shipped fast and had reasonable prices on them. By the way, I used Moyou Pro Collection no. 02.

Attitude Adjust-mint, which is on my ring finger, was in my first batch of Lynnderellas bought through preorder at Llarowe, it was her first shipment in December 2011.

For some strange reason it decided to chip on me less than a day after I did this manicure - and my Dior gel top coat also shrunk Rampage - that's a first for me!!

Mount Yu is the base for the leafy nail art and is an Elevation polish. It is also a "first batcher" - I purchased it back in November 2012.

Hopefully you enjoyed this and hurry on over and check the other girls and their green fingers ;)

Fancy Friday #38: Favourite Technique/Go-to mani

This was supposed to be a tape mani since that is my favourite technique these days - BUT everything I tried failed in a way that I didn't even wanted to show you, so instead I did my go-to mani which is the Skittlette. The term was coined - as far as I know - by Nail4Dummies in reply to Marta from ChitChatNails in fall 2012 when Marta asked on twitter what one would call a two-accent-nail mani. You can go and check out her very informative blog post about it HERE where there is a basic how-to if you should feel encouraged to try it out after you've seen my version of it.

As you will notice I am not doing the same pairing of nails that she does but that is what is so wonderful about the Skittlette - you can combine it almost endlessly as long as you keep to the 1-1-2-2-3 rule. How you mingle that combination around is all up to you!!!

First off I had to decide which colours and nail combination I'd use. I set out that I wanted to do a 1-2-2-3-1 combination. I used nails inc. prince albert road for my thumb and little finger, OPI Purple with a Purpose for my index and middle finger and nails inc. montrose place for my ring finger.

So with the colour combinations covered I then thought how I'd "dress" them up. And since I put the glittery one on already I just had to decide what to do with ring, middle and index. I had some very large non-solvent resistant glitter circles that I've wanted to use for a long time so I put them on the ring finger. Unfortunately they went all Taco on my after ten minutes, as you can see several of them started dissolving. Then I stamped the middle and index with a dark lilac stamping polish, using my Moyou London plate Pro 02.
 

 And...TA-DA - a Skittlette mani to enjoy ;).

Please also go and check out what the other girls have as their Go-to mani/Favourite technique.

Jeg havde egentlig lagt planer for en vild tape mani, da det er min favoritteknik for tiden, men alt jeg lavede var så fyldt med ARGH at jeg ikke engang synes det var værd at vise frem her. I stedet har jeg så valgt min go-to manicure og for mig er det Skittlette. Hvis du følger linket oppe i starten af indlægget, kan du der se en introduktion til den type mani. Jeg laver næsten kun skittletter når jeg skal lave noget "udenfor" bloggen og instagram, og jeg er vild med den fordi kombinationsmulighederne er uendelige - for slet ikke at glemme at jeg får brugt tre lakker på én gang :D.

Golden Oldie Thursday: Pink

So the new year brings a new challenge. I'm part of The Crumpet's Nail Tarts but I haven't had the guts to get in on the challenges - but since this is all about giving some love to our older polishes I thought I should at least try to make an effort, I have so many unappreciated polishes that really need some attention.

The rules for this challenge are simple:

* the polish you use should be at least one year old
* if you haven't been a polishaholic that long, you can use the oldest polishes you have
* the polish should be previously used, but if you're stuck, you could free a yearling from Mount Untried (seriously, some of mine are reaching puberty out there)
* you can use more than 1 polish as long as it fits the theme and the rules

So straight on to this first challenge: Pink. Which is one of those colours that I really don't own a lot of - so it was really easy to pick this one cause I do believe I only have three pinks that I have tried. And to make it an even easier challenge(yes I am taking it slowly) I have only used one of them for this challenge :D - but I digress.

May I present: nails inc. montrose place

 

I am sure the rest of the awesome ladies doing the challenge have more inspiring manis than mine so do check them out ;)

Fancy Friday #11: Inspired by a picture, painting or image

I am really excited about this Fancy Friday mani. Back when I saw the initial challenge list and noticed this one I instantly knew what I was going to do.

My aunt used to work at Royal Copenhagen as a porcelain painter where she did Flora Danica, some of the world's most expensive dinnerware. When I was 12 she gave me a candle light holder, it was in another pattern made at Royal Copenhagen called Blue Fluted, a pattern that has been made since 1775. The candlestick looked just like this one:

Courtesy of http://www.ankersenantiques.dk

I have loved the pattern ever since!!

Last year my grandmother gave me two mugs for my birthday and I think this looks beautiful:

 I wanted to recreate it for this week's challenge:

The blue I've chosen isn't quite a match but I really adore this polish so it just had to be used for this: nails inc. southwark.

I spent the better part of two hours making this and then I realised my index and my thumb had totally bubbled up - I was close to tears when I saw it!!

I decided you were all going to have to live with the bubbles ;)

I am so chuffed with this mani and do believe I can get okay at that nail art stuff.

Velkommen til den 11. fælles fredag. I dag er der dømt inspireret af et billede/foto/maleri. Jeg har valgt at Mussel male mine negle, hvilket jeg egentlig synes er gået meget godt, jeg har ihvertfald haft svært ved at tørre smilet af mit fjæs i de dage hvor jeg har gået med de negle :D