For this week's mani I got inspired by Robin Moses. She has an awe inspiring youtube channel where she shares all her wonderful nail art designs. It is a bit overwhelming to watch when you are starting out in nail art but after a while you realise that you can actually accomplish most of her designs as long as you do it to suit your own level.
This particular design is what inspired me:
As you can see mine are nowhere near as gorgeous as hers ;)
I used my three barryM gelly polishes for this mani as well as Zoya Arizona, a-england Lancelot and nails inc. culross st.
As usual my top coat dragged the design, not sure what to do about it, this time I let it dry for 15 minutes before applying top coat. If you have any advice on how to avoid this suggestions are highly appreciated!
Finally catching up here, it's been a long time since I've posted a challenge mani almost on time :D
Halloween hasn't been celebrated here for that long - it is a bit like Valentine's day that we never celebrated either, one day it wasn't here and the next it was. But where I really don't get Valentine's I think Halloween is totally fun.
One thing I have realised since I started getting into nail polish back in 2009 is that it is an AHMAZING holiday for polishes. Cool colours and interesting combinations with glitters, shimmers and glow-in-the-dark finishes.
Back in 2010 China Glaze released their Awekening collection consisting of three colours: Zombie Zest, Ick-A-Body and Mummy, May I. I finally finished my collection when I got Mummy, May I this summer gifted to me from one of my wonderful birthday group ladies. So when I received it I knew my Halloween mani would be with these three beauties:
As I mentioned in my patchwork mani post I have been doing tape manis a lot and since I wanted to use all three of them I decided I'd do one for this.
And to make it more "halloweenie" I decided to stamp as well. It is
something I still need to work on because stamping is a real hit and
miss for me. Luckily this one actually turned out o.k. This is Dashica XL SdP no. 58, and it is awesome!
I didn't go to any parties so I didn't get to show them off to others than friends and family :D
So how did your Halloween nails look like? And any good parties around where you live?
I did these at the same time as week 41 and couldn't seem to find a creative way of doing this mani so instead I grabbed and untried Cult Nails polish, Devious Nature and painted my nails.
But then I thought I'd at least should do something so I dotted a bow on my ring finger with nails inc power pink:
I usually don't grab for the few pinks I own, but this one is quite gorgeous...definitely a polish I should wear more.
Searching for examples of patchwork manis will most likely get loads of hits on tape manis and though I'm a BIG fan of those - yes I have learned something since this debacle I decided to do the Other one - which is...da-da-daaaaa:
Yeah, I was smiling too when I realised these patches weren't stitched to the bottom layer :D
Anyhoo, I never got around to finish them so it is what it is...I do love the colours together so that is a big plus for me.
These were the colours I used:
Bottom layer: Illamasqua Eclipse
Light cornflower blue patch: Illamasqua Caress
Mint green patch: Illamasqua Milf
Stitches: a-england Camelot
By the way: These are the first pictures taken in my light tent...Soooo happy with how these turned out.
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 ;)
Yesterday I realised I'd totally forgotten to post Challenge Week 36 - apparently I had a brain melt down over something :). So I'd better post this now:
As you can see my tapeskills have been vastly improved! Please refer to this disaster if you have no idea what I'm talking about.
Some of you may notice this mani is on my left hand. I actually wore the red opposite my Dr. Who mani and just did the tape mani the day after - so I actually had this ready for photoing and posting the day it was supposed to go up. See, I told you I had a brain melt down!
This is nails inc. st. james's before the taping, a wonderful bluetoned red with a very slight shimmer that unfortunately is invisible unless there is bright sunshine. The application was ace, it is a one coater and levels out nicely. Dry time was average.
I've worn RBL Black Russian on two occasions, both times I was blown away be the intense red shimmer that this black polish has. The depth of this colour is out of this world and it is a breeze to work with. I also think it is a testament to it's awesomeness that it covers so well with one layer.
I think I'm gonna wear Black Russian sometime in the near future - I have fallen in love with it once more.
So I got up-to-date on my challenges...and almost instantly lost track and got behind - again! But at least I've been posting other stuff.
The challenge for week 35 is cupcakes and since I am not a big fan of cupcakes I was a bit meh about this. But I have to say that this mani grew on me, I wore it for 4 days!! Kept going "Ah, too cute to remove, let me see if it'll last another day at work".
I bought pudding lane, one of the Sprinkles from nails inc. in July and thought it would be a very appropriate mani to use it for. I didn't want a girly cupcake mani and since the base colour is blue I thought some green might look good with it. I looked through my nails inc. stash and found three I liked the look of together with pudding lane: haymarket, spring mews and hyde park gate. Notice the green theme?
So here are my cup cakes ;)
I used hyde park gate as base colour, haymarket is the basis of the cup cake and I did the stripes with spring mews. pudding lane is somewhat obvious :D
And just for the fun of it I added a green heart shaped rhinestone on top.
I really like this mani, in fact so much I might do it again in the near future, but in purple the next time.
spring mews, hyde park gate, pudding lane and haymarket
So I have finally caught up on my challenges, hooray!!!
As some may have noticed I am going through my untrieds in order to get through that huge part of my stash that I still haven't worn. And this is true for this manicure as well.
When I first thought about this manicure I decided to choose the glitter polish first and then decide which underwear to use.
I have been wanting Deborah Lippmann Today Was a Fairy Tale since I first saw Michelle Mismas from All Lacquered Up posting about it on her blog a couple of years ago. A couple of months ago one of my fellow Danish polish-a-holics had a purge sale and I was lucky enough to get it!! I find it fittingly blingy to use it for this mani :).
I love a-england polishes but haven't worn any of my newly acquired yet. So I looked through them and found King Arthur would be a good match for TWAF.
I then blinged it further up with an accent nail with rhinestones I found in a box with pearls.
So this is it for now, I hope I can find time to blog on other polishes than my challenges during the next couple of weeks :). Look out for some DandyNails love...
I've been wanting to try this for a long time, but haven't really been able to find the time - but suddenly the challenge is upon me, and I had to take time to do it.
There are a lot of tutorials on youtube and I have sort of taken a little from a couple of them, but since I have seen the one CutePolish has the most times, it is mostly inspired by hers:
But I also found this very interesting:
The polishes I used for this mani are:
Base colour: Pretty & Polished Sphere
Nucleus: Nfu Oh JS 45 and a light pink franken polish
Blending colours: Orly Out Of This World and a purple shimmer franken polish
Stars: nails inc. floral st.
Glitter topper: Guerlain Silver Sparkle and Nfu Oh GS 03
One thing I know for sure: I'm not going to use Sphere again as base colour, all the gorgeousness from that polish drowns in all the other effects :/
Somehow I totally missed some orange polish when I cleaned my middle finger.
I had a hard time photographing this, I don't think I caught how well the glitter topper work.
It is definitely not the last time I try this - it looks utterly amazing, even though I'm not quite satisfied with my first try. It lacks something that I can't quite put my finger on...
Have you tried galaxy nails? Feel free to leave a link in the comments so I can learn what tricks you got for making a good galaxy mani.
