Fancy Friday #13: Pattern/Stamping

So we have come to the end of the first three months of Fancy Fridays. But do not despair, we have plenty of more coming up for the coming three months :)

For today's FF I've chosen stamping. Being on holiday as we speak I decided to pull out an older mani I did back in April. Actually it is a close cousin to this mani.

I love Dashica's plates, the patterns are intricate, the images are clear and crisp and Shirley's inspiration seem endless - and she makes plates that caters to different nail sizes, a big bonus.

The plate I've used for this is XL SdP 30 - upper middle image:

Since it is a full nail image and my nails are too small for it I thought it would be cool if I chose different areas of the stamp for each nail - and I think it turned out pretty well.

The base colour is China Glaze Purr-Fect Plum and I used Color Club Cloud Nine from the Halo Hues collection.

I had a middle finger nail that almost broke and I managed to repair it, but only to a certain degree which explains the very wonky looking nail :D

I love that holo polish stamps so well, you get this totally awesome look on your nails as soon as the sun turns up!!

See you again next week for the start of the next three months of Fancy Friday ;)

Så gik der lige tre måneder med Fælles Fredag og i denne uge er der dømt mønster eller stamping. Eftersom jeg nyder en fortjent ferietur til vores hytte i Sverige har jeg været lidt doven og hentet en mani frem jeg lavede tilbage i april måned - sjovt nok her i huset i Sverige, men eftersom den ikke har været offentliggjort endnu, kunne jeg jo så lige så godt præsentere den her. 

Jeg elsker den effekt der kommer når jeg stamper med hololakker, det må jeg få gjort lidt oftere :D - og forresten, i næste uge starter vi op på tre måneder mere, med en Flowers in a Pond mani. Nærmere forklaring følger næste fredag!!

Fancy Friday #12: Summer Mani/Pedi

Summer has really decided to join us here in Denmark - sun is shining and temperature is rising. So it is very fitting that this week's FF mani is a summer mani.

I've been trying to do fan brush nail art a couple of times, but couldn't get the hang of it until one of my lacquer friends informed me that it would be a good idea to wet the brush a bit to get proper brush separation :D

So with this in mind and this video in front of me I got started.

I have been looking at my Nail Junkie Green Apple for some time now wanting to use it for nail art, it is a lovely neon green shimmer jelly that dries with a satiny finish. The colour is really hard to capture and I have been totally unable to represent the Greenness of this polish - in my bottle pictures it comes off too yellow. And I couldn't even colour correct it in my photo editing programme :O

I also wanted something sunny and something water like, so I chose Catrice Twist of Lemonand China Glaze Custom Kicks to get that feeling:

Awesome yellow golden shimmer

I used Apple as base layer and then I fan brushed Custom Kicks first. I was afraid Twist of Lemon would "drown" if I'd started with it so that ended up as the second polish. I only did one "layer" of each in order not to cover up Apple.

Oh and somehow those hearts just begged to be part of this ;) I made them with Cult Nails Annalicious

I've felt like going on holiday for the past week just because of these nails...

Luckily my summer holiday starts today ;)

Fælles Fredag er i dag en sommer mani/pedi. Jeg er lidt vild med de neon jellies jeg har fra The Nail Junkie - især den grønne Apple. Jeg tænkte den ville være perfekt som grundlag for noget viftepensel sjov. Jeg er blevet i rigtig sommerhumør af at have den på i denne uge - og heldigvis starter min ferie i dag :D

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

Essence Gold Fever, Make it Golden and Gold Fever Comparison

Time for my second comparison post - I actually have a lot of polishes in my stash that would be fun to compare, so for this I decided to look at these lovely glitter polishes.

A couple of weeks ago my wonderful hubby went to Berlin and when he came back he'd brought back a couple of Essence polishes. One of them was called Gold Fever and my initial thought was, hey I have that one from before they revamped the bottle. But then I looked closer at the bottles and then I realised something was a bit off.

You can see here why:

Left: The Gold Fever I already own. Middle: The Gold Fever my hubby bought for me. Right: Make it Golden

As the more perceptive reader may have realised it looks more like the bottle on the right than the bottle on the left. So is it a new version of Make it Golden, since that one got discontinued when they revamped the bottles?

Now take a look at this:

Pinky: New Gold Fever. Ring: Old Gold Fever. Middle: New Gold Fever. Index: MiG

As you can see there is definitely the same red and golden microglitter in the new GF but it also has different sized golden hex glitter in it as well - just like Make it Golden. So no, they aren't dupes at all but the new Gold Fever is a mix of the two old, discontinued colours. Do I like it? Yes I do. Do I prefer it to the other two? Not really, there are oodles of different manis in these three polishes together, which is a total bonus.

What I don't like is when polish companies discontinue a colour, change the overall look of it and give it the same name as before. It creates unnecessary confusion. Just look at the OPI MPJ debacle - really not worth anybody's while!!!

Oh by the way: the blue polish is Southwark from nails inc. ;)

Fancy Friday #10: Tape Mani

This week's challenge is something I love to do: Tape manicures. I sucked at them in the beginning, but I loved that I could get so many different looks from it that I just kept on working on it - and I think it is probably the nail art technique I master best today. Which should tell me something about keeping on working on those I suck at...but I digress.

So here's what I've come up with for this week's Fancy Friday, using Elevation Polish Uluru and China Glaze Fancy Pants:

 
I started out with Uluru as base colour and then cut out small triangles in five peaces of Scotch tape.

I then randomly chose how the pattern should line up on the individual nail. Though I had decided I wanted the colours to alternate on each finger.

 Then I painted the part that wasn't covered with tape with Fancy Pants.

Most importantly: I removed the tape almost immediately after painting the nail, if it sits for too long you risk tearing the design.

And just to show you how bad I was at this in the beginning, here is a revisit to my colour block mani back in January last year, done with tape:

So don't despair if you can't make this work, we've all started somewhere and not everybody nails it the first time!!

Jeg elsker at lave tape manicure, så da jeg så det var denne uges Fælles Fredag tema gik jeg med det samme i gang med at spekulere over, hvad jeg ville lave. Det blev til en zigzag mani som jeg er ret glad for, ligesom jeg også er vild med de to lakker sammen - Elevation Polish Uluru og China Glaze Fancy Pants. Og for lige at understrege at jeg også engang var en klovn til det, synes jeg lige i skulle gense min colour block mani fra januar sidste år, den lavede jeg nemlig med tape.