Fancy Friday #86: NYE Nail Art

So life have gotten in the way for my blogging - and I have been neglecting posts of my Fancy Friday manis. So to start them off here are my FF NYE nails:

Yeah, shockingly I was nekkid for the celebration 'cause I had too much to do and very little time to anything nail related. Instead I did these a few days later - they were what I had planned for but never got to do...

I used OPI Push and Shove, Elevation Polish Silver Sword, Rapa Nui and Jbel Ajachi. Not the perfect NYE mani, but I really like it.

 Anyway - it matched our decorations in blue, silver and purple :D.

Hold da op hvor er livet kommet i vejen for mine Fælles Fredag indlæg. Her er mine nytårsnegle - ja, jeg var sgu nøgen nytårsaften ;), jeg havde slet ikke tid til at lave negle i de dage. Til gengæld fik jeg så lavet dem jeg havde planlagt et par dage senere.

Loki's Nail Vinyls

As some of you know I am a huge fan of tape manicures and that it has evolved into a I-love-using-nail-vinyls-instead-of-tape kinda thing.

So I was thrilled when Tara from Loki's Lacquer contacted me to do a review of her new addition to her line: Nail Vinyls. I received a small selection of vinyls and decals that are available in her shop - and I got something else extremely exciting in my envelope, but I'll return to that in a while.

For you to get a feel for what she can offer, here are the vinyls and decals I got:

I fell in love with the small triangles since I thought they would make a nice change from studs and beads.

The vinyls are all made from high quality vinyl and feel a bit thicker than NailVinyls (from @teismom). But they are very easy to work with and the thickness also refrain the decals from shriveling and melting - though very fine details do tend to melt over time.

I decided to try out the waves first since I'd had a particular idea involving brown polishes and some colour blocking that I've been toying with for a while. So here was an excellent excuse to get it done :D

I started with a base colour, OPI Over the Taupe. I topcoated it and then I let it dry completely.

I applied the wavy nail vinyl in the middle of every finger and painted with OPI You Don't Know Jacques on the right side of the vinyl and with OPI Suzy Says DA! on the left side - one finger at a time! I removed the vinyl immediately after I'd applied the polish in order to get crisp lines.

I let it dry for a couple of minutes and then put on a fast drying top-coat - et voilá: chocolate nails :D

One thing I noticed was that the vinyl was rather wide which did cause some slight problems when it came to my ridiculously small little finger nail ;) - it took some re-positioning in order to get a decent pattern. But I prevailed and it came out really well I think.

For my next mani I chose a combination of guides and decals. I decided to do a french tip mani, mostly because I hate using french tip guides since I really don't like my smile line too deep and it always is if I use regular french tip guides. What I noticed with these was they look slightly less curved than what I usually see, so my curiosity got tickled :D.

For this look I started out painting my nails with RBL Forgotten Road and topcoated it. Then I let it dry completely before using the french tip guide, doing one nail at a time.

I aligned the tip guide immediately below my smile line on my tip and then painted with a liberal layer of RBL Under the Stars to get good coverage.

I removed the tip guide at once I finished to ensure a crisp line. I then positioned the triangles and finished my mani with another layer of top coat.

These tips were a bit too wide for my small nails so the curve isn't as pronounced as some may like, but I really love the straighter look this gives me.

And now for the thing that really had me excited: Loki's Nail Aprons. Yes, I know it sounds crazy but this is really what these suckers are. Take a look at this:

Make sure you fit them so they slightly overlap - you can probably guess what'd happened in the middle when I removed them

See??? This will be awesome if you watermarble or do gradients. As a matter of fact that is what I used them for!! Gradients that is...

They are made of a diffent kind of vinyl than the rest and according to Tara there is circa 10 uses in an apron before the nail polish changes its stability.

As you can see there is very little clean up needed when you use these nail aprons - and if you are more careful with your positioning of these little suckers than me you can definitely get an even cleaner finger with almost no cleaning needed. Which is a total win in my book!!!

So if you can't get school glue to work for you as shielding or if you get vaseline mixed in your makeup sponge when you do gradients but still want to cover your fingers to reduce the amount of clean-up then I can definitely recommend using Nail Aprons.

All in all I think it is safe to say that these vinyls are a great acquaintance. I like that Tara has both guides and decals in her shop, it makes room for versatility in one's nail art. And hellooooo there are some awesome decals there: Pacman, angels, TARDIS, Loki's helmet...it really speaks to my nerdy side :D

You can buy Loki's Nail Vinyls in her shop here - and yes she does ship internationally ;). Make sure to follow her on Facebook for promotions and news.

If you make nail art using them remember to hashtag them #lokisnailvinyls so Tara and others can enjoy your art work.

These were sent to me for my unbiased consideration.

Golden Oldie Thursday #15: Hot Pink

Well here is a challenge that was almost impossible for me. I am not a pink person and my stash is almost without the colour - and only one polish I can call hot pink: OPI I'm All Ears. And since we're on holiday in Sweden with a lot of kids running around, this is just going to be a basic swatch to show you guys this stunner. 'Cause that is what this polish is!!! And I never thought I'd ever say that about a pink polish...Strangely enough all these pics turn red from the transfer from my phone :O.

 Just look at this - I mean, what's not to like about it? It has glass flecks for goodness sake!!! And I was lucky the sun was out and did all sort of great stuff with this polish.

I need to wear this again soon, this should not be packed away in my Helmer!!

*still a bit stunned that I like a pink polish*

Fancy Friday #41: Match Your Eyes

Yay, a blue challenge Again, since I've got blue eyes - and late again, my life has been taking over but in a good way ;).

This time I decided to play with texture polishes...and a fan brush. I saw a sneak peak of a fan brush gradient my good friend Jacki from Adventures in Acetone did earlier in the week and I thought I'd try it with textures.

And it all ended up looking like this:

I used these beauties for this gradient:

Sinful Colors Blue Persuasion,  OPI Tiffany Case    Julie G Blueberry Fizz

I really like the fluidity of this in particular the transition from the dark to the lighter polish.

It is difficult to see the transition from Tiffany Case to Blueberry Fizz, but that is mostly due to my inexperience with the fan brush and how to align it on the nail to get all colours placed correctly. And my nails are really small which I also didn't take into account when I layed out the colours. Note to self: the stripes of polishes need to be much thinner than I think!!

I found the technique itself a good alternative to spongeing.

I will definitely try the fan brush for a regular gradient - perhaps for the challenge later this week...and if you want to try this yourself there is a great tutorial for this at the Neverland Nail Blog.

If you want to see the colours of the other Fancy Friday girls, hurry on over to check out their blog posts.

Hurra for endnu en udfordring hvor jeg kan lege med blå neglelak :D. Jeg har denne gang kastet mig ud i at lege med en viftepensel til en teksturgradient, overraskende ok resultat synes jeg. Det er dog lidt svært at se overgangen mellem de to lyse lakker, men det er mere fordi teknikken er helt ny for mig og mine negle ALT for små til de ret tykke streger jeg fik påført penslen :D.

 

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.

Challenge Week 40: Animal Print Mani

This one has been decided by the twins - they think tigers are awesome so tiger print  it is :)

I looked at a lot of tutorials for this one and zebra and tiger stripes seem to be very close so I tried to capture the different colours of the tiger's fur to set it apart.

I sponged colours in spots on white base and did it random on each nail.

I used the following colours:
White: nails inc. floral st.
Yellow: nails inc. notting hill carnival
Orange: Zoya Arizona
Light brown: OPI Over the Taupe
Black: a-england Lancelot

They look better from a distance than what you see here but you get the concept :) Definitely fun to do so I think I'll do this again sometime - or I might even give leopard print a shot.

ID4

And as if I haven't blogged enough today...

Once more I have a group collaboration mani to show you. Originally I wasn't going to do anything July 4th on my blog, but I couldn't help myself when a ID4 group post was announced.

To celebrate ID4 I whipped out an OPI and a China Glaze and did a little something with them:

After that super elaborate Canada mani I needed something a little simpler

No amount of cream seemed to change the cuticle dryness

Colours used:
Blue: OPI Dating a Royal
Red: China Glaze Phat Santa
White: nails inc. floral st.
Silver: a-england Excalibur

Now go and check out the rest of the Independence Day Manicures out from my wonderful blogger friends.

Challenge Week 12: Skittle Mani

I have done skittle manis for longer than I have known them as such. Back in the '90s I had a thing for blues and greens, and still have. As a student I couldn't afford much else than the really cheap no names, but the wonderful thing about them was they came in all the colours of the rainbow. I think I had 10 or 20 polishes in varying nuances of blue and green and I LOVED doing my nails with one colour on each finger. And trust me, back then everybody I knew thought 10 polishes in the same colour range was crazy (won't even begin to consider what they would think about my collection now :D)

These days I only do five different colours and I still LOVE doing it!!! I tend to do colour gradings or colours-that-look-great-together when I do them, so I had great fun doing this one.

It seemed spring decided to take a short trip to Denmark so we have had quite good weather this week and I certainly didn't have any problems chosing my colours.

I bought a great amount of BarryM's last spring, but haven't used them all yet, amongst the untrieds are two Ice Cream colours that are soooo yummi to look at. Unfortunately Berry Ice Cream were sold out back then so the ones I had to use for this mani were:

Blueberry Ice Cream
Lemon Ice Cream
Strawberry Ice Cream
Mint Green
- and as a rather nice substitute for Berry Ice Cream I chose OPI's Done Out in Deco, which I think is fairly close in colour.

I have had some staining issues with a BarryM colour (yes I am looking at you Spring Green!!!) so I poured on base coat (in this particular instance Cult Nails Get it On) just in case...

Considering these were all pastels they are remarkably easy to work with. These are all two coats, and even the yellow leveled out at second coat. I can highly recommend getting yourselves some BarryM's, they are VERY affordable, and at only 2.99 £ it is hard NOT to buy them!!

But surely you must be here for some picture spam, so sit tight and enjoy:

I am a huge sucker for colours like these, and think pastels look rather lovely on me. I wanted to eat my fingers all the time, 'cause they reminded me of candy :D