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 :)

Fancy Friday #25: Sweets for the Sweet

As you may have noticed I skipped last week's Fancy Friday, I was a bit busy with that party I talked about in my previous post.

But today I'm right back in the saddle doing nail art. I'm writing this in our house in Sweden - it is a school holiday this week, so we decided to go up here and spend some time with the family. I joined them a day late, I had some long overdue role playing that needed my attention *nerd alert*.

But on to my choice of sweets for this challenge. One of my favourite kind of chocolate bars is a Danish one called Yankie Bar. It is a very soft kind of french nougat bar with a soft caramel swirl on top and then it is covered with milk chocolate. The producer have recently launched it with a new flavour and in this particular version there is also a swirl of salty licorice inside. I know a lot of you guys will say: Eeeew Yuk, but I tell you it is soooo delicious - though I might be a bit biased since I love salty licorice :D

I know, I know I talk too much - ON TO THE PICTURES:

I know I'm not totally innovative here, I've done tape manis on several occasions but I do like the small amount of work I need to put into this to get a decent piece of nail art going. This one though got a bit difficult.

I did this late last night(or early this morning) so I was somewhat tired and that made me rush things a bit, which can be seen on my middle finger. I was too careless when I removed the two pieces of tape that were overlapping and there fore the wet polish flowed out a bit.

And then there is the placing of the tape on my index finger - oh my is that off!

Besides that I also forgot my clean up tools and acetone so I would kindly ask your forgiveness for the sloppy - or rather non-existing - clean up.

But I still kind of like this mani - and I lurve the chocolate bar!!!

Oh and I shouldn't forget...
I used the following colours:
a-england Lancelot
a-england Perceval
nails inc. baker street

Så er der Fælles Fredag på bloggen. Som du nok lagde mærke til i sidste uge så sprang jeg over - på grund af tvillingernes fødselsdag.

I dag gælder det Søde sager. En af mine favoritter for øjeblikket er Yankie Bar Lakrids, jeg synes den er SÅ fantastisk. Elsker simpelthen salt- og salmiaklakrids og mærkelige smage og så er sådan en fætter her altså lige noget for mig :D

Jeg blev inspireret af farverne på folien og lavede så en tape mani, det er let for mig og jeg er på efterårsferie med familien i Sverige i denne uge, så der er tiden knap - og så bliver det de lette løsninger jeg vælger. Til gengæld sker det jo så af og til at der opstår fejl, hvilket der også gjorde her. Se lige den langefinger!!! Jeg kom i øvrigt hjemmefra uden rengøringsgrej og acetone, så der er ikke "ryddet op" efter lakeringen af de her negle. Håber i kan leve med det ;)

 

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.

 

Light It Up Blue for Autism Awareness. A Blogger Collaboration post

I'm a little late to the party but since this is for a good cause I decided to contribute anyway.

A couple of years ago we had an 18-year old boy working with us in the film archive for two months. We pride ourselves of being an open minded work place (one of the archivists suffers from Cerebral Palsy) and to be working with us turned out great for him. Some of the job functions are rather repititive and systematised and furthermore we are a happy and caring bunch of people who want all our coworkers to feel at home. He suffered from Aspergers Syndrome and wanted to see if he would eventually be able to master some kind of job position suited for him. When he left us he expressed that being with us had made him decide to apply for a dedicated high school that specialises in working with youths suffering from Aspergers. Us being open minded helped him on his way and that is why autism awareness is important - if we "healthy" people stay open minded we are more likely to help the "less healthy" in finding something that is meaningful to them and will make their life a little less difficult.

Since blue has been chosen as the colour to signify autism awareness nail bloggers are donning their blues to support the cause.

I've seen Reciprocal Sponge Gradient manis floating around on nail blogs and thought I'd try it but just do it a little differently. Therefore my tape stripes are asymmetrical but I think they ended up being only so-so:

I've had some Kiko's sitting in my untried drawer and three of them were blue so the decicsion on which polish brand to use for this mani was an easy one to make.

 

I apologise for the rather poorly clean-up. I'd forgotten to wrap up my fingers so I ended up with nail polish all over - and it being highly pigmented blues you can imagine how easy clean-up actually was :P

Kiko 339 Cornflower, Kiko 385 Pastel Blue, Kiko 337 Periwinkle Violet.

Autism Facts:
Autism Spectrum Disorder ASD is a range of neurodevelopment disorders, characterized by social impairments, communication difficulties, and restrictive, repetitive and stereotyped patterns of behavior.  Autistic Disorder sometimes referred to as autism is the most severe form of ASD while other conditions along the spectrum include a milder form known as Asperger Syndrome.

Although ASD varies significantly in character and severity it occurs in all ethnic and socioeconomic groups and affects every age group.

Males are four times more likely to develop ASD than females

Some common signs of ASD are:
Focusing on one item and excluding all others for prolonged periods of time

Become both withdrawn and indifferent to social interaction

Failure to respond to one's name or make eye contact

Many children follow patterns of twirling, rocking and even destructive behavior such as banging their head or biting.

Children with characteristics of ASD may also have conditions such as epileptic seizures, Tourette's Syndrome, attention deficit disorder, learning disabilities, and Fragile X Syndrome which causes mental retardation.

Because ASD varies in severity and symptoms it is not uncommon for it to go on unrecognized.

Currently scientists do not know exactly causes ASD although it is likely that both genetics and environment do play a role.

Some therapies and treatments have helped with the severity of symptoms in some individuals, sometimes symptoms improve with age, but as of right now there is no cure for ASD.

To support Autism Awareness Month some of my fellow bloggers have banded together to get the word out and Light It Up Blue for Autism Awareness!

Challenge Week 36: Tape Mani

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.

Challenge Week 3: Colour Block Mani

I must say I am surprising myself - I am now in week 3 of the 52 week challenge and I am actually keeping up. It is fun and educational for me since a lot of what is going on is totally new to me. Which is especially true with this challenge.

I was a little unsure how I should go about it since we've already established that my free hand skills leaves a lot to be desired. But thinking about it I decided that the best way to do this was to combine the colour blocking with a tape mani, though this would also be uncharted territory. So off I went and once more had to admit defeit.

Point in case:

What I really forgot was that the formula on these Cult Nails colours are a little special. They are very jelly like with the first coat and totally opaque in second. But that really got in the way of getting a good result - the pink and blue are nowhere near the opacity I was aiming at. Then take in to consideration that though having dapped the tape numerous times I was still able to peel layers of the yellow polish=epic fail.

And then to add insult to injury, I really wasn't succeeding in getting those lovely sharp lines going. The tape really didn't like to cooperate - and smudge city here we come...though there are some huge problems here I really like what I was aiming at and hopefully I will be able to do something more accomplished at a later date.

These were the colours that I used, they are all from Cult Nails and extremely limited - though Maria has been talking about having them all as part of future collections:

Feel Me Up - a butter cup yellow though on my fingers it looks like egg yolk.

Bad Devious Nature - a true pink that I really like.

Tied Up - Smurf Blue!! Beware of Stains.

I really enjoyed this and with some practice I think I could actually do this without total failure.