TPA Group Challenge: Inspired by Tattoos

Hello my lovelies! Saturday means another theme from the TPA Group Challenge and this week we had to get inspired by tattoos. I wasn't in the mood to use a nude base because I feel I've been doing plenty of neutral manicures lately, so I decided to go for red and black. I feel that this color combination really goes with the rock chick tattoo kind of look. I also did a studded accent nail to spice it up a bit. 

Denim Sparkle

Hello lovelies and happy Sunday! I hope everyone is safe with all the snow that's been falling in the last few days. We'we had some over here too and it's supposed to snow again today, but nothing as serious as in some other parts of the world. Today I have a blue mani for you. It's gonna be a double dose of blue since tomorrow is Monday Blues time. The one from today is a mix and match type of nail art but not too out there. I'm kind of OCD when it comes to the symmetry of my manicures. 

I've never been a fan of rhinestones on nails, but recently I've seen a lot of rhinestone manicures from Gosia and I fell in love with them. So I had to get some from eBay and of course I got a ton in different shapes and colors. I really like the square or rectangular ones like the ones I used for this particular mani. 

The starting point for these nails was Barry M Denim, a polish that I saw recently and remembered how much I loved. You can see it on the middle and ring fingers. It only took one coat to cover the nails completely. I put a tiny drop of top coat at the base of the nails and then placed the rhinestones on top using a toothpick. I finished with one coat of Seche Vite all over the nails. 

The remaining 3 nails have 2 coats of Rapsodi 340 as a base. I used China Glaze Lorelei's Tiara on top, but instead of doing glitter tips I brushed it at the base of the nail. To be honest, I really wanted to do this in the form of a gradient but the glitter is so dense in this polish that it went on opaque no matter how much I wiped  the brush. It really is an amazing glitter. 

The shimmer in Denim is gorgeous and Lorelei's Tiara is just dreamy. But I can't tell you how much I love these rhinestones. I can't believe I haven't tried them before. Can't wait to use them in a ton of manicures in the future! 

Sunday stamping reloaded

Hello loves! How is your Sunday going? I hope it will become even better with the help of this awesome glittery manicure. It's been quite a while since I haven't done a challenge from the group Adventures In Stamping. I've been busy with the Girly Girl Challenge and whatnot. But I've missed doing some stamping on Sunday so here I am with this purple glitter bomb. The reason I chose purple is the fact that November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month and the color for pancreatic cancer is purple. This is a cause very dear to me and I'm gonna tell you more about it in some other purple posts. But meanwhile you can go here and see how you can support the cause. 

This manicure is actually a lot more purple in reality, but my camera has a big problem with purple and it doesn't want to pick it up. Even if some of these pictures look blue, I swear they are in fact very very purple. The challenge this week was to stamp over glitter, so I created this holo glitter bomb as a base. 

This is Illamasqua Faux Pas with one coat of a silver holographic glitter on top. It comes from Rapsodi, a local brand, and it has the number 20 and no name. It's actually pretty dense and just one coat can create the effect you see in the pictures. The holo effect is amazing in this one. Take a look at the next picture! 

Isn't this amazing? This combo reminded me of Kleancolor Holo Chrome, but that one is a lot more blue in reality. As usual with holographics, I was inspired to choose a geometrical stamping image. The one I picked is from plate QA16 and I stamped with a purple stamping polish from Opoola. 

Of course the craziness of the glitter doesn't let the camera focus properly on the stamping. I did my best to capture this manicure. I love it and I'm so sad that I have to take it off to put on something more "work appropriate" for Monday. 

I hope I will have time to participate in these challenges in the next weeks because they sure are fun. And of course, I hope I can post more purple manicures this month. 

Girly Girl Nail Art Challenge Day 6: Who Inspires You?

Hello again loves! If it's Sunday, then it must be another day for the Girly Girl challenge. Today's theme is a little intense, but I decided to tone it down and make it fun. We were supposed to create a manicure inspired by our female role model, but since I really don't have one, I decided to choose a strong and confident woman from the fictional world instead. She definitely inspires me because she can survive any challenge and of course be pretty while she does it. I'm talking about Scarlett O'Hara from "Gone with the Wind". My inspiration was the dress she made out of her mom's curtains so Rhett wouldn't find out how poor she was. I really like how this manicure came out and I hope you do too. 

This was fairly easy to do and didn't take a lot of time. I started with a base color of Rapsodi 350, a dark forest green that I picked up from a local shop for under 1$. It has a decent formula but is pretty sheer, so 3 coats were needed to make it opaque. It applied smooth, although the brush is pretty wonky and there were a few bubbles on the nail. Here it is by itself, without a top coat. 

Rapsodi 350 indoors, artificial light

It's actually lighter in real life but for some reason these colors always photograph darker for me. You can see there was a bit of unevenness because of the brush. I'm sure some top coat would have solved that but I didn't apply any because I knew I was going to cover it with nail art. 

My inspiration for these nails was this picture here. I used a dotting tool and a custom made color to do the lighter green part. I actually mixed H&M Hunt Me Down and Rimmel Limealicious to make a dusty olive green, which I don't have in my collection. Then I applied it messily with a dotting tool to resemble the ruffles in her dress. I used a gold striper from Golden Rose (Nail Art 108) to freehand the belt and the little tassels. Finally, a coat of Seche Vite and that's it! 

I hope you like this and thanks for reading! Here are the other ladies participating in this challenge. 

Where In The World Challenge: Canada

Hello lovelies! It's the weekend! And I have another Where In The World nail art for you today. I'm so psyched to show you this one because I love how it came out. I sure hope you'll like it as much as I do! The theme is: Canada! 

I hope it's pretty obvious that most of my nails show the uniform of the Mounties or, more formally, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. I think a lot of people regard them as a symbol of Canada and I think their uniform is really neat. This is actually their dress uniform because on normal days they look like regular police men and women. 

On the thumb I painted a maple leaf just like the one on the Canadian flag, chosen as a national symbol because of the environment of the country and because the maple is the "king of the forest". It's an eleven-pointed maple leaf, but the number of points has no particular meaning. This design was chosen because it was the least blurry while being blown by the wind.

The red I used as a base color is Rapsodi 326. From the 3 red polishes I have it was the most similar to the crimson of the Mountie uniform. I used a striping brush, a thin nail art brush and several polishes to draw the rest of the stuff. The base for the maple leaf is Farmec 50 and I painted the actual leaf using Rimmel Stand To Attention and a nail art brush. 

I'm really proud of how this came out and I hope you will like it too! Don't forget to check out the rest of the Canada themed nails! 

Thank you for reading and have a nice weekend!

Dots of fun

Hello again my lovelies! This is my second post for the day because I'm taking part in this contest on Marta's blog and the entries were posted today. The theme of the contest was "dots of fun" and we had to create a dotted manicure and take a picture with a unusual and creative object. Here's my entry! 

The object in the picture is my dad's old Russian camera dated circa the 80s. I though the neon dots really reminded me of the 80s and I looked for something from that period to take the picture with. I will tell you, posing with this was not an easy task. It's really heavy and somewhat big, so it's hard to hold with one hand. It wouldn't fit in my light box and my camera kept focusing on the lens instead of my nails. That's why the position is kinda weird but this was the best shot I got. 

I created this manicure using the H&M Nude I posted a few days ago as a base. The dots were done with Flormar 49 and a Rapsodi neon coral (312) that I have yet to swatch. I used different sized dotting tools to create the dots. I really like the combo of nude and neon and I think it's quite fashionable at the moment, so I really enjoyed this manicure. 

So if you like my mani or the object I posed with, please go here and vote for me. My entry is number 19. There's two separate categories for the nail art and for the object. I would really appreciate it if you could give me your vote! Thank you! 

The splatter adventure

Hello gorgeous readers! First I'd like to apologize (again) for not posting much. This will be a hard week and a half for me as I have two hard exams in very little time. I will do my normal Monday Blues post and maybe squeeze in one more post next week if I can. Good news is that in less than two weeks I'll be on vacation and blog activity will be back to normal. Today's post is about a little adventure. 

So last week I wanted to do some more elaborate nail art because I had a free afternoon. I decided to finally try the splatter technique. I had a straw and decided to use that and cut it in half so I could splatter two different colors. The experience was not that pleasant and the result...well, you should see for yourself. 

I started with a base of Rapsodi 340 and decided to do an all blue splatter. The colors I chose for the splatter were Orly Snowcone and OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue. I covered my table with wax paper and taped around my nails with scotch tape because it's a very messy technique and the polish goes everywhere. Here's how my table looked after the splattering. 

My main complaint about this technique is the fact that you have to blow the polish through the straw. It was totally unpleasant since I could feel the polish taste in my mouth because of the fumes that came through the straw. That's why I wouldn't do this again. The other problem I had was with the polish dripping off my straw onto my nails. Every nail has blobs on it because of that. I think I could have avoided that by putting some polish down on the wax paper and then dipping the straw in there instead of dipping it in the whole bottle and having huge amounts of polish on it. Cleanup was also not nice. The scotch tape lifted off in some places and allowed the polish to flow underneath. Plus there was still a gap between the nails and the scotch tape. Here's a shot of my splattered nails pre-cleanup. 

Look at that ring finger there! I spent an endless time cleaning this mess up. And in the end I was still left with blobs of polish on each nail. Top coat couldn't level them up because they were too huge. Here's a sun picture of the final result with top coat on. I really like how the shimmer in Yoga-ta Get This Blue comes out to play in the sun. 

After this debacle I wasn't ready to repeat the process on my other hand. So I decided to do a little stamped splatter instead. I used the same polishes and the splatter image from plate FUN 2 to randomly stamp on my left hand. 

In the end I really liked how the splatter looked and enjoyed wearing the mani. If only there was a method to avoid having the polish fumes in my mouth while blowing in the straw, I would definitely try this again and learn from my mistakes. The stamped alternative is also cute and so much easier to do. Have you tried the splatter mani? What method did you use?

Monday Blues: Rapsodi 340

Hello loves! It's Monday again! Where did the weekend go? But Monday means blue and I'm certainly not sorry about that. I'm very glad to show you one of my bargain finds. It's another polish from the brand Rapsodi and it was less than 1$. 

Rapsodi 340 indoors, artificial light

This is a great medium blue creme. It's a little more muted in reality but for some reason it came out really vibrant and darker in the pictures. I'd say this is the perfect shade of blue I was looking for to complete my blue ombre. It's lighter than cobalt and darker than sky blue. Just perfect! 

natural light

It was just starting to rain when I put this on so I made a bunch of shade (or rain) pictures. They show the true color better than the light box pictures. You can even see the first drops of rain in the next photo. It dried to a glossy finish so no top coat was added.

Application is ok with this one. It contains toluene so it does smell quite a bit. I did two thin coats and there was a little VNL but it wasn't that obvious. I knew I was going to cover it so I didn't mind too much. I will show you in the next post what I did over it so stay tuned. 

I hope you liked this week's blue polish. Please go and check out what the other lovely bloggers have come up with this week: 

Gosia from Life in Color!

Marta from ChitChat Nails

Stephanie from Sincerely Stephanie

Mandy from Chameleon Stampede
Marisa from Polish Obsession

Essie To Buy Or Not To Buy and holo glitter tips

Hello my lovelies! It's Friday! And that means a whole weekend of relaxation and playing computer games for me. I got the new Diablo and I love it and play it non-stop. Today's post is about a polish from this year's Essie spring collection. It's the first Essie polish that disappointed me. Let's take a look! 

Essie To Buy Or Not To Buy indoors, artificial light

TBONTB (I'm not that crazy about the long name either) is a lovely pastel lilac with a very interesting blue shimmer in it. Of course the shimmer is more evident in the bottle but I already expected that to happen. You can still see it a bit up-close on the nails (especially on the middle finger). The problem I encountered was the formula. It's very thin and watery and sheer. It needed 3 coats for opacity but even so it didn't apply well at all. The wateriness made the application streaky and impossible to level out. I just gave up after 3 coats because I never do 4 coats for a polish.

You can see that there's a huge bald spot on my middle finger. I tried to cover it but it was impossible. The streaks are not that evident in the pictures but they made me crazy. So I decided to use glitter because glitter makes everything better. 

I sponged the tips with Rapsodi 20, which is a larger size holo glitter and topped everything with a coat of INM Northern Lights (a finer holo glitter). Northern Lights is my go to polish for saving a manicure because it also levels out any unevenness and makes the mani fry faster. Plus it's a holo glitter, of course!

in the sun

I ended up loving this mani but I'm not sure about this Essie polish. All the Essies I own have top-notch formula and even the lighter ones apply like butter. I didn't spend any money on it because I won it in a giveaway, but still. This makes me think the Essie formula is not that foolproof. 

Does anyone else have this polish? Did you have the same issues or maybe I got a dud? Let me know!

I'm a winner and other news

Hello lovely readers and friends! I'm back! I'm finally done with the ugly exam and I'm so proud to tell you that I totally nailed it. I'm not one to brag usually but this time it was so hard and I've worked a ton so I think I deserve a reward! Well, my reward came today in the form of a lovely package from Enamel Girl. Some of you might remember this post where I was showing you a manicure I entered in her spring stamping contest. I didn't  win the big prize but I did win one of the prizes in the random draw. The whole Essie Spring 2012 collection, Navigate Her! Essie is one of my favorite brands and I love the formula of their polishes. Plus the colors are extremely amazing! Here's how they look. 

Clockwise starting from the top left: Ole Caliente, Orange, It's Obvious!, Tour De Finance, A Crewed Interest, To Buy Or Not To Buy and Navigate Her

The only one I had from this collection is Navigate Her (coincidentally the base for the winning manicure). The others are brand new to me. And Navigate Her is such an amazing color that I sure needed a backup. This is also the first time I own an entire collection from a brand. 

Look at the amazing shimmer in To Buy Or Not To Buy! And the iridescent shimmer in Tour De Finance! It's also a great opportunity for me to try out shades that are out of my comfort zone (like a bright fuchsia and an orange). She also added an NYC polish and some pretty nail stickers to the prize. 

NYC Scenestealer Grey and 3D nail stickers

Totally awesome because I don't have any NYC polishes in my collection! Thank you so much Kathy for this amazing package! I love them! 

I also made a few local purchases here and there. I got two polishes from Rapsodi, a medium blue and a holo glitter! I also got a lavender creme from Gabrini that is very hard to photograph properly. And finally, today I got the Konad top coat to use for my stamping manicures. I really have high expectations from this product! No more smudging or unevenness for me please! 

Rapsodi 20 and 340, Gabrini M109 and Konad top coat

Now that I'm done with exams, I have a ton of pictures to edit! I really have lots of manicures to show you guys. Also, a review for some awesome stamping plates is coming and I still have to show you my polish jewelry. So stay tuned for all that! Oh and have a nice weekend! 

The red adventure part two: Rapsodi 326

Hello again! Second post for today featuring another red. This time with a happy ending! 

A week ago I was browsing some shops in the city just to see if there was any new stuff in. I saw this new brand that was very very cheap (less than 1$ per bottle) and then it hit me. I should look for a blue-toned red since the price was right for me to experiment and there were a lot of red shades to choose from. I chose one that looked ok in the light of the shop (although you can never know with these). I was very pleased with the outcome! 

Rapsodi 326 in the sun

This red is so yummy! I'm not a red wearer myself but I crave one from time to time. This is the perfect blue-toned red crelly. It has the opacity of a creme with the amazing shine of a jelly. The sun pictures are all without top coat and look at that shine! I just love how this looks on me! 

There is a drawback of this polish however, namely the durability. It shows tip wear after one day of wear and it needs top coat badly to make it last longer. I don't mind because it's not a color I wear often and the price is right. It's almost as getting it for free. 

Rapsodi 326, indoors, artificial light

I'm pretty happy with this red and I'm sure I won't need another one in my collection anytime soon. It's nice to know that if I want to have red on my nails, I have the perfect shade in my collection.