The Nail Challenge Collaborative - Stamping - Week 2

Hallihallo~

Today, I'd like to continue showing you the results of my stamping practice. I admit that I didn't really do any nail art this past week. I was just wearing plain polish... at least only stuff from my stash of untrieds. So my second manicure for this month of stamping is about a week old.

Obviously, this one is not entirely stamped. I didn't fancy any of the big designs I have that day, but the stars and butterfly images on my plates gave me a couple of ideas. I ended up with the butterflies and yet another pastel manicure.

For this mani, I started with sponging my background using essence my yellow fellow and an unnamed Color Club blue. This required a couple of coats, but sponging is kind of fun... I just hate it when I mess up on the third layer.

Für dieses Design habe ich mir zunächst einmal den Hintergrund gesponged. Verwendet habe ich dafür essence my yellow fellow und einen blauen Color Club-Lack, dessen Name mir nicht bekannt ist. Da insbesondere das Gelb nicht so super deckt, brauchte das ganze ein paar Schichten.

Next, I grabbed my dotting tool and created the little flowers near my cuticle area. I actually had to stop myself adding more and more. But I still needed some space for my butterflies. The white is acrylic paint, the colorful dots some random polishes from my untrieds.

Als nächstes habe ich mit Dotting Tool und weißer Acrylfarbe die Blümchen hinzugefügt. Hier musste ich ein bisschen aufpassen, dass ich mir nicht zu viel Fläche mit Blümchen bedeckte. Die bunten Punkte sind Lacke aus meinem nicht kleiner werdenen Haufen unbenutzer Lacke.

Lastly, I stamped the butterflies using plates H19 and fauxnad m78. I used the white stamping polish that came with my original Konad stamping set, but it turned out surprisingly sheer. That gave me the idea to go in with some other sheer colors to make the butterflies stand out a little bit. I used Milani She's so glitzy and H&M Urban Spirit. (It's a coincidence that I just posted a manicure yesterday that used Urban Spirit... I hadn't used it since...)

Zu guter letzt habe ich dann die Schmetterlingsmotive der Schablonen H19 und M78 verwendet und auf den freien Teil gestamped. Trotz Konad Stampinglack waren sie aber irgendwie nicht so intensiv, wie ich mir das vorstellte. Damit sie nicht untergehen, habe ich die Flügel noch ein wenig koloriert.


There's not much else to say about this manicure. It was kind of cute, but I wish I had used white polish for the flowers instead of acrylic paint. The flowers are a little intense... or the butterflies not intense enough. This is also the last manicure on "long" nails. I go impatient again...

What do you think?

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading! :)

Fairy Tail inspired...

Hi everyone!

Some of you might know that instead of living in Germany, I would rather live in Japan. I have lived there before and I like it so much better than Germany (though I like Germany too). My love for Japan sprung from my love for anime back when I was a kid/teenager. I used to be a crazy Sailor Moon fangirl, when I was like 12 years old. Haha. I even studied a Japan related major and thus spent some time living overseas.
That's when I got over anime mostly. There's just too much animated stuff going on there, it killed it for me. But once in a while, I get in the mood to watch some anime.

Last fall, I did a crazy marathon watching an anime called Fairy Tail. In one of the boss fights, there were these weird foggy/jelly monsters that had this see-through thing going on that reminded me of jelly polishes. While watching this episode, I kept thinking how I could do this on my nails... and being a polish addict, I started working on it as soon as I finished watching.

So here are some Fairy Tail inspired nails. Weird monster inspired nails. :D

Since I did these more than half a year ago, I don't remember all the polishes I used for this one. I used the acid wash technique to create this look, so it involved a lot of layering. I remember two pinks and at least two purples. One of them Barry M Indigo, the other one was an essence polish. On top I sponged on one thin coat of H&M Urban Spirit to add some sparkles. Around the edges I added a thin stripe of black using a striper and on top of that one coat of the essence Smoky Topcoat, a sheer black jelly, to soften the black.

Instead of a Q-Tip, I used my clean-up brush and some acetone to dig trough all the polish layers. I'm not sure if all those coats of polish were necessary to create this. If you look very closely, you can tell that there's a "gradient" in those pink bolts. But honestly... if it's barely visible on zoomed pictures..?

I liked the look on my pictures, even though they didn't turn out all that great. The black around the edges and the vibrant Indigo... love! But in reality, I couldn't even stand the design on my nails for an entire day. It might have been different if I had purple jelly polishes at hand, but since I don't own any, I had to use cremes. That's what you get for trying to replicate some anime monster. Haha.

What do you think? Have you tried the acid wash technique at some point? Up to this point my initial acid wash manicure is still by far the most watched post of my blog.

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Zum Schluss eine Frage an die deutschen Leser. Anhand meiner Statistiken fällt mir auf, dass ich in letzter Zeit wieder mehr deutsche Klicks habe als amerikanische. Wie ist das mit dem Englisch? Passt das oder wäre es euch lieber, wennn zumindest eine deutsche Zusammenfassung im Post beinhaltet wäre?
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That's it for today. Time to get ready for work...

Kiko 400 - Steel Grey (Swatch)

Good morning!

While scrolling through my blog pictures folder, I noticed that I never posted my swatches of the fourth polish from the Kiko Lavish Oriental collection. I bought this one a couple of weeks later than the rest, which is probably the reason. But for consistency, here are the swatches of Kiko 400 aka Steel Grey.

I'm glad that I bought it. I wasn't so interested in this grey at first, but after seeing swatches I felt the need to buy it. Together with the beige holo, Steel Grey got the strongest holo effect out of the four. But it's not an in your face holo. I'm still waiting for my China Glaze holos... I can't wait to compare their holoness. Though, I already know that the particle size is different.

Since I tried to capture the holo effect on all the other pictures, here's one in lamp light. The holo is still there, but it's faint. I find it pretty in this 'state' too. It's a sparkly grey, quite opaque (2 coats) and its drying time is quite good. Also, topcoat doesn't dull the holo effect. I have yet to try them Lavish Oriental polishes for stamping, but I think there are better ones.

Have you got any of the Lavish Oriental Holos? What do you think of them?
Have a nice day~

The Nail Challenge Collaborative - Stamping - Week 1

Hi everyone!

Here's another post for the Nail Challenge Collaborative. I'm starting the posts for the new theme for May: stamping. This month definitely is a challenge for me. I still didn't really get the hang of stamping, but I'll practice my stamping skills this month. So far, 90% of the manicures I wore this month involved some kind of stamping. I decided to try a couple of things and post when I'm fine with the outcome. I got two manicures so far. Today, I'll show you the first.

For this manicure, I used essence Skyscraper as my base. This polish is from my growing stash of untrieds and belongs to the Urban Messages edition from 2011, I think. It's a weird polish, but I like it. I was inspired by the blouse I was wearing that day. At least colorwise.

I used fauxnad plate m64 for this mani. It's a full nail design and honestly, I didn't expect it to stamp so well. I'm still not sure if I just have crappy plates, or if I just managed to transfer it properly for once... To find out, I might buy another set sometime soon.

For the stamp, I used three stamping polishes: green, blue and pink. I applied a couple of drops and mixed them on the plate while scraping off the colors. It worked nicely.

And here are two picture of the base by itself. essence Skyscaper is grey polish with a hint of beige, brown micro particles and a faint blue shimmer. It really does remind me of concrete. Sadly, my camera isn't able to photograph well enough to show the micro particles.

That's it for today! Thanks for reading! :)