Spring Challenge 12: May Flowers!

There's three more designs of the Spring Challenge for me to post... one of them I'll show you today.

Design 12 was supposed to be "May Flower"-themed. I don't remember if the flowers I tried to recreate actually bloom in May, but I remember seeing them around in our garden this spring. I really wanted to do a manicure that uses the colors at least, but I decided to recreate the flowers themselves for this challenge. I hope you can tell what flowers they are supposed to be... :P

Despite my love for acrylic paints, I actually did this manicure with polishes only. The ones I used are:

- Manhattan Frozen Jogurt
- Illamasqua Load
- Color Club Almost Famous
- essence A Hint of Mint
- Catrice Virgin Forest mixed with A Hint of Mint
- Color Club Incognito
- Woo 665

Color Club Incognito is a light nude shade that looks really violet here. I was a bit surprised and had to check the bottle to make sure it really is Incognito. I think it made a surprinsigly well suited background for my flowers though.

Sadly, I didn't manage to take a solo shot of my thumb nail that wasn't blurry. In my opinion the flowers looked best on my thumb. But can you tell what flowers they are supposed to be? My colleagues mostly guessed the wrong flower... But to be fair the flowers they guessed also exist in this color pattern.

Two more to go... but well, it's all about finally posting them... ehem.
Have a nice day~

Spring Challenge 11: Eggs and Chicks

Sunday, finally. I was soooo looking forward to the weekend! I haven't worked the early shift in a while... I was just so tired when I got off work yesterday. It had a good thing too, though. I had a lot more time on hand to paint my nails, haha.

So today, I want to present my quite uninspired take on the 11th theme of the Spring Challenge, which is Eggs and Chicks. I didn't want to do some cracked eggs and chicks like the ones showing up every year around Easter. But I didn't really have another idea too. I had been thinking about changing the base color to one of the crazy shell colors to be found in my mother's garden. She keeps a few chicken and some of them lay eggs in really interesting colors, e.g. chocolate brown or light green.

But when the time came that I decided to sit down and finally do my Eggs and Chicks mani, I had a light yellow polish on my nails already and decided to go with a classic color scheme.

So my base is Rival de Loop 481, a light yellow creme. I don't have the best experiences with Rival de Loop polishes, so I don't own many. This is actually my third. They are quite inexpensive, but what use is the price if you don't fancy the concistency and/or brush. When I swatched it first, it looked quite opaque, but in the end... 3 to 4 coats on my nails. Boo.

Well, for my manicure, I ripped apart one of those kitchen sponges with the black scratchy side and used that scratchy part to sponge Illamasqua Load and Essie Marshmallow on to my "old" manicure. Aside from the polish, there was some residue from the sponge too, but I liked the effect.

Using black acrylic paint I painted my little chicks and flower pot. They were inspired by a font I stumbled upon the other day. The lady created a few other cute fonts... sadly no free ones, it seems.

What do you think? Did you take a look at the font? :D

Misslyn 646 "Las Vegas" Swatch

A while ago, when we had the first warm and sunny days here in Germany, I decided to swatch a few of my newly bought polishes. This is something I rarely do, so I have a lot of untrieds... Since then my pictures have been sitting on my computer, waiting to be posted. Well, today I want to put one of those polishes out of its misery.

I guess Misslyn is one of those German brands that are not that well known, even among Germans. One reason probably being the fact that you cannot buy the brand in drugstores like essence, essie and so on, but in department stores. Another might be that they are more pricey than our usual drugstore brands. Misslyn polishes are about 5€ (~6$) for a bottle of 10ml. I remember the brand being around for a long time. I used to have some of their stuff when I was getting into polish when I was about 10 years old... which was 16 years ago. They have a solid range of colors as well as a regular release of limited edition polishes.

So the polish I want to show you today is from their current core range. It has the number 646, but the bottle's label as well as their website also reveal a name: Las Vegas.

I would describe Las Vegas as a purple with loads of golden flecks as well as multicolored microglitter. The purple base is a little sheer, so the flecks and the glitter show up really well. I used two coats for my pictures.

indirect sunlight

I don't own the polishes, but from swatches I have seen, I would say that Las Vegas belongs in the same family as Orly Oui or its dupes. It's not cheaper than any of those though unless you can find it on sale somewhere.

The last two pictures were taken under my desklamp to show you the microglitter. It's not very strong, but is there. From the polish name I would have expected the microglitter to be a little bit more prominent, but I still like the polish a lot.

The formula could be better though. The polish being sheer is fine with me as I usually apply two coats anyway and I think the flecks benefit from the sheerness. What is not fine with me is the time this polish needs to dry. Okay, I didn't use a fast-drying  topcoat, because I would remove it for another swatch right after I took pictures, but I managed to smudge is very badly on my way back to my desk... hence the three finger-pictures. It dries pretty shiny though. I like that.

Misslyn polishes can be bought at department stores such as Kaufhof or Karstadt, but since a little while ago, you can also order them from douglas.de.

What do you think? Any opinions about similarities by someone who owns Orly Oui maybe?

Spring Challenge 10: Butterflies!

Here's another design for the Spring Challenge! Theme number 10 is butterflies and I had a few ideas for this one. In the end I settled for a rather simple look that still took me a while to accomplish. Haha.

I used two coats of p2 Pearly Lilac from the Color me softly LE as my base color and black acrylic paint as well as a detail brush for the butterflies. I thought about adding some rhinestones or glitter, but in the end... I felt that stuff like that might steal the show from my butterflies.

I don't know how often I removed some of those butterflies until I was ok with their look... This is what I love about acrylic paint! If you are fast enough you can just wipe it off with some wet tissue and repaint without damaging the polish underneath.

I didn't take any pictures, but I actually loved how my right hand turned out. It usually doesn't look as good, because I'm righthanded and my left is just not as steady as my right. But this time, I liked it a lot. I guess practice is showing slowly...

 And lastly, here's a shot of Pearly Lilac all on its own. It applies quite well, but it's a little sheer. Drying time is okay, but not really fast. I don't know why they called it pearly. I imagined something different when I first read the press releases. Pearly Lilac is a nice pastell violett with lots of silver flecks. It's nothing outstanding, but a nice polish for spring. I really don't like the shape of the bottle though...

What do you think? :D

Spring Challenge 9: Fresh Cut Lawns

Today, I want to present you my simple and quick take on the ninth installment of the Spring Challenge!

But before that, I would like to ask for your help! The other day, I posted my "glamorous" nail design I created for a small contest. This very contest has now entered the voting stage and I would be really really happy if you would take the time to vote for me. Just go to >>Rundum schön<< and you'll find a poll in the top right corner. You don't need to be a follower to vote! Thank you!

On to the nail art! Theme 9 for the Spring Challenge was Fresh Cut Lawns... and let me tell you, I hate fresh cut lawns. I don't know, they are just too clean looking for me. Too boring. I'm glad our garden has no lawn to be seen anymore. So here's my take on the theme:

I used OPI Greenwich Village, two unnamed Color Club polishes for the white and blue and essence Sundancer for the yellow dots. Another really simple mani that was still fun to do.

Please excuse the dryness of my hands. I don't know what's going on in the last few weeks, but my hands are so dry, it hurts. No cream seems to help and I'm also entering another phase of breaking nails. I only wore this mani for 2 days, because the nail of my middlefinger broke in a very bad spot. I managed to fix it, but as you may have noticed on my glamorous-post, I didn't really do a good job with the gel I used to stabilize it for the time being. Sadness.

What do you think? Do you like fresh cut lawns!?

Spring Challenge 8: Matte Magic

Yes, I continued doing my challenge depite not being able to post. I hope I'll finish it within the next week, because I'd love to start another one. Those challenges are really fun. =)

So today I have one of those themes that really gave me a headache. I tried several combinations for this one, but none really appealed to me... Today, I want to show the two I liked the best.

after 1 day of wear

This polish is a franken I recently made myself, because I just can't find myself the perfect cornflower blue. It turned out a little bit too violet compared to a real cornflower, but I'll get there... I *need* the perfect cornflower blue. I mean, I'm looking for more than a year already.

I added those tiny silver pailettes and mattified the whole thing afterwards. I love mattified glitters... and silver plus purple is always a great combination in my opinion. My hand could have been a bit steadier while placing the glitters though.

I didn't wear this for long. Well, mattified manis just don't last very long on me, even though the polish itself was topcoated before I mattified it. But the real reason is the crazy amount of polishes I bought in the last few weeks that still want to be swatched and played with. Not that I got around to do that. Haha.

And then there was this manicure. I did it a few weeks before the purple one, around the time we had major bunny trouble.

This is Catrice Beam me Scotty! from the Out of Space LE. On it's own, it's drying to a suede like finish. I decided to mattify it nonetheless, because I found the effect of suede-and-glossy too subtil. To create this (still very subtil) manicure I applied two thin coats of Beam me Scotty! and topped it with essie Matte about you. When this was dry, I used tape to cover some matte stripes, then topcoated it using essence BTGN Top Sealer and immediately removed the tape. That's it. Nothing fancy.

Doing a glossy/matte-mani for this theme was my first idea when I read the challenge chart and I have tried several other combinations. I remember seeing some really awesome manis that sported this.. but mine didn't turn out that great. I'll try again some time.

This is Beam me Scotty! on it's own, not mattified. I like the finish, but I love the polish with top coat to make it glossy. If you use slightly thicker coats, this one is a one coater.

So what do you think of my matte attempts?

Green + Gold + Rhinestones = Glamourous?

Yay, I'm back! Finally! I don't know how many things went wrong in the past 4 weeks, but it sure did prevent me from posting. After my last post, I thought things would get better as our baby bunnies are now eating all by themselves. But right after I started doing my nails properly again, my computer decided to collapse. I guess I really need a new one soon. Oh well.

Anyway, I was very busy doing my nails, taking pictures and such, so I hope I'll manage to post a lot in the next few days. Today's mani is actually my current manicure. I'm going to enter a little contest with this one that actually ends tonight, so I have to post it first. (edit: I would be more than happy if you took the time to vote for me~ http://rundum-schoen.blogspot.de/ In the top right corner you can find the poll!)

As every so often, my inspiration was a Japanese nail artist. I love her work even though I can't reproduce a lot of it. Today's mani is a variation of a watercolor mani she has done. Instead of the watercolor effect, I chose to sponge myself a gem-like base using green polishes. I really love sponging... it's so easy and the effect is just awesome. Also, it dries quickly... and I could move on with my gold framing right after I finished sponging. Well, my framing doesn't look as delicate as I wanted it too, but it's not too bad. I definitely need a new detail brush. On the gold, I added some gold glitter as well as a variation of green and yellow rhinestones. I actually hoped they would get cloudy once coated with topcoat, but this time they failed me!

Here's what I used:

Pinky & pointer:

• OPI Bubble Bath, 
• revell email color 94 

Ring, middle & thumb:

• Catrice Sold Out Forever,  
• Catrice Virgin Forest, 
• essence Colourbration, 
• China Glaze Zombie Zest,  
• China Glaze Emerald Fitzgerald, 
• Rival de Loop spring melody and 
• Kiko 268.

I'm not happy with my pictures. Usually it's purple's that my camera doesn't want to photograph properly. This time it was green's. The green is much more vibrant in reality. It's close to the green of the large rhinestones, but sadly, it looks a bit washed out in my pictures.

The revell color doesn't last very long, I have to admit. It works great for stamping and it's really opaque, but you can tell that it is not meant for polishing your nails. On the other hand, I'm really happy that my rhinestones are staying where I put them. On my third day of wear I have lost my first and since then, nothing! Yay.

So what do you think? Is my equation appropriate?