LDTTWC Day 5: We can do it!

Okay, I'm still totally behind with the schedule of this challenge, but I still have hope that I can finish it together with everybody else, since I'm on vacation for the next two weeks. :)

I tried to come up with something for the fifth day of the Time Warp Challenge this past week, between one seminar and another. The fifth theme is supposed to honor an influental woman from the past. Hm, I did some research on influental women and there are just so many women I had ideas for. In the end, I decided to honor a special lady though. The lady I owe my name to: Joan of Arc.

I'm not sure how well known she is in North America, but I'm sure most Europeans have heard of this young woman. She lived in 15th century France and originally, was a peasant girl. When she was about 13 years old, she started having visions of three angels and saints that told her to free France from English occupation. A lot of things happened, but church and Dauphin apparently believed in what she said after her faith was tested. She got her own armor and participated in the Houndred Years' War. The Dauphin would sit on the French throne, but the war was still not over and she ended up being caught, sold to her enemies and at the end, on a pyre in Rouen, when she was only 19 years old. She's a French national hero.

My mom loved the story of Jeanne d'Arc, how she's called in France, and this is why I was named Johanna. I can't think of a better opportunity to honor her. Both my mom and Jeanne d'Arc.

Sadly, I'm not very happy with the result of my nail art. Everything went fine, until I tried to paint her face and well... that ruined everything. But since time was a problem this past week, I had to leave it like that.

I used Kiko 399 as my base color and started painting my Jeanne with white acrylic paint first. Everyhing looked fine so far. Her armor was filled in using Catrice Browno Mars, the flag's pole with Color Club Earthy Angel and the flag itself was painted with Model's Own Pinky Brown. When I was done, I outlined everything with black acrylic paint and after that... well, ruined everything. :(

I was kind of frustrated afterwars, but still painted my Middle Age pattern using red, blue and black acrylic paints... and smudged it with some topcoat. Oh well... it can't go well all the time.

Have you heard of Jeanne d'Arc?

LDTTWC Day 4: Lights, camera, action!

I'm totally late with this post, but I just didn't get around to paint my nails since the kite mani. I had decided last week what I wanted to do for this theme, so this was done quite quickly at least. I wasn't sure what movie I should do, but then, I read the description of today's theme properly: "Choose a nostalgic movie, song, or piece of literature"... and there it was! I have no idea why, but this old poem keeps going around and around in my head since about two weeks ago. I took that as a sign and decided to do my mani in honour of that poem.

I guess my German readers all know of the poem "Herr Ribbeck von Ribbeck im Havelland". At least back when I was in 6th grade, everyone had to learn this poem by heart. I don't remember all of it, but the first few lines. For those who are interested, here's an English translation of the -->poem<-- The real story of the poem is set around the year 1759 and basically tells the story of a squire who loved to give the boys and girls in his village lots of pears when they were ripe. When he died, he anticipated that his son would not continue this tradition and asked for a pear to be put in his coffin. When his son would not give pears to the children of the village, a new pear tree would grow from his grave, so the children could eat delicious pears every fall nevertheless.

Except for the base (MNY 500A) and the top coat, the whole mani was painted using acrylic paint. I originally had a retro pear design in mind, but that required some time for planning... time I didn't have last week. Not sure I'll have some this week either. But at least, I got this mani down. ^^;

What do you think? Do you know of this poem?

Fall into Autumn 4: Cloudy Days

Aaaah, I'm so behind with my nail art this week... I was told last weekend that I have to move to another room in the house by the end of next week. Since I'm not going to be around much next week because of a seminar I'm attending, all the moving stuff has to happen before that. So instead of painting my nails, I was painting walls the last couple of days. I hurt so much every night... I didn't feel like painting my nails at all. But the bright side of the story: The "Kellerkind" (it's an idiom here in Germany basically meaning something like nerd, but if you take it literally means child living in the basement) is going to be an "Attic Cat" starting next week. Btw, has anyone seen this K-Drama?

But today, I want to present my cloudy day nails. They are not exactly cloudy, but when I was thinking what I could paint for the theme, I recollected my childhood and how we would fly kites in autumn when it was windy enough. And well, those days often were cloudy days.

I used Manhattan Lotus Effect 16 as my base color and used white acrylic paint to pre-paint the kite and cloud shapes. For the kite I used an unnamed yellow Color Club, Kiko 386, BeYu 393 and a couple of other acrylic paints. The clouds were painted using my favorite unnamed white Color Club, Priti NYC Oleaster, the already mentioned BeYu polish and pink acrylic paint.

 I really like how the clouds on my thumb look. I might do that color combo again.

But what do you think? Did you fly kites too?

LDTTWC Day 3 - I remember when...

For the third day of the Time Warp Challenge, we are supposed to create a manicure in honor of an event in history... either well-known or personal. At first, I wasn't sure what to do for this one. There aren't many memories that I could do a manicure on and I had no idea what well-known event I should choose. In the end, swatching my newest Priti NYC polishes gave me the answer.

After swatching Priti NYC Bowles Black, I decided to do a manicure in honor of the first men on our moon on July 21st 1969. It's not something I remember, but it's a very well-known event.

I love how the flakies in Bowles Black show up quite well on my thumbnail in this picture. It's like a million tiny glitter stars plus a few weird looking acrylic color ones. I painted those nails so that they look right for me... and because I thought that using the half moons of my nails as the moon's shape provides a nice coherent frame.

So besides using Priti NYC Bowles Black, the black polish, I also used Barielle Sterling Silver. I applied it on top of Bowles Black as my moon's color. On my middle and pinky nails, I also sponged on some essence rich&pretty as well as grey denim and a mixture of those plus Bowles Black. My egg-shaped planet Earth was painted using my new all-time white, an unnamed Color Club, and Kiko 386.

My astronaut and the foot print were painted using black and white acrylic paint.

I was really happy with these nails. It took a while to paint, but it was worth it! They didn't make it to the end of the day though, because I was too lazy to paint my other hand with pretty moon things too... I just should have painted them, because half of the polish I applied instead came off while I was asleep. Haven't had that in a while. ^^;

What do you think of my moonwalk nails?

Priti NYC - Bowles Black (Swatch)

I bought myself a couple of new Priti NYC polishes last week, when I found this set of 5 for little money at my local TK Maxx. It had a couple interesting colors in there and because I usually like their formula, I took it home with me.

One of the colors in this Priti NYC set is Bowles Black, a black polish infused with tiny silver flakies. At first I thought it's glitter, but when I was applying it, I noticed that the glitter was irregular and there were a couple slightly bigger pieces. Works with me. Flakies are easier to remove anyway.

I used this polish as my base for the nail art I'm going to show you later tonight. Since the weather was so nice yesterday and this was a new polish for me, I decided to take a couple pictures for a swatch post. My pictures show three coats. You could get away with two if you apply slightly thicker coats, but this polish tends to be a little runny, so thin coats worked better for me.

Bowles Black falls in the same category as MNY 673, I have posted about in February. This one, too, is a black base filled with silver flakies. They are similar, but yet so different. The flakies in the MNY are a lot bigger than the ones in Priti NYC. But the silver flakies don't show up better in the Priti NYC as in the MNY. The Priti NYC doesn't need a topcoat to make the flakies show up in the first place though. Bowles Black is very glossy on its own. The formula is similar, but the drying time was definitely better for the Priti NYC.

All in all, I think Bowles Black looks a bit more sophisticated than 673. Same as with the MNY, I think the flakies give this black polish a softer, more wearable look, but since the flakies are smaller it makes the look more homogeneous. I still like the MNY! But I wouldn't have used that one as my base for the nail art coming next. :D

What do you think? Do you own any of the two or maybe another polish falling in this category? What are your thoughts about it then?

Fall into Autumn 3: School (Spirit)

Oh boy, this mani was a tough task... I had to google the concept of school spirit, because it's not something we have here in Germany. Or let's say, in the schools and university I went to. So, my schools don't have colors or any sports team that would be worth mentioning... neither did my university. My Japanese university probably does, but I didn't feel like finding out - I always get depressed when I think about my time in Japan. Miss it so much. And since I'm not much of a sports fan either, I was really troubled thinking of a theme.

So... I cheat for this one. It's the reason why I put the *spirit* in brackets. What I thought of, without thinking of any special team, was cheerleader uniforms, to be more specific, the skirts. I have seen a couple really nice checkerd ones on TV and I really wanted to do a checkered mani, so I decided to combine that. It was also inspired by a mani from a Japanese nail magazine.

 

This mani was mostly done using polishes. The black is, once again, essence black is back. The blue base is Kiko 386 and the yellow an unnamed Color Club. For the red I chose p2 can't get enough. Those are the colors for the stripes too. The rest of the checkered pattern is acrylic paint. I tried to use thinned  white polish first, but it didn't work the way I wanted it to. Bleeded and so on. The stripes are a little wobbly, but overall, I'm quite satisfied.

Theme 5 will be another difficult one... we don't really have (American) football here. It's not a big thing here. My cousin is a big fan though. He's watching it on pay-TV every year. :D


So what do you think of my checkered manicure? Does is qualify as school spirit themed?

LDTTWC Day 2 - It's vintage, darling!

Today, I would like to show you the next mani I have done for the "Let's Do The Time Warp" Challenge. Since I have somewhat cheated with my last mani, I decided to do something rather classic for this one.

If I think of vintage, the theme for Day 2, I think of pretty 20s jewelry, dresses and architecture. I did some picture research and decided to go with the jewelry theme. My inspiration was a bracelet with gemstones and filigree silver work in the art deco style. I really like this style... and the one it derives from, art nouveau, which is a distinct feature of my hometown.

This is basically a rather simple mani. I used three different polishes only. The black base is essence black is back and the red Milani Foxy Lady. I painted my filigree using essie No Place Like Chrome and a striper brush. I starting to use those stripers a lot lately. Maybe I should invest in a good quality one sometime soon. Can anyone recommend a brand to me?

When I painted the silver filigree stuff, it was one of those times when I wished polish would dry slower. The essie polish was rather quick drying and I think I wasted a lot because I couldn't draw fast enough, hehe. Not, that I will ever finish this bottle anyway...

What do you think? Does it look art deco to you?

LDTTWC Day 1 - I should have been born in...

... or rather not. Anyway, I decided to participate in yet another challenge. I just loved the themes from the challenge and well, it's not the first challenge by Lindsay from Neverland Nail Blog I'm participating in. The last one was great and I'm sure this one will be too!

Lindsay's newest piece of work is the "Let's do the Time Warp" Challenge that's going to consist of 8 themes just like the Girly Girl Challenge did. This one will be challenging, because it's no "go at your own pace" challenge. I do prefer the latter.. but the themes were just great. So many ideas! Please take a look!

For Day 1, we are supposed to create a manicure that represents an era we would have loved to live in. I didn't exactly chose a time I'd like to live in, but a time I'd like to experience. When I was still in school, I was very obsessed with palaeontology. My dreams of digging up amazing stuff were ruined by the job counselor we had to go to in 11th grade. She made it very clear that it would be absolute nonsense to even think about studying about it.

When I researched later (13th grade), I found out that it was indeed an occupation that very little people get to do... but I had developed other interests in the meantime and well, ended up studying about one of theme. I never lost interest in palaeontology though and I still love to read books about it, read about the newest discoveries and watch all kinds of documentaries. If I had the chance to travel back in time, I'd like to take a look at earlier stages of life on this planet. The mani I created is supposed to represent some of those stages.

On my pointer, I tried to paint a scene with some early humans, the mammoth on my middlefnger is self-explanatory. My ringfinger is supposed to represent a carboniferous forest. Finally, on my pinky I tried to give some credit to marine life too, but I kinda failed here. Should have painted some trilobites instead, haha.

I used so many different polishes for this mani, that I'm not going to write them all down. The mammoth and the humans were painted using acrylic paints aside from polish. And I sponged a lot for this mani.

What do you think? I'm really proud of my mammoth. I think it turned out the best out of the four scenes. I really feel like watching some documentaries now... :D

Dandelions

After I had to take off my apple manicure on Thursday, I ended up painting my nails with just one color, because I ran out of time that night. That happens more and more often lately... but I can't say that I hate it. I have so many untrieds... If I do nail art, I just can't take it off the next night (usually). There's a lot more time involved and I want to enjoy what I painted. With just polish, I don't feel bad at all if I take it off the next night to use another color.

So this Thursday night, I painted my nails with one of those untrieds, essie Bikini so Teeny. I had hoped that this would be my perfect cornflower blue, but at least in the bottle, it is not blue enough. Also, I wasn't sure about the glitter. On the nails, this color is somewhat different than in the bottle. I wish there were still some cornflowers blooming, so I could compare... well, next spring then.

I really liked the color and the next night, when I was browsing through my inspiration folder, I stopped at this cute dandelion manicure. I think it was created using some stamp, but I don't have that, so my good old brush had to do the job.

I painted one more coat of Bikini so Teeny, because, well, I wore it for a day already and hadn't topcoated it the night before. Tipwear  was the obvious result. I had three coats of that polish on now and put one more coat of BeYu 393 on top. 393 is a silver glitter polish, but it's no clear base... rather a pearly silver one. One more of my untrieds. I only noticed it later, but the BeYu considerably changed the color of the essie. It's a lot darker, bluer now. Maybe it's closer to my cornflower blue...

First, I tried to paint the dandelion with white polish, but I couldn't work as detailed as I wanted to, so I switched to white acrylic paint. Much better. So on my pinky, the dandelion was painted with polish, the rest is acrylic paint.

I finished the whole thing with one coat of essence BTGN Top Sealer and that's it. I was really happy when my co-workers could identify them as dandelions. Yay. I'm about to take the mani off now. Not sure what I want to do next. I need to research for the upcoming challenge themes...

So what do you think of the dandelions? Is it weird to paint them in almost-fall?

Fall into Autumn 2: Apples (2)

And here's the second manicure I did for the second theme of the Fall into Autumn Challenge, Apples. Let's call it the traditional take on the apple manicure. But I just love the look and wanted to do it too.

For this one, I used three coats of OPI Bubble Bath as my base. I'm glad it doesn't look as pink on the pictures as it does in RL... Three coats are definitely too pink for my skin tone, hehe. On top of that I applied one coat of Nubar 2010 to give it some sparkle.

First, I painted the apples with white acrylic paint to make the red pop a lot more. The apple's red is essence Call it Fame from the discontinued multi dimension line. How I loved those polishes... The brown for the tiny stems is Bourjois Brun enrobant and the green is a mixture of OPI Green-wich Village (see, there it is again) and essence Colourbration.

On my ringfinger, I tried to create the apple's shape using green rhinestones. Hm, I wish I had smaller ones. Like 1mm. Those are the 2mm ones. The stem consists of brown glitter flakes I put into the wet polish. After I sealed the whole manicure with a generous coat of essence BTGN Top Sealer, it held really well. I didn't loose a single rhinestone in 3 days.

On the last day, I added a little worm to my mani. I get the feeling that every single apple from our trees has one this year, so how could I not add one to my apple manicures ^-^" It's painted using acrylic paints.

What do you think of this one? Do you like the "traditional" look as much as I do?

Stephanie Oblas A Little Polish 
Sue O'Connor Creative Nail Design by Sue
Hannah Fabiny Polished Prisms
Katee Baum A Girl and her Polish
Ashley Rowlands-Vanderzande One Nail to Another 
Karine Assemien Karinea0a
Charlotte-Louise Bennett  Charlottes Nails
Alyson Epstein Beads Nails Food
Sharra Farivar The Blahg
Maribeth Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky Barnett Glamfiend
Angie Moore OurPaintedWorld
Sarah Jürgens Dakila's
Alethia Neverending Nailart
Amanda Murphy Mandy's Polish
Lisa Oswald Lisa's Nail Obsession

Fall into Autumn 2: Apples (1)

Okay, I was really excited about the new challenge and did my (first) apple manicure last weekend already. Since I'm itching to continue with my challenges, I'm going to show you my apple manicures today. I ended up doing two different manicures, because I couldn't decide... So here's one of the two.

I saw this pretty illustration online that had this handdrawn look to it. I really liked that and tried to attempt something similar with this manicure.

As my base I used the same unnamed white Color Club polish I have used recently. Actually... I think it's not bad at all, because it's quite opaque with two coats. I continued with a striper brush and some black acrylic paint to outline my apples which proved more difficult than it looks, hehe. The green is OPI Green-wich Village, my go-to green lately... I used a medium sized brush to "scribble" it. You can probably barely see it, but the insides of the apples are actually colored. I used a mixture of OPI Bubble Bath and Illamasqua Load to achieve the color. It's very visible in RL. Oh well.

I had to repaint some of the outlines later because they got too covered up, but that was easier than painting them in the first place. I painted a lot of weird shapes apples at first.

I finished the manicure with two coats of my beloved essence BTGN Top Sealer to make it juicy. I really like how this mani turned out. It's nowhere close to the illustration though.

What do you think?

The challenge team got some additions since my last post. Aside from the veterans to the challenges, a couple new ladies have joined. Please take a look at their blogs too!

Stephanie Oblas A Little Polish 
Sue O'Connor Creative Nail Design by Sue
Hannah Fabiny Polished Prisms
Katee Baum A Girl and her Polish
Ashley Rowlands-Vanderzande One Nail to Another 
Karine Assemien Karinea0a
Charlotte-Louise Bennett  Charlottes Nails
Alyson Epstein Beads Nails Food
Sharra Farivar The Blahg
Maribeth Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky Barnett Glamfiend
Angie Moore OurPaintedWorld
Sarah Jürgens Dakila's
Alethia Neverending Nailart
Amanda Murphy Mandy's Polish
Lisa Oswald Lisa's Nail Obsession

Fall into Autumn 1: Back to School

Hi everyone~

Starting today, I'm going to participate in the newest challenge that the ladies from my challenge facebook group came up with. It's called Fall into Autumn and is going to be a fall themed challenge. It's the third challenge by this facebook group I'm going to participate in and I'm sure it'll be just as awesome as the two before. A lot of the former participants are going to join in again, as are a couple of newcomers. I can't wait to see what everybody is going to come up with.

 The first theme is Back to School... which I can't really relate to anymore. There are a couple of things you see a lot for this kind of theme, so I was thinking if there wasn't something about going to school that's special for Germany. What I came up with are Schultüten. When children enter first grade they are usually presented with a huge cardboard cone filled with all kinds of sweets, toys, etc. I googled for pictures a while a found a couple of Schultüten, that had pretty geometrical prints. On my ringfinger, I originally wanted to paint a cartoon character, which is something commonly seen on Schultüten. But my hand was quite unsteady, so I decided on a couple of numbers and letters instead.

The main colors for the geometric design are

OPI Green-wich Village
Manhattan 51K
essence Stairway to Heaven

The stripes and dots were painted using the above mentioned and
essie French Affair
OPI Stranger Tides
white acrylic paint

The base for my ringfinger is OPI Stranger Tides again. I painted the letters and numbers with white acrylic paint and outlined them with the above mentioned colors and Color Club Red-ical Gypsy. As usual, my topcoat was essence BTGN Top Sealer.

I'm not very happy with how this turned out. It's colorful. I like that, but in the end, it didn't remind me very much of a Schultüte... And I really hated myself for having such an unsteady hand that day. Oh well. I'm liking the outcome of theme 2 a lot better. :D

So far, the challenge has fourteen participants and here are the links to their respective blogs:

Stephanie Oblas A Little Polish 
Sue O'Connor Creative Nail Design by Sue
Hannah Fabiny Polished Prisms
Katee Baum A Girl and her Polish
Ashley Rowlands-Vanderzande One Nail to Another 
Karine Assemien Karinea0a
Charlotte-Louise Bennett  Charlottes Nails
Alyson Epstein Beads Nails Food
Sharra Farivar The Blahg
Maribeth Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky Barnett Glamfiend
Angie Moore OurPaintedWorld
Sarah Jürgens Dakila's