Off season: Nightmare Before Christmas inspired nails

Today, I'm throwing in one of those manicures I did for the Halloween theme last fall: a Nightmare Before Halloween inspired one. I'm still not happy with my tutorial manicures and I'm starting to think that I should just redo them...

So, yeah, this is not the season for either Halloween or Christmas, but I have a friend who loves Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas and she can watch it and sing its songs all year long, so I'm just doing the same with this manicure. I wanted to do a Halloween Before Christmas manicure for about 3 years, but only 2013 I got around to do it. And I haven't even shown it to the aforementioned friend...

Aside from this, I'm choosing this manicure because it also fits the tutorial theme. I can't find the tutorial anymore and I can't even seem to remember the name for the technique, but well, it was inspired by a tutorial too. Maybe anyone knows which tutorial I'm talking about?

I remember that I was quite frustrated while painting the details on my ring finger. I just couldn't paint them fine enough. In the end, I ordered new brushes. ^^;

After one day of wear, I decided to mattify this manicure...

It looks more spooky this way, doesn't it?

Materials used:
- p2 eternal
- my go-to Color Club white
- essie matte about you
- white and black acrylic paint
- acetone

Basically, you paint your nails with your base color (black) and let it dry thoroughly. (You might want to apply one coat of topcoat here...) Then you apply random lines of your second color (white) and immediately dilute them with a fine brush dipped in acetone. You best do one nail at a time here. I managed to smudge my base a couple of times. Luckily, it doesn't show in the pictures.

What do you think about this manicure and the technique?

Thank you for reading!

OPI - Mermaid's Spell with simple nail art

Today, I'm taking a break from catching up with the Nail Challenge Collaborative to show you some simple nail design I did with OPI Mermaid's Spell a little while ago. The truth is... I'm not very happy with my pictures for the third and fourth January designs. I have to work some more on them. That's what you get for slacking...

Oh well. So as I mentioned before, not posting and not doing my nails as often as before didn't stop me from buying more and more nail polish. I frequently check on second-hand sites too and in fall, I managed to get the beautiful Mermaid's Spell for relatively little money.

When I wore it for the first time, I wanted to add some nail art, but keep it very simple. Since I love the combination of teal+pink (and teal+purple), I opted for some pink rhinestones and some nail art stickers. Man, I haven't used these stickers in ages! I picked up those star stickers back in 2007, when I was living in nail art wonderland (Japan). And they're still good!

To sum it up once more... here's the

Materials used:
- OPI Mermaid's Spell
- pink rhinestones
- nail stickers
- essence BTGN Top Sealer

I adore Mermaid's Spell. I can totally understand why so many people love it. And I can't understand why I didn't buy it sooner. It was no lemming of mine at all! I need to wear it again... soon!

Thanks for reading! :)

TNCC - Inspired by a Tutorial #2 - Shooting Stars

Good morning ladies,

I'm continuing my 'back-into-blogging'-plan with my second manicure for the January prompt of the Nail Challenge Collaborative: Tutorials. This manicure just happened. It wasn't planned at all, but I liked them.

Originally, I only wanted to wear one of my new polishes, KBShimmer Turbulence, but something was lacking for me when I wore it. In the swatches I had seen, there was this gorgeous blueish and pink shimmer, but even though it's there, it's hiding most of the time. So I wanted to pimp it up a bit for the second day of wear. And that's where the tutorial kicks in.

After googling around a little bit, I settled with this tutorial for shooting stars. I followed these steps, but chose different polishes for each nail. It's still rather subdued, but a lot more fun than the base on it's own. Turbulence is more of an autumn color I think. Stormy november skies or something.

Materials used:
- KBShimmer Turbulence (base)
- Color Club Sparkle and Soar, Metamorphosis, Sky High, Wing Fling (stars)
- star-shaped rhinestones
- striping tape

What do you think?

Ah... I really want to change my layout... I'm starting to seriously hate it...