Sonntag, 28. Dezember 2014

Matcha latte drag marble

... or at least, that was the idea behind this manicure.

Matcha latte was one of my favorite drinks this summer - home made, of course. So when I was looking for ideas for the Tea Party theme, I thought of Matcha latte. Since I like to play with the frothed milk and the green tea (you know, like easy coffee art), I decided pretty quickly, that I would be trying a drag marble. I actually never tried this technique before and I'm not sure I'll  be doing it again. It's nothing fancy, but it took me a little while to figure out how much polish I should apply and how fast I need to work.

The polishes are OPI Alpine Snow and Barielle Positive Zen-Ergy.




"A matcha latte inspired manicure. I am pretty much addicted to matcha right now, so I just had to do one such manicure for the tea party prompt of the Nail Challenge Collaborative."

Sonntag, 21. Dezember 2014

Playing with nail stickers

I was really looking forward to the August theme of the Nail Challenge Collaborative. The theme was "Tea Party" and it sounded like so much fun - I voted for this theme too. In the end, I struggled quite a bit. Especially, because I didn't really have a lot of time to paint the detailed stuff I originally had in mind.

So here's the first manicure. I used some of the nail stickers I bought at Daiso a couple of years ago instead of painting the roses. Despite the low price, they're really really nice. Quite thin and flexible. You can even reposition them when you're careful. Lately, we mostly see water decals, but stickers are actually quite nice to work with too. Maybe I even find it easier. No need for the water. And I kind of like the 3D feeling some of the stickers have. Sadly, I didn't find stickers such as those the last two times I went to Japan. Not sure this will be any different when we're going there next year. (I'm sooo counting the days!!)

Sadly, I only have the pictures I used on Instagram...



"My first manicure for the Nail Challenge Collaborative's month of August. The theme this time is "Tea Party". I used essie "French Affair" as my base, topped with the new essence "Sparcle Sand" topcoat and then I just added dots and a couple of rose shaped stickers. Haven't used those in ages... effortless nailart!"

Freitag, 19. Dezember 2014

Foiled... again

...and so much better too!

My colleague gave the Ciaté Foils set to me, because she felt like she doesn't have the patience for this kind of nail art. This is my first try with the set and I really like it. Next time, I want to try the glue with the foil I got from Bornprettystore. I haven't gotten that to work yet, but I suspect it's due to the glue. So maybe I get better results with the Ciaté glue.

Aside from playing with foils once more, I also tried practising the one stroke technique again. I'm still not all that happy with my acrylic paints. Either this or I'm doing something fundamentally wrong. :P




"And here's another manicure for the Nail Challenge Collaborative's month of July. I had pondered which manicure I should recreate and I decided on an old one where I first used foils. It's not even close to the one though. ;) The polish is the same: essence - Grand-Plié in Black. The rest is foils and acrylic paints."

The original manicure can be found -->here<--

The essence polish had almost gone bad, by the way. Even though I hadn't used the polish since that post from 2011 and the bottle neck was clean, I had to add a lot of thinner to be able to use it again. Good thing that thinner exists! :)

Donnerstag, 18. Dezember 2014

Practising the art of water marbling...

...and actually getting a little better at it!

I remember that I chose the manicures I wanted to recreate for the Nail Challenge Collaborative under the aspect of "trying again". This is another one that might not look like a total failure, but it basically is. The first one was painted, because I couldn't get the marbling right, but I liked the color combination so much, that I did it the simple way. But this time I managed to do a pretty decent water marble. Yay!






"And the third manicure for the Nail Challenge Collaborative's month of July. Another recreation. In this case a failed #watermarbling that worked out so much better this time. But it's never going to be a go-to nail art technique for me. Polishes were the same as in 2011! Essence - Replay, Manhattan - 51K, p2 - virgin."

The original manicure can be found -->here<--


I still like the original manicure. :) But... I had nubbins! That's like half of my current (December) nail length!


Mittwoch, 17. Dezember 2014

Practising the art of stamping...

...and still not getting much better. But I have been practising ever since and slowly... I'm getting a little better. I love the possibilities you have with stamping. Not just the images, but all kinds of different techniques, for example making your own decals.

Here's another manicure I have only posted on my Instagram so far.



"Second manicure for the Nail Challenge Collaborative's month of July. We are recreating some of our earliest manicures. I chose a different stamping plate this time. Otherwise not that different. The base is #essie Lapis of Luxury, the stamping plate was Pueen46."

My original post can be found -->here<-- It's even older than the first manicure I recreated.

Dienstag, 16. Dezember 2014

Catching up... again

Hi everyone,

first post in half a year. My longest break so far. I just didn't feel like writing anything. Some might follow me on Instagram and know that I have been posting a couple of manicures there. Sometimes I find it a lot easier, sometimes I feel restricted, because I can only choose one picture and text is not really what matters. The latter not being that big of a problem though. xD
Lately, I feel that I want to write a bit more about my manicures, so my little project is to catch up with my recent manicures on this blog. That's half a year worth of manicures plus there's still a ton I  could post "from the vault".

So the first posts are going to be about manicures I posted on Instagram before. I'll try to include a couple more pictures. That's going to be hard, because I took way less pictures and the few I took look like crap.

Anyway, spring this year, we had a month of recreating our earliest manicures in the Nail Challenge Collaborative. This is the first of those.



"This is my first manicure for the Nail Challenge Collaborative's current monthly theme. This month we're supposed to recreate 4 of our earliest manicures. I have already replicated a couple of my earliest ones, so I chose one of the missing ones. This one started my hunt for the perfect off-white polish, so I was looking forward to see if I have found it yet. All the basic colors are the same except the white!"

You can find the original manicure -->here<-- Look at those pictures.... o.O"


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