TNCC - Inspired by Art - #2

Hi everyone! 

Today, I want to show you the second art inspired manicure I did for the Nail Challenge Collaborative. 

Heute habe ich meine zweite kunstinspirierte Mani für euch! Meine Inspiration habe ich wieder auf Pinterest gefunden. Das Bild heißt "Before Morning" und wurde von Leonid Afremov gemalt. Die leuchtenden Farben auf dem dunklen Hintergrund gefallen mir wirklich sehr gut. Außerdem dachte ich, dass die verwendete Technik sich auf den Nägeln leicht nachmachen lässt. (Naja...)

I have also found my inspiration on pinterest for this one. The original work is "Before Morning" by Leonid Afremov. I love the bright colors on the dark background. Also, I thought that the way it has been painted should make it rather easy to recreate. ^^;

The accent nail was painted using acrylic paints on top of black polish. It's just easier for the details. The rest of the nails were painted with polish only.

Alles bis auf den Akzentnagel ist vollständig mit Nagellack gemalt, während der Akzentnagel fast gänzlich mit Acrylfarbe gemalt wurde. Ist einfach einfacher für die Details und leichte Farbabstufungen.

Products used:

- p2 eternal (black base)

- OPI Jade is the new Black

- Nicole by OPI Daffy Dill

- Kiko 356, 386, 389

- Catrice Nautica

- essence berry me home

- beauty uk nameless yellow polish

- acrylic paint

In general, I think this turned out ok. Sadly, the colors don't pop as much as I had hoped. I didn't want to layer too much, because I think that would have destroyed the effect somewhat. Some of the colors were actually more opaque before topcoat. The yellow for example. 

Mein Ergebnis finde ich soweit ok. Leider sind die Farben nicht so schön bunt wie beim Original. Ich hatte die Befürchtung, dass Schichten dem Ganzen abträglich wäre und habe deswegen jeweils nur eine Schicht draufgekleckst. Seltsamerweise waren auch alle Lackfarben vor dem Topcoat deutlich leuchtender als danach. Ganz stark z.B. beim Gelb.

What do you think?

Was meint ihr?

The Nail Challenge Collaborative - Flowers - Week 2 - Mosaic

Good morning everyone!

I wanted to show you this manicure way earlier, but a lot of things happened this week and I never got around to do it. My father was finally hospitalized this week to have his cancer surgery, only to be told a couple of hours before the actual surgery that it has been cancelled due to unforeseen emergency surgeries. It's supposed to happen next Wednesday now. Thus, not sure how the next week will go for me. I tend to be rather pessimistic... and having the late shift next week doesn't help. I can't really go see my dad because of visiting hours being identical to my shift. >_<
But for the time being... on to the manicure!

Diese Mani wollte ich eigentlich viel früher zeigen, aber in dieser Woche sind so viele Dinge passiert, dass ich einfach nicht dazu gekommen bin. Mein Vater kam für seine Krebs-OP diese Woche ins Krankenhaus. Allerdings wurde die OP nur wenige Stunden davor letztlich abgesagt, weil die Intensivstation mit ungeplanten Notfällen belegt war. Der neue Termin soll nun der Mittwoch sein. Keine Ahnung, wie diese kommende Woche für mich laufen wird. Ich tendiere da so zum Pessimismus... und die Spätschicht zu haben hilft da nicht gerade. Besuchen kann ich meinen Vater dann auch nicht wirklich, weil meine Arbeitszeiten sich mit den Besuchszeiten im Krankenhaus decken.
Aber für's erste mal weiter mit der Mani!

Ombre flowers. I got the idea from a tape manicure I have seen on Pinterest. I never really planned this, but since I had the idea for so long, the process had somehow already been decided before even starting. I'm not a hundred percent satisfied (because I messed it up a little with clean-up), but I liked it. I'll skip the how-to explanations this time, because I took pictures while painting my thumb and decided to include them.

Ombre-Blümchen. Die Idee kam mir nachdem ich eine Tape-Mani auf Pinterest gesehen hatte. Wirklich geplant habe ich die Blümchen nie, aber da ich die Idee so lange im Kopf hin und her gewälzt hatte, stand schon vor dem Loslegen irgendwie fest, wie ich die Idee umsetzen würde. So ganz zufrieden bin ich nicht, da ich die Mani beim Clean-Up leider mal wieder ein bisschen versaut habe, aber ich mochte sie gern. Das Wie schenke ich mir diesmal, da ich vom Entstehungsprozess der Daumenbemalung Fotos gemacht habe und diese weiter unten einfach mal einfüge.

Products I used for this mani include:
Für diese Mani habe ich unter anderem benutzt:

- Flormar M01
- light pink Color Club, unnamed
- Manhattan Sashimi Mimi
- pink Color Club, unnamed
- Kiko Apple Blossom
- Catrice Welcome to Roosywood
- Kosmetik Kosmo Binoticum
- white acrylic paint

I used those colors plus mixtures of the polishes, like light pink+Sashimi Mimi or Apple Blossom+Welcome to Roosywood, to make the ombre softer. Actually rather easy, but it looks nice, ne? If I did these again, I would do the outer lining with white polish though. I think, I wouldn't have messed it up while doing clean-up if it had been white polish. (But acrylics are so much easier to work with...)

Alle diese Farben plus deren Mischungen habe ich verwendet, damit der Ombre-Effekt möglichst weich aussieht. Eigentlich auch wieder ziemlich simpel, aber es hat irgendwie was. Sollte ich dieses Design noch mal machen - die Chancen stehen gar nicht mal schlecht - dann würde ich die äußere Umrandung aber in weißem Lack machen. Ich bilde mir ein, dass ich es beim Clean-Up nicht so versaut hätte, wenn es welcher gewesen wäre. (Nur leider arbeitet es sich mit Acrylfarbe so viel einfacher...)

Lastly my micro-tutorial on the process. I omited the final picture with topcoat... but I think, you get the idea.

Zum Schluss noch mein Mini-Tutorial zum Entstehungsprozess. Das letzte Bild mit Topcoat fehlt, aber ich denke man kann verstehen worum es geht.

Thanks for reading!

Let it Snow! Challenge 15: Longing for Summer

Hello~

after showing you the beautiful and summery p2 green palm tree yesterday, I'm going to continue with the second to last Let it Snow! challenge manicure. And this one is probably the first manicure that's out of season, hehe.

Longing for Summer was the theme to work on and I had a couple of ideas. I wanted to do something colorful, but not too bright. I ended up using a couple of neons, but combined them with a French to make it more wearable at work.

I started with four coats of Catrice Cotton Candy At Eiffel Tower. Ridiculous, but that's the closest to the perfect soft white I'm still looking for. The polish behaved very well though! I applied it at night and continued the next day to make sure it's really dry.

I freehanded the tips with a couple of Woo neon polishes I got from my colleague who went to Turkey last year. They are a bit sheer, so the tips got a little thick, but I think that makes those polishes promising for neon jelly sandwiches.

On my middle finger, I used the same neons and a piece of saran wrap (Klarsichtfolie) to create the marbled nail. I placed a couple of dots and lines of each color on the nail and smudged them together by placing the saran wrap on top of the still wet polish. Since the polishes are so sheer, I had to do that three times to achieve what you see. Sadly, the green doesn't really show up. Too weak ;)

That mani was kind of fun to wear. It was so colorful and yet not too much for work. At least at my workplace. What do you think? Could you have worn this to work?

Thanks for reading today as well~

Let it Snow! Challenge 14: Winter Blues

Hi everyone,

until last week I sure had the Winter Blues, namesake for Let it Snow! week 14. But this past week, spring finally has arrived here in Germany. Every day, when I take my dog for a walk it's becoming more and more evident to me. Finally!

But well, there's three Let it Snow! manicures left to show and I'd like to make it one less by showing your my Winter Blues mani. I wanted to do something in wintery colors, but not exactly winter themed. I really liked the concept of the pastel check mani I did past fall and decided to use that as the base. But instead of three colors, I only used a single one.

I used Anny Sporty Snowflake as my base. It's a shimmery grey polish, rather sheer, but thus delicate enough. Then, I picked essie Bikini so Teeny and painted stripes in one direction, waited a little bit and continued with painting the crossing stripes. Bikini so Teeny is quite sheer as well, but once you add a second coat, it builds up nicely. So it's a lot darker where the stripes cross each other. Using Catrice Nautica, I added the halfmoons, dots and thin stripes. I finished with a thick coat of essie good to go and placing a couple of rhinestones.

I liked this design quite a lot and even got nice comments from my family who's still not very fond of my hobby. I just wish my nails had been a bit longer... but they're even shorter now, so I shouldn't complain.

If you look closely, you might notice a little mistake I made on my index. I was rather impatient in doing my right hand and ended up denting my left index nail. I even ended up doing that nail a total of four times. When I noticed my mistake, I just didn't feel like doing it again... Well, for one of the strokes, I seem to have grabbed the other light blue I had picked, essie Lapiz of Luxury. That mistake is a first for me. ^^;

What do you think?
Thank you for reading~

Let it Snow! Challenge 13: Winter Ombre

Hello~

here's number 13 from the Let it Snow! challenge. I decided to do an ombre instead of the other possiblity, gradient, because I'm obviously doing too many gradients lately. I love gradients, because there's not much effort involved for an awesome effect.

But I think an ombre mani is interesting too. Especially if you have a crazy amount of polish. Finding the perfect shades can actually take a little bit. Hehe.

Sadly, my pictures turned out like crap, so there's only one decently presentable one.

I wanted to do some cool colors. If I'd do it right now, I'd probably do pinks?

But hey, for this one, I actually remember what I used!

thumb: p2 590 who cares?
index: Kiko 389 Mint Milk
middle: unnamed Color Club
ring: p2 620 artful
pinky: mix of p2 artful and Catrice Be Pool 

On top is one coat of another unnamed Color Club, an iridiscent white glitter. That made some of the colors almost neon looking. Especially Kiko Mint Milk. p2 who cares looks quite grey, but it's not. It's a really nice light mint creme, but sadly didn't go all too well with my skintone. (My family even hated it on me ;__;)

So that's it! Three more to go and I'll start posting my pastels :D

Have a great day and thank you for reading!

Catrice - Lavender Breeze stamped

Today, I'd like to show you an oldie... even though it's not the oldest from my picture stash. It's the first manicure I did after breaking my pinky nail. I wanted to divert the attention from my pinky and thought that light polishes would do the job.

I decided on Catrice Lavender Breeze which was part of some LE back in 2010, I think. It was from before the time Catrice became available to me. It goes on rather smoothly concidering it's a purple tinted white polish. (I think the name actually fits the polish!) I used two coats for this manicure.

 

For the stamp, I used essie Nothing Else Metals from the mirror metallics. I originally wanted to use a playful floral stamp, but after the first nail (my pinky), I couldn't get the image to stamp again. I gave up after about 20 tries. That's when I switched to another image, that stamped perfectly.

Despite the stamping problems, I really like the outcome. I wish I had had more time at hand back then, so I could have redone the pinky nail, but because of a dinner party, I had to leave it like that.

Do you think I diverted enough from my broken pinky nail?

Fall into Autumn 13: Fall Flair

With this post, I'll finish yet another challenge. Time sure goes by... 13 weeks for the Fall challenge and they're over already! But I don't really feel sad, because the next challenge is just around the corner and I'm looking forward to this one as well!

So without much further do, here's theme numero #13: Fall Flair. Actually, I had no idea what fall flair is supposed to mean... I still don't. But on the challenge chart it said "your choice" in brackets and that saved me somewhat. I decided to experiment a little, and luckily, it turned out quite nicely!

Last year around this time, I got two bottles of flocking powder I intended to use on a craft project I never realised in the end. Even though flocking is nothing new, I still hadn't tried it despite having the materials at hand. With this challenge, I wanted to change this fact.

I started without any plan what I wanted to do, so I just pulled out the flocking powder, chose matching polishes from my stash: Misslyn Copper Twist (chocolate brown, imo...) and Woo 665. Don't ask me why I bought brown flocking powder. I think they only had those two colors left and they were on sale or something. But it matches fall... Anyway, I painted my nails with one coat of those two polishes and started sprinkling the flocking powder on top. It worked better than I thought! It's a messy process though. Clean-up is a bit tricky... sorry for the flocking around the cuticle area.

But in the end, I was left with flocked nails and no idea what to do next. After a while, I just started putting nail polish on top of the flocking and that actually looked nice! I used a dotting tool and tried to paint little leaf shapes. Afterwards, I added some details in matching colors, the two base colors, China Glaze Riveting and a mixture of OPI The IT-Color and Catrice Browno Mars. Yes, the same I used for yesterday's mani. I still had them on my table.

I carefully topcoated my leaves with essence BTGN Top Sealer and my dotting tool to make them a little bit more shiny and blend the colors together. I was quite satisfied with the result. It looks like the leaves are floating. The texture of the flocking underneath adds something very interesting to the overall look. Not sure if I'd liked it as much with simple polish as my base.

The flocking was weird on my nails. I'm used to matte polishes, but flocking is different... it's not in the way, but I kept touching to make sure those are my nails. Sadly, I had "tipwear" quite fast... The flocking disappeared and I was left with the base color underneath. At least, not very visible "tipwear".

What do you think about the results of my little flocking experiment? Have you tried flocking powder? What's your opinion?

Fall into Autumn 12: Harvest

So here's another manicure I did for the Fall into Autumn Challenge. Only one more theme to go and it's the Winter Challenge already! But before that, I have got to show you my harvest mani.

I really wanted to do something inspired by my work&travel experience in Japan. But that turned out more difficult than I thought. At first, I wanted to do cabbage inspired nails. We would cover them in newspaper to store them. Sounds like a nice twist to a green mani... but then there was work and I was too tired to tackle the newspaper technique. Then I thought about the Kaki strings we would do. I have no idea if other countries do it too, but in the region I worked at, they would kind of sew Kaki fruits to strings and hang them in front of the windows to dry them. They are supposed to get moldy with a special kind of mold. I didn't get to see that, but I spent some days preparing those strings. But... no nice Kaki orange in my stash.

And then, there was the buckwheat harvest. That was actually quite fun because we did it in a big group. I'm not happy with the result of this idea, because you can't tell that it's buckwheat. But it looks like harvest, so mission accomplished.

My basecolor for this mani is Color Club Earthy Angel. The shade doesn't go with my skintone, but it seemed nice for my buckwheat field. I continued sponging the lower half of my nail with China Glaze Riveting, BeYu 084 and a tiny bit of OPI The IT-Color. I just got Riveting in the mail and I'm soooo in love with it! Gorgeous polish!

Next, I'd take my tiny brush and a piece of sturdy paper on which I put a couple of globs of Catrice Browno Mars, OPI Glitzerland and Color Club Rebel Spirit. I swirled them together to get a couple of shades and painted tiny stripes to form the buckwheat bundles and the rope around them. That's it.

I messed up the clean-up on my thumb. Didn't manage to do that in quite some time... In case you wonder why the pictures look slightly different than usual: My dear photoshop decided to act up a couple of days ago, so I had to use a web-based editor to work on my pictures. I hope I'll be able to solve the problem soon!

Until then... more swatch posts to come!
Take care and 'til next time!

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 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

The Lazy Days of Summer 13: Inspired by Something in your House

Hello everyone,

I know it's a bit late, but here's my take on the 13th theme of the Lazy Days of Summer Challenge: Inspired by Something in your House. I did this a couple weeks ago, when I had a sudden idea what to do for this challenge and just happened to get my hands on the inspiring something that moment.

Well, my inspiration was this painting of a huge rooster that hangs in the stairway of my parent's house. It reminded me of the fact that I still haven't created a feather manicure yet. I had bought a bag of feathers sometime in spring, but never used them. And I didn't use them for this mani either, because I just went across the street to my mom's second garden where she keeps her chicken. Since I was left to care for them that weekend anyway, I even had a good excuse to bother the poor ladies for a couple of their feathers. No, I didn't rip them from their bodies, but stole them from their nests. :D

I used Catrice Clay-ton my Hero as my base, because the color seemed to match the feathers. It's my first Catrice... haven't worn it since the day I bought and tried it... and had to decide that it doesn't go very well with my skintone. It looks nice as a base though.

Feather manis aren't very difficult... On top of Clay-ton my Hero, I  simply put a coat of a clear polish and put the feathers in the still wet polish. I didn't cut them before hand, only afterwards using manicure scissors. On top the feathers I put two coats of essence BTGN Top Sealer to even things out, but it was still a little bumpy. It looked a little boring, so I added some studs... still not sure if that was a good idea. But that's it to my first feather manicure.

As a bonus, here's pic of the four lovely ladies that provided me with the feathery material to work with~ Those are actually two different kinds of chicken.

In the last posts I forgot to include a list of the participants to this challenge, so here it is again. All the ladies have done awesome manicures, so be sure to check them out!

Victoria @ Manicurator

Alyson @ BEADS. NAILS. FOOD.

Mandy @ Mandy's Polish

Hannah @ Polished Prisms

Sue @ Creative Nail Design by Sue

Katee @ A Girl and Her Polish

Charlotte-Louise @ Charlotte's Nails

Karine @ Karinea0a

Jen @ The Polished Zombie

Jessica @ Jessica's Nail Tales

Ashley @ One Nail to Another 

Pryanka @ Nail Sparks*

Anna @ Polished Cousins

Maribeth @ Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite!

Sharra @ The Blahg

Stephanie @ A Little Polish

Amanda @ Counting Down to Bliss

Jess @ NearlyNaturalNails 

Heidi @ DIY Polish 

Becky @ Glamfiend

The Lazy Days of Summer 12: Summer Nights

Yay, only three more manicures for the Lazy Days of Summer Challenge and one of them, I want to show you today! For this mani, I initially felt like doing a jelly sandwich again. I have done a blue one a couple of times already, so there had to be another aspect to this one.

I guess some of you (at least) also go inspiration hunting on Pinterest. From time to time there's a striped/border mani with palm trees showing up that feels very summery to me. But well, my theme is summer nights and that involves other colors than yellow, orange, pink and violet. Since I really find this mani pretty, I decided to use it as my inspiration anyway and change the colors so they fit my theme.

I applied this mani over Kiko 401 Peacock Green, which I still had on after the swatches.

For the jelly sandwich I used
- Kiko 401
- Kiko 336
- OPI Last Friday Night

and for the stripes (top-->down)
- China Glaze Midnight Mission
- Catrice Pool Party at Night
- Unnamed Color Club (violet)
- Unnamed beauty uk
- Unnamed Color Club (brown)
- black acrylic paint

On my pointer and pinky, I applied a coat of Kiko 336 Ink Blue over Kiko 401 Peacock Green. It's a bright blue jelly polish, which I find a little bit more difficult to apply compared to essence Cool and the Gang. On top of the jelly, I applied a coat of OPI Last Friday Night, topped it with a coat of diluted Kiko 336 and then applied another coat of OPI, because I found that the diluted Kiko covered up too much of the glitter.

I freehanded the stripes using a striper brush. I used cream polishes for the almost dark sunset sky and China Glaze Midnight Mission to hint a sky already showing stars. Kiko 401 is supposed to represent the sea, glittering in the moonlight. To hint the beach, I dabbed on a bit of a brown Color Club glitter.

For the black borders and the palm trees, I used acrylic paint, because it is easier to handle. I really suck at painting palm trees... Only once, I painted a couple decent ones on the nails of a colleague...

I have to admit that the pictures show this mani really well. In RL, most people could not see what I tried to paint. But okay... they wouldn't look as close up as my camera lens anyway.

So what do  you think of my dark palm trees against an almost dark sunset border mani? :D

The Lazy Days of Summer 11: Summer Days

Hello~

first of all, I want to thank all of you have been commenting on my last post. It means a lot to me that I got this feedback. I'm definitely not going to stop posting in English, but I wanted to know if my readers would like me to post in German too. Well, there are a couple of days left and the post is not even 24 hours old, so I'll wait for now.

Anyway, before I'm going to face the heat again when I'm at work, I would like to show you my next Challenge item. The eleventh theme was "Summer Days" and I had a couple ideas on what to do for this one. I decided to let my love for Japan come through once more.

The first summer I spent in Japan back in 2007 was probably the best in my life so far. I had so much fun with all the other international and local students there. The weather was just awesome and I really loved the region. (I stayed in northern Aomori prefecture) So I wanted to do something that represents a part of the summer there. Festivals are a big thing every summer and every festival has these goldfish catch game for kids. You have to use a tiny paper fan to catch a goldfish from a shallow tub. I never actually tried, but I loved to watch the kids when they did.

To achieve my mani, I used white as my base color (uh, yes... again), because I didn't know how opaque the later sponging would be. I don't remember what colors I used for the sponging... I think it was a blue by Catrice and the usual unnamed white by Color Club.

Next, I painted the goldfish. I used red acrylic paint and watered it down a lot. I wanted the goldfish to look a bit like an aquarell, which I tried to achieve by layering the watered down red. It really looked that way, but it doesn't really show up on the pictures. With black and white, I added the eyes.

Next, I watered down some white acrylic paint to draw the white lines. I didn't want them to be too prominent. For the silver lines I actually used some polish, a silver striper by essence. It turned out to be a little too strong. I wanted those lines to be more subtle... oh well.

Lastly, a dabbed on a tiny bit of glitter and topped it with essence BTGN Top Sealer. I'm on my 6th bottle now... I love that topcoat.

I was really pleased with this mani. Loved it. What do you think? Is it summer days appropriate?

Okay... gonna face the heat now... Have a great day!

The Lazy Days of Summer 5: Inspired by your favorite towel

Hi everyone~

I hope everyone is having a nice weekend so far!? I do! I'm really looking forward to the next week, since I'm finally on vacation~ yay! As I'm not going to travel this time, I'm planning on doing some nail art instead. For example... my current challenge.

Today, I have one more design to show you. It's the fifth out of fourteen themes, so I have quite a few to do this coming week, hehe. So I was supposed to be inspired by my favorite towel, but since mine are all plain single-colored towels, I used one of my sister's towels instead. She is not living with us anymore, so I did this from memory. It's nothing special, but I got to use two of my untried polishes.

First of all, I painted the dark blue, Model's Own Betty Blue on one third of my nails. When that was dry, I added the lighter blue, Catrice Blue Cara Ciao to the rest. I let that dry for quite some time and then added a white stripe and white dots that I would cover up with my neon green polish by the Turkish brand Woo.

That green was really bright. It looked almost glow-in-the-dark, but it's a simple neon. It's quite sheer though. The white was definitely necessary.

Later that day, I went for a walk with my dog quite some time after sunset, but it was not dark yet. I noticed that the green was still really really bright and I decided to take a few pictures when we were back home.

Those last two pictures were taken after that walk in the last daylight. I was surprised that my camera captured it so well. It appeared to be way darker in real life. I think I like neons better than I thought. They are quite fun. But I still can't  see myself wearing a full neon mani yet...

That's it for my towel inspired mani. My pool party is coming up next.. hopefully tomorrow!

And here's the list of participants:

Victoria @ Manicurator

Alyson @ BEADS. NAILS. FOOD.

Mandy @ Mandy's Polish

Hannah @ Polished Prisms

Sue @ Creative Nail Design by Sue

Katee @ A Girl and Her Polish

Charlotte-Louise @ Charlotte's Nails

Karine @ Karinea0a

Jen @ The Polished Zombie

Jessica @ Jessica's Nail Tales

Ashley @ One Nail to Another 

Pryanka @ Nail Sparks*

Anna @ Polished Cousins

Maribeth @ Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite!

Sharra @ The Blahg

Stephanie @ A Little Polish

Amanda @ Counting Down to Bliss

Jess @ NearlyNaturalNails 

Heidi @ DIY Polish 

Becky @ Glamfiend