The Nail Challenge Collaborative - Stamping - Week 2

Hallihallo~

Today, I'd like to continue showing you the results of my stamping practice. I admit that I didn't really do any nail art this past week. I was just wearing plain polish... at least only stuff from my stash of untrieds. So my second manicure for this month of stamping is about a week old.

Obviously, this one is not entirely stamped. I didn't fancy any of the big designs I have that day, but the stars and butterfly images on my plates gave me a couple of ideas. I ended up with the butterflies and yet another pastel manicure.

For this mani, I started with sponging my background using essence my yellow fellow and an unnamed Color Club blue. This required a couple of coats, but sponging is kind of fun... I just hate it when I mess up on the third layer.

Für dieses Design habe ich mir zunächst einmal den Hintergrund gesponged. Verwendet habe ich dafür essence my yellow fellow und einen blauen Color Club-Lack, dessen Name mir nicht bekannt ist. Da insbesondere das Gelb nicht so super deckt, brauchte das ganze ein paar Schichten.

Next, I grabbed my dotting tool and created the little flowers near my cuticle area. I actually had to stop myself adding more and more. But I still needed some space for my butterflies. The white is acrylic paint, the colorful dots some random polishes from my untrieds.

Als nächstes habe ich mit Dotting Tool und weißer Acrylfarbe die Blümchen hinzugefügt. Hier musste ich ein bisschen aufpassen, dass ich mir nicht zu viel Fläche mit Blümchen bedeckte. Die bunten Punkte sind Lacke aus meinem nicht kleiner werdenen Haufen unbenutzer Lacke.

Lastly, I stamped the butterflies using plates H19 and fauxnad m78. I used the white stamping polish that came with my original Konad stamping set, but it turned out surprisingly sheer. That gave me the idea to go in with some other sheer colors to make the butterflies stand out a little bit. I used Milani She's so glitzy and H&M Urban Spirit. (It's a coincidence that I just posted a manicure yesterday that used Urban Spirit... I hadn't used it since...)

Zu guter letzt habe ich dann die Schmetterlingsmotive der Schablonen H19 und M78 verwendet und auf den freien Teil gestamped. Trotz Konad Stampinglack waren sie aber irgendwie nicht so intensiv, wie ich mir das vorstellte. Damit sie nicht untergehen, habe ich die Flügel noch ein wenig koloriert.


There's not much else to say about this manicure. It was kind of cute, but I wish I had used white polish for the flowers instead of acrylic paint. The flowers are a little intense... or the butterflies not intense enough. This is also the last manicure on "long" nails. I go impatient again...

What do you think?

Have a great weekend and thanks for reading! :)

Fall into Autumn 11: Autumn Dots

It's Friday already and I have been home sick for seven days now... and still not feeling better. And I really have been resting... :( It was convinient for my sister though. She's going to hand in her bachelor's thesis next Monday and since I was sick, I had enough time at hand to proofread it for her. It reminded me so much of my own diploma thesis two years ago. I have to admit though, that her topic was a bit more interesting than mine, hehe.

But I also didn't neglect my nails and did some easy nail art. I said I would catch up with the challenge this week, so one of the manicures was a dotty one for theme No.11: Autumn Dots. I already had a pretty clear idea what I wanted to do, but I still searched the net for some pretty color combinations. I found one that seems to have inspired at least one more lady from the challenge group. It just proves that it is a nice combination!

So here's my retro autumn dotticure:

I'm really proud of myself, because most of the polishes I used for this mani are neglected ones or even unused polishes. I used a total of six different polishes for this.

I started with three coats of essence frosted champaign from the crystalliced LE from last winter. I don't remember if I wore this before. It's a light beige with golden shimmer and some really tiny random red glitter pieces that really irritated me. Frosted champaign levels nicely, but even at three coats, it was not opaque. It seemed to enhance the white tip. I stopped at three coats, because I'd cover up a lot with my dots anyway.

gloomy daylight

 For my dots, I picked five different shades from my stash. OPI Stranger Tides and essie Sew Psyched (green), p2 Honolulu Juicer (orange), Milani Foxy Lady (red) and p2 night out (blue). I think they look nice together.

I used two different methods to place my dots. At first, I'd go color by color and place random dots to create a random color pattern. That didn't work that great as you can see on my ringfinger. The lines are a bit wobbly. Later, I'd do row by row. That involves more polish, but the lines look prettier.

Which one do you like better?

I got some nice comments on these nails and I really enjoyed wearing them. Enough to not paint my nails for three days straight even though I had time to paint them. It was weird to have a pattern like that on my nails. I kept staring at them, thinking I had something odd on my nails. :D

What do you think of my dots?

Please take a look at all these awesome manicures too:

Fall into Autumn 9: Fall Gradient

We really had the first snow yesterday! Until Friday, I doubted that it would snow in my region, because it is considered one of the warmest in Germany, but apparently... not warm enough anymore. So due to the rain and snow this weekend, huge amounts of leaves fell down and I'm starting to feel all wintery... Meh.

I didn't feel a lot like red leaves today, when I was thinking what to do for the gradient mani. I decided to turn it into another Halloween mani of sorts. I wanted to create a sparkly gradient and it turned out to be incredibly sparkly... at least, when the sun hit it.

I wanted to use China Glaze Zombie Zest again and started thinking of other colors from this one. I chose two Milani polishes, Hi-Tech and HD from their 3D Holographic line. Since Zombie Zest is really sheer, I started with painting my nails with three coats and let them dry shortly before moving on. At three coats it still wasn't opaque, so I did it a little differently on my right hand. I didn't take pictures though.

It's interesting how strong the silver looks, even though I barely used it. Hi-Tech is a really nice light green scattered holo and I thought it would be nice for a gradient, but it seems to be kind of overwhelmed by the other two. Totally different story when I look at my nails though. It is green and the gradient is quite smooth. I guess it's my camera again. It seems to hate holos... I really mean that. It turned strong holos like Make Up Store Greta into plain silver polishes. Boo.

Next, I cut a piece out of a kitchen sponge that approximately had the size of one nail. I let it soak some water, so I wouldn't soak up the polish. Whenever I use more than to colors, I usually paint the polishes directly onto the sponge, lightly press them on some paper to mix the colors and then move on to my nail. That's how I did it this time as well. I find it easy this way and it's not very messy. I didn't have a lot of clean-up to do afterwards.

I finished it with one coat of essence BTGN Top Sealer and went to bed... thinking I would be done. But the next morning, I suddenly felt like trying the impossible again. I felt like stamping. I don't know why, but to me, stamping is difficult. I just can't seem to get it right. So I feel that my stamping today was a huge success. Since I'm not much of a stamper, I have no idea what brand the plate is from, but it is called A-37. I used a white stamping polish by Misslyn for the stamp.

The spider didn't transfer very well and was barely visible, so I outlined it with acrylic paint and a fine brush to make it stand out more. I don't like spiders in my house, but I find them quite fascinating when they are outside. I love watching garden spiders, for example. They make the most beautiful spiderwebs! Most of the garden spiders around the house got eaten by birds already, so there is not much to watch anymore.

What do you think? Is the gradient fall worthy even though it's not orange/red? :D

Holo plus snowflakes

This manicure, or at least the process of creating it, inspired me to go looking for a better silver nail polish. I already posted about the result of my shopping, but I still wanted to post about this mani anyway. It's not too bad, but I had something else in mind originally.

 I originally wanted to stamp those snow flakes on a silver metallic polish and I chose this silver polish by [b]asic, but it turned out to be one streaky mess. Hence, I decided to cover it up using Milani HD. I really like HD. I think I might like scattered holos better than linear ones... but I don't own too many linear holos yet!

Anyway, I stamped the snowflakes using p2 scandal. I messed up one finger - the image didn't transfer properly. To fill in some spots, I added some dots.

Here's what I used:

I might try this again using my new silver polish. It looks nice with the holo, but due to the holo effect the snow flakes are somewhat unimpressive. I want them to be the star of the mani though.

Hm, my next mani will be snow flakes too. I really love them. Sadly, we only had snow once this season yet. And only for about 3 days too. I want more snooooow! :D

Milani - Hi-tech

Another week has passed.... again! Time is flying by so quickly lately... :(

Anyway, we have had sunny weather in Germany! So I decided to wear one of my new holographic polishes. I chose Milani's Hi-tech, the green polish from their holo line.

Greens are usually a difficult color for me, but this one works with my skin tone, I think. I like Hi-tech a lot! It's all sparkly and shining soooo pretty in the sunlight. Sadly, my camera failed me at taking pictures. I don't know how many I took exactly, but most of them were totally weird. It really seemed to me that the holo effect was too much for my camera. Or maybe the combination of holo and the green. No idea.

I recently decided to cut down my nails. I'm working a lot more on the computer lately and my nails started to get in my way while typing. It's way more convinient right now, but I miss the length... Looking at these pictures doesn't make it better at all... Plus, right after cutting them down, they started breaking again. And here I thought my nails were finally getting stronger :(
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Haul~~

Ya~~~~y!!

My friend is back from her trip to the USA and brought the treasure I had sent to her boyfriend's place. *-*
My account is not happy right now, but I'm sooo happy - it's all worth it. Hehe.

3x Milani 3D, 3x Zoya, 4x OPI, 1x essie, 1x Nubar, 2x Catrice

I also found the Catrice Out of Space LE in my favourite drugstore and had to buy two of the polishes. My drugstore usually doesn't sell Catrice. I have to drive about 45km to buy Catrice, so this was a nice find. They still didn't restock the p2 Deep Water Love though. I asked last time and they said it would be restocked within the week. That was at the beginning of last week. >___>" Still trying to get one of the polishes for a fellow polish addict.

Just one teardrop... There were two more polishes my friend brought... one OPI and one China Glaze. The OPI is definitely a fake... not sure about the China Glaze. Does somebody now if there are fake CG polishes and how to identify them? Let's see what PayPal purchase protection will do...

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