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 Art - #4

Hello!

Today, I have my final art inspired manicure to show you.

This one is a bit different from the other manis I've done so far. Instead of an actual painting, I used a doodle I saved to my inspiration folder quite some time ago. It's a doodle by Laynie from LaynieFingers. She's suffering from fibromyalgia, a disease characterized by chronic pain in the muscles and connected tissue. Back in 2012, when things were quite bad apparently, she posted a lot of doodles instead of nail art. Doodling was a way of pain management for her. I find those doodles just as inspiring as regular nail art though. I can somewhat relate to what Laynie's going through, because my mom suffers from fibromyalgia too. Luckily, her's isn't as bad. Going through my inspiration folder I stumbled upon those doodles and decided to turn one of them into the inspiration for my fourth art inspired manicure.

You can find Laynie's original doodle here.

First of all, I sponged a yellow to white gradient onto my nails. The white part looked way to harsh without any further nail art, so I covered more and more with yellow to make it more soft looking - but with the black doodle on top, I can barely tell I used any white... Meh. No idea what polishes I used for this part! I'm guessing my go-to Color Club white, and unnamed yellow from beauty uk and OPI The IT-Color.

For the doodle, I used the black nail art pen from Born Pretty Store. It's my first time using it and I think it's okay. I wish the tip was a little finer. It smudges easily though and of course, I managed to smudge it while applying topcoat.

I didn't even notice that I did two consecutive manicures involving a lot of yellow until I sorted my pictures. And I don't even use yellow a lot... Something my unconscious mind wants to tell me!?

My final verdict: doodling is a lot harder than it seems!
And, thanks for reading, of course! ^^

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?

From the Vault: A Blue French

Hi again,

I still have so many manicures ready to post that I did ages ago. Today, I'm going to release one of those from the "ready" folder...

I was inspired by some manicure I saw on Pinterest, but I can't find it anymore. I pretty much recreated it, but I just couldn't paint thin lines that day. Haha... it looks a little silly. ^^; My nails are too short for this sort of manicure.

Materials used:
- OPI Bubble Bath
- OPI Last Friday Night
- white, pink and blue acrylic paint
- loose pink glitter

I practiced simple one stroke leaves here... again. I really want to master this technique, but it's so hard o.O""

Thanks for reading!

The Nail Challenge Collaborative - Flowers - Week 4 - Kimono inspired

Hello!

I'm back with the final installment of my flowery manicures for The Nail Challenge Collaborative. I had nothing planned for this one actually and just did it last week. I decided on a design inspired by a kimono pattern... to celebrate the fact that my friend and I just booked ourselves a flight to Japan~ Sooo looking forward! It has been three years since I have been there and I miss it so much. So that's why. :D

Da bin ich wieder mit der letzten meiner blumigen Manis für die Nail Challenge Collaborative. Ich hatte dafür keine wirkliche Idee gehabt und sie auch erst letzte Woche getragen. Ich habe mich dann letztlich für dein Design entschieden, das an ein Kimono-Muster angelehnt ist. Dafür entschieden habe ich mich, weil ich mich grad so tierisch freue in 4 Wochen in Japan zu sein, denn meine Freundin und ich haben diese Woche kurzfristig entschieden, dass wir doch hinfliegen. Flug gebucht, nachher folgt die Planung der diesjährigen Reiseroute. Ich war seit 3 Jahren nicht dort und vermisse das Land sehr!

The base polishes for this were Priti NYC Bowles Black and OPI Meet me on the Star Ferry. The rest was painted with acrylic paints and enamel colors. Nothing fancy here, just praticing brushstrokes. I added a couple of rhinestones, studs and sequins on the non-flowery nails.
The pictures above were taken on day 2... when I had already lost one stud. But my Digicam didn't bleed out the golden accents like my android cam did on the pictures below taken on day 1.

Die verwendeten Lacke hier sind Priti NYC Bowles Black und OPI Meet me on the Star Ferry. Der Rest ist mit Acrylfarbe und Emailfarbe gemalt. Nichts besonderes dazuzusagen... ich habe mal wieder Pinselbewegungen geübt. Da hapert es leider immer noch sehr. Zum Schluss habe ich noch ein paar Glitzersteinchen und Nieten hinzugefügt.
Die Bilder oben habe ich am zweiten Tag mit meiner Digicam gemacht, weil mir aufgefallen war, dass die Android-Cam das Gold so  rausgewaschen hatte, wie man unten erkennen kann. Leider hatte ich bis dahin schon eine Niete verloren.

That's it for the flowery manicures. The next theme is "Around the World", which might appeal to more ladies from the group than flowers. I'm looking forward to the many manis I'm going to see!

Das war's dann mit den Blumenmanis. Das nächste Thema ist "Rund um die Welt", was einigen Damen aus der Gruppe vielleicht mehr liegt als die Blumen. Ich freue mich jedenfalls auf die vielen Manis, die diesen Monat entstehen werden! :D

I'm off to visit my father now... feeling very weird with no nail polish on... *cough*

The Nail Challenge Collaborative - Flowers - Week 3 - Tropical

Hi everyone!

I'm back after a little hiatus that wasn't exactly planned, but which I anticipated due to family circumstances. I wrote about it in my previous post: My father just underwent major surgery to hopefully beat the cancer he developed this past spring. It mostly went well and he might even get discharged next week, so we're all very optimistic right now. I'm lacking time though, since the hospital is in a different city and visiting there every other day is taking its toll when working full time too. But of course that's more important than posting about my nails ;) Plus, it's super hot here once again...

Da bin ich wieder nach einer kurzen Auszeit, die nicht geplant, wohl aber absehbar gewesen war durch die derzeitigen familiären Umstände. Ich habe es in meinem letzten Post angekündigt: Mein Vater hat gerade eine schwere OP hinter sich gebracht, um hoffentlich den Krebs endgültig zu besiegen, der sich bei ihm diesen Frühling entwickelt hat. Es ist fast alles gut gegangen und vielleicht wird er kommende Woche sogar schon aus dem Krankenhaus entlassen. Wir bleiben optimistisch. Leider hapert es aber ein wenig mit meiner Zeit, denn das Krankenhaus ist leider in einer anderen Stadt und jeden zweiten Tag besuchen fordert so seinen Tribut, wenn man Vollzeit arbeitet. Das ist mir natürlich wichtiger als Blogposts verfassen ;) Außerdem ist es ja schon wieder so ätzend heiß...

I finished my flower manicures though and I'll try writing some more posts in advance, so I can post something even when I'm too tired after a long day. Yeah, I don't usually do that. ^^;

Meine Blumen-Manis habe ich allerdings fertig und ich werde versuchen ein paar Posts im Voraus zu schreiben, damit ich auch nach solchen ermüdenden Tagen was zu posten habe. Jaaa, ich schreibe sonst eigentlich nichts im Voraus. ^^;

So here's a manicure I had planned to do when it was decided that the theme for July would be flowers. I did this manicure once before in 2011 following the steps explained by Robin Moses in one of her videos. So this is just a new take on it... looking almost the same, but I like it better on my current slightly longer nails. There's just more room for nail art that way!

Hier also die dritte Blumen-Mani, die ich schon geplant habe seit klar war, dass das Juli-Thema "Blumen" sein würde. Ich habe diese Mani schon mal 2011 gepostet. Sie ist durch ein Videos von Robin Moses inspiriert gewesen. Ich wollte sie schon eine Weile noch mal pinseln und sie sieht der ersten schon ziemlich ähnlich, allerdings mag ich das Ganze auf meinen derzeitigen, etwas längeren Nägeln lieber. Es ist einfach mehr Platz für Nailart!

There's not much to explain about this one. I, once again, followed the steps explained in the aforementioned video by Robin Moses, so if you're interested, I'd recommend to watch it! The base is OPI Bubble Bath followed by different shades of acrylic paints. The glitter polish is a mix of Zoya Faye, Color Club Ulterior Motive and Misslyn Las Vegas. Plus topcot, of course.

Viel zu sagen gibt es über diese Mani eigentlich nicht. Ich bin erneut den Schritten in Robin Moses' Video gefolgt. Wer interessiert ist, dem kann ich das Video nur empfehlen! Angefangen habe ich mit OPI Bubble Bath, gefolgt von mehreren Schattierungen von Acrylfarben. Der Glitterlack ist ein Mix aus Zoya Faye, Color Club Ulterior Motive und Misslyn Las Vegas. Und natürlich Topcot.

What do you think? Do you like the nail art Robin Moses does? Have you every tried recreating some?
Was meint ihr? Mögt ihr Robin Moses' Nailart? Habt ihr mal versucht eine Mani nachzumachen?

OPI - Fiercely Fiona (Swatch)

Hello!

It's Wednesday again, so I checked my untrieds for another color to contribute to the "Lacke in Farbe... und bunt!" collaborative. I didn't expect very many, but it turns out that most of my yellows are either in the untrieds bin or marked with my untried sticker... Hm. Well, I guess I have some favorites. The polish I chose for this week's theme Yellow is Fiercely Fiona by OPI. It was part of the Shrek collection. I'll let the pictures speak... I just want to melt away right now...

Und schon ist wieder Mittwoch und darum war es wieder an der Zeit meine unbenutzten Lacke mal auf ein schönes Gelb zu prüfen, das ich diese Woche zur "Lacke in Farbe... und bunt!"-Aktion beitragen könnte. Viele Gelbtöne habe ich nicht erwartet, aber letztlich waren die meisten meiner gelben Lacke entweder im Unbenutzt-Kasten oder hatten einen entsprechenden Sticker verpasst bekommen. Ich schätze, ich habe schon so meine Favoriten bei Gelb. Ausgewählt habe ich letztlich Fiercely Fiona von OPI, der mal Teil der Shrek-Kollektion war. Ich lasse heute mal die Bilder sprechen, weil ich einfach nur irgendwo hin wegfließen will... zu heiß... (selbst mein Laptop kommt mir dreimal heißer vor als sonst)

direct sunlight

Fiercely Fiona is a bright yellow creme... rather on the green side of yellow, but my camera refused to capture this. These are five coats (!). I might have been fine with four if I had paid better attention while applying. Drying time was slow due to the amount of polish, obviously. I guess it's a good thing that I had only used this polish for nail art so far. I'm not sure I want to wear it solo...

Fiercely Fiona is ein gelber Cremelack mit Tendenz ins Grüne, was meine Kamera aber nicht wirklich aufnehmen wollte. Ihr seht hier fünf Schichten. Fünf! Vier wären vermutlich genug gewesen, wenn ich ein bisschen besser aufgepasst hätte. Naja. Entsprechend lang hat es natürlich gedauert, bis der Lack trocken war. Ich habe Fiona schon für Nailart benutzt... keine Ahnung, ob ich sie noch mal solo tragen möchte. An und für sich war der Auftrag aber problemlos. Nur zu sheer eben.

shade

indoors

I'm sorry for my dry cuticles... I had removed my previous polish with the foil method and it's too hot to apply greasy cuticle stuff... I can't stand it. They will get pampered as soon as it cools down tomorrow.

Sorry, dass meine Nagelhaut so trocken ist... ich habe den Lack davor mit der Folienmethode entfernt und mir ist grad zu heiß, als dass ich öliges Zeug auf meinen Fingern ertragen könnte. Morgen bekommen sie mehr Aufmerksamkeit... wenn es hoffentlich kühler geworden ist.

And now I just hope that I will be able to sleep... That's the current temperature in my room... :((
Und nun hoffe ich einfach mal, dass ich schlafen kann. Die aktuelle Temperatur in meinem Zimmer...

Still the same... even an hour later :((

Until next time!
Thanks for reading!

Enchanted Flowers

Hello again!

Today, it's going to be a manicure back from February. I think doing this mani started to break my winter slump, so it's kind of special. Colorwise it's a bit dark, but I don't want to keep it in my repertoire until fall. Yes, I'm ignoring the fact that it felt like winter until yesterday. Today was sunny and I kept thinking that the sky's looking too bright... o.O"

Heute möchte ich euch eine ältere Mani zeigen, die ich etwa im Februar gepinselt habe. Ich denke, diese Mani hat mir geholfen mein Wintertief in Sachen Nail Art hinter mir zu lassen. Farblich gesehen ist es ein bisschen dunkel, aber ich mag die Fotos nicht bis zum Herbst hier rum liegen haben. Jaaaa, ich ignoriere die Tatsache, dass hier bis Vorgestern winterliches Wetter herrschte. Heute war es ja super sonnig... und ich hab den ganzen Tag gedacht, dass der Himmel irgendwie zu grell blau ist... o.O" Traurig, oder?

Anyway, this mani was inspired by some other mani, but I don't remember which anymore. The base is Orly Enchanted Forest, a nice jelly-like dark green polish. I love the cute little butterfly dangle that came with it. On my tips, I applied a bit of OPI Sparcle-icious. Next, I painted the flowers with white and purple acrylic paint. Finally, I picked a golden tip-painter and outlined the flowers. Topcoat and done. So it's a rather simple mani, actually.

Naja. Diese Mani war durch irgendein Bild aus dem Netz inspiriert, aber ich weiß nicht mehr von welchem. Angefangen habe ich mit einem Grundanstrich mit Orly Enchanted Forest, einem wunderschönen Tannengrün. Ich mag den kleinen glitzerigen Schmetterlinganhänger, der an der Flasche hing. Im Anschluss habe ich auf die Nagelspitzen OPI Sparcle-icious aufgetragen. Danach habe ich mit weißer und violetter Acrylfarbe die Blumen gemalt und diese dann mit einem goldenen Tippainter umrandet. Topcoat drauf und fertig. Eigentlich recht simpel.

What do you think?
Was meint ihr?

The Nail Challenge Collaborative - Pastels - Week 4

Hello!

On the last day of April, I want to show you the final manicure of this month's Challenge theme: pastels. Once more, I'm not sure if my colors are really pastel, but they're not bright either, so I guess it's fine. So for this last mani, I decided to tackle the One Stroke technique once more. My results so far have been rather mediocre, which I blamed on my acrylic paints for the most part. But maybe I was just too impatient and didn't practice enough... because I used the same paints this time too, and I think this time, it's a success. I watched a lot of youtube videos beforehand and praticed the brush movement on my palette. Should have done that earlier, huh.

So here's my newest installment of the one stroke... roses. Excuse the pic spam. I just really found it turned out pretty.

Of course, I noticed the stray hair too late...

For this mani, I once again used OPI My vampire is buff as the base. I'm still not convinced that I like this color on me, but as many others have written on their blogs, it's a great base for nail art. Except for the base and the topcoat, everything else is acrylic paint. I used an angled brush for the roses, a striper for details and a dotting tool for the dots.

Painting the roses turned out easier than I thought it would be. I didn't always manage at first, but you can just go over the whole thing and 'redo' it. I followed the brush movements like shown on the youtube videos and that worked fine. The brush movement for the leaves is still a enigma to me though. I tried. I really did. But I only manage half. For the 'downward' movement, I just can't figure out how to twist the brush. I need to pratice that.

All in all, this mani has a grandma-esque feeling to it, but why not once in a while. ^^ I took these pictures at dawn, when the sunlight was still soft. It added to the look, didn't it?
I enjoyed wearing this. I was constantly looking at the roses, still amazed by the smooth appearance and the details. What loading a brush with two colors at once can do, amazing. Hands down to all the ladies (and guys) who can really do this!

But it sure took some time to paint, so this won't be a technique for me to do on a regular basis, I think. And definitely no technique to just do on a whim. We'll see.

What do you think? Have you tried this technique?

Thanks for reading~

Asian Dragon

I went a little crazy painting my nails this weekend. But it was fun. ^^
I wanted to paint an asian dragon over all my nails. That seemed okay, but while I was painting I realized, that right now my nails are either too small for this kind of painting, or I simply drew too big. Maybe a little of both.

For my dragon manicure, I mainly used
- A-England Dragon (noooo, not the reason I drew a dragon at all...) body
- Kiko 395 body
- Flormar SuperShine 07 body outline
- Priti NYC Queen Victoria back
- China Glaze Riveting details on the back
- OPI My vampire is buff background

Since I really battled with my hand while trying to take pictures, I decided to take seperate pictures as well and just put them together... My hand is not flexible enough. ;( Wow! to all those ladies who can bend their hand to take proper pictures like that...

just the dragons body...

in cloudy daylight

I actually used polishes only (ok, except for the dragon's teeth)! I really like how the scales turned out. I ended up doing them differently from my plan, but it works. I just wish my nails were longer. I would have loved to paint more than one foot... and more~ tail.

So, what do you think of my excessive painting? Do you agree that a bit more space to paint on might have been good?

I'm going to upload my dragon to Kayla's indie polish contest. There are some really nice manis uploaded my close to 40 other nail artists. ^^

Ok, thanks for reading~ Tomorrow, I'll continue with my pastels.

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!

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: