Schleifchen und Pünktchen (again)

Lately, I have been going through a couple of my old blog posts, looking at the design I posted back then. I didn't change my polish/nail art as often back then and I still feel like I accomplished some great designs. But I realise that quite a bit has changed since then. My nails are way longer, I actually try to take care of my cuticles, but most of all, after one and a half year of nail art, I feel like I can do better with my paint brushes.

I had been eyeing one of my old designs for a while now: Schleifchen und Pünktchen. I really liked it and, actually surprisingly, it's currently in the top10 most viewed posts. I felt like wearing something cute again and had a couple of matching polishes on my desk: so here is a retry on this particular design. I didn't change much!

The only significant polish I changed is the white shimmery base. Instead of essence diamonds and pearls, I used W7 Polar Bear. I just had it on my desk and it's an untried, so this was decided. The other polishes are the same: p2 elegant for the tip, Manhattan 51K and Catrice Sweets of my Sweets for the ribbons. The black I used for the dots is essence black is back.

Since I wore W7 Polar Bear for the first time, I didn't know how it would behave. It's actually quite sheer. What you see here are three coats and it could have used a fourth on some nails. Luckily, it's not only sheer, but thin as well, so three coats didn't  make my nails look thick.

After painting my tips with p2 elegant, I dotted the edges with Manhattan 51K to start the lacey part. All of the lace was done with this dotting tool. One of the advantages of longer nails is certainly the increased space to paint on. I couldn't have done the lace part like this last year. It'd have covered up 1/3 of my nail.

Last time, I drew the light pink parts of the bow first and later outlined it with the darker pink. I did it the other way around this time, because it's easier to control the size of the bows that way. It worked fine - maybe due to increased brush control. The final step was adding my black dots to the tip. Well... I didn't get much better at this.

My final thoughts about this... I like the black dots in my first manicure way better. They're much more delicate. But I like the pink details better here. That's partly because of the space I had at hand this time. And even though I wasn't sure about it at first, I like Polar Bear better as the base color.

I still feel like I'm neglecting one of my favorite polishes. p2 elegant is a beautiful color and I really think I'm going to do a swatch post for this polish (even though it's discontinued). I haven't worn it since the first dots and bows mani! That's certainly the downside of being a nail polish collector...

Which one do you like better? First of second version?

Rainbow Stripes

I can't believe this is the last day off work... I've to go back tomorrow! No more painting nails daily... boohoo. The next few weeks are probably going to be a bit tough, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to do a lot of nail art... We will see.

For today, I want to show a mani, I have been inspired to do by a post on Pinterest. I'm pretty sure most of you have seen it! It's not difficult to do, but takes a little bit of patience. I finally had the patience last saturday, sat down and did some rainbow nails!

 I did these in two steps. First, I painted my nails with the rainbow, let that dry over night and continued with the taping the next morning. That's what I mean with patience. I'd normally start taping the same night, eventually do it too early and end up pulling the base off with the tape. Hah! Didn't happen this time!

Rainbow on my left hand

Rainbow on my right hand

I used nine different polishes on my left hand, following the suggested shades from my Pinterest inspiration. I wasn't sure if it didn't end up being too much on the pink side, so I skipped those two shades on my right hand. Totally different, right?
I didn't try to do perfect stripes. They are going to be covered up mostly anyway.

This is how my right hand looked after finishing with the taping. It's bolder, less delicate than the my left hand. I still liked it better than my left hand though. It kept looking too pink to me. Well, until I felt like mattifying it.

After I mattified this mani, I suddenly liked my left hand a lot better! It's like the pink took a step backward. And, overall, I definitely liked this mani the best after I mattified it. Both hands, I mean.

I certainly have to practice with the tape, alignment and stuff. And I should get a new bottle of p2 eternal. Lots of the mistakes in this mani are due to the fact that it got a bit old... stringy... and just wouldn't do what I wanted it to do.

Lastly, there's another rainbow here. They just looked so pretty when I had them all next to each other while painting my stripes. I couldn't resist taking a picture the next day. :D

I hope everybody's week gets off to a good start! Until next time!

From the Vault: Flowers...

...well, they were originally supposed to be cornflowers, but since the colors are the other way around, they don't really look like them. I did this mani even before the other one I posted this week - maybe in March or April. I don't remember what I used for it too. Except for OPI Catch me in you net. But for the rest... no clue.

I still kind of like this design and that's why I decided to post it even though I don't remember much about it. The middlefinger nail didn't turn out that pretty, but the rest looks fine.

Does it remind you of Christmas too?

LDTTWC Day 3 - I remember when...

For the third day of the Time Warp Challenge, we are supposed to create a manicure in honor of an event in history... either well-known or personal. At first, I wasn't sure what to do for this one. There aren't many memories that I could do a manicure on and I had no idea what well-known event I should choose. In the end, swatching my newest Priti NYC polishes gave me the answer.

After swatching Priti NYC Bowles Black, I decided to do a manicure in honor of the first men on our moon on July 21st 1969. It's not something I remember, but it's a very well-known event.

I love how the flakies in Bowles Black show up quite well on my thumbnail in this picture. It's like a million tiny glitter stars plus a few weird looking acrylic color ones. I painted those nails so that they look right for me... and because I thought that using the half moons of my nails as the moon's shape provides a nice coherent frame.

So besides using Priti NYC Bowles Black, the black polish, I also used Barielle Sterling Silver. I applied it on top of Bowles Black as my moon's color. On my middle and pinky nails, I also sponged on some essence rich&pretty as well as grey denim and a mixture of those plus Bowles Black. My egg-shaped planet Earth was painted using my new all-time white, an unnamed Color Club, and Kiko 386.

My astronaut and the foot print were painted using black and white acrylic paint.

I was really happy with these nails. It took a while to paint, but it was worth it! They didn't make it to the end of the day though, because I was too lazy to paint my other hand with pretty moon things too... I just should have painted them, because half of the polish I applied instead came off while I was asleep. Haven't had that in a while. ^^;

What do you think of my moonwalk nails?

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

Fall into Autumn 1: Back to School

Hi everyone~

Starting today, I'm going to participate in the newest challenge that the ladies from my challenge facebook group came up with. It's called Fall into Autumn and is going to be a fall themed challenge. It's the third challenge by this facebook group I'm going to participate in and I'm sure it'll be just as awesome as the two before. A lot of the former participants are going to join in again, as are a couple of newcomers. I can't wait to see what everybody is going to come up with.

 The first theme is Back to School... which I can't really relate to anymore. There are a couple of things you see a lot for this kind of theme, so I was thinking if there wasn't something about going to school that's special for Germany. What I came up with are Schultüten. When children enter first grade they are usually presented with a huge cardboard cone filled with all kinds of sweets, toys, etc. I googled for pictures a while a found a couple of Schultüten, that had pretty geometrical prints. On my ringfinger, I originally wanted to paint a cartoon character, which is something commonly seen on Schultüten. But my hand was quite unsteady, so I decided on a couple of numbers and letters instead.

The main colors for the geometric design are

OPI Green-wich Village
Manhattan 51K
essence Stairway to Heaven

The stripes and dots were painted using the above mentioned and
essie French Affair
OPI Stranger Tides
white acrylic paint

The base for my ringfinger is OPI Stranger Tides again. I painted the letters and numbers with white acrylic paint and outlined them with the above mentioned colors and Color Club Red-ical Gypsy. As usual, my topcoat was essence BTGN Top Sealer.

I'm not very happy with how this turned out. It's colorful. I like that, but in the end, it didn't remind me very much of a Schultüte... And I really hated myself for having such an unsteady hand that day. Oh well. I'm liking the outcome of theme 2 a lot better. :D

So far, the challenge has fourteen participants and here are the links to their respective blogs:

Stephanie Oblas A Little Polish 
Sue O'Connor Creative Nail Design by Sue
Hannah Fabiny Polished Prisms
Katee Baum A Girl and her Polish
Ashley Rowlands-Vanderzande One Nail to Another 
Karine Assemien Karinea0a
Charlotte-Louise Bennett  Charlottes Nails
Alyson Epstein Beads Nails Food
Sharra Farivar The Blahg
Maribeth Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky Barnett Glamfiend
Angie Moore OurPaintedWorld
Sarah Jürgens Dakila's