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."

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!"

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! :)

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!