Cute explosion - Japanese style nails

Cute explosion - Japanese style nails

Dark pink - Nubar Pink Crème

Light pink - Nivea Turbo Rosa

Black - Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme

Blue and brown dotticure

Blue and brown dotticure

The blues:
Golden Rose Fantastic Color 181 (base)
KIKO 300
Gina Tricot Monaco Blue

The browns:
P2 Color Victim 670 Elegant (base)
KIKO 373
Flormar Holographic 820
Wet 'n' Wild The Gold & The Beautiful

Watermelon nail art

Watermelon nail art

The polishes I used were:

- Guppy 19 (neon pink creme) & Nicōle by OPI You're An Angel (warm pink jelly w/ golden glass fleck) for the base, also Sinful Colors Forget Now (dark pink jelly w/ glass fleck) near the eponychium to give the pink watermelon flesh some depth.

-  As for the gradation, I first sponged along the free edge with an opaque white creme, then with NYX Girls Sour Apple (chartreuse shimmer) and a franken of mine (lush light jelly green w/ golden microglitter), then applied smudged, squiggly lines of Rimmel Camouflage (mid-toned green w/ golden shimmer) with a nail art brush.

- The seeds were painted with white & brown acrylic paints and a nail art brush.

Hello Berlin!

Hello Berlin! aka rhinestone explosion

I'm off to Berlin in the morning, but before that I want to show you my special mani I did for the occasion. The base on all the fingers (apart from the ring fingers) consists of Sally Hansen Platinum Chrome, Gallery Colours Silver Sparkle and Nubar Hologram Glitter, one coat of each. The symbols I did are a heart, M, a rainbow, the German flag, D, N, the Finnish flag, another rainbow, A and a cocktail glass. Why MDNA? Because it's the title of Madonna's latest album and the name of her current world tour which I'll be attending with a friend! ♥ ♥ ♥

Cherry blossom nail art

Cherry blossom nail art

The colours I used:
- Nude base - Ruby Kisses Cream White
- Pinks - Nubar Pink Crème & Revlon Grapefruit Fizz
- Turquoises - Model's Own Top Turquoise & Barry M Aqua Blue
- The branches were painted with Nubar black striper & Nubar Swiss Chocolate
- Topped with Orly Love Each Other

Original idea shamelessly stolen from HERE. :P The bottom picture is the most colour accurate of the bunch.

China Glaze Ahoy! & freehand nail art

China Glaze Ahoy!, 2 coats

China Glaze Ahoy! & freehand nail art

Tricolor gradation & nail art stickers

Tricolor gradation & nail art stickers

Las Vegas Showgirl's Nightmare

Las Vegas Showgirl's Nightmare

It all started with two coats of L'Oréal Resist and Shine #739, the most gorgeous cool gold you'll ever see. Unfortunately, every single Resist and Shine polish I've tried ends up bubbling like a mofo, and this one was no exception. The finished product here is an attempt to hide those ugly bumps - the sponged on purple microglitter did conceal the vast majority of them, and since I had gone through all that trouble, I decided to finally make some use of my large selection of (plastic) rhinestones. Garish, yes, but I couldn't stop looking at my nails during the whole two days that the stones stayed on.

Glass-flecked sunset gradation with flakies

Glass-flecked sunset gradation with flakies

My mum has a plethora of different perennials growing in her garden, and in July I was visiting my parents at the perfect time to admire her beautiful daylilies. Originally I had wanted to do a yellow & orange gradient, but as I only store a limited selection of random polishes at their house, the gradient came out more on the pinkish side. The yellow base is one coat of Misa Under my Sunbrella, followed by Flormar U05 (middle) and U24 (tip) which were sponged on, and then topped with GOSH Rainbow. I absolutely loved this mani and wore it for days.

Mum's daylilies

Depend 245 & cupcake nail art

Depend - 245, 2 coats

This light pastel mint with a hint of blue was a difficult colour to photograph, and I had to tweak the hue and saturation levels a lot afterwards. These two pictures offer a far more accurate representation of the polish than the ones below with the cupcakes. Once again, I have nothing negative to say about Depend's formula, brush or drying time.

 Depend - 245, 2 coats & cupcake nail art

My first shot at painting cupcakes! For the bases on my left hand I used OPI You Don't Know Jacques (index and ring) and my own nude franken (thumb, middle and pinky), then using the alternating colour to paint the stripes. For the different frostings I used a turquoise and a pink from H&M, a lilac from Depend and a pastel yellow from Rimmel. The bottom picture shows the results before I added some shading to the cupcakes. I also threw in a photo of my right hand even though I'm not especially proud of the wonky stripes and bleeding colours. :p

L'Oréal 842 Aurore & second attempt at water marbling

L'Oréal - 842 Aurore, 4 coats

Another old sucky L'Oréal LaquiResist polish, I haaaaaate the formula! I had to do four coats to hide VNL, and of course it wouldn't dry and I woke up with sheet marks. Mind you that there was at least six hours between me finishing the mani and going to bed. The colour itself is cute, a pastel baby blue, but the finish is somewhat frosty and the fact that it won't dry... yuck.

L'Oréal - 842 Aurore & water marbling, 4 coats

(Eek, I can't believe how hard it was to get a decent shot of my right hand...) Quick, you have to camouflage the ugly! I used Essie Mod Squad (pink), Misa Honeybunch (white glass fleck) and H&M Hello Kitty brand turquoise. Even though I worked fast, I had trouble with the layer of polish hardening before I could drag a toothpick across it to make the pretty swirls. The water I used was regular, room temperature soft tap water that I had left to sit overnight... I may need to experiment with store-bought filtered water.