Creature of Habit.

I'm a creature of habit, because I fall back easily to comfortable nail art styles and colours. It feels like a bit of a cop out when I see others do magnificently varied things.. but this works for me. I just really love me some gradients, okay?

Anyway - I got a few rolls of striping tape off eBay not too long ago and was itching to try it out. It took a little patience to position the tape exactly the way I wanted it finger after finger, but I think the result is pretty much as I envisioned it.

White is Safari's 'No 56', lighter purple is Catrice '120 Plum Play with Me', and the darker is the older Catrice by the name of 'C03 Deep Purple'.

Hello Autumn.

01  Beauti-fall Red

Essence's current LE is 'Hello Autumn' and I got one of the thermo effect polishes. Colour changing polishes are nothing new, and I've had a few less than stellar experiences with them so I was a little skeptical. It looks like a nice shade of red at any rate, and they had a 1 + 1 free sale for all things nails at Kruidvat so there was really nothing to lose as I needed a new top coat anyway.

There is a gradient effect present, but it's quite subtle. Prior to taking these pictures I held my hand under warm water (it's pretty chilly and it would have made for especially bland photos otherwise) to let the thermal effect do its thing.
I'm pleased with the quality of the polish itself, in my experience colour changing nail polishes tend to be sheer and since this was a jelly as well I was really happy to see it covered very well in only two coats!

Best I could do in terms of capturing the gradient.

Despite only wanting a single colour for my nails, I like the aesthetic of this entire LE a lot. I like the autumnal colours and one of the powders in the line has a really nice leaf pattern going - a definite thumbs up to Essence from me.

I did get crafty within the autumn theme in an area unrelated to nails...

My mother is all about the autumn decorations and I found this tutorial on how to make a lovely little leaf bowl and thought 'why not'? With some synthetic leaves provided by Xenos I got to work and made one!

Tina.

Prior to running into a display full of them, I had no idea that Kruidvat carried Sinful Colors. (I really, really want to spell that with a 'u'...) I took home this sort of mint green shade (looks rather blue in the picture) called '982 Be Happy'. I think I have an old Hema polish that's actually pretty close to this, but let's pretend that I don't.

Like I mentioned before, I wanted to do some nail art on Sea Sunset but it got damaged before I got the chance. Be Happy is as good a shade as any for what I had in mind...

Bob's Burgers' Tina Belcher.

Tina is entirely done in acrylic paints. I build my cartoons up over a white base shape done in acrylics as well, and I'm thinking I should do those in a nail polish instead to create a significantly smoother surface to work on..
I'm not dissatisfied with it, but I think her features are more reminiscent of the style of The Simpsons than Bob's Burgers. Something to keep an eye on if I decide to do another character, I suppose.

Sea Sunset.

Rummaging through the nail polish at Action, I found this pretty blue by Maybelline. It goes by the name of '800 Sea Sunset' and only set me back €1.79 compared to a regular retail price of around €8.99. I love bargains on nail polish, because it makes it feel like less of an insane hobby. I don't want to even think about how much money I've put down for my large collection small bottles of paint that you mostly clean off less than a week later. Rationally, it is.. quite a strange thing.

It has a really nice, almost galaxy-like pink shimmer that I struggled to photograph on my nails but was willing to show up on the bottles. In real life it shows up on your nails just fine. It is slightly on the sheer side, and if I recall correctly I went for three coats just to be safe.

I had originally intended to do some nail art on this, but working with glue did some damage and I don't feel like redoing my nails in the same colour, so it will probably be done over a different base.

Do you ever look back...

...And see just how far you've come?
Now, this is hardly going to be as inspirational as the title may lead you to think.

I was cleaning out a drawer and I found this little toiletry bag. Many years ago, it housed all my nail polish. It's hard to believe with the collection I've got going now, consisting of two overstuffed beautycases and two other containers.

I don't have much in the way of new nails, just my previous ones, mattified.

I'm working on a creative project with lots of materials including paper maché goop, spraypaint, enamel paint and various other things that will definitely ruin any hard work put into one's nails so I'm just not going to put any hard work into them for the time being.