Fall Farewell

Okay, so I didn't know what to call this post.

We find ourselves at the end of November, which is to me a time of transition right now. The weather is turning more to winter and leaving autumn behind, and I wanted some nail art to reflect that idea. Something transitional, something incorporating the aesthetics of fall and giving us a glimpse of where we're going.
Browns and reds are definitely autumnal colours, but red by itself envokes images of the upcoming festivities of Sinterklaas and Christmas.

I wanted the tape method to both reflect the 'removing' of autumn and showing us the winter, and also being reminiscent of giftwrapping!

Brown used is a Hema polish by the name number '14', and the red is Essence's '01 Beauti-Fall Red'. It's a theme-appropriate pun, double win.

Close up.

Wanna Bee Your Sunshine

(You may want to enlarge this to see that they are,
in fact, hexagons.)

A little while ago, a friend sent me a magnificent package with all kinds of gifts and among those were two sets of nail art supplies.

One of them contained bottles of these little hexagonal glitters, a shape which probably reminds most people of the honeycomb.

Armed with this, I decided to do some nail art inspired by bees!

The base yellow is a discounted Essence polish by the cheerful name of '137 Wanna Be Your Sunshine', purchased specially for this nail art because my other yellows don't provide a very good base.

Then I set out to paint the honeycomb shapes on using my trusty little brush and Herôme W.I.C.'s 'Zagora 150', which is starting to feel like my go-to orange.

Because of course the little hexagon glitters that inspired it all had to have a place in this nail art somewhere, I used them as an accent on my ring finger, placing them in a pattern that followed the structure of a honeycomb.

Because I wanted to add an actual bee in there somewhere too, I added this little stylized representation of one on my thumb with a black Koh polish. I'd started a little too far up (or down, depending on your perspective) I added some glitter there too, to pretend the placement of the bee was entirely intentional.
Let's keep that a secret be(e)tween friends, eh?

NYC - Strip Me Off review

Some simple nail art, because what I wanted to try out was NYC's 'Strip Me Off', a peel-off top coat.
Since OPI's version of the product I've definitely been interested - doesn't everyone hate the clean up of glitter nail polish? - but OPI is pretty pricey in The Netherlands so I've held off. A little while ago, a friend told me NYC now had essentially the same product and it just so happened the Kruidvat had some 2-for-four-euros sale going on. I unashamedly love a bargain.
The glitter polish used is W7's '125 Twilight', and the whites are a Hema white numbered 809 and Safari's No56 (which I'm fond of, but tends to goop a little too much for comfort but I'm afraid to dilute it with thinner.)

I wore this nail polish with Strip Me Off for about three days. What I noticed was that tip-wear started to occur sooner than it usually did. However, this mani went to work with me twice - that's two evenings of cleaning, so it's basically all hands - and it survived that very neatly.

I can summarize the removal experience in basically a single sentence - "works as advertised". It takes a little doing, but it's definitely less of a messy process than normal. After the biggest parts were peeled off I needed a drop of nail polish remover to get rid of some stray flecks here and there, but all in all it was less work.

'Strip Me Off' is (regardless of the oddly suggestive name) a very decent alternative to 'Glitter Off', and given the lower price but not significantly lesser quality, is the one I'd recommend!

Up-grape.

Catrice's '59 First Class Up-Grape' is a recent addition to my collection and the colour is an absolute stunner. The brush is an absolute nightmare, however. A fine formula as we've come to expect, and it covered in two coats. The brush is really the only downside, it's poorly shaped and the bristles that stick out there damage your polish more than it applies it, so it takes a little doing.

 But the colour - the colour! My pictures are nowhere near to doing it justice. It's a gorgeous dark aubergine shade with a shimmer that's just right. If it wasn't for the brush, I'd have nothing but praise.

I'm not mean, I'm a 1000 years old..

And I just lost track of my moral code.

Marceline, the Vampire Queen

Needed nails to suit a cosplay of Adventure Time's Marceline, and chose to do a  colour variant of the French manicure.

Colours used:

NYC - 003 Prey of Grey (base)
Herôme W.I.C. - Oslo 124 (top grey)
Herôme W.I.C. - London 95

I used some old Hema French manicure stickers in the attempt to get a smooth curve, but they never quite seem to work out the way I hope, and then I end up repainting the edge myself anyway. Ah well.