V-Gap Nail Art.

 

Essence - LE: All That Greys - 04 Girl With a Pearl

House Pride.

Recently I found myself in a bit of a reading rut so I went back to Harry Potter. In this case, The Prizoner of Azkaban. On top of that, a friend had recently sent me that Ravenclaw sticker and I wanted to do something in theme with it! I went for the book House colours of blue and bronze rather than the blue and grey of the films. That said, I had a hard time finding anything properly bronze in my collection. The browns didn't quite cut it, and this one literally has copper in its name. Oh well, close enough. Tape used for the design, as per usual!

Blue is Koh's '130 Midnight Blue'. The word I'd use to describe it is brilliant - it is just so stunning and sparkly in the sun. My bronze substitute is an Essence polish from the Metallics collection from 2010 (oh my god, I've had this for 6 years?!) '02 Cooper Rulez!'.
Yikes, 'rulez'. Going to erase that from my memory now.

Infrequent French.

There's a saying in fitness - that the exercise you're not doing is the one you should be doing.

I believe the sentiment of that applies to many areas - the thing you prefer not to do because you might not be good at it, is something you ought to do because it is an area in which you can improve.
And it never hurts to improve.

For me, French manicures are such a thing. I avoid them because I'm not very good at them (and they're not really my aesthetic anyway) and thus my skill in them stagnates.

Long story short, I decided to give them another go after lord knows how long to get some practice in. I used a sticker guide, Essence's '03 Cotton Candy' as a base, and Safari's 'No 56' as the tip colour.

And after all that work, they didn't survive
a single weightlifting session and thus
only lasted one day. Go figure.

Accounting Jokes.

Every now and then you'll see a pattern or a colour combination somewhere that just clicks with the part of your brain responsible for nail polish creations. In my case, it happened whilst watching an episode of Parks and Recreation, where the character of Ben Wyatt was wearing this snazzy brown-blue striped tie. I've previously mentioned my fondness for the combination, so I'll spare you the repetition of the same and get down to it.

This nail art done with Essence's '03 My Boyfriend's Jeans' and Miss Sporty's '455'.

And just for those that don't watch Parks and Rec and went 'huh?' at this post title, the character Ben is an accountant and kept throwing in accounting puns over the course of the episode the tie was in.

Mer-miss.

I had these little bottles of glitter sitting around on my desk and thought they'd make a nice mermaidish gradient, which is what inspired this mani.

It didn't really work out as planned.


Miss Sporty, '346',
Essence, '04 The Dawn is Broken'.

The intended effect was lost in spacing them out too far and not having done multiple rows of each colour. I aim to repeat this mani in the future, because I think the idea - with better execution - would look lovely.

The main point of this post is to hold myself accountable to actually try this again, no matter how fiddly the process of glitter application is.

Rest in Peace, Leonard Nimoy.

I took a break from nail art, which unintentionally turned into a break from posting as a whole. Real life situations, and relying only on a temperamental laptop kept me away. I've built up a small backlog of photos I'll be posting in the future, but for now I want to post some new nail art.

On Friday the 27th, Leonard Nimoy passed away at the age of 83.
I'm a long-time Star Trek fan, and though he had lived a long and full life, it's still upsetting to see a hero go.


So my return to this blog is a little nail-art tribute to the original Mr. Spock.

I'm very sad about his passing, and I don't really have any more words to express it, so I'll just continue by listing the polishes used.




Base - Rimmel, '825 Sky High', Spock face - Essence, '03 Cotton Candy',
Blue - Koh, '217 No Worries', Hair & lettering - Catrice, '39 Black to the Routes'.

Isbjørn

Ever since my visit to Norway I've had a fondness for the word 'isbjørn' rather than 'polar bear'. A family emergency has made for a not-so-merry Christmas so I don't feel like going on and on, but I hope everyone had a good one and a happy new year in advance.

Polishes used, with Essence's '01 Wonderlicious Green' (which is still very much a blue) as base.
Koh's 'Baby Blue (226)', 'Pearly White', 'Red!' and 'Black!'.

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?

Back to the 'Falls.

A part two to my other Gravity Falls nails. This being my non-dominant hand, so I tend to wimp out and not bother with quite such detailed things. I have pretty steady hands, but alas, I am not full-on ambidextrous.

I wanted something simple based on the colour scheme of the logo (well, the greens) so I went for sponging. I used a slightly 'bluer' side of the green family than the logo because, to be quite honest, no other reason than that they were still standing around on my desk.
They are, in order from lightest to darkest -
Hema - Long Lasting 82
Essence - 54 Trust in Fashion
Essence - 03 Back to Paradise

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!

You Belong to Rambo No. 5

And with this - another version of my beloved half rhombus - I complete the Catrice section of my Stash page. Post title is a mash-up of the two polishes used. The green is Catrice's '670 It's Rambo No. 5' and the mint blue is an Essence colour & go by the creepy name of '53 You Belong to Me'. No, nail polish, as a matter of fact, you belong to me. The 'colour & go' polishes were such a hit and miss in terms of quality that I almost never bought them for myself, but since they were very affordable I was often given them as little presents. This one falls under 'miss', which is a shame because I like the shade, but its coverage is terrible and the formula is very disappointing, very streaky. It is however fine for this type of thing.
Added a little rhinestone because I don't often do, and made the rest matte because I think it's suits the army green of Rambo.

>> Click for tutorial <<

Essence Gel Nails.

One of my friends owns all the necessities to do gel nails the Essence way, and let me borrow all of it to give it a shot. I'd never tried anything of the sort so it was fun to give a go.

The colour I used with the process is this gray/lilac from Essence's Crystalliced LE. It's '01 It's a Snow-Woman's World', and I haven't used it since 2012. Sorry, Snow-Woman's World.

One of the details I really love about it (which is a pain to get to show up on photographs, unfortunately) is the little detailing of snowflakes around the brush handle.

I think it went decently for a first try, but I have many of the same hang-ups with this technique as I do with water marbling. Those mainly being that it requires a lot of products (four separate bottles of stuff, and a lamp!) and the time it took (in this case) is disproportionate to the quality of the mani (though I imagine with a little more experience that'd be a lower ratio). During the drying process the mani also creeps away from the cuticle a bit further than I'd like.

 

I had a nice time playing around with an unfamiliar process but I don't think I'm likely to try it again very soon.

The peel-off base is both a blessing and a curse. I really loved being able to remove it so quickly and easily without the use of any additional products and messiness, but on the other hand it leaves your nails reasonably damaged. That alone makes the gel nails not something I'd recommend doing too often.

Back to Paradise.

When your nail polish collection reaches a certain size, it's an inevitability that there are going to be polishes that somehow fall between the cracks that you forget about completely.

Essence's 'Return to Paradise' collection was one that came out in 2010 and featured a bunch of nice summer-appropriate bright colours.
And also this dark green, which is the only thing of the collection I have. No surprises there, I suppose.
It's '03 Back to Paradise'.

I might arrogantly describe myself a connoisseur of green nail polishes since it's the colour I wear most, and though this one has one big fault, I do think it's a gorgeous colour and am willing to look past it. 
Unfortunately it's pretty sheer, and will need at least three coats to cover. I daresay (as usual) that this may be a less obvious deficit on a shorter nail but even then it just doesn't cover all that evenly. It becomes more obvious when one looks at it under different light - 

Flash - Artificial light.

 
Though sheerness is usually my biggest pet peeve, it doesn't seem to bother me all too much with this polish. I don't know if it's because I just enjoy the colour that much or something else but either way it was a nice rediscovery. A coat or so extra won't really kill me, after all.

Complementary, my dear Watson.

Okay, I'm semi-sorrry for this post title.
Anyway, a good complementary contrast always stands out so I wanted to apply that in a nice sponge gradient mani.

Polishes used:
2true, 'Shade no. 25' (orange)
2true, 'Shade no. 15' (blue)
Essence, '01 - Wonderlicious Green' (it's blue, damnit)
Golden Rose, 'Scale Effect 12' (flakies)

2true's shade of blue works very poorly as a polish on itself, so I layered it over the ever misnamed Wonderlicious Green, to have a good blue base. The 2true blue is a very sparkly polish, and so is its orange, so those work together very well. The orange is pretty well pigmented, and though a bit coppery now, is really a very bright orange when used on its own.

And finally, I feel the largely orange flakies tie the whole together quite nicely

I'm Blue (Da Ba Dee)

Are these polishes cousins or..?

I know one shouldn't judge a book by its cover, and it's rather childish of me but..
I've basically had these polishes sitting in my collection and not really using them because I thought the names were tacky and derivative. Which is pretty damn rich from a girl that has very cheap puns, references and forced alliterations as her post names constantly.
Anyway.
I wanted a nice blue and figured I might as well give an older one a go. I can't say for sure if I've ever even used it before.
It's an older Essence polish, '37 Just Rock It!'

Actually a really nice shade of blue, a perfect balance of that line between "obviously blue" and "is that black or not?".
It took two coats and held pretty well. It's a pure blue shade, no shimmer to be found. I will definitely wear this one again. Shame on me for ignoring it so long for such a stupid reason.

 

Natural light - flash.

Galaxy.

A lover of space since a young age, I got really excited when I saw galaxy nails for the first time. And then I also saw a lot of .. erm, less than great looking examples of the trend, and I became a little weary. However, I found it time to take the leap and simply try.

Some reference..

Polishes used (left to right):
Wild & More 109
Catrice - 840 - Genius in the Bottle
Catrice - 31 - Even More Heavy Metallilac
Essence - 43 - Where Is The Party?
Hema - French Manicure striper
Hema - 10
Koh - Midnight Blue
Koh - Black
YSL - No35

Left.

Right.

I was getting along relatively well, sponging away with my various colours and dotting the stars. And then I'd finished and.. put glitter on top. In retrospect, the glitter was a mistake. I had seen glitter work really well in galaxy nails by other people, but my glitter is FAR too green and there's just too much of it. So I wish I hadn't done that.
Will have to repeat sometime, with a less dense glitter, or going without altogether.

Diamond in..

"Diamond in the rough", get it? Because the bottle says.. nevermind.

One from Essence's 'Floral Grunge' LE, '05 Black to the Roots'. A not-truly-black-but-more-really-dark-gray with little silver shinies spread throughout that (unless tampered with) has a .. something between matt and 'regular' finish.
I didn't like the finish the polish itself had, so I covered most nails in regular top coat and did my ring fingers in matt. I didn't really like the application of the polish either. Dubious coverage and it took more than usual doing to get it on properly. Not one I'll quickly use again, I'm afraid.
I would've liked to do a neater half-moon mani, but the unpleasant application of the polish kind of made me throw the towel in. Meh.