Lisbon.

'T is a continued unfortunate state of affairs the workload my current school provides me does not leave me the time on a weekly basis to do awesome nail art things. I'd also like to see my boyfriend or friends every now and then, which means less time.

It makes me very uncomfortable, though. To see my nail polish chip more each day. I went to school without any polish at all once, it has - literally - been years since I have done that. Highly irregular.

Anywho, I bring to you a swatch of  '105 Lisbon', by Herôme.

With flash.

(Middle finger polish got a little damaged overnight..) A nice purple polish of no real preference to either pink or blue. It's a proper purple. It has a nice shimmer in it that livens up the colour.
It's not the greatest in terms of coverage, in order to be satisfied I had to go for three coats, but on a shorter nail two would do.

Artificial light.

Its longevity is nothing too special, it started chipping rather soon. I do like this shade a lot so I'll be wearing it again sometime soon!

Happy (belated) Halloween!

Themed cupcakes, courtesy of my wonderful mother!

Even though we don't celebrate Halloween as elaborately in the Netherlands as they do in the States, it's still my favourite holiday, and as the years progress more and more Halloween-themed parties are thrown, more trick-or-treaters venture out into the night and more spooky decorations and products find themselves into the stores! I can only wholeheartedly applaud these efforts!

Sadly, October is a busy time for me, and I always seem to fall short for time when it comes to doing nail art of that one day a year I love so much. So here, is my unfortunately rather bland Halloween nail art.

 

It was originally my intention to paint a little ghost on both ring fingers, but a large assignment and having to prepare for tests prevented me doing so. School before nails, after all. 

Orange is Herôme's 'Zagora 150', gray is my trusty NYC '003 Prey of Grey'

"That is not dead which can eternal lie,"

"And with strange aeons even death may die.” 

October is to me basically synonymous with "Halloween" and so nail art must follow.
In keeping with the H.P. Lovecraft project my amazing friend Gillian and I have been doing (check it it out; it's readings of various Lovecraft stories) I wanted to do some tentacly Cthulhu-inspired nail art.

 

I won't go into which white nail polish I used because they're quite terrible and I don't want to recommend them as they do not cover in the slightest. Why must a good, opaque white polish be so hard to find?

Tentacles are various acrylic paints.

Bonus happy stampy pumpkin!

Marbled.

I've been meaning to try water marbling, it being one of those techniques that's so common but I'd never attempted it myself.

Estée Lauder - Blue Dahlia, Catrice - C05 Take It Mint

I then attempted it.
And sucked, terribly.
It was somewhat of a blow to the ego to find out there was a nail art technique I didn't just miraculously take to without all that much effort. It appeared I'd met my match. I did not quit, however, and gave it another shot.
This was my third try. I think it's okay. It is successful inasmuch that it has the marble effect on the nail.

It's not really my technique. Don't get me wrong, I think it can look absolutely amazing but when it comes down to it to me it's messy (which I hate), uncontrolled (which goes against my nature) and rather wasteful. One has to test a fair amount of polishes before you even find out what works with this, and then if you want to do more than two nails .. that's a hell of a lot of drops plopped in water, you know? To me, at least, the amount of nail polish expended is not worth the result. I may experiment with it again in the future, but probably not for more than accent nails like I did here. I can't imagine bothering with a whole hand, let alone two.

✖ Tutorial

Pictured above is my most recent nail art and, never having done one before, I made a tutorial of it in the process! Please click the link for the tutorial!
 

✖

I'm a busy, busy student once more, so the time I have to spend on doing my nails is diminished.. hence not quite up to my usual standard of neatness. Still, I hope you enjoy this nail art!

Anyway - polishes used:
- Catrice C01 - Innocent Toxin (LE: Revoltaire)
- Catrice C03 - Deep Purple (Purple Passion Trend Collection)
- Teeez Big Apple

✖ Tutorial

100th post! + Even More Heavy Metallilac

I appear to have made it to a hundred posts! Have a silly doodle to celebrate.

Originally my idea was to try my hand (pun) at water marbling for my 100th, but it didn't.. really go all that well. Alas. And I didn't want too wait too long to make another point.

I have previously swatched Catrice's 'Heavy Metallilac' and I was exceptionally pleased with it at the time.
More recently (though still a fair while ago) I was given '31 - Even More Heavy Metallilac', one of the more recent Catrice polishes because it has the logo stand out on top of the bottle.

I'd wanted the opportunity to really see them side-by-side, because in my mind the colours were a lot closer.
The original Heavy Metallilac is decidedly closer to pink than its successor. Even More is a truer purple, bearing some similarity to From Dusk To Dawn.

They're both great, eye-popping colours with a fantastic shine to them. Two coats will do you just fine.