Autumn.

Of all the seasons, autumn is the one with the best PR. With pictures of leaves in beautiful colours, cozy sweaters and pumpkin spice lattes, it's enough to make you actually look forward to it.
And then it arrives.. and it's rain, wind and cold all day, every day. No thank you!

That said, I still felt like doing some nails suited to the season. In retrospect, I think I should have used either a darker brown or a lighter shade of red to have it look best, but I'm still satisfied with the result the way it was.

Polishes used are the following -
Dior, '413 Grège'
Dior, '943 Rouge Garconne'
Chanel, '697 Terrana'
Herome WIC, 'Utreg 173'
Herome WIC, 'Zagora 150'
P.S., white.

Dutchess.

The tape strips I had cut off for a previous nail art were way too long and thus unwieldy and I had cut them in half. Leaving me with a bunch of tape.

I had two recently acquired polishes - a silver Depend polish numbered 'Nr. 206' that my aunt bought me in Spain, and a Wet 'n Wild polish from the Fergie collection called 'Dutchess' that I picked up at the local tourist market.

It didn't take a genius to figure that Dutchess is more of an effect polish and wouldn't work for me on its own.

And so we have arrived at this nail art.

The Depend polish is a nice, metallic silver and I'm glad to have it in my collection as I use that sort of thing especially as a nail art base all the time.

I'm not too big on Dutchess - in my opinion it looks nicer in the bottle than it does on the nail.
I liked the look of the purple glitters (again, in the bottle) but they don't really stand out in the shades of blue, which is a shame.

Bright.

Here again is the Depend polish brought to me from Spain.
The moment I got it I really liked the image in the packaging, it's fun and vibrant and reminds me of paisley print.
And I do love me some paisley print. It's probably a good thing I don't run a fashion blog.

The polish itself isn't relevant to this post, but I wanted to try and recreate something similar to the background picture as an accent nail, so I did!

Base colours: white is a nameless polish from Primark's P.S. brand, minty green is OPI's 'That's Hula-rious'.

Detail colours: Herôme W.I.C.'s 'Dakar 107', Koh's 'Coral (185)', 'No Worries (217)' and an unknown polish from the same brand.

P.S., That's Hula-rious!

Here we've got a white polish from Primark's P.S. brand, I couldn't find a discernible name on the bottle anywhere and OPI'S 'That's Hula-rious!', a super cute mint shade.
What's interesting to me here is that Primark's polish, a budget one at its mere €1.50 and the OPI, retailing in the Netherlands around €14.95, have very similar issues.

My search for a good (and affordable) white nail polish is never ending and I'll be blunt in saying that the brush on this one is absolutely shit. It's a flat brush which I initially thought a positive, but the bristles are all over the place and make it hard to apply an even coat without scratching the one beneath it. It needed three frustrating coats to cover to a point where I was content with it. Despite that, I do really like the formula on this one. It's the only white in my collection so far that actually looks more like nail polish than white out. Decidedly a good thing, that. Until I find something with both a decent formula and a decent brush, I'm still going to consider this one a win.

The brush on 'That's Hu-larious!' has misbehaving bristles as well and similarly makes it a challenge to get a nice opaque coverage going. In its defense I will say that this particular shade of minty green is 100% my favourite of all minty polishes I've encountered so far. It's just so sweet and bright and fresh that I'll keep using it despite the non-ideal brush situation.

Outta My Skull.

More Halloweeny nails! I love doing them and I love seeing the influx of them all over the place.

A friend of mine had posted a picture of this H&M nail sticker set and I told her I loved them - and she sent them to me! An absolute darling. I can only say I'm very grateful because I love the collection of images present here.

I have skulls standing around all year.
Halloween or no Halloween.

Though it was the little alien heads that caught my attention initially, for this manicure I wanted to utilise the little skulls.

The stickers all seemed a little large to me initially but once applied it wasn't an issue.

When removing the sticker from the set I was a little surprised to find it was transparent instead of the white I was expecting, but by then I'd already coated the nail in Herôme W.I.C's 'Zagora 150'. I went ahead and applied it anyway and I can't say it looks any worse for it.
As for the rest of the nails, I wanted to complement the orange with a heavy black-white contrast. I'd considered using tape to separate the black from the white but it would have been far too clean for this look.  I wanted something grungy, and roughly sponged Catrice's '39 Black to the Routes' over 'P.S.' white so the distinction would be clear without becoming a smooth gradient.

Franken-French.

Today, on October 21, 2015, the day when Doc and Marty traveled to the future I bring you some Halloweeny nail art. I present to you the Franken-French. (And don't get started on how that should be 'Monster-of-Franken-French'.)

I wanted to keep it as subtle as is possible when you've got fake stitches running along the tips of your nails with a subdued kind of green, if you will. Chanel's '645 Paradisio' has recently entered my collection so it seemed like a good choice (and let's be honest here, I just wanted to use it, I can't resist a shiny new green).
As base to lighten the nail I used Koh's 'Orchid', and the stripes were done with Catrice's '39 Black to the Routes'. What this nail art irrefutably showed me was that I really need a new nail art brush. During this I kept alternating between the two I've got, and neither of them actually do what I need of them to.

The owls are not what they seem.

 Who's excited about the return of Twin Peaks? Meeee!

I've been wanting to do some Black Lodge inspired nail art for a while, but it kept on not happening somehow. 
Then I ordered some chevron-guide stickers and.. they were way too big for what I wanted to do, so that didn't pan out.

Then I got a pair of those scissors that cut zig-zag patterns, which is how I accomplished this. The scissors kept misbehaving though, so I'm not sure if I'll see a return of the chevron on my nails again soon. 

Damn fine cup of coffee.

The base whites are Safari's 'No56' and a Hema polish, neither of which I particularly recommend. The black, Catrice's '39 Black to the Routes'. The red nail, based on the scenery of the waiting room, is actually several shades of red stripes layered over each other to get that curtainy effect, though it's not too clear in the pictures. They are YSL, 'No04', Max Factor '549 Red Passion', Rimmel '035 Wine Not' and Koh's 'Red!'.