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Rainbow in the Dark Nails

31 Day Challenge, day 26: Inspired by a Pattern

Hello everybody! For today's nails I was inspired by my awesome knitted Pull&Bear sweater. It took me a lot of time to draw the pattern, but I love it so much that I'd be happy to do it again some time. Perhaps only on a few accent nails, then! :-) The red basecolor is Rimmel Riviera Red, and for the triangles I used my trusty striper Ink from China glaze that's actually a dark navy, but mostly looks black, just like the navy on my sweater. ;-)

31 Day Challenge, day 25: Inspired by Fashion

Hi everyone! :-) Today's nails were kind of an experiment. When I saw this super cute Modcloth dress, I couldn't wait to capture the edgy neckline with the starry mesh fabric on a semibare accent nail. I used an image plate (that I bought here) to stamp the star pattern, and later I added the rest with the help of tape for nice and crisp lines. It didn't turn out as awesome as I hoped it would though, the stars made the sharp edges of the 'neckline' fade a bit. So next time I try this, I'll probably leave out the stars. What do you guys think about my fashion-inspired nails?

My inspiration: 'Written in the Stars Dress' from Modcloth

31 Day Challenge, day 24: Inspired by a Book

Hi everyone! Seems like the last couple of challenges were a lot harder than I expected. With the previous two and today's book challenge in particular, it took me quite a while to get inspired. After lots of thinking I decided to go with the character Janneke of the Dutch Jip en Janneke stories by Annie M.G. Schmidt that I grew up with. Fiep Westendorp is the one who brought the duo further to life with her adorable and iconic illustrations in black and white. I absolutely love the simplicity of her drawings which makes the characters so easy to recognize and therefore also... perfect for on the nails! ;-) I paired my freehanded Janneke accent nail with a girly polka dot pattern, using a black creme and China Glaze Designer Satin for the dots. It wasn't the easiest job, but I'm happy with how it turned out. ^_^

Image source

31 Day Challenge, day 22: Inspired by a Song

Hey everybody! I'm at day 22 of the 31 Day Challenge, which means I had to pick a song as inspiration. I never thought this challenge was going to be easy, but man, it was so much more difficult than I'd expected! A lot of songs have abstract titles, which are really hard to capture into something recognizable on the nails. And I did want to make something that people were able to recognize, rather than something artsy and abstract that could actually be anything. So I hope you guys indeed saw that pictured on my nails is a train. ;-) The symbolic train of John Mayer's Stop This Train. I think it's a touching song and I especially love the live version of it from his album Where The Light Is.

I really wanted to portray the speed and enormous size of the train, so what better way to do that than making it in Art Deco poster style? :-) The red basecolor is OPI's Big Apple Red, and for the vehicle I used a couple of different polishes and stripers, plus a little sponging for the steam and lights. At last a layer of Essence Matte topcoat and it was finished. Hope you like it!

Double V

Hi guys! I haven't been able to do much nails lately, so I have something from the vault to show you. This mani was made with my new favorite to-go polish: H&M Deep Deep Water. It's been sitting in my drawers for ages, just waiting to be discovered, and now it has been. Pictured is only one coat. One coat of perfectly pigmented, blurple metallic polish. And it dries fast too. ♥ But as pretty as it is, I like my manis with a little extra. ;-) So later I added the triangles with tape. I started with a gold triangle, and when it was dry I made a black one inside, and repeated these steps at the cuticle area. Slowly building everything up with layers. You can imagine this took a while, with so many triangles to dry. But if you're watching your favorite TV show at the same time, there really isn't much patience needed. ;-) Thanks for reading!

Foil Water Marble

I'd never thought I'd be able to do, let alone love, water marbling, but here I am with another marbled mani. This time I wanted to do a darker one, using H&M Kiss Goodnight and Orly Sweet Peacock, which is the sparkly blue.
From my last water marbling attempts, I've learned that not every polish is suitable for it, so I wasn't surprised when that was the case with Sweet Peacock. It was hard to draw neat, controlled petals in the polish. But that actually didn't bother me at all, as my nails were left with these beautiful, more natural  swirls of polish instead.
Clean-up, however, was less beautiful! Despite having taped my fingers before dipping them in the polish, it was almost impossible to get them clean. So I took these pictures the day after, when most of the foily shimmer was finally gone after a long and hot shower. ;-) Thanks for stopping by!

Suzi Skittle

As my recent water marbling attempts for day 20 of the 31 Day Challenge weren't exactly succesful, I'll show you this colorful taped skittle from the vault instead. The grey shimmer is OPI Suzi Skis In The Pyrenees Suede. It dries with a matte finish but with some glossy topcoat it looks just as stunning! On top I did a fifty-fifty tape mani by covering up half of the nails with tape and painting the other half with the following polishes:

P2 - Groovy

Etos - #118

Essence - Sending You Kisses

Bourjois - Jaune Cab (#85)

In the meantime I'll practise more water marbling, I really want to be able to nail it! See you nex time!

Gold Ornament

This mani is from a few weeks ago. I was just getting in the mood for the December holidays and added this simple tribal-ish pattern with a striper to go with the rest of my dark nails. I sure have a soft spot for black and gold. ♥

Below are a couple of older manis in black and gold. I thought it would be fun to show these lined up together to compare, isn't it a versatile color duo? ^_^

Fancy triangles, one of my first posts!

 Shining like a star on Christmas '11.

 Nude clouds for New Year's Eve.

Fierce French!

And my recent Art Deco linework. :-)

And for those who are interested: the black creme I use is Color Club's Where's The Soiree?. It dries with a satin-matte finish, but I don't mind since it dries very quickly because of that, and I can always add some glossy topcoat. Another thing is it's a one-coater, so it covers perfectly but therefore can also leave stains on the skin. So I have to be extra careful with the application. Despite of this, it's still my favorite black so far.

Thanks for reading!

Art Deco Line Work

Merry Christmas, dear readers! Here's how my mani looks like this year. Not very Christmassy per se, but liking it anyway. :-) The gold in my hands is Essence A Piece Of Forever from the Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 collection. I was only swatching it, but ended up wearing it after liking it so much with the improvised line work, for which I used my trusty striper Ink from China Glaze. Since I'm not confident enough to make such detailed work with my non-dominant hand, I kept my right hand plain black. But it actually looks nicer like this, more balanced  I believe.

Until next time then! Have a great time with your loved ones. :-)

Smudges

Remember my animal print post? I'd drawn little animals with a Steadtler permanent marker on a matte polish. Because I wanted to keep the matte finish, I didn't use topcoat over it. Still I wondered what would happen if I did. Well, turns out topcoat doesn't exactly work well with that marker, or does it?

These pictures you're looking at are from my first attempt on the delicate print challenge. I used the same marker on top of Catrice New York and later added topcoat, causing it to smudge like crazy! If you look good, you can still see the letters. But, I actually really liked the smudged effect. It made the letters look a bit graffiti-like. Or like a quick and bad paint job, in a good way, heehee. That's what I love about experimenting: that it can lead you to things you'd never come up with otherwise. What do you think of this smudged mani?

31 Day Challenge, day 15: Delicate Print

Hello everyone! Here's my attempt on the delicate print challenge. Initially I was going for a lace pattern using stamping, but I was more in the mood for some freehanding today which brought me to this gothic kind of look. I have a huge passion for typography and calligraphy and love spending time on drawing fonts. So it was only natural for me to include it in nail art someday. :-)

Not sure if it's very noticeable, but the purple is actually a gradient, I thought it would bring more depth to the design. I used H&M Beauty Bandit as basecolor and sponged some OPI Funky Dunkey (which I'm holding in the picture) and Essence Passion For Fashion on top of it. The writing is done with China Glaze Ink, a striper polish. Hope you like it!

31 Day Challenge, day 14: Flowers

Hi everyone! :-) This is day 14 in the 31 Day Challenge and today's theme is flowers. I have to say the whole mani is a little bit too tacky for me, haha, but being a tad different than most of my manis, I enjoyed working on it very much. I used my trusty cloud design method to draw the petals, first with a black, then with Essence Ultimate Pink. Then I added the blue, diamond-shaped glitters for a bit of contrast. I don't use loose glitters often, but I immediately fell in love with these from Essence, named Shine Like A Star!, which I bought about a year ago. It doesn't show on the pictures, but they're actually holographic, which makes them even more awesome. Can't wait to use them again. :-) Thanks for dropping by!

31 Day Challenge, day 13: Animal Print

Hello readers! For this post I'd like to show you my attempt on challenge 13 of the 31 Day Challenge: a very literal animal print. It was a bit of an experiment as I used other materials besides nail polish: a Staedtler permanent marker and an Edding Deco Marker in white. Once the blue basecolor was dry (nameless polish from Claire's), I freehanded the curious animals on top. The markers seemed to attach well on the matte surface, the polish just needs to be completely dry before you can draw on it.

The animals in this print were supposed to be cats, but with a little imagination they can be any animal you like... Dogs, mice, pigs, ferrets... If you squint your eyes, they can even be the little black soot creatures from Miyazaki's Spirited Away. Oh, yeah, definitely going for the squinting. Love that movie! ♥

Dark Zigzag

Hi everybody! Last post I showed you the amazing suede version of Suzi Skis In The Pyrenees from OPI. Because it dries so fast, it's a perfect basecolor for tape manis, such as today's. I covered half of my nails with triangle shaped pieces of tape and used my trusty black polish (Where's The Soiree? from Color Club) on top. Then I removed the tape strips and felt like a rock star... Rock on!

OPI - Suzi Skis In The Pyrenees Suede

Hello dear readers! I know it's been a while again, my apologies for staying away so long. I've been busy with packing and moving to a new place, and with concentrating on school. Or busy with life, in other words. ;) But my passion for nails is far from dead, so I'm trying my best to get back to posting regularly again. In the meantime I'll share some pictures from the vault with you, starting with OPI Suzi Skis In The Pyrenees, the suede version. I think it's absolutely gorgeous in all its simplicity. I really could look all day at that dark, grainy, matte finish. ♥ This was two coats. The application is alright; like with other matte polishes, you need to work faster because the drying time is quite short. But I like to see that as a plus, it makes this grey beauty an awesome polish for tape manis... ;)

31 Day Challenge, day 7: Black & White

Hi everyone! Welcome to day 7 of the 31 Day Challenge; black and white. I love black and white manis so I was very excited about this one. I expected myself to do a full nail black and white pattern but eventually these skittled zigzag tips were the result. Basically I made randomly zigzagging black tips and added the white and colored triangles later. It reminds me of the fierce French I did a while back, only funkier. :-) Thanks for stopping by!

South Africa?

Hello everyone! I'm interrupting the 31 Day Challenge for this colorful tape mani. The reaction that I heard most about this mani is how it looks like the South African flag. While it wasn't intended, I agree it kind of does. Not just the design, but even the colors are a bit similar. However, this mani was actually a result from adjusting and experimenting with an earlier design; the fifty-fifty mani. I had worn the corally pink color (H&M Wildflower) for a day and added the muted teal the next morning. And though I already liked how that looked, I had to do something that would cover up my slight tipwear, hence the purple chevrons which you see in the last picture. That was cute too but it wasn't quite finished until I added the little black chevrons. Amazing how much of a difference a bit of black can make. ^^

This mani was also a great oppurtunity to try out two new polishes from Etos (Dutch drugstore), #122 (teal) and #118 (purple). Etos recently released a whole bunch of new exciting colors and I'm thrilled about it, because both their quality and price are quite reasonable (€2.50 for 5ml/0.5 fl.oz). Thanks for reading!

Big thank you to my little brother for taking this picture for me. ^^

31 Day Challenge, day 5: Blue

Blue nails! For this challenge I decided to bring out my stamping tools. The basecolor is Essence Via Airmail! from the Ready For Boarding collection. On top I did a leopard print in black with Konad imageplate M57. Stamping isn't a technique I often reach for because I always think too much about the mess afterwards that I'd have to clean up, especially when I'm using my opaque and therefore hard-to-remove black polish Color Club Where's The Soiree, like in this case. But clean-up actually wasn't that bad this time because I rubbed a bit of greasy handcream on the skin around the nails, making it harder for the polish to stain. :-) Even the pattern transferred okay on the nails! It's definitely not perfect, but that's the nice thing about leopard print: imperfections are hardly noticeable from a distance. ;-) So all in all I was quite pleased with how this mani turned out. I really should do stamped manis more often...

31 Day Challenge, day 3: Yellow

Yellow nails! These took a long time to get done because of the design on my ringfinger, so I made studded V-gaps on the rest on my fingers, which I actually liked better in the end. :-) The yellow basecolor is H&M's Lemon Tree. This was three to four coats which I admit is a lot. But the formula is great to work with, very smooth and no dragging, making it my favorite yellow next to Color Club Almost Famous. The silver I used for the dots/studs is Essence Romeo and the black is Color Club Where's The Soiree? as usual. What are your thoughts on this yellow rock look?