Catching up - December manicures

Hi everyone!


I guess 2017 wasn't quite happy with the speed it was zooming towards the end, so it decided to step on the pedal and went into overdrive. Oh, alright, so December is always extremely busy for my family as there are no less than 5 birthdays that can't be skipped, a children's holiday that loving aunts and uncles are supposed to attend as well, and of course Christmas with all its preparations and last but not least New Year (although technically that's in January but of course everything for the party has to be done in December). Throw in a computer that decides it can't keep up with the pace so it simply shuts down and some last minutes rush jobs at work and you can picture my life for the last three weeks. But I'm not complaining though, because I love this time of year, craziness included :) Anyway, at the moment four birthdays (including my own ;) are in the past, all the shopping and planning etc. for Christmas is done, my computer is completely reinstalled and running faster than ever and I even managed to catch up on reading blogs so I decided to show you what has been on my nails these last weeks (and I hope to do a second post with a really special manicure after this one, no promises though!)


First in line: garnet stars.

I did these for the birthday dinner for my mother-in-law. I found some star shaped vinyls hidden in the back of my drawer (no clue where I got them from or even what brand they are) and I felt like wearing red, and this happened:

I stuck the vinyls to my silicone mat, filled them with Cirque Colors Garnet, peeled off the vinyls and set them aside to dry completely. While they were drying I painted my thumb, index and pinky with two coats of Garnet, which is an absolutely gorgeous polish with a deep red jelly base and bazillions of silver holoflakies, and my middle and ring finger were covered with four thin coats of Zoya April, a pretty nude that turned out more sheer than I anticipated. A coat of Seche Vite for a glossy finish and to help things dry a bit faster and after that I peeled the stars from the mat, put them on my middle and ring finger and covered those two nails with an extra coat of Seche Vite to keep them in place. Et voila... starry, starry nails!


Behind door number two: a snowy skittle.

When trying to come up with an idea for this manicure I happened to look outside and lo and behold, the first serious snow of the season was floating down... so snowflakes! I searched my stash for a nice base and I picked Liquid Sky Lacquer Mint to Love, a lovely blue-ish mint colored, not-too-strong linear holographic beauty. Combined (and with crappy photo skills as the polish in the picture looks way too green when in reality it's more of an blue leaning mint) this is the result:

I used three thin coats of Mint to Love on all nails to reach full opacity. A coat of Seche Vite to shorten the drying time and I finished with several snowflakes from MoYou London Festive 57 that I stamped using Hit the Bottle Snowed In, followed by another coat of Seche Vite. And that was all: simple, cute and fast :)


And last but not least manicure 3: cozy plaid.

When it was time to replace the snowflakes I had a problem... a total lack of inspiration! So I browsed the web, looked through Pinterest, checked Instagram and finally decided to forget about it and started reading my mail instead. One of the emails was a MoYou newsletter and I completely fell in love with a plaid manicure that was used to promote the Holy Shapes 19 plate. Here's my version:

The pretty dusty pink is Cirque Colors Jane on Jane Street and to me that color simply screams cozy! It took two coats to reach full opacity on my thumb, index and pinky. For the accent nails I started by painting two coats of OPI Alpine Snow on my middle and ring finger. When that had dried I stamped wide striped stripes (yep, highly technical description) on my nails using Jane and narrower golden stripes using essie Leggy Legend (that my dear husband shook for at least 10 minutes as it had totally separated but I had my heart set on that color... I know, he's the absolute best <3 ), both images from MoYou London Holy Shapes 19. As usual a coat of Seche Vite took care of the sealing, drying and gloss.


And in case you're interested, here are the bottle shots for all manicures:

Cirque Colors Garnet, Zoya April

Liquid Sky Lacquer Mint to Love, Hit the Bottle Snowed In

Cirque Colors Jane on Jane Street OPI Alpine Snow,, essie Leggy Legend

I do want to apologize about about my lack of presence. It's not that I don't paint my nails but for some reason I can't find the time to sit down and write a post. I'm just going to blame the madness called December and keep my fingers crossed things will improve in January. In fact, they better as Michelle managed to talk me into participating in the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge so I'll have to do at least one post each week. Maybe I should have asked Santa for a planner ;)

And talking about challenges, I'm still working my way through the SBBNailChallenge and I think two of these manicures qualify: garnet stars for Stars (challenge 25) and cozy plaid for Stripes (challenge 10).

Finally, I loved wearing all three manicures but the last one was definitely my favorite. It suited my mood perfectly and I received a lot of compliments on it, even though the stamping needs more practice (did you know stamping stripes is HARD?). I almost wish I had a blanket in those colors to snuggle up in on the couch, with a book and a steaming mug of tea :) Do you have a favorite?



Cirque Colors Garnet, Cirque Colors Jane on Jane Street and Zoya April were bought from Pretty Polish.
Liquid Sky Lacquer Mint to Love and Hit the Bottle Snowed In were bought from Hypnotic Polish.