What's on my nails today?

Hi everyone!


This month has felt like a runaway train with no brakes and me running behind it, trying to catch up... But this evening I FINALLY sat down with a mug of tea and declared I would turn in early. My husband grumbled something in agreement so when we were about to get ready for bed something suddenly dawned... this wasn't a Monday, it's a Thursday and not just any Thursday, it's Triad-day!! So my oasis of tranquility immediately turned into a frantic search for polishes, plates and, most important, inspiration to create something worthy of the beautiful, colorful, summer manicure by Claire of clairestelle8 that Juanita picked. Fortunately the polishers patron goddess (there has to be a deity devoted to nail art... I've been calling on her this entire evening) took pity on me and here I am, it's not even midnight yet and my nails look like this:

Hi everyone!

Can you believe it's the last day of November 2018 already? I still feel like someone secretly stole a week or two as this month has zipped by with lightning speed! But my calendar shows it is the last Friday of the month so it's time for the Triad manicure again. And boy, this one was TOUGH!

Michelle picked a pretty summer manicure by Paulina from Paulina's Passions... that was completely freehanded! Of course you all know I can't freehand a stick figure, let alone an entire manicure! So I already knew I would be stamping stuff on my nails. But I really didn't feel any summer vibes so I decided I was going for contrast, opposites, turn this thing into a wintery scene! And that's where the trouble started. I picked a gorgeous white that resembled fresh snow, I had the perfect pine green and... I pulled a blank... a huge blank... the biggest blank in history! I literally spent two weeks trying to figure out what to do and nothing came to me. I even started on a manicure and it resulted to nothing (well, a lot of frustrations ;)

On Thursday evening (yep, yesterday) I desperately went to once again look at the video that Paulina had recorded to see if maybe freehanding something would be possible after all. When I read the title, something clicked inside my brain at last. Her nails were inspired by a Hawaiian shirt! (don't ask me why I didn't see that before... I guess a frustrated brain doesn't work that well) And while I don't like the pattern for clothing, I do like the combination of big leaves and flowers so I put all previously selected polishes and plates aside and went on a hunt for materials I could use in a Hawaiian shirt manicure that would still fit my non-summer mood... and I think I succeeded, see:

Hi everyone!


Quick post for a manicure that was supposed to be quick as well, but took a little longer than expected. This week's prompt: Stripes, and this is my manicure that goes with it:

Hi everyone!


Today's post is coming to you from... my bedroom :(
Yup, the dreaded flu has struck again so I'm reduced to a sniffling, feverish, whining mess that would be convinced the world was coming to an end if I were a guy ;) Although, that's unfair to my guy who patiently dug up an ancient laptop, connected it to the internet, installed all security updates from the last ten years or so, and even got my photo editor on there (I know, he's the best... but in this case I think it may also have something to do with me reaching the limits of his patience with all the complaints about how I still had pictures waiting and week 45 was over already and I was way behind and I couldn't do a thing with this small mobile to edit pictures or write a post, yada yada yada... I really am the worst patient ever!).

Anyway, I got my connection to the outside world and I can finally show you what I did for the Orange + Yellow prompt that I was actually ready to skip until I first saw Michelle's and Juanita's manicures and then came across this gorgeous design by Chloé from Klo's to me... and I just knew I wanted to recreate it, with a little twist to make it mine of course ;)

Hi everyone!


My husband did it again... a short while ago he surprised me with a new stamping plate: UberChic Art Deco Chic and a beautiful little collection of three autumn polishes by a Russian brand called Tips Polish. The moment I saw the plate, one image immediately jumped out and when looking at the polishes I knew what I wanted to do. And I'm so happy this came out just like I envisioned it!

Hi everyone!


I had a business event earlier this week and I needed a bit of a confidence booster, so I grabbed a brand new, fierce red polish and got to work. This is what was on my nails afterwards:

Hi everyone!


Over here daylight saving time has ended, the clock was turned back one hour and the temperature has dropped to around 8 degrees Celsius. Yep, winter is definitely coming! And with that in mind, I picked some cool toned colors for a simple manicure:

Hi everyone!


It's the last Friday of the month again, so it's time for the Friday Triad manicure. This month I got to pick the inspiration and I did... sort of. What happened? Late September I had narrowed down my choice to a few swirly and/or floral designs (to be honest, I can't even remember which ones ;) so I asked my husband which one he liked best. He didn't like any of them as the end of October means Halloween so he figured I should go for dark, ghouly, creepy... and he wouldn't let me pick anything else! And me being the sweet wife that I am (ha, in his dreams!!!) I figured it wasn't a bad idea so I started searching for something that I liked. We finally settled on a cemetery scene by Bedizzlenails. Unfortunately neither blog or instagram of the creator are online so I can only link to the image itself. Here's my version:

Hi everyone,

it's that time again... when I realize I still have manicures that are patiently waiting for their place in the spotlight while my roller coaster life takes up all free time. This time I have no less than four manicures for you!

Let start with the first one:

Hi everyone!


Long time no see, right? You probably guessed it... life interfered again :(
But that means I have a lot of catching up to do, so brace yourselves for several manicures in the coming days (if life doesn't act up of course... so I better start typing fast!)

First in the line of past manicures is this White + Pink design for the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge. October is breast cancer awareness month and this year it hit a little too close to home for comfort (in case you are wondering if those regular checkups are worth it, I now know they definitely are!!!). The ribbon color for breast cancer is pink but I didn't feel like doing ribbons, so I chose to do a very feminine manicure with one of the prettiest pink polishes I own. This is the result:

Hi everyone!


Recently my eldest niece celebrated her 14th birthday. She's getting more and more interested in nail art (she has her own stamper, some plates and as of her party she has a good detail brush and more plates) so of course I couldn't go to her party without a new manicure... and this is what I created:

Hi everyone!


You may have thought I had forgotten about the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge as it's been ages since I did a prompt. True, it has been way too long, but unfortunately work and health didn't cooperate to allow me to produce anything. That is, until this week! I love a smoosh manicure (which is this week's challenge), my nails were almost ready to walk out on me if they didn't receive a new manicure, and I needed to let off some steam (which I do either by polishing my nails or playing Diablo 3)... so I decided to see if I could still manage a smoosh :)

And then I had to pick colors... and lacking any kind of inspiration I resorted to looking through my previous manicures and I spotted a blue-peach-white one that set off some minor sparks in my brain. I knew I had a really pretty dark blue polish and after some searching I found it: OPI Turn on the Northern Lights! I added a peach textured polish that was chosen by my husband and my go to white creme, and this is the result:

Hi everyone!


I know, a second post on the same day? Shocking! But both Michelle and Juanita expressed their curiosity about the rejected, beige-brown version of my Triad manicure so I figured, why not write about it right now, when I have a little free time :)

I have to warn you though, I totally didn't do the gorgeous polishes I used any justice so please search for swatches by people who actually know how to photograph holographic polishes if you want to know what they look like in real life, deal? Alright! In that case, here you go:

Hi everyone!


I bet you didn't expect a new post from me, right? It's been way too long since I showed off my last manicure but it's the last Friday of the month so it's time for the Triad manicure and of course I can't let Michelle and Juanita down. Especially as the inspiration of this month, chosen by Juanita, is absolutely beautiful! It's this monochrome manicure by Olga from @son_nail. Juanita immediately called dibs on using her beloved Pebble, Michelle laid claim on black-n-white and me... I was stuck trying to figure out what colors I would use! As you can see, it turned out to be purple and white:

Hi everyone!


A quick post today as I'm already halfway out the door to the next appointment... and this is what I'll be walking out the door with:

Hi everyone!


This week's challenge is splatter... a technique I haven't tried before so my brain was already thinking of what plates to use. But I had the entire afternoon basically to myself today as my husband was running a (lengthy) errand and I'm on standby duty for work so I have to remain close to phone, email and computer, so I figured I could try a real splatter manicure and I would be able to clean up the mess and stamp something if it turned out disastrous. In the end I had to clean up some mess but I'm quite proud of the outcome. Let me present my very first splatter manicure:

Hi everyone!


It's the last Friday of the month (and for once actually the last day of the month as well) so that means it's time for the Friday Triad manicure: Michelle, Juanita and me sharing our manicure that was inspired by a manicure that was on one (or more) of our to-do lists. Michelle picked this month: beautiful mustard and navy nails by Debbie, the lady from Lady and the Stamp.

Michelle was actually very early in sending the link so I had plenty of time to search my plates for a suitable image... and search them again as I didn't find anything I liked ("Honey, I need more plates... I have absolutely NOTHING to use on my nails!!"). Finally I decided on an image that "would do" and I started looking for colors. I settled on purple and mauve and pink and was just about ready to start painting when my husband asked me what I was working on. I showed him Debbie's manicure and he asked me why I didn't go for the same colors, mustard and navy. Well... because I don't like mustard on my nails? Apparently that wasn't good enough for him so he did the unthinkable... he asked my mom (who had come over for something or other) what colors she liked best and she did the utter unthinkable... she agreed with my husband I should go for mustard and navy!! As you can imagine I couldn't stand up against the two of them so I put the purple and the mauve and the pink back in their spot and looked for the required colors. This is the end result:

Hi everyone,


this week's manicure is nothing like what I had in mind. I was thinking something along the lines of butterflies, reverse stamped with bright, maybe even neon colors. But life happened and yesterday we had to go to another formal occasion where bright and neon or even too much decoration wouldn't be appreciated. So I looked through my neutrals, found a pretty one and wore it the entire day as a full manicure. This morning, when I sat down to do my manicure for the animal prompt, I wasn't feeling bright or neon at all. In fact, I felt a bit sad, so I decided to just pick colors that would maybe make me feel a little better and use my already painted nails as a base. This is the end result:

Hi everyone,

this week's prompt is Houndstooth, or (as we call it) Pied-de-Poule. I actually knew what it was because my mother used to have a suit, consisting of a jacket and a pencil skirt, in this pattern. The twist was that her jacket had a fuchsia pink lining, so this manicure is based on my memory of what she looked like: the black-n-white pattern, the pink lining and the silver watch she wore (and still wears btw ;)

Yesterday was a sad day for my family and me as we had to say a final farewell to my cousin.
His motto was: live your best life.
This one's for him.

Hi everyone!


As you can see, I've spend an hour or so filing down my nails... again... :(
After breaking the nail on my left middle finger, I decided to take pictures of my Cinderella hand for a while, only to crash into a door when it was opened unexpectedly so that took another two nails from my right hand. I managed to avoid getting hit in the face though! So it's back to shorties (and pampering them as much as I can to encourage them to grow faster). I was lucky though, no breaks went into the pink part so it doesn't hurt.

Anyway, the 32nd prompt calls for Black and White and for me that means a minimal design, which in turn means the emphasis is on the paint and stamp job... I hope I did a decent job:

Hi everyone!

Hi everyone,


July is almost over so that means it's time for the Triad manicure of the month. If you've been here before you probably know what Triad means: Michelle, Juanita and I take turns in picking an inspiration from our to-do-list and we all create a manicure inspired by it. Just recreate it is an option but go a completely different route is possible as well :)

This month was my turn and as I knew I was facing some very busy weeks I decided to pick a beautiful but not too complicated manicure, this one by Yvonne from @eivi_nails. I love tone on tone and different finishes so it was on my list for quite some time, waiting for me to notice it. And this is what my version looks like:

Hi everyone!


As it's vacation time over here, the team that I'm part of (that usually consists of five people) has been reduced to three and one of those has been assigned to a project so that means we're down to two persons, yours truly included. That means I've been working 12+ hour days and I've basically been scrambling to at least fix dinner and do laundry and not much else but sleep. I've also found out conference calls while working from home actually provide time to paint nails, as long as you don't want to do very complicated designs ;) Typing up posts is an entirely different thing though, so I decided to do one post with my manicures of the last three weeks to be all caught up before posting the Triad manicure coming Friday.

Hi everyone,


another quick manicure because I wanted to try out some of the new colors I have been spoiled with this week (I have THE BEST husband ❤️).

Hi everyone!


Usually I try to avoid looking at other manicures until I've done my manicure for the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge. This time however I saw both Michelle's and Juanita's version pop up in my feed and I loved both of them so I set out to do a combination of the two. As you can see, that totally worked out... NOT!

I couldn't find the right sheer polish as base, I didn't like the floral images on the plates I selected, basically I wasn't happy with anything. So finally I decided to go with another idea that had been in the back of my mind the entire time but that I thought too simple to be called nail art... and I loved the way my nails looked! Here they are:

Hi everyone!


Last week I had some work related meetings where customers would be present as well. My colleagues are already used to seeing all sorts of colors and designs on my nails but I try to tone it down a bit when I know there will be "outsiders" (as it's strange enough for them to see a female tech, let alone one with neon colored unicorns on her nails ;) On the other hand the forecast promised gorgeous summer weather with lots of sunshine so I wanted holo on my nails, and lots of it! This manicure is the combination of both:

Hi everyone!


The last Friday of the month means Juanita, Michelle and me get to show you how a manicure one of us chose has inspired us to do a similar (or completely different) manicure. You guessed it, it's Friday Triad time :)

This time Juanita chose this manicure by Hannah from @hannys_manis. I remember showing it to my husband when J shared it and telling him I had no clue how to NOT exactly recreate it (except for the negative space... I don't like it on my nails so I won't do it if I can avoid it ;) Two days later I was putting away the polishes for my attempt at scrollwork and I spotted a polish that not just sparked some inspiration but caused an entire explosion in my brain. I immediately saw the entire thing in my mind... and less than an hour later it was on my nails, exactly how I envisioned it. And then I realized I had to wait another month to show it off... Today the waiting is finally over though, here's my version of Hannah's spring roses nails:

Hi everyone,


a short post for a quick manicure as I should be in bed by now... but I wanted to post this one first ;)

Hi everyone!


Week 23 brought on the winter prompt. Winter... yep, this is definitely a challenge that was thought up by someone on the southern hemisphere as it's still gorgeous summer weather over here :) So I decided to see if I could create a manicure that does go with the challenge for the week but wouldn't look too weird during summertime. I think I did a decent job:

Hi everyone!


The prompt for week 22 was Favourite Superhero. Right... superhero... and favourite on top of that!
I've never had a thing for Superman, Iron Man, Captain America or any other guy or girl in a spandex suit who zips across the screen, rescuing the world at the last moment. It's not that I hate them, they're just not my cup-of-tea so I don't go to the cinema to watch the movies, I don't buy the comics, etc., which means I don't have a favourite superhero either.

So I turned to Google to see if any superhero would spark an idea. The only one that seemed interesting was Natasha Romanov aka the Black Widow, probably because I like the combination of black (suit), red (hair) and gold (belt). This is what my superhero manicure looks like (idea definitely stolen from, borrowed from, inspired by Michelle):

Hi everyone!


It's been a while, I know, but I have a great excuse, even greater than binge watching tv series ;) I have been studying for an exam I had to take yesterday and since I had very little time to prepare the fun stuff had to take a back seat for a while. It was worth it though, as I passed with flying colors!

So what does this have to do with the manicure I want to show you? Thursday evening I was home alone as my husband had to work late. I had studied all I could and I was feeling very nervous so I decided to give myself some polish therapy. Not just because I REALLY needed to get rid of the tipwear but painting my nails usually calms me down and forces me to focus on something else. This is the result of my therapeutic manicure:

Hi everyone!

Late again, but I have an excuse... I spent the weekend binge watching the series Altered Carbon instead of writing this post. My manicure was all ready and photographed and waiting the entire time! (I didn't say it was a good excuse ;)

So what did the tv keep from you? This:

Hi everyone!


It's the last Friday of the month again, so Michelle, Juanita and me get to cross off another manicure from our to-do lists with our monthly Triad manicure. This month's inspiration was created by Emilia from PolishPixie92 and chosen by Michelle who said she wanted a stress-free, pretty design. Pretty? Definitely! Stress-free? Not entirely... but I'll get to that part later ;)

First let me show you the end result:

Hi everyone!


There is no special reason for these nails, except that I liked the colors together. Come to think of it, what better reason is there to polish your nails, right? So here are my just-because-I-like-them nails :)

Hi everyone!


Yup, real life struck again so I had absolutely no time to write a post any time earlier... but I'm keeping my fingers crossed I can finish typing this post and publish while it's still Sunday ;)

This weeks prompt is Childhood and when thinking about it, I thought back to the time when my mom taught me how to make crowns out of daisies. The way I usually see people do it is by making a tiny slit in the stem of a daisy with their thumbnail and pushing another daisy through the hole, forming a very thin, delicate chain. But my mom used a different method, she braided the stems which resulted in a sturdier chain but I had to pick way more flowers to make it. Fortunately daisies grew just about anywhere (as they are considered weeds) so there were plenty for me to pick and when I made a long enough braid, my mom connected the ends and I could wear my flower crown, making me a flower princess :)

With that in mind I set out to pick colors and a plate and here's the result:

Hi everyone!


The sun is still out and since I have a little more time for not-work-related things at the moment, I've been painting my nails... again ;) This time I was inspired by a friend who showed me her pedicure. I loved the color she'd used, so I quickly went through my stash to grab the same polish. A quick paint-and-stamp job later, my nails looked like this:

Hi everyone!


It's time for the 19th prompt in the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge: Gold + Green. I had a gorgeous pale green in mind but it didn't combine with any of the gold polishes I own (yep, I know, I need more polishes... I simply have NOTHING to put on my nails ;) so I decided to pick the gold first and see which greens would look nice with it. My eye fell on an uber-blingy pale gold that had been neglected since a family friend brought it with her from the US when she was visiting (apart from a swatch of course). To set off the pale gold color I selected a dark green that fortunately I could use for stamping as well and this is the end result:

Hi everyone!


The title says it all. The sun is out (and OMG, how I missed those warm, lazy hours sitting in the backyard, doing nothing but read a book...) and of course that means all holos can come out to play! As we had a birthday party/family reunion to go to, I grabbed two holographic beauties, a white creme and a dotting tool. A short while later I was admiring these nails while enjoying a lovely bike ride in the sunshine (of course safely covered with sunscreen as my winter-pale skin doesn't need much to turn lobster-red):

Hi everyone!


This week's theme is 'Most expensive polish' and as just about any polish lover I own some polishes that were bought for prices I don't want to start thinking about, and a few that are just very very special for several reasons. My choice for this week is a polish that falls in both categories: it cost a lot in both money and time-to-acquire-it. The beauty I'm talking about is OPI We'll Always Have Paris Suede:

Hi everyone!


When I saw this manicure by Michelle I instantly knew I wanted to do something similar and since my very demure french tips manicure had just been removed, I had a clean canvas to work with. So I went through my stash, picked some polishes and gave Michelle's design a bit of a twist:

Hi everyone!


When you're reading this it's the last Friday of April so that means it's time for another Triad manicure. This time I got to pick the inspiration and I chose this stunning manicure by Sassy Shelly.

I had absolutely no idea what I would do for my version, except that I wanted to use a beautiful base with "plain" stamping, just like the original. While searching for a polish for my Zodiac manicure I came across a polish I thought could be used as a base for the Triad manicure so I pulled it from my stash and did a quick swatch to see what it would look like... and about half an hour later I was doing a happy dance while my nails looked like this:

Hi everyone!


This week's theme is French Tip. If you've been here before (or if you quickly check the tags on the right) you can see how much I love this type of manicure... not at all! So this week was another challenge for me. Early on I decided I wouldn't do a classic french manicure or a faded french, but I did want to stay close to those so nude and white would be my colors and the white would have to go at the tip of my nails only. This is what I came up with:

Hi everyone!


The prompt for this week is Zodiac. I didn't know much about it, but I knew my sign was Sagittarius aka the Archer. As I have a plate that has a picture of constellations I figured I would be all set. Ha! Not so much! I couldn't get the image to stamp on my nails, no matter what stamper, polish, scraper or technique I used: no way no how, not a snowflake's chance in hell, or whatever phrase you prefer to express total impossibility... So I started googling for inspiration.

I now know my Chinese sign is Monkey (not that that helps much as I don't own any plates with a monkey on them, but hey, I can now make screeching sounds and tell people I can't help it because I'm a monkey ;) and I found that both amethyst and tanzanite are birthstones for Sagittariuses (or is that Sagittarii?). That was something I could work with and this manicure is the result:

Hi everyone!


YES! It may be almost week 16 but I'm writing this post in week 15 so that means I'm all caught up :)

This week's prompt is Black + Red so I immediately thought 'lace' and set out to pick a red polish. I stumbled across a beautiful classic, cool-toned red and all thoughts of lace left my brain. This polish was just too pretty to hide under a stamp! As this is a nail ART challenge, I figured I couldn't get away with just ten red nails without any decoration (and there was the tiny detail of Black as well ;) so I decided to do the simplest of nail art and leave the red as the glorious eye catcher. May I present my Black + Red themed manicure?

Hi everyone!


I'm catching up on all the things that were neglected these last weeks... so full speed ahead for a quick post about the week 14 prompt of the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge: Autumn.

I've been racking my brain how to do a fall themed manicure while outside the first leaves are starting to dress the trees in a pale green and the daffodils are coloring the ground yellow. I totally didn't feel like using falling leaves or acorns and stuff... and then it hit me, just do something abstract using fall colors! And I did, with this result:

Hi everyone!


So much for catching up on Easter Monday... but I'm back for another attempt! Let's see if I can manage to catch up on reading, commenting and posting by Sunday. That should be doable, unless another catastrophe happens (like taxes that have to be filled out before the end of March... with one week grace period, so instead of typing posts I was typing numbers into a calculator).

And talking about disasters, this manicure definitely was that! First I deleted the wrong folders with pictures causing me to lose not just the watermarked ones on my computer but the ones on my camera as well and of course I had removed my original manicure by then so I had to redo it. And while recreating the original design I managed to mess up so many times I used up all my vinyls...

So with all pictures lost and no vinyls left I could of course just skip this prompt but I didn't want to do that, so instead I decided to use the most basic form of vinyls: sticky tape! Combined with pretty pink polishes this is the result:

Hi everyone!


I know, week 12 is missing. It won't be for long but as I managed to delete all pictures of that manicure and had to redo it, the Vinyls manicure you'll see soon was on my nails later than this one so I figured I would show this manicure first.

Easter isn't a holiday that triggers a lot of ideas for me. Of course the colors I think of are pastel but that's because Easter is in Spring (over here anyway). Since I'm not too keen on eggs or bunnies on my nails I decided to go with pastels, lilac and purple to be more specific:

Hi everyone,


I'm so behind with the #52weeknailchallenge it just isn't funny anymore, so what better use of Easter Monday than do some catching up and type up some posts for the manicures I did during the last weeks but haven't been able to show off yet?

So to start, here's my manicure for prompt 11 - Ocean:

Hi everyone,


yep, I've managed to drag myself away from all the real life stuff that has been keeping me uber busy to create a manicure inspired by this stunning design by Lou 'Urban Nail Art' that Juanita picked for us. I have to admit I actually thought about not posting my manicure as I totally didn't do the original any justice... but I've shown nail fails before and this probably won't be the last either ;)



I can almost hear you wondering what this has to do with the original inspiration. Well, more than you might think! Let me tell you: sparkly base (alright, mine isn't super sparkly as I don't have any of those fancy holo powders but it is very sparkly, so even my holo sparkle killing camera wasn't able to defeat this beauty), negative space floral image so the sparkly base actually becomes the color of the flowers, and reverse stamping to get the image on my nails. I just had to tone down the sparkles on my thumb, index and pinky because... you know, work and frowning managers.

Anyway, read on for the details!

Hi everyone!


This week's prompt is plaid and the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of plaid is the blanket my parents used when I was a little girl: soft and fuzzy and with large squares of color. My manicure is an attempt to translate my memory into nail polish. The only thing different is the sparkly accent that wasn't in the original blanket, but I felt my nails needed a little extra ;)

with glossy top coat