• Hi everyone!

    It's time for Vinyls this week... and I'm not a particularly big fan of those. Or rather, for some reason I've never managed to use them properly so I prefer just about any other technique to using vinyls. But as time went by, some found their way into my stash and so I pulled out a really nice design to create this manicure:

  • Hi everyone!

    This week's theme is Brown. I love brown but I have to admit I find it a bit difficult to use it as the main color for a manicure. I think I succeeded though, as I'm still wearing this manicure and I don't want to take it off any time soon 😉 So what did I create? Let me show you:

  • Hi everyone!


    After I had done the green French tips from the previous post, I tried another approach. I love the colors, I love the image I stamped, I just don't love Frenchies 😉 But since I'm not just showing off the nails I like, here's the second take on French tips:


  • Hi everyone!


    It's time for the prompt I was looking forward to least of all... French Tip (it's actually a toss-up between Negative Space and French tips as neither is quite my style). But French tips it is, so I set out to do a 'proper' French manicure this time. Although I didn't feel like doing white tips and there was a gorgeous green polish on my desk so I decided to do a trial run on my bare (read: base coated) nails and see what it looked like. And this is what I looked at when I stopped fiddling:


  •  Hi everyone!


    Another week, another prompt for the nail art challenge: Negative Space. If you've visited this blog before, you might know I don't like naked nails or VNL (visible nail line) so this definitely isn't my favorite theme. But as this challenge is all about getting out of my comfort zone, I didn't want to skip it either so I decided to think of a design I would normally do on a nude base and just skip the base. Let me show you how that turned out:


  • Hi everyone!


    This week's theme is Halloween. I know a lot of people are looking forward to this holiday, decorate their house weeks in advance, cook enough to feed a football team... but over here (the Netherlands) Halloween is something that is only seen online with influencers, in magazines that show insta-ready interiors and in stores that hope to get a boost in sales. So to say I'm not really feeling Halloween is putting it mildly. And waking up to no less than three broken nails (and I still don't know what I did to accomplish that) didn't help much either 😢 In the end I decided to just slap on a pretty color, combine it with black (THE color for the theme of course) and see where that would take me. This is the result:


  • Hi everyone!


    I looked at the week's prompt (Orange + Silver) and I was stumped... I didn't have a clue what to do with it! Usually with these prompts, I would pair two colors with white and go for a dotticure but I just wasn't in the mood for that. Then, all of a sudden, I realized there is another design that only asks for pretty colors: plaid! And that's what I did, an orange and silver plaid manicure:


  • Hi everyone!


    It's time for Lace and I was actually thinking about two color schemes: fall colors or, inspired by my wedding dress that had a lace bodice, white on white. I decided to go for the latter but after painting the base, I realized it would look beautiful with a darker color on top. So I dug up a gorgeous reddish brown polish... and it's turned out to be this mix of fall on white-ish:

  • Hi everyone!

    This week's prompt is Pink. I definitely like pink but not as much as Michelle aka the Queen of Pink so while chatting last week I asked her what to do. She picked a beautiful manicure by @nailsrnd that wasn't using bubblegum pink or barbie pink but a darker, more mature tone... perfect for a Fall manicure! So I set out to recreate the manicure she chose for me. This is the result:


  • Hi everyone!


    I had totally planned a reverse stamped manicure for the Flowers theme, but when it came to creating it... I wanted to do a gradient! So that's what I did:


  • Hi everyone!

    I had a birthday to go for, I wanted to wear something red and sparkly and I didn't have much time. This is what I ran out of the door with:


  • Hi everyone!

    This weeks theme is Wedding. If I were to recreate my own wedding nails, this would be a very short post as I had bare nails. So instead I thought of what I would have chosen if I had been into nail art back then. The first thing that popped in my head was that they shouldn't be too eye-catching, as I think the ring should be the focal point. With that in mind, I sat down to play with polish and this is the result (that looks way more pink than in real life but no matter how hard I tried, my camera did not want to capture the true, rose-gold color of the chrome I used):


  • Hi everyone!


    This weeks theme is White + Blue and as you may know, I love those two colors. I contemplated going for a porcelain design but I wanted to experiment with a new-ish purchase: Dance Legend Spot It 02 White. So I gathered some pretty blue polishes and a white, my silicone matte and set out to play. This is the result:


  • Hi everyone!

    Another week, another theme for the 52 week nail art challenge. This week it's Stars, and I immediately knew I wanted to recreate this manicure by @alinasnailplace, but with stars (and slightly different colors and sparkles 😉). Here's my version:


  • Hi everyone,


    Slowly but surely the world outside is changing to the most colorful season of the year: fall! And I couldn't resist doing a manicure in matching colors:


  • Hi everyone!


    I had such high hopes for this week. I love the argyle pattern and I was really looking forward to combining pretty colors and creating my vision on my nails. But as you can see that didn't happen as real-life kicked in and my time was limited to the point that I hardly had time to sleep, let alone paint my nails. So instead of a multicolored argyle pattern, I had to go with a single colored one but I think I chose a really pretty color:


  • Hi everyone!


    Here's a quick post for this week's theme: Unused plate. I didn't just pick an unused plate, I chose a brand I've never used before and here's the result:


  • Hi everyone!


    This week's theme is something I totally can't relate to... Insect! I'm a city girl through and through and the moment I see a bug, I turn into the most squeamish person you can imagine. I'm lucky to have a big strong guy living with me who defends me against the hordes of creepy-crawlies that seem to love our place as a new home. So for instance when I spot a spider, I scream and he patiently gets a glass and a piece of paper to catch the intruder and puts it outside in the yard (no, not killing it, that would be mean). You can imagine that I wasn't looking forward to creating one (or more) on my nails. Sure, butterflies are pretty and ladybugs are cute, but I didn't think of those at the time. Fortunately, I remembered a manicure I once saw, ages ago, that sort of indicated a bee without actually showing one. I couldn't find it so I don't even know if this looks like the original, but here's my interpretation of a bumblebee:


  •  Hi everyone!


    Sorry for the unexpected absence. I blame my ailing computer and no time to work on that because half of the team I work in is away on vacation. But it's weekend now, the husband performed a small miracle in curing my poor puter and I was finally able to crop and watermark my pictures. So without further ado, here's the manicure I did for last weeks theme, Other Hand:


    And, keeping to the theme, here's my Cinderella hand:


  • Hi everyone!


    I had some time to myself, my nails were showing some signs of tip wear, and I had just received a small package with a few plates and a little jar of pigment powder... and this is what my nails looked like when I stopped playing:


  • Hi everyone, 


    months ago when a friend and I were chatting, I told her my husband got me another crazy colored polish, Cirque Colors High Society, a neon green with copper shimmer and a scattering of holo sparkles. She immediately decided I just had to use it for the silver and green prompt, and as that prompt has finally arrived here's the order 😉


  • Hi everyone!


    The 30th prompt for the 52 week nail art challenge is Saran wrap. I have to admit a saran wrap manicure isn't one of my favourite techniques as it usually turns out too chaotic for my liking. But since this challenge is all about getting out of my comfort zone, of course I couldn't back down. Let me show you the result and after that I'll tell you what I did.



    I started out by coaxing my husband into shaking my terribly separated China Glaze Elephant Walk for at least five minutes until it was returned to its original, evenly colored dusty grayish-green beauty. When it was useable again, I painted two thin coats on all nails and discovered there is very fine silver shimmer hidden it, making the polish look even better than I had thought at first.

    When the base was dry, I tore off a strip of saran wrap, scrunched it together to a small ball, unraveled it and scrunched it up again until I was happy with the amount of little 'corners' showing up. I then painted a small patch of Painted Polish Herb Your Enthusiasm, a lovely sage green polish with fine holo sparkles and some scattered golden flakies (I didn't see any flakies in my patch but I can see them in the bottle). I dabbed my saran ball in the patch, and started dabbing at my nails.

    Unfortunately the polish didn't really show up on Elephant Walk so I decided to grab a polish that was a lot lighter, Sally Hansen Green Tea which is a mint green creme. A new piece of saran wrap, the same procedure: make a ball, paint a patch of polish, dab the ball in the polish, dab the ball with polish on my nails. This started to look a lot better! There was a bit too much mint for what I had in mind by then, so I went in with another ball and Elephant Walk to darken the lightest parts, and Green Tea again where things got too dark, etc.

    When I was finally happy with what I saw, I did a last round of careful dabbing using Kinetics Sparkling, a warm marigold to bronze mixture of small glitters and flakies. It looks quite orange in the bottle but scattered around on my nails the gold shows up better. All that was needed at that point was a generous coat of Seche Vite on all nails and a camera to capture the first saran wrap manicure I actually liked when I finished it 😉


    These are the polishes I used:

    China Glaze Elephant Walk, Painted Polish Herb Your Enthusiasm, Sally Hansen Green Tea, Kinetics Sparkle


    Let me start with the most shocking part (to me anyway): I like this! A lot!!! In fact, I am still wearing this manicure as I type this and I don't want to take it off, that's how much I like it 😊 I guess I can handle the chaotic result of saran wrap a lot better if the colors match instead of clash, so I definitely want to try more of this as a background for stamping. What do you think? Yay or nay?


    Last but not least, I finally managed to cross off another prompt of what has to be the longest-running challenge in the nail art universe, the SBB Nail Challenge. Saran wrap is on number 39, and I've done it!


  • Hi everyone, 


    guess what? My hubby did it again! He picked a polish and a plate for me to play with. And here's the result:


  • Hi everyone,


    this week's prompt is Nautical, and I already knew I wanted to do a manicure in the classic colors for the theme: blue, white and gold. So I sat down to pick the perfect colors for my idea and this is the result:


  • Hi everyone!


    I was looking for inspiration for a manicure and my husband offered to pick a polish and a plate for me. He chose a deep, dark burgundy creme and a plate with plaid designs, and this is what I created:


  • Hi everyone!


    Prompt 28 is Yellow. I recently received a few new polishes and among them was a beautiful dark yellow... and that's what inspired this very easy, happy manicure:

  • Hi everyone!


    This should have been the 12th installment of My polish, your plate but unfortunately Michelle has had to make the tough decision to stop blogging. I'm keeping my fingers crossed it's not forever but at this point it's way too early to think about that, so I'm not even going to guess.

    At first I didn't want to post this, but it's been sitting in my Draft folder and I like the manicure too much to just delete it... so here it is:


  • Hi everyone!


    The 27th prompt for the weekly nail challenge is here and it's Stones / Studs. At first I had this idea of doing some sort of nail art that made my nails look like stones, or maybe use a nail polish that had the word Stone in its name but in the end I decided to go with (rhine)stones. And as if that wasn't bad enough, I asked my husband to pick a color for me... and he gave me neon pink! Talking about way, way, WAY out of my comfort zone! Of course there are only two colors that go with neon pink as far as I'm concerned: black and white. And this is the result:

  • Hi everyone!


    The 26th prompt of the 52 week nail art challenge (so that means we're halfway 2020 already 😲) is Fruit and while I have plenty of beautiful polishes that are related to that theme by color or name or both, I kept struggling with this one. I finally decided to just pick an appropriate plate, select some colors to go with it and get it over with. This is the result, a quick and, in my opinion, unfortunately not too stellar manicure:


  • Hi everyone!


    It's the last Friday of the month and for the last three years and a bit that has meant a Triad manicure would be online. Unfortunately both the Triads and the My polish your plate posts have been put on hold for a while until real life decides to slow down and play nice again for all of us, and sometimes polish just has to take a back seat for a while.

    So instead of a Triad manicure I would like to show you a polish that I fell in love with the moment I saw it. To me it's the perfect Spring green and the added holo sparkles and golden shimmer make it even more magical. Take a look:


  • Hi everyone!


    Another week, another prompt for the 52 week nail art challenge. This week it's time for Music. If you know me personally, you know I almost always have some sort of music playing. Before my alarm clock goes off I can already hear my favorite radio station, and one of the things I enjoy most when I'm at home is hearing the same music coming out of the wireless speakers that are in each room in the house and that my tech wizard hubby set up so they all play in sync, no matter what I put on, and I'm always surrounded with the music I selected. So you would think this week's prompt would be easy as pie, right? Wrong! I couldn't focus on a single idea and in the end I didn't have any inspiration at all. So I finally opted for the simple solution: pretty colors and a stamped image that fit the theme. This is the result:


  • Hi everyone!


    It's time for the 24th installment already... can you believe 2020 is almost halfway through already?! *shakes head in disbelief* Anyway, the 24th prompt is Glitter. As you may know, I'm not that much into glitter on my nails (or anywhere else on me for that matter) so I wasn't looking forward to this prompt very much. I looked through my stash but most of the glitter polishes I own are only suitable for small accents as far as I'm concerned (I know, I'm boring 😉). And then I came across a small category of polishes I hadn't thought of... glitter-crellies! After that the manicure was easy: pick a pretty glitter-crelly, find a matching creme, pick a nice stamp, have fun! And fun I had, take a look:


  • Hi everyone!


    For a formal occasion I needed a manicure that wasn't all over the place. On the other hand, I didn't want to go completely office friendly. So after some thinking I settled on pale peach, dusty pink, light coral and a bit of not too obvious stamping:


  • Hi everyone!


    This week it's time for Gold + Black. The moment I picked my gold polish, I knew it was going to be a very simple manicure as this gold is so stunning it doesn't need much. Let me show you what is on my nails right now:


  • Hi everyone!


    Another episode of My polish, your plate where Michelle and I challenge each other to do a manicure with the polish one of us chose and the stamping plate picked by the other. This time Michelle went for OPI Was It All Just a Dream? from the Grease collection of 2018 and I chose the daisy-like image from the fifth row, second column of Lina Feeling Shapely! 05. Let me show you what my version of the combination looks like:


  • Hi everyone!


    A couple of days ago I had some time to spend while waiting for my online meeting to begin and I ended up on a website that allows you to generate color palettes. So I clicked a bit, clicked some more and I ended up with a palette of dark brown, pale peach and coral... and I thought it would look great on my nails. So after the meeting, I went through my stash, selected some pretty colors and here's the result:


  • Hi everyone!


    The 22nd installment of the 52 week nail art challenge is Science... and I was totally lost when it came to thinking up an idea for science nail art. So I turned to Google and looked at science-related pictures. After some clicking I ended up with a series of pictures of DNA strands under a very strong microscope. I haven't been able to figure out why but all of them were dark blue with lighter, almost glowing blueish strands (maybe a lighting thing or coloring to help them stand out better). And there it was, the inspiration for my nails:





  • This is my way to remember Aunt Joann
    She was a teacher and a Delft blue painter
    She's at rest now, no more pain



    Fly high, sweet one
    💙
  • Hi everyone!


    As May is coming to an end, here's another installment of the Friday Triad manicures. This month I got to pick a manicure for Juanita, Michelle and myself to use as inspiration for our own nails. I chose this beautiful design by Jeanette from La Dame Nails. I love the mix of designs and the shiny foil so I decided to try and incorporate that in my manicure, but I didn't feel like doing animal print. Instead, I opted for flowers and leaves. So without further ado, here's my version:


  • Hi everyone!


    This week's prompt is Pet. We don't have pets at the moment but ages ago I was the proud servant of the sweetest little cat, and I do mean little as even the vet repeatedly told me she was really tiny, even when she was 18+ years old. I've had to say goodbye to her years ago, but at times I still miss that warm, purring bundle on my lap while I'm working at the computer. But, as my husband has developed an allergy to cats, the only ones that will enter our house are the ones on my nails:


  • Hi everyone!


    I guess the title says it all, even though the water is actually acetone 😉 I had so much fun doing this and it's just about the easiest thing ever. Let me show you what I did:


  • Hi everyone!


    Another week, another manicure for the 52 week nail art challenge. This week's prompt is Gradient and I went just about nuts with all the possibilities. I finally settled on coral to nude polishes and some stamping on top:


  • Hi everyone!


    The second My polish, your plate for this month and again a blue one, but I'm not complaining, I love blue! This time Michelle picked the squiggly lines at the top of Pueen plate 107 as image and I chose Color Club Crystal Baller as polish. Let me show you what I did with the selected items:


  • Hi everyone!


    If you know me personally, you know I'm married to a gamer. Yep, even in 2020 he still loves to play computer games with a group of friends. They don't drag computers over to each other anymore as they can play over the internet, but they're still gaming a lot! So when this week's prompt (Game) came along, I figured I would ask them what kind of game I should try to recreate. What a mistake-a to make-a! They kept coming up with games I'd never heard of, games that were impossible to do, or a combination of both! When I was about ready to go for Tic-Tac-Toe, they suggested Space Invaders... A thorough search of my plates resulted in a plate with the little alien monsters on it, so all I had to do was decide on what colors to use. Apparently the game has existed for ages and ages (Google tells me it's over 40 years old) so I picked a monochrome color palette: a near-black as base and a silver for the aliens, hopefully sort of resembling the old black-n-white game a bit. This is what I created:


  • Hi everyone!


    A quick post of a simple manicure to show off a gorgeous holo:


  • Hi everyone!


    The current theme for the 52 week nail art challenge is Weather. Anyone who has been in the Netherlands knows discussing or rather complaning about the weather is a national Dutch pass time. It's either too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too windy... or just not what was predicted! 😉

    I decided to go with the kind of weather I used to whine about most when I had to ride my bike to school: rain! I have to admit I still don't care much for rain if I have to be outside but I love the way the world smells after a good shower, so I guess I'll just have to get myself a good umbrella if I have to go out. Here's my rainy manicure:


  • Hi everyone!


    It's the first Friday in May (wow... one-third of 2020 is over already?!) so it's time again for My polish, your plate, where Michelle and I take turns in picking a polish or an image of a stamping plate and after that both of us can go wild creating a manicure with the choices. No rules except the polish has to be a prominent color in the resulting nails. This week Michelle picked the polish, shimmery periwinkle OPI Show Me Your Tips! and I selected the swirly image at the bottom of Hello Maniology plate BM-406. Let me show you what I did with them:


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