What's on my nails today?

Hi everyone, 

Hi everyone!

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:

Hi everyone!


Another post in the My polish, your plate series. This week Michelle picked the polish and the plate was my choice. Michelle picked a glitter... I'll let that sink in for a while... a glitter! And of course the chosen polish has to be really present in the manicure we do with it so I had to step way out of my comfort zone and finally managed to create this:

Hi everyone!


The tenth installment of the 52 week nail art challenge 2020 is Beach. I grew up close to the North Sea and when I was a kid, we visited the beach quite often (it was only a 10-minute bike ride). The water wasn't turquoise but a murky greenish, grayish blue, and the sand wasn't pearly white but... well, sandy. That's the picture that pops into my mind when I think of the beach so that's what I tried to create on my nails, a wintery North Sea beach:

Hi everyone!


It's the third time Michelle and I challenge each other with a polish one of us picks and an image of a stamping plate to use with it is chosen by the other. This time Michelle picked China Glaze Glittering Garland as polish and the plate I selected is Hello Maniology (formerly Bundle Monster) BM-412, the top image with the interlocking dots.

This is what I created with them:

Hi everyone!


The second prompt of the 52 week nail art challenge is School. The first thing that I think of when I think about school is the huge blackboard that was hanging on the wall and the teacher using her pointer to focus our attention on something... or slapping the same pointer against the board if we didn't stop making a ruckus (but that fortunately for both pointer and board didn't happen too often ;) Also, our blackboards weren't black at all, they were dark green and when you held the chalk the wrong way, they produced the most horrible squeaking sound that can still send shivers down my spine just thinking about it!

Since manicures are usually soundless, I left that part out of my highly impractical rendition of the blackboard of my youth:

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!


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,


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!


The questions in the title are what people have been asking me today. I can understand their confusion as I've been wearing one of the most beautiful multichrome polishes I know, Spell Polish Escaping Gravity. I kept my manicure as simple as possible, just to make sure that gorgeous multichrome could take center stage. Let's take a look :)

Hi everyone!


When selecting colors for my green-to-blue gradient I had also put aside three polishes by Il était un vernis that were in the pink/purple range. They combined perfectly so I decided to use them for another gradient. I added a very dark purple polish to the lineup and a white tribal stamp and here's the result:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


My to do list for today:
1. reply to all the sweet comments on previous posts
2. do the laundry: machine is working on it, two more loads after the current one

Hi everyone,


I have to do my exam this week so this weekend, between studying and growing more nervous by the hour, I thought it was a good idea to try water marbling for the letter M. Yeah, right... shaking hands, no patience and a new challenging technique, really great combo ;)

So after a few failed attempts at flooding my desk with polish and water I decided to go for something easier:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


Yep, you read that right... more pink, but definitely not girly this time ;)

When I asked my husband to pick out a nice, bright, preferably holographic polish, he brought me Il était un vernis My Favorite Popsicle... a pink! I just removed the barbie pink from my nails and he brings me another pink. Men...

But since I told him he could pick anything he wanted as long as it was bright and colorful and he chose pink, I decided to use it to create a more mature manicure by combining it with black and white. And now that I look at my hands I think I succeeded :)

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


I just received a surprise from my husband: all four Frozen Smoothies polishes by KIKO. Of course I had to play with them and I decided to go for the blue one, Glossy Doughnut. I combined it with a sparkly black texture and a black stamp with a tribal feel to it (or at least I think it looks tribal ;)

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


I had a business meeting today and I didn't feel comfortable attending with pitch black nails... so yesterday I decided to do a quick skittlette with some stamping. I picked out three polishes, decided on an image and went to work. This is what my nails look like at the moment:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


Halloween isn't very big over here but of course I couldn't resist doing at least one Halloween manicure. This is what my nails looked like yesterday:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


Autumn has definitely started but unfortunately where I am, autumn means rain and wind and cold and gray, no beautifully colored leaves that float down from trees on gorgeous sunny days... So I decided to get those leaves on my nails (and turn up the heating to imitate the sun's warmth) and I'm SO proud of the result!

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


I'm so sorry to have disappeared for more than two weeks :( To make it worse there wasn't a specific reason for it, just real life that decided to shift gears and I had to run along with it.

I did wear (and took pictures of) some manicures that I wanted to show you so these photographs have been patiently waiting for me to find some time and write a post, which is now :)
(just click the pictures to see a larger version)