What's on my nails today?

Hi everyone!


2016 is almost over and I haven't even posted my Christmas nails yet, let alone my New Years manicure! So here's a quick post to show you the nails that I wore during Christmas and the days after that.

I've probably said it before, holidays are always bittersweet for me since my dad passed away in 2011. I love seeing all my family having fun together but there's always this little voice in the back of my head telling me my dad should have been there too, to enjoy the company and see how my nephew loves to play with his big cousins (so cute, those three really are crazy about each other, even though the girls are 8 and 10 years older... or maybe that's the reason they are so patient with that little 2 year old tornado) and feel the warmth and love of being with the people you've been with for your entire life. On special occasions (like my dad's birthday, the day he passed away and Fathers Day) I usually wear classic red nails as my father loved those best so when I was trying (and miserably failing) to think of a design for my holiday nails, my husband asked me why I didn't just do what felt good... and boy, did he get it right again!

After some searching I chose Il était un vernis Pinot Noir, a gorgeous dark red holo that seems to glow from within and is just Christmas in a bottle to me:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone,


after staring at all sorts of pretty red polishes without even a hint of inspiration for a Christmas manicure (even the Christmas carols that played in the background didn't help), I decided to go for more cosy and comfortable colors, grabbed a few of my beloved neutrals and sat down to do an office friendly manicure, as tomorrow is going to be chock full of meetings so I have to look more or less presentable (and now that I'm typing this I get a sudden craving for neon green ;) Anyway, a little while later my nails looked like this:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone,


now that the ABC Challenge is finished (my very first fully completed challenge... yay!) I figured it would be nice to have an overview of all manicures I did so be prepared for a lot of nails (26 x 5 = 130 to be exact).

Hi everyone!


It's time for the last manicure in the ABC-Challenge, the Z. I wanted to end with a stupendous, awe inspiring manicure but of course I had to also think of a theme with a Z... All I could come up with was Zig-Zag and Zebra, which didn't inspire me to do something awesome and I started to get a little agitated... and then I realized another theme for the letter Z is what polishing my nails means to me. It relaxes me: I can focus on a small thing that is totally under my control and take my mind off matters that keep nagging when I can't do a thing about them. And while I'm not very good at things like painting or other "normal" creative hobbies, I love that I can create something beautiful with nail polish (and it's an extra bonus that other people like what I make ;) So basically polishing my nails is sort of my way to Zen (or at least a more relaxed, peaceful state).

Of course Zen is a very abstract concept so I decided to see what images were connected with the word Zen. When I searched Pinterest I came across something called zentangle: drawings made up of easy, repeating lines that make up patterns. While I don't think I would enjoy drawing with actual pen and paper, I immediately started thinking about translating those patterns to a manicure and that's what my final ABC manicure turned out to be: zentangled nails.

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


I know, lousy title, but I'm totally lacking any kind of inspiration (or energy for that matter) so it'll have to do. The manicure it describes is better, I promise! Want to see? Just move your eyes a little further down the page...

If you've been reading my blog for a while, you probably know I'm not too fond of polishes that have larger thingies in them like flakies or big glitters. So when the Cirque Colors Facets collection came along I decided I didn't need them in my life. But for some reason I kept looking at pictures of swatches when I came across them and when I saw a gorgeous swatch by Maria of the blue one I seriously started doubting my decision but with all the beautiful holiday collections that started to show up I didn't want to spend money on polishes that I wasn't 100% sure I would like.

Enter my husband who keeps pushing me out of my comfort zone by asking me to put on colors I wouldn't choose, do designs that are totally not me and telling me to buy polishes I would never pick myself. This time he didn't say a word. Instead he simply ordered the entire collection and gave them to me as a present for putting up with him for eleven years, two months and seventeen days (HIS words). It doesn't happen very often but I was speechless (and he couldn't stop laughing while I was trying to come up with an answer...) Anyway, when I was putting away the new bottles, Morganite ended up next to Carpe Diem and Hudson (I store my polishes by brand) and I really liked the colors together. This is what happened next:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone,


I'd been thinking about a theme for the letter Y for days but the only thing I could come up with was Yellow and I was so not in the mood for yellow. So I kept on thinking and the end of the week kept coming closer and closer... and I still wasn't in the mood for yellow! When I was just about to give up on the Y my priceless husband decided to just read a list of english scrabble words that start with a y and while I knew most of them, I never heard of the word 'yesteryear'. It turns out it means 'last year' or 'not too long ago'. The cogs in my head started turning and I decided to go with 'years ago' and an art deco theme. Of course art deco is from the 1920s so it's definitely not of yesteryear, but it IS from years ago (about 90 to be exact ;)

I've always loved the straight, geometric look of art deco and, living in a house that was built between 1920 and 1930, we have some gorgeous art deco stained glass in the separating doors between our living room and our study (which is actually one of the things I love most about this place). So I searched through my plates for an image to stamp. I'd already decided I wanted to stamp with gold on a very dark color (Great Gatsby movie poster anyone?). Everything combined looks like this:

indoors, no flash