What's on my nails today?

Hi everyone!


The last Friday of the month, and actually the last Friday of 2019! Wow, this year has been an out-of-control roller coaster with major lows (my kitchen nightmare 😱) and huge highs (my dream kitchen 😍), and with way too little nail art posts, but at least one per month for the Friday Triad. This is the last one of this year and I got to pick the manicure that Michelle, Juanita and myself would use as inspiration for our own nails. I picked a very season inappropriate pumpkin manicure by Melissa aka @melcisme. I did this on purpose because I didn't know when the other ladies would wear their manicures so maybe they didn't want to go for Winter (as it's Summer on the Southern hemisphere) or the holidays at all. This way everyone could do what she liked. Also, it doesn't need a horribly complicated technique which is a huge pro in the busiest month of the year.

I myself decided to go all-out Christmas, complete with red, white, green and gold:

Hi everyone!


It's that time again, the end of the month approaches and here is the post I never skip... the Triad manicure, where Juanita, Michelle and I take turns in picking a manicure from our to-do list and we all use that manicure as inspiration to do our own nail art. This month Juanita picked a lovely gradient-and-then-some by Courtney aka thenailartbabe. I was very tempted to do an exact recreation as I really love how it looks but in the end I decided to run wild with it and this is the end result:

Hi everyone!


Another month has passed and again, no posts from me... Life really should slow down but at this moment I don't see that happening in the near future. Oh well, at least every month there is the Friday Triad where Juanita, Michelle and I take turns in choosing a manicure that should inspire each of us. Sometimes the result is a recreation, sometimes it's completely different (I'm still waiting for black and white unicorns, Mich!), but the inspiration is the pick of the month one of us sends to the others. This month Michelle chose this pretty geometric design by Emilia aka polishpixie92.

I immediately knew I wanted to use autumnal colors and maybe a glitter crelly but apart from that, not a clue... It was only when I unwrapped a small gift from my hubby that inspiration started flowing and this is what my version looks like:

Hi everyone!



It's the last Friday of the month again, so that means Triad time! The inspiration of this month was picked by me and I had a really hard time deciding. In the end I went for a manicure that actually I saw popping up in my feed and immediately saved, this pretty dry marble/smoosh by Anastasiya of @nail_muse.

I especially loved the horizontal lines so I knew I wanted to try and get those too and boy, did I set myself up for trouble... but I think I did sort of okay. I'll let you be the judge:

Hi everyone!


I had so much fun doing the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge last year, so I had planned to join again this year. Unfortunately between the kitchen woes, work and all other stress inducing things, I didn't have the time to do so (or even to post here on a regular basis... 😢)

Recently when Michelle (from Ordinary Misfit) and I were chatting, she showed me the gift bag that was the inspiration for the Spring/Autumn manicure that she wanted to do for week 38. I googled the image and I think this is it: <link> (and if it isn't, it looks an awful lot like it). I immediately loved it and asked her if I she would mind if I gave it a try too. I didn't intend to post it but she told me I definitely had to and so I'm doing just that... may I present my Stripey Flowery manicure:

Hi everyone!


Another month has passed so that means Triad time :) This month Juanita picked the inspiration and I don't think I've had an inspiration that was this far out of my comfort zone... heck, at times I didn't think I would be able to find my way home! This is what she chose: an Easter colored, freehanded manicure with decals by Yulia from @juli_addicted. Believe me when I say it was a struggle, but I think I managed to make it mine after all... a bit. You be the judge:

Hi everyone!


Another month has passed so it's Triad day again, the last Friday of the month where Juanita, Michelle and me take turns picking a manicure that is the inspiration for all three of us. This month was Michelle's turn and oh, boy, did she cheat!!! She chose this beautiful manicure by Emiline from Nail Polish Society... and the original was done using nail wraps! How can a girl do something similar? I actually checked and the exact same wraps are still for sale, but that would be cheating, right? Oh... wait...

But no, I decided to take the inspired-by route and used just nail polish and tools, and this is the result:

Hi everyone!


You probably know by now that the one day I never fail to post is the last Friday of the month. That's the day Juanita, Michelle and myself post a manicure that was inspired by a manicure one of us picked. This month was my turn to find an inspiration and I picked one that has been on my to do list for ages... because all the striping tape scared me! It's this stunning manicure by Ruth from The Adorned Claw. And this is my attempt at recreating it with different colors:

Hi everyone,


this is a manicure that was on my nails last week, so here's a quick post to show it off anyway as I think it's too pretty to remain hidden ;)

Hi everyone!


I wanted to do a happy, colorful manicure so I started out... by picking gray and white ;)
Of course I picked those non-colors for a reason, I wanted them to look nice with the yellow I had in mind. Yellow didn't happen though because I spotted the beautifullest (yep, I've decided that's a word) lime green bottle when I was searching for... what was that color again? So green it was... and that's how this happened:

Hi everyone!


This month's inspiration for the Triad manicure was chosen by Juanita and she picked this one. It's my dusty chevrons manicure that I did back in November 2017! I won't bore you with the jumping up and down, the running around like crazy, the cheering, the shoving mobile phones under other people's noses to make sure they knew what had happened, because that totally didn't happen... or did it? ;)

Either way, I immediately knew I didn't want to change the overall design (speckled polish, chevrons, floral image) but as it's supposed to be almost summer now (not that the sun knows that but according to my calendar it's just around the corner) I decided to go for a bright color palette this time and what is brighter than neon, right?

Hi everyone!


While swatching Hema Living Coral I realized how much I actually like coral and peach colored nails. So of course I had to play a little with some more pretty polishes in that color range :)

Hi everyone,


last Saturday my husband brought home a little gift to cheer me up: a pretty coral polish called Living Coral. The brand is called Hema, which is a general warehouse chain in the Netherlands (branching out to other European countries) that sells just about anything you can think of (baby clothes, house hold appliances, food, etc.) and that has quite an extensive beauty line that includes dozens of nail polish colors. The quality varies... a lot! Some are fast drying one coaters, others are patchy and streaky and never seem to dry, so let's see in what category the latest addition to my stash falls.

Hi everyone,


nope, it's not the end of the month. It's a surprise manicure, coming from the finally decreasing chaos that has been our home for the last four months. But no complaining about kitchen renovations this time, I want to show you a manicure I did after a bottle of polish was returned to me (I didn't even remember lending it out, so here's to friends who remember stuff like that for me ;)

Hi everyone!


Another month has almost passed so it's time for the Triad manicure again. That means I had to find a clean spot and some peace and quiet to do a manicure using the inspiration Michelle chose, an absolutely gorgeous manicure by Yulia from Yulia's Nails (@yyulia_m on Instagram). This is a manicure that actually was on my to do list, so I had plenty of ideas. Of course those ideas were nowhere to be found when it came to making a list for my husband who had to get my polishes from the storage they're still in (still no finished kitchen... but there is definitely some light at the end of the tunnel as the renovations have started again. ETA is now the last week of June/first week of July).

As I really needed to start on those nails, I asked him to help me out and pick some colors he liked from the swatch pictures I have of all my polishes and bring them home. This is the result of our collaboration... and I love it!

Hi everyone,


it's the last Friday of the month once again, so it's time for the Triad manicure where Michelle, Juanita and myself take turns in picking a manicure that serves as inspiration for the three of us. This time it was my turn to choose and I selected this manicure by dreamsnails. Yep, you're seeing that right: gel polish and freehand... I don't know what I was thinking! (to be honest, I do know... that geometric design and the color blocks... what's not to love ;) I knew from the start I wouldn't do gel polish and since I can't freehand if my life depended on it, that was another no no. So what did I do? This:

Hi everyone!


It feels like February has only just started but it's the last Friday of the month already so it's time for another episode of the Triad manicures, where Michelle, Juanita and myself take turns in picking a manicure that all of us use as inspiration for our own nails. So it may be a copy, something that looks like the original or something you can't even imagine has anything to do with the choice of the month (like black-n-white unicorns ;) but as long as it has been inspired by it, it's good :) My manicure definitely falls into the last category this month. Want to see what happened? Read on :)

Juanita picked a lovely, summer manicure with palm leaves and leopard spots by Tionna from Playful Polishes. I loved it at first sight! But... as all my polish and all my tools are still safely tucked away in storage (let's just say my dream kitchen has turned into a nightmare and we probably won't wake up until early May... if we're lucky) painting my nails is quite a challenge as I really have to plan what I want to do, make a list of anything and everything I need and ask my husband to get it for me (I don't even dare to go there as everything is stacked on top of everything else and he knows how to get to things safely but I would probably wreak havoc). Once I have everything, I have to find a relatively quiet place to sit down, play and take pictures. So at this moment, painting my nails isn't the fun, relaxing experience it used to be. But no way I was going to let J and M down, so I did all the planning and listing and asking and ended up with a rainbow of bright, happy colors in front of me. And I didn't feel it at all... not one spark of inspiration!

Life happened, time passed, and Valentine's Day came along, with all its displays of red and pink and roses, and I decided I would try a manicure with a white base, pale and a bit darker green for the leaves and red for the leopard spots that I wanted to replace with small roses. So the rainbow went back to storage and the chosen polishes returned with that miracle of patience that I'm married to. Except this time he picked the wrong ones... he picked a gorgeous red, but instead of greens he grabbed gray polishes. I figured I could try them and if I really didn't like it, a third trip would be in order... and this is the result:

Hi everyone,


Surprised to see me? Me too!

To be honest, I didn't think I was going to make it this month. Last year we decided to get our kitchen redone. All was planned perfectly and we should have had only one week of mayhem, after which I would have a gorgeous new kitchen. Sounds simple, right? Wrong! You probably guessed it, for most of the last four weeks I've been surrounded with chaos, dust, plaster, paint and all other stuff that guys apparently thrive on and that forced me to put my entire stash in storage to keep my beauties safe.

So much for my plans to join the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge 2019 edition... (but I hope to catch up once all is back to normal). But nothing could keep me from the Triad manicure! So I picked the colors and the plate I wanted to use by googling swatches and reviews on my mobile, wrote down the names, made my husband dig up the bottles as he went to get some more things we needed and went over to my mom to paint my nails and take pictures with her camera as mine is... ehm... somewhere I can't find it at the moment.

But all obstacles aside, here's my version of Michelle's pick by Nails by Jema:

Hi everyone!


As I already expected, I didn't have the chance to write one last blog in 2018 with the December nails that were patiently waiting on my camera but as I have some unexpected free time (I guess that's the only advantage of back problems) I decided to write this post and give them their spot in the, slightly belated, spotlight.

Let's start with the manicure I did for my mother-in-law's birthday, early December: