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Hi everyone,
I bet it's a surprise to see a sign of life on this blog.
2021 has been a rollercoaster of a year for my family and me. Besides all the consequences of the pandemic, with lockdowns, social distancing, information and mis-information, we were also faced with the consequences of a reckless driver who speeded through a red light and ran into my mother on her bike. She was unbelievably fortunate as she got out of it without any injuries to her brain and nerves, but both her legs were shattered, and she suffered multiple cracked ribs, bruises, cuts and scratches.
The entire year was filled with surgeries, hospital visits, physical therapy, rehabilitation, exercising, talks with lawyers, arranging help, and of course encouraging her all the way, and slowly but surely improvement to the point that my mom is now able to walk without crutches or a walker. I'm immensely proud of how far she has come and I'm convinced she will continue to get better still.
Taking care of my mother, combined with a full time job and my own household, has taken up so much time, polishing nails and writing about it had to take a huge step back (along with lots of other hobbies). Now that everything is settling into a semblance of normal, I want to try and starting blogging again. I'm not making promises but I hope to pop up in your feed again in the next year with some nice nail art.
So here's to a better, happier, healthier new year. I hope 2022 holds everything you hope for it ❤️
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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):
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
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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:
