What's on my nails today?

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,

Hi everyone!


This week's theme couldn't have come at a better time. The prompt is 'Unused polish' and my husband spoiled me rotten with a huge box of Masura polishes so the biggest problem was what polish to use :) I settled on some pretty holographic polishes that reminded me of Spring and ice cream:

Hi everyone!


It's time for My Polish, Your Plate again! In case you're wondering what that's about: Michelle from Ordinary Misfit and I pick a polish and an image from a stamping plate, and we send our choices to each other. After that it's anybody's guess, as long as the polish and the plate are prominently featured in the manicure we create with it. If the polish that is picked isn't available with the other, we find an alternative that looks as close as possible to the original choice.

This time Michelle picked OPI Never a Dulles Moment (NaDM), a dusty yellow, almost mustard creme that gives me all sorts of Fall feelings (which is appropriate, I guess, as it's slowly but surely going towards Fall on the Southern hemisphere) and I picked the woven (for lack of a better word) image on the right side of Born Pretty plate BP-13.

This is what I did with the choices:

Hi everyone!


This month has felt like a runaway train with no brakes and me running behind it, trying to catch up... But this evening I FINALLY sat down with a mug of tea and declared I would turn in early. My husband grumbled something in agreement so when we were about to get ready for bed something suddenly dawned... this wasn't a Monday, it's a Thursday and not just any Thursday, it's Triad-day!! So my oasis of tranquility immediately turned into a frantic search for polishes, plates and, most important, inspiration to create something worthy of the beautiful, colorful, summer manicure by Claire of clairestelle8 that Juanita picked. Fortunately the polishers patron goddess (there has to be a deity devoted to nail art... I've been calling on her this entire evening) took pity on me and here I am, it's not even midnight yet and my nails look like this:

Hi everyone!


It's the last Friday of the month again, so it's time for the Friday Triad manicure. This month I got to pick the inspiration and I did... sort of. What happened? Late September I had narrowed down my choice to a few swirly and/or floral designs (to be honest, I can't even remember which ones ;) so I asked my husband which one he liked best. He didn't like any of them as the end of October means Halloween so he figured I should go for dark, ghouly, creepy... and he wouldn't let me pick anything else! And me being the sweet wife that I am (ha, in his dreams!!!) I figured it wasn't a bad idea so I started searching for something that I liked. We finally settled on a cemetery scene by Bedizzlenails. Unfortunately neither blog or instagram of the creator are online so I can only link to the image itself. Here's my version:

Hi everyone!


A quick post today as I'm already halfway out the door to the next appointment... and this is what I'll be walking out the door with:

Hi everyone,

this week's prompt is Houndstooth, or (as we call it) Pied-de-Poule. I actually knew what it was because my mother used to have a suit, consisting of a jacket and a pencil skirt, in this pattern. The twist was that her jacket had a fuchsia pink lining, so this manicure is based on my memory of what she looked like: the black-n-white pattern, the pink lining and the silver watch she wore (and still wears btw ;)

Hi everyone!


As it's vacation time over here, the team that I'm part of (that usually consists of five people) has been reduced to three and one of those has been assigned to a project so that means we're down to two persons, yours truly included. That means I've been working 12+ hour days and I've basically been scrambling to at least fix dinner and do laundry and not much else but sleep. I've also found out conference calls while working from home actually provide time to paint nails, as long as you don't want to do very complicated designs ;) Typing up posts is an entirely different thing though, so I decided to do one post with my manicures of the last three weeks to be all caught up before posting the Triad manicure coming Friday.

Hi everyone!


Last Friday we had to go to a birthday dinner so of course I wanted to have pretty nails (not to mention that friends and family actually expect to see a special manicure and of course I don't want to disappoint them ;) Unfortunately work is totally crazy these last weeks so I can only show them to you now, when they've already had to make room for new decorations... Oh well, at least we can look at the pictures, right? So let's do that right now:

Hi everyone!


First things first: best wishes for 2018 and I hope it'll be a year full of love and laughter and hopefully some beautiful manicures ;)

And talking about manicures... in a weak moment I was persuaded to try and do the 52 Week Nail Art Challenge. @polish_portfolio created 52 challenges, one for each week of the year and you can see all results by looking for the tag #52weeknailchallenge on social media. The first challenge is Pink + Purple and that's what I did, a (pale) pink and purple manicure:

Hi everyone,


it's the last Friday of the month again, so that means Michelle, Juanita and me should be ready to show you our manicures that are inspired by a manicure one of us chose. This month was Michelle's choice and she picked a lovely manicure by JauntyJuli. The moment I saw it, I thought I had the perfect base color... but when checking it out even closer the base Juli used was a creme and not a multichrome. The idea of using a multichrome stuck though so I had sort of made my mind up about what to use when an email dropped in my inbox and lo and behold, I wasn't the only one who had come up with that idea! So that meant back to the drawing board for me. While rummaging through my stash my eye fell on a polish I recently acquired and that had absolutely nothing to do with the vision I had. I was curious how it would look on my nails though so I pulled it out of storage and started swatching it... and then some... and then some more... and then this happened:


I know, nothing like the inspiration, right? But several elements of the original are in there though:
- dusty base color? Check!
- glittery gradient? Check!
- mandala like stamp? Check!

Let me tell you what I did :)

Hi everyone!


The ingredients for another quick and easy manicure: a gorgeous polish-with-thingies to act as the main star, a creme polish to fulfill the supporting role of base and a shiny one that is the little extra. Add some time and a geometric image, and voila... a new look for your nails :)

Hi everyone,


it's September 21st and that means summer is officially over, the sun will hide her face earlier and the nights lengthen (unless you're on the southern hemisphere, in that case spring has sprung and you're heading for summer ;) Of course most polish creators have released their fall collections weeks ago and I have picked up a few vampy-er polishes already, among which a gorgeous shimmery brown that I used as the base for the manicure I want to show you today:

Hi everyone,


another hurried manicure but this time it was my not so smart planning that caused my lack of time ;) Fortunately both OPI polishes I used were almost one coaters so I could speed paint again, with this result:

Hi everyone,


what do you do when it's so hot outside even the birds don't want to twitter and the cats don't want to bask in the sunshine? I know what I did... I stayed inside and made decals (and made sure to drink lots of water of course :) And afterwards I used them to create this manicure:

Hi everyone,


I'm so sorry to have been absent for over a week. I really wish life would just send a small announcement before it switches to rollercoaster mode :( I did paint my nails though and took pictures, I just didn't have the time to edit the pictures and write an article... So before continuing, make sure to have some beverages and snacks within reach as I have three manicures to show you so it's a long post this time.

The first (and most eye blinding one of the lot) is one that I totally blame my husband for! I asked him to pick out a color. I should have known he would pick one that I had never used before out of fear of causing accidents while in traffic... so you are warned! Are your sunglasses in place? ;)

Hi everyone,


the last Friday of the month is here so it's time for the monthly Triad manicure with Juanita and Michelle. This month's inspiration was chosen by Juanita and is the first manicure in this article by Paulina from Paulina's Passions: roses on sheer black.

This is my version:

Hi everyone!


I wanted something nice on my nails for Easter but I hit a total block... no inspiration at all! While trying to come up with something (and my mood deteriorating at an increasing rate in the process) I happened to look out the window at the rain falling from the cloudy sky and the total lack of anything even remotely close to spring and tadaa... the little cogs in my head FINALLY started turning! I decided to do a spring manicure but one inspired on the springtime we currently have: gray, gray and more gray, and some tulips thrown in for good measure as I live in Holland and we're famous for our tulips of course :)

Hi everyone!


I was playing a little with some of the colors that were still on my desk (I really have to clean that up... soon!!) and this happened: