What's on my nails today?

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!


When I saw this manicure by Michelle I instantly knew I wanted to do something similar and since my very demure french tips manicure had just been removed, I had a clean canvas to work with. So I went through my stash, picked some polishes and gave Michelle's design a bit of a twist:

Hi everyone!


I needed my nails to look a bit more office friendly for a meeting and as I'd seen this manicure by @melcisme a couple of days ago, I knew exactly what I was going to do... recreate her beautiful design of course!

Hi everyone!


It's still very cold and gray over here (it's 11 degrees Celsius where it should be around 16-17 this time of year) so I was craving colors (and a thick sweater, a scarf and mittens ;) and if the sun wouldn't come out, I wanted sunny colors on my nails... so, inspired by a manicure by @nadioula_ on Instagram, I grabbed a cream, a yellow and a peach and sat down for some me-time. This is what my nails look like at the moment:

Hi everyone!


Juanita and Michelle invited me to join their twinsies posts (so does that make this a triple-sies post? ;) We're going to recreate let ourselves be inspired by a manicure from our to-do list and post it on the last Friday of the month, but we're only really starting in January so this is just a trial run. I got to pick a manicure from one of them to recreate for November and I had already chosen their twinsies Halloween manicure (here and here) since I would be at home on Friday so I could actually do the black nail thing without getting weird looks and I would do a manicure from both of them... double win! Unfortunately something popped up that requires me to look more or less presentable tomorrow and I doubt that graveyards fall in that category so I had to search for something else at the last minute... and I'm NOT good at 'at the last minute'! So what is a girl to do in crises like that? She makes her husband pick out a design! He chose Michelle's Pink treasure nail art (see what I did with the title? ;) and after that all I had to do was select my polishes.

Hmmm... The one kind of polish that isn't very well represented in my collection is glitter polish. I hardly have any and the ones I do have usually have a clear base so those don't work either. I quickly decided to go for one of the rare holos-with-thingies-in-them that I own (and I can just hear Maria chuckle now ;) and combine it with a chrome, like Michelle did, and I think I didn't do too bad, even if it was 'at the last minute':

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!

This is just a placeholder until I have time, internet connection and a working computer instead of trying this on a mobile phone who has a completely different dictionary than the one I use... the woes of a nail blogger are endless!

Guess what? I'm not at home at the moment!! My hubby surprised me with a week-long getaway in a lovely romantic little town called Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which is in Bayern, South Germany. We had been talking about taking some time off to get away from normal day life with all its duties and chores and just spend some time together, and he picked this place to go to. Of course I totally objected (because why would I want to do absolutely nothing but enjoy the company and the gorgeous views and not think of work or any other duties) so he just about had to drag me there kicking and screaming ;)

Anyway, before we left I remembered the ABC Challenge would start again since the 31 Day Challenge (read: 31 days of absolute madness) were over so I decided to go with a re-creation for the letter R and take pictures in advance so I could write a post once the InLinkz would be available, even if I wasn't home yet. I already knew what manicure I wanted to recreate, this one! I just love the colors and the fall vibe. The only thing I changed was that I didn't put the stamped image on all nails and, since I wanted to push myself a little, I decided to try and mirror the stamped image on my left hand so my hands would be completely symmetrical. This is the result:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


As I was browsing the web for no other reason than being too tired to even watch tv, I happened to see a pretty blue manicure hidden among several other images that showed up during a Google image search that I can't even remember the keywords for. This is the link to the original post for that manicure. I fell in love with the design immediately and I wanted to recreate it but using different colors with this result:

Hi everyone!


Another two weeks have passed and during that time the flu I thought I had turned out to be a rather nasty pneumonia. I got medication, doctor's visits, pictures taken from my lungs (guess what? I have two!! ;), the works and I'm FINALLY on the way up again. During most of the exams you are asked to either not wear nail polish or remove it from your index and middle finger as they stick these thingies on your fingers to check oxygen saturation and stuff. Two bare nails and eight nicely manicured ones just would look too silly so I've been going commando for a while... yep, totally nekkid! So now that all the exams are behind me I wanted to do something really extra special. I did kind of forget that I still have the energy levels of a sloth in hibernation so it took me a lot longer than expected but I don't care about that at all when I look at my nails.

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


After seeing this post on La paillette frondeuse I just knew I had to recreate that gradient one day... It's so beautiful! I never imagined beige, teal and midnight blue would go together this great but they do and here's my recreation:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


Tomorrow is Easter Sunday and, as usual, we're visiting both my own family and my in-laws. Also we're going to check in on a very dear old lady, our great-aunt who turned 95 last month and who is in the hospital after a nasty fall (fortunately no broken bones but a lot of bruises including her ribs that cause her some breathing problems). Now usually I don't really care what people think about my nails unless I have a job interview or something like that. But our aunt always tells me a nice girl (yep, I'm still a girl in her eyes ;) doesn't wear pitch black, acid green or bright blue so as a surprise for her I've given myself a really elegant nude manicure.

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


When browsing for some inspiration I came across this manicure. I had a white and a lilac polish on my desk, patiently waiting to be put away and this is what happened next:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone,


the last two weeks have been weird, to say the least. First the training that was pretty exhausting (I guess I'm not used to being taught in a class anymore) and after that... I kind of tumbled into a pool of nothing. Last week was the fourth anniversary of my fathers death and for some reason this year was harder for me than the previous years. I didn't feel like doing anything, just hang on the couch, watch some tv and feel sad...

Yesterday we were invited to the retirement party of a family friend so I had to dress up (a bit) and as she always notices my manicure I felt I couldn't get away with just a nice polish. Lacking any kind of inspiration, I took a look at the manicures I pinned in the past and the UberChic Floral skittlette by Marta of Chit Chat Nails caught my eye and I finally felt that familiar itch to paint my nails again :)

This is what my non-UberChic version looks like:

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


It probably isn't a big surprise my favorite type of manicure is a skittlette. I love to have my nails look different but somehow matching at the same time. The queen of skittlettes is of course Marta from Chit Chat Nails. Ever since I've found her blog, I have been saving manicures that I would love to recreate and this is one for them, her chevron skittlette. I just love the combination of colors and the chevrons so I browsed my stash for similar polishes as I don't have any of the ones Marta used. I hope I did her manicure some justice :)

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


Today I'm wearing a black and silver skittle manicure that is almost completely copied from a french blog called Vernis en folie (about 2/3 down the page).

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


Another simple manicure but with a very luxurious feel to it: white and gold leaf!

indoors, no flash

Hi everyone!


They say imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, so I hope Deborah of Love. Varnish, chocolate and more…. doesn't mind this version of the beautiful manicure she did recently.

When I saw the picture on her blog, I couldn't help myself... I had to try these colors myself! Unfortunately I have baby sized nails instead of her gorgeous long ones so I could only make one circle of dots but I still loved the results.

indoors, no flash

I actually had most colors Deborah used, so I started with my regular base coat (OPI Natural Base) and after that painted on two coats of OPI Don’t Bossa Nova Me Around to get a completely opaque base. One coat of Seche Vite to speed up the drying and to keep the base protected in case I had correct errors and after that I could start my dots. I used one big dot of Catrice First Class Up-Grape, a small partial circle of Catrice Metalight (Metallure collection) and a larger partial circle of OPI Alpine Snow. Another coat of Seche Vite and my manicure was done.

The nude base makes me feel really sophisticated and the colors of the dots only add to that feeling.
I really loved my nails like this.


Have you ever copied a manicure you saw online?