See you on Instagram!

Hi everyone! In case you've wondered what happened to me and my blog, there is one simple answer:  Alex.

Our little son couldn't wait to see the world and arrived a bit earlier then planned. Since November he's occupying my every free second, so this is my first mani since then :)
I cannot be happier, but there's no time for blogging at the moment. So I decided to take a break and will be posting only on Instagram for a while. So stay in touch on IG!

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New York mani

My hubby and I have just returned from our trip to New York. What an incredible city!  We dreamed about going to NY for so long, I was giddy with anticipation before we left. And naturally I had to do a NY mani!

The skyline comes from the fantastic Bundle Monster plate BM-414. I was so excited, I couldn't stamp straight ;) The resulting image is more like New York fata morgana to be frank ;).
Mani done, I felt prepared to go:

Despite my "wavy" stamping I loved my nails. And it was a huge success in NY ("Oh, I love your nails!" and "Oh, this is New York! So cool!"). Who new that nails could be such a conversation starter! :D

Gradient: Mint Polish Tart, China Glaze Sugar High, CG Fade Into Hue, Essie Midnight Cami over one layer of no-name white
Stamping: BM-414 with A-England Camelot Read More......

31DC2013, Day 13: Animal Print

October is almost at its end and I haven't even reached the middle of the 31 Day Challenge. At this pace I'll be probably creating manis for this challenge in January :D

I have a fantastic spring-green silk scarf with zebras on it. It's such a fun accessory, I really love it. So the idea for the animal print nails was there even before I really started to think about it. I'm not totally into the resulting style, but it was a good mani training:

The colors, the pattern -  it was too much for me, so I added the matte finish to make the look more calm:

Base color: Essie's Shake Your $$ Makers
Gradient: black China Glaze Liquid Leather
Stamping: Zebra print from Konad plate m57 stamped with A-England Camelot
Matte Top Coat: Cult Nails Wax That

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31DC2013: Day 10, Gradient Nails

I wanted to try some unusual color combination for the gradient day of the challenge, so I went for rust color + dark green gradient. I like this autumn mani. Would a lighter version of the same green have been better? Probably... But I like it anyway :)

Gradient: Sponged Essence Deep Sea, Baby(dark green) and Barielle Rusty Vintage Boots (rust colored) over 2 coats of Barielle polish
Stripes: stamped stripes pattern from an OB-Nail XXL E stamping plate bought on ebay, with the same Essence green polish (yeehaa, another regular polish, which is great for stamping!) Read More......

#31DC2013: Day 06, Violet nails

I had a wonderful holiday in Riga (think Hotel Papa ;) ) and had some quality time with my cute little nephews. Now back in Hamburg,  it's high time to proceed with 31 Day Challenge. I'm totally late, but still determined to go through the themes.
The next theme is Violet Nails. I've been looking forward to try out the China Glaze Ombre set I bought on ebay. I first saw the gradient on Chalkboardnails blog and just fell in love with the beautiful colors. This is how it looks on my nails:

I know, it doesn't look as fantastic as on Chalkboardnails, but hey, that's just me, my limited nail art skills and rather ungraceful roundish nails. Who cares! I matched my mani with a violet silk scarf to work and felt like a diva :D.
But I think I'm rather a skittlette girl, so I used my Cheeky Plates to mix things up the next day:

Base color: Gradient with China Glaze Grape Expectations
Stamping: ikat pattern from the Cheeky Plate A stamped with silver Jolfin stamping polish
Skittlette: pinkie with Essence silver polish and textured P2  Sand Style polish  called "Strict" on my ring finger (I'm in love with Cheeky Plates, btw)

Since I don't have silver studs, I just used some gold ones, which I covered with silver polish as shown at Lucy's Stash Blog, and pimped up my thumbs with them.
It's amazing how you can change your mani with nail art, don't you think?

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Barry M bubble gum gradient

For this cute bubble gum look I used my new Barry M shades - Prickly Pear and Strawberry Ice Cream. The colors are beautiful, if slightly sheer. It was difficult to achieve the gradient effect - there are three coats of the lilac Prickly Pear over the pink base color.

  

Base color: two coats of Barry M Strawberry Ice Cream and Prickly Pear (middle and ring fingers only)
Gradient: Prickly Pear
Glitter: fantastic golden-pinkish holographic flake glitter Nfu.Oh # 49 Read More......

My first water marble

I've heard that water marbling can be annoying, frustrating and messy. Even some of nail art gurus like for example Nailasaurus say "Never again!". So it was kind of understandable that it took me some time to take my chances with marbling. 

I was going for more subtle look I can wear to work, so I went for the pink/dusty rose color combo and decided to do just two nails on each hand. It wasn't that bad! 

Base color: white (China Glaze Dandy Lyin' Around) on index and ring fingers and Essie Eternal Optimist on others

Marbling and Gradient: Essie Eternal Optimist and China Glaze Emotion
Glitters: Northern Lights Top Coat + Seche Vite

I taped my fingers like shown in the video below (btw, the channel of SimpleLittlePleasures has other nice tutorials) and used tap water. Starting from the second drop my polished didn't spread well, so I moved the cup a little back and forth and it helped a little. It was fun to create patterns and think how it might look on your nail, so I'll definitely marble again!  

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Mint gradient

I tried an aqua-minty-ish gradient this time.  After I've seen some awesome mix-n-match designs shown by Nailasaurus or Manicured Amateur, I find this one really boring. But since it totally matched my huge patterned silk scarf, I tried to be easy on my beginner mani ;)

Base color: two coats of light blue China Glaze Kinetic Candy
Gradient: sponged stripes of P2 Volume Gloss Fresh Sister + metallic turquoise P2 Lost in Paradise
Glitters: China Glaze Fairy Dust Read More......

Pink gradient

There are so many color combinations in my big nail polish box just waiting to be tried out. I liked this one up close. A little sparkle, cute pink color... Unfortunately I had a feeling that my nails looked like I was digging in a purple dirt from afar... Maybe I would leave the second neon purple color out the next time...

Base color: two coats of bubble gum pink P2 Volume Gloss Happy Bride
Gradient: sponged 2 x China Glaze Emotion and dabbed some CG Señorita Bonita on the very tip of my nails
Glitters: China Glaze Fairy Dust and China Glaze Techno (ring finger) Read More......

"Sex on the beach" gradient

I just love China Glaze neons. Doesn't this gradient look awesome? Caribean feeling on my nails :) I tried to do the accent nail, but all my ideas looked even worse than this golden glitter. So I just gave up this time... Next time I'd just stay with these awesome colors.

Base color: two coats of China Glaze Sun Worshiper
Gradient: sponged 2 x stripes of CG Sun Worshiper + CG Flip Flop Fantasy + CG Japanese Koi Read More......

Galaxy-ish gradient

I was really looking forward to the weekend to do a blue gradient. And I just loooooved it!
As a base I used two thin coats of China Glaze Kinetic Candy, and than sponged stripes of Kinetic Candy, China Glaze Splish Splash and the Essie's Midnight Cami. To give the gradient a little sparkle, I added one layer of China Glaze Fairy Dust. I really love how it came out. I didn't plan to do the spacy galaxy look, I just went with the flow ;) As you can see I still need to practice and not to layer too thick, but I love it anyway!

To see what it would look like, I added some China Glaze Mozaic Madness instead of Fairy Dust on my ring finger. I think the bigger dark blue glitters kind of kill the starry look. So without the Madness ;) this gradient is definitely one of my favorites now!

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Recently I discovered Nail Art and the meditational value of nail polishing :) My first experiments were fueled by numerous tutorials on youtube and jaw-dropping creations shown by some serious nail bloggers.
Highly motivated I tried some nail art techniques like stamping or gradients and got some astoundingly pretty designs. Some of them I liked so much, I decided I need to document how I managed to do them and which nail polishes I used.
So here I come with my first pics.

To hide the growing out line of my acrylic nails I tried out some simple glitter gradient (Gold fever by Essence) over two layers of Essie's A crewed interest. It was a bit too sparkly for my regular business day, but I thought it was not thaaat flashy, really pretty -  and most important, it absolutely covered the bump of my acrylic nails. A great way to "wait" for the next appointment at the nail studio.

In direct sunlight

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