Mish Mash Challenge - Music. Cassette nail art!

Hey hey hey!

How's the week going? I hope everyone here is wanting to party 'cuz todays theme is... Music!

I don't favor any particular singer or music band, probably because my mental health state of mind varies a lot; so much so that I am thinking on using the Richter scale to rate my mood swings. 

Whatever; I use music as my therapy and so I have come to stock a shitload of music in my player, basically prepared to counteract each and every of my states of mind [Author's note: it works!]. Choosing one of them songs was a no go, so I finally set my mind in some vintage-y cassette nail art!

I searched inspiration on YouTube and guess who had already done not one but two cassette nail art videos? Yup, the extraordinary Robin Moses! I seriously love watching her videos. She's amazingly nuts, and so spontaneous that you get the impression of being in her salon. 

So here's my take:

I had so much fun doing these! And I am pretty proud of myself; I had decided to take advantage of my holidays to improve my freehanding skills, and I guess I did :)

Ingredients: The base color is Kiko no. 338 Light Lavender (two coats) and the dots are Zoya Zuza (teal), China Glaze Heli-Yum (hot pink) and Kiko no. 356 Melon (orange). The cassette has been entirely done with acrylic paints and a teeny tiny nail art brush.

What do you think?

Take care,

M.

Mish Mash Challenge - A technique you have never tried before. Newspaper nails & a dandelion...

Hey there!

How are you doing? I hope you're ON for today's installment of the Mish Mash Challenge, which involves a "technique you have never tried before". I love this theme; I want this challenge, along with my artist inner self, to push me to do new things, better things... 

Believe it or not, I had never tried newspaper nails before. This blog has been running for over a year now (d'uh... I missed my own bloggiversary, but my battle with remembering dates is a lost one so let's just move on), and this week's topic has been a great push. Of course, I watched some tutorials on YouTube and took good note of Lisa's newsprint nailz, and this is what happened:

Long story short, at first what happened is a whole lot of nothing. No transfer of characters + ruined polish, that's what I got. So I decided to keep ruining the left hand's polish by trying other ways to transfer the darn text to my claws. Clear polish? Nope. Alcohol? Nope. Clear polish and alcohol? Not yet. Plain water? YES!

Then started again: 2 coats of China Glaze For Audrey + 1 coat of Kiko's Sparkling Touch topper. Let that dry and transfer the text. Any text may work, but I decided to teach my nails some tolerance by transferring an article about the persisting homophobia in France (and Europe in general). Why not?

It lacked something more, so I made good use of my Nailz Craze stamping plate NC01 and its beautiful dandelion design... Voilà!

I was so happy with the result that I sent a picture of them to The Boyfriend right away with a simple text: "Getting artsy. Like it or not?". Except I didn't really send it to The Boyfriend, but to Girona's airport. It wasn't even watermarked... *laugh* NEXT!

Take care,

M.

Do not forget to take a look at the other ladies' posts:

Unnamed Superficially Colorful thermal lacquer and NailPorn ring!

Hey there!

I hope you're having a good Monday! If your holidays are over today *cry cry cry* or if you're feeling uninspired for this week's challenge, just keep calm and pretend it's not Monday.

Now, let's lust over today's lacquered beauty, which is yet another Superficially Colorful thermal lacquer that's still unnamed...

Have a peek at the shimmer and fine pink glitter in this polish!

This baby - Candy Floss anyone? - required two coats for opacity. Its hot version is a very light pastel pink, ironically switching to a hotter pink when cold. I am completely in love with Superficially Colorful lacquers; Jin had me at Giggly, and they have all been hits until now. Let it continue!

AND... have you seen my personalized all-swag&all-out ring? That's right: a NailPorn ring! Ha! Well, I'm not wearing this at work because I don't want the clients' eyes to pop out of their sockets, but I will definitely wear this with some sicko nails soon! If you're interested in anything similar, this Etsy seller can personalize your ring with any word up to 8 letters - yeah, CriminalNails didn't fit :'( -. It has costed me $23.98 and has arrived very quickly from Israel. 

I also decided to keep rocking those stilettos at work; with a sane degree of "fear", I might add. Not that I'm a nail amazone of some sort, but heck, I just don't want my personality to drown in my corporate/lawyerly outfits. So I will show 'em some more love, until my boss makes me a painful remark or until a catastrophe happens, like ripping one of my nails off. 

Take care now,

M.

Mish Mash Challenge - Metallic. Foil nails.

Hey there!

For today's theme, Metallic, I decided to give a second chance to Foil. My previous try was so lousy that I didn't even take a picture of it. I was nervous and felt like I needed it to come out nicely, just for the life of me. Well guess what? It didn't. At all. See, for me nail art is like cooking; I have to feel good to achieve something nice. And self-imposed pressure makes me look like a mix between E.T. and a kraken. Like so: 

Whatever. I tried to nail-art with foil again, after taking some kind of psychotropic drug like pure holidays, and here's what came out:

What I like about this is that the pink seems to have chipped in a way that lets the gold underneath peek out, when it's actually the other way around. My brains are known to make weird associations, and when I look at manicures like this all I see is Terminator's face, half ripped off with his true machine self saying hi. Am I a weirdo? Just... don't answer that.

I bought the foil off eBay for almost nothing (five foils for less than Eur. 2, shipping included), and this one was the gold holographic one. The base color is from Kiko's new collection, Quick Dry nº 808 Pearly Watermelon Pink. Now let me say this: I was darn scared to put it on after reading some negative reviews of its siblings, but this is just ONE coat of Pearly Watermelon Pink! Colour me impressed!

If you want to try this method, here's a useful tutorial by ChrissyAi. It's really as simple as that :)

Take care!

M.

Dotted flowericure; flowered dotticure...

Hey hey hey! :)

Today's was a pretty sucky morning in my polish-filled world. It's the third day of my Yes Love hunt, and quite an unsuccessful one, might I add. You see, I went crazy over Illamasqua Scarce and its gorgeous little siblings, but their price and a month and a half of waiting put me off on my quest to complete the collection. Until Yes Love (cheapo chinese brand, I believe) brought a suspiciously similar line to life, that is.

I've seen it pop over a gazillion Spanish blogs on which it is deemed to be an affordable and easy to find collection. I don't know about the first, but I can only f*cking disagree about the second, ladies. It is nowhere to be found in the Barcelona area. I lost three hours looking for it today, and I think I am done with it. I will find it, eventually..!

The nails: that too is brought to y'all after a fail. I attempted some deep V sick nails and obtained some deep V sh*t that I took off immediately. That's what followed:

I will skip the info about the base color because you know it just too well by now, it's become my nail's best friend ;) After that, I used five neons to do the dotted flowers: (from thumb to pinky) China Glaze Sun- Kissed, Tokalon nº2, Kiko nº 336 Electric Blue, Nfu-Oh FS12 and Maybelline Orange Fix. The black is China Glaze Liquid Leather.

That was fun to wear but not my style much, I doubt I would ever wear this again... What about you? Oh, and my questions here are never ambush questions: you can always say no. And I point out "here" because my BF would surely disagree otherwise...

And same thing goes for: what do you think of my new blog title?

Take care,

M.

Superficially Colorful Lacquer in MEDITATIVE

Hello there! :)

One of the good things about Jin's thermal polishes is that you never know what you're going to get color-wise. You choose a color from the collection that seems appropriate to your mood or outfit, but what you're seeing in the bottle is the "cold" version of it; the "hotter" one is still a surprise. Once it's on, the magic happens and... tada: the hot version appears!

If you're feeling the urge to know the color you're putting on beforehand I guess you can heat up the bottle... Well, without putting too much thought on it, I don't suggest to use the microwave unless you want an explosion of color, literally ;) [Okay. I typed this and thought... "I am sure there's someone in this planet that has tried this, filmed this and uploaded it on YouTube". Bingo; there's ALWAYS the dumbass next door. Always: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sznbUpX3y_M]

On to today's star: after showing you a swatch of Jin's creation, Giggly, here's its sibling, Meditative. 

Meditative is a gorgeous shimmery dark teal that turns into a beautilful olive green. The formula was just as perfect as Giggly's; what you're looking at is two coats plus top coat. No. Issues. Whatsoever.

What do you think about it? Are you digging some more swatches of the Mood Swings Collection? I hope so, 'cuz I am loaded guys ;)

Take care,

M.

Mish Mash Challenge - Tape.

Howdy Ladies and (hopefully) Gents!

I am late for this entry; what an irony... I was hardly late on the ABChallenge, but now that I'm on holidays it's another story. I was posting on time in my head though, and the 16 ladies before me were ahead of their game, until I realized it was a little too optimistic, and that Wednesday was actually... yesterday. Bravo!

Tape. I love tape. I love it because it's easy to use and it gives straight and perfect lines. Me loves lines. So, of course, by association the love story was all set and done beforehand in my head.

Quoting a series I've been watching recently, "this is my design":

The metallic blue is OPI Swimsuit... Nailed it!, sent to me by the lovely Jenni, the neon green is from Tokalon and the neon pink is Nfu-Oh FS12. As a base for my two accent nails I used Kiko Nude. What else?

Those nails were lucky enough to get to see World War Z; geee I haven't been that excited to see a movie since... since a movie from the Twilight saga. Please don't hold it against me? Liked (though not loved) the movie. It was lacking zombie-nails shots.  

Take care,

M.

Neon arrows

Hey there!

I hope everyone here is extra fine :) I am finishing my first week off work and it feels SO good so far..! Collioure was a cozy-love trip; exactly what I needed to plug off from my job. My corporative Blackberry was down so I didn't even care about it... 56 mails awaited me when crossing the border with Spain. Whatever, they can still wait a couple of weeks, 'cuz ain't nobody got time for that!

Today's mani has been on my to do list for quite a while now; Geee, I am enjoying these sick stiletto nailz of mine... Neon arrows!

I used my trusted and loved Kiko Nude as a base and then hand-painted the arrows with a neon green and a bright blue that I don't have handy so... I am afraid no details are available today about them. If you're interested just let me know and I will shed some light on it ;)

The arrows were dead-easy to do, and more so because I wanted a "handmade look" rather than perfectly shaped and symmetrical lines, so I was vaaaaaary pleased with those :) Eye-catching for sure...

On holidays, shit happens too: on my last day in Collioure I broke my pinky nail... badly. Basically, it was rip open in the middle, where the nail was still above my flesh: ouch! I managed to make it last for another day (unbelievable luck here, thanks Karma!) and then just... added three thin layers of super glue (Loctite) and savagely solved the problem.What? I saw a chick use nail glue on YouTube so I thought that might work just as good, and it does! :D We'll see how much longer will this nail survive... Wanna bet?

Take care,

M.

Heart tips over Superficially Colorful Lacquer in GIGGLY

Howdy!

Let's follow up with Superficially Colorful Lacquer in Giggly, shall we? I found this polish to be so lovely as its creator, Jin, so I tried my hand at some textured heart-tips:

Heart tips, that's something I could not really do with oval nails; and I was dying to! I think they are so cute! I stopped at two accent nails per hand because I don't use to be all-in when it comes to a girly girly manicure. It's just that I naturally give this image of a smiling harmless young lady and I prefer not to give more circumstantial evidence in this regard. Basically because the image people get and my true self just don't match. 

Well, just a couple of weeks ago I ordered a Coca light and the waitress asked me for my ID. I am still traumatized.

- Excuse me?

- Your ID... I mean, you look so young.

- For what?

- For the beer you ordered?

- What beer? I ordered a Coca light..! 

For Christ's sake, I am f*cking 24 years old! Having been a criminal lawyer in practice for 2 years is obviously not phisically marking. I hate when this happens. Just imagine when it happens in Court! 

Although I have to admit it has made my work quite easy sometimes... *evil smile* Never ever judge someone by her looks. Never.

Back to the cute heartsies... They have been done with OPI Pussy Galore, the manageability of which surprised me. For a textured polish, it behaved very well: it did not get textured right on the heart's borders, you know? When it has to be nice, smooth and curvy.

Hope you like them! I am off enjoying my last day in France!

Take care & be bad,

M.