Mish Mash Challenge - Cold. Ice cream nails + Glitter Bunny Krazy Straws!

Hey there, nice nails! :)

This week's theme of the Mish Mash Challenge is cold. Throw in some summer and bam! you have it: ice cream nails! 

I've had this idea since back then when I was still on holidays, ages ago, when I was still a careless person... okay, maybe not that long ago, let's say a month. Exactly when I ripped off my pinky nail and clipped my claws off - back to the good ol' "you always want what you can't have" story. Since I had this stupid idea that you need long nails for sporting an ice cream manicure I just waited and waited until I couldn't wait anymore. It turns out I waited too much and my scoops are huge... how's that for an impatient person? Well, please be my judge. And don't be merciful.

For once I nail arted directly using nail polish, but the list is endless and there's no point mentionning the whole list in here unless you want me to, in which case your wish is my command. What is worth mentionning is the awesome glitter I covered my pinky, index and thumb with: Glitter Bunny Krazy Straws! I learned the hard way you HAVE TO thin indies before you slap them on: this bugger bubbled just like a jacuzzi; my bad. But damn! Isn't it just gorgeous?! *getting emotional*

And next up I've got a question for you. Do you like unnatural hair colors? I am talking blue, pink and purple dye here:

If so, would you wear them? 'Cuz I am wanting to. Desperately. Right now I can't; I don't think I'd encourage lawyer-client confidence, but I plan to in a near future. I would love to hear your thoughts! 
And hey, if it's "NO" just say so. This question has not been thrown in here so you can all tell me how great an idea it is, if it isn't ;) I just love honesty, for some strange reason...
Bla bla bla -- WOULD YOU?

Thanks in advance for your reaction!

Be bad,

M.

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:

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.

TUTORIAL: Totum Revolutum manicure

Hey you :)

As promised, here's the tutorial for my multi-colored manicure, that I called Totum Revolutum (click here)! Here's what you will going to need:

Introductory notes:

• Your base coat should be chosen wisely according to the result you are willing to achieve (i. e. for a neon finish, pick up a white), especially if the colors you have chosen are not 100% opaque (hello jellies!).
• The plastic sheet can be replaced by almost anything plastic, provided that it is easily pliable. You will need to bend it, so try to avoid anything too stiff.
• The plastic sheet can be transparent or opaque, but remember that only the first will allow you to see: (i) if the polish has covered the wole nail, and (ii) the approximate pattern you've obtained.
• The paper sheet is merely here to provide you somewhere to stick the plastic pieces after using them, you can replace it by anything of your choice that suits this purpose.
• I chose three cremes for this tutorial, but there's really no number limit (between 2 colors and the infinity, you're good).

Let's get started:

1. After applying your base color and letting it dry, the first thing you should do is prepare all the nail ware you will going to use for the Totum Revolutum. 

Cut as many pieces of plastic sheet as nails you will be polishing, and even some more just in case. The pieces should be rectangular, as shown below, so that you can rest your finger on it, securing it, and still use it to mix the colors you have chosen.

2. Work somewhere polish-proof; I used the same ol' plastic mat I use for all my manis.

Start adding blobs of colors randomly, and be sure to be generous. Otherwise, the colors will not mix and the result won't be as nice:

3. The result should look something like the picture below. Let's pospose the cuticle flooding worrying here and let's enjoy the mess!

4. Place a plastic sheet under your finger and secure it so the plastic won't move. Take the other end of the plastic piece and place it over your nail:

5. Stick the plastic to the wet polish on your nail...

6. ... and press your finger randomly over the plastic and the polish, so that the colors will start to blend together. No need to be gentle, but try to cover the whole nail! When you see a nice result through the plastic, take it off.

If you're not satisfied with the end result after taking off the plastic, you can add some more blobs of color and start again right away, until you're happy with it.

Remember to stick the plastic you just used face down on a piece of paper so as to avoid making more of a mess than necessary ;)

7. Use a wooden stick to take the excess polish off your cuticle area and try to trace a nice and curvy line to follow duning the clean up process.

8. Messy as it is, let it dry. 

I waited for around 15 minutes before moving to the next step. It worked for me, but you will want to wait for a little longer if you haven't used speedy dry polishes, or if you have re-started the process on some of the nails ;)

 9. When dry, clean the whole thing up and top coat it! Voilà!

I hope this tutorial will help you in your manicure adventures :) Please do not hesitate to comment below with the links to your own Totum Revolutum, I'd be happy to see what y'all came up with!

Take care,

M.

Totum Revolutum manicure

Howdy! :)

This weekend was as calm as it promised to be, and I took advantage of that to be creative.

I have been eyeballing gorgeous watercolor manicures for quite a while (if you have any good tutorial at hand please figuratively throw it my way!) and... this manicure came up:

The technique I used is very simple, but I will let the pictures do the talking for today ;) The colors used were: Astor's Tickle my Triangle (pink), China Glaze's Kinetic Candy (blue) and Kiko's Melon (orange). But I think it offers endless possibilities... and will probably recreate this with neons, for a start! 

The way the colors end up blending together in some areas, the latin expression Totum Revolutum came to mind... It will be a Totum Revolutum manicure for me, from now on! How do you like it?

As creative as I was I managed to get a photo-tutorial done, for those of you who are interested! I will post this next week, so stay tuned :)

Bonus pic:

Take care,

M.

Holiday manicure. First attempt at vintage freehanded roses.

Hey there!

Happy easter ^^ I hope you enjoyed your time. I did a whole lot of nothing and it felt darn good. The Boyfriend and I spent four days near the beach, far from Barcelona where not even work can reach you... Jeeze, I can't believe it's over!

I thought I'd be productive and fill in my archives with pretty pictures of intricated nail art, but you're looking at the one manicure I've done during these holidays. Whatever, I am proud of it. It was my first time freehanding vintage roses. Heck, it was my first time freehanding anything on my nails! 

Voilà:

For this manicure I've used Kiko Celebration LE in Blush as a base, and then added some fun as follows:

- the pink dots and the darker pink on the roses is Kiko Celebration LE in Pearly Pink Iguana [I doubt that morph of iguana actually exists, but that name makes it sound just like the ultimate lizard!]

- my middle finger and the dots on my pinky have been done using Cina Glaze Sun-Kissed

- the darker part of the leaves are done with Sfera Mariana

- the lighter pink and green were obtained by mixing the color with Kiko Blush

Whatcha say?

Now that gave me a good kick to keep on going with freehanding stuff, and I wonder what should I attempt next. Mind you, before you give me any suggestion... I get frustrated quite easily. Hence, replicating Magritte's Golconde or Las Meninas by Velazquez is out of the question. For now. I am sure we'll find a lot of interesting things to disfigure in between *evil laugh*

Take care,

M.

ABC Challenge: Letter D - Doll House.

Hello polishaholics!

I’ll be honest (when have I been dishonest?!): I consider this manicure a new episode of my Fail series. I agree we could hold a debate on the true sense of “fail” according to its etymology opposed to its current meaning in a living and continuously evolving language. It’s of no use, so we’ll basically skip that part; with that said, I am not going to censure your comments below, I am just not feeling to embody the Grammar Inquisition today.

Fail or not, I just hated this manicure. A LOT. It lasted me around two hours, and just because I was too late to redo the whole thing before going out. The recipe for such an abominable combination is: two coats of Rituals Mystic Amethyst + one coat of China Glaze Doll House.

Doll House seems such a great glitter to add on top of any manicure. But alas, I wouldn’t want it in my stash even if it was offered to me as a present. Nasty thing… Too much clear base, too little glitter, too big glitter, you name it. I had to fish for the glitter every time, and then place it conveniently (or not, as you can see). The problem is that the base is too thick and does not allow you to move the glitter around, so you can end up with massive amounts of glitter in one spot, combined to bald spots. Wow, that was trrrrrrouble! I know now why it has seated among my untried ones for a year and a half *sigh*

Nevertheless, the good thing about this manicure is that I have two polishes less in my untried pile. I’ll have to give Mystic Amethyst another go though; such a vampy red color cannot suffer the consequences of being paired with rubbishy-Doll House. Amiright?

M.

Check out what the ladies of this amazing crew have picked for letter D:

New Year's Eve - 1st post of the year.

Hello & happy 2013!

I hope you're not superstitious and are not looking at 2013 reluctantly and with a bad feeling, 'cuz that's not the best way to start the year ;) I mostly believe that what goes around comes around, karma and all that stuff. I am safe. Sort of. 

I have to admit I had some trouble sticking to the Spanish tradition of swallowing 12 grapes, one for each stroke before midnight. I was laughing because I put 13 grapes on The Boyfriend's cup and right in the end he exclaimed "fack, I lost count!". In summary, I ended up with around 8 grapes on my mouth because I couldn't swallow quick enough. Hilarious, but I hope that won't make 2013 any shittier than it is already, potentially.

Enough bla bla, on to my simple make up for New Year's Eve; face washed and black liner. I swear I had some blush on, but here's the proof I have the skin of an undead.

As for the nails, I opted for a re-version of Dita Von Teese's nude half moons and added grey french tips. I used Anny Open my Heart (that somehow I always want to call Rip my Heart Open; yuck!) as a base and China Glaze Stone Cold for the tips. Fist picture is matte Stone Cold, next one is topped off with Poshé.

I matched my dress somehow :)

So again, special occasion makes me show my face in here not once, but twice! Happy new year, ladies! Take care!

M.