Mandala Stamping

Hello Beauties!

I am still alive! Thank you for your patience this last week. My internet connection suddenly went down a week ago and it took the cable company forever to send over a techinician. This morning they made final adjustments and as you can see I am back online! Yay! :-D It feels so good.

Today I want to show you a manicure I did on p2 - be my guy that I first shared with you about two weeks ago. I used Maybelline - Gold All Night to stamp on the blue and glittery background.

The image I was using on all of my nails is the left carriage wheel. I find the design very appealing. It reminds me of a mandala with its symmetric pattern.

The design did transfer very well, but on my indexfinger it partially stuck on the stamper.I still am happy with this manicure. In real life it looked even better than it does in these pictures. The contrast between the blue and gold and even between the glitter and gold was higher. The flash from the camera reflected on the golden polish and makes it a bit hard to see.

To add some depht to my design I decided to place light blue rhinestones to the center of the pattern on each nail. The design looks kind of like the suns I used to draw when I was a kid. (Okay, I still do, when I am painting with my niece and nephew...)

I hope you are alright and had a good week and weekend. I have to do some serious blog reading and catching up this week. Being offline for 8 days is terrible! I even missed to blog about my September favourites, but I will still do that sometime this week.

I hope you do like this design as much as I do. Does it remind you of a mandala too?

You may also like:

• Holographic Pearls
• Butterfly Stamping
• Purple Gradient with Pansies

kiko - Pearly Red & Fall Stamping

Hello Lovelies!

Happy Friday my lovely readers! I hope you are well and had a good start into the new season. I am feeling much better today too and am almost back to normal. So today I want to show you a manicure I created last friday and wore until Wednesday. I usually don't wear my manis that long, but this one was so pretty and I didn't feel like playing around with polish anyway. I guess another reason that it lastet this long is that I was too weak to use my hands for anything else than reading or handeling the remote controle... :-)

But before I go into details to the finished manicure let me take you there step by step and show you swatches of my base colour first. This is kiko - Pearly Red (492).

Pearly Red is not really a red polish. In my opinion it is a wonderful and intense orange (leaning towards vermilion) crelly polish, with lots of micro flakies in it. I find it quite hard to describe, but as you can see it is very sparkly and shiny. The colour is perfect for fall.

The formula of Pearly Red is fantastic. The first coat is quite transparent, but with the second coat it is opaque. The polish applies smoothly and spreads evenly. There was hardly any clean up to do.

I then used a make-up sponge to apply kiko - Vino Perlato (493) to the tips of my nails and create a gradient with it.

Vino Perlato is very similar to Pearly Red only in a deep red tone. This colour is amazing and I have to show it to you another time by itself.

To get an even finish I applied a layer of Seche Vite over my gradient.

I then used a black stamping polish and the heart design from the plate shown above to stamp on all of my nails. I tried to place the center of the design randomly across my nails to give the design a more natural look. The hearts remind me a bit of leaves.

To finish this manicure I applied another layer of top coat to my nails and added a small clear rhinestone to the center of my stamping. 

I love this look. The gradient and the design go so well together and the clear rhinestones add a little brightness to the manicure. After taking the pictures I did add another coat of Seche Vite to seal in my stones too.

I wish you a very happy weekend and hope you like my fall design. Do you like the colours for this season?

You may also like:

• Autumnal Gradient
• BPS Holo #12
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Animal Print Series - Zebra or Tiger on Rainbow Gradient

Hello Beauties!

Happy Monday! How was your weekend? Did you do anything special? I really had a great weekend. We had lots of sunshine and I spent some time with family and took long walks. And of cours I painted my nails and had my SD card reader fixed! So tomorrow you are going to see a more recent manicure. Today I am going to show you another one from a while back. I decided to go with this colourful manicure:

Do you remember the gradient I did for Christopher Street Day in Munich in July? Check it out here. I used it to create a fun and summery animal print pattern on top of it with some black and white nailpolish and a fine nail art brush.

Is that more like a Zebra or a Tiger? I couldn't tell. I am however pretty happy with the outcome. I think the black and white stripes help the colours to stand out even better. I also love the sparkles from china glaze - Fairy Dust shining through.

To give this manicure an even more natural look I added a matte top coat. Or have you ever seen a glossy tiger? ;-) Unfortunately I was a bit too quick with this step and smudged my black polish a little bit. But I don't think it's too bad.

What do you think ot this manicure? Do you like the combination of animal print and the colourful rainbow gradient?

You may also like:

• Sunset Gradient
• Zebra
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flormar - Golden Orchid

Hello Sweeties!

How are you on this wonderful Saturday? Today I want to show you another one of my newbies from my Berlin Shopping Spree (Day 1 & Day 2). I discovered a flormar store and the lady working there was a real sweatheart. She was looking at me with big eyes asking me why I was buying so many polishes and I told her that I am blogging about polish and simply had to buy all these beauties when I get the opportunity. (We don't have a flormar store in Munich!)

I paid for my polishes, packed them into my bag and off I was when I heard her asking what blog I am writing. It took me a few seconds to realise she was still talking to me and I turned around a few meters away from the store and went back in. We laughed about it and talked some more. I gave her the name of my blog and hopefully she will stop by one day and maybe even recognize herself in this blogpost. (If you do, leave a comment! ;-D)

But now let's get on to the polish, that's what you've been waiting for, right? This is flormar nail enamel - Golden Orchid (394). I used one coat of claire's - Cloud (an off white creme polish) as a base because I was not sure if Golden Orchid would have good coverage. And then I layered two coats of the golden, sparkly polish over it. It turnes out that I didn't really need the base. Golden Orchid has pretty good coverage on its own.

The formula is wonderful. It spreads evenly and dries pretty quick. I love how sparkly it is. The crelly golden base is packed with iridescent microglitter that shimmeres in all the colours of the rainbow.

As an accent I added some drop shaped rhinestones in form of a flower to my ringfinger and a little pink flower shaped one to my indexfinger. The blueish flower I did like, but the purple one was a bit too much, what do you think?

In direct sunlight the glitter stood out best. My camera couldn't capture all it's beauty. But I still think it looks fantastic in those pictures. Imagine how gorgeous it looks in real life! 

Have you ever tried flormar nail varnish? How do you like Golden Orchid? Is this a polish for you?

You may also like:

• Purple Gradient With Pansies
• Glitter Gradient
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Glitter Gradient on Black Swan

Hello Beauties!

How are you today? I want to share a manicure with you that I did quite some time ago, but never felt like posting due to the hot sunny weather we were having this whole summer so far. Some of you may remember that little accent nail on my pinkiefinger. 

As a base for my mani I used L'Oreal - Black Swan and then sponged on china glaze - Techno & Fairy Dust with a make-up sponge to create the glitter gradient. Today is a cold gray morning and I totally feel like showing you this manicure now since it reminds me of a dark rainy day. (Wich I also love from time to time. It is a welcome diversion from the heat waves we had.)

I sponged on the glitter to get a good glitter density without the bulkiness of the clear base wich is mostly absorbed by the sponge. To bring everything together perfectly I added my favourite topcoat - Seche Vite.

I love how sparkly these glitters are and with the combination of small and bigger particles of glitter the gradient effect shows best and is super easy to do.

When I was done I felt like there was still something missing and placed some rhinestones on my glitter, but ended up disliking it and gently scraped them off again. 

Today these nails are just perfect for me. When it was so hot, I didn't like looking at them at all! Do you know the feeling?

How do you like this simple glitter gradient? What does it rmind you of?

You may also like:

• cocktails & coconuts
• glorious aquarius
• end up glamorous!

Misslyn - edgy

Hello Loves!

This is my last 'live' post before going on vacation tomorrow. I have a bunch of posts prepped and scheduled for the next two weeks so make sure to stop by that my hard work wasn't for nothing. :-D A few days ago I used Misslyn - edgy (11F), from this summer sale haul, as an accent nail and loved it so much that I decided I had to use it in a full manicure too. That's what I want to share with you today.

Edgy is a very dark grey/anthracite crelly polish full of different coloured micro glitter flakies. I see blue, yellow, purple and a hint of green. It is such a beautiful polish!

It would be okay to use two slightly thicker coats for full opacity, but I did use three for this manicure, because I had some minor imperfections after my second coat. If you apply a very thin layer only edgy could also be used as a dark glitter topper. It's glitter density is extremely high and will show up all over the nail even with the thinnest coat possible. It also gives you quite an unique finish.

Edgy is form Misslyns Satin Metal line and dries to a silky, smooth matte finish with some shine left. And a whole lot of shimmer from the fakies.

I added a coat of Seche Vite to seal it in and to make it glossy again. I just like it best that way!

As an accent I picked out drop-shaped rhinestones matching the colours of the flakies. I used yellow, clear, dark blue, light green and light blue ones and placed them near the cuticles. I then used a very liquid top coat to seal them in and avoid bubbles.

Even though this polish is a real beauty I have two points that I need to criticise. First It takes quite long to dry. Even though I added Seche Vite in the end I got some bumps on my thumb hours after painting them. Okay, I did add a more liquide top coat too, to seal in my rhinestones, but that shouldn't cause that effect. And the second thing is that it doesn't last too long. It hasn't been a full day of wearing the polish and I already have bald tips.

Taking all that into consideration I would still buy this polish again!

Do you have anything similar in your collection? 

You may also like:

• The Black Cat
• Animal Print Series - Tiger
• Black Swan

kiko 240 - Apple Red & Mickey Mouse Manicure

Hello Loves!

Last week my fianceés niece had her fourth Birthday and I was the designated photographer for the party. First I wanted to do a colourful rainbow water decal manicure for the occasion, but it went all wrong and I had to start over and come up with something new. (I will show you my big fail a bit later.) After twisting my mind for a while and browsing the web I came up with the idea to this Mickey Mouse manicure that was inspired by several pinterest pins.

As a base for my red nails I used kiko - Red Apple (240) wich is a fantastic polish. It is opaque in two coats, dries quickly and applies smoothly. For my white nails I used cartice - Get Boho In SoHo, wich I will show you with my rainbow water decal fail. (Both of these polishes are from my huge Salzburg haul.)

On my index- and pinkiefinger I used NYX - White to make polkadots. Sadly I got some streakes on the indexfinger, but I guess it lookes still okay. On my ringfinger I used a dotting tool and a nail art brush to create the large Mickey Mouse head shape in the corner with s-he stylezone -296.

I then added some black rhinestones to the upper part of that nail to make a small Mickey head and did the same by using different sized clear rhinestones on my middlefinger. My thumb was a bit more tricky, but I managed to draw a decent Minnie Mouse bow. My niece liked it, but she was so busy playing with her friends and opening her presents she didn't really care... :-D But I know what I did and I know you are going to acknowledge my hard work!

So I hope you like my girlie Birthday manicure!

You may also like:

• Birthday Party Balloons
• Twin Sweater Set
• Girls Night Out