Border and Mosaic Nails

Sometimes I just feel like switching things up a little, and pull out techniques that I haven't used for a while. Since my past two posts on here has been kinda serious, I wanted to lighten up the mood with today's nails.

We are revisiting Border Nails.

I know some people know this style better as Frame Nails, but they are one and the same technique.


For this look I am using three polishes:

H&M - Beige is one of my oldest polishes and I am surprised it is still kicking and hasn't dried all up. It has been with me since the very beginning. No wonder it is also, half empty. 

I actually won FNUG - Love Chic in a competition when FNUG first launched, and I got to choose a couple of shades from their line. Their polishes are amazing, a bit on the pricey side, but the staying power of these babies beats most of my other polishes to the boot. 

W7 - Buff is like the accident polish of this look. I never really liked this particular polish, it is too thin to be worn alone, but it works great for sponging. I think W7 make great polishes but W7- Buff is a dud. 

I also used a thin striping brush and a sponge for this look. 

First I started out with applying one coat of H&M - Beige, and once it was dry I placed 2 drops of H&M - Beige and 3 drops of W7- Buff to my Uber Chic Mat and dipped a sponge in to pick up the two colours. Dab dab dab on to the nails. 

It created a nice washed out marbled look. 

Then I went in with a striping brush and FNUG - Love Chic and framed the nails. 

FNUG - Love Chic Border Nails with H&M - Beige and W7 - Buff sponged in the middle as a washed marble look.

I am still learning to get my lines even with my striping brush, but this is definitely looking a whole better than last years attempts at border nails. 

Practise makes perfect, right?

I wore this look for a couple of days, and decided to switch up up and do Mosaic Nails. 

Grabbing my striping brush again and FNUG - Love Chic, I managed to get a couple days more wear.

FNUG - Love Chic Mosaic Nails with H&M - Beige and W7 - Buff sponged in the middle as a washed marble look.

Which one is your favourite?

Inspired By Pink Floyd

I am super excited to share this with you all. Me and TheHumbleBear from Instagram decided to do a twinmani. We ended up chatting for a long time and discovered that we both grew up listening to Pink Floyd. A lot. 

I used to sit ready with my cassette recorder in case a Pink Floyd, or Sting song would come on the radio, ready to tape. I think I still got some of my favourites on a cassette at mums place. 

I would have them on in the background when reading books, which was something I was always doing (unless I was doing homework). 

Polishes that I used for this Pink Floyd Themed Nail Art

I haven't done a freehand nail art look in a while, so I decided to grab my striping brushes and a box of nail polishes for this look. 

I sat in the living room, trying it out for filming, and as you can see from the video it is not enough light in there and the natural light from the windows is causing a lot of flickering in the light (our house came with 3 over friendly pigeons that like to fly back n forth in front of our windows) Will pull down the blinds and add more light next time. 

Products used:
Wet n Wild - Black Creme
Barry M - Coconut
Barry M - Plum
Barry M - Blue Grape
Barry M - Yellow (Superdrug LTD)
Barry M - Mango
Barry M - Lime Green
L'oreal - Scarlet Vamp
OPI - Sheer Enchantment
Sally Hansen - Pearly Whites

Two thin striping brushes from Bundlemonster

Pink Floyd - Galaxy Nail Art

My main inspiration for this nail art look was Insomia over at DeviantArt. 

When talking about Pink Floyd you can not escape mentioning their album The Dark Side of the Moon, so when me and TheHumbleBear did out nail art looks, we both did one based on the cover of that album.

When I was living in Spain 2 years ago, I came across this wall, and had to take a picture.

I Wish You Were Beer 

Be sure to check out TheHumbleBear over at Instagram, and send her my love. We had so much fun with this twinmani, and hope you liked the looks that we created. 

Pink Floyd 🌈~ One of my favourite bands 💖😘💖 #Art #AcrylicPaint #Intricate #CuteNailArt #Wishyouwerehere #PinkFloyd #RainbowNails #Polish #Asian #NailArt #NormalPolish #NailArtist #Gelish #Manicure #PrestoGel #InkArt #Favourite #Nailstagram #SharingArt #ArtDiscover #like4like #HandPaintedNailArt #Presto #OOTD #AngelPro #GellyFit #NOTD #POTD #Nails #LOVE

A photo posted by BearBearley 🐻 (@thehumblebear) on May 23, 2016 at 5:50pm PDT

GuestNails: Christmas Tree Mani

My little DIY Christmas Tree

Christmas Eve is just a few days away and I am sure you are all stressing to be done with all of it before it is over us. When it comes to Christmas I am a very organised person, being a Secretary and all. All the parcels have been mailed out, Christmas Letters written, so all I have to do now is to wait for the big day, and maybe bake some more Christmas cookies.

To go with my Mini Christmas Tree, I have for you a Christmas Tree Mani Tutorial.

How to: Christmas Tree Mani

Start out with a nude polish, I am using Color Club - Barely There, and painted two coat to all the nails Then I took a striper brush and made a triangle with China Glaze - Jolly Holly from 'Tis The Season To Be Naughty And Nice Collection Winter/Holiday 2010, way back before I even started blogging (!) I still love this nail polish.
Alternatively you could just add some tape to the sides and do it like that, but I was out and about when doing this, and not in the comfort of my home and stash. 

Then I took 'Ard As Nails - Gold Holo and added one coat of it over the entire nail. I think it looks really nice layered over the green and it gave a nice pop to the background.

With a dotting tool I added a couple of drops to represent the baubles on the tree using China Glaze - Ruby Pumps, and finished the look with a tiny star on top of the tree using the tiniest dotting tool i could find and China Glaze - Midnight Kiss.

Christmas Tree Mani, using Color Club - Barely There, China Glaze - Jolly Holly, Ard As Nails - Gold Holo, China Glaze, Ruby Pumps, and China Glaze - Midnight Kiss

MSMD - Christmas Baubles

Today I have for you a MSMD - Monkey See, Monkey Do I don't know how long it is since last time I did one of these, but I am sure it has been a couple of years now.
So I am bringing it back!

Today I am recreating Celeste Laureen's Christmas Ornament Designs from 2013, she recently recreated it herself, and you can find that over at her Instagram page.  Apparently her original design had been stolen and someone had cropped out her watermark and spread it all over Pinterest with another watermark. Shame on them.
Someone on PAA was asking who it belonged to and I was able to direct them to the rightful owner.

I liked the design so much I decided to recreate it myself.
Celeste Laureen used Essie - Bobbing For Baubles, and even though I have that polish I decided to use a lighter background colour for this.
'Ard As Nails - Mauve. This polish doesn't actually have that name, as it was a Custom Polish, but as it is a mauve shade, more specifically #B784A7 aka Opera Mauve. I am going to call this polish; Mauve for future reference.

It will make it easier for to me keep order in my stash.

On the nails you can see 2 coats of  'Ard As Nails - Mauve you could easily get away with one coat, but the after effects of my sugar craze yesterday has left me a bit shaky, so I needed a second coat. This polish is absolutely amazing, and it wears like iron on me. It has a subtle shimmer/holoness to it, and the shade is just the perfect work appropriate polish.

'Ard As Nails - Mauve 

Then I grabbed China Glaze -Mistletoe Kisses, China Glaze - Ruby Pumps, China Glaze - Midnight Kiss, and OPI - Moonraker, as well as a striper brush and Wet N Wild - Black Creme. I made large round circles with the polishes and traced around the baubles.

'Ard As Nails - Mauve with Christmas Baubles using  China Glaze -Mistletoe Kisses, China Glaze - Ruby Pumps, China Glaze - Midnight Kiss, and OPI - Moonraker

I hope you liked this look, be sure to follow me on the blog, Facebook, or Google + for more Christmas nail art designs.

For more Christmas themed nails check out my other designs here.

Fun With Flag - A Blogger Collaboration

If you regularly hang out on the internet I am sure you have seen this post on 9gag, Facebook or even Pinterest lately. That within one flag, you can often find other flags.

That is what started this idea, and as I looked up from my screen in the office, I caught a glance of another rerun of Big Bang Theory on one of the large TVs we have here. This was one of the "Fun With Flag" episodes, where Dr.Sheldon Cooper talks about flag-history on the Youtube series he has.

...and the idea was created.

I reached out to a handful of bloggers asking if they wanted to join in on the fun. I was overwhelmed with the response, and so thrilled that they found the time to join in on this "Fun With Flag" collaboration.

That instead of doing flag manicures only for patriotic reasons, I wanted to do them united with other bloggers, as a sign of unity. We are all in this hobby together, and borders mean nothing.


I am from Norway, so there will be no surprise for many of you that I have chosen to write about the flag of my home country.

Prior to the 17th century Norway had a flag with a golden lion with crown and axe on a red background, but our union with Denmark would put an end to this flag. When Norway in 1814 became independent, the golden lion was brought back and put in the upper left corner (the canton) on the Danish flag.

Source: Wikipedia

But it was not going to last for long. Norway joined a union with Sweden and needed to change their flag. Out of respect to the Swedish union and the historical friendship with Denmark, the Parliament wanted the flag to represent this by having something blue, red and white in the flag.
After much back and forth for almost a 100 years the Norwegian flag as we know it today was accepted. 9th of June 1905 the Norwegian flag was raised.

Flag Manicures. Red, White and Blue

Please check out what the other girls are doing by clicking through here:

An InLinkz Link-up

GuestNails

We had so much fun last time I did her nails, so we decided to throw ourselves at it again.
This time we swapped the wine, for a non-alcoholic wine spritzer, which meant more stable hands and more intricate work could be done.
This was perhaps the most elaborate mani I have done so far.

I showed her my most recent purchases, and we had a little brain-storming session going.
Minions, smiley-faces, school art... ideas was thrown around.

She works with kids, so we wanted to do something that would be fun for them to look at.
That's when we came up with the idea to try a pond manicure with koi fish. I had just received some nail mail from Bundlemonster, and one of the plates I bought was BM - 725, and it has some lovely koi fishes on it.


For this manicure we used Barry M - Speedy - Supersonic for base manicure, and stamped with BM - 725 in Wet n Wild - Black Creme, filled the koi fishes in with China Glaze - Midnight Kiss, Seventeen - Bronze Shimmer, Kiko - 492 and lastly Kiko - 493. I made the kelp using a striping brush and Kiko - 531, and Kiko - 534. Let the decals dry and cut them up to fit the nails.

Guest-Nail at Secretary's Nail Art

To finish it all off, I added a few drops of Barry M - Speedy - Supersonic to a clear polish and added 2 coats of that over the design, added the waves and the kelp, and then two more coats of the Barry M - Speedy - Supersonic with clear polish mix and one coat of topcoat to seal the design.

Guest-Nail at Secretary's Nail Art

I had so much positive feedback from the last time I was showing Sam's nails here on my blog, so we decided to aim at making this a regular thing. I teach her in the ways of a polish-aholic, and she lend me her time, and nails.

Guest-Nail at Secretary's Nail Art

The kids loved her nails, and she reported to me that they had asked to see them many times. So I would say that these nails where a definite hit.
I do not think we will do something THIS elaborate nex time.

Thank you Sam for your patience!

Little Miss Piggy

I have seen this hashtag around with #boyfriendpicksmypolish, and I wanted to do it as well.
So I brought him in to the nail room, and asked him to choose a drawer in my Helmers, and pick a polish.
He selected Barry M - Gelly - Dragon.

I didn't want it to be too easy, and just do a plain manicure with this polish, so I asked him to choose an image from my stamping plates. I started with showing him my Cheeky plates, and his eyes found this little piggy on the Cheeky - Jumbo Plate 9 - Wild At Heart (check the link for a full view of the plate).
So I suppose that means I gotta have to show some Piggy-love on my nails. Who better to take inspiration from, than Miss Piggy and do something girly.

I used W7 - White as a background, and stamped the little piggy on my middle finger using Barry M - Gelly - Dragon. The image didn't stamp very well, and showed up very faint on my nails. The lines on the head of the piggy are just too thin.
I redotted the eyes, and took a striping brush and did some lines for the body, and added a button.

On the rest of the nails I made animal prints using a small angled brush.

Barry M - Gelly - Dragon

So there you go! I have done the #boyfriendpicksmypolish for the first time. What do you think?

Carcassonne - nail art

This picture above here, might make you confused, do no fear. This is a nail related post. 

For those of you that follow me regularly, might remember that it was my birthday not long ago. My boyfriend got me a lot of stuff for my birthday (you can read what he got me in this blog-post), one of those things he got me for my birthday was Carcassonne expansions. Carcassonne is a fun little game about building castles and roads, and it's one of my favorite (board)games in the world. Next to Labyrinth, which is without a doubt my favorite. If you are into boardgames you should check it out.

PS: Maybe not get this specific expansion that is shown with the picture below, it's a bit too fiddly, I prefer the other expansions.

Carcassonne - The Princess & the Dragon

Example of Carcassonne in play.

So my boyfriend told me he wanted to do my nails for my birthday. We grabbed some acrylics, and polish and dived into it. This is not the first time he has done my nails, he did a Serenity (movie) manicure . In the previous mani, we did not use any acrylics, and he has been dying to show of his acrylic skills.

First challenge. He wasn't happy with my selection of green polishes. So I had to go ahead and mix them up until we got the shade we wanted. 2 drops of ESSIE - Mojito Madness and 3 drops of ESSIE - Navigate Her seemed to be the shade he wanted.

ESSIE - Mojito Madness and ESSIE - Navigate Her

4 nails on each hand got painted green, and the thumb was painted grey with MISA - Working Hard, Hardly Working. Stamping using Ciaté - Vintage Paint Pots

The backing of the tiles in Carcassonne and the Bundlemonster plate I used for stamping.

Once the nail polish was all dry we got the acrylics out.

I was sneaky and got some pictures while he was busy doing my nails. 

You can see he has placed out the tiles he was recreating next to him. 

After half an hour we had a break. This is what it was all looking like then. You can see the pieces taking form. It was getting dark outside, so sorry for the terrible pictures. 

He wanted to use more time on this, but I had to draw the line somewhere. He was keeping me busy while he was painting by feeding me white wine, and after a while it got nearly impossible to keep the hands still. 

I did dent my nails over night, so sorry for the rough look, but here are some pictures of them finished.

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

Carcassonne nail art

What do you think? Would you wear nail art inspired by a game? 

Let me know in the comment section below. 

The Easter Eggs Hatched

Today I have for you an Easter Egg manicure. I don't really celebrate Easter, but I love holidays, so I am throwing myself into this one as well.

Last year I did three different Easter manicures, all using the same background polish.
Field of Marigolds
Easter Nails - A skittle Adventure
Easter Nails

I have been on the lookout for a really good yellow polish for this years Easter manicure. I even bought a yellow texture! 
But even so, when it was time to do Easter nails again, I  am tempted to go for the same polish as last year. I managed to stay away, and opted for this B*O polish instead, that I bought from Born Pretty Store. It's called 62, and it's more like an orangey-yellow.

I used 3 coats of B*O - 62 for this manicure and finished it off with Sally Hansen - Sugar Coat - Sugar Fix. I also added some wings, eyes and beak using Nordic Cap - NP07, Sinful Color - Snow Me White (I have also bought myself a backup of this polish as it's running very low), and Wet n Wild - Black (I really need a backup of this, very soon)

Happy Easter Everyone!

For more Easter-manis click here.

Sunflowers - Prado Red - manicure

There is one thing that I want to get better at when it comes to nail art.
Freehand

I took my acrylics out for a test. I'm glad I had plenty of time, cause the stuff I was attempting was a bit harder than I thought. So instead of a one stroke manicure, which was what I attempted first. I went for something a bit easier, and did sunflowers.

My favorite sunflower is the Prado Red. I think they are beautiful. Just look at em!

For this manicure I used Savina - Royalty. This was one of my first nail polishes, and I haven't used it for ages. I felt it was time to give it some love. 

Since I did this manicure long into the night hours, I do not have steps-to-steps pictures on how this manicure was built.

Savina - Royalty needed 3 thin coats to cover all VNL. I added topcoat over Royalty before I proceeded to the acrylic art. I used a deep red acrylic colour for this manicure and a flat brush. I used a stippling motion with the brush to create the petals. For the seeds I used IsaDora - Winter Rose, and a dotting tool. 

I then proceed to the stamping. I used Cheeky - Jumbo plate 3 - European Romance. For stamping polish I used China Glaze - Exotic Encounter. I did a full stamping accent, and isolated some vines on two other nails. This was really tricky, since I wanted the vines to fill in the gaps. I think this was pure luck with how well the stamping came out on the index finger and the ring finger. 

What do you girls think? Do you wanna see more nail art like this?

Tag: My boyfriend does my nails (aka Inspired By a Movie)

Sorry for MIA lately, I have now moved into my flat, and is started to get settled in. I finally got internet here, which took forever. Mostly cause I had to wait for an installer to drag the line into the flat, and wait for there to be one that was available. Due to all the flooding here in UK, that took its time.

I wanted to do something fun, and this tag is something I have been wanting to do for a while. So after an eternity of trying to get him on-board for this (which only took 3 sec), we sat down and doodles on my nails. This is what he came up with.

For background colour, we used Nordic Cap - NP07, which is a bright orange, and Essie - Bobbing For Baubles for accent. Using the accent colour to create the design.

He choose the symbols from the Firefly - Serenity movie. 

In the future, a spaceship called Serenity is harboring a passenger with a deadly secret. Six rebels on the run. An assassin in pursuit. When the renegade crew of Serenity agrees to hide a fugitive on their ship, they find themselves in an awesome action-packed battle between the relentless military might of a totalitarian regime who will destroy anything - or anyone - to get the girl back and the bloodthirsty creatures who roam the uncharted areas of space. But, the greatest danger of all may be on their ship.Written by Anthony Pereyra (from IMDB)

Holy Motherboard

I have to admit I am a bit late with this post, I'm playing catch-up on these challenges. The girls over at Llama Nails on FB have this Nerd Challenge going, and it looks really cool.
Previously on this challenge we have had "Inspired by Math", "Inspired by Space", "Inspired by Science Fiction" and "Inspired by Litterature", now its time for "Inspired by Technology".

I love computers, that's just how it is. So when this challenge arrived I knew what I wanted to do. A post I did last year was a programmers -manicure with HTML codes, and this time I'm going deeper, and taking a look at the Motherboard. Interesting enough, I'm holding my first motherboard in the HTML -code manicure.

For this manicure I used black and white acrylic paint, a liner brush, a script liner brush and a dotting tool. I used China Glaze - Unpredictable as my base color. At the end I added a metal circle and a nail art sticker ( for the serial number)

Michelangelo the Architect

Often when people talk about Michelangelo, the talk about the painter and the sculptor, but we often forget that he did not just paint and sculpt, he was also an architect. A pretty darn good one at it as well. So when the girls at Llama Nails FB -group said we where having a challenge "Inspired by artists", and the first artist was Michelangelo, my thoughts went to the architecture he designed. This manicure is inspired by some of the buildings he designed. I'm still very new with acrylic paint so it didn't turn out exactly how I imagined it to, but we all learn by doing.

I started out with W7 - Silver Suede, used a "fan" brush and added some white acrylic paint, and painted the architecture in black acrylic paint with a "script liner" brush, and a "spotter" brush.