#31DC2013 Day 14: Flowers

Today I have for you day 14, flowers! I have many floral stamps to choose from, but I wanted to do some free hand nail art. So I did. I made some poppy's, or 'klaprozen' in Dutch. I painted two nails with poppy's and the rest of the nails are painted with two coats of W7 Lava Flow.

The three colours of Lava Flow are the same three colours I used in my poppy design. 

Essie Blanc as a base, for the red I used a mix of Essence Kiss On Top Of The Rock and Catrice Fred Said Red, and the black is Essence Black Is Back.

This polish remind me of poppy's because the black glitter looks like the seeds of a poppy and the red glitter comes really close to the colour of the poppy flower petals.

I really enjoyed painting these floral nails free hand. I did quite some stamping and tape manicures lately, so it was nice to put my painting skills in the design for a change.

#31DC2013 Day 13: Animal Print

I have for you; Snakeskin Print Nails! For the 13th challenge I didn't want to do cheetah or zebra nails, because I think those are too mainstream. I wanted to do some snakeskin print nails, but I wanted them to look as realistic as possible. So I got onto the web and searched some snakeskin images. I found some white/beige/gray prints that I really liked. So, here are the nails!

These nails took some serious painting! I used a few different techniques, which I'll show below.

These are the equipment I used for this manicure. From left to right, top to bottom: China Glaze Calcium Gel Fortifier Base Coat, Essie Blanc, OPI My Vampire Is Buff, Catrice ASHley, Only You Mirror, Mirror, OPI Nein, Nein, Nein! Ok, Fine!, ball of plastic wrap, image stamping plate MLS-09, Essence stamper, old gift card, kitchen towels.

First, I painted my nails with two coats of Essie Blanc, let it dry and used the saran wrap method to dab on the colours OPI MVIB, Catrice ASHley and Only You Mirror, Mirror.

Then I stamped on a snakeskin print using image stamping plate MLS-09 and OPI Nein, Nein, Nein! Ok, Fine!. Topped it with Seche Vite and voilà! Snakeskin Print Nails!

I like how the colours come together in this manicure. These are quite realistic looking, as I say so myself!

Snowflake Jelly Sandwich

Hey my lovely readers! Today I took a little break from the challenge - which I still didn't finish - to paint my nails more 'wintery'. So here's my Snowflake Jelly Sandwich!

Isn't this cute? It is so subtle and sweet yet so wintery! I didn't want it to be much of a Christmas manicure, we celebrate Sinterklaas before Christmas, so I think that's a little early. But the Xmas nails are definitely coming!

For this manicure I sandwiched OPI - Pirouette My Whistle between Catrice - Cotton Candy At Eiffel Tower. I stamped the snowflakes with Essence - Stamp Me! White and used plates BM-323 & BM-H02.

I had fun doing these, but from now on I only do manis for the challenge till it ends.

Do you like these as much as I do? Please leave a comment below!

#31DC2013 Day 09: Rainbow

Yay! Today’s challenge is rainbow! I was looking forward to this challenge because I had already a design in mind.

I recreated this manicure from Missadelinne. I found it on Pinterest, but had a hard time finding out whose it was originally, because this picture was all over the web without a name or watermark. I find it disturbing that people just use pictures without giving credit to the nail artist who made it. So here you go Missadelinne, I got my inspiration from you. You are a wonderful nail artist which I admire.

Here’s my take on her Colourful Dots and Stripes manicure.

I used quite a few polishes as you can see. The base is Essie Blanc. For the rainbow colours I used Catrice Abloom (red), Catrice Orange Utan (orange), Kiko 279 (yellow), Catrice Miss Piggy’s BF (green), China Glaze Sunday Funday (blue) and China Glaze Man Hunt (dark blue). I created the lines using striping tape.

This is such a fun and colourful manicure! I love how these were originally inspired by a rainbow cake!

If you wonder what is on my index finger, well that was the cut which I told you about in my stash update. Although the cut is healed, it left a little scab behind. I know I could have photoshopped it out, but I was lazy, hehe ;)

Maybe I need to paint my nails more often with those bright colours. They're so fun and sunny in these cold days!

#31DC2013 Day 04: Green

I wanted to stamp todays manicure and I immediately thought about the dollar sign image from the Cheeky Summer collection. So I did!

 I painted all my nails with two coats of China Glaze Re-fresh Mint and stamped the dollar signs with Catrice Sold Out Forever with plate CH55 from the Cheeky Summer Collection. I like those two colours together! Again, I chose a matte finish for this one, because it gives it that paper feel.

As you can see (maybe?), I made some pics with a shiny topcoat too, but I didn't like it too much. Okay, more pictures with the matte finish...

I was very astonished by the fact that Catrice polishes would stamp that well. I'm definitely trying out some other polishes from Catrice to see if they will stamp as well.


Alrighty then, one last picture for you guys!!

I hope you enjoyed this manicure as much as I do! Let me know what you think of these nails in the comments below!