Top 20 Nail Polish Favorites! (collaboration)

Hello fellow nail art lovers! Today I'm going to show you my top 20 nail polishes at this time. As some of you already know, I organized my stash last week and I counted 70+ nail polishes in my collection (you can see almost all of them here ). ^_^

The idea of showing you the top 20 nail polishes doesn't belong to me - a fellow nail polish addict, Georgia , came up with it, but me and some other bloggers embraced it with joy.

I can't say that this wasn't a challenge for me, even though I don't have as many nail lacquers as other nail art bloggers, but I tried to choose my favorite ones based on how much I use them and how they look on my nails. They are in a random order on my palette and will be presented by brands. ^_^

Ok, so that's my Top 20 palette. Now, for the nail polishes...

Continue dreaming/reading

Cherry Blossom Nails

This is my latest entry for Tip Top's contest. The theme was "Flowers" and the colors we were allowed to use were pink, purple, maroons and nudes and green for leaves. I'm not very fond of flowers so, the first thing that came to my mind were Cherry Blossom Trees, which have cute, discreet flowers and represent spring, in Japan. 

For the Chinese the cherry blossom is a very significant symbol of power. Typically it represent a feminine beauty and sexuality and often holds an idea of power or feminine dominance. Within the language of herbs and herbal lore of the Chinese the cherry blossom is often the symbol of love.

For the Japanese the cherry blossom holds very different meaning. The cherry blossom is a very delicate flower that blooms for a very short time. For the Japanese this represents the transience of life. This concept ties in very deeply with the fundamental teachings of Buddhism that state all life is suffering and transitory. The Japanese have long held strong to the Buddhist belief of the transitory nature of life and it is very noble to not get too attached to a particular outcome or not become emotional because it will all pass in time.

You can read more about them here: Sakura. 

I used only two shades of pink, one from Avon and one from Maybeline Colorama and combined them to obtain other shades and I combined a bit of blue, for the light purple background. 

I drew the branches with a thin brush and I used the dotting tool to create the flowers. 

Enjoy! ^_^

Colors! Colors everywhere!!!

The weather is pretty dull, foggy and all that so I decided that my nails should bring up some colors and happiness all around. Here they are! ^_^

What I used:
- Miss Sporty - 455 Clubbing
- Maybeline - Mini Colorama 52 Dark Plum
- S-he Style Zone - 115 White
- Avon - Speed Dry + Orange, Nailware Pro + Baby Pink
- Flormar - 437 Spring & Summer
- Moyra - 605 - Pastel Shades
- Rimmel - Lasting Finish 055 Sunshine, 60 seconds 740 clear
- Oumaxi - acrylic paint

Couple

Sorry for the bad quality of the pictures... ^_^

Getting the Christmas spirit

So... Christmas is almost here and this inspired me to do a simple manicure with pines and candy canes. I used some glitter and I think it turned out nice, considering the fact that I kind of rushed it. Enjoy! :)

Psychedelic dream

I've been dreaming of painting my nails like this for quite a while and now I had the chance. 

I love how it turned out.

My boyfriend told me to try and make the black stripes because he thought they look better this way. 

I'm not sure about that, but I think they turned out pretty good in the end.

I didn't use the marble art technique because it's messy and it doesn't always turn out great. I painted my nails with a yellow base and afterwords I made stripes and shapes with different colors. 

Enjoy! ^_^

My B'Day Nails!

Last week I celebrated my B'Day with some of my best friends. We had sweets, chips, pizza and my homemade cake with decorative kittens made from marzipan. It was fun! :D

Also, one of my friends is a great photographer ( you can see more of his photographs here: http://andreinicoaraphoto.blogspot.com/ ) and he took some awesome pictures, including the one with my nails! :D

So, this is a double premiere for the blog - my first B'day celebration since I started the blog aaand the first picture of my manicure took by a professional photographer. Yaaay!

My manicure was inspired by the dress I wore and I used tones of grey, red and black. I also added some glitter to make it more similar to the dress. I hope you like it! ^_^

Halloween Part II - Pumpkins & Cats & Ghosts, oh my!

As usual, when I find a manicure I like and I want to try it on my own nails, I.. well, not really fail, but, let''s just say I'm not very good at copying other person's manicures. Yay for creativity!  :|
Here is my inspiration: Mini Nail Blog
And here is the result:

             Enjoy! ^_^

Fruits!

This was one of my last summer-related manicures... *frowns*
I found a kiwi manicure on Google and that's where it all started.. my own FRUIT THEME!
I wanted a fun theme, colorful and bright which turned out looking pretty yummy. ^_^
The colors I used were bright and I tried to draw the fruits as accurate as I could, cut in half: apples, kiwis, blueberries, strawberries and watermelon slices.
Enjoy! :D

Here is a bonus photo with my manicure and Ale's (one of my best friends) nails! ^_^

Newspaper Fairytail

I'm a huge fan of the newspaper manicure. It's such a simple technique and it looks so good! ^_^
Here is a tutorial by Cutepolish: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kcdt4_5Ncc

For my nails I used an older newspaper and because the paper was very dry and the print was old, the letters didn't come out as in the tutorial. Some of them didn't stick to the nails at all so I decided to make the manicure a bit more "Fairytail-ish" by adding some stars and glitter where the letters weren't showing.
I think it turned out really nice for an improvisation. :)

Sorry for the bad quality of the pictures...

Mary Poppins

     
     I've recently watched the Mary Poppins movie and it reminded me of my childhood and how nice and simple everything was back then. *daydreams*
     Soooo I decided to try and paint my nails as a tribute for this wonderful story and for the great actors that gave life to some of my favorite characters of all time... :)
     Here is what I managed to come up with: 

Spots & dots

I wanted to try this Splatter Nails Tutorial but I gave up because I do not own any acrylic nail polish, so I invented my own technique. I used a toothbrush and I just pressed it really quickly onto my nails, after applying regular nail polish on it... I used a white base and "all the colors of the rainbow".

I  bought a few bright neon colors last week and I wanted to try them, so I thought this would be a fun and interesting way to see how they look together. 

I think they turned out really nice and they add a touch of happiness to the last days of summer... 

Black, White & Red

This week I wanted to experiment a bit with my nails, trying new designs and combining only 3 colors. I'm really proud of how they turned out and I think I managed to make them look both cute and interesting at the same time.
I got the chance to try my new nail polish - "Mosaic Effects" from Avon and I compared it to the same type of nail polish from Rimmel. I think that the one from Avon is better because it dries quicker and the effect is more visible.
I also cut them again, so they're not round anymore and this shape lets me experiment more.
I have a bunch of new ideas I want to try in the next few weeks and I hope those will turn up as I expect. ^_^

Getting the London look?

Olympic Games, bla bla... here are my nails! :D

This manicure is one from my stock, I had it a while ago, waaay before knowing where the Olympics would take place... :)

Pokenails!

Okay, so a few weeks ago I was "corrupted" by my boyfriend to play Pokemon on some site.
The game was very catchy and I ended up playing it even more than him for the past few days.





Anyway, he also suggested I should make a Pokemon theme for my nails. At first I thought it would be impossible, but, in a few hours, after many tries I managed to come up with what you can see...


I only painted 4 pokemons: Charmander, Pikachu, Squirtle and Jigglypuff  because my nails are small and it is complicated for me to draw without some good brushes - I really need to buy some.

Since I don't use fake nails, it was harder to paint the ones on the right hand, but I think I did a pretty good job for a beginner in the art of nails... ^_^


Here is a close-up with the drawings:

The pokeballs were very easy to paint and I really like how they turned out, as well.

Bye bye! ^_^

Beach Nails

It's summer... It's hot... I'd really like to go to the beach, but I'm not sure I will be able to go there this summer... Oh well...

 That's why I decided to paint my nails similar to how a beach is - palm trees, hot sand, warm salty water and the sun shining bright above them all... *day dreams*

I used different shades of blue, green and yellow and a little golden glitter to resemble the grains of sand...

I also tried to create waves, to make the nail art look more dynamic. I think they turned out pretty well. ^_^

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to take pictures right after I finished my manicure so the tips of my nails were a bit scratched and the polish went off, but, all in all they still look pretty good...

Enjoy! ^_^

Garden nails

In the weekend I helped my parents a bit in the garden and the plants inspired me to paint this set of nails...

The colors are bright and the shapes are like crawling plants with small flowers (dots). I also used a little glitter to make it look like they have spines. :)

For the green/aqua nails I used a combination between Green Park and Urban Turquoise from Maybeline and I used Avon's Color Trend - Ice Sheers as a top coat to make them a bit more pearly.

For the other nails I used Urban Coral from Maybeline and a shiny top coat from the same brand. 

The lines and shapes were made with special nail art polishes from Umbrella ( No. 20 and 25). I used a thin brush and I let my imagination flow... ^_^

I think they turned out pretty well for how "much" effort I put into them... :)

P.S. A huuuuuuuuge "Thank you!" goes to my boyfriend for lending me his phone to take pictures of the nails... ^_^

Black & Pink

Hello! ^_^

This is a manicure I had a few weeks ago, when I spent a full weekend with my boyfriend. As a result, my nails were influenced by the fact that he was with me... *blushes*

I rarely paint hearts on my nails, but I often use the french manicure in different color combinations - it's easy and looks nice. 

I love the combination between dark pink and black because it's the way I picture punk music ( one of my favorite music genres) and I find it very dynamic. :)

I used Dark Chocolate and Bubblicious from Maybeline, my favorite nail polish brand at the moment. 

 As usual, my nails are different on each hand, but I like how they turned out. :P

This is my last post with pictures from my stack, since I have changed my manicure today and I will take some pictures tomorrow.  Bye bye! ^_^