Summer Challenge Day 31: Recreate your favourite challenge

Summer Challenge Day 31: Recreate your favourite challenge

Today is the last day of this challenge! I’ve been through stuff that I thought I’d never do myself. (Half moons, water marbles and yellow polish, I’m looking at you!!). But it’s been fun. Some of the challenges have been pretty hard to come up with solutions for, but hey, that’s why they call them challenges.

So, today is the day that ends it all with a recreation of my favourite challenge.

It was a close race between two manis, but in the end I knew which one it was going to be. Have you guessed it already? I’m going to make the mani from day 21 again – inspired by a colour. Do you remember it? It was the day I let myself be inspired by a peacock.

So here we go again. I used Star Gazer 304 again, but this time I picked Maybelline mini Colorama “Electric Blue” for the other half of my gradient. I have so many blues in this shade that I don’t want any of them to feel left out!

Here’s my gradient – Star Gazer Bottle: 

 And here it is again – Maybelline bottle:

Perhaps you can see it’s a bit textured. That’s because of the sponging, and because I don’t have any top coat on yet. We know that there’ll be added glitter in a moment anyway!

Icing makes some gorgeous glitters, and “Lemme see your peacock” is definitely one of them. Clear base, loaded with green and magenta glitters! I dapped it on with the tip of my sponge – I still wanted my gradient to be partly visible.

Here’s the final result. The top coat is Poshé, my all time favourite!

And here’s a pic of the involved polishes:

Icing: Lemme see your peacock, Star Gazer: 304, Maybelline mini Colorama: Electric Blue

I’ve been in this challenge with other Danish girls, and I want to send a special thanks to all of them for taking the polish journey with me.Thanks girls, you're awesome!

Here they are:

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

That’s it. I’ve got another challenge in mind, but I’m not quite ready yet. I’ll keep you posted!

I hope you enjoyed my series of summer challenge manis. ♥ 

Summer Challenge Day 30: Inspired by a tutorial

Summer Challenge Day 30: Inspired by a tutorial

This is one of the challenges I’ve been looking forward to! I love tutorials! And especially the ones that state “It’s super easy”. I found a great one on YouTube, and let me show you the result I got out of it first: 

Neat, eh?

And here’s the tutorial I made it after. 

It reminds me a bit of retro wall paper, I think it’s really cool. I’m definitely going to try it out with different colours!

Here’s the colours I used. For the base I used two coats of Sephora’s “Summer in Bangkok”. It’s a turquoise/green shimmer polish, that’s got such a great formula. It’s easy to apply and almost opaque in one coat. Here is a pic of two coats, no top coat. 

Then I applied a bit of glitter. I used Funky Finger’s “Tinsel Town”, which is a green base with green and holographic glitters. The base is relatively dark, so my guess is that it can be used on its own, and that it would probably take 3 coats to make it opaque. But here’s a pic of that step. One coat of Tinsel Town over the Sephora. 

After that I added the stripes, black and white alternately. I used Claire’s “Two way nail art pen & brush” in black and white for that step. I didn’t take a pic after that step – it’s all in the YouTube tutorial after all :D

 

And then it was time for some dotting. I used Flormar 400, which is a plain white crème, and Flormar NA12, which is a black striper. I used a double sided dotting tool.

I must admit that I’m more than pleased with how this mani turned out. I know that my hand isn’t as steady as in the tutorial, but hey, practice makes perfect, right?

 

Which colours would be cool to make this pattern with? Like, Turquoise, purple and silver? Suggestions are more than welcome! <3

There are other Danish girls who also did a “inspired by a tutorial” mani today. I’m curious about which tutorials they followed, so why don’t we check their blogs out?

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel – that’s going to be the last challenge, and I’m going to recreate my favourite challenge. Can you guess which one it was?

Summer Challenge Day 29: Inspired by the supernatural

Summer Challenge Day 29: Inspired by the supernatural

This challenge takes us around a bit. From books to movies, from fashion to colours, and now to the supernatural.

The first thing that springs to mind when I think of the supernatural is ghosts.

So I started out my mani by making a Skittle.

I used 3 coats of Essence “Free hugs” for the pinky, 2 coats of H&M “Berry Love” for the ring finger, 3 coats of Funky Fingers “Curacao” for the middle finger, 3 coats of Wet n Wild “Sunny Side Up” for my index finger, and 3 coats of Viva la Diva “51” for sweet little tom thumb.

While I was polishing my nails, I suddenly discovered that the blue Funky Fingers polish is scented. It smells like caramels!

Can you see where this mani is going yet? No?

Then I took my dotter and added a little bit of  black here, a little bit of white there, and finished it off with a bit of blue in between, and here’s my final result:

 And here are the ghosts on their own:

Did you know that the little ghosts have got names? Well they do. Take a look:

Here are the base colours polishes:

Essence: Free Hugs, H&M: Berry Love, Wet n Wild: Sunny Side up, Funky Fingers: Curacao, Viva la Diva: 51 

And the blacks, white and blue for the details:

I think this mani is super cute - in all modesty, naturally! But I’m more interested in knowing what you think, so please do share your thoughts in the comments below :)

There are other Danish girls who also did a “inspired by the supernatural” mani today. Come with me and let’s check out their blogs and see what they came up with, shall we?

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel – for nails inspired by a tutorial! We’re approaching the end of this challenge now.

Summer Challenge Day 28: Inspired by a flag

Summer Challenge Day 28: Inspired by a flag

This is one of the challenges where I knew for sure exactly what I’d pick just as soon as I read the subject. A flag. It would be obvious to do the flag from your country, wouldn’t it?! But hey – I like to do things that aren’t that obvious, so I picked another flag.

I don’t know if any of you know this, but I love skulls. I think they’re really cool and pretty, so I just knew that the flag that should inspire me today should be the skull and crossbones flag that the pirates use: Jolly Roger.

I started out with two polishes from my stash of untrieds: Perceval from A England and Glitz Gal from Sally Hansen’s Gem Crush series.

Perceval is a stunningly beautiful red. It’s a shimmery one coater, and I love it. I’m so glad I chucked it into the shopping cart when A England had a promo sale! Glitz Gal required two coats, dried very fast and dried up glittery and gritty. I painted my pinky with Glitz Gal and all the other fingers with Perceval.

Indoor pic:

Then I added a coat of Uninhibited from L. A. Girl’s Glitter Addict series on my index finger. It’s a clear base packed with black glitter. It’s such a special topper and I absolutely love it!

 Then I taped half of my middle finger nail with masking tape and painted two coats of Glitz Gal before removing the tape again.

You might think now that there’s not much Jolly Roger in this…?  Patience, dear girls – I’ve got stamping coming up. But first I applied a coat of Sally Hansen Diamond Shine top coat, just to protect it all while I worked.

I used Essence Matte Black stampy polish and the large stamping plate K (holiday designs). I stamped the same skull on my ring fingers and my thumbs, and then I sealed it all up with a generous coat of my all time favourite top coat, Poshé.

Here’s the final result. My mani, inspired by a flag:

The polishes involved: 

Please tell me what you think of this. Do you like that the nails aren’t all the same?

There are other Danish girls who also did a “inspired by a flag” mani today. Do you think that they all made the Danish flag, Dannebrog?  Let’s check out their blogs and see, shall we?

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel – for nails inspired by the supernatural!

Summer Challenge Day 27: Inspired by artwork

Summer Challenge Day 27: Inspired by artwork

I’ve had a lot of trouble with the interpretation of this challenge. I mean… artwork? Hmmm. I can’t even make a straight line, let alone copy Leonardo Da Vinci! So I’ve been looking around, searching for inspiration, but it took me quite a while to actually nail this one.

Here’s my inspiration:

Melted crayons on canvas!

I’ve seen some other blogger girls making manis where they make it look as if the nail polish drip down from their cuticles, and I’ve been dying to try this forever! So I thought this was the perfect opportunity to just do it.

I started out with two coats of NYX “Acid Pink”, which is very pink with blue microshimmer. It’s neon alright! Formula was perfect – easy application, good coverage, a reasonable drying time. 

Sunshine pic: 

 Indoor pic: 

Then I painted my “drips” on with a thin brush and a dotting tool. I used L. A. Girl’s metallic nail polish “Millenium”, which is a great metallic purple. It’s a one coater, and it’s perfect for this purpose!

Here’s the final result. Sunshine pic: 

 Indoor pic:

 There are other Danish girls who also did a “inspired by artwork” mani today. I’m very curious about what they have used as their inspiration, so let’s check out their blogs, shall we?

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel – for nails inspired by a flag!

Summer Challenge Day 26: Inspired by a pattern

Summer Challenge Day 26: Inspired by a pattern

Patterns, eh? I googled patterns, and there’s quite a lot to choose between. After a lot of browsing, I decided to go for none of them :D 
Instead I went pattern-hunting in my own house. And after having browsed from room to room I ended up with something useful. I’ll get back to what it was at the end of this post.

The finished manicure ended up looking like this: 

 I used “Deeper Dive” by Spoiled. It’s a teal, shimmery jelly with small flakies in it, and it is opaque in two very easy coats. I love the polishes from Spoiled, even though the fat brushes can be a challenge to work with. Here are two coats of Deeper Dive – without any top coat on.

I stamped with a no name silver stamping polish and I used the bubble motif from Mash’s stamping plate #50. I really like how this mani came out! 

 Are you curious about where my inspiration came from? Or have you guessed it already?

Here’s my inspiration:

My shower curtain! :D

I had in mind to make the rings with a drinking straw dipped in polish, but my nails are too curved for that, even though I have never thought of them as particularly curved. I didn’t manage to make one single ring with the straw, no matter how hard I tried. So thank god for stamping plates, when everything else fails!

There are other Danish girls who also did a “inspired by a pattern” mani today. It’ll be very interesting to hear where they found their inspiration, so why don’t we check their blogs out?

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel – for nails inspired by artwork!

Summer Challenge Day 25: Inspired by fashion

Summer Challenge Day 25: Inspired by fashion

(- or “The Purple Bomb”!)

Following other people’s fashion just isn’t my kind of thing, so I had to depend on Google for this challenge. Again :D

I managed to find a picture that I could use as inspiration for this challenge. I forgot to write down where I found it – so proper credit will be given once I’ve found the pic on its original place again.

I started out with a gradient using three different purple polishes. I used Herôme “Canberra” as my base, as this was the lightest polish of the three. The other two polishes were L. A. Girl “Groupie” and E.L.F. “Party Purple”.

And from a different angle:

I’m wearing a coat of Poshé top coat on these pics.

And here are the polishes I used for the gradient: 

E.L.F. – Party Purple, L. A. Girl – Groupie, Herôme – Canberra

Then I took a thin brush and three different purple OPI polishes and started making brushstrokes of purple on my gradient. I used OPI Temptation first because I didn’t want the glitter to be prominent, then OPI Ink and OPI DS Original as the final holographic touch.

And here’s the result – after adding another coat of Poshé top coat.

And from another angle:

And a sunshine pic, to show off the holo: 

The polishes: 

OPI DS Temptation, OPI Ink, OPI DS Original

Here’s the picture that I got my inspiration from:

Can you see the resemblance? The mani didn’t quite turn out like I wanted it to, but I am quite pleased with the result anyway. Do you like it?

There are other Danish girls who also did a “inspired by fashion” mani today. I am very curious about what they came up with, so let’s check their blogs out:

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel – for nails inspired by a pattern!

Summer Challenge Day 24: Inspired by a book

Summer Challenge Day 24: Inspired by a book

Those of us who can’t freehand designs ourselves have to think differently when it comes to challenges. I find it hard to make my manicures be inspired by books, but I actually had a really cool idea to defeat this challenge. I wanted to make little note book pages on my nails. But after two attempts I just had to accept the fact: I just can’t (even) draw straight lines with striper brushes! Argh!

So I had to rethink this mani. I googled a lot, but nothing interesting or usable came up. I ended up standing by my bookcases, gazing at all the books, looking for some inspiration. And suddenly I found it – my inspiration. It’s a book I bought from the library. They sometimes sell some of their book to clear the shelves for some new ones. So this book about strawberries found it’s way to me: 

Jordbær means "strawberries" in Danish

 I have the perfect polish for a strawberry mani. But first it needs some underwear, and I chose to use an Essence polish, “Fateful Desire”, which is a nice red crème. I used one coat only, because it is only underwear. Here’s a sunshine pic of that beauty: 

Essence: Faithful Desire

Now for the new polish. It’s a polish from Sation, and it’s called “Miss Popular”. It’s from their “Class of Sation” collection, and it’s a clear base packed with two sizes of red glitter, and holographic hexagons and bar glitters.

I added one coat over the Essence, and here’s how it shines in the sun without topcoat: 

And here’s an indoor pic:

I really like this. You should of course know that I love glitter by now :D
But now for the final touch, the green stalk. I used Sinful Colors “San Fransisco”, which is a dark, very shimmery green. I painted the stalk on one of the strawberries with a striper brush.

I didn’t want stalks on all the strawberries, so I only did the ring finger.

 Please tell me what you think of this. Isn’t “Miss Popular” the perfect polish for the strawberry look?

There are other Danish girls who also did a “inspired by a book” mani today. I can’t wait to see what they came up with, so let’s check their blogs out:

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel – for nails inspired by fashion!

Summer Challenge Day 23: Inspired by a movie

Summer Challenge Day 23: Inspired by a movie

I absolutely love movies. I watch a lot of them, and I always have. There are lots of movies that I’d love to be inspired by, but since I totally suck at freehand drawing, I felt as if I had to rely on stamping.

I googled and looked at hundreds of movie posters before I picked which one I’d go for. I ended up letting myself be inspired by “Black Swan”, which is an American psychological thriller from 2010.

I used Flormar’s white crème as my base. It’s called 400 and I used two coats for desired opaqueness. It was easy to work with like all the other Flormar polishes I’ve got. I stamped with Wet n Wild’s “Black Crème”, and I used Bundle Monster stamping plate #214.

Here’s the result:

I was quite pleased with it, but kept feeling that something was missing. I added a coat of Daring Digits’ “Silver Dragon”, which the creator herself describes as a silver “flakie” topper. The silver glitters doesn’t show much in real life, but you can see them here on this pic of the finished mani:

I didn’t add a top coat because “Silver Dragon” dried up completely smooth and shiny. 

Here's the Black Swan trailer in case anyone's interested :) 

 

There are other Danish girls who also did a “inspired by a movie” mani today. I’m very curious about which movies they chose, so let’s check their blogs out:

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel – for nails inspired by a book!

Summer Challenge Day 22: Inspired by a song

Summer Challenge Day 22: Inspired by a song

It took forever for me to figure out how to overcome this challenge. Before I actually got to it, I thought it would be easy. I mean, I love music and there are so many songs to choose between. But to actually make it match a manicure, that was so much more difficult than I ever imagined.

But after hours and hours of thinking, I picked an old song from 1986, namely Madonna’s “True Blue”. The song is from her third studio album, True Blue, and it deals with the feelings for her then-husband Sean Penn.

I used another Flormar polish for this challenge, namely number 446 which is a shimmery, yet a bit of a dusty blue. I used two layers for full opacity.

Sunshine pic: 

Indoor pic:

And since this is a love song, I added some hearts. I used an indie-polish from Daring Digits called “Love Hurts”, which is a clear base with small blue glitters and larger blue and black hearts.

There was no need to go fishing for the hearts, they were loaded on the brush each time I dipped. I did arrange them a bit on my nails though, since some of them wanted to play on my cuticles. That’s not the polish’s fault though, but mine alone :D

Here’s one coat over the Flormar, and covered with a layer of my all time favourite top coat, Poshé.  

And here’s an indoor pic.

Here’s the official True Blue video. I think it’s so funny to watch videos made in the 1980s.

So that’s my mani inspired by a song. Did you like it? Do you like Madonna?

There are other Danish girls who also did a “inspired by a song” mani today. You should definitely check their blogs out to see what they came up with.  

• Neglelir
• Se min kjole
• Mette
• Life is a fairy tale
• Vicki's Polish

Stay tuned the day after tomorrow - same bat time, same bat channel – for nails inspired by a movie! I’ve begun thinking already!