31 Days Challenge #9 - Rainbow

This one was easy, I knew exactly what I wanted to do!

I started with 2 coats of Purple Professional #32, then, on my accent nail, I placed some striping tape and then painted each remaining space with the rainbow colours. For this I used Kiko 334 (2 stripes), Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Good to Grape, O.P.I Fly, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Limewire, Sally Hansen  Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow, Basic #291 and Andreia #40 (2 stripes).

Some stripes don't look perfect, but I'm happy with this, I think it looks cute! xD

31 Days Challenge #6 - Violet

I have a confession to make...this one was done in a hurry, I wanted to go to the beach this afternoon, but I had to paint my nails before going. I tried to stamp, but it didn't work that well, so today I have something really simple. :S

I used 2 coats of Sally Hansen Good to Grape and 2 coats of Catrice Forget-Me-Not on my accent nail. Both of these polishes have great formulas, I used Good to Grape on my toes several times already, and it never disappoints. Forget-Me-Not also stamps really well.

What does everyone think about my nubbins? I feel so weird without my longer nails, but my ring fingernail has a major breakage ("fixed" with the tea bag method) and so low that I can't file it all the way down, then I broke a corner on the nail of my pointer finger...had no choice but to chop them down.

Rainbow Challenge Day 3 - Yellow

I like yellow on me and I just found this out recently, when I got a neon yellow for review. I used to think it was one of those colours I would never wear and I bought one just to use in nail art.

This is what I had on my nails when I decided to enter this challenge, so I've been saving this photos to post on this day, as I only have one more yellow and it was posted here already.

I did this manicure for one of the portuguese FB groups, the theme for that week was animals and I came up with an owl. xD

This is 3 coats of Mellow Yellow by Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear, topped with another 2 coats of Whimsical by Revlon. That's a lot of coats, but moving on to the photos:

For this I used:
- Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear Mellow Yellow
- Revlon Whimsical
- Revlon Colorstay Coastal Surf
- Eyeko Rain
- Andreia #19
- Dotting tools
- Head pin
- Nail art brush
- Paper reinforcements

Again, not my style, but I'll admit I have so much fun making stuff like this!

Once again, here's the list of all the girls taking part of this challenge:

 ~on beauty stuff and what else's...~

9ml universe (you are here)

atlcatsmeow 

Captivating Claws

Fancy Phalanges

Fe's Nails

Follow the Yellow Polish Road

Football and Fingernails

Fresh Air & Fashion

Happy Nails

iHeartPrettyPolish

Jolien's Kingdom of Polish

Kelly's Kolors!

Lacquer Dreams

Lacquer or Leave Her! 

Liesl Loves Pretty Things

Light Your Nails!

Manicurity

My Life In Polish

nailpolish is alive(:

Nail Polish Lane

Nail Pron

Nubbin Nails

Of Color n Music Passion for Polish Polish and Such

Sincerely, Obsessed with Polish

So You Think You Can Paint

The Rantings of a Nail Polish Hoarder 

To Polish or Not?

How to ruin a perfectly good gradient

With all the beautiful gradient manicures showing up everywhere lately, I wanted to try it again, using at least 3 different colors, this time. I went with purples.

 From left to right:

• Essence Twins Julia
• Claire's (no name...I hate how Claire's nail polishes have no name or number here)
• Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure #409 Good to Grape
• Kiko #334

This was my second attempt at a gradient manicure and I was quite pleased with it, I didn't have any rough visible lines between each colour and I thought it looked pretty cool! That is, until I put glitter on top of it, then I hated it...Another manicure that didn't last long...

Rainbows! Rainbows everywhere!

Eeek! What have I done? xD

A while ago I ordered some cheap nail art brushes from Deal Extreme and after 3 weeks of waiting, they finally arrived on friday, but I had no idea of what to do with them at the time. Then, this past sunday, I was bored and saw that one of the FB groups I'm in is having a weekly "contest" and this week's theme was rainbows! I wanted to take part in it and it was also a great excuse to try out my new brushes and also get me out of my confort zone.

After going through my nail polish stash, trying to pick some colours, I realized that, in 109 nail polishes, I didn't have any oranges or a light blue that I could use for the sky! That left me no choice but to mix my own and that was a completely new experiencie for me. It went kind of ok, but the formula of my base colour sucked balls! xD Seriously, it was the hardest thing ever to apply.

Here are all the colours I used:

 For the base colour I mixed:

• Revlon Colorstay #170 Coastal Surf

• Yolizul 164 (used it for the clouds too)

 Yay! I did a rainbow with all 7 colours! xD
Here's what I used (following the colours of the rainbow from red to violet):

• Andreia #40
• The orange was a mix between the previous one with the yellow
• Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear #27 Mellow Yellow
• Sally Hansen Hard as Nails #620 Limestone
• Essence Colour & Go # 55 Let's Get Lost
• Kiko #334 
• Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure #409 Good to Grape

 And here is how my rainbows looked like:

 

It looked cute, turned out better than I expected, but soooooo not my style! Obviously, I took it all out the next day...

O.P.I Fly and Stamping Failure #1

Obviously, the first polish I wanted to try, after the reddit swap, was O.P.I Fly. 
The only other O.P.I I own belonged to my mom and it is really old! It's Happy Anniversary and I barely use it. I had to see if the brand was as good as everyone says it is and if they are worth the price (here, they cost 16.90€, that's around $22 for a bottle). 

Well...the polish was awesome! Good pigmentation, awesome formula, the brush is amazing and makes application so easy. Damn you, O.P.I! Why did you have to be so expensive and so awesome? So out of my budget... -.-'

I wanted to try my new stamping plates as well, but boy, did I fail! xD I applied top coat before stamping, because I wanted my nail polish to dry faster and that was a complete mistake! The stamp wouldn't stick to my nail like that, and when it did, it was barely visible, so I grabbed a toothpick and decided to freehand it using the lines I was able to stamp as a guide.

This was what came out of this adventure, it's pretty crappy though. xD

 Natural light in this picture

 This is Sally Hansen #620 Limestone

Did I do too bad on the leopard print? xD

I think this reminds me of easter...

 Hi everyone! Welcome to the new followers too. :3

I'm tired!! D: Spent the last 30min replying to everyone's comments on the giveaway post. Never had so many comments, so thanks to everyone who took their time to write to me, some really made me smile.

I was feeling inspired by soft, springy colours, so I picked up a muted green, a lilac and a yellow and went for a taped mani with some diagonal stripes. I think I ended up with an easter themed manicure. xD What do you girls think?

The colours used were Kiko #349, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow and a nameless Claire's nail polish and to make this I just painted my accent nail with the lilac, cut some tape in thin bits, positioned them diagonally over my nail and painted the free spaces with the other colours. It really is that simple and easy!

Green Spring Marble

Spring is coming! I can feel it already...my allergies have started. The awfull cough, the sneezing, the clogged nose...Funny how you can spend 27 years of your life allergy free and then one cold changes everything...This past year was awful in terms of allergies, the cough keeps coming back, the slight asthma too, and whenever I have to take the damn pills for it, I feel like I need to sleep all day...but I digress.

Spring, time for greens and lovely pastel colours! The weather has been warmer lately (I even felt too hot today and it was only 18C outside xD), and to go with it I determined it was time to try my two new greens and mixed both of them by marbling my accent nails. So without further ado, here it is:

 

Left accent nail in detail

 Right accent nail in detail (the top coat caused a bit of dragging here)

I used Gosh Forest Floor on most of my nails, it's a beautiful dark green, completely perfect with 1 coat, but I used 2 anyway, and for my accent nails I used Sally Hansen Polar Bare, Myio Grape and Gosh Forest Floor as well.

Blurry pic, sorry, but only noticed it after taking all the pictures and didn't feel like doing it again.

Loved the colours, loved how the marble came out, was just so happy with this entire look, but my awesome Mavadry top coat is too tick to be used and I had no choice but to go with the only other top coat I own, it's from Claire's, and it's pretty crappy...Took ages to dry, dragged a bit of the colours in the marble (even if they were already dry when I applied it), the next day I woke up with some bed sheet marks, nothing serious but it was still there, and then after 1 day and a half, I bumped my middle left finger in a frying pan and this is the result:

so now I have a crack on my nail polish, from one side to another! That never happened to me before, it didn't peel, it's still holding on, but that crack has got to go!! Think I'll just repaint that nail.. xD 

Top coats...this is how we find out how important a GOOD one really is important, they make all the difference.

Valentine's Day Water Marble

  I wanted to do something cute and differente on my nails for Valentine's Day, but had no idea of what to do.

  I tried to do something like this on my accent nail, but without nail art brushes or a dotting tool, it was like mission impossible! Tried to do the white line with tape and the dots with a tooth pick and a pen only to hate it in the end and I really had to take it off. It was so crappy! xD After an entire afternoon of trying and failing I finally gave up and went with a water marble on my accent nail.


  Here's the result! (Sorry for the dry skin, but this winter has been hard on my hands and skin, I feel that I'm all peeling. Not good...)

 

Right hand

Left hand

 

Right hand's marble in detail. Had some trouble with a few annoying

 water bubbles getting trapped under the polish. (eeek!! Ugly ugly dry skin there!)

Left hand's marble in detail.

I really love how this one turned out, so pretty *-*

Nail polishes used:

 

 Miyo #26 - Pacific

Risqué - Possessão Rosa
Sally Hansen #120 - Polar Bare

The only thing I didn't really like in this manicure was how different the pink turned out in both marbles, it's a lot darker on my left hand...Oh well, maybe I'll do better next time.