Minty Holland

Hey-yo,

today I have got only simple mani with the new Winstonia plates. W218 has very cute tulips and not less cute wind mills, so I couldn't resist and stamped them right away after the world cup. :) By the way Holland is on the third place after all. You can see this mani as a little tribute for it.

Only by chance I learned from a friend, that the mint colour were the trend this season. Essie offers a beautiful gentle mint, but I saw essence 146 that's what I mint! and couldn't tell the difference between shades of the two.

And the finish is made with p2 simply matte top coat from the limited edition RED I love u!

Pastels

Hey ho and all heil spring!

The sping came this year early, even our sakuras have ceased blooming, although they usually bloom about middle of April. Anyway the mood is springlike and AiS (FB group Adventure in Stamping) challenges us to use pastel tones today.

And here we are:
Butterflies and butterfly wings (Bundle Monster BM-424 and BM-307) with several Catrice LE's and grey stamping colour by essence.

Unfortunately the grey contour is slightly translucent, and I noticed it clearly only on pictures :((.

Green

The theme green from the GOT Polish Challenge.
I wanted to participate all the time, but the timing was far from being perfect and I did miss it every week. But this time...
I have got some nice green shades, and the oldest of them is the lightest pastel green color with silver mini-glitter. It's Grunge me tender! from the essence limited edition floral Grunge.

The next stripe is catrice Green Days (limited edition Hip Trip).
Over the middle intense green I placed the stripes made in decal technique with chrome light green by Artdeco and also long time owned Voyeuristic Green by alessandro. The image is from Bundle Monster BM-306.

Borders are decorated with green striping tape.

Essence Love Letters

Essence has released the new limited series: Love Letters with nail polishes, even with one new stamping polish!  Also there is mattifying paper among some other products.

And a new stampy set. I already have two of essence "stampy sets" and didn't wanted another one, but the stamping plate was worth it.

Lets see, what I could do with the Love Letters.
"Background" text is from Bundle Monster BM-405. Other images come from the new essence plate. The images are stamping well, what is not always the case for essence plates. Dark gray stampy polish works also perfectly.

Some images are like "stamps" on envelops: they have "worn" edges. I stamped them also with a violet polish by Ives Rocher, which looks like stamp ink.

Three Blues

Challenge on Adventures is Stamping: Mani using three blues.
Man, was that hard to choose only three of blues! Blue is one of my favorite colours anyway, I've got many shades, but not every of them qualifies for stamping. First thought was about some snowy motives, but I already used them for an other challenge, so I took just some paisleys and filled them with colour.

Base: 010 frosted mint by p2 from Snow Kissed collection. Stamping: Konad ultramarine, Konad light blue and essence 158 if i were a boy. For two accent nails I prepared stamping decals with Dashica SdP-39 plate. There are also if I were a boy, Konad light blue and IsaDora 684 Dazzling Acqua in decals. The other motives are from three essence plates (it's a shame they don't have any serial numbers, no idea how do distinguish them...) And some glitter. Blue, of course.
For decals I used also Catrice Gel Like top coat. It was pretty good, but still a bit smearing images... I hoped to find a substitute for Seche Vite, but Seche is still the best top coat in terms of stamping.

Black to the Roots

Another shade of the series floral GRUNGE is entitled "The Rough", what you feel after the polish dried completely. It becomes the matte finish with a little rough surface due the tiny silver glitter particles. The colour is very dark grey, almost black, maybe that's why the colour is listed as "Black To The Roots".

I could imagine this polish as component for "galaxy" manis or alone of course.

Once more close-up view.

Bunny Love

Easter is over and everything is sold for half the price at least. How couldn't I buy these cuties? Two sweet golden bunnies and a pink heart made of the finest Lindt chocolate are framed by a nice box with flowers and butterflies.

I felt the urge to recreate this design on my nails. The base is essence floral GRUNGE Lily Bloom. Then I painted the heart with a pink metallic polish (IsaDora 629 Icy Purple looks exactly like pink foil). Because I wanted the bunnies filled with colour I did them like stamper decals.

On my thumb and pinkie I stamped various floral and butterfly patterns from essence and cheeky plates with the same pink and golden polishes.

The next step was to paint the golden border on the nail tips. I set pink and golden dots between the thin and thick golden parts. And a top coat over all.

Floral Grunge

I didn't expect that essence brings their next limited edition so soon. But here you are: 

It's called floral GRUNGE. I bought only three colours of five. Coral and lila were not that interesting.

The white one with the name LILY BLOOM is pearly white with very fine light pink and golden shimmer:

I am not sure if my picture can show any of shimmering... The polish is opaque, but you get the better look with at least two coats.

The next polish is minty GRUNGE ME TENDER.

It has more distinguishable shimmer, which I would call blueish and silvery. I think, the cosnova is very into shimmers, because almost everything they release these days for essence or catrice contains shimmer.

And when we combine the two:

The idea of final look was something like that:

But it didn't work out well. I used some lace stickers also by essence, but for french manicures. I struggled to get them right in the line and ruined most of my nails. :(

Water Colour

Day 15 of Laid Back 31 Day Challenge - Water Colour.

Water colour is a technique to thin down drops of colour polishes with acetone so that they look like watercolour. The base is usually white. I did it also over white. I don't own pure acetone, so I took polish remover with acetone instead. Maybe that was the reason, but watering down war probably not watery enough or the polish would get thicker too soon, so that the colours are not homogenously smooth. The thin top coat by p2 (glamorous FINISH nail art top coat), that I don't normally use because it tends to smut my stamping if it's done with intense dark colours, helped a little to smooth the areas of different colours and kind of blended them.

To smoothen colours even more I used another top coat by p2 - silver matte.

And then I thought that in this purply mist some mystic "fern" should grow: it's one of the first essence stamping plates and Insta-Dri Blazing Blue:

Cheer Up Mani

Day13 of Laid Back 31 Day Challenge - Cheer Yourself Up Mani

To cheer up you need something sparkly, funny and bright. So I found a good occasion to use the essence nails design kit "Vintage District" with their big blue glitter:

One of my favourite colours is turquios. So I painted all nails with "boat trip" by p2. Unfortunately my camera doesn't do a good job for some colours like turquios or pink.

My accent nail has stripes of misslyn "heaven on earth", butter LONDON "Victoriana" and Golden Rose matte blue (maybe 10 is a number of that shade, but I'm not sure).

Then I planted a glitter per a stripe so that I've got another stripe across the tricoloured stripes.

Purple

Laid back 31 days challenge. Day 5 - purple.

I wanted to try striping tape mani which was done by someone for Christmas themes. There is alessandro Dramatic Blossom as base, alessandro Midnight Rebel, Misslyn las vegas and essence topper 03 Crazy in Love from "hugs & kisses" over the base.

Pink

It's too late again, but here we are: 12th of February with pink.

It's practically Valentine's Day, so pink and some hearts are predestined to be on my nails. I used the essence polish from the series "hugs & kisses" Sugar Baby Love. I' am not sure, how do I get the right shade of pink/red etc. polishes with artificial light, any suggestions?

And of course there are hearts with glitter, rhinestones and tiny pearls ("caviar"?).  Some reviews on these pearls stated that the pearls tend to get off the nail. I am curious how long would they stay on... I sealed them with Seche Vite, although I liked the look without sealing more. The pearls had their own texture and matte shine.