A Japanese inspired konadicure

Written by Elisabeth on February 28, 2010 – 16:51 -

It’s been nearly a year now since my three weeks long vacation in the wonderfully confusing and quite spectacular country of Japan. I simply love Japan and miss it so much. Although I realise that I probably wont be going back for several years, me with a baby on the way and all.

Apart from watching every travel and food show on tv from Japan I can express my longing through a Japanese inspired konadicure followed by a cup of green tea.

My left hand

My out of focus right hand

 

This is three coats of Essie Ballet Slippers with images from Konad plate S9, Konad special polish used for stamping. I’m especially pleased with the kimono clad girl as that’s my very first multicoloured print.


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Water marbling

Written by Elisabeth on February 21, 2010 – 18:23 -

After an incredibly long blogger-hiatus I thought I needed a manicure with both some ooomph and pizzazz to re-enter with. It was either that or abandon this blog project all together.

This is my very first take on water marbling. I was inspired by CucumPear’s awesome water marbling in greenand after having watched about seven videos off youtube about the bothersome art of water marbling I decided to follow CucumPear’s example and start off with painting my nails in the base colour and then marble on top of that.

I thought this was way easier than I had imagined it to be, and cleanup was ok - I just used a cotton bud soaked in polish remover that I held in a pair of tweezers and a q-tip for the details.

For a first try I must say that I am immensly pleased with the result!


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NOTD - Matte about Carribean Blue

Written by Elisabeth on August 10, 2009 – 16:01 -

A couple of days ago I got Essie’s matte topcoat Matte about you in the mail. For a starters the name is adorable, but the best part is that this matte topcoat rocks! Today is the third day of wear (the forth day for the polish I mattified) and it’s just some slight tip wear. The finish is now more satiny, but still in the matte family and I have used lots of lotion and spent the better part of yesterday in the kitchen with some greasy abura age.

In the picture you can see how nice and matte Matte about you made my China Glaze Carribean Blue. It reminded me of those blue chalcs I used to draw on the pavement with when I was a kid.

Matte about you is the best matte top coat I have tried, and I love it! I highly doubt I’ll be sporting very many shiny manicures for the next few weeks; with a slight exception of a trip to Iceland (and I still haven’t decided on a mani for Iceland yet - it must be easy to combine with everything, yet be chic and cool as that is the only way to be in Reykjavik: Cool.). Also - at the first day of my new job (which is just two weeks away now) I’ll probably wear very traditional and more professional looking nails - I have to ease them into my nail polish obsession!


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Nails of Someday in the past - China Glaze, Who’s wearing what

Written by Elisabeth on August 8, 2009 – 15:11 -

This is absolutely a very pretty colour, it’s more subdued than what I usually wear, but sometimes all I want to see on my nails are these discreet colours that don’t scream out at anyone. So I’ve also put in a rather large order of sheer’ish polishes from Essie to broaden my Pretty Polish selection.

The picture is from a couple of weeks ago when I still tried to have long nails. The only problem with long nails is that my nails grow so incredibly fast and after just 3 weeks of OPI’s Nail Envy my nails were ridiculously hard. To top that off my nails curves a lot when they grow - you can see it partially on my thumb here, and it drives me insane because I go from perfectly nice tips to these tips that refuse to be shaped in a … uh… shapely manner faster than you can say “glass file“.

So now they are short again. I’m so fickle.

Anyways. The colour: Pretty, yes? Pretty, pretty, pretty.


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NOTD - China Glaze In the Lime Light

Written by Elisabeth on August 3, 2009 – 13:51 -

I guess I’m forgiven for this being the NOTD of Friday. Today’s NOTD is actually Essie’s Jelly Apple, but I’m not entirely happy with it - could be that it’s not as jelly’ish as I wanted it to be, or could be the gigantic smear on my right thumb since I was a huge klutz yesterday. Yes. Huge. I also burned my right hand on a cup of coffee (1/3 cup of coffee to be accurate, the rest managed to stay inside the cup). Anyways - Jelly Apple will accompany me on today’s sushi adventure, smear or no smear. I am totally beat after spending an hour at the gym with high intensity, that aerobics instructor of mine does earn her money’s worth!

So. Back to Friday. Friday was my last day at my job an I wanted to go out with some pizazz - a combination of so long and thanks for all the fish, I’m out of here, and let’s hope the grass will be greener at my new job. The Husband got to pick my colour and he went straight for China Glaze In the Lime Light.

And it was perfect!

Well, it would have been more perfect if it isn’t for the fact that I have a clumsy gene or something so I managed to get a dent in one of the nail. But, please, look beyond the dent and marvel in the hidden shimmer that this neon-dries-matte-is-transformed-by-top coat has! It’s marvellous and captivating and I spent large parts of my last day fluttering my fingers in front of my face with a happy sigh…


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NOTD - Orly Mint Mojito

Written by Elisabeth on July 19, 2009 – 19:23 -

Well, this is actually yesterdays NOTD. I was inspired by the sudden burst of summer (In  Norway we are always a bit shocked and overjoyed whenever we have actual summery weather during the summer months. It’s hard to live in the North…)

Recently I saw some pictures of MAC’s Peppermint Patti and my lemming for that particular colour came back in full strength. I had bought Orly’s Mint Mojito because it’s rumoured to look pretty much the same, but after comparing my nails to online pictures I think Mint Mojito is way greener. A pretty colour, but greener.

To make it even more summery and festive I put on some hearts and shimmer from a polish I bought on vacation in Japan. I think it looks great, but now that I have removed the polish I can see that my nails are severely discoloured where the hearts were. My nails look like I’ve been a heavy smoker for 40 years or something. I don’t even smoke!

Mint Mojito had great wear on me, I removed it today because I was bored of it not because it had chipped or anything, and I’v had in on since Wednesday. I have noticed thought that all my polishes seem to get better wear after I started using OPI’s Nail Envy under my regular base coat.


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NOTD - OMG! I’m Indi-a mood for love

Written by Elisabeth on July 15, 2009 – 20:19 -

OPI’s Indi-a mood for love is supposedly a dead on dupe for the pink in MAC’s limited edition Hello Kitty collection. Arguably, Indi-a mood for love does not have Hello Kitty on it, but it has a great formula and if you really really want Kitty on the bottle you can always slap a kawaii sticker on there!

For the konadicure part of this I used China Glaze OMG! I think it was a nice effect even if it was a bit more subtle than I had imagined it to be inside my head. But people have complimented this manicure so I guess it shows off enough.

I’m also beginning to be happy with the shape of my nails. I think they need a bit more work before I’ll be completely satisfied, but I’m on my way. I haven’t had long nails for a few years so it takes some getting used to.



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NOTD - Nfu-oh 54 - Matte version

Written by Elisabeth on July 8, 2009 – 16:46 -

A couple of days ago I tested my flakie polish nfu-oh 53 on top of a black base. The nfu-flakies are so beautiful and change all the time depending on how the light hits. Yesterday I put on some Orly Matte Top, a top coat designed to give polishes a matte satiny effect.

I must say the effect was most satisfactory, and I actually preferred it to the original with a coat of Seche Vite. The matte finish made my nails look like exotic rocks with shiny bits deep inside. Also the blue base became much more apparent.

For this picture I put a droplet of water on my finger to show more or less accurately the matte vs the shiny effect.


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