China Glaze Surfin' for Boys

China Glaze Surfin' for Boys was part of this years summer neons collection. It's a bright orange with a slight coral tinge to it, maybe because if the pale lilac shimmer in it. This is basically the color of the safety vest you keep in your car. Also, traffic cones and reflective biking equipment come to mind. What I mean to say is, this color screams for attention. 

The formula was great. It leveled itself beautifully, was a bit sheer on the first coat but dried fast so you could add a second one right after you're done with your second hand, and left you with a satiny finish. I prefer it shiny, so this is two coats in the sun plus top coat.

And here we have the same thing indoors under artificial lighting. What keeps me from wearing it more often, is the settling shimmer.

This is after a little more than 10 min solid shaking. You can still see the shimmer accumulated in the bottom of the bottle. As this is about as patient as I ever get, I just painted my nails at that point anyway. 

Vigorous shaking before every application no matter how I store it is sort of annoying, but I'm glad I have this color for those days when I need a really bright pick-me-up.

I spy.. Essie A-Crewed Interest with an accent

This quick and easy manicure was inspired by a cute eye print dress that Moschino Cheap & Chic came out with this fall. I saw it in a magazine and basically put it on my nails right away.

The main color is Essie A-Crewed Interest, with Essie Cute as a Button as accent on my ring finger nail. 

A-Crewed interest is a heavenly, light, creamy, peach color, and the formula is as bad as the color is beautiful. I used it several times and this is the first time it turned out somewhat even without any frustrations. I was genuinly surprised when I was finished, and hope to reproduce this success in the future. What worked for me was applying a thin coat first, that ended up terribly streaky. A second medium coat after the first one was dry almost eliminated the streaks and then a third, thin coat gave me the covarage I wanted. 

Cute as a Button was flawfree after 2 coats, but still a little sheer, so I added a third one there aswell. 

After I topcoated everything, I got out my nail art brushes and just drew a simplified eye on the ring finger with Jordana Black Charm nail polish. The general shape was made with a small bent brush, not unlike the one I line my eyes with. I guess muscle memory took over and my hand basically made the upper lashline by itself ;) I also used that brush for the iris. 

To get the lashes nice and feathery, I used a striping brush an just added lashes until they lookek full enough for me.

I think this is a really fun and cute mani, and that it has the best effect when the eye is used as an accent. Not painting an eye on every nail also saves you a lot of time, so it's relatively quick to do with a great impact. 

31 Day Challenge, Day 01: Red

Here to kick off the first day of my first Nail Art Challenge ever is P2 Charismatic along with Kiko #227. 

I bought Charismatic a couple of years ago when I was still living in Germany and had access to this marvelous brand of nail polish goodness. P2 do really great nail polish, they're formulas are good, they get out new colors often enough and the price is almost unbeatable for the polish you're receiving. 

As soon as I got it out of my drawer, I thought of lush, shiny, velvet sofas. The shimmer in this polish really gives it a lot of dimension and I do think together with the stamp my nails look like tufted cushions :)

I stamped an image from the BM-310 plate with Kiko #227, which is a blackened burgundy color. 

I'm super happy to participate in this Challenge, and that I can cross the first day off my list! What do you think off my tufted nails? 

The 31 Day Challenge

I'm so excited!

I just looked at a couple of my favorite nail blogs (because honestly, what else is there to do on a friday night?) and discovered that a lot of bloggers are going to take on the 31 Day Challenge. Starting September, or, you know, 53 minutes ago for me in Spain. 

I loved looking at the Challenges and how all the participants are coming up with different manis under the same theme, and I'm super happy that I can take part this time.

This is a really cool opportunity to get out of my comfort zone and try things I usually wouldn't do, for example water marbling. Every single one of my attempts ended in frustration thus far, so mastering that would be a huge accomplishment for me. 

Also, posting 31 Days consecutively might get a little stressful, but the kick in the butt I need to get this blog into gear. 

Lucky coincidence, just yesterday my Bundle Monster 3 stamping plates arrived! I can't wait to play with them. All in all, I think this is going to be a great month and I'm ready to get started.

Here are the themes for the Challenge:

*** I'm fully aware that September only has 30 Days, but I'm looking forward to posting my favorite mani on October 1st :)