Top 5 Manis from 2014

Hey girls! As you know, I'm on a kind of hiatus because of my short nails, but I saw someone on Instagram posting their favorite manis of 2014 and thought it'd be a great idea for a post, so here we are. Today I'm going to share with you my favorite manis from this years that is almost gone now, some are here because of the skill put into them and the result and some were added because of sentimental value. So, in no particular order, here we go!

Summer Nails (November 2014)

I loved this mani because of the combination of colors and the matte neon glitter just scream summer to me, which is probably my favorite season. It's also the first mani where I used my new Topa Topa plates and loved how they stamp, plus Freckles by Polish me Silly is one of my favorites glitters ever.

Watercolor Birds (October 2014)

During this year I experimented a lot with stamping, using the decal and leadlight techniques, and here is my favorite experiment from the year. The background stampin sandwiched between a sheer polish and the OPI Sheer Tints made a beautiful watercolored kind of background for the black stamping, done with Moyou London's Mother Nature 02 plate, that I had been "lemming" for so many months.

The Color Run Splatter Mani (August 2014)

This is one of the mani I included because of sentimental reasons, although I do love the final result too. I did this one to conmemorate my first 5k participation, which was The Color Run. Since then I've been constantly training for the 5k (still can't run the whole way, but getting there!) and I've attended a few more running events. Picking up running is one of the best things that happened to me during this year, it's a great stress reliever :)

Nailart Inspired by a Pen (August 2014)

 I think this one is my favorite mani because of the level of skill it required, as it was all handpainted. Also because it combines two of my biggest hobbies currently: nail polish and fountain pens :) I love writing letter and journaling with different combinations of fountain pens and ink, there's something just so charming about those pens. I love the colorful ones, which can be hard to find, and this one with the bunnies is one of my favorites ever.

Happy Easter! (April 2014)

Finally, another one that was included for sentimental reasons. This was my Easter Day mani and it wouldn't mean so much if it wasn't because I did this one of my first meet-up with my nail polish buddy Ann. We found eachother by chance on a Facebook group ad quickly became close friends due to our mutual interest in nail polish, specially indies. She's been a constant inspiration and support and made my 2014 more awesome, so yay for friendship :)

And that's it! I hope you liked my little recap and I look forward to sharing more new mani with you in 2015! (I have an old one programmed to publish in a few days, but after that, I'll be posting new manis)

Thanks for reading and have a happy and safe New Year celebration! :)

Christmas Pudding Nails

Hey girls! I didn't mean for my christmas nailart series to only consists of two post but sadly, things happen. And the thing that happened to me was that I got a temporary position for a department store that just finished yesterday :) It was a great chance for me since I've never worked retail before and I learnt a lot, but my nails took a real hit, now I'm sporting super nubs and waiting for them to recovery a little before sharing manis again. Until that happens I have one last Christmas mani to share with you.

For this nailart I wanted to use all or most of the shades from the Lime Crime Les Desserts collection, which is one of my favorite collections of all time, and since those remind me of sweets I thought of doing a drip nailart combined with some mistletoe for a kind of non-traditional Christmas pudding look.

From my index to pinkie we have, as base: Parfait Day, Once in a Blue Mousse and Lavendiary. For the drip part I used Milky Ways and for the mistletoe Pastelchio and China Glaze Strawberry Fields.

I hope you all had a beautiful Christmas Days with your loved ones and hopefully Santa brought you lots of nail polishes to play with :)

Thanks for reading!

Nail Mail: Julep and stamping plates

Hey girls! How are you doing, getting into the holiday spirit yet? Today I have some nail mail to share with you. These are small buys that I did with some friends from a local group within a span of a few weeks. We live in different cities so when we do group buys we pile it up a bit and then the other girls ship us our stuff (which is cheaper than paying separate international shippings). And look who's making another appearance on the blog, my Pom named Puchi (pronounced Poo-she)

We are big fans of stamping in my group so when the girls wanted to order Sugar Bubbles and Vivid Lacquer I jumped at the opportunity to try some myself. I got SB022 and SB025. You know I love japanese patterns and the kokeshis were so cute! I also want to do a mani with the lady blowing the dandelion seeds, it was really popular on stamping groups a while ago. Then we ordered Vivid Lacquer of which I got VL024 and VL028 (steampunk patterns!)

And then I got some polishes too. These are my first Julep plus a new addition to my Butter London collection. The polishes are (L-R): Kimberly, Love, Kayla and Chuffed (the new version).

Anyway, I look forward to sharing these with you soon, maybe for January since I already decided to dedicate December to winter/christmas nailar :)

Thanks for reading!

Moyou 30k Recap

Back in the first week of November Moyou London announced yet another nailart contest on their Instagram account in honor of hitting 30,000 followers. The challenge was to upload a nailart inspired by a character from Alice in Wonderland, each week during November. This obviously seemed more manageable than the Rainbow Challenge, which was a daily thing, so of course I had to try my hand at it.

Today I'll be sharing with you my four entries for this challenge (which you might already seen if you follow me on Instagram).

First week was inspired by the Queen of Hearts. I was inspired by the design of the character from the classic Disney movie and added some partially painted white roses. I used mainly the Pro 04 plate with a little addition of Fashionista 05 and Topa Topa 04. As bases I used OPI My Vampire is Buff, Sparitual Spellbound and Colorama Amarelo Sol. For stamping I used Konad Black, White and Spellbound,

The next week was dedicated to the White Rabbit. I don't have any rabbit or clock images from Moyou so I had to get creative to get close to the theme. I used an image from Kaleidoscope 02 and free handed some arms to turn the image into a clock. I also used Hipster 02 for the bowtie and patterns from the Tourist 07 plate as backgrouds, everything else is freehanded.

Third week was dedicated to the Mad Hatter. I drew inspiration mainly from the character from the Tim Burton film portrayed by Johnny Depp by representing different parts of his outfit on my nails.  On my index I depicted the hat, with the baroque pattern and peacock feathers, on my middle nail I represented the bowtie. Then I added the famous 10/6 by hand painting and a hat pattern. For this nailart I used Tourist 07, Artist 02 and Hipster 02 plates.

And finally, we have Alice! I used mainly pastel yellow, light blue, black and white for this soft and cute nailart. I represented Alice herself, her outfit and parts of her journey in my entry. I used Artist 02 for Alice's face (which I painted in as a stamping decal) and for the backgroud swirls on my ring finger, Hipster 02 for the bow and hair in my index and the tea cup in my ring finger and Pro 04 for the roses.

Overall, I'm not really happy with how many of these turned out. Even though I had some nice ideas (like turning the Kaleidoscope image into a clock) my execution wasn't the best as I kinda rushes my manis because I didn't get any inspiration until the last minute. Honestly, at some times it felt more like a chore than a fun thing. However, I love my Alice mani because of the color scheme and how the stamping turned out, I think I did well in representing the character too.

Do you participate in nail art competitions? I try to participate in Moyou's contests whenever I have the chance, even though I haven't won anything -so far- I like that it makes me *really* look at my plates to come up with ways to acommodate the theme. 

Thanks for reading and see you on my next post!

Cardinal and jerseys

Hola niñas! Hoy les traigo un nailart invernal para ponernos a tono con las fiestas (aunque hace un calor de locos jaja). De bases usé Barry M Gelly Elderberry y Sparitual Spellbound y estampé los copos de nieve con la placa QA58 y para el diseño de jersey ocupé la placa Naliz Craze NC02, ambos estampados con Konad White. El glitter blanco con rojo es OPI Bearest of Them All. Y el pajarito cardenal fue pintado a mano. Y eso, simple y sencillo :) Espero les haya gustado y nos leemos en mi próximo nailart navideño!

Hi girls! Today I have my first Winter/Christmas nailart of the season. Where I live it's hard to get into the holiday spirit because Christmas for me it's in summer and instead of hot chocolate all I want to drink is icea tea.

NOT that Ice T

So I usually don't even think of Christmas until the day before when it's too late and too hectic to think of nail art, so this year I'm dedicating the whole month of December to wintery and jolly manis.

I knew I wanted to do light blue, red and white so I started with two coats of Barry M Gelly Elderberry which is a beautiful dusty medium blue that goes on perfectly and is opaque in two coats. To my pinky and ring fingernails I applied OPI Bearest of them All which is white micro glitter with red hexes in a clear base and Lynnderella Love Lace & Lilacs to my middle nail. On my index I used Sparitual Spellbound, a red microglitter jelly.

Then it was stamping time! I used QA58 for the snowflakes and Nailz Craze NC02 for the jersey print, both stamped with Konad Special White.

For the cardinal I did a nail art decal. Basically, I applied some topcoat on a ziploc bag and hand painted my design over it. Then, when it was fully dry, I carefully peeled off the design from the bag and stuck it to my nail, finished it off with a layer of topcoat and you can't hardly tell it wasn't painted directly. I loved this technique for doing free handed art, no more worries about painting with my non dominant hand!

Overal, I'm really happy with how this turned out, the color combination is cute and feels very winter-y to me. I don't know if cardinals wear jerseys, but these two images looked good together to me, so I went with it lol. Anyway I hope you liked it too and see you on my next post!

Nail Mail: ILNP Sale

Hi girls! Today I want to share with you some polishes I got from ILNP but I want to share it with you in a special way, in the style of Polish Hound Cait's Mail Time posts, where she takes pics of her incoming mail with her dog, Ham. I've been reading her blog for a while now and her posts with Ham are some of my favorites so I tried to do the same with my Pom (which didn't like to sit still for pics, so this was a real challenge LOL).

I placed this order during the last ILNP sale which happened around the first week of November. Some days later I got the shipping notice and from there, it was only a matter of patience. My polishes arrived finally on November 30th (which was odd, I never get mail on a Sunday). My new polishes came wrapped in the ILNP tissue paper and bubble-wrapped together inside.

I ordered mostly holos since I could never set my mind on the multichromes, but it's OK I already have some of them and I've been wanting a light blue and medium blue holo.

I ended up ordering (L-R): Music Box, Peace (H), Summer Stargazing and Atomic Sherbert. I'm in love with Music Box and Summer Stargazing, and look forward to wearing those. I'm a bit disappointed with Atomic Sherbert as I thought it'd be a bright orange holo, but it's still pretty.

I look forward to sharing with you manis featuring these shades in the future. Also, did you like the inclusion of my pup in these posts?

Thanks for reading!