Cupcakes are for Sweeties

My daughter's cupcake nails - for people's right to express themselves on their nails :)

Referring to Don't Touch My Cupcake! by Trincess

Snowflakes on Ice

I've been gradually building this snowflake look over the weekend. I first removed the old polish on Friday and made the maintenance care with buffing and all and put the base coat. Then on Saturday I painted a coat of Baby Blues and on Sunday finished it with second coat of it + added Ticklish Toes by Wild and Crazy for the shimmer. Today I finished the look with rubber 3D stickers and a coat of Nubar Diamont. Have to squeeze in the nail care whereever I can before the baby calls for attention again LOL

Here's a close up on the nails. I really like these stickers for they seem thick enough to last on the nail yet they are bendy enough to follow the shape of the nail. After the top coat I pushed the few bubbles it had with a toothpick. Got to thank toothpicks for making me fall in love with nail art in the first place and sticking with it through the rough spots :)

This is actually the same color I used on the  icicles but it looks so differend with shimmer and indoors when the warm toned lighting hits it.

I guess I am in a blue mood looking back the past few manicures! When I went through my subscriptions I noticed his has been a blue Monday for many: for example Bregje sported a beautiful dark konadicure on Oooh, Shinies! and Nihrida added another blue polish to my wishlist with a brand I´d never heard before on her blog.

Thanks for stopping by!

Crowned tips with Tristam

This was my second play date with Tristam by A-england. The first one ended up with ugly sheet marks... So to minimize the possible damage I painted just the tips this time around. That way I could get away with just one coat of polish. "Crown your hands and feet" it says on the bottle, hence kind of crowned french it was. As a base I used Angel Touch (Enkelin kosketus) by Lumene Quick & Chic.

The holo is very beautiful in this. But that´s about all the good words I can put up for this. First time I used it I put on two coats and waited hours before going to sleep. No other polish has let me down like this. When I woke up in the morning the surface was so uneven I could barely look at it let alone take pictures. It looked like deep blue mess.

Painting just the tips this time was a safe way since the consistency is very runny. It doesn't really resemble lacquer at all. It´s so thin it drips down the brush... In a way it enables nail art very well - you take a few drops on a plate and take some on the dotting tool and the drops don't dry too fast so you have time to complete the whole set of nails with it. But it doesn't cover all that well. It's pretty with one coat if you don't look too close - from the backside against the light it looks a bit like water coloring. There you can see the thickness (or lack of it) from the shadow it makes. It looks nice and shiny on the surface now but I feel half-done when I know the color is not even.

I expected so much more from all the raves I've read. I don't have time to paint great many layers and hold my hands up in the air waiting for it to dry. Maybe I got a bad bottle, who knows, but for a polish in this price range I feel really let down. I have to be honest, this is my biggest disappointement to date.

Good news is we just got our first snow! The weather's not cold enough to let it cover the ground but I managed to shoot some evidence before it melted away :)

Have a fun weekend!

Waiting for Snow

The first snow should come this week. It's been such warm few months it's hard to believe Christmas season has begun (in stores). To get in the mood I wanted icicles on the nails. I decided to do a reverse version of my fire nails (seen here) and switched to cool toned colors and upside down design.

The only rays of light I caught...

I used Baby Blues by Models Own for the base color, intense blue from Nail Star for the icicles, lined them with Enamel Art 1000 multi-glitter, filled them in with Twilight Matte by Nubar and finally laid a coat of Rimmel Matte finish to even it all up.

Here´s a close-up. I really like the effect Nubar Twilight Matte brought. Now I think maybe some shimmer on the base would've been more pretty than a plain background. Still glad I tried Baby Blues mattified. It looks so flawless it´s hard to believe I put just one coat of it on each nail!

Last night I had a dream where I was to participate in oral examination. As an extra task I was asked to present my nails. They were appalled for there were stains from dark polish on the back of my nails. I don't remember having nail-dreams before. Dreaming of nail polishes, sure. But nail designs being reviewed, no. In a dream I also had to read two poems but for the other one I had only ques for words and no real poem to read. I was sure I had failed and told everyone I'd take the test again next month with a new nail design LOL

I've been wearing this look for almost full 5 days without a crack. I'm really not sure what it is that makes polish last on me for so long?!

Have a great week!

New Layout and Dynamic View

I've been going though new layout options in Blogger and ended up really loving "Dynamic View" - especially Magazine-view. However, it is so dynamic there are no options for sidebars. So I couldn't fit GFC or Bloglovin or any other means of subscribing in it. So I'm back with the old template. Back with a new banner and an updated color theme :)

While playing with Blogger I found that you can visit any blog in a dynamic view. Just try it: add view/magazine after the home url-address. Like in my case http://doo-polishing.blogspot.com/view/magazine. I love how professional it looks. It lets the pictures do talking. Note that this requires latest version of a browser you´re using.

I added this dynamic view-link on the tabs too. There you can select from seven options which way you want to view it. The default view is my favorite: Magazine (see the pic above). You get the main idea of all the latest posts in a single view and can click each post to read more. Snapshot brings you all the pics published on the blog, on the same page. Sidebar lets you in on all the articles in a single view on the left sidebar. Flipcard shows all the posts as clickable thumbnails. There are also Classic, Mosaic and Timeslide views. I think I will be using these views when I visit new blogs, to get a better overall idea of them :)

Have you tried dynamic views? What do you think about them?

CC She's So Glam and update

Long time no pink! I reached for my box of un-used and grabbed She's So Glam by Color Club and butterfly nail sticker from my latest haul. I used 3 coats to get even finish, which is a lot for me. Top coat needed for a quicker drying (Diamont by Nubar). True candy pink color, very girly and fun. Not my favorite application-wise.

I wanted something simple over it so I just dotted a row with pearl white and put a pretty rubber sticker on one nail. I love dotting with pearl white because it reflects light so nice.

 Here's a clutch bag my daughter made for me today. I wanted to pose with it right away :)

I´m working on changes on the layout of the blog. Don´t be alarmed if things look a bit strange while you visit. I´ll add more pages (tabs) under the banner, more refined tags etc. I'm not a big fan of having to click each post open separately but this new template does the pictures more justice. I hope you like it too.

Thanks for stopping by :)

ELF Mint Cream + with holo on top!

Here's Mint Cream by ELF , my second favorite from ELF nail lacquers. It's thick and pigmented like Coral, but this one is plain creme with no shimmer. Really lovely, fresh and bright on its own. Two coats provide perfect coverage. Here shown alone with no top coat.

However I longed for some shimmer. With all the great self-made holographic polishes out there lately I decided to fill in the void in my holo collection with trying a mint-holo! Glitter Gal's Light as a Feather (supposed to be a white holographic polish) was very sheer so it seemed like a good idea to layer it over a pigmented polish.

Here it is under (very limited) natural light. It toned down some brightness - though not as much as I feared - and replaced it with fine holo shimmer. There is no sun to speak of, so I had to use a flash to capture it better:

It´s so unfair the Glitter Gal is the most expensive polish I've bought (compared to the tiny size of it) and now it could be my way to holy holoness! I'd love to try this over anything but I fear I'll use it up and I must save it for when the sun comes back. That means months of waiting...

I´ve never tried holo top coats but for what I've seen on swatches the holo is much coarser on them and doesn't really translate the finish into a holographic one. So I'm more than happy with what I got with pairing up these two :)