It's the final tri-polish Tuesday of February and after several uninspired weeks I've finally got some nail art I'm actually pleased with! I used the same grey and pink as for the other tri-polish manis this month and added a bit of glitter, which unfortunately doesn't show quite as well on the pictures as it did in person (and even then it was subtle). Huh, who knew subtle glitter was a thing?

I made this a while ago for my niece's birthday - she loves elephants (and balloons!) and enjoyed looking at my nails. I really liked this mani and was sad when I had to take it off again for an appointment where it wouldn't have been appropriate. (It is a sad day when elephants are inappropriate.)

I'm not sure what it is about them that makes them so endearing, but elephants are the best! Don't you agree?
Check out the linky below for more grey, pink and brown! Next month's colours are green, blue and purple. Want to play?

Captain Elephantnails

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Hi!
Today's post is a bit of a hodge-podge of several things: Nail art, giveaway winner and a few words about modeling contests.

I've been seriously off my game in the regular nail art department - it's either something huge and crazy or nothing at all. My last attempts at dotting and sponging turned out disgusting. That and the lack of time are the reasons I haven't been contributing to all the great challenges going around this year. But finally it's time!

Here's my contribution to the Nail Art Ideas Linkup challenge for this week: Red. This challenge is hosted by Craftynail, Brijit's Digits and Eeek! Nail polish! and there's a different theme every week.

 

I made what is apparently called a "waterfall" mani with a bunch of red polishes. It was fun and easy to make and made me feel better about my nail art. Make sure to check out the other contributions in the linky below!

Red :

Next, my giveaway winner. I drew a name early this week using the highly sophisticated method of a list (first the original post, then the reminder post, in the order of commenting) and a randomizer. The lucky winner was Alice Beerland, who has already replied to my mail and chose the beauty package. Congratulations again! I've added a few small extra surprises for you and I'll get it to the post office next week.

I hope you all enjoyed getting to know my blog (if you didn't already).

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

And now a bit of a warning: You'll be seeing more than the usual number of German posts here for the next couple of months because it's that time of the year again - Germany's Next Top Model (a knockoff of America's NTM, hosted by Heidi Klum) has started.

I know, I know, it's all staged, the model business objectifies women, detrimental to body image and exploitation of hopeful young girls. I agree completely.

Please do not watch this kind of show if you have any kind of self-esteem, body image or eating issues. If you do watch it, please remember that the body shapes demanded by the modeling business are far from the norm and that photos and videos can be manipulated, and often are. Do not starve yourself. Do not neglect everything else to become a model. Do not despair if you're not tall, or don't have gorgeous hair, or don't conform to the beauty standards set by the industry. You are beautiful. Everybody is beautiful. Who you are matters so much more than how you look. Take care of yourself (your body and your mind) and love yourself.

Honestly, I think it's awful that 10-year-olds watch these shows and want to be like the girls they see there. I think it would be a good idea to ban them, along with all the other shows and ads that can give people unhealthy ideas of what a body should look like.

However, all that said: If you are confident in your body, if you are aware it's just a show, that much of it is scripted, that we only see a selective slice of reality, and if trashy TV is your guilty pleasure, enjoy these shows. Just don't take them seriously.

So yes, it is my guilty (very guilty, as you can probably tell from the  paragraphs above) pleasure to watch these shows and to mock them relentlessly. I'm sorry, girls, but if, after so many seasons of seeing how relentlessly participants (and judges) are mocked everywhere, you decide to participate anyway, all I can do is tell you and your friends and family not to read my blog.

So anyway, back to the blogging aspect: Since this is a German-language show, it doesn't really make sense for me to write about it in English, since you won't be watching it anyway. However, there will be brief summaries at the beginning of each post, usually about the horrific and inexplicable things Heidi decided to wear in that episode (Dalek coat and hamster life vest, I'm looking at you). If you want more English snark, you might enjoy my Model House Rules (pt I, pt II and pt III).


But don't worry, this won't turn into a complete GNTM blog, I'll still be posting nail art - hopefully more frequently than so far this year.

Have a fantastic weekend!
Captain Spacenails

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Hi everyone,

Work's been keeping me pretty busy! I missed matte day and texture day - I'll definitely revisit matte at a later point, since, as you may have noticed, I'm mad about matte. Matte was not an option for today's nail art though: Bender has such a sparkling personality that he needs the shiny like a megalomaniac villain needs a white fluffy cat.

I trust Bender Bending Rodríguez of Futurama fame needs no introduction. At least I hope so because I need to work some more today so I'm typing this post up really quickly... if you have no idea who or what Bender and/or Futurama are, immediately get yourself the first season of Futurama and watch it!

in the shade

in the sun

The base colour here is a-England King Arthur (with a top coat), with the rogueish robot done in Boulevard de Beauté shades 12 and 17, which are essentially light and dark silver. His mouth presented a problem, the black polish for delineating the teeth would not cooperate and then I had to redo the white part as well and it all got a bit messy and now he's got a bit of a big mouth, but then, doesn't he always? (I've said this before, but I really need to get some good white and black!) Also, excuse the lack of cleanup, I didn't notice the state of my middle finger until just now, when I'm no longer wearing the mani (it really wasn't 'bring your robot to work' day today).

closeup of King Arthur in the sun, 2 layers w top coat

King Arthur essentially applies itself, just like as all other a-Englands I've tried. This is the good stuff. This shows two coats, though you might even get away with just one thicker one. 

You can find a list of a-England distributors here.

Let's see what everyone else did for metal day (I'm really hoping someone did a heavy metal mani!)

10. Metallic :

The robot-loving nail newbie

Note: All opinions are completely my own. Any links to external blogs or stores are pure link love - no advertising or affiliate linking going on here. I received the Boulevard de Beauté polishes as a gift; other than that I paid for everything, but who am I to resist Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon?

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Dear readers,

Are you as surprised as I am to see me posting every day? Don't get used to it though, I'm sure I won't be able to keep this pace up when things get busier again. But in the meantime, let's celebrate my renewed blogging energy with a mani!

As I said the other day, I've decided I can't just go and buy polish and then just show it to you in haul posts, so I've set an additional challenge for myself: All manis for the OMD Rather Awesome Challenge will include an indie and/or recently purchased polish. 

That way I'll be able to get to know my new treasures and they won't just disappear into my stash to only be unearthed in a few months. I think it might also lead to a few outside-the-box manis (okay, more out there than usually) as I'm inspired or challenged by the polishes.

Today's OMD mani - skittles - isn't very unusual, but you get two for the price of one and a review to boot. 

I ordered two flakies from the models' own summer collection, despite the rather mediocre reviews. The reviews were right, the texture is quite goopy and Aqua Splash has an almost colourless base that requires three or more layers to get any sort of colour beyond a sickly green. Red Sea is better, its base is quite red and opaque in two coats.

Then last week at the drugstore I saw their store brand s-he has a flaky special edition as well and picked up three of them. Unfortunately, they're just as pallid and goopy as the others, but you have to do even more fishing to get a few flakies on your nail.  

Top row: s-he 121/285, Catrice Dark Knight, iQ gloss effect Pink Lady, LOOK unknown red, L'Oreal Lush Tangerine - Bottom row: models' own Aqua Splash, s-he 122/008, s-he 122/005, models' own Red Sea, s-he 122/006

That said, if you fish and dab carefully and use them as a topper, they look quite pretty, as you can see on the pictures. In fact, they make the perfect skittle! I really like the golden glow of the orange polish and the large turquoise flakes of the purple. My main concern is the bubbling that all of these polishes seem to generate - could that be caused by fishing for flakes?

The other mani is over just a base coat - two coats for the red, four for the others.  The red one is actually really pretty on its own, like strawberry jam. And I don't know why, but somehow I ended up liking this one better, with its subtle pastels.(Overall, though, these definitely aren't my favourite manis ever.)

Have you tried these or other flakies? Can you recommend any?

And now let's see what the others have come up with today!

The flaky nail newbie

5. Skittles :

 

Note: Any links to external blogs or stores are pure link love - no advertising or affiliate linking going on here. I paid for everything,but luckily it wasn't much.

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Hi all,

Today's theme for the OMD Rather Awesome challenge is Black & White. For some reason that made me think of masks, so I went to look for Commedia dell'Arte masks (as you do) and found this great picture. Commedia dell'Arte is essentially an old Italian form of theatre with stock characters characterised by masks - here's a Wikipedia article and a description of the two characters on the pointer (Pulcinella) and the pinkie (Scaramuccia, also known as Scaramouche - sing it with me now: Scaramouche, scaramouche, will you do the fandango?). 

 

The comedy (Ride) and tragedy (Piangi) masks in the middle aren't Commedia dell'Arte as much as Venetian masks (think Venetian carneval), but they're the quintessential theatre masks so of course I had to include them.

I used my stock black and white polishes for this, s-he and LOOK - not because they're particularly good (they aren't) but because they're what I have. I really need some good nail art-worthy basics! At first I attempted to show the plasticity of the masks, but it ended up looking a bit sloppy, even with the matte coat on, so I made them fully black and matted them again.

I did my nails last night so these are my 'safety' pictures taken indoors in artificial light, because a lot can happen to a mani before morning. Than sounds more sinister (or risqué) than it is, I'm just someone who forgets to be careful with her nails. And so, not half an hour later, I had inexplicable dents in my masks from making supper (not pictured). What's a girl to do?

Well, I was itching to try my new polishes anyway, so I dabbed some Digital Nails Timey Wimey on them, instantly transforming the mani from serious and artsy to HEY, CARNEVAL! Seriously, look at the party going on on my nails. The Doctor would approve (and bring a banana).

Timey Wimey has tiny glitters in purple, turquoise and probably something else, red squares, lime green hexagons, and large turquoise metallic circles that shine green when the light hits them just right. It's easy to apply, I just need to work on my dabbing technique and placement of the larger glitters.

So yeah, not strictly black and white anymore, but it was intended as b&w, so that counts, right? ;)

Check out the other black and white nail art by clicking on the linky!

4. Black & White :

The all-too-colourful nail newbie

 

 

Note: Any links to external blogs or stores are pure link love - no advertising or affiliate linking going on here. I paid for everything, but I can't bring myself to care because my nails are busy partying like it's 1999.

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Hi all, it's nail art day! Well, actually, as it turns out, in July every day might be nail art day. I don't usually take on 30/31 day challenges because they're too tough for me, but since I've been managing the Tri-Polish challenge nicely and July should be a nice and quiet month for me, In decided to give the Oh Mon Dieu! It's the Rather Awesome 31 Day Challenge a go. It's hosted by Craftynail, Eeeek! Nail Polish! (love that name) and Brijit's Digits - all three blogs are well worth checking out. Click on the link above see all the details of the challenge and perhaps participate as well - there's prizes too, but I'm mostly in it for the fun.

It's nice and relaxed because you don't have to do everything (hence no post yesterday) and you don't have to do it in the right order either. I probably won't have something every day, but today's topic is blue and it inspired me to do this summery mani - it reminds me of deck chairs and beach balls.

It's a fairly self-explanatory mani - I started with a two coats of P2 up in the air and then began adding stripes at random intervals, one colour at a time.

 You may notice this was a pretty glossy mani at first, which was nice, but I decided to add a matte top coat and oh mon dieu, I love it!

But then, you already knew I have a bit of a love affair going on with my matte topper.

How do you like the mani? What are your favourite summer colours?

Go here to see today's linky collection, I'll have to see if I can get the code for tomorrow's.

The summery nail newbie

2. Blue :

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It’s that time again – Crumpet’s tri-polish challenge for June is here!  You can go here to read all about it, but essentially the challenge is to create four manis using the same three polishes in three predetermined colours, plus you can use black, white, gold, silver and glitter toppers as freebies.

Es ist wieder so weit – die Crumpet Tri-Polish Challenge geht in die nächste Runde! Hier könnt ihr die Regeln nachlesen, aber kurz zusammengefasst geht es darum, dass für jeden Monat drei Farben bestimmt werden und jede Teilnehmerin für jede Farbe genau einen Lack wählt. Mit diesen drei Lacken (plus Schwarz, Weiß, Gold, Silber und Glitzertopper) macht man dann vier Nageldesigns und postet sie in der 3. und 4. Woche jeden Monats jeweils am Dienstag und Donnerstag.

Boulevard de Beauté 16, OPI Purple with a Purpose, LOOK

June’s colours are pink, purple and red, which suits me just fine because I have tons of purple and a few red and pink ones too. Not too many pinks so far though, so I went and bought a pretty intense, almost neon pink, but that didn’t work with my reds and purples at all, so in the end I settled on the following colours for the month (I don't know what the LOOK nail quickie is called because the name has rubbed off the label so I can’t tell you what it is except that it’s very red - and that it's stupid to put the name on the wand if it's gonna come off):

Colours used for this mani

Die Farben für Juni sind Rosa, Violett und Rot – Jackpot, alles Lieblingsfarben! Vor allem violette Nagellacke hab ich in Massen. Rote hab ich auch einige, in Rosa habe ich aber vergleichsweise wenig, also hab ich mir einen ziemlich intensiven, fast neonfarbenen pinken Lack von iQ gekauft (siehe Mai-Haul), der dann aber gar nicht mit meinen roten und violetten Lacken harmonieren wollte. Die endgültige Auswahl seht ihr oben (beim roten LOOK ist das Label schon so ausgebleicht, dass ich den Namen nicht mehr lesen kann – ist aber auch bescheuert, den Namen an den Griff zu kleben).

June is my birthday month so I’m starting this tri-polish challenge off with party nails: Balloons!

I adore this mani, I think it turned out really cute. I used a wide dotting tool to apply the main part of the balloon and then rolled it around a bit to get the typical oval balloon shape, and then I refined it with a fine brush. I added the white “light reflections” and the strings in the end. As you can see, I used all three colours (you have to use all three in one mani at least once) plus white s-he polish for the background and light and black LOOK for the strings.

 

Im Juni hab ich Geburtstag, also mach ich gleich mal Partylaune mit Luftballons!

Dieses Design gefällt mir total gut, ich finde, es ist echt süß geworden! Für die Ballons habe ich ein großes Dotting Tool verwendet um Farbe aufzutragen und es dann ein bisschen hin- und hergedreht, um die typische Ballonform zu erhalten. Dann ging ich noch mal mit einem kleinen Pinsel drüber um die Unebenheiten in der Form auszubessern und das kleine Nubbelchen unten dranzumachen (hat das einen Namen?). Am Ende habe ich noch die Lichtspiegelung und die Schnüre gemalt. Wie ihr seht, hab ich hier gleich mal die Bedingung erfüllt, dass man in mindestens einem Design alle drei Farben verwenden muss, außerdem noch einen weißen s-he-Lack als Hintergrund und für’s Licht und einen schwarzen LOOK für die Schnüre.

This nail art made me very happy – it’s playful and fun and I think I want balloons at my birthday party this year :) 

Look at the linky below to see what everyone else has been getting up to!

The nail newbie,  who prefers 21 colourful balloons to 99 red balloons

Das ist so ein richtig fröhliches und verspieltes Design, machte Spaß zu malen und zu tragen – und ich glaub, ich will auf meiner Geburtstagsparty wirklich Luftballons haben :)

Unten in der Linksammlung könnt ihr euch die Beiträge der anderen Mädls ansehen!

Euer Nagelnewbie, dem 21 bunte Ballons lieber sind als 99 Luftballons

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 Nerdige Nägel - ich kann nicht genug davon bekommen. Habt ihr Star Trek schon gesehen? Und falls ihr Raumschiff Enterprise-Fans seid, schaut mal weiter runter zum Tricorder-Link - coole Sache, oder? Da kommt man sich richtig vor wie Pille.

You know when I said I was a trekkie? Well, I wasn't kidding. There were so many fantastic images in the movie that didn't leave me alone (plus I saw it a second time) so I had to do another mani.

 

For the geeks among you, this is a mashup of this screenshot and the scene at 2:13 in this trailer, part of which you can see in this picture. For everyone else: The USS Enterprise is on the left, the USS Vengeance on the right, but all you really need to know that it's a battle in space. So basically, full of awesome.

The polishes I used may seem familiar to you - yes, this was originally intended as a tri-polish challenge manicure in May but it didn't seem right to use it because the red and blue play only minor roles and the overall impression is certainly more of black and white. The only "new" one here (but still within the tri-polish rules) is the glitter topper, which will get its own post soon because it's filled with win.

I have at least one other idea for nail art inspired by the movie and there probably will be more Star Trek nail art coming because I'm currently in the process of re-watching the original series with its papier-maché rocks, monsters with visible puppet strings, questionable story lines (gigantic evil cats in magician's castles in space, I'm looking at you!), the people on the bridge throwing themselves left and right to simulate being shaken when the Enterprise is hit, good old Leonard "Eyebrows" Nimoy as Spock, the unbelievably cool Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, and William Shatner as Captain Kirk, the original space cowboy and ladies' man. 

Man, it's so good. I grew up on that stuff and watching it is like coming home. 

For any trekkies reading this, I had a bit of a geek-out over this project on Indiegogo (which is a crowdfunding page like Kickstarter but you have other payment options than Amazon and I'm really sad Kickstarter only uses Amazon payments because now I can't help put a TARDIS into space :/ ): a real medical tricorder. It sounds amazing and I'm tempted to get one just for the coolness of it although I have no real need for a constant heart rate, stress level or blood pressure monitor. My nail polish shopping behaviour is a pretty accurate way of telling me what my stress level is and I think the tricorder would try to rush me to hospital for the way my heart rate soars when I see holo polish swatches. But it's so neat!

Just a shame Indiegogo's headline in the newsletter was "Heal me up, Scotty!", and other articles are using the Beam me up, Scotty line as well, even though a tricorder has little to nothing to do with beaming. Get your nerd references right, people! Though admittedly, it is a better tagline than if they'd used what Doctor McCoy usually says while holding a tricorder: "He's dead, Jim."

The nerdy and possibly slightly hipster nail newbie

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