Norwegian Health and Beauty Convention 2012

Me and my mom got free passes to the Health and Beauty convention for this Sunday! I was really excited about that 'cus the tickets were just too much for me to bother to both buy the tickets and stuff inside the convention. So no money for the tickets means more money for nail polish! And boy were there nail polish there! I'll show you the pictures I took of the different stands first and then what I bought myself:
Pictures after jump

Inspired by an Animal Sunday - Seahorses

I've been really into underwater themes lately and been browsing pictures of mermaids, fishes, corals and seahorses. If any of you know of any good sites to look at this kinda stuff or have made nailart in this theme please give me a link, I'd love to see it!
These nails contain a underwater scene with three seahorse, some corals and seaweed.

The basecolor is OPI - What's with the cattitude? and the rest of the colors are OPI - Cajun shrimp. essie - rose bowl, opi - green wich-village, china glase - papaya punch and china glaze - blue island icetea.

I love the colors in this design! The seahorses turned out really cute!
# Do you like this design?
# Do you like underwater themes?

60 Followers!

Wow, this is so great! I've reached 60 followers and I'm extremely happy and grateful to all my followers! I know that these follower posts can be really cheesy and tacky, it is a very special feeling to know that others like what you create and use their time to look at it! All you other nail bloggers know what I'm talking about!

I'm going to have a giveaway for my followers very soon(new ones are also welcome!), but first there's going to be a one year anniversary blog giveaway! The prizes are being shipped from various places now so it will be ready as soon as the prizes are here!

Ones again thanks so much you guys, I do appreciate it!

Black and Green gradient

I felt so inspired by yesterdays pink gradient that todays nails also are gradients. This time matte black and green glitters. I started with Orly - Goth and then sponged on Essence Choose me and finished with China glaze - It's alive! Such great polishes and they work really well together! I sealed it with two coats of china glaze - matte magic, my favorite matte top coat.

I love this combo of the green, blue and gold tiny glitters in choose me and the bigger green and yellowish in It's alive.














# What do you think of this gradient?

Gradient glitter with laces

I do like me some nice laces, so that was the idea for todays nails.  I've also seen some amazing picture of glitter gradients and really waned to make some myself. Definitely something I'll be doing more of! See my post on different gradients Here.  I'm feeling like I'm staying in the "valentine theme" with this pink and red mani, hehe.

For this I first lay a layer of OPI - Aphrodite's pink nightie and pink shimmer and then layered a layer of a multicolor glitter in a pink base and then Nyx - Turks and Caicos, a blue jelly base with multicolor glitter. Then the laces on the tips with the HM vivid Duo.

I could have done a better job on the laces, but I'm pretty happy on the gradient. So pretty with the glitter! I need to make one with black and green!
# Do you like gradients?
# Any ideas for gradient colors to use?

Nail art Documentary

I'd like to share this great documentary about nail art that Nailit shared on her blog yesterday.
It's made by a girl from Los Angeles who interviews some of the great nail artists in the world!
I didn't want to just post the video on my blog 'cus I think you should check out her page so just follow this link to the documentary: Nail art documentary
And another movies that really made me laugh the other day is this:

I love these kind of nail related movies so please share some with me if you know of any! 

Heart with Thorns

I'm not into the pink, hearts, love and birds going around for valentines. But I enjoy having a theme to make designs to, so this valentines mani is a little more 'me'.
I used the classic picture of the heart with flames coming out and a thornstring(?) going around it.

My original idea was to make flames underneath the thorns going across the other fingers, but I'm glad I kept it simple. The background is NYX - Mocha latte with the thorns in Nicole by opi-one time lime and china glaze Holly-day. I like the retro look the nudeish background gives the design.

I really enjoyed making this design and hope you guys liked it!

# What do you think of this heart?
# Do you like these old school/retro designs?

Dollish Polish - We're gonna need a bigger boat

Dollish Polish is really popular right now. Here etsy store has been so overflown by orders that it's closed at the moment! That's great since she's a really talented nail polish creator. 

Many of her polishes have names from famous movies and today I'm showing We're gonna need a bigger boat. The quote is from the epic shark movie Jaws.

Since the bottle is so small I didn't want to use it all at once so instead of using two to three coats I gave it some underwear in a similar shade and layered it.  

The base color is Orly - Sweet Peacock.

We're gonna need a bigger boat is a blue shimmer base with some small and some larger red glitters. It's so amazing! I'm really loving this combo of red and blue. 

Closeup

Some of the batches of Bigger boat came out a lot greener than intended say Dolly, but I don't think mine is one of those. It's a perfect blue!

See some more Dollish Polish swatches by The polishaholic here

# What do you think of this polish?

# Have you tried Dollish Polishes?

Week 6 - Half moon mani

The half moon mani is originally intended to make your nails seem longer and more elegant. I love the look half moons give my nails. I would totally wear it more, but I always forget about it! 

For this I used silver and blue for my half moons. 

It's Orly - Shine and Isadora - Bugatti blue with Royal blue Jelly dots. 

I haven't used this color combo before, but I enjoy it a lot. I have to admit I got the idea from the Ravenclaw colors(big HP fan!) 

I enjoyed this week! Next week is no surprise "Valentines nails"

# Do you like halfmoons?

Orly - Gumdrop With Explosions

This pretty little mint came to my hands a couple of months ago, but has been lying in the untried drawer of my Helmer ever since. But now if finally came out, and boy am I happy for that!

I love me a good mint, and this meets all my requirements for a mint!

A thing I like about is that it's slightly more blue than green! I like it! The application was smooth as butter and two coats was good for opacity.

To make some extra sparkle I made some golden and pinkholo explosions, following this tutorial by the Nail Side

 I know that gold and mint looks great in designs, but my eye also fell on Make up Stores pink holo Britta.

 The holo didn't come out as much as I wanted. And I didn't get the explosions that great, but all in all it went okey! I need to work some more on my explosions, but they really are getting better. I adore the color combination, this is definitely something I will have to use in the future!

# Do you enjoy a good mint?

# Do you like the colors?

Review: Hello Kitty Stamping Kit

Bornprettystore contacted me and asked if wanted to do a review of one of their products. I was very happy and decided to try the hello kitty stamping kit. I've never done any konad or stamping before so this was new to me, but very fun!

In the kit there were two plates, three stamping polishes, a scraper and a stamper.
The first thing I noticed about this set was that the white had leaked in package and was only half full. Since it had been slightly open under the shipping the polish had gone very thick and was hard to work with. Luckily none of the other things had gotten white polish on them though.

When I started to try the stamping it totally didn't work and I knew I was doing something wrong, but couldn't understand what. I was doing everything by the book, so was wasn't it working? Then I realized that the plates still had the plastic on them! Duh...

Much better:

After the plastic was removed things went slightly more easy, haha!
The plates had nice and deep engravings and there were no problems to get enough polish in them and transferring it to the nail.
The scraper however was useless. The line was not straight and very uneven so it was impossible to drag any polish of with it... Instead I took an old creditcard and cut it in two to use as a scraper, much better!

The black and red polishes both worked well, but the white one I couldn't use to stamp. It dried way to fast and was impossible to trace to the nail.
The result was just so and so, but remember that this was my first stamping kit so I don't have much training in stamping. I kinda failed on the index finger, but the other ones turned out okey.

All in all I have mixed feelings for this set.
Plus sides: Deep engravings, black and red was good to work with, the stamper itself was good
Minus: White was opened in the package, white was useless to stamp with, the scraper was useless.

You can buy this set here for 8.77
I will give you guys a coupon you can use when you shop at bornprettystore to get 5% discount when you shop!

# Do you like to stamp?
# Have you bought anything from Bornprettystore before?

Inspired by an Animal Sunday - Butterfly Fimos

I hadn't yet tried the butterfly fimos I bought from DollishPolish so I decided that today was a good day to do it!
The bag consisted of a variation of different colored and patterned butterflies. Some of them are cut perfectly thin, but some are also very thick and hard to work with. That kinda sucks, but I try to use the thin ones mostly. I think this set is really cute and the butterflies adorable!

The basecolor on this is HM - Peppermint Fusion with some black dots on.

I also want to say thanks so much for reaching 50 followers!! I love all of you, hehe! There are two big giveaways coming on here soon so stay tuned. The prizes are at this moment being shipped from around the world and I'm really looking forward to it!


#What do you think of the fimo?
# Do you have any ideas for next weeks animal?

Essie - Dive Bar

Dive Bar is from the 2011 winter collection from Essie.
This is a mysterious blackish blue with shimmer in it. In the bottle I can see some amazing purple duochrome, but it doesn't apply to the nail unfortunately.

The application was pretty smooth and nice, two coats to make it opaque. The color is very pretty, but I must say I was pretty disappointed that the purple didn't show on the nail. That would have made it even better.

Now that spring is coming this polish won't be worn a lot, but I'm still glade I have it.

NOTD: Gussied up Green with Bling

For todays nails I started with the great Gussied up Green from China Glaze. In the bottle this looks almost brown, but on the nail it's great!

Gussied up green on it's own

Over this i made some triangles using tape. Tape manis are not really my thing, but check out Nailside or Sophie for some really great tapimani work!  I used Orly Sweet Peacock for the triangles and then added some silver bling, hehe. Bling is not really my thing either, but it's fun sometimes!

I had to remove this quite fast, 'cus I was going climbing today so bling nails aren't the best thing to wear!

Hope you're having a good weekend!

#What do you think?
# Like bling?

Week 5 - Newspaper Mani

I dried so hard and for such a long time to make this mani work, but I just couldn't get the hang of it. After changing method various times, trying a bunch of different alcohols and buying new alcohol and changing the base polish a bunch of times the result was still not good...

Well I did get a little more hang of it at the end and as you can see there is some writing there at least, haha! Oh well. I love newspaper manis and other people have gotten great results so I will just have to keep trying I guess.

I followed these two tutorials mostly:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kcdt4_5Ncc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=endscreen&NR=1&v=wcmO0R3Kqzo

# Have you tried to make newspaper nails before?

Milani - Green Glow

This shade of green is so great! I love the combination of metallic and neon it has. I realize that this polish is actually to sheer to use on it's own and I should have given it a basecolor. Four coats and still not opaque on these photos:

I'll probably come back to this polish with some basecolor to it, but I just needed to try it since it had been laying  in my unused drawer to such a long time.
# What do you think of it?

Makeupognegler har giveaway

This is only for Norwegians so Norwegian post!
Vinn masse sjeldne lakker fra makeupognegler! Skikkelig supert tilbud søte Siv Lene har her. Sjekk også ut bloggen hens om du ikke har gjort det før, den er kjempe flott!

Kom til giveawayen her!

Giveaway: Get a free stampingplate!

The Norwegian nail polish forum has been sponsored by Bornprettystore.com and is hosting a giveaway for a free stamping plates. And the best thing? Everyone is a winner!


For instructions follow this link. The page is on Norwegian, but most internet readers have a translate program now so that won't be a problem! Go ahead, this is a good deal!

Sinful Colors - Gorgeous+ a comparison

This shade looks like a great duochrome in the bottle, but turns out without any duochrome and pretty dull on the nail. The color is pretty, but when you expect something better it just turn out dull...
Two coats with a top coat:

Even though it was a disappointment it is a gorgeous color, and I do actually love it!

I realized it looked quite like Sephora by OPIs - Mermaid to order, but I was wrong. They don't look quite like, they are exactly the same. I really can't tell the difference between these two, can you?

Here is the bottle picture of them both, so disappointed that it doesn't look like that on the nail...

About the week 5 newspaper mani that was supposed to be here on Wednesday I've been trying to make it, but just can't do it! I'ts impossible... Gonna buy some new alcohol tomorrow and see if it works better then...Any general tips on what I may be doing wrong?


#Do you like these colors? 

11 questions blog award

I'm not actually that much fan of awards, and I've received a bunch that I have not passed on(no disrespect to the ones that tagged me, just not my thing!) But I love these kinds of "answer questions"-things!
This award if from the great Kaki at Obsessed with glitter!

Rules:

1. Each person must post 11 things about themselves on their blog.

2. Answer the questions the tagger set for you in their post and create 11 new questions for the people you tag to answer.

3. You have to choose 11 people and tell the. No tag backs.

Here are Kakis questions for me:

1. What is your favorite thing to splurge on?

Nailpolish(duh!)

2. What do you do when life gets you down?

Read, go for a walk in the forest close to my house, paint my nails and hang out with my cats.

3. What is your favorite way to celebrate an accomplishment?

It used to be to get drunk, but not so much anymore...I'm not sure now actually

4. Favorite day of the year?

The day that is the nicest to me! Don't really have any special favorite

5. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

Nothing really, I'm happy with me!

6. What is your biggest polish lemming right now?

The hits flakies and holographics!

7. What is your weirdest habit?

*Staring out in the air for 2 minutes thinking* I can' think of anything! Probably a lot, but nothing that I react to, haha

8. Does anyone know about your online blog?

Yea

9. What is your favorite nickname?

Lady Luck

10. What is your least favorite nickname?

Kiki

11. If you could visit one place in the world, where would you go and why?

Japan - 'cus it seems so different and rad!

I'm not going to tag anybody, but if you feel like passing it along go ahead!