NYE

Good morning! And even though it's not evening yet, I'll say this: Happy New Year's Eve! New Year's eve is all about fireworks and colors, at least to me. And this is what I selected for my theme this year. I didn't wanna go for any specific patterns or designs, so I selected a widened french manicure with single color base and lots of glitters. My goal was trying to achieve the look of black, night sky with lots of fireworks going off.


Here's what I came up with! As you can see, the light is eating a lot of the color away. So be warned everyone, I have more!


This is more like it. Can you see how extremely sparkly this look really is? It's amazing what a macro and a flash does to glitter... And very very sad what it does to the skin tone. This really made me wonder if my cuticles are this suffered... As they don't look reddish at all in RL, as they show in this pic.

For this specific look, I used the typical "Salla-style" base, 1 coat of "Concia" and 1 coat of "Ticklish Toes". For the black undertone I used "Bellie Up".


For the glitter layering I used total of FIVE different glitters! I started with "Black Diamond", sheer black polish with golden glitter. On top of that, "Silver Bell", "Emerald City", "Purple Glitter" and "Blue Glitter". A line of silver nail art polish and a coat of "Insta-dri" and I was done.

Products used for base:
"Hard As Nails" by Sally Hansen
"Concia" by WaC
"Ticklish Toes" by Wac
"Bellie Up" by Wac


Product used for tips:
"Silver Bell" by WaC
"Emerald City" by Models Own
"Black Diamond" by Mavala
"Purple Glitter" by Mavala
"Blue Glitter" by Mavala
"Nail Art Paint" in silver glitter by Kiss
"Insta-dri" by Sally Hansen

I'd like to wish my readers

H A P P Y N E W Y E A R !
May it be full of surprises and joy!

I'll see you guys in 2011. :)

Reversed curves

Good morning! The flu is about to take over me but I managed to build up a manicure and a post though it took lots of sneezing. The BW ruffian, as you know, is my favorite manicure at the moment so I wanted to stay on the same path with my next manicure as well. I wanted to test the new polish I got, lucky for me they went quite well together!


And here's the result of my test. I started with two coats of "Pedal to the Metal", then stamped the design on with "Purple Grey". After it was dry, I went over most of the nail with "Purple Grey", curving the line a bit. To my surprise, this polish was almost good to go with only one coat! However I had to fill up with some minor bald spots, so two it was, in the end. :)

Products used:
"Hard as Nails" by Sally Hansen
"Pedal to the Metal" by Sally Hansen
"Purple Grey" by Models Own
"Insta-dri" by Sally Hansen
BM19 by Bundlemonster

Blog news & shopping haul

As you might have noticed, there has been quite a lot of changes in this blog within few days! I changed the layout yesterday and kept fighting with it till around 10pm (GMT+2). I couldn't just let the black and white ruffian go to waste, so I took some pictures around 2am on the Sunday morning and started working on the header. The old layout didn't work (in my opinion), so I decided to change that, too. I think I'm quite happy with the out come right now, it's little bit easier to browse as I split one sidebar into two and divided it into personal info and blog related info.

There has been two other additions, too. Main thing is that I added Twitter on this blog! Now I'm able to share some more about myself and what I'm doing. I still plan to do a post roughly every 2nd day, so on those days I don't post here, I can throw in few tweets. :) Tweets will probably introduce me little bit deeper, and they won't be just nail related. I think it'll be a lovely change for me to let out some steam, as this blog is and will be all about nails.

I also decided to give up on Blogger's own photo uploads, as those tend to pixelate the photos on a nasty way. Since christmas I've been uploading all my photos into photobucket, so the quality should be better now. :) All pictures on blog posts are clickable so you can view them bigger.

Enough with the babbling and to the point! Today I went shopping with my mother, sister-in-law and my lovely niece. It has become a habit of going to the nearest city together and spend a "girls' day out" roughly 3-4 times a year. Of course the sales are a good way to lighten up the wallets. ;) This year I took it quite calm and focused on nail stuff, only one cardican found its way into my closet.

On the first shop (I know, it's sad) I found an offer of Sally Hansen products. I don't have a good, metallic polish so of course I had to get one. I went for Sally Hansen's "complete salon manicure" polish, the color is called "Pedal to the Metal" and it's lovely foil-like polish. The color is silvery that tints to purple. I also ran out of Mavala's "Mavadry" so I decided to check "Insta-Dri". I have no experience in any Sally Hansen products, so this will be interesting experiment. The polish was 12,50€ and the topcoat 9,95€ from Anttila.


The offer the shop included Sally Hansen's "Hard as Nails" nail hardener for free to anyone who bought two Sally Hansen products. I thought, what the hell and went for it. It promises to "help prevent chipping, splitting, cracking". The nail harderer I currently have is almost running out, so I'll give this a shot. I'll probably make a similar review of these products as I did of Mavala, after I've tested this for about a month. I'm not sure what the price of this product is but I'm tempted to say it's somewhere between 7-10€.


Moving on! And here are the two polish I actually *needed*. I'm not just saying that, it's true! I've had the same bottle of WaC's "Bellie Up" for about... 1.5 years so it's almost empty. I've also thinned it about two times (or more) so it's really not as good as it was when I got it, it was about time to get a new one! 2,95€ from Seppälä.

Another one I've been dying for is Models Own's lovely polish "Purple Grey". This has been on my wishlist for so long but until now I haven't seen it at all on my local store. Now it was finally there, so I just *had* to get a bottle! 4,95€ from Seppälä.

I must say I was about to cry when I saw "Lemon Meringue" on the shelf, too... It's another of my wish list polish but I told myself to keep the count in 5, so I wasn't allowed to buy it. :(


And here's quick swatches of the new polishes. At first, "Pedal to the Metal", isn't it just absolutely gorgeous? I can't wait to use this on my nails!


I still wonder where the name "Purple Grey" comes from, I can't say I see any grey in this at all... More like brown... But I do love the shade never the less.

Thus is all from me today. Now I'm off to do something on my nails, so I have something to post about tomorrow. Until then, CU!

Experimenting with ruffian

Good morning! Christmas is starting to be over and New Year is coming closer. I won't go to any details of the xmas present as none of them had anything to do with nails, unfortunately. However, on Sunday I started to experiment with ruffian manicure, or reversed french, whatever you suits you better.

I've been thinking about doing a ruffian for a long time but I've always wanted to do something special for it, not just the typical two-colors.



This is what I came up with. I know the look isn't perfect (smearing here and there) but I the longer I keep looking at this manicure, the more I like it! For the base I used white nail polish, total of three coats to make it perfect. On top of that, I stamped a design from BM plate and sealed the design with topcoat.

After it was dry, I free-handed the ruffian with "Bellie Up". Another coat of topcoat and that was it! I was sure the free-handing would be hard but I'm quite satisfied with the outcome, on few fingers the line looks a bit crooked but it's mostly because of the stamp design.

Products used:
"Nail Tip Whitener" by Rimmel
"Bellie Up" by WaC
"Special polish" in black by Konad
Top coat by Konad
BM20 plate by Bundlemonster

What do you guys think, should I continue experimenting with "ruffian with a twist"? :)


Yesterday night I spent about two hours with the giweaways and found few suitable ones which I entered myself and, of course, I'll share those with you guys.

Be sure to check out the updated giveaway site!

Have yourself a merry little christmas...

Yet another christmas nails, I feel almost sad that these will be the last ones for this year. For this look I'd like to thank Charming Nails for the inspiration as my nails have similarities to hers, the glittery red nail polish and the changing of red and green rhinestones. I simply had to add something of my own, which lead to another holly oak design and leaving one nail green. :)

This is how the design came to be. As a base, I used two coats of "Concia" and a coat of "Ticklish Toes" which still is my favorite nail polish for this season. For the red tips, I used two coats of "Vogue" and a coat of "Scarlet Sparkle". For the greens, "Green Tea" and "Emerald City". Then a coat of topcoat, applying the rhinestones using a dotting tool and a coat of Konad's topcoat to seal the rhinestones in. For me, this looked perfect as it is... So I didn't add any stamping on it. Sparkle was enough to give the festive look.

Products used:

"Concia" by WaC
"Ticklish Toes" by Wac
"Vogue" by WaC
"Scarlet Sparkle" by Models Own
"Green Tea" by Models Own
"Emerald City" by Models Own
Topcoat by Konad
Rhinestones from eBay


I'd like to wish you all...
Merry Christmas!

May it be peaceful and warm.

I'll see you in couple of days!

Holly oak leaves

Today will be the first of the "actual" christmas manicures I did, for tomorrow I have another post timed for those who'll pop by. For this look, I had to use holly oaks, which I haven't used on any of my christmas/seasonal manicures.


This is how it came to be. At first, I was supposed to use the holly oak design from BM plate, but unfortunately I didn't have green polish thick enough. At this point I was about to cry (yes, I'm a sissy) but I decided not to gave up. Thank god for dotting tools!

For this look I used Pink Sherbet and "Ticklish Toes" as a base, to give the nail a nice shimmer. For the tip, white manicure polish as always, which is very close to dying. :/ Shimmery red nail art liner to the edge of white, and dark green and dotting tool for the holly oak "leaves". Red rhinestones for the berries and topcoat to keep it all together.

Products used:
"Pink Sherbet" by WaC
"Ticklish Toes" by Wac
"Nail tip whitener" by Rimmel
"Two-way nail art pen and brush" in shimmery red and forest green by Nail Star
Red rhinestones from eBay
Top coat by Konad (I forgot this from the picture!)

With this one last picture I "wave" you guys bye-byes till tomorrow!

50 posts: nail wheels!

On Monday, this blog reached a milestone! Monday's post was the 50th entry I've done but as the post wasn't anything special, I decided to celebrate it afterwards. What would be better than making a post about nail polish I own?

This is probably one of the most irritating posts I've ever done, basically because the pictures. On Monday I got a long-waited package including 10 clear nail wheels I bought from eBay for 5.98 dollars (4.48€). I was happy as ever and started painting the wheels, categorizing them by brand, as I don't have enough polishes to do specific color wheels.

The painting was relaxing and fun, as I got to compare my collection and the brushes. But photographing the wheels... Now that was pure hell, and I really mean it. I did it anyway and now I can show you my minimal collection. I decided to go for two coats for the best coverage and realistic look, as I usually do only two coats on my nails as well. The colors aren't quite accurate on every wheel but I'll try to take these out and take better pictures when it's not so cold outside.

1. Ticklish Toes
2. Anchorage
3. Concia
4. Pink Sherbet
5. Self Control
6. Vogue
7. Granada
8. Ugly Fangs
9. Fancy Dream
10. Bombay
11. Neon Orange
12. Twilight
13. Silver Bell
14. Bellie Up
15. June Bug
16. Lollipop
17. Madriel

1. Pastel Pink
2. Lilac Dream
3. Pink Punch
4. Green Tea
5. Orangeade
6. Scarlet Sparkle
7. Emerald City

1. Coralicious
2. Sky High
3. Electric!
4. Sunshine
5. Pompous
6. Red Award
7. Fever
8. Grape Sorbet
9. Vintage

1. Re-Fresh Mint
2. Emerald Fitzgerald
3. Bing Cherry
4. Grape Juice
5. Bashful

1. Green Apple by Anytime
2. "nameless" by Lumene
3. Go Crazy by Lumene
4. Live It Up by Lumene
5. Glitter Purple by Mavala
6. Glitter Blue by Mavala
7. Black Diamond by Mavala
8. Bronze Green by Mavala
9. Miss Mole by Gosh

Counting all the polish together I ended up with 47 actual nail polish. This is quite minimal number to most of the nail art bloggers but for me, it's been perfect so far, I only update my collection when I'm in severe need of a polish. And I have to admit, this collection of mine is getting bigger, little by little. :)

Ding dong merrily on high...

Christmas songs have been playing a lot, especially during the weekend. Of course I couldn't help but to do nails, as I do love this time for the year.

This is what I had to do when listening to the christmas carol called "Ding dong merrily on high". I dare to claim that the bells are the most popular thing (next to snowflakes) stamped on nails during this time of year but I had to do my own version. :)

Three coats of "Emerald Fitzgerald", bells are stamped using "Anchorage" and the red dots on the bows are "Bing Cherry", dotting tool was a friend and good ally. A coat of topcoat and I was good to go.

Products used:
"Emerald Fitzgerald" by China Glaze
"Bing Cherry" by China Glaze
"Anchorage" by WaC
BM14 by Bundle Monster
1.0mm dotting tool from eBay

Golden luxury

Good evening! I'd like to apologize for the quietness in this blog. I finished the semester on Wednesday and after that it has been rather hectic. I don't think I'll have much time to update the blog on next week as the christmas is coming but I'll do my best. At least I'll post a picture of Xmas nails, if nothing else!



This is how my nails look at the moment. I wanted to do sort of "delux" nails but instead of the safe silver, I decided to use my WaC metallics again. Two coats of "Madriel", three coats of "Lollipop" to the tips and on top of that, a coat of "Black Tag" graffiti nails. I also had to tidy up the line of Lollipop and Black Tag, so I added a line of bronze nail art polish.

I'm not a fan of gold at all and I preferably use silver what comes to jewelry... But I do think these nails look pretty great! I'll probably be playing a lot with Graffiti Nails during the holidays as it's so easy and makes manis look great!

Products used:
"Madriel" by WaC
"Lollipop" by WaC
Graffiti nails in "Black Tag" by Isadora
Top coat by Konad
"Two-way nail art pen and brush" in bronze by Nail Star

Sour apples and lilies.

The title hints you guys to the right direction. I'm continuing my little crusade for doing nails that are out of season. These would be more suitable to spring time than holiday season but let's not let that disturb us! As I mentioned in the previous post, I bought some mini nail polishes on Sunday and of course I had to test one of them out. Today's selection was Lumene's "Go crazy", lovely sour apple green with shimmer.

For this manicure I give you something you rarely see...

... My right hand! Yup, that's right, my lovelies - for once I managed to make my right hand look better even though I'm a rightie. I had some focusing issues on the left and it needs not to be shown here. :D

This is how the manicure turned out to be. I used "Concia" again for the base to even out my nail's natural color, on top of it I added a coat of "Ticklish Toes" I simply can't let go off. "Go Crazy" on the tips took 3 coats, I think I should've added 4th, though. This polish is quite sheer, so a green base on the tips would have do the trick better than layering the polish.

Even though it's barely visible on the picture, I also added a line of green nail art paint on the edge of the green, to make it pop out a bit. After the whole deelio was dry, I stamped the image from m36 on the nail. This was the plate that came with the starting set I ordered. This was the first time I used it, as I totally underestimated it. It's quite lovely!

What do you think, was "Go Crazy" good purchase?

Products used:
"Concia" by WaC
"Ticklish Toes" by WaC
"Special nail polish" in black by Konad
Top coat by Konad
"Two-way nail art pen and brush" in apple green by Nail Star
"Go Grazy" by Lumene Natural Code
M36 by Konad

Mini nail polish haul!

It's all about mini nail polish today! And by mini... I really mean mini.

As it's came to known, I'm quite a fan of basic nail polish available from local stores. Of course I'm yearning for quality nail polish but until then, I'm gonna buy what I can if I see something interesting. On Sunday I went shopping with mom and came across few nail polish that screamed for my name... Of course I had to buy myself a christmas present (one of the many).


These are the little beauties I took with me. And these truly are little, only 4.5ml and 5ml. The polishes from left to right are: "Go Crazy" by Lumene; "Bronze Green", "Glitter Blue" and "Black Diamond" by Mavala. All of these were 3,90€ á bottle.

"Go Crazy" is lovely green shimmer that tints to yellow. I already have this same brand in blue, so green was a natural continuum to it. I'm a sucker for this kind of color!

"Bronze Green" is pretty much what the name of the polish says. It's green that tints to bronze, quite interesting color that caught my eye immediately after I saw it, I simply couldn't resist it.

I won't talk much about "Glitter Blue", as it is literally what the name says. It's glitter and it's blue. ;) The base of the polish is clear.

"Black Diamond" seems to be about silver and golden glitter in a black base. This polish is quite sheer also, it will be interesting to see if it'll work on its own or will it need a black base to be at its best.

This is all for the haul, tomorrow I'll make a regular post of a manicure. See you then!

Greyscale and zebra print

Good morning sweethearts! What would be better than sitting in front of the computer, still in PJs, with a fresh cup of coffee, watching the snow fall outside... And blogging about nails? I know - adding winter socks to the picture!

I'm afraid I somehow wore out my christmas mood (what comes to nails) so I decided to take a break and do something simple.Which to me means French mani, as always. I also wanted to keep the colors lowscale so... Greys it is!


This is what I came up with. It's a neutral, simple mani with neutral colors... But I had to add a little twist in it, so these are shiny as ever! A photo can't really capture the shine but I think you can use your imagination pretty well. ;)

I used two coats beige/peachy color "Concia" as a base to minimize the nails natural shade. For the tip, I also did two coats of "Anchorage", my favorite grey. Both peach and grey had a shimmer to it but...

...I decided to go all out which lead to a coat of "Ticklish Toes", which is so lovely in all possible ways. As you can seein the closeup, this polish is absolutely gorgeous on any other polish, why not even by itself!

After the nails were dry, I added tape underneath the grey polish and tamped the zebra pattern from Konad's M57. To make the line tidy, I draw a line with silver nail art brush. I also had to do some touch-ups with black, as my nails are rather curvy and therefore - agonizing to stamp without mistakes. But hey, no one is perfect. ;)

Products used:
"Concia" by Wild and Crazy
"Anchorage" by Wild and Crazy
"Ticklish Toes" by Wild and Crazy
"Special nail polish" in black by Konad
Top coat by Konad
"Two-way nail art pen and brush" in silver by Nail Star
"Nail art paint" in black by Kiss

Haha, as you can see... I'm definitely continuing my "career" as a spokesman for affordable cosmetics and nail polish, generally available in normal markets. Why spend a fortune on nail polish when you can practise being perfect with affordable ones? Hopefully I'm not losing readers for not using OPI or China Glaze all the time. :D

Grape shorbet

Two weeks left till Christmas! Oh my gosh... Maybe I should start thinking about xmas presents?

Today's nails are fairly simple but I like them, nevertheless. Except... I should stop wearing light colors... Can you tell why? No matter, I'll fill you in with the secret... They are getting stained! Reason for this? Hair colored with shock color... Apparently I'll have to start wearing gloves when I do my hair. ;)

On top of the base coat, I added three coats of China Glaze's "Grape Juice" which is simply stunning color. Can you see the shimmer? The diagonal tip is supposed to be white crackle polish by Isadora called "White Art" but as you can see... It's tinted to pink. :D I also added a silvery and a snowflake from Bundlemoster's plate. A coat of topcoat and I was good to go!

Products used:
"Grape Juice" by China Glaze
"White Art" by Isadora
"Two way nail art brush and pen" in silver by Nail Star
Snowflake from Bundle Monster's plate BM14
"Special NailPolish" in white by Konad
Top coat by Konad

I'm quite happy with this simple manicure. See you on Sunday! :)

Orange slices

The title of this entry sort of tells what I was going for... And failed miserably. :D

I was browsing Google Images for inspiration after spending the whole day writing the project portfolio for school. Part of the work I was doing was color collages. I did these for green, yellow, orange and pink. While I was doing orange I ran to, of course, pictures of orange slices. This inspired me to do a look for nails.



This is what I came up with. As you can tell, I didn't have two different shades of orange nail polish, so I went with yellow. What a huuuge mistake this was... I used white nail polish as a base, then added total of three coats of yellow to make it somewhat opaque.

After the white was done, I went for the white stripes. These I did with nail art brush. Unfortunately the stripes came out a bit too thick... The tips are neon orange and on top of that, I added a coat of orange glitter. Then I pushed the yellow rhinestones in and sealed them with clear top coat.

The poll ended yesterday and the votes all suggested I should start adding "products" used to every post... And here's the first one.

Products used:
"Nailtip whitener" by Rimmel
"Twilight" by WaC
"Neon Orange" by WaC
"Orangeade" by Models Own
"Two way nail art brush and pen" in white by Nail Star
Rhinestones (eBay)

This is all for today! I'll try to figure out something more creative and prettier for the next post. Until then... ;)

Independence day?

Hi hi again. Today's look is all about blue and white. Why? Because today is the independence day of Finland. At first, I didn't have any ideas of doing this... But while I was working on the nails, my mother mentioned it. I thought, what the hell, let's do it, then.

This is what I came up with. On top of base coat I added two coats of Anytime's "Ballet dancer". I used Rimmel's "nail tip whitener" to make the diagonal tip. The line is made with Nail star's metallic blue nail art polish with brush. The dots are made with the same color, this time using the pen feature.

The stars or flowers however... Of these I want to talk. I mentioned buying these nail art stickers from eBay. I can honestly say I've never ran into such a bad quality in nail stickers before. These were total pain! I used tweezers to place the stickers on my nails, so I didn't even touch the glue at all. Even with this procedure, the tips of the star started immediately lifting off. I carefully added some top coat under the lifted tip... But alas, less than 15 seconds the tip was one again lifting off! I ended up sealing the stickers with two coats of topcoat but it didn't help at all - the surface was very uneven and the tips started to point out again after a while.

I'm not very happy with these stickers... However I can't judge them just by this one try... I'll let you know what'll come out of these once I've tested them couple more times.

Polkadots and butterflies.

Top of the evening! I had a post meant to go "live" today in the morning but... Yesterday evening I came to other thoughts and decided to continue the dotting tool saga (which should be larger than three manicures). This manicure was also the first one I got complimented on by a stranger (store clerk), part of the reason why I decided to delay the other post a bit!

I simply couldn't let go of the "Pastel Pink" I used on the previous nails, so I decided to with that. I also wanted to create a contrast but didn't wanna do white... So black it was.


This is how the nails came out to be. :) I used Models Own's "Pastel Pink" and WaC's "Bellie Up!". Both required 3 coats, Bellie Up mostly because it's running out... Should buy new white and black. For the dots, I relied on Kiss's nail art polish and made the dots with dotting tool. I sealed the dots using Konad's topcoat. This is the best thing for dots for me, most of the brands seem to smear a bit.

I couldn't resists on adding the small butterflies with rhinestones on the nails, too. I found this sheet from Seppälä and it cost me 1,95€. Not a bad price for the sheet with more than 20 stickers with varying patterns (also flowers).

Too girly? Never!

Strawberry-chocolate shake

Good morning. My failing continues, as always. Lately it's been extremely hard for me to do nails and designs... Not to mention making them last. Currently I don't have any quick-drying top coats, so it's ridiculous to do anything fancy... Mainly because I have no focus... Or the virtue called "patience". So the simple line continues.

And here's the look for today. First of all I'd like to apologize for the quality of the photo. The skin looks quite harsh in this... Anyway, let's move on. The colors used for this are Gosh's "Miss Mole" and Models Own's "Pastel Pink".

Miss mole was opaque with 2 coats, Pastel Pink required three. This polish is quite runny and a bit disappointing in that way, nevertheless, good to go after three coats. Dots on the ring finger were done with dotting tool. On top of everything, a coat of ultra shine topcoat as always.