Hello lovelies,

It's the last day of the month (and year!) and that means the Nailvengers Assemble! challenge. Joining me in the challenge will be Sammy (The Nailasaurus), Alice (One Nail To Rule Them All) and Allie (Brit Nails).

This month's theme couldn't be anything else than New Year's Eve Nails! I've opted for elegant black and gold with matte finish. I started with a coat of Cirque Memento Mori, then added the gold glitter Rimmel Bling Thing. I have stamped the thumb with China Glaze Passion and Bundle Monster plate BM-H14 from the Holiday Collection set. Then I've used China Glaze Passion again and painted on the 2015. Lastly, I've used OPI Matte Top Coat to 'mattify' the whole manicure.

I'm not very happy with how the thumb turned out and it ruined the whole manicure but I'm really liking the other nails. I've also prepared a small collage of some of this year's Nailvengers Assemble challenges I did:

I wish you all Happy New Year and all the best in 2015! See you tomorrow ;) Lucie x

Hello lovelies,

Merry Christmas!!! Yes, for me it's Christmas today as us, Czechs celebrate Christmas on Christmas Eve. We have a Christmas dinner (carp and potato salad is traditional food but I cook schnitzels and potatoes) and after dinner we go hide and wait for the presents to appear under the tree (mum & dad always sneakily put them there). You wait till you hear a bell and once you hear it that's a permission to rush to the Christmas tree and open the presents. Of course now I'm grown up & living with my OH so we don't do all this but we will when we have some little ones :) That's all the Christmas talk sorted, now back to the nails...

Today's manicure is based around the newest addition to my nail polish collection - Nails Inc Whitechapel which I got in a goodie bag from Nails Inc who sponsored the Nailartists UK meet up (read about it here). We weren't obligated to blog about the Nails Inc products but we agreed we would do a glitter gradient nails with a Christmassy accent nails. Here is my take on this:

I have started with a coat of the Nails Inc Superfood NailKale Base Coat. Then I applied two coats of Zoya Purity (white creme) and let them dry for a bit. Then I started applying the Whitechapel glitter from tips towards the middle of the nail, creating gradient effect. I have a video tutorial here. The accent finger is stamped with China Glaze passion and MoYou London Festive 03 plate. The last step, well at least I thought it would be, was to apply the Nails Inc 45 second Top Coat with Kensington Caviar. Here's where it all went wrong - first coat of the topcoat was quite ok although it smeared the white polish a bit and tinted it lightly. But because it is not very thick it didn't give that smooth finish over the glitter gradient so I decided to do second coat of topcoat. For some reason unknown to me, the tips of my manicure went matte! So now I had more tinted white which wasn't white anymore and half of the nails matte and half glossy! Could this get any worse? Oh yeah! I thought I would cover this all up if I make the whole manicure matte. I found SpaRitual Matte Effect topcoat in my collection decided to use it. If you don't know it, it has yellowish tint to it so now I have tinted my beautiful, pure white nails with pink and yellow! Lovely! I didn't have time to re-do the manicure so it has to do :D

Looks like I just wrote a mini novel..

Have yourself a very merry Christmas or any other holiday you celebrate and I'll be back in two days! Lucie x