National Breast Cancer Awareness Day

Today was National Breast Cancer Awareness Day in Portugal.
And as such I wore a mani that fit the occasion. 

October is known as the month for breast cancer awareness but I wanted to wait for today.

I could tell people that happened to throw a glance at my nails on the bus and metro, clearly recognized what it was all about and I even got some shy smiles from some women - quite comforting.

I went for a simple look, 'cause I wanted to focus on the pink ribbon - that was the whole point to this mani :)

As such I began by painting all my nails white with Bellaoggi Snow White.

I did the pink ribbon on my ring finger using acrylic paint.

And the rest of my nails got a very sof gradient in the pink tones also, using Inglot O2M Breathable No. 603 and 607.

And I was so happy I managed a really good gradient :))

Hope you've liked this one and remember: the key word here is prevention, so ladies, do your check-ups and remember to always be awesome, no matter what! <3


Hugs & Kissies,
Mina *

Pumpkin Carvings & Halloween Glitter

I've been doing all kinds of 'different' Halloween manis, trying not to go for the obvious designs.

Still I'd promised you all a 'more traditional' manicure for Halloween and today I felt inspired enough to go for it:

And I really have to say - sometimes you don't need much to rock a great mani! :)

I started this mani by painting my index, pinkie and thumb with a black polish - Purple Professional No.18.

I then chose a glitter topcoater with Halloween glitter colours - Golden Rose Jolly Jewels No.106.

I love the purple and the green mixed with the gold. 
The perfect Halloween mix of colours, right after gold and orange, of course! ;)

I went with an orange base colour for my middle and ring fingers, using an OPI from last year's Summer collection ( I think...) - it has lost its identification sticker ages ago, so I can't really tell you which one it is.

I then saran wrapped the base with Beauty UK Aztec - the perfect gold - to mimic a lit pumpkin.

After that dried I took my black acrylic paint and painted some Halloween motives (bats, graves, a haunted house and a scary tree) for a carved like effect :)

I loved the simplicity of this look and loved how great the photos came out - I think orange polishes go with my skin tone - at least on photos ;)

What do you think? Hope you've liked this one as much as I have! 

Hugs & Kissies,

Mina *

Mahjong Tiles On My Nails!

If there's one thing I wish I knew how to play that is Mahjong.
All I know is how to play the online 1player game, which, let's face it, is not Mahjong (at all!).

Still, I can't help but feel drawn to the beautiful tiles and so I've finally decided upon freehanding some of them on my nails and I couldn't be happier :D

I pinned some pictures of Mahjong tiles on my Pinterest «Ideas» folder if you wish to see.

These felt amazing to wear! :)

I started with a base of white which I then saran wrapped with a bit of a lemon yellow - you can't see it at all but in real life it was more perceptible ;)

Although I can't tell you much about the game rules, I do know a bit about each tile.

On my pinkie, you have what is part of the honor tiles, and it falls into the dragon category. This one is the Red Dragon.

On my ring finger you can see number three, part of the simple category, in the bamboo suit.

My index portrays a tile from the simple category too, but this one is part of the circle suit (the other suit is the character one).

My middle finger is one of the flower bonus tiles, the orchid.

I chose not to do the Chinese symbol for it, because it would look too different from the other nails.

Anyway, it was inspired by this picture here. 

And finally, my favourite nail, to which I put a lot of love and effort :)

It is one of the season bonus tiles and this one represents the Winter season .

Below you can see this alongside its original picture, by Natalie Woo, which I found here.

Amazing how macro photos will show you all you did wrong! hahaha - I guess working on a microscale is hard ;)

Let me know what your thoughts on this one are and make sure you have a fantastic weekend! :D

Hugs & Kissies,

Mina *

You Can't Make Pop Art Look Gory

Because Pop Art is just too cute for that! :)

I wanted to do a Halloween version of Pop Art nails (my very first attempt with acrylic paints) and I even went searching for horror interjections (see here).

I ended up coming with something really cool, but not really gory and there's even a story line for this mani - check it out:

Once upon a time, there was this young woman who was such a clutz, she kept bumping into things, dropping things and ruining things in general.

This story is about how one day she dropped a knife right on her left foot - OOPS!

The entire neighbourhood could hear her desperate (and rather painful) wail: NO!

But there was no turning back in time - the knife had dug in deep in her foot and there was a loud SPLAT!

sound, as her blood went everywhere over her kitchen floor (so much for moping the floor earlier)

'PUFF! Another good sock ruined', she thought, as, you see, she was quite used to such accidents happening on her.

It's not that it didn't hurt but, for the record, those were her favourite pair of socks! I mean, c'mon!

That's not the end of it though... oh no, that would've been too good to be true.

You see, after she finished taking care of the bleeding and once she'd mopped the floor (again!) she sensed a...a strange...what was that?!...a strange odour...and what...EEP!...

Yes, you guessed it - she burnt her dinner! Oh what a night!

And now for some normal photos  and descriptions:

My favourite ones are my thumb, middle finger and pinkie, although I like the look altogether.

But somehow, after redoing my index for the umpteenth time I lost all the love for it I could possibly muster!

And although I don't totally dislike my middle finger, let me just say that I was going for a gory effect and not a jelly fish final look!

Seriously just look at it! It's like a weird, wounded jelly fish! hahaha

Still it was a funny mani while doing it and while wearing it - what do you think?

Hugs & Kissies,

Mina *

Chihiro's Little Helpers

For today's manicure I wanted again something cute, that could shield me from the rainy weather, but, this time, I went for something more challenging nail art wise :)

I finally did something I'd been longing to do for some time and did my (first of many) Chihiro mani :)
If you know not who Chihiro is, you may want to click here for the movie trailer to «Spirited Away» (Hayao Miyazaki is, plainly put, amazing!).

I went with a simpler design - I'll attempt the more complicated ones further in the future as I'll have to do them justice ;)

I chose this picture and I'm really happy with the end result. Check it out:

Eeeek! I'm so proud of these! I am, I so am, I really, really am! :D

Do you know that giddy feeling when someting turns out just the way you imagined it? 

Well, this is it!!! <3

I started it with a saran wrap base composed of an orange like brown (Perfect Lady No.76), a dark brown (It Style No.117), a nude shade (Inocos Nude Disse Ela) and a golden one (Inglot No.223).

I then about drawing the Susuwatari - the little black soots - with acrylic paints in a mixture of black, dark green and purple, to help give them some dimension.

The Susuwatari are small, black as soot and kinda fuzzy, with spherical bodies and inquisitive eyes. 

They make a squeaky murmuring sound when excited, meaning: they are just too cute to ignore <3 

Although they're little, they're Kamaji's helpers in the boiler's room, carrying coal to heat up the water in the bathhouse.

On my middle finger you can see Boh. Boh is son to Yubaba - the 'villain' to the story.

Here he is in his lil mouse/pig form, after being transformed by his mother. It's about this time that he becomes friends with Chihiro :)

*so proud*

And as a little extra, I've made a special one, for you Pinterest lovers :)

Have you ever seen «Spirited Away»? This movie is definitely on my Best Of Movies list, but then again I'm a sucker for anime <3

Let me know in the comments if you share my happy mood over this manicure.

And you can also let me know what kind of manicures (or other things) cheer you up on a rainy day ;)

Hugs & Kissies,

Mina *

Kiss The Rain

If you're a 90s teenager you immediately related to this title - if not, you can always check what I mean here.

The weather's been pretty much on the rainy side these past few days and I was on a embrace-it-all mood :)

As I was searching for something simple for today's mani, I thought: why not cute clouds and some falling down the sky rain bits?

So, here's how my nail looked for the day:

I warned you it'd be a simple yet cute one :)

AND it took me no longer than 25min to be finished - which sometimes, and as much as I love nail arting, feels like a quite welcome breath of fresh air!

I started it all with two coats of lovely Kiko Gray (328).

I love how hazy this polish looks - know what I mean? It's like it emits an aura and I find it my nails look gorgeous with it! Or maybe I embrace the cloudy weather a bit too much ;)

I then took my white polish (Bellaoggi Snow White) and added the shape of the clouds on all nails.

While I waited for that to dry, I dotted the rainy bits - which look more like snow flakes, I know, but they're cute nonetheless :D

To finish it all I added some light and dark blue to each cloud, using the watercolour technique, to give it a 'fluffy' look.

Because I wanted the clouds to maintain the white outline, so I just coloured the 'clouds' insides' ;)

It felt good to enjoy the evening doing something else different than nail art <3

Don't get me wrong - I do love it! - but I felt like going to the movies with BF and this was the perfect quick mani: simple & cute :D

Let me know what you think of these and hope you're managing the Autumn-y weather in a relaxed way, such as myself ;)

Hugs & Kissies,

Mina *

Why People Fear Clowns!

Today's mani is another one suited for Halloween!
Surprinsily many people have a phobia of clowns and find them scary and creepy and avoidable at all costs.

I don't include myself in that category but after searching for scary clowns, I could understand why all the paranoia around what I till then thought were circus characters ;)

I'm a sucker for horror movies and such and archived some pictures on my Pinterest board for future inspiration (who knows?).
For today's mani I went with something less scary and likely to give me midnight nightmares ;)

So, picking this picture as my inspiration, this is what I came up with:

Bam! Did I manage to scare you?

Hopefully just a little bit and not too much :)

If I take a good look at it, I must confess it's not as scary (nor as similar) to the original as I had intended, but I'd still put it on the scary side - how about you?

As you can see, I didn't manage to fit the whole design on just one nail, opting to do his joker hat pattern on the remaining nails, instead.

I quite like the contrast - you have a pretty pastel quilted pattern on the one hand and then a weird looking, definitely creepy clown like.

Although the original clown had really even teeth, I wanted mine to have them a bit more on the crooked side and I gotta say it's my favourite part.

I think the eyes came out pretty okay as well and I just wish I'd been able to make his facial features more accurate in that part around his nose - that came out as a bit of a failure.

Still, I was pretty happy with these, mostly because I suck at drawing faces and facial expressions and I managed to give this lil' buddy a real scary and intimidating aura, don't you think?

And! I looooved the quilted pattern! I will surely be doing another one of this soon, maybe with more Autumn like colours - what do you think?

Let me know how you feel about this one, down in the comment section below and hope your week has started in the most awesome of ways!

See you tomorrow.

Hugs & Kissies,

Mina *

Halloween Love, by Zi

A couple days ago I showed you my first Pon & Zi manicure. Today I'm bringing you another one, just because it's impossible to close the door, once you've gone that way ;)

I chose a cartoon I felt could adapt to the Halloween theme (you can see it here), but still be quite romantic...erm...in a very weird and creepy way, but romantic nonetheless... I guess...

Without further ado, here's some Halloween Love, by Zi (told you he was the darkest personality of them both ;))

Told you it was a creepy kind of romantic... hahahaha

The weather's all grey and rainy, so excuse the bad lighting in today's photos ;(

The caption is the best for me - so you get all gutted, Zi, take out all your insides, heart included, just to show Pon? You're insane! :D

I started with a matte green polish - Coral Matt Effect No.408 - and then did all the drawing using acrylic paints.

I improvised the background a bit and made it 'dirty', by sponging a mix of grey, white and black polishes.

What do you think of these for a different Halloween mani? Would you wear it or is it just too creepy? ;)

I loved it although I got some weird looks in public transportation hahaha

Hope you're having an awesome weekend.

Hugs & Kissies,

Mina *

Smoky Flowers Are Still Flowers

I went for another one stroke mani but this one (obviously) went down the lane of failed manis - hahaha

Why then am I sharing it with you all? Because the colours are lovely together and because regardless of everything else, I actually felt quite elegan with these!

Plus!, they taught me a very valuable lesson - I know what I'm doing wrong! My strokes are too big!! 

When you're watching a video tutorial, naturally the nail is shown in macro mode, right? Well, let's just say I forget about it, don't adjust my proportions scale and bam! ;)
Does it happen to you as well, somehow? 

Still, here's today's mani:

Black, red and white go so beautifully together, don't you think?! :)

I started by applying two coats of my favourite black nail polish: Purple Professional No.18.

The two coats weren't really needed but I was feeling like taking the time ;)

I then picked up my angled brush and went about doing flowers using white and red acrylic paint.

Nothing too fancy and you can see where the paint just wasn't enough (even though I did two coats for each flower...)

I added a black centre to each flower also and added a top coat.

Although they're not perfect I still like the smoky effect they got - my lack of technique has it advantages afterall: who'd have known? ;)

Hope you had a lovely day - the week's almost over and I can't help but think 'Thank God It's (Almost) Friday'! :)

Hugs & Kissies,

Mina *

Autumn Sea

My favourite thing in the whole world when the days get longer and the time gets warmer is the thought that soon I'll be going to the beach and enjoying some swimming in the sea :)

But that's not to say the sea isn't beautiful in all seasons, for it is! <3

So, for no reason at all, only because I felt like it I painted the sea and its 'Autumn waves' on my nails today (which gave me a most zen-licious mood throughout the day, I  must add :))

Ah...Peace :))

It all started with two coats of Rimmel Acqua Cool, which I think you can only see in tiny spots on some nails anyway - one gets carried away when sponging ;)

I then went about the upper part of the nail, close to the matrix, looking for a stormy sky effect, with some purple, grey and dark green polishes.

I finished it all with different shades of blue sponged to make the appearance of waves and to imitate the different tones the sea naturally has.

Some white for foamy bits and that was it! :)

Quite a simple effect to achieve if you have the patience to wait in between layers and to keep adding colours till you get an image close to what you pictured in your mind :D

BF said these reminded him of Japanese drawings - what do you think?

Tell me all about it down below and have a superb evening! :)

Hugs & Kissies,

Mina *