Good news everyone: I finally got a new laptop - rejoice! All my systems are up and running again. Also got the new Windows 8 - I am still figuring out the best way to work with it. While it has some cool ideas (the tiles look pretty good in my opinion), I need to get used to it ("where the heck is everything hidden?")

Currently I am trying to figure out a way to adjust my pictures (i.e. Gimp - I don't own PS at the moment). The cold and dark season has just begun, and under-exposure and washed-out colours are a problem.

Nevertheless, here are some pictures of my most recent manicure. Think chocolates...


The colder it gets, the more I want to stuff myself with chocolate and gingerbread - oh the temptation.


Dry cuticles are a downside of autumn/winter season. But all the gingerbread and chocolate and cinnamon, however, is definitely on the plus side.


The colours I used:

• Dark chocolate brown: Essence Who is Mr. Brown?
• Milk chocolate brown: Essence Most Wanted
• White chocolate: Essence Flying Higher
• Strawberry flavoured dots: P2 Perfectly

That's it for today. Have a nice week and see you soon for more mouth-watering nail designs :P

Hi again :) New Japanese manicure coming up - again my sister worked as a model for me and she chose this design from the Nail Up! magazine:


Nice one, isn't it? So with no further introduction - the pictures (click to enlarge):

Here's the list of polishes I used:

• Essence White Hype (matte white)
• P2 030 virgin (jelly white, for evening out the other white polish)
• Essence circus circus 02 don't feed the tiger (duo polish with gold and black/gold glitter)
• Essence Multi Dimension 76 cool and the gang (electric blue)
• Essence Legends of the Sky 05 Take my Red away (red)
• P2 232 Shockful (green)

As always, white was a problem. White polish and me, we will never be friends. Did you notice that the rhinestones on the thumb look like a turtoise? You can never unsee it... ^^



Have a great weekend!

Hi to all nail art lovers! Did you have a nice Valentine's day? Even if you are single: I hope at least nothing bad happened ;)

I'm not too much of the lovey-dovey type. But it's quite cold and winter returned with all its freezing might so I wanted something that felt like spring. And since Valentine's day came up it was the ideal excuse occasion for this nail design:


Hooray, shinies!
Choosing this design I assumed that it wouldn't take too long in the making. It's basically one colour on each nail, topped with a few rhinestones, right...


... Right. It took me almost two hours. ^^; I'm still very slow when it comes to applying rhinestones it seems. I haven't found the right method yet to speed up the application process. I hope I'll get to it during my Japanese nail art challenge.


Here's what I used:

• hot pink: Nivea Calcium Power 43 Cherry Glacé (not sure if it's red or pink - seems to be right in between)
• soft pink: Essence Sweet as Candy (this was 4 coats or so and still the smile line is visible)
• soft yellow: P2 Dream Lover (also 4 coats)
• rhinestones from bornpretty
• I don't know where I got the large rhinestones on my thumb and ringfinger - they just were in my art supplies
• base coat and top coat as usual

I have a request for nail polish producers: Would you mind making pastel polishes that are opaque in two coats? I'm not even asking for one-coaters, just a standard two-coater would be absolutely awesome.


Many thanks in advance.

Yours sincerely, Naekubi

Part 5 of the nail art experience! In most nail design pictures you only see the left hand. For right handers it is easier to draw on your left hand, of course. For me actually, too. But with practice you can get to draw with both hands fairly well.


In my case I have a little advantage on my side: When I was a kid I used to draw and do things with both hands, I was quite undecided whether to become a right hander or a left hander. So my mum told me to always use the right hand - more convenient. (Don't worry, I am fine - no stuttering, no mental damage whatsoever).There are certain things I still do like a lefty: Eating, combing and brushing my teeth. It feels totally weird to do those things with the right hand...

So for those who ever wondered how my right hand looks in a close-up, here you go:

The design is simple. I didn't have gold sequins, so I used a glitter polish instead.

Now on to the list of polishes I used:

• red: Rival de Loop 20 (it's been 8 years since I bought it, but it is still available at Rossmann)
• pink: H&M Duo Nail Polish Dusty Nails
• nude: P2 perfectly (discontinued)
• gold glitter: Essence Make it Golden
• gold lines: China Glaze Midnight Kiss

I noticed that I don't have many nude polishes in my stash, so there is a colour I could stock up a little bit without feeling too guilty. (Even though my stash is quite full as is.)

Please excuse the partially bad lighting on my pictures. Winter is just not a good time for shooting photos if you don't have studio lights.

See you again soon!

Here we go again with the nail art challenge! I must say: I absolutely love this challenge! This really is a lot of fun because I get to try all kinds of cool designs and the best thing is: I don't even have to use my brains and come up with designs, hehe :)


The Chinese new year celebration is on Monday, so I chose to do a new year nail design. At least I assume that's what it says in the Japanese description. In the picture above you can see some other suggested designs for Chinese new year.

It's not red and gold, thank god. It doesn't pick up the Chinese zodiac sign as a theme, either. It would have been very strenuous to draw a cool dragon on my nails, anyways. But hey, it has spring blossoms on it and as far as I know, that's what Chinese new year is about.


The colour combination is beyond awesome. Dark ink blue and shimmery dark green and I was hooked. It reminds me of an ao dai dress that my mom once wore (about 30 years ago).


It's nice to have a completely flat nail design again with no bumpy rhinestones, bulky glitter and so on. Even if I use nail art glue I always lose one or two rhinestones.


I used my usual vast selection of drugstore polishes:

• dark blue: MNY 709A
• shimmery green: Essence Out of my Mind
• fine gold glitter: Sabrina polish (no number, no name)
• red: Rival de Loop 20
• pink: H&M Duo Nail Polish Dusty Nails
• white: Essence White Hype

right hand

left hand

I rarely tolerate flowers on my nails, therefore this nail design is an exception from my relatively strict nail art principles. ;) To me it is definitely a yay! manicure.


Thanks for stopping by!

Part 3 of my nail art challenge! Today I have a wonderful design in black and white for you. I was aiming at something more simple and straight forward. And this was both simple and easy to do (well, from a certain perspective I guess). And you only need two nail polishes of your choice. ^^


I think I mentioned it earlier: I dislike white nail polish. To be honest, I hate applying it. It gets streaky and is incredibly unforgiving. It's easy to mess up and ruins your manicure right at the first coat. I thought it would be ok because half of the nail is covered with black.


You see that thin white line at the cuticle? That happened during clean-up. I first applied a coat of white polish and then added the black. While cleaning up I always removed a bit less of the white layer than of the black one :-/

Here's the list of nail polishes I used:

• Essence White Hype
• Essence Black Out
• basecoat and top coat as always
• little star-shaped glitters from the craft shop

So, what is your verdict? Yay or nay? Feel free to leave a comment! :)

Are you ready for part 2 of the japanese nail art challenge? Follow me this way...


This is today's nail art and it even has a name: Alice in Wonderland. I guess you get the idea. I chose this nail art design mainly because it's blue and blue polish is hands down my favourite. Here's how it turned out on my nails (pardon the bad quality of the pictures, it's just so darn gloomy here - daylight, where are you?):


I wanted to try out my new rhinestones that I ordered at bornpretty just recently. Funny comment of a friend on my nails: "Guess there wasn't enough space to put any more rhinestones on it."Also my french mani doesn't have that curved smile line. I thought it looks better this way on my not so long nails.

I guess I still need to practice a bit to handle the nail art glue. Almost affixed my index to the dinner table in the process... *coughs*


Polishes I used:

• light blue: Essence Street Styler (Urban Messages LE)
• silver: Essence Style for Summernights (Nails in Style LE)
• dark blue: MNY 709a (VIP is chic LE)
• basecoat and topcoat as always
• red heart-shaped and black round rhinestones purchased at bornprettystore.com

I must say that I love the striped nails! The dark blue polish combined with this awesome silver shade is just great.


Thanks for stopping by!

Hi there! I hope you all had a wonderful christmas season. I sure did, which is why I didn't post anything - instead I ate and slept and ate some more and then slept some more, hehe.


The past weeks I spent too much time on my computer (both at work and at home), so staying away from laptop, internet and blog became necessary.


Next year there will be a little change on the nail art posts, because I am ready for a nail art challenge! The series "Das aktuelle Nagelstudio" ends here to make room for something new. So make sure to stop by the next days to see what the future will bring :)

My nail art this week was quite simple. Purple and red with glitter, scotch tape technique. I used the following nail polishes:

• red: Essence Wake Up!
• purple: p2 No. 091 (discontinued)
• glitter: Essence Nail Art Twins 02 julia
• basecoat, topsealer

The pictures are relatively accurate, this red is a little bit on the orange side. Not ideal for my skintone, but ok with the purple polish.

See you guys next time!

I am behind one week... this manicure comes from the vault. It's cold and Christmas time is approaching real fast. Now feast your eyes on this great jelly red:


Winter time calls for warm colours, glitter and stuff. I was hoping for this one new red glitter polish by Essence being way more red, but no. Relatively pale pink. I'm a bit disappointed, but it still looks ok.


The polishes I used (besides basecoat and topcoat, which are always the same):

• P2 Diva (an alltime favourite)
• Essence Make it golden (gold glitter... love it!)
• China Glaze Passion (ring finger)
• Essence Time for Romance

I used the sponge technique to apply the glitter polishes. Easy, efficient nail art, versatile and quick - that's how I like it.


If you know any brand that carries a ruby red glitter polish, tell me. I am interested :)

Edit: Dear sparkle, this is the only not-super-close-up picture I could find and this one's for you ~

Just a quick post about last week's nail design. Actually I wanted to post that yesterday but got stuck with karaoke (on a side note: it's fun even if it's just two people).

So finally I managed to try one of my Orly polishes that I got in summer from one of my sister's friends (thanks again, Bill!).


I added a free handed half moon manicure to it. Here's what I used:

• P2 Quick Dry Hypoallergen Base Coat
• Catrice Be my Millionaire (old version)
• Orly Rocket Science
• Essence BTGN topsealer

That's it. Have a nice sunday!

I love autumn! Autumn is my favourite season. The colours, the smell, the light, the fresh air. Crispy yellow and red leaves on the pavement that sound like potato chips when you walk on them... mmmhhh...


It's like a feast for the eyes before winter. Nature creates warm and rich colours that are just very inspiring.


So here we have my "Welcome autumn!" manicure. It was also partly inspired by this key chain in the picture that my little brother gave me as a souvenir from his visit in Madrid, Spain. A friend of mine noticed that this manicure looked a bit like the windows of a church. I can see the similarity, yup.


Let's move on to the polishes I used:

• P2 Hypoallergen + Quick Dry Base Coat
• Essence Gold Rush (gold beige)
• Essence 50s Girls Reloaded LE You're a Heartbreaker(blue)
• Essence Wake Up! (red)
• P2 Your wild side LE vibrant green (dark green)
• Essence Natventurista LE Barefoot through the Moss (light green)
• Rival de Loop no name (dark brown)
• Essence Sun Club LE BBC Golden Sands (golden brown)
• Essence BTGN topsealer

*phew* *wipes her forehead* I hope I didn't forget any polish. This is a free hand manicure by the way. I tried it with scotch tape first but with five different colours on each nail it would have taken forever.

Thanks for stopping by and see you soon!