Merry Christmas!

Hi everyone!
Christmas is finally here, I hope you all are having a nice and peaceful holiday. It’s been a busy time for me lately, but now it’s finally time to relax and enjoy the good times with family and friends.

I wanted to somehow sum up what’s been happening on this blog this year, so I made a collage of some of my favorite manicures from 2011.

Click the collage to enlarge, or click here for a version with individual, clickable pics. Click click. WordPress doesn’t allow embedding, so this got a little convoluted. If you bothered to take a look, though, please tell me which 2011 manicure you like best!

Thank you all for reading and commenting, I really really appreciate every one of you! I hope you’ll stick around in 2012 as well.

From all my heart to all of you, I wish you a very merry Christmas!

Break! (Or at least slow down…)

Hi guys! I just thought I’d pop in and say a few words about the ghost town that has been my blog lately! As you might have noticed, there’s not a lot going on here at the moment. I just have to disappoint you and say that I’m really busy with real life right now, so unfortunately my blog is on the back burner for the time being. Fall is such a hectic time all around, and I’m having to work a lot more right now as well, because there are a lot of shifts that need to be covered. I also have a lot of fun stuff to do, but it takes a lot of time. I hope you’ll bear with me for a while, I promise I’ll be back eventually! I might pop in with a few posts now and then if I find the time as well.

I hope everyone is having a fabulous fall so far! Enjoy all your pretty polishes in the meanwhile, I’ll see you soon!

Mitt lille land

My little country
A little place, a handful of peace
thrown out among mountain plateau and fjords

My little country
Where high mountains are planted
among houses, people and words
Where silence and dreams grow
Like an echo in barren earth

My little country
Where the sea pats mild and soft
like it’s caressing from coast to coast

My little country
Where stars glide by
and becomes landscapes when it gets lighter
while the night stands there – bleak and silent

My little country
A little place, a handful of peace
thrown out among mountain plateau and fjords

My little country
Where high mountains are planted
among houses, people and words
Where silence and dreams grow
Like an echo in barren earth

Music/lyrics: Ole Paus

What My Girls Want

In my giveaway poll I got a lot of useful comments on what you’d want to see in the future, and I’m so grateful for the inspiration and creative criticism you all provided. Your comments gave me a lot of motivation and ideas, definitely priceless information for a blogger!

I just thought I’d give you an overview of some of the main points of the poll, and a summary of what I probably will or won’t feature here on Nailin’ It.

First and foremost, a lot of you simply said “keep up the good work”, and thank you for that! I guess I’m doing something right, hehe.

Some of the things that many of you liked and wanted to see more of, are swatches and comparisons. I love doing swatches and nails of the day posts, but I haven’t been doing a lot of comparisons. One of the reasons is that I try not to have dupes in my stash, so I often don’t have similar polishes to compare the swatch to. But often I feel that it can be useful to see which polishes aren’t dupes as well, so I’ll try adding some comparisons to my manicure posts from now on.

A lot of you wanted to se more stamping and other nail art. I’m very into stamping right now, so I’ll definitely show you more of my stamping designs! When it comes to other types of nail art, I’m not as good, but hopefully I’ll get better with time.

The third big category of suggestions were tutorials. Many of you wanted more tutorial videos, and while it scares the crap out of me to appear on camera, I thought it was great fun to do my foil method video. Maybe I’ll work up the courage to do some more videos in the future. I got a lot of requests for tutorials, such as stamping, nail shaping, how to make nail polish jewelry, water marble, how to polish and cleanup around your nails and general nail care. Definitely a lot of stuff to think about there!

Now for some of the things I unfortunately can’t feature a lot of on my blog. A few of you suggested more giveaways, and while I definitely appreciate my readers a lot, I can’t afford to have a lot of giveaways. My blog isn’t sponsored in any way, so all my giveaways have been paid for out of my own pocket. I’m sorry, but I hope you’ll still read my blog even if my giveaways are just a yearly thing.

Another suggestion I got was more reviews of recently released collections. I’d love to do those, but it’s difficult for a number of reasons. First, I’m not sponsored, so I don’t recieve the collections for review by the polish companies. Secondly, I live in Norway, so if I want polishes from new collections, I have to order them online. That of course takes a while, and because I only ever buy the polishes I’m interested in from a collection, I won’t be able to review entire collections (unless some pr reps wants to send them to me, hint, hint!).

Anyway, I’m definitely inspired, so thanks again! And please don’t hesitate to ask if there’s anything you’d want me to write about.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Love, S.

The new batch

I just got a new batch of cabochons and fittings from Beadaholique, time to play! Here are my first four creations from the last week.

From top to bottom: Ozotic Pro 505 (Eclipse) over black, Clarins 230 over OPI Diva of Geneva, OPI DS Glamour, Kleancolor Chunky Holo Fuchsia over China Glaze Endurance.

I was a little too eager to finish my first couple of rings and earrings, so I didn’t wait long enough between coats on the cabochons and I ended up with bubbles in my jewelry. This time I was more patient, and I’ve spent days just polishing these beads to make sure they don’t bubble.

Prettyyyyy! I can’t wait to wear these!

Duochromes are really amazing for this kind of stuff, I tried some of the Orly Cosmics, but I think I’ll ditch them in favor of Nfu-Oh flakies. My mom got a Nfu-Oh 51 ring and a pair of matching earrings, she was very happy with them! These beauties make very nice gifts for friends and relatives.