31DC2013: Day 11 - Polka Dot Nails

Hello there guys!! We're onto polka dots today, I wanted to do some 3D polka dots which I saw at Chelsea Queen's instagram. I thought it looked awesome but lacking that bit of substance I like, I had a mildly crazy idea and I decided to roll with it.

I call them pop art polka dots, I adore the pop art style SO MUCH and I'm slightly sad that it's been not used to full potential here. That changed today. I simply painted some explosions then did the polka dots over them. I didn't purposely do the pop art theme, but I'm happy it turned out that way. 3D polka dots look so cool and they are so easy to do!
So yes I am very much enjoying this manicure, I didn't think I could come up with something substantial for polka dots but one constant with polka dots is that they are cute. I am onboard with that and if they look this cool, I now have more respect for polka dots.

The neon is still happening at PlumeriaPainted (who cares about being season appropriate, obviously not me), I had to try Beach Party by itself and I just love it. I love all the neons and clearly I need all the neons. I'll be writing a full post on Beach Party soon, expect glowing things about it.
I toothpicked the explosions and used bobby pins for the dots. I'm also glad I managed to space the dots out right, I have made the dots not spaced out right before many a time.

Orange: Models Own - Beach Party
White: Barry M - Matt White
Black: Rimmel - Black Pearl
Red: Essie - E-Nuff Is E-Nuff
Green: Max Factor - Cool Jade
Purple: Illamasqua - Jo'Mina

Thank you very much for reading and I hope you have a great day!! :)

31DC2013: Day 10 - Gradient Nails

Hi there guys! We are a 3rd of the way in of the challenge and I'm proud that I'm still here frankly, today is gradients, and I love them. They are so gorgeous, shame that I'm not so hot that them even though I make them way harder than they need to be. I'm kind of in love with this look, it's the neon gradient. Yeah I love neon, pretty sure I don't hide this. I originally had a completely different gradient idea in mind but once I got my hands on Models Own Beach Party, things were changing...

AHHHHHHHH NEON I LOVE IT!! If that wasn't clear already. It's brighter in real life and all I can do is stare, I love all things bright (lots of love today). The pink/orange/green is so pretty, I just can't (sorry for lack of a better description).
Once decided the neon gradient was going to happen, I wanted the accent to be a more dulled version (though I probably would have loved this more if it was all neon, but the accents make the neon stand out more). Black and white glitter always looks fantastic over gradients, as most glitters do.

I also did a different gradient technique, now the last time I tried this technique it failed. But that was my fault, I was a bit too cack-handed. Normally I get the sponge and do one colour at a time, I knew the paint all the colours on the sponge and press on would make my gradients look better but I fail to use good advice.
My gradient is blended, when I look close up, the parts where the pink goes into orange and orange goes into green and the blend is beautiful and I am proud. Usually that blend is not there. That's the case for my thumb and ring finger cause I was lazy haha, but I still like those gradients.

Neon polishes:
Pink: Nails Inc - Notting Hill Gate
Orange: Models Own - Beach Party
Green: China Glaze - I'm With The Lifeguard
I really like the colour of this but it's SO sheer, so many coats were done that day.
White base: Barry M - Matt White
Black and white glitter: L'Oreal Color Riche - Confetti
Regular polishes:
Pink: No7 - Me! Me! Me!
Orange: Essie - Tart Deco
Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black
Rainbow glitter: OPI - Rainbow Connection
In most lighting Rainbow Connection always looks silver, also Rainbow Connection doesn't really have rainbow glitter, there's mostly pink, orange, green (see my colour scheme ;)) and silver (there's also yellow and blue). The silver bothers me, is there silver in a rainbow?? (No) But I'll always like this polish cause of the name, still searching for my perfect matte rainbow glitter polish :)

There's me and my sponge to give you an idea of what I did, I definitely had to clean up after but it's the best gradient I've done so I can't complain. Thank you so much for reading and I hope you have an amazing day!! :)

31DC2013: Day 9 - Rainbow Nails

Oh hello there guys!! We have some rainbows today and currently this is my favourite nail art of the challenge. It works on many levels too, it's like triple rainbow all the way across the sky.

You see dem rainbows, there's the rainbow pattern, there's a rainbow skittle going on and just lots of rainbow colours, I love all things multi-coloured so this works for me. I like the colour combinations on each nail, though I could've added more red or yellow, I like the abundance of cool tones :)

I love geometric patterns (I don't know if this counts as a geometric pattern but I think it does) as they're complex and look super cool. Sometimes I just forget to do more even though I really like them. I'm positive there's a name for this design but I have no idea what that name is.
I personally think they look like rainbows, I used to be obsessed with rainbows and I still think they're beautiful and can make the rainy days better (ah I'm full of corn today ;)). Basically I drew some "rainbows" with my black pen then filled in the colours accordingly.

Polishes used:

Thumb: OPI - Dutch Tulips (red), Essie - Fear Or Desire (orange) and Rimmel - Sunshine (yellow) over Lovely Me:Ex - White

Index: Models Own - Beach Party (orange, new polish alert! I have many things to say about this polish but we'll save that for another time :)), OPI - Charged Up Cherry (pink) and Max Factor - Cool Jade (green)

Middle: Illamasqua - Nomad (green), Revlon - Dreamer (blue) and Barry M - Berry Ice Cream (purple, originally going to be Barry M Prickly Pear)

Ring: Nails Inc - Baker Street (blue), OPI - Jade Is The New Black (green) and OPI - Japanese Rose Garden (pink)

Pinky: Illamasqua - Jo'Mina (medium purple), Barry M - Fuchsia (pink) and OPI - Plum And Get It (dark purple)

Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black

Well I hope you enjoyed this post, thank you very much for reading and have a fantastic day!! :)

31DC2013: Day 8 - Metallic Nails

Hello there guys!! Metallic is not my finish of choice and random things seem to come from it but I loved my metallic mani last year, so I did what I did last year and I asked myself "What's metallic?", I came up with cans of Coke. Then I changed it to a Cherry Cola can cause I can (see what I did there? :/).

It didn't out the way I wanted it to, I'm not so impressed. It's mostly my failed lettering, I swear I can write better than that. My curved nails are hiding some of the letters, I should've thought about that beforehand.
Otherwise I really like my cherries, for some unknown reason I have big issues with cherries even though they are not particularly difficult. You can kind of get the tin of soft drink feel I guess, this idea was really random, I can almost promise that my next manicures will not be as random.

I also intended to do something special with the cherries, but slowly that didn't work and I did your standard cherry look. I like the different colours of the cherries, it's pretty bomb (see what I did there? It's a stretch :/).
Did you know there's no commercial Cherry Cola, there's Coca Cola Cherry and Cherry Coke but no Cherry Cola (well at least I think so). I liked the look of Cherry Cola the best.

Silver: w7 - Silver Mirror
Haha I have a silver polish this year (as opposed to last year), it's technically not mine but I can use it, as it's on "borrowed terms", unfortunately for those that I borrow from they tend to not get it back. 2 very easy coats, it's foil like, the brush shape was also great for my nails. Once I finished painting the base I thought silver nails look really weird on me but once the art was on it wasn't as weird.
Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Dark Red: Nails Inc - Tate
Pink: Barry M - Boots Xmas LE 2012 B
This is another metallic-ish shade to tie in the metallic theme.
Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
White: Lovely Me:Ex - White

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a really good day!! :)

31DC2013: Day 7 - Black and White Nails

Hi there guys!! I had a nice simple idea for this, but I decided it was apparently too boring (nothing wrong with it at all just saying) and I randomly added Snoopy (which was an idea I've had for this but I've already done Snoopy nails). I really like the addition of Snoopy even though he's a bit unrelated.

Piano nails...and Snoopy...with a heart. I like the completed look, I'm all about random sometimes, this is definitely one of those times. The piano keys are so easy to paint and look cute, Snoopy was harder to paint (proportioning, it's always proportioning) but I'm happy with how he turned out. I was going to colour in the heart, but decided to keep it a monochrome look! And Luxe and Lush adds a bit more interest to your simple black and white mani.

I love the piano, I've been playing since I was 5 and it's a brilliant versatile instrument. It's a reason why I keep my nails short sometimes (sometimes being the key word) cause it makes an infernal clicking noise. During June this year I really had to keep my nails short cause I had a piano exam, but I got my results and I passed my Grade 7 piano exam!! It was difficult not gonna lie, and it's only going to get harder but I love the piano so it's ok :)

White: Barry M - Matt White
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Glitter: China Glaze - Luxe and Lush
I've fallen out of favour with Luxe and Lush but I'm loving it over white, it just looks awesome. The flakes do the whole orange to green and normally look blue/purple. But it's extremely rough (even with an amazing Color Club topcoat) and there are bubbles and I had to do thick coats for even flakes. Not obvious bubbles so it doesn't bother me much, haha in the past I thought the bubbles were added random glitter, even though I couldn't see random glitter in the polish it was just there :P

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day!!! :)

31DC2013: Day 6 - Violet Nails

Hi there!! I think the prompt just means purple nails cause I'm not sure if I used violet. This is a bit meh, I cut my nails too short (but it's been helpful in terms of daily life) and this probably would've looked better on longer nails, but hey I don't think it's bad, just meh.

I wanted the drips over a textured polish (different textures at once oh la la), the cremes ended up being a bit textured due to that but the glitter smoothed it out a bit. I wanted to do layers of purple (not in a gradient style), but gradients look much better so I added glitter to just the illusion of a kind of gradient. The purples don't get lighter eventually in the pictures but in real life Jo'Mina is darker and it works better.
For this I think more blue should have showed but these are purple nails so it's best this way. Also the blue and purples are a bit too close, maybe I should have put the darkest at the top and lightest at the bottom. And yes the shards still annoy me, I had to pick some off, why can't they stay flat on my nails like happy shards?

Light Purple: Barry M - Prickly Pear
Medium Purple: Illamasqua - Jo'Mina
Dark Purple: OPI - Plum And Get It
Purple Glitter: Butter LONDON - Shambolic
Glitter Topper: Models Own - Freak Out!
Blue: OPI - Get Your Number
I liked Get Your Number better this time, the holographic shimmer in it is so pretty, but the blue is still too dull for my tastes but I can appreciate it more.

Thank you for reading and I hope you have a great day!! :)

31DC2013: Day 5 - Blue Nails

Oh hello there!! Continuing a theme from last year that I started during the 31 day challenge and I decided to continue, I have Eeyore here today. I've previously done Tigger, Winnie the Pooh and Piglet, I'm thinking of actually getting round to painting all of them. It's looking good currently :)

To be honest I wasn't impressed in real life, I felt like there was something that made it not cute. But in the photos the cute factor comes back!! I love when that happens, um Eeyore is adorable, also love how he always seems to be exhausted. The purple french tip was to represent his tummy and the bow on my pinky is for the pinky at the end of his tail.

I like how these are relatively simple but very cute, didn't take me too long (except there were some proportioning issues I had to sort). In my other Winnie the Pooh character designs I purposefully didn't have a black outline to take away the "edge", but Eeyore kind of required a black outline for his details. Blue is my favourite colour so blue nails are always welcome around here.

Blue: Essie - Bikini So Teeny (one of my favourites)
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black
Pink: Barry M - Fuchsia
Purple: Barry M - Prickly Pear
This was more similar to Bikini So Teeny than I thought, but you can obviously still distinguish them.
Peach: w7 - Linen
White: Lovely Me:Ex- White
Green: OPI - Jade Is The New Black

Thank you very much for reading and I hope you have a wonderful day!!! :)