Entry to Polish Art Addiction's contest

I call it Candy Flowers and Treats (cause I have to name everything I do ;))

I loved the theme to this contest (monochrome) and wanted to do a kind of twist on the traditional polka dots and roses (which is one of my favourite nail art things to do). So I did it in pink.

Since I'm on holiday I didn't have a pale pink with me and that was quite crucial in this design. Of course me being a genius (sarcasm, please don't take me seriously) I came up with a plan. I got No7 - Snowflake and layered OPI - I Lily Love You over it (and cause I love it :)). Hopefully that's ok, 4 coats was too much though, in real life it was hard to differentiate the roses and the background (thankfully only in some lighting).

Another issue was I had limited pinks so I borrowed one from my aunt. Topshop - Domestic Goddess, which in the bottle looked like a dusty rose. Once I put it on my nail I thought "It's brown", which really annoyed me. Slowly though throughout the day I kept looking at it and it became it's true dusty rose colour. This photo looks dusty rose thankfully, I found a really good lighting spot ^_^ I used that for the polka dots and the roses. I wasn't sure if it would go with The Face Shop - PK105 but I thought the combination was great.

One of my favourite things about this are the pink leaves, that was the reason I wanted to do this in pink, for pink leaves. It was also the background colour for the polka dots. It's OPI - Charged Up Cherry, I've only shown it with nail art on top currently. But again it's lovely.

Right hand picture, the only difference is that I used Charged Up Cherry to do lines on the roses, which did nothing, but I was experimenting.

Nice close up of my thumb, where I really like it basically, but sometimes the roses look really in depth, I noticed that when looking at it. Only sometimes though... :P

My Perfect Colour

Hello, this is a very special colour to me. There's no sentimental reason or anything, it's just the colour. I've been looking for this colour for almost a year. Maybe for others it's the easier nail polish colour to find but seriously. I. Could. Not. Find. It. The shade colour just be wrong. I'm very anal when it comes to these things. It's called a perfect colour for a reason.

(I thought my pictures would be too crappy to post but it ended up pretty colour accurate so it's all good ;))

Oh my. It's perfect. My perfect colour is a light Tiffany blue or robin's egg blue (reminds me for Owl City's song "Brielle":)) and probably it has loads of other names but the names above are the ones I refer it to as. I've seen so many variations. But. They. Are. Not. This. Correct. Shade. See all the others shades were WRONG. Eg China Glaze - For Audrey (and really that should've been right, I personally think it's not the bright Tiffany blue but it's still nice), OPI - Mermaid Tears, Essie - Turquoise and Caicos etc. The list goes on.

Well I should actually write what it is and its The Face Shop - GR501. I have been loving The Face Shop polishes, inexpensive, really good quality and great colours. Also it's clearly not green so the GR is not needed.

Without saying it's my favourite nail polish and hopefully it will be that way for a while. Sometimes I just look at it and think "OH MY GOODNESS IT'S SOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL". It also gives a sense of achievement from finding the colour (which it really shouldn't, now finding a nail polish is an achievement :/), when I first saw the colour I had a feeling it would be perfect. I was just hoping application would be good, and it was 2 coats for full opacity, I did 3 for luck and I did an extra coat before the photos becuase it was mildly chipped (5 days without topcoat :)). Just one more, IT'S PERFECT!!!!! :D

Combo: Barbie Girl

Yay another combo!!! I'm not going to do one combo and leave like 3 weeks in-between before the next one ;) Also since I love combinations I don't see why not. Seeing the mani it's pretty clear why I called it "Barbie Girl" (well I think anyway).

Hot pink and the flakies really make it Barbie. Ok I can't explain why, it just does, at least to me. This picture is the most true to colour out of all the pictures. The multicoloured flakies on top make it like jumbled and I thought it could be colours of purchases or something (I just made that up :L). I again used The Face Shop - PK105 (used for the pink penguins) and oh my goodness it is the most amazing hot pink.

Ok the colour did not show up correctly (I could not find good lighting in my cousins house also my camera just wouldn't co-operate) but it's way brighter. When I was looking at the pink I thought "WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE??!". But I also like hot pink which also contributed to my love of the polish. I did 3 coats (it was 2 coats for opacity but did another one for luck).

The flakies were OPI - I Lily Love You. This is 3 coats (it's very thin). I broke my ban again. :L But it was on my list (obviously that justifies it)!!!! And it was either that or China Glaze - Snow Globe (Snow Globe has been rejected in my head quite a few times). Simple put I lily love this polish (:L). I love flakies I love how they are iridescent so they are different colours in the light. I love that the base is pink (even though it doesn't really matter cause it doesn't show up when layered). It's gorgeous, nuff said. 

Hehe close up of Barbie Girl. Yes without saying, I really like this combo, not a favourite (I have something else for favourites ;)) but it's lovely. And really fun :)

Combo: Seaweed in troubled waters

Hello!!! Back from my "break". Well I went on a trip, then I went to my cousin house for 2 weeks and I couldn't find a way to upload my pictures (I probably could've found a way to upload my pictures but I decided to take a break :P). When I got back to my aunt's house there was a bit of a computer problem so I had to wait until I could post. But anyway now I'm back to posting (need to get used to writing sentences again :P).

In my opinion one of the best things about nail polish is layering. There are pretty much endless combinations, so this is one of the combinations I have done. I'll probably be posting quite a lot of combos, I love them! ;D

And yes I give them names sometimes (most of the time). I thought the green sparkle was kind of like the seaweed and the crazy layered glitter was "troubled waters". This was Revlon - Dreamer, Revlon - Radiant (blue glitter with larger green pieces) and Revlon - Belle (silver glitter with larger holographic pieces and blue glitter). Dreamer has always been one I layer over. I don't really like this combination, I layered Radiant first by itself and that didn't look too good. Belle did make it look better but it was the colour of Dreamer. I don't actually like it. This is why I layer over it.

Well you win some you lose some. This was kind of in-between cause I like the glitter (but they are nicer in other combinations).

More combinations to come, most better than this one :P

31 Day Challenge Recap

Yay I finished the challenge!!! So I'm just going to do a complete recap of the whole challenge :D

Red Nails - Red Converse

Orange Nails - Tigger 

Yellow Nails - Sunset Palm Trees

Green Nails - Mint Chocolate Leopard Print

Blue Nails - Essie Turquoise and Caicos

Purple Nails - Butterfly Wings

Black and White Nails - Ninjas 

Metallic Nails - Robots and Gears

Gradient Nails - Ocean and Sky

Rainbow Nails - Rainbow Glitter

Polka Dots - Minnie Mouse 

Stripes - Nautical Stripes

Animal Print - Cow Print

Flowers - Vintage Roses

Delicate Print  - Ramdom Floral Print

Tribal Nails

Glitter - OPI Excuse Moi!

Half Moons - Peter Pan Collars

Galaxies

Water Marbled

Inspired by a colour - Essie Tart Deco

Inspired by a song - Anchor by Mindy Gledhill

Inspired by a movie - Pokemon

Inspired by a book - Lettuce by Mandy Stanley

Inspired by fashion - Tuxedos 

Inspired by a pattern - Cherries

Inspired by art - Pop art

Inspired by a flag - Great Britain

Inspired by the supernatural - Boos

Inspired by a tutorial - Penguins

Recreate your favourite challenge - Winnie the Pooh

So that's my whole challenge :) I mentioned my favourites yesterday but unexpected favourites for me were Day 8 (Robot nails), Day 16 (Tribal print), Day 19 (Galaxies) and Day 25 (Tuxedo nails). But there were SO many manicures from the challenge that I loved.

31 Day Challenge - Day 31 - Recreate your favourite challenge

Honestly I've had so many favourite challenges. So picking one wasn't easy. I think it was tied between Day 2 (Tigger nails), Day 14 (Vintage Roses) and Day 23 (Pokemon). But there were so many others that I loved so it was tough picking. I think the thing that swayed me was that my aunt kindly got me a mustard yellow...

                 (I couldn't help it, I had to cut my nails, and I like this length a lot better)

Winnie the Pooh!!! I recreated the Tigger nails, and by recreating, I created another character on my nails :) It is SO simple compared to the Tigger ones, but something simple can be just as nice. The red for Pooh's t-shirt, I don't normally like the look of eg second and middle finger one colour and the ring and pinky another (do you understand what I''m saying?? :L). But for this I think it works.

Close up of the thumb of my left hand, I'm proud of that, harder than it looks. You have to be very careful with the black pen (or whatever tool you're using). I used white as the base again for the mustard yellow to come out better.

(I don't understand how the colours are so different from one hand to the next, I used the same lighting :/)

And not forgetting my right hand which I am also very proud of. Definitely more difficult but it still looks neat :) (I swear it's just my thumb cuticle that's messed up).

Colours used:

Red: OPI - Dutch Tulips
Mustard Yellow: Topshop - Naked
White: Natural Collection - White and Sally Hansen - French White Tip
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black

Equipment used:
Toothpick

So that's it, the challenge is over. I actually painted my nails everyday for most of it. That probably won't be happening too often anymore. I really enjoyed the challenge, just trying different looks and techniques was SO. MUCH. FUN. (maybe I wasn't that enthusiastic :P). But I think the challenge is a really good thing to try and it does help for manicure ideas ;) This was a fun experiment!! :D

31 Day Challenge - Day 30 - Inspired by a tutorial

Also bonus challenge for myself, use the new polishes I got :) In June I told myself I wouldn't buy more nail polish til my birthday in November (I have been bad and have bought quite a lot, no a lot.).  But I had an exception, if I found any polishes on my wishlist, then the 1st rule is forgotten. Obviously I found some colours on my list :L ;)

Weirdly I think I actually had the hardest time coming up with a design for this theme. My mind kept changing and there were virtually no tutorials I wanted to do. Also ones that fit my colour scheme. Really the theme was "Anything you want" and I still was stuck.

But finally I decided on this, and I really like it.

                                        (My nails are too long, being cut after the challenge :))

Funky pink penguins :P I copied a picture as there are so many tutorials for penguin nails. I really like the fuchsia, I got a couple of colours that weren't on my wishlist (I'm bad at this ban :() but they were really inexpensive (£1.45 from The Face Shop and the quality is so so good)!!!! And 20% off if you bought 4, which I had to do. One was my perfect colour so it was totally justified, more on that another time ;) I thought the pink and blue could work for a penguin and they actually did which was the best part.

I was thinking of a design for the plain nails, but the glitter alone sufficed and of course it did. I thought it kind of look like falling snow, which isn't exactly for summer, but the other colours are so bright. It's China Glaze Luxe and Lush from the Hunger Games collection, this has been on my wishlist for a while. I'm a Hunger Games fan (like everyone else) so when I heard there was nail polish for it, I was there. Luxe and Lush automatically appealed to me, so it was that or China Glaze Snow Globe (which is also SO pretty), honestly I was leaning more towards Snow Globe. Since China Glaze is pretty difficult to find in the UK and pretty much impossible where I live, I didn't get it. I didn't want to get it from eBay because eBay frustrates me and in a sense I had given up on this polish. Thank goodness I didn't. It would probably go well on any colour but on the pale blue, it is truly beautiful :3  Full manicure to be done of that. I used 5 coats on my nails. Yes I know 5 coats is ridiculous, but it's very thin and I wanted a decent amount of flakes (or flakies, I'm not used to using that term). I love flakies, I know some people don't like them but I am not in the same party.

Anyway back to the penguins, they're a cute bunch. the bow ties really complete it, out of the penguin designs I thought this was one of the cutest :3

Colours used:

Fuchsia: The Face Shop - PK105
Blue: The Face Shop - BL601
Orange Coral: Essie - Tart Deco
Flaky Glitter: China Glaze - Luxe and Lush
Hot Pink: OPI - Charged Up Cherry (not pictured, whoopsies)
White: Natural Collection - White
Black: Lovely Me:Ex - Black (no name)

Equipment used:
Toothpicks