31 Day Challenge

Allo!

We’re at day 21 of the 31 Day Challenge, this is the final stretch people! Today is supposed to be ‘Inspired By A Color‘. Right… ಠ_ಠ

Anyone else find this one as vague as I do? I mean… Haven’t the last 20 posts been about colors? 😛 I figured this day was left up to user interpretation, so I decided to do something fun with my favorite color. GREEN! Well, varying degrees of jade and mint green to be exact. I decided to attempt my first Ombre Nails manicure! Normally for an ombre mani you’re supposed to use the same polish blended with white to varying degrees, with the resulting look being a gradient from thumb to pinky of darkest to lightest (or light to dark). I changed it up a bit and used five polishes I had that were varying shades of jade/mint green. It’s not a perfect example of ombre nails but I like it anyway.

Don’t forget to head over to Cris and Sam’s blogs to see what color they were inspired by today. 😀

Day 21: Inspired By A Color (Jade/Mint Ombre Nails)

From thumb to pinky I used the following shades: Orly – Green With Envy, Essie – Turquoise & Caicos, Milani – Dress Maker, Barry M – Mint Green, and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear – Mint Sorbet. The Dress Maker polish kinda sticks out like a sore thumb compared to the rest of the colors, but NO CARE because it’s pretty. 😉 Not to mention it’s a almost dead-on dupe of Chanel’s infamous Jade polish! 😀

Dress Maker also has a lovely subtle shimmer, here’s a closer look (enlarge this sucker, you won’t regret it). I personally cannot get enough of these jade and mint green shades. I think it looks wonderful with my skin tone. I’m sure that once I eventually get my Helmer I’ll have to devote at least half a drawer to my continuing collection of greens. 😀

And here’s a wonderful grainy antiqued shot of the polishes I used for this ombre manicure. ^_^

I want to thank you all again for coming to my blog every day to check out the challenge, it means a lot to me and I’m so happy to be sharing my love of polish and these new experiences with you all. ♥

Good Morning Everyone!!

Today is the day 19, Water Marbling day, and the last day of the pattern themed nails. I’ll admit that I was absolutely TERRIFIED of water marbling. I have heard so many horror stories about the process and how difficult it is to get proper results. So I procrastinated as late as I could before I finally attempted this look. And…. Thank goodness for youtube tutorials because I LOVE IT!! I found it to be a lot easier than I thought it was going be and I’m really pleased with my results. 😀

Don’t forget to head over to Cris and Sam’s blogs to see their water marbling nails!

Day 20: Water Marbling

I was actually pretty surprised at how easy these were for me. Now I feel silly for dreading the process so much! Each nail looks different from the next, it reminds me of tye-dye patterns.


I used four different polishes, and I forgot to take pictures of the bottles. 😛 I started out with two coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme White Out. Then I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Crushed, Sally Hansen Xtreme Deep Purple, China Glaze Rodeo Fanatic and Essie Turquoise & Caicos for the marbling.

Here’s your macro of the day! I really like the mixture of creme and shimmer polishes. 😀

I hope you all liked these as much as I did! Now that I know how to do water marbling I definitely plan on doing this more in the future. 😀

**EDIT**

Here’s the tutorial that I used. I want to note that I did NOT use brand new polish, I don’t feel like that’s necessary at all. And I’m not sure what she means by “high quality” because all the colors I used worked perfectly fine, regardless of whether I got them from the drugstore or a salon.

Morning Everyone!

We’re at day 19 of the 31 Day Challenge and I’m really excited to show these nails to you all today! I’ve always wanted to try Galaxy Nails. I think I did a bang up job so I’ll just let the pictures speak for themselves. 😀

Day 19: Galaxy Nails

These were SO much fun to do! I couldn’t believe how easy and spontaneous this look was to create! You pretty much just pick any “space type” colors and go to town with a make-up sponge. 😛 Don’t worry though, I took 939430940.5 pictures during the process of creating these sto expect a galaxy nail tutorial in the next few days! 😉


So… I used a lot of colors to create this look. I won’t list them all here, I’ll save that mess for the tutorial, hah! I think I may have gotten a little carried away with the stars, but ah well. My genius boyfriend mentioned that I should have made the stars glow in the dark. WHY did I not think of that?! I have glow-in-the-dark polish! I’ll have to try that next time I do the galaxy nail look.



It would have been a total disservice today if I hadn’t included a macro shot of this look. Enlarge all of these pictures. Bask in them. It’s okay, I’m drooling too. 😉

Now head over to Cris and Sam’s blogs to see their galaxy nails, I’m sure they’re fantastic!! 😀

Morning Everyone!

We’re moving right along into day 18 of the 31 Day Challenge, Half Moons! I’ve always wanted to try creating the half moon look because I think it looks so chic and sophisticated! I wanted to try to re-create the Dita Von Teese half moon manicure look, but I wanted to use a more vampy/dark red than what she normally sports. I opted for layering China Glaze’s Branding Iron (a shimmering brown based red) over one coat of Orly’s Au Champagne, a gorgeous shimmering white polish from their 2011 Holiday Soirée collection (review to come).

Don’t forget to take a peek at Cris and Sam’s blogs today to see their half moon manis!

Day 18: Half Moons

I’m really quite pleased with the way these came out! Using the page reinforcement rings really made creating the half moon look SO incredibly easy. And I’m really loving the contrast between the wonderful winter white of Au Champagne and the glowing deep rich red of Branding Iron. ♥


I also filed my nails down just a mm or two, I realized how long they were getting after my glitter nails from yesterday! And for everyone wanting to know where I purchased Golden Seahorse, you can find it [HERE] but it’s currently out of stock again.

Macro shot here, the shimmer in both polishes is heavenly.

Thanks for checking out my day 18 nails! I can’t believe how easy it is to create this look! I think I’ll be playing with half moons a lot more in the future.

Hey Everyone!

Today we’re hitting day 17 of the 31 Day Challenge, and it’s all about Glitter! Initially I was going to have a “Glittergate Extravaganza” twin post with Cris and we were both going to show you the new Walgreens exclusive Ice Baby collection by Wet n Wild. And then I realized I was sleepy, had to work at 10pm and did not really have enough time to swatch 8 polishes and edit photos. Sooooo, those will have to wait for another day. 😛

Instead I’ll be showing you another long time lemming of mine, Golden Seahorse by LA Splash. This polish eluded me for quite some time until I was able to get my mitts on a bottle. And I’m glad I did because it’s a beauty. 😀

Don’t forget to take a peek at Cris and Sam’s blogs today to see their glitter-mania for the day!

Day 17: Glitter (Golden Seahorse – LA Splash)

Golden Seahorse is a beautiful seafoam green polish filled with multi-sized golden glitter flecks. I really, REALLY, love this color. It reminds me of a beach house in a catalog, does that make sense? 😛 I used Mint Green by Barry M as my base, but next time I think I’ll just use 2-3 coats of Golden Seahorse by itself because it seems to be rather opaque.


You’re gonna want to enlarge this last macro shot so you can take this all in. 😀

Thanks you everyone for your continued support and encouragement you have shown me so far throughout this challenge. It’s been amazing sharing all these new experience with you all! Tomorrow is Half Moon manicure day, see ya then! 😀

Hey Hey Hey!

Today is Tribal Print day in our ongoing 31 Day Challenge, and I’ll admit that today’s theme intimidated the hell out of me. 😕 My free-hand nail art skills are still a work in progress and I didn’t have any stamping plates that would I could get away with calling ‘tribal art’. So I started scouring the internets for images and possible tutorials on how to create tribal nails. And that’s when I found it, the Aztec design by WAH Nails. I know there are several variations of the aztec nails, but I figured that I could recreate them fairly easily. I took a deep breath, grabbed my polish and went to work.

Don’t forget to take a peek at Cris and Sam’s blogs today to see their tribal manis for the day! ^_^

Day 16: Tribal Print

I’m still waiting to get my set of brushes from that I ordered from the Born Pretty store (3-4 weeks!! :-() so I had to use a small acrylic brush and I couldn’t get my lines as thin and straight as I wanted them to be. 😕


Overall I’m pleased with my first attempt at aztec nails! Yeah it’s a little wobbly but dammit it was my first try ever! 😛 I used Maybelline Banana Bamba as my base color (2 coats). I then used Wet n Wild Black Creme & French White Creme for the accents, as well as A England’s Galahad (seriously, love this color!).

Your daily macro. ♥ I really want to try this look again when I get my fancy brushes. ^_^

Thanks for checking out today’s manicure challenge! Tomorrow is Glitter nails!

Hey Everyone!

And we’re back again for day 15 of the 31 Day Challenge! Today’s task is Delicate Print, and I had a heck of a time trying to figure out what to do with this one. My hand drawn nail art abilities are still hit or miss and I really don’t have that many stamping plates to play with just yet. So I decided to wing it with my trusty m57 plate. There are two intricate patterns on the plate that I believe are intended for french tips. I used the two together to make a mehndi-esque design.

Once you’re done here, head over to Cris and Sam’s blogs today to see their delicate print manicures. 😀

Day 15: Delicate Print

I started out with two coats of Wagon Trail by China Glaze. Wagon Trail is my absolute favorite nail polish by China Glaze. It’s a vampy, rich, blackened olive green filled with golden shimmer. Amazing, right?! I then used A-England’s Holy Grail (a beautifully regal gold polish I have yet to review) for my stamping plate. I’m actually pr