31DC2013: Day 30 Inspired by a Tutorial

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Morning friends!

Here we are in the last day in September! I can't believe we are here already! This month has seriously absolutely flown by. Today's prompt is inspired by a tutorial. There are a ton of tutorials out there for some awesome nail art. I stumbled upon this super cute Piglet tutorial by Qt Place and knew I had to do it!

Isn't this adorable?! I absolutely loved the Winnie the Pooh series when I was growing up and Piglet always stuck out to me because he was so cute and had a stutter somewhat like I did growing up. So Piglet always resonated with me.

I won't get into details about how to do this manicure because you can go check out the tutorial here! The light pink is OPI I Theodora You and the dark pink is Nicole by OPI Something About Spring. All the purple outlines are China Glaze Gothic Lolita.

What do you think of my Piglet nails?! Would you wear these?

Make sure to head over to The Lacquerologist to see what tutorial inspired Emily today! Also enter our giveaway!!
See last years tutorial inspired nails here!

31DC2013: Day 29 Inspired by the Supernatural

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Morning friends!

We are sooo close to the end here! Today's prompt is inspired by the Supernatural. I think this is supposed to be geared more towards ghosts, goblins and vampires, but I decided to go in the superhero direction! They have supernatural powers!

If you can't tell these are Wonder Woman nails! I feel like she's a pretty awesome heroine with a multitude of superpowers so she's totally worthy of this prompt! If you know nothing about Wonder Woman you can check out her awesomeness here!

For these nails I started off with Cult Nails Evil Queen on all my nails except my ring nail which I used Essie Butler, Please. Then I just started abstractly adding Wonder Womanesque images on all my nails. The other polishes used are Essie Good As Gold, Cult Nails Tempest and Wet n Wild Black Creme. All of it was done freehand with my small cut down nail art brush!

These were pretty fun to do and I think they fit in with the theme! I can't believe there are only two more days to go in the challenge! It's blowing my mind! Do you like my Wonder Woman nails?

Check out The Lacquerologist to see what inspired Emily today! Also only a few days left to enter our giveaway!!
See last years supernatural nails here

31DC2013: Day 28 Inspired by a Flag

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Morning friends!

Wow we are so close to being done this beast of a challenge! Today's prompt is Inspired by a Flag, I feel like whoever wrote this challenge had a specific manicure in mind when they were thinking of this, so like usual I resorted to Google to see what interesting flags I could find! I ended up finding a ton of really cool flags around the world, but ended up choosing the state flag of Maryland in The United States!

I think these turned out pretty cool! Here is the flag for reference if you have never seen it before,

I decided to completely replicate the flag on my thumb and then do each of the crests on my four nails! The Maryland flag is really cool because it is the heraldic banner of George Calvert, 1st Baron Baltimore. It is the only flag in the United States to be based on English heraldry.It also seemed appropriate to do these nails since my boyfriend grew up in Balitmore!

For these nails I started out with Cult Nails Tempest on my thumb, index and ring nail. I used Cult Nails Feel Me Up as a base on my middle and pinky nails. From there I used China Glaze Adventure Red-y to freehand the crosses and Wet n Wild Black Creme to freehand the stripes and diamond pattern.

I created the above image for easy pinning if you're into that kind of thing :)

What do you think of my Maryland State flag nails?! Are any of my readers from Maryland?

Make sure you head over to The Lacquerologist to see what flag has inspired Emily today! Also if you haven't yet make sure you enter our giveaway! Only a few days left!
Check out last years inspired by a flag nails here

31DC2013: Day 27 Inspired by Art

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Morning friends!

Today's post is Day 27 in the 31 day challenge! I am soooo excited and proud that we are nearing the end! We've almost finished another year! So awesome! I am really excited about today's nails because I have been wanting to do this design since June! One of my really good friends Ashley O'Brien is an amazing artist. She paints beautifully and I got the pleasure of seeing this design in person, so when I was thinking about what to do for today's nails I finally had the excuse to do these nails!

She created this beautiful piece for her cousin's wedding so this is now in Ireland. I love the rough purple gradient and the paisley pattern. The whole thing is really amazing! For my nail interpretation I started out with my go to Cult Nails Tempest on all my nails to have a nice blank canvas to try to replicate Ashley's beautiful work!

The whole manicure was done with my smallest cut down nail art brush and a bunch of polishes! I pretty much just kept looking at the picture of her painting and painting on my own nails and adjusting until I was happy with it. Here are all the polishes used! If you're wondering about a specific one just ask below!
Pure Ice Jail Bait
LAQA & CO. Nookie
Pure Ice No Means No
OPI Miss You-Niverse (review coming soon)
OPI I'm Feeling Sashy (review coming soon)
China Glaze Gothic Lolita
China Glaze Fancy Pants
China Glaze Snap My Dragon
Born Pretty Store Sweet Color #009
Essie Good As Gold


It's a little hard to see in the picture, but on the right hand side of the painting in the purple gradient there were awesome purple rhinestones! So On my pinky and thumb I added a line of purple rhinestones to emulate that! I even tried to get her signature on my pinky! :D

I'm so happy I finally got around to doing these! That you Ashley for the amazing inspiration! What are your thoughts on these nails?!

Make sure you head over to The Lacquerologist to see what art inspired Emily today! Also be sure to enter our giveaway!!
Check out last years inspired by art nails here!

31DC2013: Day 26 Inspired by a Pattern

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Good Morning loves!

Today's prompt is inspired by a pattern. This is another tricky one to interpret similar to inspired by a colour, a pattern could be anything?! When I'm stuck for inspiration I hit google and found a pretty cool blog with a post on mixing and matching spring patterns! Since we all know I'm a sucker for skittles I got super excited and decided I needed to recreate these patterns into a manicure!

I'm seriously digging these nails and am super excited about all the cohesive patterns! The inspiration for the patterns can be seen below,

I think I did a pretty good job matching them no?

For this manicure I started off with Lime Crime Milky Ways on all my nails except on my ring nail, which is just China Glaze Fancy Pants. I then proceeded to freehand on the patterns using Fancy Pants, China Glaze Budding Romance, China Glaze Snap My Dragon and Sally Hansen Lightening! I had a lot of fun making these patterns, and it's a skittle, come on I'm in love!

All the work was done with my smallest cut down nail art brush, and I actually did this on both hands! But completely spaced on taking a picture of my right hand, whoops!

I think this really fits with the inspired by a pattern theme and I'm super stoked because well I love these nails. Sorry to toot my own horn, but they are awesome! :D What are your thoughts?! I can't believe there are only 5 more days left in the challenge! I can't believe we've come this far!

Be sure to stop by The Lacquerologist to see what pattern inspired Emily today! Also there are only a few days left to enter our giveaway!!
Check out last years inspired by a pattern nails here!

31DC2013: Day 25 Inspired by Fashion

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Good Morning my lovely lacquerheads!

Today's challenge prompt is all about being inspired by Fashion. In all honesty I am not a big fashionista. I love clothes, but my meager student budget does not allow me to buy incredibly gorgeous pieces that I would if I had an unlimited budget. Also the lifestyle of trekking back and forth to campus everyday does not lend itself to gorgeous dresses and heels. So I follow other fashion blogs and wish that I could afford/have somewhere to go in those beautiful clothes! Today's inspiration is from one of those blogs!

These nails are inspired by this Mara Hoffman Open Back Column Dress which unfortunately costs almost $300. Good thing a girl can dream right?! lol

These nails are loosely inspired by the dress. I was originally planning on copying the print exactly, but my nails were just too small and I was too tired after work to do all of that :P
I started off with a white base and then began freehanding on the design with my smallest nail art brush. I did it over a white base so the colours would really pop. For this manicure I used, China Glaze Igniting Love, China Glaze Budding Romance, China Glaze Sunday Funday, Sweet Color #009 along with black and white creme.

I really like these nails even if they aren't quite as crisp as I would like because I was a little on the tired side. But they look great when I hold my hand out far! What do you think about these fashion inspired nails?!

Be sure to head over to The Lacquerologist to see what Emily has done today! Also be sure to enter our giveaway!
Check out last years fashion inspired nails here!

31DC2013: Day 24 Inspired by a Book

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Morning friends!

Today's nails are inspired by a book! I really wanted to do Harry Potter nails, but was struggling to come up with an original way to do it. My 8 year our cousin is absolutely obsessed with Harry Potter and this past summer he went to Universal Studios and to The Wizarding World of Harry Potter! Not only did he make me eat some rather disgusting Bernie Botts Every Flavour jelly beans, but he was so proud of his new stuffed toy Hedwig! So after thinking about him I decided to do some Hedwig nails!

Full disclosure, I did these nails by looking at this photo of Hedwig that I found on Google. After I was finishing I decided to google Hedwig Nail Art to see if anyone else had done something like this before. I found almost the exact same manicure on Coewless's blog! So full credit goes to her for thinking of the idea first even though I didn't know they were similar until after I was finished lol.

I started these nails off with two coats of my absolute favourite white creme Cult Nails Tempest on all my nails. Then I started drawing the eyes with Wet n Wild Black Creme. The yellow of the eyes was done with Sally Hansen Lightening and mixing varying amounts of white and black to that to get the shading. The shading for her feathers and beak were done with black and white creme as well as Revlon Hot For Chocolate again mixed with varying amounts of white creme.

On the rest of my nails I ripped a sponge up and sponged on a mixture of Hot For Chocolate and white creme. I sponged most of the polish off onto wax paper so that the sponging was as light as possible. I also went back and added a little bit of white creme over the brown to give it a different feel. I finally went in with a mixture of Hot For Chocolate and white creme and my smallest nail art brush and added the feathers in U shapes!

I really like these and I really hope that my cousin approves! These are for you Nathaniel! :D What do you think of these Harry Potter Inspired nails?!

Remember to head over to The Lacquerologist to see what book inspired Emily today! Also be sure to ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY for a chance to win one of 2 $30 gift cards to Born Pretty Store!
Check out last years inspired by a book nails here!

31DC2013: Day 23 Inspired by a Movie

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Morning!

Today's nails are to be inspired by a movie! I actually really struggled with this prompt. First of all there are about 6 bajillion movies out there and I reaaallllyy didn't want to take off my Roar nails from yesterday. So I pretty much procrastinated starting these all day. I cleaned, did homework, and marked before I even started looking at prompts. I asked friends what they thought and started and took off 4 other manicures before I did these. Eventually I settled on Kill Bill nail art.

I actually only saw Kill Bill for the first time this past summer! My boyfriend and I only had a few select DVDs to pick from to watch a movie and when I mentioned that I'd never seen it he was shocked and immediately said it had to be watched. I really like Quentin Tarantino movies and this was no exception!!

For these nails I started off with Sephora by OPI Cab Fare and then did all the nail art with Sally Hansen Rapid Red, Essie Good As Gold and black and white creme. It was all done by looking at various Kill Bill posters on google and using my favourite cut down nail art brush!

I'm not super thrilled with these, but that could be more because I loved yesterdays so much and I was sad to take them off! What do you think about my Kill Bill nails? Have you seen the movie?

Be sure to stop by The Lacquerologist to see what movie Emily has been inspired by today! Also ENTER OUR GIVEAWAY!
Check out last years inspired by a movie nails here.