31DC2013: Day 31 Recreate Your Favourite

Press Sample Purchased by Me

Afternoon loves!

WOW! We did it! We finished another year of the 31 Day Challenge. It's been a rough month, but we got through it and I am reaaaalllly proud of some of the manicures I came up with. You can check them all out tomorrow in my challenge round up post. It has also been really fun checking out the rest of the bloggers participating this month in the challenge. I especially enjoyed reading through my blog list this month!

Today I had to choose which one of Emily's manicures I was going to recreate. It was a tough job as so many of her manicures rocked this month. Emily also has an awesomely distinct nail art style and I was afraid I wouldn't be able to do her manicures justice! I eventually settled on her Day 26 Inspired by a Pattern because her wood grain idea was genius!

I did not have the same base colour as Emily, so I decided to use one of the only cool browns that I have piCture pOlish Demeter as my base. Then I used my It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black to draw on the wood grain pattern.

These were super cute and fun to do and although mine is a tad darker than Emily's original creation I still think the overall look is similar! It is a genius idea !!

WOOOOW now I am officially done the challenge! I'm still shaking my head that it has gone by this quickly. You can check out Emily's original post here and make sure you head over to see what manicure of mine she recreated! I LOVE IT!

If you haven't yet this is your LAST CHANCE to enter our giveaway for the chance to win one of 2 $30 gift cards to Born Pretty Store.

Geometric Challenge Day 6: Bent

Evening Guys!

So this is about 14 and a half hours late, but I'm FINALLY getting my Bent nails up! I absolutely love what I came up with for today! I wore these through my few exams during the end of my Hell Week and I think they brought me luck ;)

So here's how I got to this design. I started thinking about bent things, which led me to broken, which then led me to fractures which led me to a fracture pattern! I was trying to come up with a cool colour combo, but after much deliberation decided to keep it simple in black and white.

I had just received the Cult Nails Anniversary Collection a few days before I did these so I used Cult Nails Tempest as my base. I needed two thin coats for full coverage, but I can see how you might be able to get away with one thicker coat. I just wanted to make a note on how wonderful Cult Nails customer service is. When I went to use Tempest there were a bunch of hairs sticking right out to the side. I trimmed them and went along my merry way, but sent an email just in case this had been a recurring problem with a batch of brushes or anything. Immediately they responded and said to just send my order number and they would send a new bottle of Tempest right away. I didn't ask for one, they just immediately offered. Amazing customer service! Has to be one of my favoutite indie companies ever.

After Tempest was dry I grabbed my It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black which I have been totally neglecting lately and started in on my fracture pattern!

After my pattern was complete I felt like it was missing a little something! So I grabbed Essie Good As Gold and filled in a few of my spaces to add a little extra dimension.

Wow that was a lot of pictures, but I adored these and wore them for 5 days! They only came off yesterday and my nails are still bare lol. I'm really enjoying my reading week and it's nice to spend some quality time with family and playing pointless games on my iPad and not feeling guilty lool.

Make sure you check out the rest of my challenge buddies, who actually managed to get today's prompt up on time! lol

Victoria of Manicurator
Emily of The Lacquerologist
Whitney of Dressed Up Nails
Lindsey of Neverland Nail Blog
Alexis of XOXO Alexis Leigh
Brittney of Precious Polish

The Digit-al Dozen Does Art: Street Art

Hey lovelies! Today I'm super excited because this is my first week as part of the Digit-al Dozen! When this group originally formed I had to say no because I just did not have the time, but now since I no longer have an hour and a half commute to do every day I have 3 whole hours every day that can be devoted to ANYTHING! So I am really excited to be part of this group! The theme this week is ART!

Art is hard. When I did the 31 day challenge and inspired by art day came around I totally froze and did nails inspired by the process of art. So after much deliberation on what to do for art I finally turned to Pinterest and came across this really cool street art!

Is that not wicked? I thought too with the arch it would make a ruffian of sorts!

I started with Essence Nude It! and then created the kind of ruffian using black creme. I did the bricks with Revlon Hot For Chocolate and OPI You Don't Know Jacques. Then I created everything with It's So Easy White Striper. I went back to create the rainbow rain with a number of Art Club neon stripers in blue, green, yellow, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Purple Panic and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Rapid Red.

I love the street art, but I'm not quite sure I did it justice! I mean look how coooool the street art is. I wish I had super long nails so I could have recreated the whole scene. I also wish the pin was properly linked, but none the less these were fun! I even created an easy pinable image so you can all see what the inspiration was :)

What do you think of these street art nails?! I'm super excited to see what the rest of the Digit-al Dozen has come up with. Make sure you check them out below! Hope you're all having a great Monday, I'll be back in class all day, wooohoooo stats! ;)

My Entry for Wacky Laki Fashion Inspired Nail Art Contest

Afternoon ladies gents and lacquerheads!

I have some nails that I created for Wacky Laki's Fashion inspired nail art contest. I have only ever created fashion inspired nails once or twice so I really wanted to push myself to try and create something for her contest.

These wacky nails were inspired by a dress Victoria Beckham was wearing. Here is the inspiration!

For this look I started with two coats of Sally Hansen Ion. Then using my medium length striping brush I created some blobs with Essence Off To Miami!. I used the same technique as if I was creating ikat print nails. Then I used It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black to add the black outline to each shape and some black speckled throughout each blob. Honestly at this point I thought it was going to be a total fail, but I kept going.

They looked like little hairy amoebas until I added the black lines using my striping polish. Once the lines were there I actually quite liked the final look!

These were fun to create it actually really pushed my boundaries to create something fashion inspired! What do you think of these nails?

For this contest there is a public vote going on now over at Wacky Laki! There are some spectacular entries, some of these ladies really know how to take fashion and directly translate it onto their nails! You can vote for your favourite nails here.

Do you ever create nails inspired by fashion?

Glitter, Skulls and Herringbones

Today I have some nail art inspired by a few different manicures that I've seen around. I was digging through my inspiration folder the other night and came across this utterly amazing manicure done by Very Emily and knew that I was going to do nails inspired by it. I have also seen an amazing herringbone print on a few blogs lately from the tutorial by Miss 80 Million on YouTube. I really wanted to do both of these, so I put them together to create a mash-up of inspired nails!

To emulate Emily's look on my index and pinky nails I used Orly Christmas and while the second coat was still wet I sprinkled on some loose red glitter from Dollar Tree. On my middle nail I used Wet n Wild Black Creme and then freehanded on the skulls and x's using a striping brush and Milani White On The Spot. For my herringbone nails I followed the tutorial and used White On The Spot as my base then stamped with Black Creme and BM-201. I added the lines with It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black.

I had NO idea how the loose glitter was going to play with top coat so please excuse the glitter all over my hands, I wanted to snap a few pictures before adding any in case it was a hot bleeding mess.

Thankfully with topcoat I loved these nails even more! The topcoat really brought out the sparkle and shine from the loose glitter and I was staring at these allll day long. I used a coat of Gelous and then 2 coats of NYC In a Minute Top Coat. Loose glitter is hunnnnnggrrry. It really likes to nom on top coat because I had to add another coat in the morning because my nails were crazy bumpy even with Gelous and 2 coats of NYC.

I quite like the combination I came up with here! My skulls aren't near as good as Emily's but I really do love the skull and glitter combination. It's so fun with just that touch of rock.

What do you think of these? Are you ever inspired to mash-up two manicures you love to create something new?

Hope you're having a lovely day!

Sugary Sweets are Such a Treat!

Who doesn't love some sticky, sugary goodness? Yes I'm talking about Cotton Candy. Today October 12, was the day that the Cotton Candy Machine was patented! So I felt the need to create some fluffy cotton candy nails!

Currently I can't remember the last time I had cotton candy, but I did have a Cotton Candy martini at East Side Mario's some time ago and it was completely delicious. I remember getting cotton candy at street fairs during the summer and loving it as it melted into pure sugar on my tongue. So delicious!

Since the two most common colours for cotton candy are pink and blue, I pulled out my flocking powder from Michael's and sprinkled Hot Pink over Essie Knockout Pout and Calypso over Sally Hansen Blue Me Away!. I was going for the super fluffy look at fresh made cotton candy has. On my thumb I tried to create the white cone that your cotton candy comes on when you get it straight from the machine. I used Essence Nude It! as my base and Milani White On The Spot and It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black to create my cone.

Did you love cotton candy growing up? I don't think I could handle as much now, but I used to just love this stuff as a kid! I think blue was always my favourite, because well it was blue LOL!

Hope you're all having a great day and you're not too sticky after looking at this sugary sweet treat ;)

10/10/10+2

Confession. I'm a bit of a nerd. Now when I mean a bit, I mean I am a complete and total nerd. I like math. I like programming. I like sitting at a computer coding and do happy dances when I figure out where the errors in my code are. Since that is out of the way today is Metric Day! The tenth day of the tenth month, get it? heh heh, I'm the only one chucking aren't I? Metric day is celebrated today because the number 10 is the nuts and bolts of the metric system. Everything eventually comes back to 10. So I did some nails inspired by the fabulous number 10!

Since holograhics are awesome I decided to use all holographics for my base. And I love blue, so blue holo bases were the only logical choice here. Thumb to pinky I have, China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le with Spectraflair 35 grade topcoat, Enchanted Polish Ocean Potion, ,Ocean Potion again because I loved it so much, Milani Cyberspace and China Glaze Splish Splash with the holo top coat again. Then I set out to create 10 in a few different ways on my nails using It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black.

Getting 0's right is hard man. I'm not terribly skilled at creating circles so some of them look a bit wonky. Too bad the base of the metric system isn't 11 eh? lool I think I'm the only one laughing again...

I hope you are all having a great metric day and use the number 10 at some point throughout your day! If you actually pay attention to what you're doing you might use the number 10 more than you think you do! ;)

Since we just had Canadian Thanksgiving and it's October I found a cute little math joke to end off this post!

What do you get if you divide the cirucmference of a jack-o-lantern by its diameter?
Pumpkin Pi!

Jack-O-Lanterns

Today I have my first installment of Halloween nail art! I'm planning on doing a week of Halloween nails if time allows, but I liked these too much that I felt like I needed to post them early!

Back when China Glaze released the Hunger Games Collection I passed on Riveting, why? I'm not sure, I wasn't a huge orange fan. Then I started seeing some awesome swatches of it and knew that I needed it. It glows people. Unfortunately at this point all were sold out in my area and I didn't feel like resorting to evilBay to find it. Then a few months back when I went down to the states to drop off my sister at school, I popped into her local Sally's and there is was! On clearance and then another 50% off! Of course I got home and didn't use it right away. This is the problem when you constantly buy new polish. When I was thinking of what base to use for my jack-o-lanterns, Riveting only made sense!

These are so much fun and I felt like I was looking down at little pumpkins all day on my nails! I used 2 coats of China Glaze Riveting for the base and then used It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black for all the faces.

I didn't follow any picture for these, just thought of what a jack-o-lantern is supposed to look like and went from there! I think some of these look funnier, while a few have a bit of a scary vibe! And Riveting really glows which totally emulates a candle glowing inside the pumpkin. Win!

I love carving pumpkins, and have carved one pretty much every year for as long as I can remember. Me and my dad used to draw out various designs on newspaper until we were happy with one. Also since there are three kids in my family we used to have to get a minimum of 3 pumpkins so we could all have our own design. I'm already thinking about what we will carve out this year.

Do you love Halloween? Have you ever carved your own pumpkin?

Hope you're having a great day!

31 Day Challenge Day 30: Inspired by a Tutorial

Holy Moley! It's pretty much the last day of the challenge! I can't believe that I managed to get through the whole month of September doing nail art every day! It's been a lot of work, but a ton of fun!

Today's theme is Inspired by a Tutorial. There were a ton of different tutorials that I considered doing, but then I decided to go check out Cute Polish because her tutorials are what really got me hooked on nail art! When I went to her page I saw that she had created a tutorial on Magic Kingdom nails just a week ago that I immediately knew I needed to recreate!

This is such a cute look and super easy to achieve! She suggests using a blue creme polish, but to me, this look was dying for a base of Sinful Colors Cinderella. Then I used It's So Easy Stripe Rite Blue to create the castle on my ring finger. It's just a few lines! So easy to do! Then on the rest of my nails I used China Glaze Lorelei's Tiara to make a silvery blue gradient!

I have quite the thing for Cinderella and the castle at Magic Kingdom. When I was little all I wanted to do was meet Cinderella when we were at Disney. We waited in line to see all the princesses and when we got to the front, Cinderella wasn't there anymore! I burst into tears and the Disney staff came rushing over to find out what was wrong. They radioed to find out where she was and then took me and my family over to the castle on golf carts and I got a private meeting with Cinderella! It was kind of completely amazing :D

I totally love these nails! Just sayin. Sometimes keeping it simpler is better and Cute Polish is totally amazing at creating tutorials!

Ahh I can't believe there is only one more day in the challenge! All that's left to do now is the tough task of going through Emily's designs and trying to pick one to recreate! It's going to take me awhile I'm sure.

Don't forget to head over to The Lacquerologist to see what tutorial had inspired Emily today!

See you tomorrow for the last day! And make sure to enter my Cult Nails Toxic Seaweed Giveaway!