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 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 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.

31DC2013: Day 22 Inspired by a Song

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Morning friends!

Today I have some nail art that I am very excited to share with you. I'm pretty much doing these nails day by day right now and I didn't have time to even start these nails until last night around 11pm. I was only supposed to work until 9, but ended up having to stay until 10:30pm so by the time I got home I had very little energy to think about what song I was possibly going to be inspired by. So I texted my boyfriend and said I need a song, pick me one! He immediately said Roar by Katy Perry as he had juuust heard it on the radio as he was coming home from work!

I absolutely love this song and am super thrilled that I created nail art based on it! As soon as my boyfriend said Roar I watched the video and I was instantly hit with inspiration! Check out the embedded video below. It is such a happy, feel good song!



Let's get back to looking at the nail art, because well I love it! :D

My thumb is from the opening scene in the music video, it starts off graphically saying, A Motion Theory Adventure Filmed in Junglescope with ROAR in big orange letters. My index nail is another scene from the music video where Katy is scared in the dark and can see all the eyes staring out at her. My middle nail is my favourite!! It is the tiger ROARING! I'm rather proud of how he came out :D My ring nail is pink and yellow flowers with green leaves quite like the flowers on Katy's grass skirt in the second half of the video. My pinky nail is leopard print to represent the scarf she's wearing that magically turns into a fab bralet lol.

I used waaaaay too many polishes and spent waaay too long on these nails, but I mean come on? They were worth it right? I must sound so full of myself right now! I used 24 polishes and pretty much every colour on my nail was custom mixed to get the right shade that I wanted. If you have any questions about a particular colour leave a comment below and I will let you know :)

I was sure these nails were going to be a giant fail because I was tired after work coming home, but listening to Roar on youtube like 5 times for sure put me in an awesome mood!

What are your thoughts on my Katy Perry nails?! Do these seem roar appropriate to you? Yes I make bad puns when I write posts at 2am :P

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

31DC2013: Day 19 Galaxies

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Good Morning loves!

Today's challenge prompt is Galaxies. The usual route of galaxy nails involves sponging on a mixture of colours until it looks like a galaxy and then adding in some stars so it is a very far away perspective. I like galaxy nails, but decided to go for a more 'close up' perspective.

Our Solar System!! I know nails like these have been done before, but I had much more fun making these than I would have doing classic galaxy nails. The base of this manicure is the beautiful Essence Jacob's Protection. This is a deep navy jelly with green and turquoise micro glitter that I thought would mimic stars in the distance.

Pretty much every colour was custom mixed so I will list all the polishes I used below. All the work was done with my smallest cut down nail art brush :D Here are all the polishes used
Sally Hansen Lightening (yellow)
Sally Hansen Rapid Red (red)
Revlon Sorbet (light orange)
Essence Wake Up! (dark orange)
China Glaze Sunday Funday (light blue)
Essie Pretty Edgy (green)
Essie Marshmallow (white jelly)
NYC Sidewalkers (gray)
Sinful Colors In The Mist (green gray)
Pure Ice Bikini (light blue)
Revlon Bare Bones (nude)
China Glaze Desert Sun (brown)
Essie Bulter Plese (cobalt blue)
Sally Hansen Ion (grey white)

SUPER love these and have been showing them to all my friends :D I don't want to take them off today to do watermarble nails. Bleh. Another least favourite :P Do you like my galaxy nails?!

Be sure to stop by The Lacquerologist to see Emily's galaxy nails!
Check out last years galaxy nails here!

31DC2013: Day 16 Tribal

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Good Morning!

Today's challenge is Tribal, I really enjoy doing tribal nails, and have done a number of different tribal designs in the past, but I have never looked up any specific tribal art and recreated that! It has always been just a random application of colours and patterns. When I was in Alaska last month I learned a lot about the Tlingit Natives, pronounced Klinget, one of the groups of native people that still call Southeast Alaska home. At the stop of Icy Strait Point, Hoonah, Alaska we discovered much of the history of the Tlingit Natives and got to experience much of the art and totem poles that exist there. I took a number of pictures of the carvings that were on the walls and I decided to recreate one of those works today!

Here is the picture I took of the carving I recreated! The lighting isn't the best, but you get the idea. In person these were so beautiful.

For this manicure I started off with a white base using Cult Nails Tempest just to have a good surface for creating the art on. Then I drew the outlines of the fish and the wings with Wet n Wild Black Creme. Then I began to fill in the coloured areas using Born Pretty Store Sweet Color #009, the teal, Cult Nails Evil Queen, the red, and a mix of Cult Nails Feel Me Up and Joe Fresh Caramel for the yellow. All the details were done with my smallest cut down nail art brush and a small dotting tool.

I went back in with OPI A-Piers To Be Tan and filled in all the remaining white areas to mimic the wood of the carvings. I really loved the final outcome of these!

I created this combination image in case any of you want to pin my tribal manicure! I had a lot of fun in Alaska and learned a great deal about the Tlingit People. If you would like to learn more, you can check out some of the facts on this Wikipedia page!

Be sure to check out The Lacquerologist to see Emily's tribal manicure today! She has been killing this challenge so make sure you're checking out her posts!
Check out last years tribal manicure here!