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31 Day Challenge

31 Day Challenge, Freehand, Uncategorised

31DC2012 Day 26: Inspired by a Pattern

29th November 2012

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Today’s nails are inspired by good old gingham as part of the 31 Day Challenge. I’ve done gingham nails before but I wasn’t 100% happy so I wanted to give them another try and I like the outcome much better.

As always, head over to Let Them Have Polish and Nails and Noms to see their nail art today.

I used Barry M White as my base colour and used a nail art brush to paint on the stripes 2×2 on each nail in Essie Navigate Her and then used Barry M Spring Green to paint on the little squares where the lines cross. I topped it all with a coat of Seche Vite.

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31 Day Challenge, Uncategorised

31DC2012: Day 25 Inspired by Fashion

27th November 2012

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Welcome to Day 25 of the challenge! Today, we have to create nails inspired by fashion so the first thing I did (again) was type ‘Fashion’ in to Google! I came across the Vogue website and started clicking through this season’s catwalk shows.
I spent a long time looking through and I was waiting to see something… ANYTHING that I could immediately envisage on my nails when the bottom half of a dress from Christian Dior’s ready-to-wear collection caught my eye. I immediately knew that this would be the nail art I’d do to match and I’m so pleased with the way it turned out.

Runway photo credit: Vogue.co.uk

For this manicure, I didn’t use a base colour or even a base coat, I went straight in with some striping tape to mark off the lines. I did this for two reasons. Firstly of course, you’ve got the authentic see through look and also I couldn’t be bothered to wait for anything to dry! For the thicker lines I just used two pieces of tape right next to each other. I used nail art tweezers for this step because it’s very fiddly.

When all the tape was in place, I painted on a coat of A-England Lancelot, one nail at a time, and carefully peeled off the tape using the tweezers. There was some polish out of place, especially near the edges where the tape had come away from the nail a little, so I dipped a nail art brush in some acetone to clean away the bits I didn’t want. When everything was completely dry, I used two coats of Seche Vite to glaze it over.

Now go to Rie and Cris‘ blogs to see their fashionicures!

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31 Day Challenge, Freehand, Uncategorised

31DC2012 Day 24: Inspired by a Book

22nd November 2012

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Like last year, I’ve gone with a children’s book again. There aren’t a lot of books for grown ups with pictures in them so kids books make for way more interesting nail art!

In case you couldn’t tell, these nails are based on The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle. I remember loving this book as a kind but my copy is long gone.

We’re postponing the challenge a little this week because we all have super busy schedules but we’ll be back on track next Tuesday with Day 25. I’m feeling the pressure following the completely unexpected and overwhelming success of last year’s Inspired by Fashion mani.

Pop over to Cris and Rie‘s blogs to see how they’re getting on with the challenge!

I used Barry M White as a base colour. The caterpillar is made up of Barry M Watermelon, Barry M Spring Green, Essie Navigate Her and a dark green Sinful Colors polish that I can’t remember the name of and I’m not at home right now to check!

Also mixed in there are W7 Coral, NYC Lexington Yellow, Essie Glamour Purse and a blue Rimmel Polish that, again, I can’t remember the name of!

It’s all topped off with two coats of Seche Vite.

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31 Day Challenge, Freehand, Uncategorised

31DC2012: Day 23 Inspired by a Movie

20th November 2012

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I’m here with Day 23 of the 31 Day Challenge and the film I chose is Watchmen. We all know how I love everything superhero so this was the obvious choice as I’ve exhausted most of the other ones. If you haven’t seen the film, watch it!

This is the first really detailed freehand nail art I’ve done for absolutely ages and I love it! I wish I had more time these days to do nail art like this. I miss it!

Don’t forget to stop by Nails and Noms and Let Them Have Polish to see how they’re getting on with their challenges.

Thumb to pinky: Silk Spectre, Dr Manhattan, Watchmen, Rorschach (kind of!), The Comedian

All the details were freehanded with nail art brushes and here’s a run down of the polishes I used…

Urban Outfitters Denim Blue, Cult Nails Quench, Essie Mezmerised, Collection 2000 Sherbet Lemons, W7 Black, Barry M White, Deborah Lippmann Fashion*.

I also used white and black acrylic paint here and there for the small details.

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31 Day Challenge, Uncategorised

31DC2012: Day 22 Inspired by a Song

18th November 2012

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Day 22’s nails have to be inspired by a song and I struggled for a long time to come up with an idea. In the end, I just put my MP3 player on shuffle and waited for inspiration to strike. When Lana Del Rey‘s Blue Velvet came on I remembered this flock that I have from Born Pretty Store and knew it was meant to be!

Rie and Cris‘ nails for Day 22 of the challenge are very impressive! Go see!

I used one coat of NYC Water Street Blue* to my nails. Then, one by one, I added a second coat, waited about 30 seconds and dipped my nail in to the flocking powder. It comes with a really good brush that I used immediately after application to brush the excess back into the pot and it made very little mess. Because it’s so fine, the bits that missed the pot just kind of blew away in to the air like dust!

This powder is much finer and therefore way better than the stuff I used before and has even convinced me that a velvet manicure can be lovely when done right.

And here’s the song that inspired the nails. Did you know the original version is by The Clovers from way back in 1950? You can hear that here. It’s been covered by loads of people through the years but Ms Del Rey has managed to put her sombre, dreamy spin on it perfectly.

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31 Day Challenge, Uncategorised

31DC2012: Day 21 Inspired by a Color

16th November 2012

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Day 20 of the challenge is a bit late. This is definitely the strangest day of the challenge, a color is a very simple thing to find inspiration in so I kind of got lazy and just went for a purple ombre. So I guess you could say I was kind of inspired by purple?! I’ve never actually done an ombre manicure before and I really struggled to find the right colours for this one.

Stop by Let Them Have Polish and Nails and Noms for some pretty manis!

The colours used from thumb to pinky are:

Sally Hansen Plum Night

Cult Nails Vicious

E.L.F. Purple Pleaser

Color Club Pucci-Licious

Sally Hansen No Hard Feelings

I topped it off with a top coat of Seche Vite. My first bottle is starting to get thick and I can see the shrinkage problem starting to take hold!

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31 Day Challenge, Uncategorised

31DC2012: Day 20 Water Marbling

13th November 2012

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I’ve never made any secret of the fact that I despise water marbling and in the last 2 years, I’ve only done it twice when it was part of a challenge. Well as much as I hate it and totally wanted to duck out of this day, I ain’t no quitter! So last night, I put my big girl boots on and knuckled down to business.

I went in to this knowing that I would only be doing one accent nail. It’s insane how much this technique has stressed me out in the past and I’m quite a level headed person! I took precautionary measures and promised myself that as soon as I did one nail satisfactorily, I’d be finished so I didn’t end up pulling my hair out this time!

Rie and Cris have both done amazing jobs with their water marbles today. Go check ’em out!

I used Sally Hansen Ion* as a base colour and created the water marble with Barry M Watermelon and Blueberry from the Gelly range. My index finger is Barry M Blueberry and I used one coat of Seche Vite to top it all off.

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