31 Day Challenge: Follow a Tutorial

Hello Readers!

I am so excited to bring you the penultimate prompt for the 31-day challenge, which is to follow a tutorial for nail art.

I actually did these prompts slightly out of order, because I loved this tutorial so much I wanted it to be the last manicure I had on my nails. Here's the link for the tutorial I used: Pop Art Nails by JauntiJuli

And here's how mine turned out:

I pretty much followed the tutorial exactly, although I didn't pay much attention to exactly how she used the colorblocked images in her video; I ended up picking pretty much random solid shapes from the MoYou London Holy Shapes plate:

Sooo much easier than trying to do it with tape or free-handing! I love this plate, guys. The huge solid images stamp so beautifully. 

For my polishes, I decided to go with a pre-designed set of stamping polishes just to make color matching easier. I used Bundle Monster's "Weekend Warrior" polishes. I also used this adorable MoYou London plate from the Tropical Collection:

Since I did a lot of reverse stamping for this mani, I made good use of my silicone mat. This is probably the first time I have ever made decals for all ten fingernails, but I wanted my right hand to match since I plan on wearing this for a while. 

Thanks for stopping by today! Be sure to check out some more tutorial-inspired manis over here:

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31 Day Challenge: Inspired by the Supernatural

Hello Readers!

For today's 31 Day Challenge prompt, inspired by the supernatural, I decided to go with an alien theme and play around with Bundle Monster's "Time Machine" collection.

This mani is also glow-in-the dark, thanks to a quick and easy topcoat of Sinful Colors glow-in-the-dark nail polish, which I have been anxiously awaiting to arrive at my local Walgreens for some time now and I was very excited to find it there last weekend. Unfortunately it does dull the shine of the shimmery blue polish  I have under it, which is Sinful Colors "Nice Guise", also part of the halloween collection this year. 

I also have on "Hello Halo" from the Sinful Colors Kylie Jenner line. It's a shimmery white with purple shimmer, and it takes 3 coats to get this opaque. 

Here's my time machine plate for my aliens:

I also used a Born Pretty plate here for my little green arrows. I did stamp this in an actual stamping polish, which is by Bundle Monster and called "Empire Club". 

I also used this plate for the hills that my flying saucer is soaring over, which is a dupe for a MoYou London plate in the "Mother Nature" collection:

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31 Day Challenge: Inspired by a Flag

Hello Readers!

We are winding down on the 31-day challenge with only a few prompts left. Let's have a look at the prompt list:

Today's prompt is to be inspired by a flag. My flag is the Kansas State flag, because although I no longer live in Kansas, I was born and raised there and it holds a very special place in my heart. For reference, here is what the flag looks like:

I decided to pull my inspiration from the main color scheme of deep blue and yellow, and the sunflower image at the top because sunflowers are such an iconic symbol of the state of Kansas. 

I used Sinful Colors "Liquid Iris" for my base polish, and made two stamping decals with a Bundle Monster plate form the CYO 2014 collection:

I decided to use the shimmery polish instead of a regular navy blue because I wanted it to represent stars. The Kansas state motto is "Ad astra per aspera", which means "to the stars through difficulties". I also remember looking up at the Kansas night sky as a child, and it was such a beautiful, unobstructed view of the stars.

I decided to add something extra to my thumb, too:

I used Sinful Colors "Yolo Yellow" to stamp on my thumb, and I have to say I am really impressed by its performance as a stamping polish. I was not expecting it to stamp that well over a dark color!

I used a couple of different plates for the thumb- one from Bundle Monster's Time Machine collection- the image said "I love music" but I only stamped the first part of it, along with letters from  one of MoYou London's Typography plates:

Thanks for stopping by today! Check out some more flag-inspired manis over here:

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31 Day Challenge: Inspired by Artwork

Hello Readers!

For the artwork prompt of the 31-Day Challenge, I decided to delve into some water decals to make a mani inspired by Van Gogh's many paintings of sunflowers.

But using water decals doesn't mean there's no stamping to do! Originally I was going to do my triangle stamping in blue to represent the blue vase the sunflowers are in, but I didn't really like the way it was looking, and since Van Gogh did so many sunflower paintings, many without any blue in them at all, I decided skipping the blue was acceptable. 

For my base polish, I used Sinful Colors "Beaches and Cream", and then stamped over that with Sally Hansen Miracle Gel in "tan-acious" with this awesome tweed pattern from a Born Pretty plate that features a lot of neat plaid patterns:

After that, I used Sinful Colors "Rich in Heart" to stamp the triangle pattern (middle, far left) from this MoYou London plate in the Holy Shapes collection:

I really like how these turned out, and I really enjoyed using the water slide decals to make the detailed sunflowers much easier to pull off. 

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31 Day Challenge: Inspired by a pattern

Hello Readers!

Today's prompt for the 31-Day challenge is to do a mani inspired by a pattern. Now, I have been having a very long love affair with paper for much of my life, and so- and this may come as a shock- I have an even bigger collection of patterned paper than I do of nail polish. So of course when I was thinking of what to do for this prompt, I headed up to my paper stash to have a look for some inspiration.

I came across this lovely double-sided paper by Allison Kreft, produced by Webster's pages:

A side:

B side:

The general idea of double-sided paper is that both sides coordinate well and are designed to be used together. Now, I wouldn't normally think to put these colors and patterns together, but Allison Kreft said it was ok and I love bright and cheerful manicures, so I decided to go for it. Here's what I came up with:

My base orange polish here is "Electra-cute" by Sally Hansen Miracle Gel. I used this stamping plate, which I got off of Aliexpress and I have heard may be dupe for something...

I never would have come up with this combo on my own, and I kind of love it, so I think I may look to my paper collection for inspiration more in the future. 

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31 Day Challenge: Inspired by Fashion

Hello Readers!

Today's 31-Day challenge prompt is to be inspired by fashion. Nothing came to mind immediately, and I considered googling "fashion week" to look for a photo to pull inspiration from, but then the idea to base it off of one of my daughter's outfits came to me. Baby clothes are some of my very favorite clothing items, because babies.

This is one of my favorite outfits, modeled by my muse herself:

And I thought it would be really fun to abase a mani off of this look. So, here is what I ended up with:

I actually wore this mani while helping run crowd control and persuading small children to sit still during a practice session for a children's program. Part of the reason I chose this mani was because I hoped they would be entertained by it, and I have to say it did come in handy. When the children were getting restless, I showed them my nails and it was instant fascination and quiet while they delightedly examined them. I also used this trick for my toddler, and she was pretty excited about the cat. She kept pointing to it and saying "meow! meow!", and then she tried to eat my nails. Not sure what that was about, ha ha. 

I used a born pretty plate for the basic leopard print, and my cat face comes from this Bundle Monster plate (bottom left):

I also recieved happy nail mail today- my first MoYou London order- hooray! And so I employed this very useful plate from the Holy Shapes collection to outline my thin leopard print stripe on my middle finger:

I'm so excited about this plate just for its sheer usefulness. Also, this plate is incredibly well etched. Even with the large open shapes, it stamps beautifully every time.

Thanks for stopping by today! Check out some more fashion-inspired manis over here:

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31 Day Challenge: Inspired by a Book- Lord of the Flies

Hello Readers!

Today's 31 day challenge prompt is to be inspired by a book. I ran through a few different ideas in my head before settling on attempting a Lord of the Flies manicure. I mainly picked Lord of the Flies because I felt like I could come up with enough stamping images to pull together different elements of the book.

So I used a few different stamping plates for this, mostly from Bundle Monster's "Hangloose" collection but also a "Time Machine" collection plate. I also used a fimo clay slice for the pig face.

I decided to keep the background the same on all the nails and add little leaves to frame the elements and to provide continuity through the manicure. It also goes along with the setting of the book, which takes place on an island jungle.

In case you haven't read it, or it has been a very long time, in the book a group of school boys get stranded on a jungle island. One of the boys finds a conch shell which they use as a symbol of leadership and to call meetings. The boys basically go feral, kill a pig and put its head on a spear, and have a weird party in a cave with a fire where bad things happen. It's kind of a disturbing book. But at least there is no blood and gore on this mani! lol

Here's a look at the Time Machine plate I used for the fire and cavemen images:

Thanks for stopping by- check out the other literary inspired manis over here:

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31 Day Challenge: Inspired by Minions

Hello Readers!

Today's prompt for the 31-Day Challenge is "inspired by a movie". To preface this, when I bought this stamping plate I told myself I'd probably never make a Minions manicure. However, this week my son has been watching Despicable Me and I figured eh, why not jump on the Minion bandwagon and give it a try. So, I give you: Minions.

I had fun cutting up the decals and placing parts of them onto my nails. I wanted to make the minions extra mischievous. :) 

The gray and black stripe represents the main villain's scarf:

I used a plate with some random characters (mostly minions) that I got off of Aliexpress:

Thanks for stopping by! Check out the other movie-inspired manis here:

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31 Day Challenge: Inspired by music- Gotye

Hello Readers!


Today's prompt for the 31-Day challenge is a super fun one, and I'm excited to be getting into these more creative prompts.

...so, music! Ever since the challenge started, I've had this wild idea to base my music mani off of the music video for "Somebody That I Used to Know" by Gotye. If you're not familiar with the video, it's a really strange/surreal one where the singer and a woman are painted into an abstract painting that's largely composed of neutral colored geometric shapes and a little bit of green toward the end. Here's a still shot from the music video:

I found this here

I've always wanted to do some form of artwork based on this concept, because I have always thought that it was really visually interesting. 

So, here is what I came up with:

To achieve this look, I simply started with a light pink, almost nude polish (LA Colors "Blushed"), and then added freehand lines across the nails with different colors. I stamped the face from a Bundle Monster plate, in the "Secret Garden" collection:

I'm not sure how much you can tell that it's supposed to be a face. Originally I shrank it down so it would be smaller on my nails, but it was even harder to tell what it was when it was the smaller size.

Check out some more song-inspired manis over here: 

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31 Day Challenge: Inspired by a Color

Hello Readers!

I'm excited to be starting the last section of the 31-Day challenge, where we get to pull inspiration from many different sources to create our manis. The first prompt is fairly simple, and something I am often inspired by- a color. I interpreted this to mean a nail polish color, as in to be inspired by a nail polish color that I want to build a mani around.

This mani was inspired by a neon, highlighter yellow color that I found just yesterday at the dollar tree in an amazing little box that had four different nail polish colors for just $1. They were great colors, too, and they had two different boxes there. I was inspired by the colors they had put together in the collection box and really wanted to create a mani using them.

These are the polishes I used. I did mix and match from the two collections my store had available, so if you go and look for these you will note that this is not all the same collection. The polishes didn't have a name on the bottles, which is always annoying, but the colors are fantastic. I especially love the blue, which is a perfect "facebook blue" and unlike any blue in my collection. In fact, the match for facebook's blue inspired the mani, as you can see:

I used a Bundle Monster plate for my images, from the Time Machine collection. It looks like this:

After I did my stamping, I used the large hex glitter to do some glitter placement on the argyle print and above the girl's face. I also did the glitter placement on my thumb:

Thanks for stopping by! Check out the other color-inspired manis for the challenge here:

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31 Day Challenge: Watermarble

Hello Readers!

Today's prompt for the 31-Day challenge is water marble. This marks the last prompt in the styles section of the challenge, which means tomorrow we will be moving on to inspired by, and I am super excited about that!

So for water marble, I decided to test out a pretty nifty marble effect plate instead of taking the plunge into actual water marbling. I just don't think I'm there yet... maybe next year. ;)

My base polish here is Sinful Colors "Set the Duo-Tone". This was a pretty easy polish to use and it only required two coats. I did a little bit of reverse stamping on my ring finger to try to enhance the water marble effect. 

The plate is by Bundle Monster, and is part of a blogger collaboration from a while ago:

I like the versatility you can get with the large image on the left. The way I used it kind of reminds me of tiger or zebra stripes, but there are a lot of different looks you could get with it. 

I'm excited to see the other water marble images- I am always amazed by what people manage to do with "real" water marble techniques!

Check them out here:

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31 Day challenge: A Hitchhiker's Galaxy

Hello Readers!

Today's nail art theme is Galaxies. I've never done galaxies before... probably because there are a lot of things I've never done before in the nail art world. So I was excited to try galaxies for the first time, but then the idea of the book "The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" popped into my head and wouldn't leave. I decided I needed to have a whale in my galaxy. My original plan was to do the whale in all white, because I just thought it would mesh better with the galaxy theme. I didn't like it though, so I re-did my whale in color.

I did also put a potted plant on my thumb, though I think I like the manicure better without the potted plant. 

My whale comes from the Bundle Monster "Fuzzy and Ferocious" collection, on this plate:

Are there any other Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy fans out there? I remember I first read it in high school and it was unlike any other book I had ever read. It made me laugh out loud so many times. 

Thanks for stopping by! Check out the other galaxy manis here:

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