31 day. Challenge - violet

I did some stamping for this but decided I liked the plain colours better with the contrast in texture. Kleancolor's My My Sapphire for the middle two fingers, and Ciate's cream polish in Talent Scout for the index and little fingers.

An InLinkz Link-up

Halloween week - It was a graveyard smash

For today I made a graveyard scene design. Really pleased with it!

I painted my nails with two coats of Ciate's Chinchilla, a light grey, and then sponged the ground on using Ulta3's Midnight. Midnight is a very dark navy and I really enjoy using it.

I then stamped on the graveyard images. The owl on the branch, the ghost, the gravestone with "RIP" underlined, and the haunted house on my thumb are all from UberChic Beauty's Halloween plate. The gravestone next to the ghost is from Winstonia 116, and the gravestone and the cross and bats is from MoYou Festive 16.

31 Day Challenge - inspired by a song

I've been looking forward to this prompt! I chose to do a mani inspired by the Box Tops song "The Letter":

Give me a ticket for an aeroplane,

Ain't got time to take a fast train.

Lonely days are gone, I'm a-going home,

My baby just wrote me a letter.

I painted my nails with Ciate's Sugar Plum, then stamped using plates:

Winstonia "On The Road" (aeroplane and tickets)

Cici and Sisi 01 (the clock)

Born Pretty Store BPL-021 (the couple)

Winstonia W102 (the love letter).

The train was a water decal which I made myself, and the heart on the letter was coloured in with Kleancolor Be Wild With Class.

I love having the colours of the stamping decal but I struggle with getting the topcoat thick enough to peel the decal off without getting too thick - i got some bubbles with this, frustratingly.

and here's a YouTube video of the song.

An InLinkz Link-up

31 Day Challenge, Day 1 - Red

Day 1! The theme is red and I'm taking advantage of the open-ended nature of the colour prompts by doing some stamping. A while back I ordered some stamping polish from Mundo De Uñas, and it arrived on Tuesday. I also got a new stamping plate from Lily Anna, and I wanted to try it out.

The Munde de Uñas polish is amazing! So opaque! It does have a rather strong and unusual smell (apparently an enamel paint smell?), but nothing too bad. The main drawback is that, being so opaque, it's a pain to clean up off your cuticles after stamping. In the comments to my water marbling post, Nerd With Nails suggested using chapstick to help with clean up, and I wonder if that would also be worth doing with this stamping polish.

I also love the Lily Anna plate, which gave easy crisp results. After painting my nails with Ciate's Boudoir, a red jelly, I stamped with Lily Anna 07. The star pattern is lovely and I already have plans for some reverse stamping with it.

An InLinkz Link-up

31 Day Challenge, Day 30 - Owl Be Inspired By A Tutorial

For today I followed a tutorial by Sunshine Citizen for making owls. Super cute! This is actually a tutorial that's probably better suited to short nails, but it's still cute on longer nails.

Sunshine Citizen did a pictorial tutorial and also a video. Here's the picture:

Tutorial by Sunshine Citizen - http://www.sunshinecitizen.com/autumn-owl-nail-art/

For my base colour I chose Ciate's Iced Frappe, a warm brown-grey-mauve colour. Application was pretty good with two coats and good flow onto the nail. I then used white acrylic paint for the face and feathers, because it's so much easier to get solid white that way. (I started with white nail polish - not good.) I finished by doing the eyes/nose/outline in Kleancolor's Dark Brown.

I tried a new hand pose today... pretty satisfied with it, actually. How do you decide how to pose your hands? Do you do the same pose each time? I like to try to vary my poses a bit from post to post and keep things interesting. Also sometimes the manicure can be seen better with a different pose, particularly since my nails have a pretty deep C curve.

An InLinkz Link-up

31 Day Challenge, Day 25 - Inspired By Fashion: Denim

Denim! Jeans are such a staple of the fashion world, and I was all set up for this challenge. Some time ago I bought Ciate's Denim Manicure kit, and I've been saving it for the right occasion. And not only is the theme for today "fashion", but tomorrow is a casual Friday. Perfect! (I always do my nails in the evening and wear them the next day.)

Ciate also fits the fashion rule in that you pay a premium for the brand name, unless you are like me and wait for it to pop up on Catch Of The Day. :D

The kit comes with a blue polish, Regatta, which quickly dries to a kind of semi-matte finish. It also has some water decal stitches, some nail studs, and some nail glue. Overall the kit was easy to use, with clear instructions, except for the nail glue. It had to be cut open and then had a tendency to go everywhere. I much prefer my other nail glue, which comes in a little bottle with a brush to paint it on. Much easier to control.

This kit was a lot of fun and I like the end result. Check it out!

(Note: the thumb is part of the picture on the packaging, not my own thumb!) 

An InLinkz Link-up

31 Day Challenge Day 6 - Violet - Violet flower nail art

Although flowers are an upcoming theme, I wanted to do some nail art of the violet flower.

I painted my nails with Ciate's Chincilla, then used Ulta3's Sour Grape for the petals and Rimmel's Sunny Days for the stamens.

An InLinkz Link-up

Ciate chevron mani

For Christmas, Ciate put out a nail polish advent calendar. Every day you'd open a door and there would be a tiny (5ml/0.17fl. Oz) bottle of nail polish.

Can you imagine? Tiny nail polish! Christmas come early! Unfortunately, it was also a bit expensive for me, so I passed on it. But then, some months later, it popped up on Catch of the Day! ...which I realised after the deal had expired. But this story has a happy ending, because it came back as a Returned Deal, and it was third time lucky. (And on sale, at that.)

For this manicure, I used Hopscotch (orange) and Chinchilla (blue-grey) to create a chevron mani.

I had a difficult time with this manicure, probably due to the fact that I did it sitting riiiiight in front of the heater (Canberra's winter has arrived for real this time!) and the shorter brush, due to the shorter bottle. To be fair, the brush itself is normal sized, but the shorter handle was harder to use.

Anyway, it's definitely a rather messy mani, but the colours did go nicely together. A very editorial look.