31 Day Challenge - rainbow

I'm trying to continue branching out from just plain stamping, so today I made some stamping decals using Lily Allen plate 07. I then coloured it in using Essie's Twin Sweater Set (red), Face of Australia's Some Like It Hot (orange), OPI's I Just Can't Cope-a cabana (yellow), Sally Hansen's Just In Lime (green) and Brisk Blue, and China Glaze's Grape Pop (purple).

In hindsight, I wish I'd used brighter colours - the purple in particular is too dark. Ah well. I might try using some smaller decals later in the challenge instead of trying for a full nail look, as clean up was a bit of a pain.

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31 Day Challenge - violet

I've been making an effort to use items from my stash, so today I used two untrieds.

I painted my nails with a gorgeous purple from Essie called The Lace Is On. I decided to stamp it with a lace pattern, as a bit of a nod to the name, so I broke out Born Pretty stamping plate BP-02. (I really love peeling the blue film off stamping plates! So full of anticipation.)

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31 Day Challenge, Day 27 - Inspired By An Artwork

For this one I tried to imitate a painting by Barnett Newman called Who's Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue?

Not quite the same scale as the painting! The proportions are not right, alas.

I painted my nails with Butter London's Pillar Box Red, then freehanded the stripes on with Essie's Butler Please and OPI's I Just Can't Cope-acabana. I thought about taping off the lines but wanted to practice freehanding stripes, because I want to get better at it.

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31 Day Challenge, Day 20 - Water marble

Water marble! So pretty when it works, so muddy when it doesn't. I managed to get some decent nails on my left hand by waiting to do them last, so you don't see my not-so-great attempts. #bloggersecrets For this marble, I used Ulta3's Lily White, OPI's Houston We Have A Purple, and Essie's Bobbing For Baubles.

I have not been looking forward to marbling, because it's so time-consuming and prone to failure. I also find that, because you need room temperature water for it to work, you really need your weather to be... room temperature weather... (I hope you know what I mean there.) Anyway, my house is pretty cold, so I microwaved my bottle of water in the hopes that it would help. It sort of did? And sort of didn't.

I also taped off my nails, because I've heard cuticle oil can protect your skin but I'm a bit sceptical. Anyone out there use cuticle oil? I'm curious.

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31 Day Challenge - Day 14, Flowers

Come on springtime! Floriade has just started here in Canberra, so I wanted to do some tulip nail art to celebrate it. (Even though the tulips are only juuuust starting to flower - I have one just opening in one of my flower pots. Exciting!)

I painted my nails with OPI's Alpine Snow, then freehanded the flowers. For the stems and leaves, I used Essie's Going Incognito. The flowers are Natio's Raspberry for the two outside flower points, and Maybelline's Ultra Violet for the inside point, with Butter London's Pillarbox Red for the flowers on the ring finger. Despite this, all the flowers look pretty much the same shade to me... ah well!

ETA: Tulip action shot!

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31 Day Challenge - Day 10, Gradient nails

I set forth on today's challenge full of optimism, but in the end I made the subtlest gradient imaginable. Bah! Still, it's a nice subtle look. I used a foundation make-up sponge to make the gradient and it soaked up the polish like crazy, so perhaps a different sponge would work better. A little post-manicure googling suggests that wetting your sponge first can help as well, so I'll have to try that next time.

To do this, I first painted my nails with Essie's Bikini So Teeny, then made a subtle gradient with Bikini So Teeny, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri's Brisk Blue, and Essie's Butler Please. It looked a little rough so I stamped over it with Bundle Monster plate BM-305 with konad silver stamping polish.

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