31 day challenge - metallic

#31dc2016 - today's #nailart prompt is Metallic, so I painted my nails with Revlon's Metallic - perfect name match! Stamped with plate BC-10.

I also took this photo showing off the top with the name. Bit of fun composition!

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31 Day Challenge - Inspired by fashion

I was going through my stash of nail art supplies earlier this month and came across a bag of little Chanel logos, purchased so long ago I forgot I had them and can't remember where they came from. Possibly from Emily de Molly? #mystery

They totally inspired my for this challenge, so I did the classic black leather Chanel bag.

I painted my nails black (Revlon's Black Magic), waited for them to dry, and then used striping tape to mark out a grid on my nails. I then used Nails Inc's Leather Look polish in Noho (another black) and peeled off the tape - this gave it a great quilted look. Finally I used a wax pencil to position the CC charm on the end of my nails.

So boss! The charms were rather precarious and didn't stay on for very long, since they weren't top coated on. However, I think some nail glue would have fixed that if you wanted to create this look yourself.

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31 Day Challenge - Geometric

I got a nice water decal sheet from Born Pretty Store (QJ-247) which I've been waiting to use, and this challenge is the perfect time.

To prep for the transparent decals, I painted my nails white with Essence Wild White Ways, which I bought after Gelic recommended it - it's amazing, I only had to use one coat! And so cheap! :D

I then used Revlon's Black Magic for the other nails.

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31 Day Challenge, Day 29 - Inspired By The Supernatural

A nice quick easy manicure today: blackest night with a ghost accent nail. BooOooo0!

I painted my nails black (Relvon's Black Magic) and then stamped the white ghost on with plate BM-223. I passed over this li'l ghosty for the spooky Halloween nails I did earlier in the challenge because I wanted to keep it black and orange, so this haunting is overdue.

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31 Day Challenge, Day 24 - Inspired By A Book, Treasure Island

Today's nails are inspired by the classic book Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, a tale of pirates and hidden treasure. I really like how these turned out!

I started by painting my nails with Revlon's Gold Coin, then used Cheeky plate CH49 to stamp the treasure chest, the skull and crossbone pattern, the cutlass pattern, and the ships. I stamped the palm tree from N.Nail plate "B26" (available from KKCentreHK, as far as I can tell, because I bought it in-store from a general beauty store). I finished by free-handing the "X marks the spot" and the dotted path to the treasure.

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31 Day Challenge, Day 21 - Inspired By A Colour: "Electrified Web".

We've hit the "inspired by" section of the challenge, and it's definitely the pointy end of the challenge now. For today's challenge, I looked for inspiration by rummaging through my stash of as-yet-unused polishes (the 31 Day challenge has happily made quite a dent in the ranks of my unused polishes). I pulled out Revlon's Web Electrified, a bright metallic orange polish that always makes me think of spiders and Halloween. Bingo! Decision made. I grabbed my Halloween-themed plates from Bundle Monster and headed off.

Unfortunately I'd forgotten how badly those plates stamp! Ugh, they're too shallowly etched (one spider is even missing a leg!) and always difficult to stamp, so my easy Sunday manicure turned into a bit of a project. I do like the end result though. I did different designs on each hand, and kept it more generically spooky rather than specifically Halloween by steering clear of the "Trick or Treat" and "Halloween" designs.

I love this polish, it's such a beautiful glowy orange. I also really like the other polish that I have from the Spiderman collection, a gold called 1000 Volts, so I regret not buying some of the other colours while they were in the shops. If only I had an unlimited fund for polishes!

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31 Day Challenge, Day 19 - Galaxies

Apparently I've been living under a rock, because I had never heard of galaxy nails before. A short google later though and I was all across it. It's a pretty easy, fun manicure, although you do need a fair number of polishes.

I painted my nails with Revlon's Black Magic, then used a damp sponge (it does work better than a dry sponge!) to apply OPI's Alpine Snow, Maybelline's Green Park, Kleancolor's Metallic Fuchsia, Kleancolor's Boogie Nights (the orange), Crows Toes' Indian Summer (multichrome pink/purple), and Ulta3's Blue Marlin, plus a topper of Sephora X's Shifty (holographic glitter). Whew! More Alpine Snow was applied with a toothpick for the stars.

It was so colourful! So astronomical! And yet... I couldn't help but do a cheeky little bit of stamping with Cheeky plates CH45 and CH46. Rocket ships, planets, and some alien spaceships, oh yeah. They white means you miss them on a casual look, which I love - it's like a little Easter Egg.

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31 Day Nail Challenge, Day 11 - Polka Dots

A simple and easy manicure today - dotting tools make it so easy to get a great look!

I painted my nails black with Revlon's Black Magic, then used Revlon' White on White and Ulta3's Sour Grape and Fairy Floss to make the dots. I finished it with Face of Australia's Platinum matte topcoat from their Screen Siren collection.

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31 Day Challenge, Day 5 - Blue nails, stamping with Cheeky plate

I'm posting on day 6, but I did actually do this mani in time for day 5. I went to a market to try and sell some of my old clothes, and was there pretty much all day with the set-up/selling/break-down time.

I like to theme my nails to events that I'm doing or going to, so for the markets I used Cheeky plate CH-55, from their summer collection. It has some $$$ signs, and a some little sale signs, plus some other fashion-related images.

I used Revlon's Royal Blue again, and stamped using Stargazer Chrome Gold, because all my stamping polishes have gooped up and my Mundo de Unas order hasn't arrived yet (unsurprising, since I only ordered on Friday - international shipping is open again!). It's not very crisp, sadly, and I hope my new stamping polish will fix that.

Sadly I didn't even break even at the markets, so I possibly should have done the dollar signs in red, but I still like the way this looks. It's a kind of distressed luxe.

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31 Day Challenge - Day 4, Green Nails - Sugar Spun Nails

I've hit the winter blahs, and although I've been doing and even photographing my nails, I haven't posted here for a while.

Chalkboard Nails is doing a 31 day nail art challenge, and I thought I'd kick-start my posting by taking part. Here's the full challenge list:

Day 4 is green nails, so I decided to pull out some polishes from my yet-to-be-used stash and have a go at a technique I've never done before: sugar spun nails. I used this tutorial by The Nailasaurus.

(Speaking of yet-to-be-used stashes - I saw someone proclaim on their blog that they were quite into nail polish, and as proof they offered up the size of their collection: 30 bottles of polish! While I agree that they're definitely a polish fan, I had to laugh, because my yet-to-be-used stash alone is easily over 30 bottles of polish! I know that quite a number of bloggers have multiple helmers full of polish. It's a whole different scale in the nail blogging community, for sure.)

For this manicure, I used a base of Revlon's Emerald City, which has a matte suede finish, and I used Chi Chi's Relax! Don't Do It and Maybelline's Green Park for the sugar spun drizzles.

The good: the texture of these nails is lovely, and I do like the look.
The bad: it took a long time for the polish to become goopy enough to even vaguely form threads, and it still wasn't quite right when I used it, as you can see by the thick lines. It's not exactly sugar-spun, but more of a Jackson Pollock effect. I'm not sure what went wrong (too dry? too wet?), but as a result it took quite a while to dry, and I'm still concerned about sheet marks.

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Nail art - Stamping on Revlon 1000 Volts using Cheeky floral plate CH44

Over Easter I went on a road trip down from Canberra to Melbourne with some friends, and we stopped in Albury for dinner on the way back. While looking for a restaurant, we stopped into a Terry White chemist where I found them stocking the new Revlon Spiderman collection (more details here), and I grabbed the gold 1000 Volts. It's super pretty - definitely my new favourite gold!

I decided to do some stamping with my Cheeky plates, and used the floral plate CH44. I'm quite taken with how it turned out.