Talk to me, Harry Winston, tell me all about it! 31 Day Challenge, Day 22 - Inspired By A Song, Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend

I really liked this prompt! I've been listening to music during some of my other manicures and waiting for inspiration, and I chose to do a manicure based on the song Diamonds Are A Girl's Best Friend. Here are some of the lyrics:

A kiss on the hand may be quite continental,

But diamonds are a girl's best friend.

A kiss may be grand: but it won't pay the rental on your humble flat 

or help you at the automat.

Men grow cold, as girls grow old,

and we all lose our charms in the end.

But square cut or pear shape, these rocks don't lose their shape:

 Diamonds are a girl's best friend.

Tiffany's! Cartier!

 Black star! Frost Gorham! Talk to me Harry Winston, tell me all about it!

I rummaged through my blue polish drawer and unearthed an unnamed pale Tiffany's blue by Portmans. Four coats later and I stamped some diamonds on the accent nail using Bundle Monster BM09, and stuck some little heart studs on the other nails. The silver stamping doesn't really have enough contrast but it's getting late so there you go.

As a bonus, here's Marilyn Monroe performing the song in the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes:

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend from Ars Memorandi on Vimeo.

And here's an audio-only version of the cover/adaptation by Nicole Kidman from the movie Moulin Rouge:

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I'm pretty fascinated by the way that, so far, everyone has chosen to do blue nails. Maybe music is blue coloured? :)

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 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 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 Challenge, Day 18 - Half moon studs

For my more "standard" half moon manicure, I decided to take on the recent trend for exposing part of your nude nail bed. After applying my base coat, I stuck on some hole reinforcements and painted my nails with two coats of OPI's Every Month Is Oktoberfest, a nice shimmery vampy red. I then peeled off the reinforcements and used some acetone and a brush to clean up the half moons, and then a nail art brush to draw in any points that weren't sharp enough.

It looked nice, but I thought it could use a little something else, so I stuck on some studs which I got from Born Pretty Store.

I really like the finished look!

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31 Day Challenge, Day 18 - Half moon (literal interpretation)

So, I took the challenge a little literally today...

I was looking through my stamping plates earlier in the challenge, and I saw these crescent moons on Cheeky plate CH46. A quick stamp over my previous manicure and voila! Half moon nails! :D

I did however want to do an actual half moon manicure, so my "standard" half moon manicure can be found here.

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31 Day Challenge, Day 17 - Glitter

GLITTER! I have such a love/hate relationship with glitter - it's so sparkly, but so time-consuming, whether you're putting it on or taking it off. Accordingly I only did glitter on my accent nail, because I didn't want to spend hours on a mani I'm going to take off tomorrow.

I painted my nails with Ulta3's Wild Berry, a dark grey polish - bit of an odd name! I can't think of any grey berries? Anyway, it's a nice colour but it was a bit runny and had a tendency to flood my cuticles to the extent that I can't get it off.

I then used some orange and yellow hexagonal glitter which I got from Born Pretty Store a while back, in a pack of 12 different colours. The glitters were pretty cheap and you get a lot of them in each little jar, which is great. I used a toothpick and some clear nail polish to stick them on, and sealed it with topcoat. You need to keep an eye on which hexagon you're picking up, because occasionally they can be a little smaller than usual or a bit unsymmetrical, but it's not a problem if you're paying attention.

With hexagonal glitter, I find that you get the best results if you don't tap the glitters too deeply into the polish - just gently place them on. I got impatient towards the end and tapped one of the hexes near the tip too hard, and it's embedded slightly - d'oh! Patience is the key, and giving yourself plenty of time.

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