Challenge Your Nail Art: Skittles Meets 30 Days Of Colour: Blue

My last nail art mani for this month (I'll have my monthly favourites post tomorrow)  Anyway today I am back combining challenges again!  This time I am joining Challenge Your Nail Art theme of skittles with 30 Days Of Colour's blue theme.  I mean how could I not just do a blue skittle mani?  It's funny really, I put these in my planner together because it made sense to do them together but then when it can time to do the mani I went completely blank on what to actually do.  Then I remembered that Christy (@he.chosethenails on Instagram) recently did a blue skittle mani and I thought why not steal her idea?  So that is exactly what I did. 

For this mani I used China Glaze DJ Blue My Mind, Capacity To See Beyond and Liquid Crystal.  Stamping design is from Bundle Monster BM-S185.

Thanks Christy for the mani! And thank you for being an amazing follower of mine.

Challenge Your Nail Art: Galaxy Nails

I'm not going to lie and say I was looking forward to this week's Challenge Your Nail Art Galaxy Nails theme.  You may know that while I like the look of Galaxy nails on other people I am not a fan of them on my nails, and more importantly I don't like doing them.  So much so I contemplated skipping over this entire challenge to avoid this theme, but that would be silly right?  My next thought was to just skip this theme....until I remembered that I had a whole stamping plate with Galaxy designs.  Talk about winning! I also had the perfect base for today's theme too!

It has been forever (literally years) since I have worn piCture pOlish's Aurora.  It's such a beautiful multichrome polish and perfect for Galaxy nails.  I used two coats over black and stamped using Powder Perfect's Silver Stamping Polish.  Stamping design is from Bundle Monster's BM-XL213.

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I really love how this mani turned out.  I wish I could capture all of the colour shifts in this polish.  Seriously, it's magical!  I love multichromes!

There is only one more them left for this month!  March is literally next week.  How crazy is that?

Don't forget to check out the others who are participating in this challenge.  I am sure there are going to be some amazing manis this week!

Challenge Your Nail Art: Gradient meets 30 Days Of Colour: Hearts/Love

For this first time ever on my blog I am actually going to combine two challenge manis together.  I use to combine challenge themes like crazy on Instagram back when I was doing four plus challenges (crazy times! But super fun).  With themes like Gradient and Hearts/Love how could you not combine them?

I recently received my Lina Nail Art Supplies with the new Make Your Mark 03 stamping plate.  It has a blank image with is designed for things like gradients to make it easier.  I thought this was the perfect opportunity to test it out.  Well, I'll go into more details when I do my actually review but for this gradient I used the good old sponge method.  So easy, blends nicely, less mucking around and a better result (for me).  For this gradient I used Bundle Monster's Mercury Baseline, Monarch Dream and Kandi Spirit.

And now for the 30 Days Of Colour portion of this post.  I couldn't go past using this heart image from Lina Nail Art Supplies Make Your Mark 03 stamping plate.  I can see me using this image a fair bit.  Anyway I stamped the image using Powder Perfect's White Stamping Polish.

Now I am currently still obsessed with matte nails so I just had to break out the Matte Top Coat for this mani.  I think the matte is my favourite version of this mani.  Which is your favourite glossy or matte?

Given I have two different challenges in this post there will be double the blog links with everyone who is participating in these challenges.  So many pretty manis to look at.

Challenge Your Nail Art: Hearts

I'm back with another mani for Challenge Your Nail Art.  Today's theme is hearts.  I actually had a little trouble coming up with an idea of what to do for this theme.  I mean it's hearts, it really should be easy right?  Well apparently not.  I drew a complete blank and didn't even know what stamping folder of mine to start with (I have a lot of stamping plates and sometimes I forget which brands have what images - or there is the odd time where I think I have a certain image when I don't).  Anyway, I thought rather than focusing on what image to use, I thought I would pick my overall colours and work from there. One of my favorite combination of colours is pink, silver and black.  They always look so good together.

Polishes used for this mani are Pretty Serious Cosmetics Sugar Cakes and Absence, OPI It's Frosty Outside and Powder Perfect White Stamping Polish.  The stamping design is from Bundle Monster BM-317.  Now I didn't actually realize until I stamped the image on that this image is slightly too small for my nails (oops) so you will have to forgive my poor stamping efforts.  

Despite my poor stamping efforts, I really like how this mani turned out.  It really has reminded me that I should use studs every now and again.  They just bring a whole different look to a mani don't they?

These are the upcoming themes.  I'm kinda dreading the Galaxy theme already (I may skip it but we'll see how I am feeling at the time).

I am looking forward to seeing what everyone else has done for this theme.

Challenge Your Nail Art: Flowers

Generally speaking I am pretty good at completing nail art challenges, however every now and again I start some and don't end up finishing them for whatever reason.  Challenge Your Nail Art Twelve Days Of Christmas was one of the challenges I failed at (mainly because I was having a lot of Christmas nail fails and then was trying to swatch like a mad woman).  The Challenge Your Nail Art is a bi monthly challenge and I have decided that I am going to give it a go this month.  I have it all scheduled in my planner so fingers crossed I can keep on track with it (and everything else I have planned).  I may need to double some things up but they don't call these things a challenge for no reason do they?  

Anyway the first theme is flowers.  I recently purchased the new Neutral Beauty Collection from Grace-full Nail Polish (which I will be swatching and reviewing soon) and was wearing Lilac Ice when I realized that I needed to do a floral mani.  Easy solved, I used Lilac Ice as my base and stamped using Bundle Monster's Lunar Lines.  Stamping image is from Lina Nail Art Supplies Feeling Shapely 06.  I had planned on filling in the centres of the flowers but I actually really like it with the two tones of purple.

Picture taken in light box

Picture taken in light box

I'm going to apologize for this sunshine picture.  It was actually taken at 8pm (it's Daylight Savings here in Melbourne) and the sun was setting so it's quite yellow toned.

Picture taken in late afternoon sun

So that's mani number one for this challenge.  Only four more to go.  Seems achievable but let's see how I go.  Are you joining in with this challenge?

Challenge Your Nail Art: Twelve Days Of Christmas: Christmas Lights

Talk about challenging your nail art!  This is a mani that nearly didn't happen.  It was seriously one fail after another.  I seem to be having lots of nail fails at the moment (most of them haven't been posted online anywhere mainly because a lot of them haven't even made it to the picture stage lol).  I'm definitely due for a break soon I think.  Anyway, I luckily managed to get this mani done.  It seriously was my last attempt before I was going to give up on this challenge.

Polishes used are OPI Alpine Snow, Color Club's entire Pop Wash Collection and Powder Perfect's Black Stamping Polish.  Stamping design in from Uberchic Christmas 1.

Now there are some inlinkz codes for this challenge, however I can't get them to work.  I have no clue what is going on and why they aren't working.  I'll definitely keep on trying.

Challenge Your Nail Art: Twelve Days Of Christmas: Snowflakes

Today we are having a belated birthday/Christmas party (which we have lots of prep work to do still).  With that being said I will make this a quick post because these balloons won't blow up themselves and the food won't do itself.  Anyway, today is day two of the Challenge Your Nail Art: Twelve Days Of Christmas - snowflakes.  I was feeling pink for my nails today so pink snowflakes it is.  Polishes used are OPI Mod About You, OPI Sunshine...Bedtime! and Powder Perfect's White Stamping Polish.   Stamping design is from Uberchic Christmas 01 stamping plate.

Right, off I go to party prep.  Hope you all have a great day.  I'll be back tomorrow with a much bigger post.

Challenge Your Nail Art: Twelve Days Of Christmas: Silver & Gold

Happy December everyone!  *insert a traditional comment about how fast this year has gone etc*  As you may be aware, I had originally set myself a challenge to swatch all of the polishes that I have purchased this year.  Sadly, this is a challenge I am going to fail.  I have too much to swatch and not the time to do it.  November has been exceptionally busy and December probably won't be much slower.  Plus, I really want to do some Christmas nail art which I wouldn't have time for if I continued with my original plan.  To ease the pressure off me, I have decided to join in with the Challenge Your Nail Art: Twelve Days Of Christmas.  This challenge runs every other day all the way up to Christmas, kicking off with today's theme - silver and gold.

Now this mani I guess is kinda a fail.  I planned to do this challenge, however I didn't write that it was a Christmas challenge, hence why my mani is kind of a fail.  For my base I used OPI Rich & Brazilian, and then did a gradient using Essie Good As Gold and No Place Like Chrome.  The vinyls are Xroma Polish & Vinyls Fleur de Lis.

I promise going forward my manis will be more Christmas themed, like this challenge intended.

I believe there is an inlinkz code coming so you can check out all the manis that the others are doing but I can't seem to find it (I'm guessing it's not ready yet).  When it pops up I'll add it to here.