31DC2013: Day 25 - Inspired by Fashion

Four posts in one day, I'm on a roll! I still would have to do four more to technically be on the correct prompt for today, but that's okay.

So, onto the prompt. Day 25 is inspired by fashion. Honestly, I don't know anything about fashion, but I recently purchased these leggings from Charlotte Russe and I am completely obsessed. They're so comfortable but look fancy and they were only $7.50 in store and yeah, I just love them, so I figured it be appropriate to do some nail art inspired by them.

Possibly easiest manicure of the challenge, definitely the easiest out of all the ones I've done today.

For this manicure, I used Pure Ice Black Out and Julep Matte Top Coat. I added small studs from the born pretty store to mimic the studs on the leggings.

I really dig these, I'm definitely going to recreate these sometime soon when I have the opportunity to wear them for more than an hour.

31DC2013: Day 24 - Inspired by a Book

Moving right along to day 24 of the challenge.

These nails were inspired by John Green's Looking for Alaska. I don't want to spoil to book by explaining too much because if you've read it, you should get it and if you haven't read it, then you need to. Right now. Stop reading this post and go to your local library and check it out, seriously.

I will say that the idea of a labyrinth comes up a lot through out the book, which is why I chose to use Chalkboard Nails maze design for majority of my nails.

I used Pure Ice Black Out, OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, and Zoya Josie for my ring finger. For the gradient behind the maze on the rest of my fingers, I used OPI Skull & Glossbones, Zoya Natty, and Pure Ice Black Out. I painted the maze design with OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.

31DC2013: Day 23 - Inspired by a Movie

The prompt of the 'inspired by' section that I've been most excited for - inspired by a movie!

Do you know what movie this is? It's Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away, and honestly, if you haven't see this movie, you need to. If not for the story, then for those cute little soot sprites because they are freaking adorable.

Spirited Away is a Japanese animated film produced by Studio Ghibli, the same studio who produced films such as My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Ponyo. I'm not going to spoil anything in this post, don't worry in case these nails give you a really strong desire to watch it haha.

For my pointer and middle fingers, I painted little soot sprites with star candy, on my ring finger I painted No Face, and my pinky is based off of the main character, Chihiro's, shirt. For my thumb, I've painted the dragon from the film.

I really like these, I wish I could have soot sprites on my nails 24/7.

So as of right now, I am six days behind, hopefully I can do a few more prompts today so I will finish by October 1. :)

31DC2013: Day 22 - Inspired by a Song

So, there are technically three days left of this challenge, I have nine prompts to do before it's all over. We'll see if I catch up before it's all done, hopefully! This challenge has definitely burnt me out, and hopefully next year, since I will be all graduated and what not, I will be able to paint my nails once a day, no problem.

I sat for a really long time trying to figure out what to do for today's prompt, it's actually one of the reasons I am so far behind. I finally decided, since I had just seen Ke$ha I should paint my nails inspired by one of her songs. I chose warrior.

Essentially, I decided to take aspects of her album cover and translate them into nail art.

My middle finger is a neon green and white galaxy nail, my ring finger is based on her outfit and the rest is the neon purple/pink galaxy within the word "Warrior."

I really like how these turned out except I couldn't get a decent photo to save my life. My camera saw that neon green and was like "nope." Trust me, the green is much darker, much more neon, and actually looks like a galaxy in real life. I spent all last night trying to figure out how to color correct that in photoshop and just gave up. The rest of the nails are color accurate though.

For this manicure, I used Finger Paints Pop Art Purple, Finger Paints Silkscreen Green, and Finger Paints Art of Theft as base colors. I sponged on OPI Planks A Lot, Zoya Rocky, Zoya Josie, and Zoya Darcy for my thumb, index finger, and pinky. I sponged on OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls on my middle finger and used Windestine Asbestos on all of my fingers except for my ring finger. I also added larger dots using a dotting tool with OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. For my ring finger, I individually placed loose glitter from the Born Pretty Store.

31DC2013: Day 21 - Inspired By A Color

This post is coming to you from a very tired, very busy, and very far behind nail blogger! That's right, I'm not dead, I didn't quit, I am still here and (trying) to move along with this challenge!

So now that I'm a good six days behind, I am finally onto the "inspired by" part of the challenge.

The first day of this part of the challenge is "inspired by a color." The world of nail blogging seems to be on the same page with this prompt as in "what the heck does that mean" and "I guess I'll paint my nails based on the name of a polish" which is what I did.

Can you guess which polish I based my design off of? Let me give you a moment...

Moments over!

If you guessed OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons then you are very much correct!

Honestly, I really freaking like these, the buttons are adorable, the pretzels look yummy, what's not to love?

I used OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons as a base and painted the buttons using Zoya Josie, Zoya Rocky, and OPI Planks A Lot. For the pretzels I used Julep Otte and mixed a little but of Finger Paints It Baroque with Otte to create some minimal shading. I used Windestine Asbestos for the salt, pretty smart, eh?

Who knows when my next post will be up, hopefully sometime soon but probably not tomorrow because I am seeing Ke$ha right after I get off work. Kinda of wish I had more Ke$ha-y nails for the occasion, but it's midnight, I have to get up for work at 6:00am, and I'm sleepy.

I am excited for the prompts coming up, I've had my ideas in my head for most of them since the beginning of the challenge. Stay tuned :)

31DC2013: Day 20: Water Marble

So the Ravens won and I did a successful water marble this morning, what an excellent day!

I'm quite tired and have a crap-ton of homework to do (and I'm debating on whether or not to paint my nails at least one more time today), so I'm going to let the photos talk for themselves.

I will say that this mani is super springy and as much as I love fall colors and fashion, I am just not feeling it quite yet. Though I am super ready for hoodies and sitting around the fireplace and chai tea.

I used all OPI polishes for this manicure. Before doing the water marble I painted my nails with Steady As She Rose as a base and then used Sparrow Me The Drama, Stranger Tides, Planks A Lot, as well as Steady As She Rose for the water marble itself. Obviously I will have a forever obsession with the OPI On Stranger Tides collection because I love dusty/dirty/grayed out pastels always.

31DC2013: Day 19 - Galaxies

After three attempts, I can finally show you my galaxy nails!

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to do a pastel galaxy, of course inspired by The Nailasaurus. After attempting to follow this tutorial, and failing miserably (not because it wa s difficult but because I didn't have the proper colors), I decided to try pastel galaxy drips.

Once again I failed, and I thought I'd give it one last shot.

I'm so glad I did, I love how these turned out. I only wish I had a unicorn charm from Hex Nail Jewelry and it would've been perfect.

To create this pastel galaxy, I started with Zoya Blu as a base. I then sponged on, with tiny bits of make up sponge, OPI Pink Friday, OPI Planks A Lot, and Julep Taylor until I was happy. I added some sparkle with a glitter polish from Forever21 and added stars with OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.

I'm not sure if I want to tackle a water marble tonight, but I probably should since I'm going to see the Ravens game tomorrow and won't have tons of time to continue playing catch up.

31DC2013: Day 18 - Half Moons

Hello everyone! I'm forever behind in this challenge, but I decided I'm okay with that as long as I finish on time :)

It's proving to be quite difficult to work two jobs and go to school, and I've been going to whole lot of concerts lately, which has been awesome. I used to go to local shows all the times, but the local bands I like don't exist anymore, and it's been nice seeing live music again.

Today is half moons, er well, Wednesday was.

I had no plan on what to do for this prompt. I just picked out colors and went with it.

I decided to use OPI Pink Friday and Zoya Mickey to create a striped gradient. I didn't like the harsh line of the half moon from the paper reinforcements, so I added dots with OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.

Kind of reminds me of a pearl necklace, kind of reminds me of a cake.

I don't know if its something I'd do again, but my camera must love pinks because look at that color balance. So insanely perfect.

I'm working the next prompt. Tried to do them once but completely failed and I'm taking another stab at it. And then, of course, the dreaded water marble.

31DC2013: Day 17 - Glitter

Today I had a really hard time deciding if I wanted to just put some glitter polish on my nails and call it a night, or to do some nail art.

I opted for the nail art, though I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it.

First off, I wish I had started with a base color instead of doing five/six coats of Color Club Jingle Jangle on my nails. The overall feeling of my nails are thick and squishy and I have no idea if they're ever going to fully dry.

Other than that though, I really like the design and how OPI Pink Friday looks with the glitter. I do wish my pinwheel nail was a little neater, but nothing a little practice wouldn't fix :)

Unfortunately, I do not feel like these photos do the manicure much justice. It's so sparkly and awesome  but my camera was like "no, I'm going to make it look dull" so whatever. I need to find a different place to take my photos so the lighting is always consistent (aka, away from natural light).

Hopefully I'll have something posted tomorrow, but honestly, I'm leaning more towards no. I have work from 8:00a-12:00p then school from 1:00p-4:50p and right afterwards I am driving to see Yellowcard on the Ocean Avenue Acoustic tour. If not, I'll just be behind again for a little while, but I know I'll catch up :)

31DC2013: Day 16 - Tribal

Last year for tribal nails I decided to do an ikat design. I wasn't super pleased with it, but it was super easy and didn't take any time at all. This year I decided to try something a little more complicated.

The lines aren't as perfect as I'd like the, but I'm still working on that. I think part of the reason is, I need a better brush. This is the best tribal mani I've ever done, and is definitely a favorite for me for this challenge.

I used OPI Did You Ear About Van Gogh as a base and started painting stripes using Zoya Rocky. I then added thinner stripes and some dots with Pure Ice Black Out and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.

I'm really into this color combination, but I also just love a nude polish paired with anything.

Tomorrow is glitter and I'm having the biggest debate with myself whether I should make it super easy or complicated. I guess we'll have to see.

31DC2013: Day 15 - Delicate Print

YAYYY! I CAUGHT UP! I think we should throw me a party, shouldn't we?

Okay, probably not, but I'm happy to have caught up and to have no half-assed any of the three manicures I've done today. I'm actually quite pleased with them all, even this one.

So this wasn't exactly what I had originally planned for today. I really wanted to try out some stamping, but go figure, I couldn't find the stamper itself. I had to go with plan B which was try to paint my own delicate lacey print on, which did not work. So instead I painted little white flourishes on my middle and pinky nails and used a dotting tool for my index and ring fingers. I really like that I left the base –almost – naked, with just one coat of OPI Don't Burst My Bubble to try to cover up the staining a bit.

I used OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls for the flourishes and the polka dots and topped it all off with a coat of Seche Vite.

The flourishes kind of remind me of snowflakes a little bit, and I kind of absolutely want to do this manicure again during the winter, but with snowflakes instead of things that are trying to be snowflakes but aren't really.

Also in this manicure you can see how itty bitty my nail beds are, which I'm always self-conscious about, but I think the patterns over top help make it not so noticeable.

Tomorrow is tribal print which I'm kind of terrified of and I definitely need to cut down one of my brushes because what you see here is basically the skinniest line I'm able to obtain with my current brushes.

31DC2013: Day 14 - Flowers

Okay, I took of my shark camo, and decided to do day 14 of the challenge. I'm hoping I'll also do the delicate by the end of the day, I think I have something in mind.

This is almost sickeningly cute – pink and purples flowers and hearts – but I like it.

I used the image above as inspiration. I kinda wish I had added the little swirls inside the flowers, but it's still cute without it.

I used all OPI polishes to do this manicure – My Boyfriend Scales Walls, Steady As She Rose, Planks A Lot, and Sparrow Me The Drama.

I know delicate print was my least favorite last year, so hopefully this years manicure will go better.

31DC2013: Day 13 - Animal Print

Happy Sunday!

When I saw the prompt for animal nails, I wanted to take a different approach.

For my boyfriends birthday, back in August, I bought him these shoes (in mens of course... since they're no longer in stock I couldn't find the link to the mens). I really love them, I wish I had a pair, unfortunately they're sold out.

When I decided to do Shark Camo, originally I was going to follow the shoes and do it completely out of sharks. The more I thought about it, the more I was like no.freaking.way. Instead I did a little google search for 'shark camo' and found this image:

I figured that was way easier to tackle and went for it.

I really love these and I'm so very happy with how they came out. I used Zoya Blu as a base, Zoya Rocky and Julep Meryl for the camo pattern, and Zoya Neely for the sharks.

I wanted to catch up on the challenge by the end of today, but I'm not sure if I can get myself to take these off just yet. I love them way too much.

31DC2013: Day 12 - Stripes

Since I have time, I figured I'd do another super quick post for day 12, hopefully this will help me catch up.

For these I really wanted to use the OPI polishes I had ordered from zulily. Yeah, I got A LOT of nail mail within the past two days. They were things that I had ordered at various different times, and yet they all came in at once, but I'm not complaining :P

I really like these colors together and, of course I would. The pink and the purple are from OPI's Pirates of the Caribbean collection, I finally have completed my set :)

For this manicure, I used Sparrow Me The Drama, Planks A Lot, and French Quarter For Your Thoughts.

31DC2013: Day 11 - Polka Dots

Hi everyone! I've finally made it to the patterns portion of the 31DC2013. I'm going to do a quick post before I leave for work in about 10 minutes.

For this prompt, I just wanted to use all the Zoya polishes I had received in the mail from their BOGO and that's exactly what I did.

Very simple, but I do like it. Kinda reminds of clowns, but in a good way, or Dippin' Dots Cotton Candy flavor.

I used Blu, Micky, Yana and Rocky. I hope to catch up on posting by the end of this weekend :)