31DC Inspired by a tutorial 33DC Tribal

To do a double challenge for this I just had to find a tribal tutorial that I liked. I found one by Simple nail art designs here .

I was doing these quite late at night so the lighting is a bit weird in these photos. I used A England Lady of the Lake, Essie The Girls are Out, Lilypad Lacquer Nature Calling and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls for the colours and painted on the details with acrylic paint.

Tomorrow is the very last day of the 31day challenge and I will be recreating an awesome mani so come back and check it out :).

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31DC Inspired by the Supernatural

I really wanted to use this polish, the Black Cat exclusive for Rainbow Connection: Celestial Dancer, a blue jelly polish with circle, square and star shaped glitter in. To make it supernatural I added a hidden alien face on my ring finger.

Celestial Dancer is amazing! This is three coats with no undies and the deep jelly effect is awesome.

I was inspired by the little grey men aliens and I drew this on with my Barry M silver nail art pen.

So there we have it- supernatural nails, Check back tomorrow for inspired by a tutorial :)

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31DC Inspired by a flag

I chose my home county flag for this which is the Yorkshire flag, a white rose on a blue background. Rather than doing one large rose I decided to do stylised small ones.

The base colour here is OPI Taylor Blue, one that was made for a charitable cause (which you can read about here) but is my perfect teal. I did the roses with Dance Legend Teleportation and Elegant Touch White and then used Jessica Goddess to add a pearly white highlight. 

I don't know why I always do roses down the inside of my nail which really doesn't suit my normal photography style, next time I'm going to do them on the outside.

We're very near the end of the 31 day challenge, only three more designs to do. I hope you've enjoyed reading about my designs as much as I've enjoyed doing them :).

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31DC Artwork

I saw a picture on google images a while ago and pinned it and I thought I'd revisit it for my artwork mani. It's a field of flowers with poppies as the main focus.

This did not have any credit on google- but if you know whose it is please let me know. (EDIT- Lucy kindly found out that this belongs to Suzzee)

The polishes I used in this were NYC Lexington Yellow Chelsea Cherry, Essie The Girls are Out, Barry M Key Lime, Guava, Essie Rock the Boat. I painted all of this using a thin brush to make some of the dots more irregular than if I had used dotting tools.

I really like this, it does look like I have a field on my nails :).

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33DC Tape

I saw this done on another blog (although I can't remember whose) and I thought it looked really cool. Its a taped off gradient

I used Lilypad Lacquer Merlot for Me as the base, waited overnight for it to dry then applied my tape and sponged Emily de Molly Where Boys Fear to Tread over the top.

Thankfully the sun decided to come out to show off the magnificence of this look. It still looks good in the shade but different.

The 33 day challenge will resume on Monday and I have some exciting news on Monday as well :)

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31DC Inspired by a pattern

I was inspired by the triangles pattern on some of my bedding. Unfortunately my blues sort of merged together, but the pink worked really well :).

I used Chirality Cu2+ and Dance Legend Teleportation for the base colours then made decals on a plastic bag for the two triangle nails with Essie The Girls are Out and Beach Bum Blu.

This one looks so much better in sun than in shade. The Dance Legend is so holographic!

I've enjoyed the 31 day challenge but this week is a struggle so I'm glad it's winding down. The 33 day challenge will continue until December but only three times a week which is much more manageable- I feel like I have a lot of untrieds I want to show you but haven't been able to because of the challenge restrictions. I also want to show you my autumn colour palette.

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31DC Inspired by fashion 33DC Most used colour

I am a little pushed for time this week because I am being an extra in a film and am unable to wear nail polish while filming and I'm filming for 4 days. So this is a speedy mani with no base. This is my first time using one of the Revlon-Marchesa nail wraps and it was a fantastic experience, it was very easy to apply with no wrinkles whatsoever. The fashion inspiration is of course these fabulous nail wraps. Again this is a double challenge with most used colour from the 33DC- my most used colour is definitely blue.

I love holographic roses but I will accept that I may have done too many designs with roses in this week. I think my technique is getting better but it's pretty hard to get the lines as thin as I want them to be.

The polishes I used were: Chirality Cu2+, Barry M Blue Grape and Elegant Touch White.

The nail wrap is awesome and I like how understated this whole mani is. I apologise for the staining on my nails- I just didn't have time to put a base on.

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31DC Inspired by a Book

These nails are inspired by the cover art on the book Beauty by Robin McKinley. It's a fantastic retelling of Beauty and the Beast, slightly darker and a lot more realistic. Anyway the cover of the book is red with silver roses and flourishes so I thought I'd recreate that look.

The base colour is Deborah Lippmann Through the Fire, the glitter is Pocket Money Polishes Sparks Fly. I did the stamp with Barry M Silver Foil which I also used for the roses along with A England Dorian Gray and Dance Legend Teleportation. Teleportation is incredibly holographic and I love the effect this gives the roses.

The stamping plate is Moyou plate 04 from the Sailor Collection. My moyou plates are simply incredible, perfectly etched with really cool designs.

I love how this turned out, the contrast of silver on red is exquisite and the tiny holographic flash is great. I actually have plans to do some more holographic roses for a later manicure in the challenge.

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31DC Inspired by a Film 33DC Dots

Woo double challenge! Today I am doing film for the 31 day challenge and dots for the Crumpet's Nail Tarts 33 day challenge. I decided to do a very iconic film in dots so that if I mucked it up it would still be recognisable. However, I think I did a pretty good job representing Harry Potter in dots. 

We have a Gryffindor scarf, HP himself, a snitch and a bludger and a wand casting a spell. I think my favourite is the snitch, that large dot is just perfect. 

I used quite a lot of different polishes for this manicure, but I was careful not to use too many to ensure it was a cohesive design. The base is OPI My Vampire is Buff and then the art was done using NYC High Line Green, Park Ave, Chelsea Cherry, Barry M Black, Revlon Hypnotise and Elegant Touch White.

It was fun designing a mani in which I would only use dotting tools to actually portray something. Excitingly, as this goes out I will be off being an extra in the new feature film The Theory of Everything about Stephen Hawking.

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31DC Inspired by a Song

I was not inspired at all for this post so I went with Billy Joel Piano Man and did piano keys on top of french tips.

I used a coat of OPI Bubblebath and then used Elegant Touch White and Barry M Black to draw on the piano keys.

I think my mani for tomorrow is awesome! Please come and look at it :)

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31DC Inspired by a Colour

This is a recycling of yesterday's manicure with a different accent nail which I much prefer and think fits better with the whole mani. I have been inspired not by a colour but by the combination of blue and gold.

I used striping tape to get the chevron effect on my ring finger over a base of NYC Full Metal Jacket and Hare Polish Dauphine of Decadence. The Hare polish is gorgeous but a complete nightmare to remove, more so than other glitter polishes I use.

I love how art deco this whole mani is, check back tomorrow for my song inspired mani. 

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31DC Water Marble

I really struggle with water marbling I just don't have the time or the patience for it (or the filtered water). So knowing this I decided to go into the water marble prepared with some plastic bags and I picked up the marble onto the bags then picked my favourite part and made a decal

I think I marbled with NYC Ink Stain, Rain Drop and a pink polish, I then applied the decal on top of a white polish. I hand placed glitter out of Hare Polish Dauphine of Decadence along some of the curves.

I will go into detail about the other fingers tomorrow, but if you're desperate to know today leave a comment :).

So as I took the water marble finger off immediately you'll be seeing most of this manicure again tomorrow for my Inspired by a Colour look. 

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31DC Galaxy

I wanted to do something a little different for galaxy and try and portray the majority of space which is big and black and dusty. Forgive me for the shine on these pictures, I am going to be making a lightbox asap but I need to find a suitable box first.

I started with a layer of black and then sponged my dark effect polishes over the top. The circles came out of Smitten Polish The Ghost of Jupiter and they represent distant planets and stars. 

The polishes: A England Bridal Veil, Deborah Lippmann Hit Me With Your Best Shot, Dollish Polish The Man in Black and Smitten Polish The Ghost of Jupiter. 

I then matted this and it looks amazing matte, you can see the sparkle in the black undies and more of the colours from The Man in Black. 

Two days of space themed manis, I'll have to try and avoid them for the rest of the challenge. Tomorrow is the dreaded water marble which I am definitely not looking forward to, it's the technique that just doesn't work for me.

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31DC Half Moon

I'm revisiting the very first design I ever posted on my blog with this post, my half moon planets. I still love this idea and am very proud of my little planets.

Obviously my thumb is Earth but the rest are just random planets.

The polishes: Lilypad Lacquer Bluebell, W7 Silver, OPI Eurso Euro, Smitten Polish The Ghost of Jupiter, Tara's Talons Envy in a Bottle, NYC High Line Green, Orly Hook Up, Jessica Goddess, Hare Polish Dauphine of Decadence, NYC Chelsea Cherry, A England Bridal Veil, Dollish Polish The Man in Black.

I'll admit that I am now doing space themed nails two days in a row but I really wanted to recreate these, so tomorrow I will be doing galaxy nails without the galaxy.

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31DC Glitter

For my glitter mani I used a couple of my untried polishes in this design. This is three coats of Dollish Polish I Survived The Fire Swamp a gorgeous flame red jelly polish with red glitter in it. I then topped it with a single coat of Pocket Money Polishes Sunshine which has red, yellow, orange and gold glitter in it.

I stamped with my Moyou Sailor 04 plate and NYC Full Metal Jacket with this fabulous fan pattern. Here is the glitter combination alone, what you can't see in this combination are the glitters in the Dollish which are quite subtle in the red jelly base and the red glitters in Sunshine, but don't they look amazing together.

I'm having a bit of a jelly polish moment right now, I love the options of making jelly sandwiches and I've just ordered a few of the Nails inc ones on sale.

This is a very different colour scheme than what I normally wear so it catches my eye a little more than normal and I really like that :).

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31DC Tribal

The base for these may look slightly familiar because I drew this pattern on top of my rainbow nails gradient. I didn't really have a plan for these, I just doodled as I went along.

The colours in the gradient are NYC Chelsea Cherry, Lexington Yellow, Lavender Cupcake and Orly Blue Collar. The doodles are with my trusty Barry M black nail art pen.

I enjoyed doing this design, but I was having some issues with my matte top coat which made the pen bleed a little. I like how the gradient with the pattern makes it look like each section is over a different colour. 

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31DC Delicate

I've had to do this prompt in the past and I hate it. I am not a delicate type of person. I chose to use the opportunity to try out a gradient idea I've had in my head for a while and then I doodled a sort of delicate pattern on top.

This gradient is made up of H&M Orange, OPI Flashbulb Fuchsia and OPI Tomorrow Never Dies. I then added Dragonglass Nails Hear me Roar over the top, although I did dilute this with some acetone as otherwise the gold colour covered the others in the gradient. These photos are with NYC Matte Me Crazy because I love the satiny finish it gives to the manicure.

This is a zentangle design (flying geese) and I like how it shows off some of the gradient and hides other parts

This diluted version of Hear me Roar is perfect for giving a glint of gold to this gradient and I love it, I can't wait to show you swatches of it, they are coming once I finish the 31 Day Challenge.

I love this so much, the gradient is just perfect and the glitter works really well with it :)

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