33DC Inspired by a Tutorial

This wasn't really a tutorial but it is someone else's design. Dressed up Nails did these awesome dotty hearts and when I saw them I knew they were what I wanted to copy for this challenge. I did mine in neon pink and pastel lime green- a fabulous combination which is under appreciated.

The colours used here are Jessica Lime Cooler and Lilypad Lacquer In Pink We Trust- an exclusive made for the UK store Sally Magpies. I did the dots with a dotting tool and freehanded the stripes with a medium length striping brush.

I really like this manicure. I like how in your face it is but also isn't because the pastel green tones it down, just awesome :).

Tomorrow I will have a post summing up my top ten polishes for the winter season now that the clocks have gone back and some of them are a little wild cardy so come and see if you agree with me :).

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33DC Woodland Animals

The prompt for today is animals and I had to use this mani from Eeeek! Nail Polish as my idea because it was so gorgeous (much better than mine ;)). We have here a badger, a fox and erm... a dog? My boyfriend thinks it's a squirrel... Plus the tail of the brown creature which was my little addition to this :).

I love this so much- I still need more practice with acrylic paint to make it do what I want it to (my fox was a little lumpy).

For the base I used A England St. George then stamped with Moyou Pro Plate 8 (I think) and NYC Magic Earth to produce a leafy background. The stamping alone looked incredible- I wish I'd taken a picture before I attacked it with acrylic paint. I know it's quite a common thing to do tone on tone stamping but I personally haven't done it before. With my new squishy stamper I am able to do art over stamped backgrounds because I don't have to wait ages for polish to dry before stamping.

I love these little woodland critters :)

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33DC: Chinese Pandas

This is possibly one of the most stereotypical things you could think of when it comes to China and I don't even want to guess how many people will do pandas. However I couldn't resist the opportunity to do some subtle stamped bamboo and then stamp pandas over the top.

The base for this is Ethereal Lacquer Thigh Highs which I showed you yesterday. I stamped using 2 True Arete, NYC Full Metal Jacket and Konad Black. During this I managed to knock my konad black off the table and spill it onto my clothes! Ah the casualties of nail art.

I love my little pandas sitting there munching on bamboo.

Ok so I could have done something a little bit more original but I love this and it's a very neutral direction (as opposed to the red and gold dragon I was also considering). Tomorrow's post also features a new indie polish that I love so come back to see how I wore that one :).

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33DC Flowers: Moyou Tulip Stamping

As soon as I saw this Moyou stamping plate image I knew what I wanted to do with it and that was to make stamper decals:

These are quite simple to make- pick up your image on your stamper as per usual and while it's on the stamper use nail polish to colour in the parts of the design you want to (here I coloured in the tulips and the grass below them)  then add a generous coat of clear nail polish to the image and wait for it to dry (I usually leave mine about 15-20 minutes) then use tweezers to peel the whole thing off the stamper, place it on your (dry!) base coloured nails, use nail scissors to cut away any excess around your nails and then put another coat of the same clear top coat over the top, wrapping the tips.

I used a few different polshes here, the background is Jessica Lime Cooler, the flowers are H&M Orange and Yellow, OPI Flashbulb Fuchsia and A England Rose Bower, and the leaves are NYC High Line Green.
I love the effect you can get with stamped decals, they can produce some exceptional nail art images. Remember to check out all the other 33 day challenge flower designs, there will be some amazing nail art!

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31DC Stripes

For stripes day I went with a half moon design and horizontal stripes. I really wanted to use Tara's Talons Envy in a Bottle again and it goes really well with a nude nail so I decided to leave a bare half moon and then use a striping brush to add horizontal stripes with A England St. George.

This is a mani made up using only UK indies :). The UK indie scene is flourishing and there are some amazing polishes appearing all over the place. This is great news for those of us here in the UK who can't afford to pay the steep shipping charges from the US.

This mani is simple but eye catching because of the searingly bright green polish. I am still in love with Envy in a Bottle (I used it here) and St George goes with it perfectly.

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31DC Green

This is not really nail art, more a combination of polishes but I recently got both of these polishes and had to try them out. I know shatters went out of fashion last year but I like the look of this one over the nude with the circle glitters just peeping through.

This post is showcasing a gorgeous British indie polish, Growing Strong by Dragon Glass Nails. Growing Strong is based on the Tyrell house in Game of Thrones. Margaery Tyrell is one of my favourite characters from GoT (I can't say why whilst also being spoiler free, but her slytherinness is awesome!)

This is two coats of Growing Strong which still has visible nail line but I quite like that in nude polishes. The yellow glitters came out easily but I had to do some minute fishing and placing of the green glitters. I'm going to blame my overhasty application for the couple of bubbles that appeared.

I love how this looks with the green shatter, I'm not normally a shatter person but in the right circumstances it looks great. Tomorrow is my first stamping in this challenge.

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I Feel... Wicked Stamped

My Moyou plates arrived yesterday and I had to try them out. I was still wearing my swatch of Smitten Polish I Feel... Wicked, and decided to try a stamp from the Sailor Collection Plate 4 which would show off the polish underneath.

I love this swirly design which leaves a little circle of polish completely clear but I wish I had stamped a little lower on my little finger.

The etching on the Moyou plates is great, the stamp came up perfectly every time. It is worth noting though that this design was only just long enough to cover my entire nail at the moment and my nails are fairly small so check the dimensions of the plates and buy the XL versions if you have big nails. I also got the Suki Collection Plate 1 which is the most unusual stamping plate I have ever seen and I am very excited to try it out.

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Smitten polishes

Today I have two Smitten Polishes to show you, both from the collection inspired by the musical Wicked!

This is one coat of Look to the Western Sky, over a coat of Nails Inc Lowndes Court. I think it could have been built to opacity but I like to be able to control how much glitter goes on my nails without worrying about whether the polish is opaque or level.

This polish reminds me of a beautiful sunset.

And moving on to the second polish, I Feel... Wicked:

This is the most amazing polish ever! It is buildable but I prefer to layer so I am showing you two coats over Barry M Racing Green. Application was easy and I cannot stop staring at my nails.

I used two coats of Save the Nail Fast Dry top coat to smooth this out, but I could have got away with one.

Smitten Polish has surpassed my expectations, I love both of these polishes and would definitely buy another Smitten.

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Lime Cooler

I was buying some polishes online and happened to see the Jessica Summer Collection for 2013 and there was one polish I had to buy which was Lime cooler.

Lime Cooler- Jessica

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A saint's golden eye in the moonlight

A long title but I really wanted to use the titles of all these polishes. After water marbling yesterday I just wanted something simple so I went for a glitter gradient- classy and elegant.

In bright daylight (the sun was hiding)

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Boadicea Queen of the Britons

I love ancient and Medieval history especially the strong warrior figures in the past of Britain. Boadicea was a warrior queen of the British Iceni tribe who fought against Roman troops around AD 60. She is most famous today for using blue body paint on her troops to scare the Romans. I was inspired by this painting to do nail art over my A England St. George swatches. I used various motifs from the painting on my nails:

Boadicea inspired nails

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St. George

I having been fancying an Indie nail polish for a while and was quite disappointed to find that most of them are American and the shipping is very expensive to the UK. Until I discovered A England. I was immediately drawn to St. George a dark green polish with scattered holographic particles. It did not disappoint:

A England St. George

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