Day 14: FLOWERS

Hey guys. Really really quick post today because my laptop is about to die & I have to get to bed! I wasn't happy with my overall manicure for challenge day 14 but it is what it is. I kept failing at stamping and freehanding so I resorted to some plain old decals. 

 

The base for this manicure is three coats of Cult Nails Enticing, a new polish for me but definitely one of my new favorites. These decals are from Sally's from a while back. I liked how the color looked on its own but of course today is a day for flowers so I had to add some somehow. 

What do you think? Do you like this light, soft pink?

 

Day 13: ANIMAL PRINT

Hi everyone! It's Thursday, and a GREAT one at that! My last class of the day was cancelled, and I don't have to work today because I'm going to a concert tonight! Yup, another country concert.. I've gone to at least thirteen this year. Definitely my guilty pleasure (besides nail polish...).

I wanted to do a sort of... closure manicure. Closure of the end of summer. The last full out neon manicure before they sit in my melmers until next spring/summer. Not that I strictly follow color/season rules but I like wearing darker colors in the fall and winter. Here's what I came up with.

 

I used Nina Ultra Pro Solar Flare and China Glaze Pool Party. I have a serious weakness for China Glaze neons.. they are just beautiful! This manicure didn't photograph too well. I personally like how it looks in person better. I used Konad stamp m57, which had both a zebra and a cheetah print stamp. I used Fingerpaints Black Expressionism to stamp. This manicure is so much fun. I actually really like the yellow. I layered two coats of each polish over two coats of OPI Alpine Snow. Using white for a base under neons makes them really really bright, as you can see above.

What do you think? 

Day 12: STRIPES

Hey hey! :) Happy hump day. I worked a realllly short shift today and planned to be super productive afterwards... that plan completely died. I came home and got pizza for lunch with my mom. We watched The Voice while we ate lunch. It was nice to spend some time together. :o) Not to mention I am becoming obsessed with The Voice. Arrrgh! Blake Shelton + Adam Levine.. and Michael Buble is joining the mix as a mentor... can it get any better? I'm in a picture mood today... here is Blakie & Adam if you have no idea who I'm talking about (or if you want a photographic reminder ;D).

 

YUM. I will take the both of them. But mainly Blake. Really. 

 

I've seen Michael Buble in concert twice. The second time, we were in the 2nd row and I touched his
hand as he walked by. By touched, I actually mean grabbed & wouldn't let go of. *swoon*

Ok. Done swooning. Back on task, back on task. I did like three different manicures for this striped theme but the first two sucked. My Seche kept ruining them.. and the colors weren't working out. So, I decided to revert back to what I like to call old faithful:

This is Essie Ole Caliente and China Glaze I'm Not Lion. I'm practically obsessed with how these two polishes look together. I can't even handle it. =O I'm just in awe. I've never striped it like this before, but I figured why not go for the gold. This was so easy to do. I slapped on a few coats of polish, a layer of Poshe (because Seche is being pissy), then used Scotch tape to add the lines. I love the middle two fingers where there's just one vertical line. So cute!

Let me leave you with a REALLY funny picture. I found this one when I was browsing on my Facebook for a picture of Michael Buble. This was my OPI stash circa April 2011. This means I've accumulated over 400 polishes in about seventeen months....

 

My caption on Facebook for this one was "This is $100 worth of polish..I think I have a problem" HAHA!

Day 10: GRADIENT

Hi guys! This is a manicure I'm really excited about! Today is day ten, gradient day! For today, I decided to use this tutorial from The Nailsaurus. I used colors sort of similar to the ones she used because I loved how they looked. I've done a ton of glitter gradients but I wanted to try a color gradient with some solid cremes. I fought the urge to add glitter to this manicure. Well, here it is:

I took this picture to show a friend this hair treatment I got, 

and I LOVED how my nails looked in this picture!

This manicure was really hard to photograph, but I got a few color-accurate shots. It looks awesome in person. I'm loving this. I used two coats of Essie Art Deco and I sponged with that & Essie Watermelon. These colors look awesome together, and the gradient was really easy to do. I followed the tutorial completely to get this look. 

If you've never tried this look, I definitely recommend it! It was much easier than I expected!

Day 9: RAINBOW

Happy Sunday, my fellow polish fiends! Today is day nine of the challenge! For today, the theme is rainbow! I can honestly say I've never done a full-out rainbow manicure. There's gotta be a first for everything, right?!

 To me, the "rainbow" idea is a little daunting because of how many colors it requires... I am not an artistic person, and sometimes matching colors is hard for me (i.e. which "purple" or "green" is right). I was a little nervous about this challenge day. The fact that there was so much creative liberty scared me. Red is red. Blue is blue. Polka dots are polka dots. Stripes are stripes. But rainbow? You can do anything with rainbow. Ahhhh! The possibilities are endless.

I ended up with a rainbow base and a black stamped manicure. Check it out.

 

My first thought process was.. roygbiv = 7, my fingers = 5. This is where the idea to do half-colors on my nails came from. Then... I stamped.

 

I'll list the colors I used from pinky->thumb:

pinky: OPI Overexposed In South Beach, Love & Beauty Dark Purple

ring finger: China Glaze Shower Together, Brash Electric Sky

middle finger: OPI Don't Mess With OPI, Piggy Polish Poet-Tree

pointer: Zoya Pippa, Essie Meet Me At Sunset

thumb: Essie Ole Caliente, Cult Nails Evil Queen

HOLY POLISH! I've never used this many colors in one manicure! It was a lot of fun to do, though, that's for sure. I used however many coats it took to reach full opacity. For the yellow, it was a few more than for the red. Actually, I only used one coat for my thumb nail- Cult Nails polishes rock! 

I stamped with bm-205. I really like this butterfly/bow-looking image. It looks whimsy & fun over the rainbow design, something different.

What do you think? Are you wearing rainbow today, too?

 

Day 8: METALLIC

I've made it through a full week of the challenge! Wahoo! I wasn't sure if I'd make it, because let me tell you: painting your nails every. day. and working full-time and going to school is HARD work! It's a great feeling to get a brand new post up on the blog every day, though. I hate hate hate not being able to update regularly, so I try my hardest to fit it into my schedule, no matter how busy I am. 

Today is day eight of the challenge: metallic nails! I only own a few metallic polishes, but one of my untrieds just so happens to be Essie Penny Talk from Essie's recent Mirror Metallics Collection. I'm trying to use untrieds for this challenge, so Penny Talk fit the bill!

 

After wearing Penny Talk by itself, I decided to add some stamping to see how that would change it up. The image plate I used is bundle monster-322 (I usually forget to add in which plates I used but I'm getting better at that!). I used two coats of Essie Penny Talk and stamped with the same black you saw yesterday, Nina Ultra Pro Black. 

My stamping wasn't perfect but I'm happy with it! As for the Essie, application wasn't horrible, but this polish will show any and all imperfections on the nail, so beware! That's just the nature of metallics. I've heard that this line by Essie is much better than some others.

What do you think!? Are you a fan of metallics?

Day 7: BLACK AND WHITE

Hi ladies, happy Friday! Today I tried a stamping pattern for my black and white mani. I just received some new polish in the mail from Zoya so it was hard to put those aside and wear black and white.. wah!! That's definitely the hard part of this challenge! Anyway, here is what I ended up with today:

 

My black was Nina Ultra Pro Black and my white was OPI Alpine Snow, my go-tos. I'm not sure why my stamping didn't come out so good, but I didn't have the time to re-do the mani so this was my end result. The stamp I used was bundle monster-319.  

Do you like the puzzle piece look? I'd love to see how this looks with different colors. 

Day 6: VIOLET

Hi guys! A very last minute post tonight- almost forgot to get this one up here! I'm laying in bed as I type this too. I'm glad I remembered. I've been in a not so great mood for a few days, so I've been trying to do some soul-searching. I did this mani this morning after my homework (yuck). I wanted to do something really intricate but for some reason stamping just wasn't working for me. It was lame. Ah well. I ended up with a solid color.

 

This is two coats of China Glaze Grape Juice. Great application, great color! I'm happy with it- nothing more, nothing less. What do you think?

Day 5: BLUE

Hi guys, welcome to my day five post! I was waiting for the first excuse to try these babies out from the recent Nails Inc Cupcakes Special Effects Collection. I picked up three of the four at Sephora this weekend. I couldn't resist. Here is Pudding Lane.

Wearing my new ring! Get this: it cost me $4 from forever21! I'm in love with it.

Shown is two coats of Nails Inc Pudding Lane. Application was quick and easy, and the polish dried really quickly. I topped it with two coats of Seche Vite to smooth the bumps from the glitter. This is a fun and pretty polish but I don't have much more to say about it. 

I'm feeling sorta down today.. it's one of those days where everything just seems really crappy.. I try not to talk about my personal life a whole lot on here but it does feel good to rant a bit. That's all I'm going to say for now, I guess.

Anyway...back on topic. What do you think? Do you like this polish?

Purple tomorrow! That'll surely raise my mood a bit :)

Day 4: GREEN

Hi guys! Happy Tuesday (that really feels like a Monday)! I go back to school today, but I'm only taking two classes so it'll be a nice and easy semester. My goal is to work a lot and save up a ton of money and go back to full time classes in the spring. It's refreshing that my classes aren't until 12:30 and are only Tuesday and Thursday. Wahoo! 

I've got an untried on today! I decided to go with an unconventional green for challenge day four. I chose OPI Stranger Tides from the springtime Pirates of the Caribbean collection from last year. I just recently picked this one up.

This is three coats of OPI Stranger Tides stamped with a few Bundle Monster stamps in Nina Ultra Pro Black. This is a very classic look. Stamping with black over this shade is such a great look! I love this black for stamping. I was also happy with Stranger Tides. It went on a little streaky but I'm pretty sure that was my error, not the polish.

What do you think?

Day 3: YELLOW

Ahh.. finally caught up. It's only day three and I'm already behind, lol. I can honestly say I've never worn yellow on my nails before, but I'm totally embracing it. I feel really quirky and spunky wearing yellow! I bought this yellow because of the name.. I'm guilty of buying polishes for their names all the time. Sometimes I care more about a polish's name than the actual color. I'm obsessed with sunflowers and I saw this polish at Ocean State Job Lot for $4... how could I possibly resist? You're right- I couldn't.

Pictured is two coats of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Sunflowers layered over two coats of OPI Alpine Snow. I'm shocked at the formula of this Sally Hansen- it was SO GREAT! I tend to be a brand snob and usually gravitate more towards my OPI's but I was so impressed by this. These normally retail for eight bucks so I should've expected a good formula, but I was really blown away. The brushes were awesome too, I loved the angles of them.

Layering a lighter color or even a neon over white is the biggest tip I recommend to others. It's a great way to make colors pop. My application wasn't amazing, as you can see some tiny faint white spots... but I was in a rush and this did the job. I'm actually pretty happy with it. I recently ordered Zoya Pippa from the recent Zoya BOGO promo and I was hoping to do that for this day, but their shipping is taking FOREVER and I haven't received it yet. Can't wait for Pippa! :D

What do you think of this? Which yellow are you sporting today?

Day 2: ORANGE

I apologize for the lateness of this post! I work the entire holiday weekend and it blows. Sometimes, work gets to the point where you wonder if the money is even really worth it. For day 2 of the challenge, I decided to use the color I used for my senior prom! While all of the other girls in my class were getting tacky acrylic tips with French manicures, I was scoping out Sally's for a color to complement my turquoise blue dress. I fell in love with the orange/turquoise combination. Here it is!

This is two coats of Fingerpaints Original Orange and a coat of Icing Tiger's Blood on my accent nail. I like the way this came out! I wore Original Orange by itself with no accent nail for prom; I wasn't that into nail design at the time! Of course I've gotta include a few pictures from that wonderful night...

The top picture is of my date & me, the second picture showcases my mani! Had to cut a guy out of it lol! That was such a fun night- definitely exceeded my expectations. & I'm glad I did my nails myself! I got so many compliments on that color.

What do you think? I'll be posting my yellow day three mani later today.

Day 1: RED

Happy first day of the 31 day challenge! I didn't think I'd get this post up today, but I'm cutting it really close to midnight! My internet shockingly started working again today before the repairman comes tomorrow. Yay! Today I'm starting the challenge that a ton of other bloggers are participating in. For the next 31 days, I'll be doing my best to change my nail polish EVERY DAY to post something new for the challenge! It's going to be very interesting... 

Here's day one: RED!

 

This is two coats of OPI The Thrill of Brazil. I picked this little baby up at Transdesign. I love it. It's a great red. It reminds me of the CND Shellac mani I got while I was on my cruise in February (except I like my painting job better ;D). And- what's that on my accent nail, you ask? Oh, just some plain old craft glitter I found in the basement. I thought it'd be a fun way to add a little something to this mani! I really like it.

What do you think? Which red are you wearing? And to remind you... here's the challenge: