Day 31: Recreate your favourite challenge.

So that's it, the challenge is over! I've really enjoyed doing it but whilst the inspiration was good it was stressful to manage everything alongside getting a post up everyday. Today I decided to do gradients again, they're super easy and I think I need to improve on them a lot because mine are never very smooth, the sponge effect is always very obvious. I also felt that my original post's colours weren't obvious enough so I changed them around a bit (and I made it into a 3 colour gradient instead)

I used China Glaze - Something Sweet and an unnamed light pink and an unnamed darker pink. Hope you like them!

Alice

Day 29: Inspired by the supernatural

I had no idea what to do today so I just turned it into "inspired by halloween" and did a halloween themed post with a haunted house, bats and ghosts.

The background is Barry M - Black and then I use white acrylic paint for the outlines.

Alice

Day 28: Inspired by a flag

I must say that the olympics have made me very proud to be British and I was definitely supporting Team GB the whole time, so when we placed 3rd in the medal table (which, when you think about how small we are, is quite a feat) I knew I wanted to do flag nails related to the olympics.

Our flag takes pride of place on my middle finger (don't look too much into that) and in order of the top 5 from thumb to middle finger is the American flag, the Chinese flag, our flag, Russia's flag and the Republic of Korea's flag.

The base to all nails was Barry M - Matt White and I also used Barry M for the red and blue and acrylic paint for the yellow and black.  All details were done with a small brush. Hope you like them! There's only one picture today because it seemed a bit silly (and offensive) to cut off the American flag on my thumb as I usually do.

Alice

Day 27: Inspired by artwork

These nails might seem rather lazy but I had barely any time to do this design in and I couldn't think of anything inspired by artwork that wouldn't take a billion hours to do.

I have done this design before, before I had this blog and before I could actually take pictures of my work that were in focus. I have a few designs on my computer that are all out of focus and I've been intending to redo them all for a while, mainly so that I have good pictures of them but also to see how I've improved in the last year or so. So consider this the first installment, perhaps I should post before and after photos? What do you think?

For this design I used Barry M for the red, yellow and blue, and unnamed pink from a set I got ages ago and China Glaze - Gaga For Green. Then I did the details in acrylic paint and Barry M - Matt White. Hope you like them!

Alice

Day 26: Inspired by a pattern

I had a billion ideas for this but I chose this one because it was different to my usual style, hope you like it!

All done with dotting tools of different sizes on a background of China Glaze - Refresh Mint

Alice

Day 25: Inspired by fashion

Hello everyone, I'm afraid I'm not a massive follower of fashion, in fact most of the 'fashionable' pieces of clothing in my wardrobe are those that I barely ever wear, so for this challenge I turned to trust Google images and put in 'fashion' and then chose the first thing that caught my eye.


I used Orly - Glowstick and Barry M - Matt White and Black with tape to create these nails, hope you like them!

Of course as is always the case with neons it was difficult for the camera to pick up, but I promise you it was incredibly bright, and you'll just have to take my word for it ;)

Alice

Day 24: Inspired by a book

Let's face it, today couldn't be anything else with a blog name like mine. Especially as I've been intending to do them for so long. So here I present to you: Lord Of The Rings nails.

On my pointer and middle finger I have Frodo and Sam in the style of my cartoons, much like this post, and then of course the elvish writing on the ring "one ring nail to rule them all".

I used acrylic paint and a small paintbrush for the detail on a base of Barry M - Gold Foil and Models Own - Peach Sherbet. The hair was done with Barry M - Yellow and Barry M- Mushroom using a thin dotting tool.

Alice

Day 23: Inspired By A Movie

So as you can see, I really couldn't decide on a specific movie to do today so I decided to do a variety of childhood favourites (Shrek is still one of my favourite films now, I'm such a child at heart). These nails took forever but they are so worth it, I'm really proud of these. I wanted to push myself and I'm glad I did.

All the details were done in acrylic paint on a base of Barry M - Matt White. I had to adapt Wall-E to fit on my super short nails but I hope you like it anyway!

I love animations, but my boyfriend hates them (whut?) and I can't wait to see Brave. Although I dont think any recents have lived up to the brilliance of monsters inc/shrek/finding nemo. Which (if any) is your favourite animation?

Alice

Day 22: Inspired By A Song

When I was thinking through this challenge there were never any dispute over which band's song I'd be basing my nails around. It was always going to be Mumford and Sons. Unfortunately their songs aren't very transferable to nail designs, so I picked the most obvious and went with 'Little Lion Man'.

If you've never heard of them, open a new tab/window now (don't quit this post because what would be the point in me writing it eh? And you wouldn't get to see the nails) and go to youtube. I'd recommend Dust Bowl Dance or Thistle and Weeds, but they're one of those bands that makes a brilliant song absolutely every time, so just type in their name and go with the flow if you must. I'm ranting on about them now I know, but they are brilliant musicians. I went to see them live at the beginning of June when they came to Huddersfield (whut?) and they were just as good, if not better, and that says something about a band.

ANYWAY, here are the nails, which I'm sure is what you came here to see. I used Barry M - Yellow and sponged on Revlon - Mad About Mango. Then I painted the lion just by mixing Barry M - Mushroom with Barry M white/black for the lighter and darker shades of brown using a very small brush and then used acrylic paint for the details. Hope you like them!

Alice

Day 21: Inspired By A Colour

First of all, a letter to whoever made this challenge, WHAT THE HELL DOES THIS MEAN. End of letter. I took it to mean inspired by the name of a colour, but then still couldn't decide what to do. So I sat in front of my box of polishes and went through loads with no inspiration, and then I came across China Glaze - Sea Spray and inspiration hit.
Now I know this design is not original, both MrCandiipants and The Nailasaurus have done designs similar, but I loved them both and I'd always known I wanted to recreate something similar, so here we go. I was going to add a surfer, but I didn't have time :( hope you like them anyway!

Alice

Day 19: Galaxies

So here's what was supposed to be yesterday's post: galaxies. I didn't know how these were going to turn out but I'm pretty happy with them. Though my nails are waaaay to short, I don't think they've been this short since I used to bite them. I have to leave the house in less than 5 minutes so this is a super quick post, hope you like them!

Extra picture of the beautiful Barry M - Black Glitter

Alice

Day 20: Watermarble

So as I mentioned yesterday, I'm doing day 19 and day 20 in the wrong order. Mainly because I was dreading the watermarble and just wanted to get it out of the way and secondly because I'm now not going to be at home for a month. I've brought all my nail varnishes with me (yes, all 300+ of them D:) because I'm a crazy lady but I wanted to be sure I could do them with the materials I have at home + my sisters help (which just meant she stood there and watched basically, but still).

So here you go, watermarble nails. I HATE WATERMARBLING. I was surprised I even managed to get a pattern this time, normally it just sinks to the bottom, although they're still awful. I also made them matte, to give them a little bit of awesomeness, if not much. Though I do quite like the thumb, I smudged the corner which is why there's some random dots there but the whole frenchie effect is pretty cool, a total accident but nevertheless still cool.

You only get one photo because I'm so ashamed. If it wasn't part of a challenge I wouldn't even post them, so consider yourselves (un)lucky to get one ;)
Alice

Day 18: Half Moons

Hey everyone! Sorry for not posting yesterday, I do have a genuine reason though, I was revising for my driving theory test which was today (I passed, yay!). So here you go, a day late and kind of boring half moon nails. I'm also going to be doing Day 20 water marbling tomorrow and Day 19 galaxies on friday for reasons I will explain tomorrow, you'll still get both but not in the right order. :D Anyway, hope you like today's nails :)

Alice

Day 17: Glitter

Let me get one thing straight before I write this post, I am not a glitter person. I dont like glitter on my clothes etc, and I dont like it on my nails. Unlike with the clothes though it's because I dread taking them off because I use remover pads rather than polish remover and cotton buds so I can't use the foil method. That being said, if I can try forget about removing them I quite like the look of them, even though I dont own very many (aka 5). I wanted to do a gradient (surprise surprise) and also decided to mattify it.. so here you go :)

The nude is Models Own and the glitter is China Glaze - Blonde Bombshell topped off with Rimmel Lycra Matte Top Coat

Alice

Day 16: Tribal Nails (Part 2)

I really didn't want to take these nails off, so I did what I originally intended to do with them (but forgot to do like a doofus) and mattified them! I love mattified nails as I've said before, not only do they make taking pictures a billion times easier but they also look so cool! I hope you like them as much as I do :) (Part 1 here)

I used Rimmel's Matte Top Coat in addition to yesterday's colours

Alice

P.S. Do I get some kind of woman/blogger points for actually managing to post this before midnight (shock horror)?

Day 16: Tribal Print

I love doing tribal print. Somebody asked me to do a tribal nail set for them a while ago which forced me out of the 'I won't be able to do tribal print and I'll feel like a failure so I'm not going to try' mindset and made me do them, and they're great because my OCD can fade away and I dont have to be precise, I can just splodge whatever the hell I want on there and hope for the best. However, I did get a bit carried away on the detail today, I can never be simple can I? I hope you like them :)

I used toooooo many colours to list but the black and white is acrylic paint :)

Alice

Day 15: Delicate Print

This one had me stumped for ideas until I changed 'delicate print' into just delicate, and then I instantly thought of fairies. My fairy is not very delicate and neither are the stars from her wand but she's still cute right?

I used China Glaze - 'Something sweet' with Essie 'Shine of the Times' and acrylic paint, topped off with seche vite

Alice

Day 14: Flowers

Sorry again for the lack of posting, I've been so busy!  So I present to you lovely readers... abstract flowers! Hope you like them, I wanted to try something a little different to my usual floral designs and I based it around a scarf I saw a few weeks ago. Hope you like them!

Alice

Day 13: Animal Print

Hello! So today was animal print in the challenge and (again) I wanted to be as original as possible, so I googled around a bit (trusty google, eh?) and saw lots of pictures of pretty frogs (okay, not that pretty because they're frogs but interesting) and decided upon a simple design because I knew I didn't have much time. Hope you like it!

I used:

• China Glaze - Refresh Mint
• A mix of Barry M Black and Barry M Mushroom 
• Topped off with Seche Vite

Alice

Day 12: Stripes

Day 12 was stripes and I had loads of ideas about what to do for them, but whilst deciding the wonderful mrcandiipants published a tutorial for zig zag nails and I just had to do them, hope you like them!

I used China Glaze - Electric Pineapple, the pink in the picture (again I dont have it with me) and acrylic paint for the black

Alice