31-Day Challenge #6: violet patterned tips

For today's challenge I was playing around with striping tape again. Purple is my favorite color, so I had a hard time choosing which polishes to use, but in the end I thought it would be cool to contrast something dark and moody with something sparkly!

The creme is Julep Gabrielle, and the holo shimmer is DIFFERENTdimension Whatever. The holo in this polish isn't intensely rainbow-y, but it gives a little extra dimension (ha!) to the nail.

After I took this picture, my middle fingernail broke, so tomorrow all my nails will be shorter. :-(


Check out today's other violet manis!

31-Day Challenge #5: blue sea

Recently I got an aquatic-themed stamping plate (MoYou Sailor 04) and I thought the blue nails day would be the perfect time to use it!

The fish are so cute, no?

I did the gradient background with four colors (though you can really only see three):

• L'Oreal Now You Sea Me
• Color Club Endless Summer
• Revlon Plunge Pool
• Revlon Beguile (looks black here, but has a blue-to-purple shimmer)

The stamping was done with Sinful Colors Snow Me White. I finally have a decent white for stamping!

While I was photographing this mani, Trudy tried to butt in on the action.

Check out today's other blue manis!

31-Day Challenge #4: green colorblock

Another day, another 31-Day Challenge! I'd never done a colorblock mani before, but I'm pretty sure I'll be doing them a lot from now on! So easy but they look really put-together! Also I'm a sucker for geometric patterns. (Design shamelessly stolen from Didoline's Nails.)

Although I did get a bit grumpy when I noticed that my striping tape left some gray gunk behind. >:-(

Colors used:

• base: Sinful Colors Snow Me White
• emerald green: Revlon Posh
• shimmery spring green: Julep Mackenzie
• medium blueish-green: Essie First Timer
• light yellow-green: Julep Adrianna

Check out today's other green manis!

31-Day Challenge #3: yellow striped gradient

This mani marks my first successful use of a striping brush! How exciting is that. I followed this easy tutorial by A Little Polish.

Polishes I used, from top to bottom: Julep Abbie, Sinful Colors Snow Me White (a two-coat white!! Where have you been all my life?), Sally Hansen Lightening, and OPI The "It" Color. I noticed when I was done that The "It" Color looks really orange here next to the other yellows, but in reality I'd say it's right on the border between orange and yellow.

Like I said, this was really easy to do and I like the intentionally imperfect result! Unfortunately I ended up with stained yellow nails despite my base coat. Good thing they'll be covered up by nail art for the next month!


Check out today's other yellow manis!

31-Day Challenge #2: orange butterflies

The butterfly wing mani is something I've wanted to try for a while, and I thought orange would be the obvious color for it! I followed this tutorial from I Feel Polished.

The base color is Julep Parker, with Julep Natalie sponged on top. For the black I used my Sally Hansen nail art pen. Now, I owe Sally Hansen an apology: last time I tried to use this pen, the color bled a lot, and I kind of dissed it in this post. But this time it worked perfectly! Not sure what happened there. Sorry, Sally Hansen, I like your nail art pen! The only thing I noticed was that as the black dried, it cracked in places, but I think this can be lessened by coloring over the same spot twice.

I used Maybelline Porcelain Party for the dots, and put a coat of Gelous on top. Somehow a bunch of scratches showed up in the topcoat--can't be sheet marks, because I did this mani at 2 PM! Oh well. This mani made me happy. :-)

Check out the rest of today's orange manis!

A few wedding pictures

I just wanted to share a couple of the beautiful pictures our wedding photographer took. I can't believe we've been married over two months already!

It's amazing how happy I look when it was pouring down rain not two feet behind me! (It stopped just in time for the ceremony.)

31-Day Challenge #1: red strawberries

It's here...the 31-Day Challenge!! I'm really excited about this, as I'm not very experienced at nail art, so I want to use this as an opportunity to practice lots of different techniques. I'm an extremely left-brained person and not very creative, so I'll be taking inspiration from others' art for a lot of the prompts. But imitation is the best form of flattery, right? I'm hoping that this will be a springboard for me to start coming up with more unique nail art of my own.

Day 1's theme is the color red, and I thought what better way to celebrate summer before it's over than with a strawberry mani?

Fun and easy! I started with a base of L'Oreal Caught Red-Handed, then added the seeds with a dotting tool and L'Oreal Creme Puffs. I painted the leaves with a short nail art brush in Julep Mackenzie. I think these turned out really cute (and my husband was able to identify what berry they were on the first try).

Check out all the other participants in the 31-Day Challenge (thanks to More Nail Polish for setting up the InLinkz)!