Day Thirty : Inspired by a Tutorial

There are soooo many good tutorials out there for nail art but one person stood out the most for me and that's Kayla from Kaylashevonne.com - her art AND nails are always so prefect. The Retro Polka Dot manicure amazes me; how does one make it look so flat, smooth but still look like dots with all those dollop of polishes on top?  Kayla can in her tutorial.

Retro Polka Dots

by Kayla Shevonne

I had none of the polishes that she recommended and the green that I had to substitute with did not like Skull & Glossbones AT ALL. (Also I thought my right hand may like at least one photo in this challenge, probably sick of Lefty taking up all the spotlight)

Day Twenty-Nine: Inspired by the Supernatural

I've been looking forward to today's challenge! I'm not much of a supernatural girl... in fact, I'm quite opposite, almost anything supernatural scares me, Zombies on Minecraft? Dig a hole and wait for daylight to come. There is one ghost that I am very fond of, King Boo from the Mario series. He's so uber cute and the sound he makes when he's up to something mischievous makes me giggle inside as if I know what he's up to.

King Boo

As the years gone by, he's became less of an evil villain and more of a cheeky prankster who is always up to no good, I love him so much, haha. (For those who have asked me why I never show my thumb - it looks weird in photos but also I have a short thumb compared to the rest of my already short fingers and so it's rarely noticed therefore I just paint it plainly where someone else would put most of their nail art on it. Anyways, photo just for them!)

Day Twenty-Eight: Inspired by a Flag

Watching bloggers pile in manicures for 4th of July is really fun. I've always wanted to join in the fun but it'll make no sense for me to do one considering that I'm not american and I've never been to America. I've just been admiring it from a distance, well I know it's not exotic or anything like that but most young people in New Zealand dream of either living in Europe, America or Australia... and well you can guess which one I am.

Not only is the American flag fun and covered in stars but the famous Uncle Sam's hat is also inspired by it. Isn't it just adorable? Unfortunately my french manicure didn't turn out just as cute - it's so hard using stickers and tape! (.. and I really do not recommend Eyeko Saucy)

Day Twenty-Seven: Inspired by Artwork

Another quite vague challenge for today. I noticed everyone is being inspired by really famous paintings made long time ago that now hangs in the museum nowadays. To me, art is almost everything. There's artwork from a fellow best friend who is now an aspiring photographer, there's artwork in manga tankōbon which cost so much but barely feeds the artists, freelance artwork all over deviantart, etc, the list goes on. For me, I decided to get inspired by artwork in a game, I love gaming, don't hit me but if I had to give up gaming or cosmetics, I'll chose cosmetics - That's how much I love games.

Tiny Tower

The artwork is absolutely amazing in this game and the little bitizens that you control are just as adorable... who would have thought a game this good would be completely free? I sure didn't believe it when I saw the price tag (You can download it here if you own an apple, I think they have a version for the android too). Anyways, I chose 4 of my favourite costumes that the bitizens can wear, the panda, the cat, the frog and the ninja and skittled them across my fingers on both hands. 

I have one real thing to say, "Strippling brushes are absolutely annoying!", I have no idea how anyone is able to control since a long brush with inconsistent polish dripping off it.

Day Twenty-Six: Inspired by a Pattern

Today's challenge is quite vague - I had no idea what I wanted to do since there is a lot of "Patterns" in the world since patterns just means anything that repeats and/or occur frequently. I decided to do my "google, close my eyes and point to one" option. When I opened my eyes, I saw a very cute floral pattern that belonged to a website design help site with a list of free seamless backgrounds.

Isn't that just cute and prefect for spring? (Even though it's going to be fall here soon, haha). 

Here's my attempt on this floral pattern!

Day Twenty-Five: Inspired by Fashion

Today's nails are inspired by Nicki Minaj's tights from the Victoria Secret runway where Orlando Bloom proudly cheered for his wife, Miranda Kerr. Nicki Minaj is very famous for her quirky outfits but this one stood out the most for me.. it's soo bold and brightly coloured.

Nicki Minaj 

on the Victoria Secret Runway

I didn't notice that there was a contest that is being held by O.P.I for the release of the Nicki Minaj Collection when I was painting until I started seeing a huge hoard of them being posted on everyone's blog. You can look at the entries here and I'm so sorry that this is another Nicki inspired manicure - I bet you're sick of seeing them! 

Day Twenty-Four: Inspired by a Book

I remember this book being read to me twice during my Primary School years (5years old until 12) but I still proceed to purchase it and continued to read it many, many times. It just doesn't bore me. I can't bare to go watch it on the big screen in case they completely butcher the story for me, that's how much I love Charlotte's Web. Though.... the sound of a talking pig is quite cute, lol.

Charlotte's Web

By E.B. White

 

E.B. White is a genius at writing children's book about talking animals - he wrote Stuart Little too!

Day Twenty-Three: Inspired by a Movie

The first ever movie that I've ever watched was when I was 7 years old. Pokemon had been quite popular at the time, I mean it's still popular but this was when the first generation was released and every kid was oogling over how cool they were. I was basically in the same bandwagon along with my 3 brothers. This manicure is inspired by the original 4 pokeballs before all those weird ones starting poping up in later generations like the cherish ball.

It was the first pokemon movie EVER (there's 14ish now) and it played along with a shorter film based on Pikachu and the rest of Ash's pokemons but it look a while to get to New Zealand as there wasn't really an audience for it at the time of it being released.

Mewtwo Strikes Back
+ Pikachu's Vacation

(I hate how the purple kept smudging all over the other colours no matter how much I let it dry or try to avoid those areas with the topcoat D:)

Day Twenty-Two: Inspired by a Song

There is one person that always makes me happy again after listening to his happy, energetic but abstract songs - Adam Randall from Owl City. I am seriously a HUGE fan of his. I picked one of his top hits and it luckily did not have a too much of a weird but cute name *coughStrawberry Avalanchecough*.

Fireflies. 

... and inspired by these lines:

"'Cause I'd get a thousand hugs from ten thousand lightning bugs as they tried to teach me how to dance"
 and
 "A disco ball is just hanging by a thread"

AND these photos of Japanese fireflies

Day Twenty-One: Inspired by a Colour

Wasn't too sure what today's challenge meant but according to other blogs, it seem to be an inspiration on a polish's name. To be honest, it was hard figuring out which I wanted to do because they all had "non object" names such as Royal Blue or puns such as No Spain, No Gain. So when I purchased some Ulta3 polishes from a local pharmacy, I saw that one was them was named Watermelon. I knew that was the one I wanted to do and I've been wanting to do a watermelon inspired manicure since summer started... a month ago.

Yay, Happy Summer!

Day Twenty: Water Marbled Nails

This was the challenge that I dreaded the most out of all of them because it's really messy and wastes a lot of polish.... and did I say messy? I've tried it out in the past but it didn't turn out so good and clean up was just horrendous. I have to say this time was a lot easier but that's probably due to the fact that I'm now used to painting my nails almost daily, hahaa.

First I tried to do a rainbow one, Yes.... I really love colour, but the water I used made it difficult to make patterns in the water before it started to stick to the toothpick. I decided that 14 colours was way too much for me to handle so I closed my eyes and reached into my bag to pull out 5 colouring pencils, luckily they didn't contrast too much with each other! Unfortunately, it was still way too hard to make any sort of pattern in the polish in the cup of water so it didn't turn out too interesting... but I still really like it :)

Day Nineteen: Galaxy Nails

Originally I was going to do something like Emerald Sparkle's Galaxy Nails but even with her easy-to-understand tutorial... mine didn't have the same results. After 4 retries, the sponges that I have been using went too hard for these finer details so I ended up picking a couple of colours to go on top of the white nebula instead. People who can actually do these galaxy manicures are my envies, it's definitely a lot harder than it looks and even more harder than it sounds, hahahaa.

Day Eighteen: Halfmoon Nails

I'm not really a big fan on halfmoons and french manicures because they look so crisp when others do it and mine? They're really wonky. I stumbled upon this manicure when I was playing with an app on the boyfriend's new iphone, it's called "Nailup" released by the Japanese nail magazine, it features a couple of pages full of manicure ideas and tutorials (but the downside with this app is that it does not update). Anyways, on one of the pages it featured a model wearing this delicate manicure:

... and I tried it for myself except it didn't turn out as dainty as the picture above.... everything looks IS thick and chunky - not very feminine.

Day Seventeen: Glitter Nails

Ohhh, this was a hard challenge for me considering how much I love glitter polishes - I have two draws just for this finish alone because I just can't get enough of them and they go with anything. I did a quick google search because I just had too many ideas but one completely inspired me to do something different to what I was planning in my head. It would have to be this gorgeous manicure - rainbows and glitters? Yes please!

I didn't have the same equipment to do the same thing so this is my take on these nails.

Day Sixteen: Tribal Print Nails

As you may have noticed already, I'm from New Zealand. I wanted to do a Maori pattern inspired manicure for today's challenge instead of all the Aztec-ish ones that everyone has been doing for Day Sixteen. However, I remembered that Robbie Williams had caused a lot of controversy back in 2000 where the artist disrespected the spiritual symbolisation of the tattoo which belonged to an Iwi (Tribe). I don't want to accidentally place myself in that position so I ended up doing something similar but different.

My bestfriend's stepfather is of the Tongan heritage and in their dining room is a massive framed pattern of his family/tribe too. I know this is still a rather sacred and important part of their family too but it had a distinctive way of actually making the pattern print onto the cloth.

So... I decided, instead of copying a pattern like this, I would stamp it to look like it was one of these cloth pattern instead so it would have no meaning but also hopefully not disrespecting anyone's tribal patterns along the way.

Here's what I used:

• Jordana: Bare Beige
• Miki: No Name but it's a brown shimmer
• Jordana: Black
• Models Own: Nude Beige
• Models Own: Becca's Brown
• Bundle Monster:  BM-221
• Sponge

Day Fifteen: Delicate Print Nails

I didn't really have a clue on what today's challenge really meant.... I mean what is a "Delicate Print" ? After googling past challengers of Day Fifteen (Can you believe that I'm half way already?) and seeing a lot of lacey/lingere-ish nails... it sort of kinda makes sense.

So here's my take on Delicate Print, inspired by this cute blue babydoll.

Day Fourteen : Flowers Nails

Today, my bottle of actone has finally finished but I could not find a seller in time to purchase another bottle and so I'm back on nail polish remover which is basically watered down acetone. Gah.

BUT... on a happy note, I finished my Flower Nails for today's challenge and they make me feel quite proud, aside from the very messy clean up, especially since they're kinda cute. This is another first for me. It's the first time I've ever used nail decals stickers even though I have a HUGE collection of them - they're quite fun and pretty though they do pull apart really easily. These nails were inspired by a premade fake nail set from Etsy made by (and probably also designed by) Cel from Cel's Deconails.

Day Thirteen : Animal Prints Nail

My dog, Sunny, (You may remember him from here) loves to dig. He often makes me giggle when he does because he gets really excited and then really muddy afterwards with pieces of dirt all over his black nose and scruffy face. He's so silly and naughty but I still love him. I didn't want to be too cliché with cheetah prints, zebras prints... or any  of those exotic animals so I chose my best friend and baby.



Did I mention Newspaper Manicures aren't as easy as tutorials describe them to be? It took me 2 whole hours to get what you can see on my fingers but I'm guessing it might be the paper that they were printed on... they're not fluffy but more like them papers you print work on for printers.

Day Twelve : Stripe Nails

Last week I broke my arm and haven't really got used to it yet. I wanted to do a neat tape stripe manicure for this challenge but even when both my arms could freely move with a huge cast in the way... I sucked at tape manicures. Instead I resorted to freehand lines which I don't quite like - it reminds me of painting hard boiled eggs for easter ( and I was inspired by this springish background of stripes).

Also, the colour combination is something I didn't chose... It was the boyfriend's idea! He deliberately chose 5 colours that he thought would not go together just to troll me, *Shakes fist at him*

Day Eleven : Polka Dots Nails

I painted my nails red and placed black dots onto them because I saw a cute bra last week, like this but black and not made with sequins, while shopping for new clothes for university. It was prefect for my Polka Dots Nails (but it also hit me that I haven't seen polka dots on clothing for a very long time). Anyways, when the boyfriend saw my nails, he said they reminded him of lady bugs which prompted me to add a few black lines, white dots and change the polish on my ring finger into something cuter for today's challenge.