PCFSC: #36; What I love about Spring

As I have mentioned in the past; I live on a farm. It's not one of those animal farms, no, it's a fruit/vegetable farm. My mother is one of the best strawberry farmer ever - I'm not saying this because we're related but I'm saying this because it's completely true. She hand plants every single plant, hunt for bees to create a hive to pollinate them and then spends hours in the hot spring-summer sun picking each berry (even if it rains heavily or when she had severe Carpal Tunnel Syndrome). She's honestly amazing.

The strawberries always turn out tiny at first but jammed packed with flavour but as the season progress, they can get up to a size where you can only fit a maximum or 4-5 in your palm and still have enough sweetness to make you semi choke. I especially love ours because not only are they sweet but they're also "crisp" - they don't feel as slimey nor soft like the supermarket ones. Our strawberries are always ready to be picked around November (that's the last month of Spring down here) and I always look forward to packing them into little plastic chips because I can eat as many as I want, tehehee.

However, mummsy has retired from the strawberry farm early last year (good thing she did, it was way too much hard work for her) but it still reminds as the thing that I love the most about Spring!

PCFSC: #28; Easter Bunnies

... Or should I say Easter West Highland Terriers, or something like that?

Either way, I still think they looks semi cute, haha, I can imagine them as slippers on my own feet for the cool fall weather that I'm enjoying so far! I hope it snows down here this year too; it'll be my first in snow :)

PCFSC: #25; Spring Stripes

Everything about today's nails cries off "Spring is here" - I'm just surprised that it look me 25 challenges and near the end of the entire thing to find my spring pastels that already existed in my collection. Hahaha.

I think this looks like a baby room or shower on crack topped off with some gentle glitter.

PCFSC: #22; Large Flowers

I actually did the challenge after this one first before coming back to this one. The Purple Crumpet Fairy Spring Challenge has a lot of flowers - I don't want all my flower manicures to look the same so this took a lot of thought. I went through the list a couple of times to see if I could recycle anything but I still couldn't think of anything special.

In the end I draw it from something that I own that I really like, which turns out to be my favourite shirt this summer. I changed the background and smaller flower's hues to orange because of the next challenge (background colours/base colour aren't that important in this case!) - you'll see in 2 days.

PCFSC: #20; Spring Splatter

Ha! Yesterday I did a splatter manicure for my Robin's Egg nails... but after I did them, I saw that the Spring Splatter was up next, opps. Instead of the traditional splatter using a straw and some big breaths, I opted for hand drawn slime splatters. They're still splatters, aren't they? :)

PCFSC: #18; Lambs

I automatically thought of "Counting Sheep" when I saw today's challenge, so just imaging this is a spring night, full of stars, with little baby lambs jumping a fence, Baahh!

PCFSC: #17; Bulb to a Flower

Remember the Spring Gradient manicure that I did 2 days ago for the Purple Crumpet Fairy Spring Challenge? Well I really had to think about today's nails but decided to recycle the gradient as part of a "symbolic" NOTD.. I actually thought a lot about how to explain it so here I go, lol

In USA.. and probably most northern hemisphere, they have a saying that goes "After April Showers comes May Flowers" which totally explains the glitters, haha. Along with that, I tried to play on the riddle  "What has 4 legs in the morning, 2 in the afternoon and 3 in the evening?" in the form of a flower; Bulb to a Flower.

I should had used a different colour for the flower but at the time I was painting it, I had read that the Long Headed Poppy blooms within the dawn and wilts during the day, interesting huh?

PCFSC: #16; Spring Gradient

Another skittles, yay!

I did a Yellow --> Orange gradient today for the Spring Gradient. I have no idea why the yellow KaSi polish always end up looking slightly green in photos but it's definitely not that colour in real life. Kind of made the gradient less "smooth" with that random undertone of the polish. Oh wells, just add some glitter and everything will be fine!

PCFSC: #13; Tulips

Today's nails was inspired by the pattern below from a website called Colourbox which sells loads of these cute stock pictures.

I wish I had enough light purples to create two different backgrounds for the tulips like the inspiration picture but I didn't which was a bummer! Oh well, still looks cute.

PCFSC: #12; Daffodils

I find it really weird to be painting and drawing daffodils at this time of the year due to a very famous New Zealand charity, The Cancer Society, whom begins searching for volunteers annually at the beginning of Spring for Daffodil Day.

This is probably one of the biggest charity runs in this little country, basically people donate at least a gold coin in return they get a plastic daffodil to wear for the rest of that month to show support. At highschool, my house was the yellow house of leadership and we would raise at least $1000 per year from students. The reason why daffodils are used is due to the tendency of them blooming first out of all flowers in spring after a long winter and they're a bright flower; a positive encouragement for cancer patients and a symbolisation of cancer survivors.

Now they sit gracefully on my nails for today.

PCFSC: #8; Blossom Trees

Straight from my own farm and inspired by a picture from google that I can no longer find (explains the purple centres), freshly bloomed White Plum Blossom Trees!

I really love it when these blossoms bloom in Spring, there's so many and they're very dainty. We have about 8 very mature adult trees on one side of our driveway; when they do come, our driveway is absolutely snowed with Petals! It's very pretty!

PCFSC: #7; Spring Sunrise

I googled images of Spring Sunrise and got many photos with the same beautiful coral skies gradienting into the night blue above and patches of grey clouds shatter around. It's just very beautiful.

Honestly, I have never witness the sun raising but I have seen it set before. 
The photo above reminded me of a Sunset which kind of reflects on my manicure for today :)

PCFSC: #4; Spring Water Marble

Ahh... The dreaded Water Marbling... One day I shall master you enough to clearly show where I made pattern using the tooth pick but until then, this is all I have to show. One day.

So... I think it didn't turn out very spring-ish so I added Fairy Dust on top to create subtle shimmer but it didn't make it any better!

 

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:)