PCFSC: #30; Easter Bonnets

I've never hear of an "Easter Bonnet" in my life - I thought they'll be more like those lady bonnets from long time ago where women did all the housework and men had most authory... luckily nowdays there's a handy little search engine called Google.

Google told me that Easter Bonnets are hats decorated with flowers and chicken which celebrates spring and easter for the Easter parade; they're also made from straw or knitted. This was my inspiration:

... Funny thing was, I was going to stamp on butterflies and roses then layer nail decals sticker on top but I had left my stamper and scrapper back at home! Oh my.

 

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: #26; Buy your Easter Eggs!

Remember the Ducklings Nails for Challenge #21? I used "real-fake" feathers for it so today I wanted to use something similar but for Easter Eggs. I wanted to capture the look of those chocolates eggs as they are getting ripped opened and unwrapped, ready to nom on; the tin foil is meant to be in side of the foils around the eggs, the stripes is the decoration on the outside of the foil.

I don't buy Easter Eggs - I want to though... a massive hollow one that I'll get sick off after the first 10 minutes but will last me for an entire week but my mum has always been really strict with candy but this year I don't live with her for Easter, yay! 

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: #24; Butterflies

This type of nail art is a lot harder than it looks! It's exactly like the galaxy one, looks easy because it just looks so good but in reality, it's extremely difficult. I applaud those girls who are able to draw the black lines of the butterfly in a crisp, smooth manner, I am truly amazed and I definitely know I can't!

 

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: #14; Pastel Skittles

Skittles, yay!

I really love this NOTD except for the green finger - I wish I picked a more yellow-green pastel or that Kleancolour had, had released a darker green (which would still be good if they did that now). I couldn't find a good spring glitter that suited all these colours and I just can't leave them look plain so I HAD to stamp them with something flowery, hehe.

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: #9; Favourite Spring Lilac

My favourite lilac has one of the cliché-ish but cutest name ever, Lilac Dream. This is not only a favourite for spring but all year round too, I think it's prefect, not too blue nor too red. Whenever I play with this lilac, I cant help but want to Jelly Sandwich it or at least glitter bomb it - today is no different, lol.

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: #6; Pink Polka Dots

Today's manicure is inspired by my pink hair bow clip. It's pink, has polka dots and laces - I use it after showers when my hair just does not listen to me and flops all over my face and into my mouth, eyes and nose.

I have to remember to clean my base colour before doing any nail or or it will smudge and mix with the colour underneath causing something yucky and not crisp when I clean it all at the same time. REMEMBER THAT!

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!

 

PCFSC: #3; Small Flowers/Flower Bed

These flowers turned out to look very similar to the flowers on Spongebob Squarepants; it was not intentional but I'm rather happy that they came out well. I was going to place little "pearls" in the middle of each flower but decided that it was fine; simple but elegant.

This manicure was inspired by a Japanese woman who made three beautiful white acrylic flowers and placed them on her nude nails like a glorified french manicure.

PCFSC: #1; Valentine's/Love

New Zealand isn't much of a country that celebrates days like "holidays" such as Valentines. I had a bit of trouble thinking of ideas for today's challenge... the only real thing I know about Valentines is that it is the day of love. However, I did not want to make it too tacky with reds, pinks, and hearts so I decided on some Valentines candy which I saw on Futurama. They look unbelievably cute and vintage... surprise, surprise, New Zealand doesn't have them!

My "word painting" isn't very good... errr... yea. I'ma say this manicure is "Happy Un-Valentines" as it looks as if someone is plotting to kill someone with poisonous valentines candy. Hahaha.

I noticed that this manicure would have been awesome if I had this stamping plate; it's definitely wishlisted :)

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-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-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-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 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