12 Days of Christmas Nail Art: Christmas Trees

Today I have a medley of Christmas Trees over a new blinging polish by ILNP for the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge Your Nail Art Christmas Trees prompt!



The base of this is amazing of course, stay tuned, I'm going to be blogging my recent INLP winter picks soon! This is INLP Juliette and it is rose gold perfection! So beautiful and bling-y inside and out.

But of course I had to fufill the Christmas tree prompt so I broke out my stamping supplies!!!



For this look I used my new Bundle Monster Holiday Set, more specifically the BM-S218 plate, and stamped various Christmas Tree designs on the nail, not always getting the perfect placement.





The polish I used for stamping is OPI Christmas Gone Plaid, which worked okay, but was a bit watery and a little difficult to stamp with.



Feel free to join us in the Challenge Your Nail Art 12 Days of Christmas Challenge, just join our Facebook group and follow along. You don't have to do every one, I know I probably won't this year, but we're casual. The more the merrier!!! :)

As always, check out the other lovely ladies participating in this challenge below!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

12 Days of Christmas: Snow Day

This month this blog is going to be holiday all the things!!!! In addition to my normal 52 week challenge, I'm going to do my best to try and keep up with this 12 Days of Christmas challenge from the Challenge Your Nail Art Facebook group!

I just love this Facebook group and had SO much fun doing this challenge last year. Here is the calendar of prompts, and feel free to jump in if you'd like to! Just join us on Facebook!



Today's (well yesterday, but it still counts, we're a pretty chill group of ladies, rules aren't too rigid!) prompt was Snow Day so I broke out some snow flake stamps and went to work on a rather classic snow flake look.



For the base I used Literary Lacquers Blue Stocking Romance.



For the stamping I used a-England Encore Margot as the stamping polish and broke out the new Bundle Monster holiday set for the snowflake images.



The specific plate I used was the BM-S218 plate.



Expect to see a lot more looks featuring those stamping plates! I'm so excited for my month of holiday nails! Love this time of year for nail art!

Don't forget to check out all the other awesome snow day manis in this prompt below!!!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up
   

My Anti Valentine's Nails

So we have finally reached the last day in the Love is the Air Challenge Your Nail Art prompts! And today is Anti Valentine's Day nails. Well after a week full of pink and hearts and lovey-dovey nails, I consider anything that doesn't include pink, hearts etc. anti-Valentine's.


So for this look, I wanted something grey, monotone and the opposite of anything pretty and love related. So naturally I turned to Pintrest and typed in "grey nail art" and was eventually connected to this LOVELY look by Pshiiit!  

And I had Zoya Evvie, and a holographic similar to FNUG Psychedelic - ILNP Mega (L) - so I was determined to make this my Anti Valentine's Day look, which humorously enough, I'll actually be wearing on Valentine's Day (I'm typing this the night before Feb. 14). It's perfect though because I am so over pink at the moment.

I used nail vinyls to create the lines separating Evvie from Mega and then used acrylic paint to freehand the black lines. This was my first time using acrylic paint in a nail art look and I have no idea why I waited so long! Look at how opaque that black looks! So crisp!!!

Anyway, so we've reached the end of another Challenge Your Nail Art challenge! I enjoyed it! I think though, this was a bit too much Valentine's theme (though I sort of did that to myself by joining all those other prompts with V-Day looks).

Coming up, I'll think I'll still continue the 52 Week Pick N Mix challenges once a week, but I need to show you guys some swatches of some new to me brands I've been testing out!

Don't forget to check out the other Anti Valentine's Day nails below, I'm sure they were more creative than mine were! 

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Happy Valentine's Day

Well we finally made it to Valentine's Day! I hope you have a happy one, whether you celebrate it or not! It's a three day weekend here in the United States, so me and my husband will be celebrating that with some much needed time away!

So let's get to today's look. Obviously, the prompt for the Challenge Your Nail Art Love is in the Air is Valentine's Day.



To start this look I used two coats of Fair Maiden Polish Total Eclipse of the Heart. This polish is bright pink and it is so beautiful! It has purple flashes with it's holo and it is just so pretty! It went on in two lovely coats, a buttery perfect application.



Inspired by those violet flashes, I used Essie No More Film to stamp the images using Bundle Monster BM-H17 (cupid and hearts) and Winstonia 102 (birds).



I wanted to keep it very simple for the final Valentine's Day look! I'm not going to lie, I'm super happy to be done with hearts and love for awhile. Not that I don't appreciate it all, it's just all a little too cutesy for me to do so many days in a row!

Don't forget to check out the other gals of the challenge!

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

I Love the Color Teal

Today's prompt for the Challenge Your Nail Art Love is the Air challenge is I Love the Color... And if anyone knows me I really love the color teal (especially on my nails!).



So instead of just choosing one hue of teal, I chose them all! To start the mani, since I can't do without holo, I started with two coats of Painted Polish Trashed on Teal, which is a teal jelly polish packed with holo microglitter! It is really beautiful on it's own!



Then I decided I wanted to do stripes over the Trashed on Teal, in sort of a ombre look! For the stripes I used straight nail vinyls with the polishes: Sally Hansen OMGhost, Essie Mint Candy Apple, Zoya Wednesday and OPI AmazON AmazOFF.



And since it's Valentine's week, I decided to use dots to create a heart. I started with two thin coats of Mint Candy Apple and then used a dotting tool to appy a heart using OMGhost, Wednesday and AmazON AmazOFF.



I really looooooved this look! One of my favorites I've done in awhile, probably because it features sparkles and my favorite color, teal!

What is your favorite color and have you ever put it together in a single look? I'd love to see it! Also, don't forget to check out the other ladies participating in this super fun challenge!

   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Nail Art Technique You Love: Gradient and Nail Vinyls

Hey everyone, today is the beginning of a five day challenge from the ladies at Challenge Your Nail Art and the theme is Love is in the Air!

But hold up, that means this thankfully isn't five full days of Valentine's nails, a lot of it is just things we love. And today, we start with a Nail Art Technique You Love. This was an awfully tough one. I love stamping, I love nail vinyls, I love a lot of things. But I decided to combine two things I love for today's challenge.



For this challenge I combined nail vinyls with gradients. I just absolutely go ga-ga for gradients. I'm not super great at them but I just love how they look every time.



Now I had to throw a heart in there because it is Valentine's week, but truly this does represent two nail art techniques I love! For the gradient I used KBShimmer Shore Thing and Zoya Edie and then topped it with a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust, because I can't do a mani without some sort of rainbow reflection!

I used chevron nail vinyls in a pattern I hadn't tried before, angled, and I really like how it turned out. Different from your typical chevron look!



I created the heart using my freehand (definitely not a skill I've mastered or favor on my nails at least!) and added dots of Zoya Rocha, because I liked how the coral contrasted against the bright blue/green chevron!

I hope you like this look! What is a nail art technique you love?! Don't forget to check out the other fabulous ladies of this challenge, listed in the inlinkz below!
   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

My Favorite Winnie the Pooh Character Nail Art

So who is my favorite character in Winnie the Pooh?!?! Piglet of course. I don't remember why Piglet is my favorite, but I do remember that I used Piglet in my very first screen name, long long ago in my childhood, I think the the days of Prodigy.

So onto the fun Piglet nails.



The polishes I used in this mani are Essie Cascade Cool and Essie Secret Stash. Secret Stash is a bit of a crelly, took three coats to get to this opacity, Cacade Cool only needed two for the Piglet face accent.



I used a stripping brush to make the stripes with Cascade Cool, and I was inspired by this manicure I found online for the face. I used a finer nail art brush and a black stamping polish to make the detail on  I wish I could say I was that creative, but well, I'm not.

Anyway, this was a pretty fun nail art prompt! What do you think of this look? Do you like?

And don't forget to check out the other ladies taking part in the challenge!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

Bees and Honey Nail Art

In honor of Winnie the Pooh Day on January 18th, Challenge Your Nail Art has created a three-day nail art challenge all inspired by Winnie the Pooh!

Today's challenge was Bees & Honey!

To get things started, because I love all things holo, I had to start with some yellow and blue holo polishes.



Since Smitten Polish is one of my favorite indie brands, I went to my Smitten shelf, and chose two perfect creamy holos for this prompt. On the thumb and pinkie is Nuclear Sunshine and on the three middle fingers is the lovely Blue Himalayan Poppy (seriously, you need this blue-aqua holo, it is a definite favorite of mine)!

My thoughts going into this was I would use my pinkie and thumb as bookends, and sort of a bee hive! In the middle I would would make it the bountiful place where the bees seek the pollen to make the honey!!!



For the beehive design I used Winstonia plate W-113 and using my Born Pretty Black Stamping Polish and for the flowers I used my Lily Anna 10 plate and used Essie Hip-Anema!



Then I free handed some bees on the bountiful flowery nails (wow, I really like the word bounty today). As you can see my free hand is not the best, but overall, I think this turned out great!



So what do you think? I really hope you like these because tomorrow's nails, I'm not going to lie, they aren't the greatest! Also, don't forget to hop around and see how some of the other ladies did for this challenge!!!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up

   

12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Wrap Up

Merry Christmas Eve readers! Today I have a wrap up of my 12 Days of Christmas Challenge! Plus bonus shots at my attempts at nail art last year!



I'm very proud of myself for completing the challenge and sticking to it. Having something to tackle nail art wise after getting home from work, or volunteering at the tree lot, I just really appreciated having the creative outlet. It gave me something to look forward to and something fun to think of how to tackle each challenge that lay in front of me. Believe it or not, it took the stress away from the holidays for me!

I'd have to say my favorite nails were probably my Christmas Skittle and my sweater nails.

Now, for the horrifying look at what I did last year at Christmas.



I wasn't even blogging my nails really at this point, it was more of a take photos of the nails, share them with ladies on Makeup Alley and Instagram. I really started the nail blogging in February of this year. At this point last year, I was just starting to get into indie polishes. I had my first KBShimmers, as you can see above, and was dabbling with some light nail art techniques. The lights I did were courtesy of some gelly roll pens.

And now a recap of all the art I did:

Day 1: Snowflakes


Day 2: Christmas Trees


Day 3: Snowman


Day 4: Santa and Elves


Day 5: Ice Blue and White Colors


Day 6: Any line from the "12 Days" song - Two Turtle Doves


Day 7: Red and Green


Day 8: Christmas decorations


Day 9: Glitter


Day 10: Ugly Sweater Nails


Day 11: Presents


Day 12: Freestyle - Christmas Skittle


Merry Christmas dear readers. I am so thankful you take the time to read my blog and comment from time to time. I cherish you all. Coming up I have a post on some confessions and goals for the new year AND Top polishes and nail art of 2014!!!

A Christmas Skittle

To end this epic challenge, I decided to have a little bit of this and that! A combination of things I hadn't tried yet but were oh-so-holiday-esque!



I used a host of polishes for this challenge. For the Candy Cane nails I used a base of Painted Polish Ho-ho Holo and painted the stripes with Sally Hansen OMGhost.



For the base of the middle three fingers I used Literary Lacquers I Heard the Bells (a polish I got for free for shopping on Black Friday and purchasing a certain amount).



Then I used KBShimmer's holiday nail vinyls, the one of ornaments and trees, and painted a coat of ORLY Candy Cane Lane and OPI Christmas Gone Plaid (which I just won off a giveaway from Danele at Low Country Lacquer), leaving I Heard the Bells in the center making up the trees and ornaments.



For the final nail, I wanted to do a Christmas tree a-la what I have seen some other people do online with the striping tape. And to top the tree I used a glitter piece for KBShimmer Pine-ing for Yule.



Overall I really LOVED this challenge and I am so excited that I participated. I had such a fun time seeing what everyone else did with the prompts, I am truly grateful too because I feel this challenge made me grow in my nail art skills.

I'll do a wrap up of all my art tomorrow, and I'll give a sneak to what I did last year (which REALLY shows how much I've grown, in photography and nail art).

But once more, please don't forget to hop around to the other lovely ladies participating in this challenge!


   

    An InLinkz Link-up