Take Two Day 5: Cartoon theme

Hello blog friends! I'm a bit late on this and I've missed a couple days of this challenge too. Unfortunately I've been sick and just haven't felt up to doing much at all. I am feeling better now though! I really wanted to do the cartoon day nails, so here they are!

I picked some characters from an episode of Adventure Time. This is a very unlikely friendship - the Snow Golem and a fire wolf pup! The poor little fire wolf just wants to give the Snow Golem some love, but every time he licks the Snow Golem he starts melting!

Take Two Day 2: Flag nails

Yarr! Greetings land lubbers. Ye've likely found that I be a wee bit silly. Uh. Urghh. Uh hem. Yes.. so, I am a bit silly. I don't take things too seriously. I wasn't overly inspired by any world flags, so instead I picked my favourite flag. The PIRATE FLAG!

Take Two Day 1: Inspired by a Band

Hahah! Yes! Your eyes do not deceive you! My 80s child is not only showing, it's running around naked banging two pot lids together.

As far as bands go, my favourites actually include a lot of black and death metal (I know, can you believe it?). I wasn't feeling particularly dark or brutal today so I wanted something more fun and light hearted. My favourite musician right now is actually Grimes (I'm seeing her live in a couple weeks!), but I wasn't inspired there either. So in a giggly moment of silly, I picked Jem and the Holograms!

Reddit 52 Week Challenge: Black and white

It's time for another week of the Reddit Laqueristas 52 Week Challenge. This week's theme is black and white. I have no idea how I came up with this idea. I decided to do some bunnies.. at night. I think it's pretty cute.

Reddit 52 Week Challenge: Inspired by a game

This took me somewhere I didn't expect to go! I'm a bit of a video game geek, so I had all kinds of ideas for this theme. I never expected to end up in Candyland. Although, to be fair, one never really expects to end up in Candyland.

In case you don't know, Candyland is a very cute, colourful boardgame loved mostly by little children. The reason I picked it was because I just felt like doing something cute and colourful. Maybe it's all the Halloween stuff I've been doing.

This was an ambitious undertaking, but in the end, I love it.

Upcoming Nail Art Challenge for December

Note: There were some technical difficulties with the original sign up tool, so if you signed up before please add your link again below!

After the fun I had with the This Is Halloween challenge I was pretty excited to get stuck into another challenge. The lovely ladies of Nailed It NZ, A girl with some clothes and From L&P to English Tea have concocted a new take on The 31 Day Challenge that we see around all the time. They've nicknamed it "Take Two" and it looks like a lot of fun! This challenge kicks off on 1 December!

Keep reading to find out more and sign up for the challenge!

This Is Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Recreate

Aww. I've had such fun with this challenge and I'm sad it's finished. Man, October flew by. I loved this challenge and looking at everyone's take on each day. You ladies are all wonderful!

For this final day I had to recreate my favourite manicure from another challenger. There were a lot I liked, some I couldn't do because I lacked some of the colours I would have needed. In the end, I picked something that made me laugh a lot at the uniqueness of the idea. It's also something I knew would truly challenge me!

I picked Sonoma Nail Art's Zombie manicure. Her take on it was to do a Rob Zombie manicure. Awesome, hilarious idea!

This Is Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Trick or Treat!

I choose... trick. At first glance these little candies probably look very innocent and delicious. Have a closer look though.

Yep. Those are little skull candies. Have you ever googled "Skull candy" and tried to find actual candy and not a set of headphones? I have. It's a tough challenge. On the flip side, "Candy skull" yields Mexican sugar skulls. So I just did my own thang.

Reddit 52 Week Challenge: Week 5 Orange

Busy busy! I was kind of sad to take off my bone piles, but I think this looks really cool and fascinating. I was looking through my stamping plates for inspiration and came across a weird design on Bundle Monster plate 206. I don't know what it is... could be balls of string. Or some sort of abstract viney flower thing. Either way, I thought "This is cool, but it needs eyes."

This Is Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Graveyard

This was fun! I think the general idea for the "Graveyard" challenge is more along the cemetery route, but that's not necessarily what I think of. A graveyard, to me, is less formal somehow. I (randomly) thing of elephant graveyards, unmarked graves and mass graves.

For this challenge I decided go more with the mass grave/unmarked graves idea by doing piles of bones. We'll never know who these old bones belong too, but they look pretty neat and creepy chillin on my tips.

This Is Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Witches

I decided to take a break from the creepy Halloweeny colours and looks. I did have some pretty neat ideas for some creepier witch nails, but this time The Wizard of Oz won out. Yep. I will never pass up an opportunity to use a polish that is impossible to photograph - like Ruby Pumps. I just like to torture myself like that.

For this mani my inspiration was two of the witches from The Wizard of Oz. Firstly, The Wicked Witch of the East - that poor dear we never get to meet because she ended up unceremoniously crushed under Dorothy's house. The only part of her we see are her black and white striped legs adorned with the gorgeous ruby slippers. The other inspiration, for my ring finger, was the kind and beautiful Glinda, the Good Witch.

This Is Halloween and Reddit double challenge: Gradient

AAARRRGHHHHH

OK. Now that I've got that out of the way, let me just say that this challenge has seriously challenged me at every turn. I am very happy with the result.. but man. It was quite a thing getting to it.

Today just happens to be gradient day for both challenges I'm participating in: The Reddit Laqueristas 52 Week Challenge and the This Is Halloween Nail Art Challenge.

I have never done a gradient before. Technically, I am so new to all of this that everything I do is a first. I am the sort of person to jump in the deep end though. None of this two colour horizontal gradient thing. Oh no. I think I'll do a vertical tri colour gradient! What could go wrong? ಠ_ಠ. Well.. It turns out the answer is "a lot". But all's well that ends well.

This Is Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Bats

This was a bit tricky! And I've been pressed for time. I'm going to a masquerade ball tonight (woo!). The colours I'm wearing are mostly silver and white. I've been very busy making my mask (Which I think is gorgeous. I'll post pics later if anyone is interested!)

So I had this conundrum where I needed to do bats but didn't have time to do bats AND then do a mani for the ball. I decided to try and make my bats a bit more subtle and kind of stick to my colour scheme.

This resulted in my idea of doing a bat sammich (that would be a jelly sandwich... except with bats instead of glitter). Then I added silver tips for some bling and voila!

I'm pretty happy. The bats look like they're flying through fog or something. It looks quite eerie.

This Is Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Zombies

Hell yeah zombies. I'm not a huge fan of fast, scary, used-to-be-my-neighbour zombies. But zombies of the funny kind are awesome. Zombieland is a great movie. So I was pretty excited about this!

I had a few different ideas which I drew on paper in actual nail size to figure out what was possible. In the end hungry little cartoon zombies trapped on my nail that will never get to that delicious brain is what won. (That was a long sentence).

This Is Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Jack-O-Lanterns

Oh my goodness. This has been very time consuming. I wanted to do something different for this challenge. During my search for inspiration (googling) I came across a glowing pumpkin carved with a silhouetted cat and some stars and went THAT. I WANT TO DO THAT.

I knew it was going to be a pain and take forever, but I also wanted to challenge myself. I am so glad I did. I really love the result.

Reddit 52 Week Challenge: Week 2 Blue with Revlon Royal

It's been a busy couple days in the nail world with the Halloween Challenge and now the second week of the Reddit Laqueristas 52 Week Challenge. This week's challenge is a simple one - Blue. I think it's the simple ones that can be the hardest though. It's so broad that inspiration can be hard to find!

In the end I decided to use one of my favourite rings as inspiration. I love how gold and royal blue look together. So luxurious. It's just a classic and even ancient colour combination, reminding me of Ancient Egypt and one of my most loved gemstones, Lapis Lazuli. I really love how this turned out!

This Is Halloween Nail Art Challenge: Ghosts

I am a bit late to this challenge, but I only stumbled on it last night! How cool is this though? This challenge originated over at Lacquer Dreams and I hope that all the very talented ladies participating don't mind me crashing their party and arriving (fashionably) late.

Today's theme is Ghosts. I imagined little ghosties flying around in some sort of ghosty nether. Doing ghosty things. This is how that mental image ended up looking when applied to my nails:

Reddit 52 Week Challenge: Week 1 Taping with China Glaze Riveting

I frequent a section of Reddit called RedditLaqueristas. It is full of awesome people who love nail polish! This week we begin a new year of the 52 Week Challenge. Every week for the next year there will be a new theme to inspire awesome nail art!

Here is the 52 Week Challenge on Reddit

The first week's theme is taping! I have never done this before! It is extremely annoying and I don't own the thin nail art tape, so I used masking tape cut up. Masking tape is good because you get less bleeding, but for the design I chose to do I really needed the thin tape.

Either way! I think my first 52 Week Challenge mani looks really pretty.

I started with 2 coats of China Glaze Riveting (this colour is AMAZING). It's an extremely rich reddy orange with chunky gold shimmer. I love it! The dark colour on the tips is OPI Every Month Is Oktoberfest and the glitter stripes are China Glaze I Herd That.

I think this works beautifully. The red shimmer in Every Month Is Oktoberfest is subtle, but the other colours really bring it out. I Herd That is very dense gold and copper glitter with a sprinkling of holo glitter. This colour is also amazing! The fiery orange of Riveting really plays off the copper in I Herd That.

This was totally worth all the time, effort and cursing involved. 

Cheat sheet:

1. Orly Nail Defense - 1 coat
2. China Glaze Riveting - 2 coats
3. OPI Every Month Is Oktoberfest - 1 coat (taped)
4. China Glaze I Herd That - 2 coats (taped)
5. Orly Polishield - 1 coat

Next week on the 52 Week Challenge the theme is Blue. Woo!