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!

Little cloud dudes with buckets who like rainbows

Hi! Everyone calm down! I'm alive! OK, so you probably haven't been in a mad panic over my absence, but I'm back anyway. I've been all kinds of busy lately. We're planning a house plus I'm trying to get as much Christmas shopping out of the way now as I can and occasionally attempting to have a social life.

This lil bit of nail art is actually from a much larger picture (with a lot more going on) - the idea is part of a painting that I'll finish one day. I've titled this "Little cloud dudes with buckets who like rainbows". I think that about sums it up. They just want to be colourful. Aww..

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.

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.

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 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:

Rainbow glitter with a swirly rainbow tip! Black Cat Lacquer Double Rainbow

RAINBOWS! My favourite colour is probably pink, but if "rainbow" was a colour, it would be that. Rainbow colours make me happy, so why not rainbow nails?