Resistance Is Futile!

My geek seems to be showing this week in my titles. That's ok, I have geek pride.

I'm really excited to show these nails this week.  I finished them off this afternoon, got the pictures taken, edited and watermarked and now it's time to get down to business!

31 Day Nail Art Challenge - Day 31 - Pick Your Favorite

Yay! I've finished the challenges and got them all posted! woohooo!! Today's final and last challenge is "Pick your Favorite". Yesterday I asked if anyone could guess which one would be my favorite. That's right, I picked "Glitter"! In my defense, I did have a moment of hesitation between "Glitter" and "Inspired by a Song" but I ultimately gave in to my "inner 11 year old" and went with Glitter.

For this one I did a base color of Finger Paints "Laugh My Art Off" and did a thin line of Jade's "Star Lites".

This has been an awesomely great time doing all these. So much so that my next bit is going to be "Fortnight Of Love". Fourteen days of Valentine's Day themed nail Art.



31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 30 - Inspired by a Tutorial

Wow!! I can't believe this is almost done!?! Where did the month go? Today's challenge is "Inspired by a Tutorial". I decided to go with watermelons - there were several tutorials on this topic and I wanted to give one of them a try. Although to be honest several previous ones are also based on tutorial, like the water marbling, etc because I had never tried these things before. I picked this one prior to ever beginning any of this - and by the time I got to this point, I decided to stick with my initial decision.

Tomorrow's the last day of the challenge and it is supposed to be "my favorite" one from the previous 30 days. Anyone want to take a guess which was my favorite?  hahaha



31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 29 - Inspired by the Supernatural

Today's Challenge is "Inspired by the Supernatural". Given that Halloween seems like it was just yesterday, I had to go with ghosts. I find them fun to do and cute. Yah, I know - I seem to go for sparkly and cute at every opportunity.

I did a base color of OPI's "OPI Ink" and used Jade's "Snow White", Orly's "Liquid Vinyl" and China Glaze's "Ruby Pumps" to make the ghosts.  Simple and fun.

Tomorrow's challenge - "Inspired by a Tutorial"



31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 28 - Inspired by a Flag

Today's Challenge is "Inspired by a Flag". I've done so much traveling over my lifetime, both national and international this really was a tough choice! I was born on the island of Puerto Rico, I spent 6 years living in "West" Germany, I have family history with Poland, UK, Canada, France, Barbados and so many more.

I decided to go with Poland. My grandmother is second generation polish immigrant, both her parents immigrated here from Poland prior to WWI. I adore her and she's the bestest!

For this one I did a base color of Jade's "Snow White" and covered half the nail in Cover Girl's Boundless Color "Red Revolution". Given the history of the country - I thought that was a great color name to use for this one.

Tomorrow's challenge - Inspired by the Supernatural

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 27 - Inspired by Artwork

Today's challenge is "Inspired by Artwork".  I really liked the idea on this one.  I'm a big fan of art, in general. My favorite painting is by Renoir, "Dance at Bougival". However, for this challenge I went with a more modern work.

You'll note that I didn't exactly replicate the original work. I took a few artistic liberties of my own. I started with a base color of Jade's "Snow White", and used Orly's "Liquid Vinyl", Jade's "Outrageous" and Color Club's Art Club "Red" and "Yellow" to create the design.

Tomorrow's Challenge is Inspired by a Flag. So many to choose from that are meaningful to me! Which to choose?

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 26 - Inspired by a Pattern

Today's Challenge is "Inspired by a Pattern". I must admit, I wasn't overly ambitious with this one. I went with the signature Burberry Plaid. I have a Burberry wallet and I love it! It's also one of the few fashion houses who's known more for a pattern than for their actual logo.

The colors for this were simple and straightforward. I started with a base color of OPI's "Bubble Bath" and used Orly's "Liquid Vinyl", Jade's "Snow White" and Color Club's Art Club "Red" to do the pattern.

Tomorrow challenge - Inspired by Artwork



31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 25 - Inspired by Fashion

I'm very excited about today's challenge, Inspired by Fashion.  DVF is my all time favorite designer and I decided to do nail art inspired by her most famous design: the wrap dress! I love this dress so much because it's the only clothing design ever to flatter every women's body type. Diane is also well known for her fabulous prints but this time I shied away from replicating three other challenges  by doing one of her prints here.  I've already done that so many times up to this point.

I started with a base color of OPI's "Bubble Bath" and for the dress I used Cover Girl's Boundless Color "Pink Prism" and "Red Revolution". I added a little round gem where the knot of the wrap should go. This one was easy to do and it was also one I really liked. I had a clear idea of what I wanted to do for this one and I think I executed it exactly to my vision.

Tomorrow's Challenge is "Inspired by a Pattern"

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 24 - Inspired by a Book

Today's Challenge is "Inspired by a Book".  I decided to go with "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" as the book. This was a tough one for me, so many choices and which one to choose? I did very much enjoy the entire Harry Potter series of books and I was so glad I waited until they were all out to read them. I would have hated waiting for each one to come out!

I started this one with a base color of OPI's "Purple with a Purpose". I used Stripe Rite's brown to make the broom and wand. For the scar I used Stripe Rite's black glitter and for Voldemort's eyes I used China Glaze's "Ruby Pumps" and Orly's "Liquid Vinyl" I also used Color Club's Art Club "Silver Satin" and Jade's "Star Lites" on the wand.

That's about all for today's challenge. Tomorrow's challenge is "Inspired by Fashion".

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 23 -

Today's challenge is "Inspired by a Movie". The movie I picked was "Happy Feet".  I was in the mood to do something cute - and you really can't get much cuter than penguins. It's also one of my favorite kids movies. Being a mommy of a 3 year old, I still have to watch the kiddie movies.

I started with a base color of Savvy's "Blue Frost". To make the penguins I used Orly's "Liquid Vinyl", Jade's "Snow White" and Color Club's Art Club "yellow. Penguins are just fun to do and fun to wear in the wintertime.

Tomorrow's challenge is "Inspired by a Book".

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 22 - Inspired by a Song

Today's Challenge is "Inspired by a Song". So many choices and I could only pick one? I picked Rollins Band - Disconnect. While it is inspired by the song itself, I didn't stick to close to images in the actual video. This song always comes to mind when I see "drama" on facebook, twitter and other online places where people interact in a negative way.

The pointer finger on this one is supposed to be the outlet that the plus on the middle finger came out of which was connected to the tv/monitor on the ring finger and the pinkie finger was my representation of a circuit board. I did the thrumb (not pictured) and pinkie finger last, and I was pleasantly surprised how great it came out. Exactly the way I envisioned it.

I used Orly's "Liquid Vinyl" (black) as a base color on all five fingers and Jade's "Snow White" on the other three. For the "circuit board" I did a thin layer of Finger Paints "Guggen I'm Lime" over the black and then use Color Club's Art Club "Satin Silver".

Tomorrow's Challenge "Inspired by a Movie"!

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 21 - Inspried by a Color

Now we're getting into the final stretch of challenge and it's more editorial than previous portions. I really liked the concepts for this portion, even if my execution is less than stellar on at least one - my toughest choices here was picking my favorites!

Today's challenge is "Inspired by a Color". The color I chose was green. I live on an avocado farm with a backyard Palm Tree nursery in Homestead, Florida. Once upon a time this land was once smack in the middle of the everglades, a grassy river and ecosystem that is completely unique. The weather and the land is such that our weeds can grow as high as 6 feet in the summer season and it also means we have some very lush flora to go with our fauna. I love living here and the background picture to this blog is actually a picture of one of our plants out in the nursery.  This picture is one that I took that very much was one of the plants that inspired this manicure.

Now the actual manicure.

For this one I used a base layer of Finger Paints' "Guggen I'm Lime" and added diagonal stripes of Sally Hansen's "Emerald City" and Color Club's Art Club "yellow".  It specifically brought to mind some of the varigated colors in many plants. I'm sure this is not the last time I'll do something with this color scheme.

Tomorrow's Challenge, Inspired by a song. Ohhh so many songs!

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 20 - Water Marble

Today's Challenge is Water Marble. This one was especially tough because I'd never done water marbling before. I'd actually had to go and look up a few tutorial in blogs and on YouTube to figure out how exactly I should b doing this. It took several different attempts to figure out which polishes and color combos I liked best, but this is the best one out of my initial efforts.

I went with this one because it reminded me of Tie-Dye T-shirts! I love all things retro and this is another one I wore for a few days because it tickled me to death. As challenging and frustrating as this one played out - I ultimately have been sooo thrilled with the final outcome and the potential final outcomes that I'm definitely going to try and work on my technique and using different polish combinations.

Tomorrow's Challenge is "Inspired by a Color".  Now we're really starting to get into the editorial portion of the Challenge and I most definitely enjoying this whole challenge and am so glad I did it!

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 19 - Galaxy

Today's post is Galaxy Nails. This one was a little awkward and a lot tough for me. My origina concept totally didn't work out... I was less than thrilled with it....it was bad enough that even my fiance asked "Are you sure you want to go with that?". He's a stereo typical guy who knows nothing about nail polish.....and usually doesn't even notice what I've got on my nails. I took that as a sign and that was the end of that. Here's what I did finally come up with......it's completely not fancy or even especially artistic. Most of the thoughts I had on this one, far outstripped my skills.

For this one I used a base layer of OPI's "OPI Ink" and topped that off with a layer of Jade's "Star Lights" (silver glitter). The challenge on this one was getting the glitter distributed across the nail in a fairly even way. Some streakiness was ok, but it couldn't be to obvious that it was brush strokes.

Tomorrow's post - Water Marble! Another one that I found difficult.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 18 - Half Moon

This one was a genuine challenge for me. I never did these in school and I've never had a client ask for a half-moon manicure either. I did know in theory how to do it, and it was not difficult at all to actually do.  I was inspired to do this one from a tutorial and it was actually fun to do and super cute.

These owls are super fun to do and wicked cute. My mind wants to say they'd be great holiday themed what which holiday? Halloween? hmmm, could be a good time to wear them in a more halloween themed colors.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 17 - Glitter

It's the day I've been waiting for! GLITTER! You might have guessed from all the caps, I'm a little excited about today's challenge. Although I didn't do anything wild and crazy for it - I did pick my three absolute favorite glitters.

For this one, I used China Glaze's "Ruby Pumps", I did two coats. The purple is OPI's "OPI Ink" and the gold stripe is Stripe Rite's Gold Glitter. It's a fairly simple design and I wore a variation of it for New Year's Eve  - this design on just the ring finger and big toe as accent nails.

Tomorrow's challenge - Half Moons.



31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 16 - Tribal Print

Today's challenge is tribal print. Since I was doing this one on my shorter nails, I couldn't do the tribal print I would have liked. Being of Native American descent, I'm very familiar with several specific designs but all of them would have required longer nails for me to do - so I kept it simple and went with brighter colors.

For the base color, I used Jade's "Outrageous Fantasy", then I did the triangles using Color Club's Art Club "Aqua", for the dots, I used Jade's "Outrageous" (royal blue), for the two straight stripes I used Color Club's Art Club "Yellow" and for the squiggly line I used Color Club's Art Club "Satin Silver".  This one really was a challenge for me to do, not so much because it was difficult, but because it was difficult to do on my own hand.

Tomorrow's challenge - GLITTER! woohoo

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 15 - Delicate Print

Today's nail art is a Delicate Print. This isn't super delicate because I am limited by my tools how delicate I can get - but this is about as delicate as my tools allowed me to be. I learned this one from a tutorial on YouTube awhile back. It reminded me of wedding cake roses. I think it's just cute in a lil girl kind of way.

To do this one I used Cover Girl Boundless Color "Pink Prism" as the base color and Jade's "Snow White" to make the little "cake roses". I tried this one using my tiniest dotting tool - it came out much smaller than if I had used my striping brush. 

Not a very exciting print but it was, like all the challenges, well worth doing. Tomorrow's challenge is Tribal Print.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 14: Flowers

Now we're starting to really get into the ones that I find the most challenging to do free-hand. today's challenge is Flowers. I have mixed feelings about this one, and it's clearly a "subject matter" I need to work on freehand. 

To do this one I used Cover Girl's Boundless Color "Red Revolution" as the base color and used Orly's "Liquid Vinyl", Color Club's Art Club "Satin Silver" and "Yellow",  Jade's "Snow White" and "Star Lights" to create the flowers.

Tomorrow's challenge - Delicate Print.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day 13 - Animal Print

Ohh Unlucky 13! Ok maybe not so unlucky - today's challenge is animal print. Not nearly as tough as you'd think it is to do free hand. I really got stuck on this one since there's soo many possibilities. Zebras, Tigers, Cows, Cheetahs, Leopards...you get the picture. There are many many tutorials posted on YouTube that range from using stamping plates to free hand designs. I decided to go the free hand route, I actually learned to do this one from my instructor back when I was in school. She felt we should all learn to do them and do them well since there's always women who love all things animal print and it's a good money maker.  (yes, she went there).

I didn't load the nail with the print like I normally would have since I was losing light and the polishes I was using don't do well under flash. I used Milani Cosmetic's "Golden Goddess" as my base color. I used Orly's "Liquid Vinyl" and a striping brush to make the outline of each "spot" and filled them in with Milani Cosmetics "Metallic Mango".

I really need to add both stamped and free hand animal prints to my portfolio as there are sooo many possibilities there.   Tomorrow's challenge: flowers!