26 Great Nail Art Ideas - Mixed Tape Mani

Hey there!  This week's 26 Great Nail Art Ideas theme is Mixed Tape Mani.  I'm no spring chicken so the absolute first thing that popped into my head was old school mixed tapes...as in cassettes.  I had quite the collection of tapes back in the day, mostly recorded off the radio (but I was a pro at making sure no radio announcer words snuck in there) so I was dying to do some cassette tape nails for this theme.  Alas, I chickened out and decided to stick with what I assumed was the theme's intention and used a couple different types of actual tape (the sticky kind) to do this week's nail art.

The Digit-al Dozen does December/Nail Crazies Unite Candy Cane

Press  Sample

Hey there!  It's the end of this month's Digit-al Dozen theme of "December".  It also happens to be the day for the Nail Crazies Unite theme of Candy Canes and what's more December than candy canes?  So I've combined the prompts into one post with some candy cane stripes and stamping.  My stripes streaked a bit but I do quite like the glitter-y red and white look.  I wish I had a photo of the first time I tried this.  This isn't perfect but it's definitely an improvement.

The Digit-al Dozen does Vampy: Red Glittery Stripes

Hey there!  I've been a bit obsessed with glitter lately.  I like to think that most girls have a love of sparkly things, glitter included, which might explain why I spent a small fortune (shipping to Canada is way too expensive) on one of the new Pat McGrath Lust 004 lip kits and I don't even wear makeup.    But twice this weekend, I went out wearing glitter on my lips.  I'm trying to talk myself out of buying one of the red ones (the one I originally bought was the Flesh color) and instead I've been playing around with putting regular red glitter over red lipstick.  I haven't gotten brave enough to wear red glitter lips out yet but, since I had the glitter out anyway, I decided to also try it out on my nails.  It's not a secret that I love red glitter nails so I definitely had no complaints about these.

The Digit-al Dozen does Fashion - Sailor Stripes

Hey there!  It's time for this month's Digit-al Dozen theme.  I'm not gonna lie.  This is not a theme I have any insight into.  We're doing Fashion and, if I were to do a week worth's of manis for my personal style, we'd have 5 days of solids colors (mostly black or grey) with maybe a day of stripes.  So I hit the internet and found some outfits I could use as inspiration.  Funny enough, the first one I have is, in fact, stripes.

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Pink and Aqua

Hey there!  Today's 40 Great Nail Art Ideas post combines one of my favourite colors with my favourite pattern.  Our group color theme is pink and aqua (I LOVE aqua...the color, not the band) and my personal prompt was stripes.  I'm a pretty plain person but if you look at my clothing or my decorations at home, everything is striped so obviously I love putting them on my nails too.

The Digit-al Dozen does Rainbows/40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Summer

Hey there!  Today's post is a double theme which are always fun to figure out.  If you've been following this week, you'll know we've come to the final day of The Digit-al Dozen's week of rainbows.  In addition to those rainbows, 40 Great Nail Art Idea's theme is Summer, presumably since summer officially begins on Monday.  And what says summer more than sunglasses...other than a stamping image that directly says "Hello Summer".  Not exactly subtle, eh?

The Digit-al Dozen does New & Improved/40 Great Nail Art Ideas Things That Fly - Advanced Stamping Bees

Hey there!  Today is the final day of The Digit-al Dozen's New & Improved week which has been super inspirational for me.  It's been one of my favourite themes in quite awhile.  I've decided to combine my last new technique with 40 Great Nail Art Ideas prompt of Thing That Fly.  I knew I wanted to do a cute bumblebee for Things That Fly and thought it'd be a good time to try Advanced Stamping.  I get a bit confused about whether there's a difference between Advanced Stamping/Stamping Decals/Reverse Stamping but I can tell you that I have never filled in a stamp image on the stamper and directly stamped it onto my nail so that's my new technique for today (even though it's only on one nail).

The Digit-al Dozen does Inspired by Pinterest/Magazines - Day 2 Autumn Striped Nails

Hey there!  For the second day of The Digit-al Dozen's Pinterest/Magazine week, I have my re-creation of a mani that I saw as an article header in my favourite magazine, Nail It!  I must have loved that photo because I busted out the vinyls to do this...and if you know me at all you'll know that I always complain when I use vinyls.  Not that they're not awesome and easy to use, I just worry about drying time before I use them.  I really should do it more often though since I always love how striped manis turn out.

Dark and Grungy Chevron Nails

Hey there!  It's the final week of The Crumpet's Nail Tarts 52 Week Pick n Mix Challenge.  I'm sad to see it go but have to say I'm pretty proud of myself for managing to do all 52 prompts.  The final prompts were dark/grungy and zig zags.  I think chevrons are zig zag-y so I thought a saran wrap chevron mani would be cool....little did I know that I'd pretty much lose the entire chevron effect.  Trust me, the chevrons are way more visible here than they were in real life!

The Night Circus Nail Art

Hey there!  This month's The Polished Bookworms book was one of the greatest things I've read in ages...The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.  It's a story of duelling magicians which sounds odd but it works.  The setting of this duel is a mysterious circus that is only open at night called Le Cirque des Reves or The Circus of Dreams and wow does that circus ever sound dreamy.  The best thing about this book, to me, was how fully immersed I became in this circus.  The imagery is so well written that I felt like I was there...and now I wish the circus was real!  The circus is set up so everything is black and white, except for a group of diehard fans who follow the circus called Reveurs who always wear a splash of red, hence the red striped accent in my nail art.

The Digit-al Dozen does Neon: Day 1 Neon Stripes

Hey there!  Guess what....it's a new Digit-al Dozen week and I can't even begin to tell you how much I love the theme!  I love neons...like a disturbing amount.  Neons are pretty much the only polishes I frequently buy full collections of so this week was a blast for me because I got to use a whole bunch of them.  For today's post, I'm combining Neon Week with the 52 Week Pick n Mix Challenge themes of Stripes and Pastels by using KBShimmer's Summer 2015 neons which are sort of pastel neons.

Pink and Red Skittle Nail Art

Hey there!  This week's 52 Week Challenge prompts are Skittles and Red & Pink.  Try as I might, I could not get them to not look like Valentine's Day nails (though it didn't help that I wanted to use my new heart swirl vinyls) so I guess I'm bringing you a bit of V-Day love in the summer!

The Digit-al Dozen does Fandom: Day 1 Kevin Smith

Hey there!  It's the start to a whole new Digit-al Dozen week and this one is going to be SO MUCH FUN!  This month's theme is Fandom which I took to mean a couple different things so I have a few mani's inspired by things that I'm a big fan of and at least one of something that I truly know nothing about but that is a popular fandom and I happen to be a fan of a guy involved in making it (more on that later this week, I guess).  But for today I have possibly my all time biggest fandom.  I'm a giant fangirl of the screenwriter/director/actor/podcaster/public speaker Kevin Smith (known to some for his recurring role as Silent Bob) so that's how I'm starting my Fandom week.

The Digit-al Dozen does Childhood: Day 2 Teddy Bears

Hey there!  For Day 2 of The Digit-al Dozen's Childhood week AND for the Crumpet's Nail Tarts 52 Week Pick n Mix Challenge, I did some teddy bears that reminded me of early childhood or baby showers.  The 52 Week Challenge prompts are 3 pastels and negative space.  It was tough to combine all three themes but I hope I succeeded here.

Color Club Holographic Gradient

Hey there!  Wow, two posts in one day...yikes!  But, even though I'm in the middle of the Digit-al Dozen's Fairy Tale week, I couldn't forget about the 52 Week Pick n Mix Challenge now could I?  One of this week's themes were holo and who doesn't love a good holo?  The first ones I remember being wowed by were Color Club's Halo Hues so that's what I used here along with a few Nail Vinyls.

31DC2014 Day 19 - Expanding Galaxies

Hey there!  Happy Friday everybody!  Day 19's 31 Day Challenge prompt is Galaxies.  Galaxy nails are seriously one of my favourite types of nail art so I was looking forward to this one.  So much so that I may have taken way too many photos of these.  After doing my galaxy nail art I decided I wanted to unleash the geek in me and turn them into Big Bang nail art (the scientific principle, not the TV show) so I used some Nail Vinyls to make them look like the galaxy was exploding/expanding.

31DC2014 Day 12 - Stripes over gradient

Press  Sample

Hey there!  For Day 12 of the 31 Day Challenge I'm killing, not two, but three birds with one stone, as they say.  1.  I get to complete "stripes" day.  2.  I get to review these cute cuticle tattoos from Bundle monster and 3. I get to do a new gradient since I didn't love how my gradient day nails turned out.  So today here's a new gradient with stripes.

31DC2014 Day 11 - Fall-Toned Dots Shower

Hey there!  Since I've already done a polka dot look for the 31 Day Challenge I was browsing Pinterest, looking across inspiration for what to do for for the official Polka Dots day.  I came across this awesome manicure by Raggio di Luna that she called "Dots Shower".  I loved it so much that I tried to do a similar look with an autumn colour palette.

piCture pOlish Blog/Insta Fest 2014!

Hey there!  I've never been as excited for a post as I am for today's post.  Today is Picture Polish's annual Blog Fest.  Just in case you haven't noticed, I'm a huge fan of the Picture Polish brand with all of their innovative colors and finishes.  As such, I'm so honored to have been chosen to be amongst the many talented bloggers that are participating this year.  

2014's Blog Fest posts are divided into two parts.  Part 1 is a review of one of Picture Polish's amazing shades.  Part 2 is the creation of some nail art using two Picture Polish shades featuring the use of Nail Vinyls.

Part 1

For part 1, I was given Bewitch, a blogger collaboration shade from a fellow Canadian blogger, The Obsessed.  Bewitch is a purple-leaning brown with a scattered holographic finish and a strong golden shimmer as you can see in the photo below.

For this swatch I used two easy coats of Bewitch and top coat.  With the first coat, the purple colour of the jelly base is apparent.  With the second coat, it appears to be more of a warm, vampy brown.  Perfect for autumn.  

In this macro shot, you can really see the holographic particles and the shimmer that set this colour apart from other browns in my collection.

To show more of the scattered holographic effect, here is a photo taken in direct light.  Check out that sparkle.  

Part 2

For part 2, I was given Chillax and Bonkers, both from the Urban Shades collection, and mini chevron Nail Vinyls.  We were given the option of also using a black/white polish for our nail art.  I also used a pair of tweezers to place the nail vinyls and an angled clean up brush.

When it came to creating some nail art with only the items provided, I was tempted to come up with some wild design with zig zags going in all directions but instead I decided to just showcase how easy nail vinyls are to work with.  

To create this look, I started with a white base (1).  Once that was fully dry, I used the tweezers to place the mini chevron Nail Vinyls at an angle (2).  Make sure the stickers are well secured otherwise you can get some bleeding underneath and at the edges.  Then I went over the Nail Vinyls with Chillax on the top half of my nail and Bonkers on the bottom half (3).  Then, immediately I removed the Nail Vinyls, cleaned up the edges and finished it with top coat (4).  If you wait for the polish to dry, you're more likely to get lifting at the edges of the polish.

I really hope you guys like what I came up with.  

Thank you to Picture Polish for providing me with this thrilling opportunity to participate in this year's Blog Fest!  Don't forget to give Picture Polish and Nail Vinyls some love by following these links.  

Picture Polish

Store: www.picturepolish.com.au

Every Day Deal: http://picturepolish.com.au/everyday-deal

International Stockists: http://picturepolish.com.au/network

FB: https://www.facebook.com/piCturepOlish

IG: http://instagram.com/picturepolish

Nail Vinyls

FB: https://www.facebook.com/nailvinyls?fref=ts

IG: http://instagram.com/teismom

Store: http://nailvinyls.com/

'Til next time...

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