ER31DC Week 31 - Redo!

Well, the last week of the Extra Relaxed 31 Day Challenge is upon us, and this one was quite difficult. I didn't quite know what to redo.

The other half suggested tribal, but to be honest I nearly wept tears of blood after how long it took to do the first one. Then I was thinking glitter or polka dots... until I remembered I'd not done a gradient mani in an absolute age. I love gradients. Not so massively fond of the cleanup afterwards, but I have a new bottle of pure acetone on my desk that says that isn't going to be a problem any more.

Tri-Polish Challenge May - Stripes & Tips

Tri-polish challenge nails #2 - Stripes and Tips.

This was actually the first set of nails I did for the challenge, and I really have to admit that I had completely no direction when doing these nails. I just did stuff, and then these nails happened.

ER31DC Week 10 - Gradient

I love a good gradient, me.

Since I figured out how to do it I've done loads - check out my gradient tag. Its a great background to other manis, such as striping tape or spots and its soooooo easy to do its unreal. Plus every time I wear one to work my co-workers are dead amazed haha.

The colour scheme in this mani was inspired by one thing - the sun. Its finally made an appearance here in the refrigerator known as the north east of England, and thus everyone has gone absolutely mental and decided to wear shorts and have BBQs. We take what we can get here in Newcastle - enjoy it while you can, because it may not come back for another six months.

Easter Nails

Just a quick post this morning before I continue lying around dying of a nasty cold (illness makes me so melodramatic haha!). Did these last night as everyone seemed to be doing Easter nails and I decided to hop on the bandwagon.

Nails are done in Sinful Colors Snow Me White, with sponged gradients of (thumb to pinkie) Nails Inc Albert Place, Sinful Colors Verbena, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Yellow Kitty, Sinful Colors Mint Apple and Essie's Off The Shoulder. Then, for the super cute icing on the cake, I topped them with Cagedbird Lacquer's Faerie Carnival, a beautiful pastel glitter which kinda makes my nails look like frosted cakes.

Mmmm, cake.

A shot of the gradients before glittering. I quite like the semi-matte look you get from sponging polish.

Pokemon Challenge Week 10

I never use fighting pokemon. In fact, if it doesn't burn or mentally crush, then I'm probably not a big user of it haha. My squads are always big on fire and psychic pokemon, with others thrown in as necessity dictates.

So I had a real problem deciding which of the fighting pokemon I was going to use this week. I don't like any of them! I was tempted to go for Mankey or Primeape, as I do love the episode of the anime where Mankey steals Ash's hat, but as always I had to be awkward and go for the non-obvious choice...

...Poliwrath.

Poliwrath is conveniently a dual type pokemon, water/fighting. And far more interesting to look at the the rest of the fighting bunch, with their various shades of brown/beige.

Poliwrath was done in Sinful Colors Snow me White, with Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Thinking of Blue and LA Colours Art Deco in Black. Gradient (as always) was done using the fabulous tutorial from The Nailasaurus.

ER31DC Week 4 & Apologies

First of all, apologies for not posting for a week or so - we've had a bereavement in the family so everything has been a bit topsy turvy, and obviously family comes first.

Back to our regularly scheduled activities, and first up this weekend is the Extra Relaxed 31 Day Challenge. Week 4 is green week, and has once again highlighted that I really don't realise how many of each colour I actually have.

Shuffling through my surprisingly large collection of greens, I decided to see what I could do with just two colours and a glitter - Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Green Slipper, Essie's Navigate Her, and OPI Fresh Frog of Bel Air.

My first gradient

I've never done a gradient before. I've stared at the fabulous tutorial on The Nailasaurus god-knows-how-many-times and thought "I'll do that... at some point. Maybes." Because I am a lazy wuss who is disappointed by anything less than perfection first time.

So, I figured I'd do a subtle gradient on a polish I'd not used yet - Essie's Bahama Mama!

Sponged over top of my ring finger is a lovely muted bronze polish from Sleek called 'Truffle' which actually looks a lot more subtle in real life than it does in these photos. 

I adore both polishes, both Bahama Mama and Truffle, as they both go on quite easily and give wonderful colour. Bahama Mama is difficult to clean up however, as I found last night when I did these and had to scrub my cuticles when my hand slipped! They're still not totally clean on the middle finger.