31DC2015: Day 23 - Inspired By A Movie

Today's prompt is based on a movie and I had a really hard time figuring out which movie I wanted to do because I honestly don't watch a lot of them, and the ones that I do watch are pretty impossible to do nail art on. But I was browsing ideas and decided to base them on the movie Tangled, which is honestly one of my favourite movies. 

I did some really simple nail art, the ring and middle finger are based on the scene with all the lanterns in the night sky and the pinky and index finger are loosely based on Rapunzel's hair when it's plaited and has all the flowers in it. They're simple designs but I think they represent the movie pretty well!

I used waaay too many polishes for this so I'm not going to list them all, but I did base the flowers on a previous design by Sarah over at Chalkboard Nails.

Thanks for reading! 

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 22 - Inspired By A Song

I had the idea for today's prompt after I recently got Halsey's album Badlands and have been listening to it almost non-stop since. I really love the song Colors so that's what inspired me today. 

My index and pinky fingers were inspired by the lyrics "everything is blue" and all I did was simply dab a bunch of different shades of blue onto the base of a triangle sponge and then dab that onto my nails to create a slightly ombre, mixed up blue design.

My middle and ring fingers were inspired by the talking part of the song, precisely the following line "you touched me and suddenly I was a lilac sky". I used two purple polishes and a white polish to create the purple ombre representing the lilac sky line. I really love how this design turned out, it was pretty much exactly what I imagined in my head. It's simple, but still represents the song.

So that's all for today! Thanks for reading!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 21 - Inspired By A Colour

This prompt is always one that stumps me when I get to it because it can mean anything. Usually I just pick a base colour and roll with that and do a random mani but this year I decided to actually get inspired by the polish names! I had a browse of my polishes and came across an Essie polish called Dress To Kilt, a nice deep red, and I instantly thought of doing a plaid design. So that's what this design is today, an attempt at plaid, which honestly I'm no good at and in the end it just becomes a bunch of vertical and horizontal lines. Despite all that though I kinda like how it turned out!

The other two polishes I used were also by Essie and are Go Overboard and After School Boy Blazer, which I guess also ties into the plaid design if you think about school uniforms! The base is My Vampire Is Buff by OPI.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 20 - Water Marble

I absolutely love water marbling but I don't do it often enough because it's messy and I'm lazy. But as the prompt calls for it today, I picked a few Essie polishes and went to work. This time though I decided not to do my usual design and instead went with dropping the polishes anywhere in the water (as opposed to the normal bullseye) and swirling them around till I got a pattern I liked. As you can it was a bit hit and mess with that technique but I think they still look really cool and it was nice to do something a bit different!

The patterns on each nail kind of remind me of planets and I absolutely love that!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 19 - Galaxies

This is probably one of my favourite days of the whole challenge because I love me some galaxy nail art! I can definitely see myself improving over the years every time I do this prompt and this year is my best to date. I was extremely happy with how my nails turned out because I didn't hold back from using more colour and making it brighter than the past two years.

I used a bunch of polishes for this so I can't name them all (mostly because they've already been put back in their drawers).

And I only have one picture today because I started using a new camera and wasn't exactly sure what I was doing so I ended up with only one good picture but oh my god is it a good picture!

I was so damn in love with these nails! I still am, but I was so sad when I had to take them off for the next prompt. Hopefully now my photos will improve greatly!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 18 - Half Moons

Today's prompt is half moons and honestly I have no feelings towards this nail art design. Sometimes it looks nice, but I think I've only ever done half moons once away from this challenge. I just don't think they're that interesting, but in saying that, I did actually enjoy how my design turned out this year.

I started with a gray base and applied some half moon nail vinyls that I got from here, sponged on white polish over the gray and then did a combination of a blue and pink polish to make this sponged purple colour! I love sponged designs so I think that's why I was happy with how it turned out compared to if it'd just been another solid colour.

It definitely didn't photograph as nicely as it was in person, but you can still see the different colours and how combined they've turned into the purple!

That's it for today! Nothing that special.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 17 - Glitter

I had a lot of trouble with today's prompt because the original design I did didn't turn out quite the way I wanted it to so I went with a completely different design and I didn't really love that one either, but there was no way I was redoing a bloody glitter design for the third time so I stuck with it. It's not even that bad but for some reason I just wasn't in a glitter loving mood!

The glitter is by Maybelline Color Show from their Brocades collection I think, but I can't remember the name. It has small gold specks as well as all the silver so it's a really nice combo but it's not in your face with the gold.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 16 - Geometric

Hello! Once again I'm writing the next few blog posts all in one go which means they'll be back dated and I won't have polish details because I'm bad at blogging. But anyway, onto the mani!

I love doing geometric designs so for today's prompt I wanted to lay out a geometric pattern and then fill the spaces with a bunch of different colours, and that's exactly what I did. This is one of my fave designs of the challenge so far, I really love how it ended up!

I didn't plan too well though because I wanted to have two spots for each colour on each nail but that only worked out for two of my nails. Oh well, still looks awesome and I was so happy with the end result!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 15 - Delicate

Today's prompt is another one that I'm not too fond of! I am no good at delicate designs and in the past two years I've always just done a variation of a French manicure. But this year I had zero ideas so I sat down and ended up with the mani below. I used some glitter, some dots and even did a border!

The base is Peach Bloom and the glitter is Orchid Bouquet both by Maybelline Color Show. It's a really lovely glitter top coat that I did one layer of and then sponged on the rest to get a lot on my nail without making it too thick! The purple border was done using the purple striper from Ulta3. I was going to do dots all over the nail but when I did the first two I thought that looked a lot nicer than doing them all over the nail.

I don't know whether this is very delicate but it's minimal and simple and I guess that's the same thing!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 14 - Flowers

I'm not a huge fan of doing floral nail art. I've done some designs in the past but I've never been completely happy with the end result. I guess I'm just not a floral person. But I persevered and did a very simple, blobby type of design.

I started with a base of Bikini So Teeny by Essie, and for the flowers I used Fuschia Petal and Vivid Rose, with Peach Bloom in the centre and Chic Chartreuse all by Maybelline Color Show.

I quite like how this one turned out because I didn't care too much about the application and placement of the flowers. I just blobbed them on and went with it!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 13 - Animal Print

For the past two years I've always done leopard print for today's prompt but this year I decided to get out of my comfort zone and do something I've always wanted to do: zebra print! It was a lot easier to do than I thought but now that I've done it, I'm not that impressed by it. Maybe in the future I'll mix up the colours and go out of the normal black and white combo!

I think I did alright for my first attempt though! Definitely room for improvement but in the end it is just a few curvy/slanted stripes so it's supposed to look a bit messy and out of place.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 12 - Stripes

For today's design I had this colour scheme combined with the glitter polish in my head for a few hours while I was redoing the dots from yesterday. And I absolutely love how it turned out, it was exactly how I imagined it and better!

I used striping tape to get the lines so straight and (mostly) even. The glitter is a limited edition from Moonstone Polish that was in a What's In-die Box from one month last year!

The blue is Blue Marlin and the purple is Spring Break, both by Ulta3.

I also used the Revlon Matte Top Coat to dull things down a little bit!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 11 - Polka Dots

I've already done a few dotticures in this challenge, so when today's prompt rolled around I was feeling a bit uninspired, and I guess that's why the mani I'm posting is the second one I did for this prompt. I did a simple dotticure and when I went to edit the pictures I realised I absolutely hated it and I couldn't even bring myself to continue editing. So I redid the mani and ended up with an even simpler one! Nothing like a good white base and bright colours to pull me back in!

If I remember correctly (because let's face it, I'm clearly writing this post days later with the plan to back date it) the colours are Mojito by Ulta3 and Vivid Rose by Maybelline Color Show with a base of Snow Me White by Sinful Colors.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 10 - Gradient

I love a good gradient, but when I do them I always tend to stick to the safe colours such as green/purple/blue or pink/orange/yellow andddd today is no different! I went with the latter because I did the former last year for today's prompt. So I guess I'm still changing it up a bit!

Today I used Tangelo, and Frangipani by Ulta3 and Vivid Rose by Maybelline Color Show because they were already on my desk and I was in a rush. I then did some white dots (because the sponge stuck to almost every nail!) using Snow Me White by Sinful Colors.

So that's all for today! Nothing new or special this time round.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 9 - Rainbow

Today's prompt is one of my favourites because it's such a fun one and it's always so bright and colourful and you can do a lot with so many colours! Last year's design from this prompt was one of my absolute favourites of the year so I knew I definitely wouldn't be able to top it. So I did a simple sponged mani with all the rainbow colours and tried my best to fit them all on my little nails!

All polishes I used were from Ulta3 and they are, in rainbow order, Pink Colada, Tangelo, Frangipani, Mojito, Blue Marlin, Spring Break.

While it didn't turn out the best because my nails are so short that I couldn't get all the colours on each one, it still fits the prompt and is very rainbow-y!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 8 - Metallic

Just like every other year, this prompt is one of my least favourites because I don't love metallic nail polishes. So this year I decided to use the nail foils I recently received from Lady Queen Beauty (you can check out my review of them here). This time around though I decided to use them against a similar background to the foils themselves so that they blended in more and looked close enough to being an actual polish.

I really like how well they ended up blending in with the polish! I did originally try to do triangle designs with them but it was so hard to keep the foil and glue in one shape and it ended up looking pretty cool but it was just too messy and all over the place!

The polish I used is Vivid Rose by Maybelline Color Show.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 7 - Black & White

Today's prompt is probably one of the easiest prompts because you can do so much with black and white and it almost always look classic and elegant. I used my go to black and whites of the moment, Black Out by Sally Hansen and Snow Me White by Sinful Colors to do a simple cross hatch design.

I really loved this design and I was genuinely sad to take them off for the next prompt! Plus the top coat is so shiny and makes it look even nicer.

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 6 - Violet

I went with a simple peach and purple gradient for today's prompt, so not a lot to post about for this one but the polishes I used were Peach Bloom by Maybelline Color Show and Spring Break by Ulta3.

I wasn't sure how well the peach and purple would go together but they ended up complementing each other quite well I think!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 5 - Blue

For today's prompt I chose to do what I think is called a pond mani! Where you layer a sheer polish over dots and then do another layer of sheer and dots and so on until you get a 3D looking sort of pond design. I've never done this before, but I've seen it everywhere and always thought it look really cool! I didn't know just how cool it was until I did it myself and couldn't stop looking at it.

I used one of the OPI Sheer Tints called I Can Teal You Like Me. So it's definitely more teal than blue but I used it anyway because it was the closest.

I think all up I did maybe four or five layers of the dots, but I doubled up on the layers of sheer polish just because I felt like that covered it better and gave it more depth!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 4 - Green

I wanted to do something new and different for today's prompt since the past few days haven't been anything special. I really like the look of fish scale/mermaid nail art and I thought today would be a great chance to do it as I have a huge variation of green polishes! The end result didn't turn out exactly like scales because as it turns out it's actually kind of hard to get all the dots the same size and to mix the colours around enough. But it's still really cool and I like the effect it has.

I used a bunch of Ulta3 colours for this one so if you want to know the name of a specific one that you like, leave a comment and I'll let you know! I'm glad I went with something different for today, even if my back did ache after doing it because of how long it took!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 3 - Yellow

So I'm already a day behind, but thank god for the back dating option on blogger I can make it look like I'm not! I did these nails using the 'sandwich bag' method where you blob on some polish and go to town on them with a square cut out of a sandwich bag so that it ends up being swirly and awesome!

I used Sinful Colors' Snow Me White and Maybelline's Fierce 'n Tangy. I normally do this design with a bunch of different colours but I quite like it when it's only focused on one main colour mixed with white. Very simple!

- Melissa.

31DC2015: Day 2 - Orange

Day 2 of the challenge is orange! I'm not a lover or hater of orange but I never know what to do with it, so today I just went with a simple dotticure and added some gray into the mix. I don't recall what polishes I used as I packed them away and am already planning tomorrow's mani. But that doesn't matter too much!

Only a short post today because there's not much else to explain about this one!

- Melissa.