"Signature" Style

Thirty-one day challenges always seem to have a prompt of "signature style" but I have a problem. I don't have a signature style! I mostly just do various challenges and I try to use new techniques all the time. In fact I've never done the same manicure twice, with one exception. I did a rainbow manicure with a sponge on my own nails and I've had clients ask for it twice.

So I decided to take it sort of literal. I decided to first do a gradient, since it seems like people always request that. I made a gradient with Sassy from Revlon and Gargantuan Green Grape from OPI. I love the colour green and this gradient is probably my favourite!

Then came the literal signature. When I first came up with the idea, I thought of just doing my name. But I realised that I should really just do my nail blog persona of "The Nerd." The signature is done with Blackest Black from Designer Brands.

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Tie-dye

After completing the mother-daughter appointment, I was talking about how I still had a few manis to accomplish before I leave on Friday afternoon for the weekend. I won't have internet connection, so I needed to do the manis and their blog posts before I left. Then my husband and my flatmate, who is staying with us since she was sort of kicked out of her old apartment and gets married too soon to find a new one, offered her nails for a manicure. I told her that tie-dye was the only manicure left that would make sense on another person and it was perfect. She's going to do tie-dying on Friday evening!

It was my first time doing tie-dye this way, although I've heard of water marbling also called tie dye. I wanted to try this way though as I've had it on my pinterest board for a long time and I never got around to trying it.

I started out with painting her nails a white base colour, which in this case was from the studs pack from Models Prefer. The tie-dye lines were from My Dogsled is a Hybrid from OPI, Amazon Amazoff from OPI, and Continuum from Formula X.

And a strange octopus type pose because she thought it was hilarious!

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Blue Base

And here's the daughter! She absolutely loved the nails that I did the other day for complement/contrast, so I told her that I would do the distressed look on her nails. The only prompt that it could still fit in was the blue base. So we started off with that.

The base colour is Continuum from Formula X. Then I added some colours to distress. She picked out Diva of Geneva from OPI, Lavender Soap from Revlon Parfumerie, Sparks will Fly from China Glaze magnetix, and Lily White from Ulta3.

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Topper- non glitter

So I sort of fell apart on keeping this challenge up to date. The issue was that I was sick on Tuesday and then busy on Wednesday. Finally Thursday came along and I was able to do three friends' nails so that I could finish on time! So although I'm just now posting them, they should be day 28. These nails belong to the mum of one of my friends from my singing group. They came over for a mother-daughter night. They both love my nail art and were super excited to get manicures!

For the non-glitter topper, I had used I Can Teal that You Like Me from OPI sheer tints. It's the only topper that I have that isn't a glitter! I had to look up some ideas on pinterest and I really liked the idea of creating a gradient.

I started off with painting her nails a pinkish neutral, Summer Rose from boe. I then painted a bunch of layers of the sheer tint with slightly less of the nail each time. It reminded me of when I was little and used to dip candles in wax at Cedar Point to get different colours. It took a while for the colour to show up, but I was very pleased with the effect.

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Something You've Never Tried Before- Newspaper Nails

I sort of cheated with this because I've tried doing a map manicure with this same technique. That was a total fail! The polish just got sticky and the map didn't transfer at all. But this time I looked at the tutorial that CraftyNail posted. I also made sure that the white was really dry. I actually ended up taking a half hour walk with my husband as it was drying, so I knew it was good.

I also wasn't originally going to do this manicure, mostly because I didn't have a newspaper. Who gets newspapers any more? But then my husband and I were cleaning before Australia Day and found a random old newspaper. It was a USA Today from October 2012 and I wasn't even in America at that time nor do I read a newspaper!

Anyway, I cut out some pieces of newspaper that I liked. And it actually worked! There was still a bit of newspaper that stayed on my nails instead of just the image transferring. I'm still happy with it and will be trying it again in the future.

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Fishbraid

Yesterday was Australia Day, which meant that I wasn't able to write up my blog post. My husband and I had about a dozen or so people over to play board games and video games. I played Pandemic for about twelve hours with one of our friends, with some other people joining us at various parts of the day.

We did take a break from Pandemic for me to paint her nails, though. She was the third friend to "donate" her nails to my challenges this month and so I did the next design on the list, the fishtail braid. It was my first experience doing it. They didn't turn out perfect, but I learned from some mistakes. Namely I started the braid too high (and therefore had to try to add another layer to the bottom) and the angle wasn't really correct. But I've learned from them and hopefully it will work better next time. I love trying out new designs and techniques.

The colours she chose were Sex on the Beach from China Glaze, Radiant Violet from Three Beauties, and Push and Shove from OPI.

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Complement and Contrast

When I hear the word "complement," I think of things fitting together like puzzle pieces. So what better to do than puzzle pieces?

Puzzles also need a picture behind them, so I first did a technique that was new to me. In fact, I just found out how to do it a couple of days ago! It's called distressing. First, I painted a white base with the Models Prefer studs pack, which was also the black used for the pieces. Then I did the distressing, which is just brushing on the nail polish with the bottle brush, but wiping off the excess on the bottle. That way it doesn't give an even coat that covers the nail. To add to the contrast part, I chose blue and red, which I realise aren't opposite on the colour wheel, but they are opposite in terms of hot and cold! They are also in opposite directions with the red horizontal and the blue vertical. The blue was Frostbite by China Glaze and the red was an unnamed Chi Chi magnetic nail polish.

Here's the look pre-puzzle pieces. I'll definitely do this technique again. I really liked it and it's great for using nail polishes that don't have a lot left in the bottle, which is part of the reason that I used Frostbite.

Then I added the puzzle pieces to get my final look!

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Decals

I was able to use my friends again for this prompt. She has kids, so it was my first time going over to a client's house.

She chose the paisley water decals that I have from a previous review for the Born Pretty Store. The colour on her nails is My Dogsled is a Hybrid from OPI.

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White Base

I had a job interview yesterday, which I think went well but I'll find out if I got the job in two weeks. I wanted to paint my nails to match my skirt. My skirt is black with white stripes and some flowers.

I started with painting my nails white, which makes sense since I'm using it for this prompt. I then added tape. Lots of tape. Forty pieces in all! The black and white are from the studs pack by Models Prefer.

Sadly I didn't have time to add the flowers before my interview, but I added them when I got home to finish off the manicure. The flowers are made from the pinkish purple part of Pastel Punk from Revlon's nail art pen.

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Blobbicure

This was my first time doing a blobbicure. I looked up how to do it and gave it a go.

I had put up a request on facebook to all of my friends to ask for them to "donate" their nails since I'm doing so many challenges. At least I've been able to do one mani on each hand. Today was when my first friend came over for a manicure.

She chose Mulberry from Ulta3 as the base colour and told me to pick the colour for the blob. I chose Strawberry Sundae from Ulta3 to go with it.

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Three shades of green/yellow

I really don't like yellow and green is my favourite colour, so clearly I chose to do three shades of green! The colours I chose were #42 by Fuso for the middle/base, the lighter colour is Glowstick from Wet 'n' Wild Fergie, and the dark colour is Candid Cameron from Nicole by OPI Modern Family collection.

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Rainbow

For almost a year, I've been wanting to do a rainbow manicure using a fan brush. At that time I didn't have a fan brush yet and then the subsequent prompts of "rainbow" I had different inspirations right before I did then. Well, this time I finally did a rainbow manicure with a fan brush!

My initial idea was to still do it with red at one end of the nail and purple on the other, but then right before I did these, I decided to just do each colour throughout the whole nail. I started with a white base colour from the studs pack of Models Prefer. Then I added colours using a fan brush in reverse rainbow order. Desire by Formula X, Continuum by Formula X, Envious by Kmart, Bananarama by Kmart, Tahiti by Ulta3, and Red My Fortune Cookie by OPI.

I wasn't sure how I felt about these nails. They look more chaotic than I thought that they would in my head. Then, just as I was finishing, my husband came over and said "awww pretty!" about my nails. He never says anything about my nails without me prompting him. So I know that they aren't a totally wreck! (Although he did say that he also likes Jackson Pollock, so apparently he likes the style of chaos.)

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My inner pyromaniac!

I loved that the prompt for today is fire. I'm a bit of a pyromaniac. I love that fire is hot and it's so beautiful!

I started this mani by painting my nails white with the white from the Models Prefer studs pack. Then I painted over it with Bananarama by Kmart. Next I used a sponge to get the mixed yellow/orange/red effect. I put random splotches of Red My Fortune Cookie from OPI. I also figured that looked too red/orange, so I also sponged on some extra yellow.

The last part was to add the black on top. Since flames don't have a straight edge and are varied in their appearance, this was actually a really easy thing to do. I absolutely love how they turned out!

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Artwork

For the theme of artwork, I really wanted to do some pointillism. I've always thought it was really cool how a bunch of dots can form a beautiful picture. It's one of the reasons that I love aboriginal artwork so much. I didn't want to do the obvious pointillism of the Sunday Afternoon pointillism that everyone knows, so I took to google for some inspiration.

I found one that I really liked by Clare Ellis. I clicked on it to visit her page and found one that inspired me because it was a bunch of blues, which is my second favourite colour. The one I choose is called Wheel of Sapphire.

Here's my interpretation. I used Continuum from Formula X for the base colour. The dark blue is an unnamed polish from Chi Chi magnetic. The medium blue is Frostbite from China Glaze. The darker blue around the medium blue is just a mixture of Frostbite and Blackest Black from Designer Brands. The white is from the Studs pack from Models Prefer.

Here's the original artwork:

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